Year of the Bullies

The grandstanding Brendan Jones

On Wednesday, Dec. 10th, NC House Majority Leader Brenden Jones threw a viral-video tantrum on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) superintendent and school board chair, berating, belittling, and bullying them -- he was actually yelling -- about books some third-party special interest told him were used in the schools, accusing the officials of ignoring parts of the new “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” SB49, which seeks to govern discussions of gender identity and which was also meant to show educators just how much contempt people like Rep. Jones have for their profession. After Jones' read titles and short out-of-context selections, in a sneering voice meant to signal to his base just how irredeemable these books really are, he actually tossed them contemptuously on the floor behind him.

Rarely has such fear of the written word and its power to contaminate been exhibited in public by a high-ranking official since at least the Spanish Inquisition.

Rep. Jones was especially het up about a book he waved in the air, Santa’s Husband, which he alleged was recommended to elementary school students in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. The superintendent started to respond — “I’m not aware that …” — and Jones angrily interrupted. “You’re the superintendent. You're not aware of what's going on in your school system? You don't know what's printed? It’s trash,” he yelled, tossing the book over his shoulder. After the hearing, a Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools official issued a statement refuting Jones’s allegation: “We have once again searched our school and classroom libraries, and that book is not offered. CHCCS has not recommended this book for children of any age, as that would be a decision for parents to make for their own children.”

 

I have to admit that the superintendent actually sort of brought this on himself, having been recorded speaking to a teachers meeting in January 2024, saying what he really thought about SB49, opining that in his opinion parts of the law are unacceptably discriminatory. He indicated that he would be reluctant to enforce what was going to inhibit some students from being their authentic selves. Griffin later wrote in a February 2024 email to staff that although the school board had voted to adopt the new law as policy, there were exceptions possible -- far as the superintendent was concerned -- related to classroom discussions and the requirement to notify parents about any change in the way enrolled children were referring to themselves. It’s a fad, right now, adopting preferred pronouns. It's seems silly to old people like me, but it's not going to end Western civilization. 

The video of the superintendent's sharing of his opinion on the law and his subsequent email to staff got into the hands of @LibsofTikTok, the username of various anti-LGBTQ and far-right social-media accounts operated by a former real estate agent from Brooklyn, Chaya Raichik, who's big into the whole "groomer" hysteria. So by that route, the horrifying goods on the superintendent got into the hands of Rep. Jones, who knows a great opportunity for grand-standing when he sees one.

I betcha ten dollars Rep. Jones, as a loyal Republican soldier, voted multiple times total for Lt. Gov porn-meister Mark Robinson -- in both primaries and general elections -- and never felt a moral qualm.

College Professors Too Are Being Bullied

Peter Hans, the figurehead who's running the UNC system for the Republicans in the General Assembly, has drafted a policy that declares all course syllabi at the 16 affiliated campuses will now be considered public documents and must be posted on-line for more rabid third-parties to comb through. That news came from The Daily Tar Heel, one of the best investigative orgs in the state.

Alex H. Jones wrote about the new policy: "This is cheap red meat for the MAGA people. I would imagine most of the complaints against course syllabi will come from conservative think tankers paid to made liberals look foolish."

This policy represents an attack on civil liberties derived from centuries of reactionary politics in North Carolina. Civil liberties have always been weak in the South. The Confederacy was essentially a police state, and civil-rights protests were met with state violence. The same has been true with regard to higher education. In the 1850s, politicians drove a UNC professor out of the state for voicing his opposition to slavery. When civil liberties in the South conflict with white supremacy, we know which priority wins out.

And if UNC professors are required to post syllabi online for the perusal of aggrieved right-wing activists, they will be subjected to threats and potentially even violence. Doubt it? Look at the number of acts of political violence MAGA Republicanism has inspired over the last ten years. The intent is to make professors nervous, over the long term to suppress the teaching of left-leaning ideas at UNC. It’s an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech.

 

Chapel Hill Professor Reinstated

 

Last Wednesday, I wrote about a Chapel Hill professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies getting himself placed on administrative leave for supposed Antifa-adjacent advocacy of political violence against the Trump oppression.

Prof. Dwayne Dixon has been reinstated. From NC Newsline:

The reinstatement comes after the ACLU of North Carolina, representing Dixon, threatened legal action over the university’s decision to place him on leave, writing in an Oct. 2 demand letter that it was a “textbook violation of the First Amendment.” They issued a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday before legal action would follow....

Dean Stoyer, UNC’s vice chancellor for communications and marketing, said ... “We have found no basis to conclude that Dwayne Dixon poses a threat to University students, staff, and faculty, or has engaged in conduct that violates University policy. As a result, the University is reinstating Professor Dixon to his faculty responsibilities, effective immediately.”

 

Sen. Ted Budd Defends the "New and Awful Reality" and Its Effect on the State's Flagship Institutions

 

Irony is dead

Democrats see an opening to use Trump’s spending cuts as attack lines about coward Republicans in Congress, "especially those from competitive districts" -- damned for living on their knees and swallowing every bleb of Trump's ego, even the actions that actually harm their constituents.

