CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – As an advisor to four presidents – Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton – David Gergen has seen his share of controversy.
And as a native North Carolinian, he sees HB2 as a controversy that continues to damage his home state and its stellar universities.
The Higher Education Works Foundation followed up with Gergen after his stirring commencement address at Elon University in May. In the accompanying video, Gergen sounds many of the same themes – with a special emphasis on how HB2 hurts North Carolina’s universities, both public and private.
A state once considered a beacon of the New South, one that welcomed a creative class of innovators, now provokes a growing sense that it wants to turn backward, the CNN commentator says.
As a result, would-be North Carolina students, faculty and employers around the globe are having second thoughts about the state.
“When North Carolina, as it has been recently, shows up in headlines – North Carolina and Mississippi do the same thing together – that is going backwards for us in terms of our reputation,” Gergen says. “… Let’s not go back. Let’s not go backward.”
Peter Watson says
Very thoughtful and spot on comments from an intelligent and articulate NC native son. David Gergen has worked with presidential administrations across the spectrum, and so presents as non-partisan a point of view as you are likely to get.
He’s right on the money, both figuratively and literally, as HB2 has damaged and continues to damage the economy of our state.
City of Charlotte legislators passed what amounts to a feel-good city ordinance for the Charlotte LBGT community, that would have had little practical impact on anyone or anything, if McCrory and the legislature simply ignored it.
Instead, McCrory & company responded to it in a manner designed to inflame their far right base, and created a train wreck for the people of North Carolina, taking our state’s economic interests and world wide reputation off the rails in the process.
Janet Doub says
Very insightful. I agree with this very articulate and educated man. As a former educator, I feel he is right on target. It distresses me greatly to see what is happening to education in NC. Obviously many people are very uneducated and have sipped the koolaid of bigotry disguised as “common sense.”
Pat Bartram says
Many decades ago, a famous black columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a column stating that politicians deliberately allowed and promoted lower educational standards. Why? Because under-educated Americans would not be able to progress intellectually to understand what the pols were doing that kept them in office and gave them free passes to unlimited graft and terms. It struck a chord with us, we looked up a top college and sent out daughter to Chapel Hill. Today, I would not do that. We live here, but the state is definitely backward turning, in almost every significant measurement. So sad. So scary.