When North Carolina’s flagship university’s board of trustees voted to start a new school based on intellectual freedom to counter “woke” ideology, the backlash was swift.
That sparked outrage from the faculty, who said that it’s their responsibility to determine the curriculum—which illustrated to conservatives why the new school is needed.
Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS COC), suggested publicly that the university’s accreditation may be at risk if the trustees don’t revoke their mandate to develop the new school.
“We’re going to send a committee to talk to them and help them understand it and either get them to change it, or the institution will be on warning with us, I’m sure,” Wheelan said.
Video footage of her comments made at a Feb. 7 meeting of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina was obtained by The Epoch Times.
The conservative think tank recently condemned the threat and stated that such a warning is often a step toward revoking accreditation.
It illustrates the broader problem with accreditation agencies practicing woke ideologies intolerant of dissenting views, just like the universities they accredit, according to Jonathan Butcher, a fellow in education at The Heritage Foundation.
Universities and schools use euphemisms such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “progressivism” to describe critical race theory. This Marxist-based ideology divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender.
DEI proponents say it’s necessary to discriminate against whites to make up for past and present discrimination against minorities who are victims of systemic racism in America.
Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a Raleigh-based think tank, wrote that accreditation threats to the university have been used to “disempower university boards.”
Her Feb. 9 article states that Wheelan and Margaret Spellings, a former president of the University of North Carolina university system, have a history of coordinating to pressure the university board of governors from exercising its oversight authority.
Spellings is now co-chair of a public university governance committee—which has no power over universities—created by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat.
Appointments to the university system’s university boards are made through North Carolina’s Republican-led Legislature or the university system board of governors, also appointed by the Legislature.
Wheelan said the university’s board would receive a letter from the accreditor because it proposed a new curriculum without the administration’s or faculty’s input, according to Robinson’s article.
The article stated that Wheelan later told a trustee that Spellings had asked her to send a letter of inquiry to the board.
Spellings’s office in Dallas stated that she wouldn’t be able to immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
Robinson told The Epoch Times that the trustees’ vote to expand the program took some faculty by surprise.
She believes the governor’s commission is meant to “undermine” the current board of trustees because Cooper wants the appointment process for trustees to look different.
Faculty members say that such a school isn’t needed because they already teach civil discourse in their classes, Robinson said.
Accreditors ‘Using’ Their Power
“I think the faculty are interpreting that as, ‘Oh, you’re going to hire a bunch of Republicans.’ And they don’t like that,” Robinson said.While the accrediting board could withdraw accreditation from UNC–Chapel Hill, Robinson says it’s unlikely.
Creating a school based on intellectual freedom and civil discourse has been discussed on campus for some time, she said. While professors are part of the input process when starting a new school, not all professors would need to approve it.
“The trustees are not going rogue here,” Robinson said.
Wheelan told The Epoch Times in a Feb. 21 email that a letter had been sent to the university questioning the process after news of the school’s development broke.
Wheelan said that the university’s trustees appeared to make curriculum decisions without faculty or administration input.
“There is nothing ‘political’ in SACS COC asking about the ‘process’ that was followed, which is what we’re asking,” she wrote.
However, Butcher said it appears accreditors may be using their power to keep universities anything but diverse when it comes to ideology.
“College accreditors have the same sort of DEI statements, commitments to antiracism, as the universities they accredit,” Butcher told The Epoch Times.
Another accrediting agency, Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, has an entire section on antiracist resources on its website, including one titled “Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms,” which tells professors to “recognize your implicit biases and remediate your racial illiteracy.”
Butcher said the UNC board should be applauded because free speech and intellectual freedom are severely restricted on most college campuses nationwide.
He said the university had conducted studies that revealed students didn’t feel free to speak their minds.
The students described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.
“These woke kind of very aggressive critical race theory ideologies are part of all sorts of campus life,” Butcher said.
One way to curb Marxist ideology is to make universities responsible for providing a good education. Universities should help repay federal student loans that go into default because students don’t get a good education and can’t get a job, he suggested.
He said the list of college accreditors needs to be expanded, allowing nonprofits and businesses.
Requiring universities to change accreditors periodically is another good idea, which has been part of the pushback against CRT in Florida, he said.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced that Florida will no longer fund DEI programs or positions that adhere to divisive ideologies and plans to remake the woke New College in Sarasota into something akin to Hillsdale College.
The Florida governor wants university presidents and boards of trustees to hold a post-tenure review of professors as needed and ban DEI oaths used in hiring in which candidates pledge allegiance to oppressor-victim ideologies.
Other red states are attempting similar moves.
The Republican-controlled West Virginia House of Delegates introduced a bill recently to curtail various DEI initiatives in public higher education across the state.
In Texas, two House bills have been introduced to stop discriminatory DEI hiring practices and defund Texas universities that teach CRT.
In February, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, a Republican, directed his chief of staff to send a memo to state agency leaders and universities that using DEI to make hiring decisions was illegal.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has publicly said he wants to modify or remove tenure for professors teaching CRT. Texas state Sen. Brandon Creighton is expected to introduce a bill to that effect in the Senate.
Creighton led the effort to establish the new Civitas Institute—a think tank dedicated to free market principles, the First Amendment, and intellectual freedom—at the University of Texas–Austin.
“I believe the mission of all colleges and universities should be to innovate and educate—not indoctrinate,” Creighton said.
“Accreditation criteria should be merit based, and if Texas Universities stray from those goals, lawmakers will advance guardrails ensuring that it is followed and that alternative accreditation entities are relied upon.”
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