Magical Thinking

The high-level duo of Tom Ross and Margaret Spellings, co-chairs last year of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina, issued some eight months ago a 153-page set of recommendations for reforming the way the university system is governed. Both Tom Ross and Margaret Spellings are past presidents of the UNC system, hounded out of office, incidentally, by increasingly conservative boards of governors put in place by the Republican bosses in the General Assembly. Turns out, of course, that their recommendations for reform to remove partisanship and increase diversity were akin to pissing into the wind. To suggest that the politicians should stay the hell away from boards of trustees and governors, when they had only just recently won enough control to punish the liberals in the classrooms -- that idea was dead abirthing. Increase diversity? Ross and Spellings actually used that word, which to Christian conservatives is evidence of a plot to turn every kid gay. So the Commission report disappeared from off the earth.

So it's nice to hear that Ross and Spellings brought the whole topic up again. They talked about the dangers of vindictive partisanship in our colleges and universities during an online discussion organized by the nonprofit Coalition for Carolina. Then Joe Killian, writing about the on-line conversation for the NC Newsline, brought it to my attention.

Killian republished the Ross/Spellings report’s top-line recommendations (which get better toward the bottom):

Expand the UNC Board of Governors from 24 to 36 members – with 32 of them appointed and four standing members

Expand each campus board of trustees to 15 members

Allow the minority party of the General Assembly to appoint eight seats on the UNC Board of Governors

Reserve four seats on the board of governors and campus boards of trustees for the chairs of the faculty and staff assemblies

Mandate 16 of the board of governors’ members be appointed from eight designated parts of the state to promote geographic diversity on the board; the other 16 would be appointed at-large

Institute a one year “cooling off” period between serving in the General Assembly or being an active lobbyist and serving on the board of governors or a board of trustees

Create a new “Center for Higher Education” which would monitor the UNC Board of Governors and maintain a database of well-qualified candidates for appointment to the boards

The ruthlessness of the conservatives toward higher education -- when it's coupled in any way with progressive advocacy -- came to full flower in 2015 with the punishment of Gene Nichol, a distinguished faculty member in the Chapel Hill School of Law and past President of William and Mary College and a consistent critic of the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly. It's almost Putinesque how they targeted Nichol with specific poison pain, took away his Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity -- just shut it down because some politicos complained that Nichol was actively helping the poor with some kind of legal aide.

The conservatives are on a jihad to stamp out liberalism in higher education. They don't need no recommendations from over-educated bureaucrats.

Gov. Cooper Trolls Berger/Moore

Cooper with Ross and Spellings.
Yes, that photo is from today.
Photo Jeff Tiberii

This morning Gov. Cooper announced that he is naming a special "Commission on the Future of Public Universities in North Carolina" to take a close look at how the UNC system is operating, presumably and particularly, the highly partisan Republican regime on the UNC Board of Governors (BOG) and on the boards of trustees of the various constituent colleges -- the partisan regime established by Berger/Moore as a further instrument of their authoritarianism.

Cooper's commission will be purely advisory. It will therefore be (1) attacked and then (2) ignored by Berger/Moore, but perhaps it can help focus more of the public on the degrading of higher education in North Carolina.

"We need serious, diverse leadership," the guv's press release said, which we ain't currently got on the UNC BOG. The BOG is 100% appointed by Berger/Moore and is 80% Republican (often from the volcanically partisan branch of the party), with only four unaffiliated voters, and one measly Democrat. As soon as Roy Cooper won the 2016 election, Berger/Moore quickly wrote legislation to extend their rule, assigning the appointment of all constituent university trustees to their own heavily partisan BOG. Currently, the governor can appoint precisely no one to any university governing board.

Diversity? You've got to be kidding!

As close as the guv's press release gets to naming the stunts that have destroyed the BOG's reputation is this paragraph, wherein he alludes to the scandals and collusions that have highlighted the UNC system during the last decade (or since Berger/Moore took over in 2010):

"Unfortunately, a spate of controversies over the last few years has led to concerns that boards plagued by undue political influence and bureaucratic meddling hinder effective university governance. Instability and political interference can have significant impacts on campus leadership, turnover and academic experience for students, and can threaten the university’s reputation and the state’s economy and communities."

