Contextualizing the free speech initiatives at the UNC system

February 18th, 2023

Happy Saturday morning. It doesn’t appear that Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence feature, ChatGPT, has yet obtained the nuclear codes as it threatened to do earlier this week. That’s a good reason to seize the day.
 
We’re talking this morning about intellectual diversity at North Carolina’s public universities, and we’re doing it for two reasons: 1) It’s been in the news quite a bit recently, and you deserve a fuller picture than what’s been provided; and 2) The UNC System is the crown jewel of our state – our secret economic development and growth weapon. What happens there impacts all of us.
 
UNC System President Peter Hans remains one of the only key figures in state politics who enjoys respect and support from legislative leaders and Gov. Roy Cooper. He’s smart, savvy, and sophisticated, and he doesn’t usually wade into controversy.
 
That’s why what he said at last month’s Board of Governors meeting was noteworthy: “We cannot condition employment or enrollment on adherence to any set of beliefs, no matter how well intended…Legally, intellectually, morally — it’s our responsibility to protect students, faculty and staff from compelled speech.”
 
What’s behind that forceful declarative? North Carolina media hasn’t much covered it, but there’s a battle playing out behind the scenes for the future of North Carolina’s public universities. Below is a full, factual, and balanced rundown of the state of play, followed by our brief commentary.
 
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“In addition to your application please submit the following: …[A] two-page statement that demonstrates your knowledge of evidence-based pedagogy, antiracism and equity-based teaching, the actions you have taken in the past to support these efforts, and your plans for implementing antiracism and equity-based practice in your teaching and professional interactions.”
 
So read a December 2022 application requirement for prospective faculty seeking a position as NC State’s Assistant Teaching Professor in Microbiology.
 
Hans and the Board of Governors seek to prevent this and similar episodes (for example, NC State also requires prospective students to submit diversity and inclusion statements with their application) in the future. How? We’ll get into that in a moment, but first a (brief) diversion into what antiracism is.
 
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As The Atlantic reported last week, “Universities’ publicly stated positions imply that there is only one proper way to interpret the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] trinity: through the concept of ‘anti-racism,’ which may not mean what you think it means.”
 
Indeed, “antiracism” is a political doctrine that goes far beyond “not racist.” It is controversial. The doctrine teaches that discrimination on the basis of race is not necessarily bad. If a policy yields equal outcomes along racial lines, it is antiracist, even if the policy discriminates on the basis of race.
 
The founder of Boston University’s Center for Antiracism Research, Ibram X. Kendi, takes this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: “If racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.”
 
The doctrine flips on its head the view that race-neutral policies – in law, hiring, promotion, and more – are ideal. Instead, the doctrine agues that race-conscious policies, including ones that disadvantage people because of their skin color, are desirable to achieve an equitable society.
 
Kendi writes, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
 
(NC State describes Kendi as “a thought leader in racial equity and antiracism,” and its Vice Provost distributed copies of Kendi’s writing to other university leaders.)
 
That is antiracism doctrine, and that is what NC State (and other UNC System schools) require some prospective faculty to profess adherence to in job applications.
 
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Hans and the Board of Governors apparently view these types of requirements as problematic (there are many more examples of similar episodes throughout UNC System schools).
 
Hans delivered the remarks quoted at the top of this story at a January Board of Governors meeting during discussion of a new system-wide proposal to prohibit “compelled speech.”
 
The proposal, which is copied in full at the end, would prohibit universities from requiring current or prospective faculty or students to “ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement.”
 
In short, it would ban the ideological and/or political job requirement listed above.
 
But some faculty leaders have forcefully denounced the effort.
 
UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Chair Mimi Chapman called it an “overreach.” UNC law professor Gene Nichol called it “dangerous and stupid.” They argue that individual campuses, not the UNC System, should determine requirements for faculty and students. They have not, to our knowledge, directly addressed antiracism requirements in job applications or diversity statements in student applications.
 
Similarly, the News & Observer editorial board declined to comment on the substance of the proposal, instead asserting that conservatives are “snowflakes” and that the Board of Governors seeks to “protect the tender feelings of conservatives.”
 
Simultaneous to this, the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees is spearheading a separate but related effort which has also generated fierce opposition from some faculty and opinion writers.
 
Earlier this month, the board voted to support accelerating the creation of a new school at the university, called the “School of Civic Life and Leadership.”
 
The trustees say the school would focus relentlessly on free and open discourse. They point to a UNC System survey that concluded a large proportion of students self-censor their political views in class and among their peers.
 
The school’s mission “would be to develop students’ capacity and knowledge necessary for healthy democratic citizenship,” the trustees wrote. “The school would promote a culture of free speech and open and civil inquiry in which we recognize members of divergent political groups as friends to learn from instead of as foes to vanquish.”
 
Opposition to the trustees has focused mainly on process. Some faculty leaders and opinion writers argue that all academic initiatives should originate with faculty, not the Board of Trustees. They complained that the board did not solicit their input before the vote, and they did not like that the Wall Street Journal published an editorial supporting the initiative.
 
The trustees argue that they have a legal obligation to act in the best interest of the university. “By law, we are charged with helping to set policy, advising the administration, and approving the university’s budget,” they wrote. “The university belongs not to the faculty nor the administration, but to North Carolina’s almost 11 million people, whom our board was appointed to represent in overseeing America’s oldest public university.”
 
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As if the public brouhaha weren’t enough, it appears that members of Gov. Roy Cooper’s newly-created “Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina” are pressing university accreditors to thwart the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees effort.
 
Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), which accredits UNC System schools, threatened UNC-Chapel Hill during during a presentation to Cooper’s commission last week.
 
She said, “UNC-Chapel Hill’s board is going to get a letter because of a news article that came out that said that the board, without input from the administration or faculty, had decided they were going to put in this new curriculum offering.”
 
Wheelan added, “We’re going to see the committee and talk to them and help them understand it and either get them to change it, or the institution will be on warning with [accreditors], I’m sure.”
 
The day after Wheelan’s presentation, she reportedly walked back the threat, telling UNC-Chapel Hill trustee Marty Kotis that Margaret Spellings, who sits on Cooper’s commission, directed her to raise the issue: “I was asked to mention it…I will tell you it was Secretary Spellings who asked me to mention that.”
 
This information suggests that opponents of the School of Civic Life and Discourse are attempting to leverage UNC-Chapel Hill’s accreditation in an effort to kill the initiative.
 
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What to make of all this? With the above facts in mind, we offer you some perspective.
 
Premising university employment or admission on statements supportive of a particular worldview are dangerous. They fly in the face of the long-held view that universities should facilitate exploration of different perspectives, not decide which ones are right.
 
Similar fights over intellectual diversity are playing out around the country. In some of those fights, purported defenders of free thought are behaving in ways similar to those they claim to oppose.
 
For example, “critical theory” has become a major flashpoint in education. Some seek to ban or otherwise devalue critical theory in university environments. But deciding that critical theory doesn’t belong on a university campus is itself a form of intellectual suffocation. 
 
Hans and the Board of Governors rightfully steer clear of such traps in their proposed prohibition on compelled speech. They’re positioning themselves firmly on the middle ground that both sides of this debate seem to have vacated. They don’t endorse or oppose any particular worldview. They simply say public universities may not require applicants to say they support a particular cause as a condition of employment or acceptance.
 
That’s eminently reasonable, defensible, and in line with the core values that we’ve long understood to define a university.