Instead of standing up to Trump, they play utter hypocrites and ask for "carve outs" for their districts only. Two reporters from the NYTimes uncovered a bunch of attempted evasions/bypasses/exceptions to the Trump wrecking ball and program cuts -- promulgated by Republican members from red states. For example, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama got defensive right quick after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research (one of Trump's ExecOrders that has since been paused by a federal judge). Alabama's received more than $518 million in NIH grants for projects currently active there, a great number of them headquartered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The senator made weak excuses to the local press and claimed that she would press Trump officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts -- whatever the hell that means -- so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions.” Elitist.

Cut someone else's money, not ours! What's fair for everyone else is not fair for me. Nor convenient at this present time.

So these cowed men and women in House and Senate stay mouselike in paralyzed fear of being noticed and devoured. Some of them, like Sen. Britt, if you take her at her word, are doing what they can to mitigate the damage to their own constituents. For example, Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kansas) has made himself the lead sponsor of a House bill that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Mann's bill, cosponsored by several other Republicans from farm states, would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from American farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from USAID to the Agriculture Department.

They're justifiably nervous about the blunderbuss Trump is taking to all the walls of shelter and the roof too over many a marginal rural family trying to hold it together. And hence those R reps are possible sitting ducks politically, if folks get good and tired of the one-size-fits-all programming of Trump 2.0. House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ main political action group, sent out a message this week titled, “Vulnerable House Republicans Hang Farmers Out To Dry,” which noted how the funding freeze was hitting farmers around the country. The message singled out several Republican lawmakers by name, including Representatives David Valadao of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, like Sen. Briff of Alabama, represents a state with two of the largest recipients of NIH grants -- Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. Budd looked totally caught off-guard and unprepared when the Times reporters asked what he was planning to do about the cuts. Budd said he agreed with the Trump administration’s move to limit the amount of taxpayer money used for overhead costs, but, uh, obviously the universities -- which are swell institutions doing valuable research -- "those guys are gonna need time to adjust to their new financial reality." Too bad, so sad. “I think the White House wants to protect them,” Budd added forlornly, flying in the face to all evidence to the contrary. Trump doesn't actually care about much but his own loot.

UNC-Chapel Hill Punishes a Scholarship Student (and Certifiable Pain in the Ass) -- But It's a Free Speech Scandal

 

Laura Saavedra Forero, a UNC senior, a neuroscience major, and until very recently, part of the prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship program, was told on Jan. 6 (a date that already lives in infamy), that the Morehead-Cain Trustees had decided to terminate her scholarship.

Oh she was an activist, you bet! Her interview with the Daily Tar Heel is hair-raising if you're set in your ways:

In her application [for the Morehead-Cain], Saavedra Forero said she wrote about her activism, citing her work surrounding climate justice, the Black Lives Matter movement and for the Latino community in her area. She said in her interviews she talked openly about her use of “nonviolent direct action," her chosen form of protest method.

“I never hid who I was or what I did,” she said. “I always made it very clear, throughout my entire college application process, that if a program or a university did not want me for who I was at my core, and that is someone who organizes for the community, then I did not want to be there.”

But what really pissed off her superiors, all of whom are now either terrified of the partisanship of their governing boards or totally agreeable with suppressing dissent -- the activism that doomed her scholarship were her very loud protests of Israel's campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza, because evidently people like Virginia Foxx and her fellow travelers take a huge leap in equating any criticism of the Israeli government -- which has been a dick -- to "anti-semitism." I reject that.

But she started out as an advocate for handicapped access on campus:

When a broken elevator at her residence hall left Saavedra Forero [who depends on a wheelchair] stuck in her dorm room for 32 hours, she mobilized press and campus activists to start a years-long campaign calling for more accessibility at the University.

She subsequently crossed the apparent "redline" for the increasingly politicized bosses above her -- they are justifiably terrified of what the General Assembly might do next to hurt higher education -- when she organized a noisy protest of a appearance on campus of NC House Speaker Tim Moore, because of his meddling in university governance.

A Morehead-Cain scholarship official named Chris Bradford confronted Saavedra Forero over a graphic she had posted on her Instagram account, indicting Starbucks' pro-Israeli connections -- a bloody depiction of Palestinians being fed into a coffee grinder. That earned her a vague threat about her behavior, that it was under scrutiny. Saavedra Forero wasn't deterred, even though genocide in Gaza ... very verboten. She organized a protest with Starbucks Workers United outside of the Carolina Inn on Oct. 12, 2023. Bradford wrote her another email: “I am very clear that you have a right to free speech, and I do not believe that anyone has a right to not be offended,” he wrote in his email. “But I am equally clear that this scholarship is a privilege, and that the behavior of scholars should be a model for the behavior of others on campus.” Free speech as long as the new political correctness isn't offended.

To cap it all off, she participated very publicly in the UNC pro-Palestine "encampment" on the UNC campus, the event where Chancellor Lee Roberts marched in so theactrically to restore the American flag. Saavedra Ferero got trapped in her wheelchair under a toppled barricade. A week later, she attended an event near South Building organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, and participated in the march that attempted to block Provost Chris Clemens’ car from exiting the parking lot. A few days later, Saavedra Forero was informed that she was charged with “impeding traffic” and “resisting a public officer.” She said she was the only participant charged with impeding traffic. She was also referred to the UNC Honor Court and the Emergency Evaluation and Action Committee for her conduct. 

