A simply delicious fight has broken out at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The university’s board of trustees has approved the creation of a new school that won’t be “progressive” — and the Left is very unhappy about it.
The board is under attack from the usual bunch of domineering folks, including the university’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Wagging a finger at the trustees, Belle Wheelan, president of the SACS Commission on Colleges, said that curricular changes should be up to the faculty and its “standards.”
I’m delighted to report that the board is receiving support. Here is an open letter to the board by Reed Rubinstein, Adam Kissel, Diane Auer Jones, Robert Eitel, Jim Blew and Mitchell Zais, all of whom have served in the Department of Education at one time, who say:
We would like to take this opportunity to commend you on your resolution recommending the development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC. We welcome these plans for an academic unit devoted to cultivating skills of civil discourse, dialogue, and deliberation.
Presently, the letter gets to the matter of Ms. Wheelan’s complaints:
Although she admits that she has not even read your resolution, she has threatened to put UNC on “warning” status due to your effort to provide guidance to your university on matters related to the academic program and curriculum. You are democratically accountable and duly sworn trustees of the university, responsible for its flourishing and service to the public, yet Wheelan demands of you, “Eyes on, hands off.” She proposes for you the role of mere spectators at the university entrusted by the legislature and North Carolina law to your stewardship.
Bear in mind that this is the same accrediting agency that failed to discover the widespread academic fraud at UNC that involved fake classes meant to keep star athletes eligible to play and then did nothing after the facts were disclosed.
The letter continues:
We also note that your accreditor has a well-documented history of arbitrary and ideological intrusions into proper university governance. Your accreditor’s actions have led the State of Florida to effectively mandate by law that all public universities in the state end their association with SACSCOC. So serious have been SACSCOC’s abuses of power that we anticipate efforts to terminate your agency’s status as a Department-recognized accreditor in a future administration.
Now, wouldn’t that be lovely?