BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT, ALTHA CRAVEY, AND JAY M. SMITH
Nearly three months after the Confederate statue was toppled by activists, “Silent Sam” continues to roil the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite the controversy’s campus-specific particularities, the questions it raises are emblematic of the issues confronting many campuses in our age of high-stakes political conflict.
A quick reminder of the facts: On August 20, “Silent Sam,” which is located on UNC-Chapel Hill’s McCorkle Place, was pulled down from its pedestal by protesters. The statue had been the focus of a regular protest movement for decades. Opponents consider the statue, a representation of a Confederate soldier, to be a symbol of Jim Crow-era white supremacy. With good reason: as protesters have pointed out, at the statue’s dedication in 1913, Julian Carr, a Confederate veteran and industrialist, recalled how, shortly after the Civil War ended, he had “horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers.” The United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had commissioned the statue and covered most of the costs of its installation, saw the memorialization of Confederate war dead as integral to their strategy of promoting the “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War and its aftermath, a narrative that minimized the brutality of slavery and idealized the virtues of the white antebellum south.
While the dismantling of this Confederate monument was welcomed by many, others denounced the action, and their dissatisfaction was echoed by the state’s legislature, both houses of which have Republican majorities. On August 28, the UNC Board of Governors, which oversees the seventeen-campus system, passed a resolution giving UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt and the institution’s Board of Trustees until November 15 to come up with a plan for the toppled monument’s “disposition and preservation” (this deadline has since been extended until December). On August 31, Folt issued a statement in which she observed that “different meanings” were attached to the monument: while the university “repudiates” Carr’s 1913 remarks and “the system of oppression they represent,” the statue is also seen by many as “a memorial to fallen soldiers, many of them family members.” She concluded: “Silent Sam has a place in our history and on our campus where its history can be taught, but not at the front door of a safe, welcoming, proudly public research university.”
Harry Smith, Chairman of the UNC Board of Governors criticized Folt’s remarks in an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, indicating that he disagreed with her plans for disposing of the statue: “I was very disappointed in Chancellor Folt’s hasty release with such strong statements on her opinion on the relocation … The Board of Governors worked very hard to ensure we follow proper governance and oversight and allowed UNC-Chapel Hill to have plenty of time to develop a meaningful, thoughtful plan.” Folt had threatened such a plan “with such a quick release with her strong views and opinions.” Smith, a businessman who was appointed by North Carolina’s highly gerrymandered Republican-dominated legislature, has made significant donations to Republican political campaigns.
Black faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill published a statement in the student newspaper arguing that the statue had no place on campus of any kind, declaring: “We have witnessed a monument that represents white supremacy in both the past and present be venerated and protected at the same time that we have been asked to serve as examples of diversity and inclusion. That is a demoralizing burden.” They added: “A monument to white supremacy, steeped in a history of violence against Black people, and that continues to attract white supremacists, creates a racially hostile work environment and diminishes the University’s reputation worldwide.” Over 400 UNC faculty supported the statement.
On October 12, UNC’s Faculty Council passed a resolution that stated that “[r]eturning the statue to the UNC-Chapel Hill campus would reaffirm the values of white supremacy that motivated its original installation” and “would undermine the moral and physical security of all members of our community.” It declared “the values that the statue and its base represent” to be “inherently opposed to the principles of light and liberty that guide the educational mission of UNC-Chapel Hill.”
A further twist in the controversy occurred when a graduate student who had protested the monument was put on trial by the university’s Graduate and Professional School Honor Court on October 25 and 26. Earlier this year, the student had coated the monument with a mixture of her blood and red paint. During the trial, it was discovered that one of the judges was a law student who had once defended Silent Sam before UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees, asserting: “It is our belief that the Silent Sam Memorial is a memorial to the brave North Carolinians who were defending their home state at the advance of the Union Army who was literally raping and pillaging their way through North Carolina on their march to the sea.” The court found the student protestor guilty, sentencing her to 18 hours of community service and giving her a letter of warning. Altha Cravey, a UNC-Chapel Hill geography professor who has long been critical of Silent Sam (in addition to being president of the North Carolina AAUP Conference), commented: “I think as more faculty find out, there will be a real reluctance to use the Honor Court in the future. Not because of [the law student] wanting to be there, but because of others allowing him to be there.”
The Silent Sam controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill has crystallized a number of key issues that define our highly polarized present. Universities must strive to create the kind of culture of inclusivity upon which genuine free speech and democratic debate depend on campuses that still bear the physical vestiges of racism and in communities in which these artifacts are deemed culturally significant. Universities must also, in these partisan contexts, be able to make decisions that allow them to secure an environment conducive to the university’s core mission without having to fear improper political interference on the part of governing boards. Finally, policies are needed that provide appropriate protection and due process to students who engage in political activity.
Michael C. Behrent
Associate professor of History, Appalachian State
Vice President of the North Carolina AAUP Conference
Altha Cravey
Associate Professor of Geography, UNC-Chapel Hill
President of the North Carolina AAUP Conference
Jay M. Smith
Professor of History, UNC-Chapel Hill
Incoming Vice President of the UNC-Chapel Hill AAUP Chapter
I appreciate this thoughtful essay, but I want to challenge one small part of it: The notion that people making judgments on campus must be unbiased. In this case, it’s the idea that a pro-Silent Sam student should not be part of a court judging vandalism of the statue by a student. But by that same logic, anyone who ever criticized Silent Sam would also need to be banished from such a jury. I think it’s possible for people to take positions on public policy and still fairly judge protesters who commit alleged violations related to those policies (for example, I hate Silent Sam but I think the mild punishment of the protester was appropriate, because otherwise anyone would be allowed to vandalize displays they disagree with).
if we take that “unbiased” logic further, no one who expresses an opinion on something should ever be allowed to serve on a campus committee examining that topic. The result of a “ban the biased” position is that the only people who are allowed to make judgments are the indifferent centrists who refuse to take moral stands–and that’s a kind of bias itself. This fear of bias often has bad effects–for example, the AAUP for decades has been stymied from speaking out and acting quickly against violations of academic freedom for fear that such action might make its investigative reports and censure decisions seem “biased.” It’s time to stop trying to ban bias.