The UNC Board of Trustees is seeking to add a new school to the university. In its last full board meeting, members unanimously passed a resolution to create and “accelerate” development of the School of Civil Life and Leadership.
The resolution includes a goal of delegating at least 20 faculty to the school, providing a degree option for undergraduate students and promoting democracy on campus through public discourse.
Or, in other words: the school is meant to better allow for students to discuss opposing political viewpoints.
“The school would create a space for free speech, a culture of civil and open inquiry in which we as a university and faculty members and other students would recognize members of political outgroups as friends to learn from rather than foes to vanquish,” said BOT Chair David Boliek as he introduced the resolution.
In an interview with “Fox and Friends” after the vote, Boliek said research shows that conservative students censor themselves on college campuses and that is something the board wants to change by creating the new school.
“We want to provide that opportunity for students to express themselves, to learn and develop the skills necessary to be leaders of the future,” he said.
The creation of a new school, however, isn’t up to the Board of Trustees. According to UNC’s Provost Chris Clemens, it instead lies in the hands of the university’s General Education Oversight Committee. The committee is made up of faculty from various departments at UNC.
In another faculty-led committee at UNC, the Faculty Executive Committee, members said they were blindsided by the BOT’s resolution.
Chair Mimi Chapman said she was both flabbergasted by the announcement itself and that the faculty hadn’t been involved in the development of the proposal.
“To my knowledge, there has been no groundwork done, no market analysis to see if students even want such a curriculum, no investigations of overlap with what is already happening, no analysis of competing needs on campus,” Chapman said. “It is deeply upsetting and unsettling.”
Clemens said Monday he was also surprised by the resolution during the BOT meeting.
“Those statements don’t reflect the position I’m giving right now,” he said. “[Boliek is] giving his view of something… I did not know there would be a resolution about it, I did not know there would be media events around it.”
The provost said he believes the purpose of the school is to not make a political statement, but instead to follow the university’s IDEAs in Action “oral communication capacity” curriculum.
“We want to equip our students to open their ears, find their voices,” Clemens said. “That is not a liberal issue. That is not a conservative issue. Rather than being about balance, the school is about claiming the vision of the university as a place that serves our students and our state with the most basic necessities for making our society and our democracy work.”
Multiple faculty members in the meeting, however, disagreed. They said they didn’t believe the school was necessary, because exposure to different perspectives is already being offered by current faculty.
“I think there are people all over this campus and the vast majority of the faculty that are extremely skilled at allowing their students to have constructive discourse in the classroom,” Chapman said. “I take issue with anybody’s… assassination of our faculty’s ability as we have it now to help students have conversations about complicated topics in the classroom. That’s why we’re all here.”
Clemens suggested that faculty who believe the curriculum is already being fulfilled meet with campus leadership to express their concerns. He also reiterated that the ultimate decision to create the school will be made by the General Education Oversight Committee.
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The ultimate decision to appropriate state taxpayer money to the university ultimately rests with the NC General Assembly. Maybe it’s time to do a little endowment depletion at UNC-CH.