A Breath of Fresh Air

UNC Board of Governors moves to limit political litmus tests in faculty decisions, admissions

The UNC Board of Governors is now considering a new policy to ban compelled speech in faculty hiring or promotion decisions and in student admissions decisions.

“We cannot condition employment or enrollment on adherence to any set of beliefs, no matter how well intended,” UNC System President Peter Hans said last week in support of the new policy.

Here, here!

The Board of Governors effort seems an attempt to solve a major problem at UNC System schools: Rules requiring faculty and prospective students to profess their support for social justice causes are disqualifying people because of their legitimate and reasonable political views.

A Problem in Need of a Solution

A growing number of departments in universities throughout the UNC System require faculty to adhere (or at least pretend to adhere) to various social justice doctrines to qualify for hiring, promotion, or tenure.

N.C. State University, for example, required applicants to a microbiology professorship to write an essay describing their knowledge of antiracism doctrine and document their history of advancing the doctrine in the past.

The UNC School of Medicine amended its rules in 2021 to require an essay outlining “positive contributions to DEI efforts” from faculty seeking promotion or tenure.

We have no objection to universities employing faculty who feel strongly about social justice causes.

We do have an objection to universities only employing faculty who hold specific social justice views, and disqualifying all others.

Here’s the informal standard CPR holds on this question: Would a department or school policy disqualify Brown University’s Glenn Loury or Columbia University’s John McWhorter from hiring, promotion or tenure?

N.C. State University’s agriculture school announced this month that it will integrate performance in DEI trainings into its faculty hiring and evaluation processes.

How would Loury, who is black, fare if he stood up in a DEI training and repeated what he said recently about social justice causes?

“I’d go so far as to say the activists are so busy bending over backwards to indict antiblack racism that they become racists themselves—racists in that they worship at this shrine of identity and privilege the claims of some people over other people based upon their racial identity.”

Do you think McWhorter would be hired or promoted if he responded to a social justice essay prompt with the below excerpt from Woke Racism, his new book?

“It is losing innocent people their jobs. It is coloring academic inquiry, detouring it, and sometimes strangling it like kudzu. It forces us to render a great deal of our public discussion of urgent issues in double-talk any ten-year-old can see through. It forces us to start teaching our actual ten-year-olds, in order to hold them off from spoiling the show in that way, to believe in sophistry in the name of enlightenment…This and so much else is a sign that Third Wave Antiracism forces us to pretend that performance art is politics. It forces us to spend endless amounts of time listening to nonsense presented as wisdom, and pretend to like it.”

Opponents

UNC-Chapel Hill’s faculty chairperson, Mimi Chapman, publicly opposes the Board of Governors policy, though she declined to engage with the problem the UNC Board of Governors is attempting to solve. (In fairness, it’s unlikely the reporters who seek her input ask her to contemplate the other side, anyway.)

Chapman instead spoke broadly about the need to have a “welcoming, inclusive” campus.

But if Chapman’s definition of welcoming and inclusive is a set of policies that would deny black Ivy League professors a place on campus, that seems a major problem.

Reporters covering this issue would do well to ask Chapman how she would view a DEI statement that excerpts McWhorter’s book or a response during a training seminar that quotes Loury. Because under the letter and spirit of the litmus tests being imposed throughout the UNC System’s schools, rhetoric like that from Loury and McWhorter would be disqualifying.

We hope the Board of Governors continues with its policy undeterred by those who would limit intellectual diversity. And we hope the policy, if passed, will be implemented forcefully.

In the meantime, we’ll continue with our series, There’s Something Wrong in Higher Education, to keep spotlighting examples of illiberalism on UNC System campuses.

And to those who have been sending us material to use in our posts – keep it up!

Full Text of the Proposed Board of Governors Resolution

a. To mitigate the risk of compelled speech that undermines the intellectual freedom and fostering of free expression required of the University of North Carolina by Article 36 of Chapter 116 of the General Statutes and embraced in Chapter VI of the UNC Code and Section 1300.8 of UNC Policy, the University shall neither solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement.

Nor shall any employee or applicant be solicited or required to describe his or her actions in support of, or in opposition to, such beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles. Practices prohibited here include but are not limited to solicitations or requirements for statements of commitment to particular views on matters of contemporary political debate or social action contained on applications or qualifications for admission or employment or included as criteria for analysis of an employee’s career progression.

Any constituent institution believing a requirement or solicitation prohibited hereby to be necessary for reasons related to the educational, research, or public service mission of the University established in G.S. 116-1 shall obtain prior written approval to include such a requirement or solicitation from the President following discussion in open session of a meeting of the Committee on University Governance attended by the requesting constituent institution’s chancellor, its provost, and its chair of its board of trustees.

b. Any employee who acts in contravention of the foregoing prohibition on compelling speech, violating Section 5(a) above, shall be subject to existing disciplinary measures taken against employee(s).

c. Except as provided under current law, nothing in Section 5 creates or vests a private remedy or claim in any employee or applicant for admission or employment subjected to a practice prohibited hereby.

d. Nothing in Section 5 modifies or otherwise affects the University’s existing guarantee of the right of academic freedom in its faculty’s academic scholarship or classroom instruction, or research pursuits, subject only to institutional academic tenure policies as contemplated in Section 602 of The Code, as well as applicable law and UNC Code and Policy.

e. Nothing in Section 5 infringes upon the ability of an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to voluntarily opine or speak regarding any matters, including those of contemporary political debate or social action, as contemplated in Section 5(a). Nor shall anything in Section 5 prohibit discussion with, or questioning of, an employee or applicant regarding the content of the employee’s or applicant’s resume, curriculum vitae, or body of scholarship, or other written work or oral remarks presented by the employee or applicant in his or her own support.

f. Nothing in Section 5 modifies or affects the University’s ability to ensure its employees comply with applicable federal or state law or existing employment requisites under the law or agency policy, such as employment oaths, appointment affidavits, and licensure and certification requirements.