CHAPEL HILL (March 23, 2023) – The chair of UNC-Chapel Hill’s trustees isn’t backing down from a new School of Civic Life and Leadership – or a new policy that forbids university officials to ask applicants about their positions on political issues.
But he doesn’t say how the university can do both at the same time.
In remarks at the Board of Trustees’ meeting today, Chair David Boliek Jr. celebrated a ribbon-cutting Tuesday for the NC Policy Collaboratory – a research collaborative created by the NC General Assembly in 2016.
The collaborative is headed by Dr. Jeff Warren, a marine geologist and former science advisor to NC Senate leader Phil Berger. When the Collaboratory was created, Boliek said, the media spawned fears that political influence would get in the way of sound science.
Instead, Boliek said, the Collaboratory’s work has made findings about chemical contamination in NC water and ways to detect and fight the Covid pandemic.
“They are solving the problems and great challenges of our time,” he said.
Boliek said the Collaboratory is similar to UNC’s Program for Public Discourse, which says it supports “a culture of robust public argument,” but also one that “recognize(s) civility as a precept to the free and open exchange of ideas.”1
“Ideas that make a difference come from many places. They do not always come from one source,” Boliek said.
He added that the proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership, which is intended as an outgrowth of the Program for Public Discourse, should be shaped through “all proper channels.”
Traditionally, new academic programs are shaped by the university’s faculty – and Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz has asserted that the School of Civic Life will be.2
But UNC-CH faculty, who maintain they were were blindsided by the board’s resolution in January that urged creation of the School of Civic Life, adopted its own resolution on the proposal: “The Faculty Council recommends no further action on this new school until such a time as a proposal from the faculty towards this school is developed and then properly discussed.”3
Soon after the board asked the university in January to “accelerate” development of the school, Boliek appeared in an interview on Fox & Friends.
“This is all about balance,” he said.
“We clearly have a world-class faculty that exists and teaches students and creates leaders of the future. We, however, have no shortage of left-of-center progressive views on our campus, like many campuses across the nation. The same really can’t be said about right-of-center views. So this is an effort to try to remedy that with the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which will provide equal opportunity for both views to be taught at the university.”4
BOLIEK SAID today he is pleased that the Board of Trustees also adopted a resolution affirming the university’s support for a new policy adopted by the UNC Board of Governors that says university officials cannot ask student or job applicants about their positions on “matters of contemporary political debate or social action.”5
“A university is not a place for indoctrination,” Boliek said. “Civil discourse doesn’t always mean you agree.”
But he didn’t explain how the university can hire more professors with “right-of-center” views and at the same time abide by a policy that forbids questions to applicants about their political stances.
1 https://publicdiscourse.unc.edu/mission-statement/.
2 https://www.unc.edu/posts/2023/01/27/a-message-from-the-chancellor-promoting-democracy-and-staying-true-to-our-commitment/.
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeogHe7-ZS4.
4 https://www.foxnews.com/video/6319418361112.
5 https://bot.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/160/2023/03/Meeting-Book-Strategic-Initiatives-Committee-March-22-2023-PUBLIC_rev-032223.pdf, p. 4.
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