The Damage a Trump ExecOrder Did To High Point University

 

Nido R. Qubein, the president (since 2005) of High Point University (which he also attended as a student soon after his immigration to North Carolina from Lebanon in 1966), is something of a go-getter in the world of higher education. Since taking over High Point, he's made the place famous. Freshman applications skyrocketed from 1,000 to 22,000 annually. Enrollment surged by 5,000 from the barely thousand students at the sleepy little United Methodist private school when Qubein took over. Qubein increased the endowment from $42 million to $240 million, enabling HPU to invest in several new divisions (including a law school, a school of pharmacy, a school of entrepreneurship, a school of dentistry, etc.). According to his LinkedIn, Qubein does a regular 2-minute "Monday Motivation" talk which is distributed to all students at HPU. Many of those "Monday Motivations" are viewable, and I was totally arrested by the one he did on "tolerance" and "respecting others," such wholly objectionable language now to trumpists.

Qubein is a good talker, a slick salesman of his up-by-my-own-bootstraps biography. He's in demand for inspirational/entrepreneurial/business-oriented talks and speeches, and you can see why:

Another of Nido Qubein's accomplishments as president of HPU -- he expanded the campus from 91 to 520 acres, "expertly landscaped into a Disney-esque mini city with fountains and heated swimming pools, a high-end steak house, and a concierge service—'literally a resort,' one enthusiastic student quipped in a recent YouTube video, 'an all-inclusive vacation with a side of homework' ” (The Assembly).

Which led Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem opinion journalist, to put the bow on it:

HPU is the school where rich people send their dumb kids who can’t cut it at elite schools. They’ve spent millions of dollars transforming themselves into a Walt Disney version of a university where the one-percenters can install their kids, apparently safe in the knowledge that some of them won’t let crazy notions about democracy and doubting the growing American oligarchy get into their pretty, little heads.

Next year, incoming freshmen will be charged $49,146 in annual tuition and fees, the university reported.

FREE SPEECH NOW THE ISSUE AT HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY

 Dan Kane broke the story for the NandO this morning:

Remember Trump's ExecOrder back in January that all educational institutions receiving federal dollars must cease diversity, equality, and inclusion efforts? Trump's vassals in the Department of Education followed up the ExecOrder with a letter to all institutions receiving federal grants, a "Dear Colleague" warning. HPU's provost later explained what happened then: 

“As you know, universities were given just 14 days to comply with the Dear Colleague letter mandates in order to maintain federal funding, and my initial communication with you came after the termination of several national Department of Education grants for local educators, of which our School of Education was a recipient,” he said. “None of us want to see our students or university lose funding.”

Totally understandable. What's not totally understandable is how far the HPU admin was willing to go. A scant week after Trump demanded no more diversity, equality, or inclusion, the university provost issued a list of 49 banned words or terms (count 'em!), including “equality,” “gender,” “black and latinx,” “white,” and “white supremacy” -- to be removed from all “documents, events and presentations.” "Course descriptions, student handbooks, class syllabi, and webpages were among the university publications listed for censoring." The provost also announced a prohibition on faculty providing pronoun preferences in their email correspondence.

News of the crackdown on speech at HPU leaked. When reporter Kane made email contact with the provost, to request an interview about the censorship, the provost first got the lawyers on the phone, and miraculously, he then sent an email to all HPU faculty rescinding his initial word ban and then copied the reporter with that email. He refused the interview:

“Our legal counsel has helped clarify that our priority should be on ensuring all our program qualifications and requirements do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, etc.," the provost wrote the faculty. "Therefore, the concern about the language that is used is no longer a focus. You no longer need to conduct audits regarding the list of words that were originally identified as words that might lead to an audit by the federal government. There are no terms or words that you are required to change."

Reporter Kane found one faculty member willing to comment anonymously, "fearing retaliation." “It gave me a sense of anxiety, ... this is like ‘1984,” the professor said, referring to George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel about a “big brother” government that resorts to censorship, fabrication, and surveillance to keep its citizens under control.

The lesson in the reversal at High Point University: It was the prospect of light shined on censorship that ended the censorship.