An alumnus of the Morehead-Cain Scholarship program told the Daily Tar Heel:

“I think there was a moment in time where Laura's boldness went from inspiring to threatening the Foundation,” they said. “And their only understanding of how to react was to assert dominance in this relationship, which is to remind Laura that she is being paid ... by the Foundation.”

The Daily Tar Heel details more. Bottomline: UNC-Chapel Hill is becoming a major university that I used to have respect for.

Virginia Foxx Causes Indigestion at UNC

 

Since 1984, the UNC Board of Trustees (UNCBOT) has annually awarded its highest honor, the Davie Award, to "individuals who have shown extraordinary service to UNC or to society." Former recipients include Dean Smith, William Friday, the first president of the UNC System, and former UNC chancellor William Aycock. But this year, the mainly all-Republican UNCBOT awarded the Davie thingie to Rep. Virginia Foxx (and three other alumni). Granted, Foxx is a UNC graduate and also a full time black frost on spring flowers, so it's not surprising that students who know a little political history would object because of Foxx's character and her public deeds. The Davie Awards were handed out at a UNCBOT banquet back on November 6th, the day after the Election (Foxx must have been in a good mood, as her moods go), but the existence of student pushback didn't make the Daily Tar Heel until this week.

The DTH profiled Foxx quite accurately and with commendable restraint:

Foxx ... is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District and was elected in November to her 11th term in office. Last spring as the chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Foxx led the charge to investigate antisemitism at college campuses during Pro-Palestine protests .... Foxx ... has publicly expressed anti-LGBTQ+ stances, including opposing the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and speaking against the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision which legalized same-sex marriage. Additionally, Foxx voted against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which aimed to federally formalize interracial and same-sex marriage rights.

That bio is guaranteed to bring on a gag reflex in the brighter students. The DTH reporter interviewed a couple of undergraduates who knew exactly who Virginia Foxx is, what she represents, and that she's led the current assault on free speech at universities. These students were unified in their opposition to giving the Davie Award to people who embody anything but the "values" that UNC has and should reflect -- inclusiveness, diversity, equity.

UNCBOT Chair John Preyer was evidently holding an unmelted pat of creamery butter on the back of his tongue when he lied to the DTH reporter that "the political leanings of the recipients do not factor in being given a Davie Award."

When the Enemies of Democracy Are Judges

 

"The order didn’t give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP’s requests."

--Gary D. Robertson, reporting for AP 

As I predicted last week (wasn't it?), the Republican-heavy Court of Appeals has reversed the Wake County Superior Court judge who refused to stop the usage of UNC-Chapel Hill's brand new ID system, the "UNC One Card," as the approved NC ID for voting. The One Card meets all the standards of what a valid photo ID must contain, as written in the Republican law -- that was the ruling of the State Board of Elections (SBOE) which the Wake judge was upholding. 

But according to the NCGOP, the very notion of "digital ID" was a red flag, like "digital" identity -- flashed via hand-held phone -- was a new witchcraft for voter fraud. The Republicans actually chose to argue against the One Card that it just wasn't fair to all the other universities, which were forced to use physical, laminated plastic cards containing a photo -- letting Chapel Hill alone get away with this flashing of a cell phone to vote. Especially if the device was in the hands of a young voter. Why, Good Lard, with the UNC system you'll have ineligible voters by the billions casting ballots through electronic manipulation. That was the argument that caused three appellate judges to reverse the Superior Court. 

Oh yes, we're familiar with the Robinson Calculation, that someone nefarious is somehow and somewhere faking things on-line to make conservatives -- Robinson particularly -- look like frauds, because A.I. and gawd-knows-what-else can manipulate a computer to delete whole identities and steal votes and write bad checks, and they're doing it all the time to benefit Democrats. 

The Democratic National Committee and a UNC student group who joined the case defending the use of the One Card said the SBOE rightly determined that the digital ID met the requirements set in state law. The DNC attorneys wrote that preventing its use could confuse or even disenfranchise up to 40,000 people who work or attend the school so close to the election.

The NC Court of Appeals has an 11-4 Republican majority. The ruling discussed here. unanimous among three judges whose names are being kept secret for some reason -- just incidentally also "didn't give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP's requests." Three separate judges, eyeing each other across a conference table in Raleigh, agreed to do a favor for the NCGOP and rule that the Chapel Hill system did not constitute a valid photo ID. Is it not remarkable they won't put their names to this decision? For reasons we can immediately and accurately guess, if I were guessing. 

There's a Silver Lining: Students and permanent employees can still obtain a physical ID card instead -- conveniently at Chapel Hill locations and at no charge for those who received a digital ID but want the physical card for voting. There has got to be a major informational push on that campus to tell students where to go to get the other ID.

