Tag Archives: University of North Carolina

What Our College Students Are Studying

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On Sunday, The American Thinker reported that the University of North Carolina has decided to cut many areas of their curriculum.

The article reports:

One of the schools in the UNC system, UNC-Greensboro, is in the news these days because of a decision by Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. to cut undergraduate and/or graduate programs in physics, mathematics, computer science, anthropology and nursing, citing “university direction, enrollment patterns, prioritizing faculty time and expertise, and growth opportunities.”

Reaction to the decision to cancel STEM was swift.

Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Charles Bolton resigned in protest of the cuts and the way Gilliam handled communication.

Slated for elimination are undergraduate programs in

    • Geography (just Google everything, right?),
    • Anthropology (that’s about, you know, old stuff), and
    • Physics (Newton and Einstein are dead white males),

as well as graduate programs in:

    • Nursing (hospitals and doctors might disagree),
    • Geography (of course),
    • Mathematics (WaPo’s Travis Meier is applauding this one), and
    • Computational mathematics (calculators from Walmart will do the trick.)

Some of the courses that remain:

  • African-American and African Diaspora Studies (cutting them would lead to “mostly peaceful” Antifa/BLM demonstrations),
  • Media Studies (better to help Democrats win elections),
  • Communication Studies (“failure to communicate” caused problems in Cool Hand Luke),
  • Peace and Conflict Studies (to help Hamas, Hezbollah … um, negotiate),
  • Liberal and Interdisciplinary Studies (of course), and, your favorite and mine,
  • Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Tuition at UNC Chapel Hill is $8,989 for North Carolina residents and $37,550 for out-of-state students. Admittedly that’s a deal if you are a North Carolina resident, but do you really want to pay that much for a degree that probably isn’t marketable?

Ending Racial Discrimination In College Admissions

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On Wednesday, The New York Sun posted an article about a case the Supreme Court has recently decided to hear. The case involves Harvard University and its discrimination against Asian students based on their race.

The article reports:

The future of how America’s oldest university chooses its students will be decided not in faculty lounges in Cambridge, but in judicial chambers in Washington, D.C. As the Sun has reported, the high court looks set to decide the future of college and university admissions after elevating cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Bacow (Lawrence Bacow, President of Harvard University) struck a defiant note in response to the dramatic legal development, maintaining: “Our admissions process, in which race is considered as one factor among many, makes us stronger.” He promised to “defend with vigor” that approach against “narrowly drawn measures of academic distinction.”

Harvard’s admissions process is one of the nation’s most selective. Last spring, it extended offers to just more than 3 percent of applicants, making it a bellwether for how thick and thin envelopes (or their email equivalents) are sent out nationwide.

Mr. Bacow wrote that Harvard is “more than our numbers, more than our grades, more than our rankings or scores.” The question is whether just such a “holistic” approach runs afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws and the promises of the Constitution.

The article concludes:

To argue this, Students for Fair Admissions, the group mounting the legal challenges, points to Harvard admissions practices that penalized Asian-American students by giving them low marks on such metrics as “likability,” “courage,” and “self-confidence.”

While Mr. Bacow argues that Harvard’s admissions process reflects the reality that “race matters in the United States,” Students for Fair Admissions maintains: “The cornerstone of our nation’s civil rights laws is the principle that an individual’s race should not be used to help or harm them in their life’s endeavors.”

The University of North Carolina, which shares a Supreme Court docket with Harvard, fired back that the “true agenda” for Students for Fair Admissions is to “deny opportunity to qualified students.”

While both North Carolina and Harvard are undaunted, all eyes will now be on affirmative action’s suddenly very uncertain future.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., once stated, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” If you truly want the students you admit to your college to graduate, you should admit them according to their academic record and their achievements–not on the basis of their race. Diversity is a nice idea, but how many of the students that colleges accept in the name of diversity have the academic skills to graduate in four years?

The Story You Weren’t Told

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project.

The article reports:

The creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project is joining the University of North Carolina journalism faculty in July, funded by a Knight Foundation grant.

The academic world has not greeted the news with jubilation, but rather outrage — because Nikole Hannah-Jones was not given tenure to start.

