BY ELYSE CRYSTALL
In my circle of family and friends in Brooklyn, the word chutzpah could indicate admiration for someone who asserted herself, spoke truth to power in spite of what others thought: “She had the chutzpah to challenge the senator’s policy on Medicaid expansion.” More often, however, chutzpah expressed disgust at a person who was arrogant in the face of failure; who flagrantly disregarded the needs and well-being of others; or who cherry-picked (or even invented) data to suit their purposes.
It’s this second meaning that I think applies to the top UNC system and UNC–Chapel Hill administrators who formulated the disastrous “Roadmap to Fall 2020.” Among those with the most chutzpah are the former UNC system president (and former CDC director) Bill Roper, who insisted in April that UNC campuses could open with in-person instruction, even as North Carolina’s infection rates rose; the UNC system plutocracy, that board of (mostly white male) governors, who watched while UNC campuses wasted millions of dollars to create the impossible—“safe” campus residency despite the threat of a virus ideally suited to spread in dormitories; and the Chapel Hill campus’s Chancellor Guskiewicz and Provost Blouin, who ignored faculty, students, and workers who had been agitating for months and speaking to national audiences, warning of the disaster about to unfold. Guskiewicz and Blouin are the same men who sat on a letter from the Orange County Health Department, which strongly recommended that the dorms not be opened, and who then expressed shock when the Chapel Hill community got hold of the letter and accused campus leaders of betrayal and apathy. The failure of leadership and the lack of moral clarity up and down the ladder—the chutzpah—is astounding.
And then there is the additional chutzpah of the “Roadmap”-makers’ simultaneous insistence that they were following CDC recommendations not to test asymptomatic people and that campus congregate living (dormitory) conditions, categorized as “high-risk” by the very same CDC, were just fine. Their justification for not testing— “it would create a false sense of security” among students with a negative result—had already been rejected as nonsensical by many other campuses, including our neighbor Duke University. Guided down their “road” without the benefit of expertise in adolescent behavior, our leaders simply kept repeating this erroneous and possibly fatal formulation. Apparently, they did not think about the message they were sending by failing to provide rigorous testing.
Throughout the summer, faculty, student, and worker challenges to the “Roadmap to Fall 2020” were featured in national and international media: op-eds and petitions, TV segments, and podcast interviews appeared on CNN, NPR; in Newsweek, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed; and in local and regional media outlets. The campus community was trying to be heard above the roar of our leaders’ chutzpah.
Some may say that there is nothing to be gained by looking back and blaming those who failed miserably. And there is some truth to that. But it is also true that we must examine the decisions made by the powerful, critique their beliefs and assumptions, and learn what they, and we, must do differently. All one needs to do is look at the hundreds of thousands of young Black, brown, and white protesters who took to the streets of large cities and small towns, in the United States and across the globe, to understand that the past is the present and the future. If we do not reckon with what went so terribly wrong, we are doomed not only to repeat it but also to default on our responsibilities as members of an intellectual community: learning from our mistakes to better understand ourselves and the world we recreate every day, a world we can therefore change.
We need new leadership and new ways of governing—on our campuses, in the NC General Assembly charged with selecting the UNC System Board of Governors, and nationally. That will require time and coordination. We can work on this; many of us are working on this. But what do we do now about the spring 2021 semester?
When the chancellor stated in an email two weeks ago that he was going to be reassembling his team to discuss plans for spring 2021, my chutzpah-radar went off. I thought, what will it take for our leaders to acknowledge that they need new voices, a new vision, differently-situated people to be making decisions that affect the lives of thousands of human beings across the state? Then he announced on Friday 9/11 at the UNC-CH Faculty Council meeting that he was adding a new committee of faculty, students, and staff to join the team working on the “Roadmap to Spring 2021.” After seeing the list of committee members, I wonder: will that committee, vetted and selected by the chancellor, have the chutzpah it takes to challenge the chancellor and his “experts,” the same experts who insisted that opening in the fall would be fine? I’m afraid I already know the answer.
Guest blogger Elyse Crystall is teaching associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I have a somewhat more benevolent definition of chutzpah, which looks at it as filled with moxie, risk-taking (but not in a way that endangers others), and daring. What characterizes the administration, though, is hubris: the overweening pride that generally comes before a fall. This is the result of UNC’s knuckling under to the “business model” it adopted 20 or 30 years ago. Granted, there are many students and teachers (such as yourself) whose primary goal is the gaining and transmission of knowledge. Others always ask: is it profitable?
This seems to be a widespread disease amongst administrators. Do they think that their distinguished faculty cannot read? Cannot remember the last failed initiative? That we have forgotten about the last fiasco? The shameless waste of time and money on consultants and on “task forces” and committees is nauseating and infuriating in equal measure. It is especially so since it has seemed so obviously lacking in any connection to the data or best practices. Because it is so transparent it is difficult not to conclude that much like President Trump and AG Barr, they scarcely feel the need to disguise their real motivations any more. 🙁
Professor Crystall makes an impressive argument about the dangers of arrogant chutzpah. But what are forces that drive institutions and their leaders to lose their perspective and ignore the needs and health of students, faculty, staff and the larger community
Dr. Gabin suggests that the “business model” is a major source of the problem. When the power of revenue, and the fear of lowered revenues can push the decision makers to make faulty decisions such as making football and basketball games more important than in-person classes and the overall-health of the campus. And nationally, even when cooler heads prevail, national leaders push athletic conference (think Big 10) to accept the dictates of “business as usual” and make the teams play.