NCGOP Takes Another Shot at Stopping the Youth Vote

 

The whole world is going paperless, and only the NCGOP professes in court that they can't possibly believe that the digital world actually works. Instead of a physical card, encased in plastic and featuring a photo, UNC-Chapel Hill has gone wholly digital with student IDs. Any student can present their phone as proof of identity, with a photo and other identifying details that any fool can see is legitimate. (Why, begorra, you have long been able to flash your phone to get on an international flight.) Other universities not to mention businesses and agencies, are bound to follow the trend, and more paperless IDs will become common.

But the GOP sued in Wake Superior Court the week of Sept. 9th to halt the use of the mobile UNC One Card as legal identity. Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory denied the Republicans a temporary restraining order on Thurs., Sept. 19, and for not the first time, the haters of the young got rooked in court.

Unclear whether the GOP intends to appeal, but sure, it will, and its chances of getting judges on the side of disenfranchisement up the ladder remains strong in this tyrannized state.

A Half-Million Dollar Kegger in Chapel Hill

 

The last thing any university president should want is an apolitical campus.

--Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan College

I believe the last thing President Roth will get this fall is an apolitical campus. You need to be careful what you wish for. The confrontation between young people who see the state of Israel as murderous jingoists beating down people of color and others who blame every bad thing in the Middle East on the Palestinians themselves, whether they've taken up arms with Hamas or not -- that is an unwinnable pissing contest that has roiled many university campuses (to Virginia Foxx's great delight, since she's nothing if she's not an opportunist for easy targets).

The confrontation on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus on Tuesday, April 30th, between pro-Palestinian demonstrators who took down the American flag and mainly a group of frat boys trying to keep the flag up off the ground caused me to feel several things simultaneously. I resent the implication that patriotism is on the face of it genocidal or racist or anti-human or imperialistic. Granted, patriotism in the hands of an authoritarian despot can be twisted into all those adjectives, but taking down the American flag and replacing it with a Palestinian one is not a good look for a protest movement that wants to highlight the suffering of millions and push back against a militaristic government that knows no restraint. On the other hand, the elevation of a symbol over human beings strikes me as a peculiar kind of idolatry. Didn't the Golden Calf teach us anything? I don't much cotton to people turning my flag into a personal cult image covering a whole smorgasbord of cultural grievances.

The frat boys at Chapel Hill naturally got instantly famous with the Fox News universe and got themselves invited to and celebrated at the Republican National Convention for the patriotism that the Right insists is the only patriotism that counts, and if you don't agree you're clearly an enemy of the people. The frat boys received the blessing of Donald Trump. And soon after that, a conservative operative began a GoFundMe page for the frat boys, hoping to raise $15,000 for what the organizer called a reward for upstanding behavior, a beer party. Instead of $15,000, the GoFundMe site raised a half million dollars.

So yesterday they actually held that "rager" at the American Legion in Chapel Hill, an invitation only, beer-soaked "triumph of the bro-hemians" and a showcase for Lee Greenwood ("God Bless the USA," which established that Republicans owned patriotism and no one else need apply) and other mainly country musical acts. They called it "Flagstock 2024." Blowing that kind of money on Labor Day was a sufficient kind of desecration in itself.

"Invitation only." You heard that, right? 

All of the university’s fraternities and sororities, as well as the campus ROTC, were invited to the event, with 10 “core” fraternities that had members at the flagpole on April 30 invited to be VIP guests. A June update to the GoFundMe originally identified six fraternities as part of that group: Pi Kappa Phi, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Upsilon, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Phi Gamma Delta and Zeta Beta Tau.

A dissenting voice came from Brendan Rosenblum, a member of Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, who was among the frat boys who held the flag up in April. Rosenblum, who did not attend "Flagstock 2024," told the News&Observer that he "views the event and the rhetoric that has surrounded it in a more somber way. While others may view the pro-Palestinian protesters as “a mob” ... Rosenblum sees them as his fellow students, and views the events of April 30 as a failure from multiple groups to foster civil discourse about the war in Gaza." “I think we were there that day to try to, you know, represent our beliefs,” Rosenblum said. “But also, everyone was there because they cared about an issue, and whether or not I agree with them, it doesn’t matter.”

Rosenblum captures what the spirit of a university education is supposed to embody, an attempt to inhabit other viewpoints with understanding and a modicum of sympathy. That is the sort of "politics" I think the Wesleyan president was talking about.

Of Course They Kept the Students Out

 

Students waiting unsuccessfully for admittance
to the BOG committee meeting in Winston-Salem.
Photo Kaitlin McKeown for NandO

Korie Dean for the NandO: "Students from UNC-Chapel Hill say they were kept out of the building where the UNC System Board of Governors — a public body — met Wednesday .... The board’s University Governance committee unanimously voted ... to approve a policy targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, jobs and efforts at all public universities in North Carolina. That committee, along with several other board committees, met throughout the day in a theater at the Alex Ewing Performance Place on the UNC School of the Arts campus in Winston-Salem." (Emphasis added)

They didn't want pesky, alert students watching them begin the process of doing away with diversity, equity, and inclusion, a few things generally high on an idealistic student's bingo card. So they claimed there were no seats available in a theater for a handful of UNC-Chapel Hill students, and by that glorified logic, they also kept the students out of the entire building.

