BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT

On Monday, December 3, the Chancellor and Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill delivered their formal plan for what to do with “Silent Sam,” the controversial Confederate statue. They managed to formulate a decision that was almost perfect in its absurdity. To lay to rest a controversy that has plagued the campus for decades—and which culminated with the statue’s toppling by activists last August—Chancellor Carol Folt and the campus board announced that they would create a  “University History and Education Center.” The cost of this center, which would be located on an area of campus known as Odum Village, is estimated to be $5.3 million. As one UNC graduate student tweeted, “@UNC will be the only institution to ERECT A CONFEDERATE MONUMENT IN 2019.”

At the same time, Chancellor Folt and the Board of Trustees also managed to run afoul of the elementary principles of shared governance, completely ignoring an October resolution passed by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Faculty Council, which called for the statue’s permanent removal from campus.

The latest installment of the “Silent Sam” controversy began on August 20, when protestors pulled down the statue from its pedestal, located at UNC-Chapel Hill’s McCorkle Place. Due to its strong association with racism (as evidenced in the 1913 dedication speech by a notorious white supremacist), the statue had been the focus of campus protests for some time. After it was toppled, the UNC Board of Governors, which oversees the seventeen-campus system, instructed Chancellor Folt and the campus board to come up with a plan for the statue’s disposal. The 28-member Board of Governors is appointed by the North Carolina General Assembly, a heavily gerrymandered body dominated by Republicans.

In making her decision, Chancellor Folt was under significant pressure from the UNC Board of Governors. In an August 31 statement, she said that “Silent Sam has a place in our history and on our campus…., but not at the front door of a safe, welcoming, proudly public research university.” Harry Smith, the chairman of the UNC Board, criticized Folt’s remarks in an interview, stating: “I was very disappointed in Chancellor Folt’s hasty release with such strong statements on her opinion on the relocation.” Furthermore, the UNC-Chapel Hill board asked the system board to push back Chancellor Folt’s quadrennial review several months: only in March 2019 would she be eligible for the pay raise (her current salary is  $632,810) that eleven of her fellow chancellors were awarded in November.

Folt and UNC administrators also faced headwinds from Republican politicians, who were highly critical of the statue’s dismantling. North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said:  “There is no place for the destruction of property on our college campuses or in any North Carolina community; the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted by public safety officials to make clear that mob rule and acts of violence will not be tolerated in our state.”

The pressure placed on Folt and UNC-Chapel Hill board is consistent with recent actions taken by the Republican-dominated legislature and their appointees in the Board of Governors. In 2015, the Board shut down UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity because its director, Gene Nichol, a law professor, had a record of outspoken criticism of state government. In 2017, the Board prohibited the UNC Law School’s Center for Civil Rights from engaging in litigation, despite the fact that similar centers do so in law schools across the country. Also in 2017, the Board adopted a “campus free speech” policy (mandated by the legislature, after it passed a Goldwater Institute-inspired “free speech” bill) that implemented punitive action against the kind of student protests that “Silent Sam” has regularly inspired.

The agenda of Republican politicians in North Carolina was expressed with particular directness in an article published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative think tank, shortly after the statue was felled: “Now that Sam has suffered his ignoble defeat and he no longer stands guard over Franklin Street, what is to be done? Optimally, he would be raised back upon his pedestal in defiance of the mob. For doing so would take some of the starch out of the mob. Without such a strong response, the rioters will be emboldened to seek new targets for their bloodlust. And not just statues or buildings named long ago for men who were of their own time. They will attack all that is conventional, original, or lofty: they will bend the curriculum to their will, stifle dissenting voices, and chase off faculty whose beliefs are insufficiently radical.”

The pattern is clear: as the UNC Board of Governor has demonstrated time and again, its goal is to impose its political priorities on the entire UNC system (despite the fact that Democrats won the popular vote in the 2018 elections). In proposing their “Silent Sam” plan, Chancellor Folt and the trustees were clearly seeking to placate the Board, which will review the proposal at its December 13 meeting.

In the process, Chancellor Folt and the Board have brazenly violated the basic principles of shared governance. On October 12, UNC’s Faculty Council passed a resolution which boldly declared 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 added “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.” The resolution also endorsed a statement published by African-American faculty in the Daily Tar Heel, UNC-Chapel Hill’s student newspaper.

It is highly ironic that Chancellor Folt proposed that “Silent Sam” be housed in an “education” center while denying the insight of the university constituency whose primary responsibility is education. AAUP’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities asserts that the “primary responsibility of the faculty” for matters relating to the university’s education mission is “based upon the fact that its judgment is central to general educational policy.” Folt and her backers in the Board of Governors want to undertake an educational program that UNC Chapel Hill’s faculty has deemed educationally untenable.

In any event, Chancellor Folt has managed to “settle” the “Silent Sam” question in a manner that is guaranteed to keep the issue alive for the foreseeable future.

Michael C. Behrent

Vice President, North Carolina AAUP Conference