Matt Kregor, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently won a scholarship worth up to $20,000 to study Tajik and Russian languages in the Asian nation of Tajikistan.
Twenty grand to travel to a remote Asian country and study not one, but two foreign languages — such stuff is what multicultural dreams are made of, is it not?
Well, not so hasty. The award drew criticism within Kregor’s own university, from Prof. Charles Kurzman, the associate director for the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, and contact for UNC-CH’s “Social and Economic Justice” program.
Kurzman fretted over Kregor’s winning the David L. Boren Scholarship because it comes from the National Security Education Program and requires Kregor, upon graduation, to use his new skills to assist in national security.
National security for … America.
Thus in the Chapel Hill Herald Kurzman worried about the “cloak-and-dagger stuff” of having a student in the classroom who might be headed for a future in intelligence-gathering — especially if professors might wind up contributing to national security by, egads, teaching a student like Kregor without knowing who’s footing his school bill. As Kurzman put it, “if we are serving some government intelligence function by training them, I would like to know.”
More to the point, Kurzman asked, “To what extent are we helping students go out and do all sorts of dirty deeds that we would be embarrassed to have a hand in?”
No, really — “dirty deeds.”
Well, what do UNC-CH leftists do when they aren’t complaining about students getting scholarship money to serve national security or protesting academic departments seeking money from conservative foundations to support course development? Chase money from leftist foundations to support course development, of course!
In April, the leftist listserv at UNC-CH was abuzz with the news that the Ford Foundation “announced a new $2.5 million grants initiative to support scholarship, teaching, and civil dialogue about difficult political, religious, racial, and cultural issues in undergraduate education in the United States.” That would be Ford’s ” Difficult Dialogues initiative” set up “to help colleges and universities create a campus environment where sensitive subjects can be discussed in a spirit of open scholarly inquiry, intellectual rigor, and with respect for different viewpoints. The initiative will support new and existing courses and academic programs that increase knowledge of the religious and cultural complexity of American society and engage students in constructive discussion of conflicting viewpoints.”
(Oddly enough, a “campus environment where sensitive subjects can be discussed in a spirit of open scholarly inquiry, intellectual rigor, and with respect for different viewpoints” was once considered de rigueur for a university.)
Nevertheless, Prof. Donald Nonini responded, asking the listserv on April 18 whether other professors “would like to join together with me to put a proposal for funding on a project connected to this initiative which we could submit to Ford? Seems like we have rich and harrowing experience to draw on, as well as the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration, to draw on among us.”
Nonini added, “Besides, it might actually provide us with resources, where our administration fails to do so.”
This is, of course, the same Nonini who vehemently opposed a grant from the Pope Foundation and was among those UNC-CH professors who signed an open letter to that effect.
Meanwhile, two days later, UNC-CH hosted a mutual hand-wringing session on the subject of “Selling the University: Funding, Academic Freedom, and Public Responsibility: How does dependence on corporate, foundation and research funding influence teaching, research and service?”
Epilogue
On June 24, UNC-Wilmington criminal justice professor and TownHall.com columnist Mike Adams wrote about one college’s pursuit of the Ford Foundation’s grant. Georgia College and State University was seeking “Difficult Dialogues” funding to bankroll its investigation into “deeply held religious belief’s precluding or interfering with the principles of academic freedom and the enterprise of questioning and discussing controversial subjects,” for which they’re seeking “anecdotal evidence of religious faith making civil, balanced, classroom discussions virtually impossible.”