These guys on the Board of Governors are all conservative appointees by a General Assembly which has been crushing democracy every chance it has, and it's had many chances, going after ballot access, voting rights, and crippling the Democratic governor's power while enhancing their own. Just naturally, the BOG is following the same path of squelching democratic inclusiveness and cracking down on dissent.

Sorry, no seats in the theater for you whining students!

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.

Turns Out Kevin Guskiewicz Is a Badass

 

On July 11, we covered the surprise, unilateral move by UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz to waive tuition and fees for any prospective North Carolina student coming from a family making less than $80,000 ("Is the UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor a Badass?"). He suddenly made that commitment hard on the heels of the Supreme Court's overturning of affirmative action, so the political defiance was pretty clear.

We predicted at the time that his shocking independence (because university rules allows him to do what he did), and the new policy itself, would mark him for ouster. The honchos of the General Assembly (Berger/Moore) don't exactly cotton to independence, and their chosen representatives on the UNC Board of Governors, not to mention Chapel Hill's own Board of Trustees, tend to follow the same path. All Republican (if not 100%, then pert nigh).

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz being grilled
at the July 19 BOG meeting

Guskiewicz faced the music with the Board of Governors in a special called meeting on July 19 -- last Wednesday. The meeting was tense, "Daniel in the lion's den" someone remarked, and Guskiewicz faced a barage of often hostile questions about why this and why not that (read Joe Killan's extensive reporting), and he finally got a little bit fed up. It happened because "Haywood 'Woody' White, a new board member who has been critical of Guskiewicz’s announcement and the program itself, quoted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the case, in which Thomas said he had been struggling for 20 years to see the benefit of racial diversity."

White asked Guskiewicz whether he agreed with that statement in light of the court’s ruling. It was an uncomfortable moment for a chancellor whose university fought to keep race as a factor in admissions — but who understands political appointees to whom he answers largely oppose it.

Guskiewicz replied that as an educator with decades of classroom experience, he has seen the difference a more diverse student body makes to all students on campus and their readiness to engage with the larger world....

[He said a lot more right in here, trying to elevate the BOG's vision for diversity ... leading to this:] 

“The bottom line is a decision has been made,” Guskiewicz said. “And we will abide by that decision.”

Oh, they'll have to get rid of him now. 

Is the UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor a Bad Ass?

 

Kevin Guskiewicz

Last week Kevin Guskiewicz, the chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, unilaterally announced free tuition grants for deserving NC students whose household income falls below $80,000. He made the announcement hard on the heels of SCOTUS's decision limiting the use of race in college admissions nationwide, and he seemed to be doing it as an "up yours!" to SCOTUS. 

"Our responsibility to comply with the law does not mean we will abandon our fundamental values as a university," Guskiewicz wrote. "We are and will remain passionately public, and we will ensure that every student who earns admission to Carolina can come here and thrive."

A "passionately public" university makes sure its student body isn't just affluent, milk-white kids from suburbia, whether you count them by their skin color or their economic situations. Ballsy of Guskiewicz (who has the power and authority, by the way, to grant tuition wavers or financial aid to certain students).

Especially ballsy of Guskiewicz for making the move without first asking permission. Republican members of the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees and of the UNC Board of Governors (aren't they all Republicans, or wanna-bees?) said they were shocked -- shocked! -- when they heard the same news everyone else was hearing, that the Chapel Hill Chancellor had the balls to counter the backward-trotting Supreme Court of the United States.

I'm developing new respect for Dr. Guskiewicz. We last mentioned his name on this site when he showed up defying the ambitions of House Speaker Tim Moore. Guskiewicz now has at least two strikes against him, so of course they'll want to get rid of him.

Tim Moore Is Basically a Loser

 

NC House Speaker Tim Moore reeks of self-seeking. He's a schemer. Doesn't he always know "what's in it for him"? Early on in his career, he was grabbing mainly for money. Now, having amassed a great heap of power serving a record number of years as Speaker of the House, he's perfectly capable of torching someone who crosses him. There's now an imperial attitude to go with the nose for cash. But the strong arm doesn't always work for him.

Tim Moore Wanted an Academic Robe

It got leaked in October 2019 that Tim Moore wanted to "retire" from the General Assembly and be president of the UNC system. That rumor actually sparked a UNC student protest demonstration and just incidentally, plenty of coolness from members of the UNC board of governors who were wary about that kind of pressure. In the end, too many important people didn't see Tim Moore in the top dog mortarboard and cape, and that air ship went down.

Then, only a few months later, in Feb. 2020, it had become an open secret that Tim Moore was angling now to get appointed chancellor of East Carolina University. The job was open. It was lesser than being president of the entire system, but maybe he was feeling bargain-basement. Another Republican, Robert Moore, the East Carolina University Board of Trustees member censured as part of an SGA election scandal in February 2020, was the one who outed Moore's pressure campaign, in a defiant and get-even resignation letter. 

So Moore's second try for a cushy retirement plan deflated as quickly as the first one.

