GOP launches another unconscionable attack on UNC

Well, the cure is worse than the disease. Ever aggrieved at their supposed exclusion, right-wing conservatives launched another attack on academic freedom at UNC. Under pressure from Art Pope’s henchmen the politically appointed UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees declined to offer tenure to acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Chapel Hill grad. The fallout will almost certainly chill intellectual debate on campus and have repercussions for the school’s image.

Hannah-Jones is a giant in the world of public intellectual debate. Her 1619 Project engendered a lively discussion about the nature of U.S. history and the American nation, bringing writers and thinkers into a needed discourse on our country’s legacy of racism. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her work and her writing has an enormous following. She also has roots in North Carolina, having attended UNC and started her journalism career reporting for local outlets in the Triangle.

In other words, if there is anyone UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism should want on their faculty, it is Nikole Hannah-Jones. But the right wing in the state has notably different standards. They seek to enforce a stringent conservative doctrine on the UNC system, erasing contrary perspectives in much the same way as their legislative handlers have obliterated meaningful democracy in N.C. legislative elections. Critics like the so-called Jim Martin Center for Academic Renewal seek to reinvent UNC as a Hillsdale College-style incubator for right-wing conservatism, and if god willing they can’t do that, they’d prefer to burn the universities to the ground.

 The clear intent here was to send a message: transgress the new reigning right-wing creed, or we’ll make it hurt. Unsatisfied with bullying an acclaimed writer, Art-Pope funded “think tankers” want to place every faculty hire in the purview of university boards of trustees, which of course are full to the brim with right-wing Republicans. That proposal may seem outlandish, but it is getting traction in state Republican circles. If it happened, UNC’s status as a destination for top faculty would take a nosedive.

None of this, however, is new. Since UNC rose to greatness in the 1920’s, North Carolina conservatives have waged an endless war against it. In the Depression era when Chapel Hill was arguably at its intellectual zenith, Charlotte’s conservative Southern Textile Bulletin constantly harassed liberal UNC president Frank Porter Graham. One of his sins: going to dinner at an integrated restaurant. A couple decades later, a conservative legislature passed the infamous “Speak Ban Law” prohibiting communists from giving speeches on campus. Jesse Helms called UNC the “University of Negroes and Communists.” Phil Berger and Thom Tillis cut the system by 15-18%.

 I want to believe that UNC will endure, but that’s not guaranteed. The fundamentals are still strong. The faculty and the student body are resilient. But in America, power talks, and in North Carolina, power currently rests in the hands of right-wing Republicans who hate the system. Because of their attacks, UNC is a weaker university than it was ten years ago. What will it be ten years from now?