Back in August, a mob of protesters pulled down the “Silent Sam” statue on the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus and it seems likely that Chancellor Carol Folt gave police the “stand down” order that allowed the mayhem. And just recently, she ordered that the pedestal on which the statue had stood be removed. She had no authority to do so. The UNC Board had had enough and sent her packing.
The Martin Center’s Jay Schalin reflects on those events and the entirety of Folt’s “progressive” reign at UNC in his piece “UNC’s Leadership Crisis Exposes Academia’s Feckless Mindset.”
As he recounts, Folt had established a reputation for siding with left-wing radicals while she was at Dartmouth (at the time she was hired, I recall reading a blog post by a Dartmouth loyalist who said that he felt sad for UNC but was delighted that she was leaving his school) and continued in that vein at UNC. Leftist disruption was fine since the protesters always mean well.
An example was Folt’s decision to host a “Town Hall on Race and Inclusion” in 2015 at the height of the Black Lives Matter campaign. The event was, predictably, taken over by a shouting mob. In Schalin’s words:
Folt stood meekly on the side of the stage while the protesters raged, even though campus security stood ready at her command to restore order. (One wonders whether the protest was a staged event, with Folt knowing ahead of time that the event would be disrupted?) In her closing remarks, she expressed what appeared to be support for the protesters (and the more aggressive audience participants). ‘We couldn’t have heard more strongly that we need training,’ she said, most likely referring to ‘racial equity training,’ which one participant suggested should be mandatory for university employees.
Of course — more diversity training. That’s how to solve a university’s problems.
Schalin concludes:
It’s time to get UNC leadership that shows respect for all the people, not just for the angry, noisy ones who want to tear everything down. The choice of Carol Folt for UNC-Chapel Hill was an all-too-predictable mistake. Campus controversies will be unavoidable in the near future; it’s time to select leadership who can handle them on a higher plane than yielding to the mob.