If He Can't Have the Regalia, He Wants It for His Friend

By the spring of 2022, a couple of years after Moore's last feint toward becoming university royalty, Moore became hellbent on getting his former chief of staff Clayton Somers in as chancellor of UNC-W. Clayton Somers had been Moore's inside man at UNC, his messenger boy and his fixer, but a new university president, Kevin Guskiewicz, had begun ignoring Somers and showing a dangerous independent streak:

"Kevin wouldn't just accept what Clayton said unquestioningly," one senior university official said. "Clayton didn't like being questioned .... That got their relationship off to a rocky start and it never recovered." 

Clayton Somers' side-eye. Photo Cornell Watson

Somers had become "deeply involved in negotiations around what to do with the [Silent Sam] statue after it came down. He ultimate plan involved a multimillion-dollar settlement with the highly controversial Sons of Confederate Veterans. It created a public relations nightmare from late 2019 into early 2020 and was ultimately thrown out in court" (The Assembly).

Bottomline: Fair-haired boy Clayton Somers had become a walking, talking sorehead who was on the outs with university administration, plus he was never going to be chancellor of anything. He didn't make it past the second round interview and wasn't on the short list of finalists. Another man got the job, so once again Tim Moore had custard creme on his face.

He took it out on Holly Grange.

Who Is Holly Grange and What Did Tim Moore Do To Her?

In July 2019, Holly Grange was a moderate conservative Republican member of the NC House (Dist. 20, at the Coast). She'd been in the job since the election of 2016 but was evidently getting antsy. She began to talk about maybe running for governor, which Lt. Gov. Dan Forest already had sewn up. That was a surprise (who did she think she was kidding?). NC Republican primary voters preferred the self-righteous vinegar coming out of Dan Forest. So Forest beat Grange with 89% of the vote. Ouchie! 

Grange's consolation prize, more or less -- she got appointed to the UNC-Wilmington board of trustees, and as a board member she was also selected to serve on the chancellor search committee. She didn't like what Tim Moore was doing to force his guy on the search committee. Some -- several -- members involved confirmed to The Assembly that Speaker Moore waved his dick around, but it didn't impress anyone. So Clayton Somers failed, and Tim Moore failed, and Holly Grange did it!

So about a year into her service on the board of trustees and in October 2022, very soon after Clayton Somers did not become chancellor of UNC-W, Holly Grange received a mysterious heads-up in a text message, that she should look at a bill that was just filed in the House. It declared her trustees seat "vacant." What? She was in the seat, a voting member. But a new law declared she didn't exist. It was a way to fire someone without firing them. Senior admin people at UNC-W couldn't believe it either, but just like that, Tim Moore had Holly Grange dumped out of her seat. Grange herself summed up the action: “I was removed simply because the Speaker of the House could not secure the chancellor’s position for his chosen person.” 

That's a fundamentally weak man who would do that.

A Stuffed Shirt Visits UNC-Chapel Hill

 

Photo Ira Wilder, Daily Tar Heel

Mike Pence spoke at the UNC-Chapel Hill student union yesterday on the topic "Saving America From the Woke Left." He was certainly comfortably asleep during the four years he served as Trump's lickspittle, so that topic was very much on-brand.

Pence, who is notoriously wary of being one-on-one in a room with any woman, favors a national abortion ban -- an exceedingly popular position on college campuses like UNC -- and he owned it in Chapel Hill: “I couldn’t be more proud to have been a small part of the administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe vs. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and give America a new beginning,” he said.

A new beginning? Like, beginning again in 1950?

A counter-protest to Pence's speech formed outside the student union.

Ira Wilder, Daily Tar Heel

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 Pirates Take Chapel Hill

 

Hattip to reporter Joe Killian for posting a link to the editorial in Science, "Universities are not political prizes." It opines about the accelerating legislative push in some states to politicize higher education. Cowed administrators quickly learn to comply:

Take the recent incident involving the University of Florida, which blocked liberal professors from testifying as experts in a lawsuit that challenged the state’s voting laws. The university rationalized that as a public institution, it must remain neutral when the real reason was that it didn’t want to anger political overlords.

That article doesn't mention the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but it could have -- where right now and ongoing there's a bloody pirate-ship boarding by besuited swashbucklers sailing the high seas under the banner of Berger/Moore in the NC General Assembly. 

"Universities are not political prizes"? Yes they are.

Here's what happened at the meeting yesterday of Chapel Hill's Board of Trustees (as reported by Joe Killian), "a special meeting held largely in closed-session":

...the board took the unusual step of not publicly disclosing what they were voting on or using any names or titles. Instead, they voted on three “action items” that were not publicly described and then abruptly adjourned after the vote. [All votes were unanimous with the exception of student representative Lamar Richards, who voted no on one and abstained on two others.]

After fielding questions from reporters throughout the day, UNC-Chapel Hill media relations released a letter from Chancellor Guskiewicz making the announcement shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday. “The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees approved the Chancellor’s recommendation to appoint Dr. Chris Clemens as executive vice chancellor and provost of the University.” ...

The executive vice chancellor and provost at Chapel Hill serves as chief academic officer (why faculties fear provosts) and CEO, the university Number Two, with immense police powers.

So who is Dr. Chris Clemens and why would the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees keep his name secret during that BOT vote? Hmmm. Are they ashamed?

