When the Left tries to get its way, that is “fighting for social justice” or some such blather, but when those on the right push back, it’s sure to be attacked as “playing politics.” Recent controversies in the University of North Carolina show the point and that’s the subject of Shannon Watkins’s Martin Center article.
The biggest controversy involves “Silent Sam,” a statue of a Confederate soldier on the Chapel Hill campus. For generations, students at UNC went about their educations without paying any attention to it, but in this era of hypersensitive (and underworked) students, the statue is an intolerable affront. Hoping to appease the progressive mob, several UNC bigwigs wrote to North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper, asking him to intercede. The problem was that legally, decisions over property on any UNC campus belongs with the Board of Governors.
Watkins writes,
Once the letter came to light, many board members objected. For one, they are the ultimate authority of the university system and felt that they should have been consulted before the letter was sent. They also were unhappy with the contents of the letter, which implied that removing the statue was the best solution without considering other alternatives.
Of course, they who were accused of playing politics.
Unlike many university governing boards, UNC’s has a conservative majority that is bound to find itself in the middle of more serious controversies than this one. Watkins concludes,
Now that they have awoken to the reality that they must lead if the university system is to right itself, the growing conservative majority on the board likely will face increased pushback the more they introduce new points of view into university governance.