“Political pressure from conservatives,” particularly a North Carolina-focused education think tank, led the university to offer Hannah-Jones a fixed five-year term, according to NC Policy Watch, a project of the progressive North Carolina Justice Center. 

Evidently that is not the reason Ms. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure.

The article continues:

The UNC trustee who oversees lifetime appointments, Charles Duckett, postponed the tenure review for Hannah-Jones in January, three months before UNC announced the hire, board chair Richard Stevens told reporters last week.

Duckett “asked for a little bit of time” to ask Hannah-Jones to clarify her background, since she does not have “a traditional academic-type background,” according to Stevens. She accepted the five-year term, which lets her continue as a New York Times journalist, before the full Board of Trustees voted.

Asked what he specifically wanted to know from Hannah-Jones, Duckett told Just the News no one had asked for his side until now. “I cannot comment today due to issues outside my control,” he said. “I normally do not respond at all but appreciate the question.”

The article notes a possible explanation:

A spokesperson for the journalism school told Just the News last week it wasn’t sure why the board “did not act on her tenure package” but was told “there was reluctance to grant tenure” to a non-academic.

“The University and the journalism school very much wanted Nikole to join us, and she was offered a Professor of the Practice 5-year fixed term contract,” Susan King, dean of the journalism school, said in a statement.

The 1619 Project has been denounced as an opinion piece rather than an accurate reporting of history. To grant tenure to someone who has no academic background and has published opinions as fact would not be a good move for a university.

Fighting Back Against Indoctrination

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The College Fix posted an article yesterday about a course being taught at the University of North Carolina Wilmington by Dr. Mike Adams.

The article reports:

“What does the evidence say about the claims of the Black Lives Matter movement?”

“Is the criminal justice system really systematically racist?”

“Is there really a rape epidemic on our college campuses?”

“What was that you were saying about white privilege?”

“What was that you were saying about patriarchal oppression?”

These are some of the study prompts for a new class to be offered at the University of North Carolina Wilmington called “Issues in Criminal Justice.” Were these topics taught by a left-leaning scholar, the classroom conversations and readings might have gone one way.

But the class is the brainchild of one of the most well-known and outspoken Christian conservative scholars in the nation — criminology Professor Mike Adams — and he promises that students will finally get a chance to hear how those on the right would answer these questions, and more.

He calls the class “a reasoned response to systematic academic malpractice.”

“Please note that whereas political leftists author virtually all of the readings in your other courses, conservatives and libertarians author most of the readings in this course,” the syllabus states. “This is done so that you will be exposed to beliefs that contradict those of the vast majority of your professors. Often, these dissenting views are presented only as caricatures. In this class, you will hear from the proponents of such views directly.”

Among the required reading list: Mike Lee’s “Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document”; John Lott Jr.’s “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime And Gun Control Laws”; K.C. Johnson’s and Stuart Taylor’s “The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack On Due Process At America’s Universities”; and Heather Mac Donald’s “The War On Cops: How The Attack On Law And Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.”

The article concludes:

Adams said he is disappointed in how his colleagues no longer teach both sides of an issue.

“There’s a legitimate question as to whether all my colleagues are just incompetent or whether it’s just that they have a moral compass that points to them,” Adams told The Fix. “I’m really trying to figure out if they’re intellectually herniated or just morally herniated. But in all likelihood it’s improper to attribute it to one or the other. It’s got to be a combination because the situation has just gotten so bad. I just have to teach a course like this one.”

Adams made national headlines in 2014 when he won a seven-year court battle against the University of North Carolina Wilmington for retaliating against him for his conservative, Christian views. As part of the settlement, campus leaders agreed to adopt procedures protecting Adams from renewed retaliation.

Adams told The Fix that in light of his past experiences, he is not worried about his academic freedom or the pushback this class might receive from some corners of campus. In fact, he added, controversy is one sign of robust intellectual diversity.

“I’m worried if I don’t cause controversy,” he said. “I’m extremely worried about that. A lack of controversy on college campuses is a sign of sickness and intellectual atrophy.”

Thank you, Dr. Adams, you are a courageous man who is making a difference.

Insanity At One University

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The Washington Times posted a story in June 2016 outlining some of the speech guidelines at the University of North Carolina. The inmates have definitely taken over the asylum.