Chris Clemens, Provost, UNC-Chapel Hill

Joe Killian:

Clemens has been at the center of controversy over the creation of a program at Chapel Hill called the “Program in Civic Virtue and Civil Discourse,” which Clemens and others described as a “conservative center” going back to its inception in 2017. [Donors remain anonymous.] Clemens has since denied the program will be explicitly conservative.

Clemens has described himself as “among the most outspoken conservative members of the Arts & Sciences faculty at UNC for many years, sponsoring the college Republicans, Carolina Review and several other student organizations.

Clemens trained as an astrophysicist but climbed the administrative ladder, currently senior associate dean for research and innovation in the College of Arts & Sciences. "Two UNC Board of Trustees members and one member of the search committee confirmed to Policy Watch that Clemens’s conservative credentials made him an attractive choice for the Board of Trustees and UNC Board of Governors with close ties to the Republican majority in the North Carolina General Assembly."

Mimi Chapman, the chair of the faculty, published an ominous letter to the "University community" in the Daily Tar Heel on the eve of the BOT's secret vote, in which she warned that "the Chancellor is under significant pressure to make a particular choice. Based on the information that is being relayed to me by multiple sources, our trustees and the UNC System are dictating his choices to the point that he really has none to make."

It's not clear that Chapman was referring to Clemens, but it's logical to think so, right?

Hannah-Jones Won't Be Moving To Chapel Hill

 

"For [UNC-CH], Tuesday’s announcement from Howard could provoke a bitter recrimination."

--"Nikole Hannah-Jones To Join Howard University Faculty," headline this morning in the WashPost

Ya think?

Hannah-Jones got UNC in a headlock and squeezed until they cried uncle and gave her tenure. Then she chose Howard University. Snap! That's a public punishment of our leading university that's gonna leave a mark. She promised that she wouldn't come to UNC unless she was granted tenure. She didn't say she wouldn't come even if she was granted tenure. Some academics in the School of Journalism may feel jerked around. Some Board of Trustees members will be cursing into their coffee cups. Meanwhile, student activists do not sleep.

I'm sorry she won't be stirring it up in North Carolina.

UNC Board of Trustees Caves on the Issue of Tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones

 

Lamar Richards

Lamar Richards is the hero who did the heavy lifting for the reversal of fortune for journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. After weeks of scorchingly bad national press for their refusal to grant tenure to Hannah-Jones, the UNC Board of Trustees reversed itself yesterday in a 9-4 vote, primarily because Lamar Richards would not stop pressing the board for reconsideration. Richards petitioned for the special meeting yesterday and apparently worked behind the scenes to line up the votes.

The meeting of the BoT got momentarily ugly yesterday when the chair announced it would be going into closed session to consider a personnel matter -- standard practice that was nevertheless a surprise to the students who had gathered to watch the proceedings -- and some were shoved and punched to get them out of the room. Lamar Richards subsequently addressed the crowd via speakerphone to explain the process and calm the crowd.

The closed session lasted for some three hours and went on into the night.

Student protesters stand behind members of the UNC BoT before being
removed from the room yesterday.
Photo by Helen McGinnis for The Daily Tar Heel

The nine voting for tenure:

Richard Y. Stevens, Board Chair, former Republican member of the NC Senate representing southern Wake Co., a registered lobbyist, and a lawyer

R. Gene Davis Jr., Board Vice Chair, and a lawyer

Teresa Artis Neal, a lawyer (Harvard) and the only Black member of the board

Jefferson W. Brown, a partner in the law firm of Moore and Van Allen in Charlotte

G. Munroe Cobey, a retired partner of Tudor Investment Corporation based in Greenwich, Conn. where he was a senior portfolio manager

Charles G. Duckett, a partner in Battle & Associates, Inc., a marketing services firm

Kelly Matthews Hopkins, a former elementary school teacher turned life coach in Charlotte, and the second of only two women on the board

Ralph W. Meekins Sr., a personal injury lawyer from Shelby

Lamar G. Richards, student body president

The four voting against tenure:

David L. Boliek Jr., a Fayetteville attorney with prevous experience in political consulting and public relations

Haywood Cochrane, immediate past chair of the BoT with a background in banking and healthcare management

Allie Ray McCullen, owner of a real estate and appraisal firm in Clinton

John P. Preyer, a former legislative director for Sen. Lauch Faircloth at the US Capitol and president of Restoration Systems, an environmental company specializing in wetland, steam, nutrient, and habitat mitigation

NOTE: Yesterday was the last meeting for Chair Stevens and for trustees Brown, Cobey, Duckett, and Hopkins because their terms have ended, so perhaps they felt a little freer to defy their GOP bosses in the General Assembly and elsewhere. 

Who Shot the Sheriff?

