Larry Chavis taught entrepreneurship and strategy at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School for 18 years, but the university has just decided not to renew his contract. Why? Is this problematic?
In today’s Martin Center article, Duke professor John Staddon looks into the case. Apparently, Chavis was using his classroom as a soapbox to promote his personal views on economics and LGBQT issues besides the material he was supposed to teach. Was Chavis in the wrong? Was UNC?
Staddon finds fault on both sides, writing: “It looks to me as if Kenan-Flagler, along with UNC, Duke, and countless other universities, started going off the rails decades ago. Motivated by sympathy and racial guilt, plus pressure from activists, they allowed the founding of departments and institutes that were motivated more by social justice than by the search for verifiable truth.” Chavis took advantage of that atmosphere and will now have to find another job.