Just some highlights of that partisanship which Cooper didn't enumerate: the firing of UNC President and humanist Tom Ross in 2015; the forced resignation of replacement President Margaret Spellings in 2018; the all-too-obvious jockeying of House Speaker Tim Moore for various academic appointments; the 2019 sudden resignation of UNC Chancellor Carol Folt, judged soft on the Confederacy after she supported the removal of Silent Sam from campus; the heavy thumb of an Arkansas donor who seems to have single-handedly nixxed the appointment of Hannah-Jones to the School of Journalism; the refusal to reappoint a widely respected UNC Law professor to the University of North Carolina Press Board of Governors after he questioned the legality of the university's giving a Confederate group a bunch of money to take Silent Sam off the campus; the planned relocation of the UNC System offices from Chapel Hill to Raleigh, presumably so everybody can see the Berger/Moore resting bitch faces more clearly, a proposal that led BOG member Leo Daughtry, a former GOP state lawmaker, to abruptly resign his seat, saying publicly that moving the offices was a further indication of the board’s recent failure to provide "a sufficient buffer" between politics and the university system.

How Do We Know the Guv Just Gave Berger/Moore the Finger?

Who did Cooper appoint to co-chair his commission on higher education? Why, Tom Ross and Margaret Spellings. Isn't that pretty much an eff-you? Also a dare, since Ross and Spellings form an impressive bi-partisanship that ought to be above criticism. (Ha!) Ross was president of the UNC System from 2011 to 2016, a former superior court judge, and president of Davidson College. Spellings was president of the UNC System from 2016 to 2019 and served as the U.S. Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush.

Such distinguished educators might give the GOP some pause in attacking their integrity. Naw. They'll find a way.

The Notorious B.O.G. "Train Wreck": Member Kotis Spills Some Beans

Marty Kotis, a member of the notorious Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina, spoke on the record with the Greensboro News&Record and gave us some slight glimpse inside that politicized body.

Fennebresque

1. BOG Chair John Fennebresque is a diva. According to Kotis, Fennebresque took it on himself to oust UNC President Tom Ross from the job, the event last January that has launched the current meshugaas. “John went in there hard-charging and, bam, it blew up from there. As it should. If I was a sitting president and someone came in there and did that, I think I’d be upset as well. The process was just completely flawed.”

Kotis was the lone "NO" vote on firing Ross last January.

Kotis can't answer why Ross was fired: “The reason we can’t answer is because we don’t know. John [Fennebresque] did this on his own. Only he can answer why."

2. The "search committee" for a new president -- three key Fennebresque allies on the BOG and Fennebresque himself -- took a dictatorial approach to the process and cut out everybody else.

3. Senate Bill 670, which would require the full BOG to review three finalists for the president’s job, was passed by the General Assembly (and still hasn't been signed by Governor Squishy), was introduced because of complaints coming from Kotis and other BOG members: "So when you run into a major roadblock, you’re going to vent to the people who appointed you and tell them that you can’t do your job .... This was not the legislature reaching down and trying to tell us what to do. This was us asking for help.”

4. Last Thursday, when Fennebresque suddenly called an emergency meeting of the BOG for Friday and members of the BOG learned that Margaret Spellings was the lone candidate being anointed by Fennebresque and his allies, Kotis and others on the BOG called for Fennebresque to resign, and Republicans in the General Assembly sent Fennebresque a sternly worded warning about violating S670 (which still hasn't been signed into law).

5. Fennebresque has called another meeting of the BOG for this morning, and everyone expects Spellings to be presented for a vote. Kotis and others are probably not going to be happy with that scenario: “You can’t sit back and just watch this train wreck occur over and over and over,” Kotis said Wednesday. “At some point you have to take action. You have to be willing to break ranks. You have to be willing to be a whistleblower. There are a lot of us feeling that now.”

UPDATE: 12:05 p.m.
Career politico Margaret Spellings elected President of the UNC system without a dissenting vote.

Tom Ross for U.S. Senate?

Thomas Mills started a little boomlet touting Tom Ross as the Democratic candidate to take on Dick Burr for the U.S. Senate seat in 2016.

Ross was fired as President of the University of North Carolina system on Friday in what is emerging as the most nakedly political firing of recent history. Board of Governor members -- Republicans, mostly -- made the decision, but it was the Board Chair, Republican John Fennebresque, who stumbled around at the subsequent press conference -- the most bizarre press conference you'll ever see -- saying how wonderful Tom Ross's leadership has been, but, we -- uh -- need his wonderfulness gone.

Politically, powerful Republican members of the NC General Assembly apparently wanted Ross out. So they could have someone more to their ideological liking in? Well, duh. But will it be Art Pope, who apparently has been overheard to say he'd like the job? If so, expect cloudy weather with a threat of shit-storms.

But back to the question at hand ... Tom Ross for U.S. Senate?

Ross has spent most of his life in academic settings and in academic pursuits, managing academics. That might automatically qualify him as a superior "hand" at handling hungry crocodiles. But with all due respect, I haven't found academics particularly ready for the prime time of high-level politics, especially at that national level, where some political experience might be considered pretty essential.

The late, great Paul Wellstone, excepted -- the exception which proves the rule.