 "...a Pulitizer Prize winner should not be awarded tenure because she doesn't give enough credit to white people"

--Judd Legum on Twitter

So it appears pretty certain that the man the J-School is named for at Chapel Hill had a strong role in nixxing tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones. Walter Hussman Jr. gave $25 million to the School of Journalism and Media and got his name on the building in 2019. He had gone to the school and had made a fortune owning newspapers, including the fabled Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

When Walter Hussman heard that Hannah-Jones was being considered for the prestigious Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism, he began writing emails to UNC-CH officials and expressing his reservations about the appointment. "The Assembly" (a new "digital magazine" for freelance writers in North Carolina. Subscription is required) obtained those emails, and former News&Observer executive editor John Drescher wrote a lengthy article quoting from them and delving into the numerous issues raised when a big-time donor puts himself in the way of a hire. 

Drescher doesn't quote the Hussman emails at length (drat!). Hussman is a respected old-time American journalist with a strict philosophy of objective reporting, and I would have liked to take in the full unfurling of his thoughts on Hannah-Jones in long-form (so to speak). Don't know if I'm getting full Hussman in the brief excerpts that Drescher quotes. Is he a fuddy-duddy with a congenital blind spot for his own biases?

From what Drescher quotes, Hussman was particularly alarmed by Hannah-Jones's key role in producing the famed 2019 Project on American slavery and racism. Hussman liked the criticism of the project by a group of four prestigious (white) historians:

“I worry about the controversy of tying the UNC journalism school to the 1619 project. I find myself more in agreement with Pulitzer prize winning historians like James McPherson and Gordon Wood than I do Nikole Hannah-Jones.

McPherson and Wood, along with two others, had signed a letter to The Times saying they were deeply offended by the new interpretation of American history offered in the 2019 project -- the thesis that American history was shaped -- and is still shaped -- by anti-Black racism and that maybe the Founders and their followers up to the present day did not and do not in fact commit to the ideals they say they revere. Ouch. The 2019 Project tromped on white piety about the high-mindedness of our national identity, a view cherished by both liberals and conservatives (Adam Serwer).

Hussman wrote in one email that he was particularly offended by this Hannah-Jones's sentence: “For the most part, black Americans fought back alone.” Hussman fastens on the odious exclusiveness of "alone" while ignoring the qualifying "for the most part":

“I think this claim denigrates the courageous efforts of many white Americans to address the sin of slavery and the racial injustices that resulted after the Civil War .... Long before Nikole Hannah Jones won her Pulitzer Prize, courageous white southerners risking their lives standing up for the rights of blacks were winning Pulitzer prizes, too.”

To which Judd Legum commented that Hannah-Jones's big sin must have been not complimenting white people enough (see above).

Still an open question: How did Hussman's criticism of Hannah-Jones get disseminated to the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees? Did it get disseminated? We know (thanks to The Assembly) about Hussman's emails to faculty/administration figures (the chancellor, the dean, etc.). Did he also email members of the BOT? 

When Political Hacks Take Control of a Once-Great University System

 

In between trying to keep the weeds from overwhelming my garden, I've been trying to keep up with the controversy over the hiring of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC-Chapel Hill. I covered the right-wing boil about her appointment a week ago yesterday, and I've been trying to stay up with daily developments since then, preparing to write about the craven behavior of the UNC-CH administration in the face of a decision by the UNC-CH Board of Trustees to deny Hannah-Jones tenure. But some days are too cluttered, I hear the weeds celebrating out there like frat boys on a Thursday night, and Jeffrey Billman summed up everything for me too perfectly not to steal his sentences wholesale here:

Since we’re about to talk qualifications, let’s remember that the guy chairing the UNC Board of Governors [Randy Ramsey] does not have a bachelor’s degree, lied about earning an associate’s degree, but did receive a diploma from a boat mechanics program, which, in the eyes of the General Assembly, qualifies him to oversee 16 public universities.

Randy Ramsey was also one of the “brains” behind the Silent Sam debacle, which involved the BOG trying to fork over $2.5 million to a bunch of Confederate yahoos—a judge struck down the deal—and then lying to the public about it.

The Board of Governors and the NCGA control the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, which earlier this week denied tenure to “1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones on account of … you know, reasons.

Definitely not because she’s Black.

Or because The 1619 Project poked the bear of white resentment by forcing a critical reevaluation of the role of slavery and racism in the formation of American society, which is not exactly something the UNC System is ready to do.

Because—ostensibly—she’s not an academic.

“Susan King, dean of the journalism school, said she was told that the trustees didn’t approve tenure to someone outside of academia, as Hannah-Jones is a professional journalist, not a professor. However, the Knight Chair is specifically designed to bring the best in their industry into higher education.” (N&O)

Of course, other Knight chairs weren’t academics—that’s kind of the point, to bring people with real-life experience into university classrooms. Journalism isn’t a profession you learn in a classroom. (I assume UNC Hussman is better, but my j-school was useless.)

The handling of this phony controversy has made UNC’s administration a national laughingstock, again....

There's more, of course, about white people's misplaced hypertension over the 1619 Project or over any acknowledgement that the very structure of our constitutional government was written to establish (and maintain) a racist understanding of who should govern and who should be subjected.

What's happened to Hannah-Jones and to the integrity of what used to be North Carolina's flagship university is just the logical outcome of the Art Pope/Phil Berger/Tim Moore campaign to control higher education and forcibly rewrite the understanding of history as Anglo-Saxons uber alles.