The article reports:

Guidelines issued on the university’s Employee Forum aim to help staff avoid microaggressions in their interactions by cautioning against offensive phrases such as “Christmas vacation,” “husband/boyfriend” and “golf outing.”

The guidebook, first reported by Campus Reform, categorizes examples of potential microaggressions by “social identity group,” including race, gender and sexual orientation.

 Under the “Religion” tab, the guidebook says organizing vacations around Christian holidays further “centers the Christian faith and minimizes non-Christian spiritual rituals and observances.”

With regard to “gender” microaggressions, the guidelines discourage comments such as “I love your shoes!” to female colleagues or otherwise complimenting the appearance of women.

It gets worse:

Microaggressions against “sexual orientation” include using the terms “husband” or “boyfriend” when addressing a female colleague, or “wife” or “girlfriend” when addressing a male colleague, instead of the asexual “partner” or “spouse.”

This, the taxpayer-funded university warns, sets “the expectation that people do not identify as LGBTQ until they say otherwise or disclose their sexual orientation.”

At faculty award ceremonies, be sure not to ask honorees to “stand and be recognized” for their achievements, which assumes “that everyone is able in this way and ignores the diversity of ability in the space.”

To further complicate matters:

An editor’s note later amended to the University of North Carolina guidebook makes clear that it “does not represent University policy.”

“The piece was compiled from research and published scholarly works in response to Forum members’ interest in the topic of microaggressions,” the note says.

If the guidebook does not reflect University policy, why does it even exist? Where in the world did we come up with the concept of microaggressions? People are different–that is because we all have different backgrounds, different talents, different abilities, different taste, etc. When did noticing these things become microaggression? It is time for the rebirth of common sense. I guess I shouldn’t expect that rebirth to occur on college campuses. Meanwhile, how much are parents paying to have their children exposed to this junk?

Punishing Achievement While Rewarding Mediocrity

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Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about an area of discrimination we rarely hear about. It seems that our elite universities have been discriminating against Asian-American students.

The editorial reports:

The percentage of Asian-American students at Harvard and other elite universities has held suspiciously steady for two decades at about 18%, while the number of college-age Asian-Americans has increased rapidly. In May the coalition (a coaltion of sixty-four organizations) asked the civil-rights arms of the Education and Justice Departments to investigate why Asian-Americans, who make up about 5% of the population but earn an estimated 30% of National Merit semifinalist honors, aren’t accepted to Harvard in numbers that reflect these qualifications.

Sixty-four organizations filed a complaint with the Education Department. The Education Department dismissed the complaint, stating that there is pending litigation on the matter. (One suit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina).

The editorial further points out:

A similarly narrow ruling next year could give Harvard and other top schools license to maintain de facto quotas. Asian-Americans need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students to be considered equal applicants on paper, and 450 points higher than African-Americans, according to independent research cited in the complaint.

Why are we preventing our best and brightest from entering our best schools simply because of their race? I thought there were laws against discrimination based on race. This kind of activity does not help anyone. Students with the lower scores may not be equipped to handle the academic workload at these elite schools.This really must be discouraging to the students who have achieved the high scores.

The editorial concludes:

Meantime, the Asian-American coalition says it will continue to push back, potentially broadening the complaint. Quota-like admissions also seem to exist at Yale, Princeton and elsewhere, and the feds won’t have litigation as an excuse to look the other way. But if the Obama Administration finds another excuse, as it probably will, Asian-Americans will need the Supreme Court to end their exclusion.

Racial discrimination should never be acceptable regardless of who it is aimed at. I hope the Asian-American students sue the pants off the schools that are doing this and then use the money to provide scholarships to Asian-American students in their communities.

Brilliant, But Sad That It Is Even Needed

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The Blaze is reporting today that four college students at the University of North Carolina have invented a product that will help protect women from the date rape drug. The product is a nail polish that changes color when a woman dips her finger in her drink.

The article reports:

They developed a prototype nail polish, which works like so: Dip your finger into your drink, and if someone has spiked it with date rape drugs, the nail polish will change colors.

The company the four students formed is called “Undercover Colors.” It is a sad reflection on our society that there is any need for this product, but I hope they sell a million bottles to women of dating age.