UNC-Chapel Hill controversy over free speech

Last week UNC-Chapel Hill’s Faculty Council passed a resolution affirming the right of faculty members to speak freely and the university’s duty to protect their speech.

“[Faculty members] should be encouraged to provide thought leadership, to be public scholars when their work gives them meaningful insight,” said Mimi Chapman during the meeting. “This is what faculty at a great research university does. They weigh in. They share their knowledge and experience. We shouldn’t be intimidated into hiding our light under the proverbial bushel.”

The faculty resolution comes after the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees adopted both the “Chicago Principles” and “Kalven Committee Report" on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action” in late July.

The “Chicago Principles,” crafted at the University of Chicago in 2014, affirm free expression as essential to university culture. Dozens of colleges, universities, and student and faculty groups have adopted them, including the UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Council in 2018.

But the principles are not without controversy. Political conservatives, many who believe right-wing speech and ideology are suppressed in academia, support the principles. Some educators believe they preserve free, open and rigorous debate on campuses.

Yet others say they fail to address some of the thorniest issues about free expression on campus and can be used to justify ignoring or curtailing student activism.

Far more controversial is the Kalven report, a product of the tumultuous political environment on campuses in the late 1960s. The report emphasizes that a university should stay neutral on controversial political issues.

In adopting the Kalven report, the UNC Board of Trustees said it “recognizes that the neutrality of the University on social and political issues ‘arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.’

The report “further acknowledges ‘a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political and social issues of the day,’” the trustees wrote in their resolution of support.

Now that the trustees adopted both the principles and the report, it’s unclear what university leaders and faculty members can say about current controversies, such as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

As Policy Watch reported in July, many people at UNC-Chapel Hill felt frustrated by the university’s silence about the end of the constitutional right to abortion, even as other major colleges and universities issued statements.

In the absence of an official statement from UNC, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health released its own about the ruling’s impacts on the day it was announced.

https://ncpolicywatch.com/2022/09/14/unc-chapel-hill-faculty-pass-resolution-as-tensions-continue-over-free-speech/

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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