The recent decision by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism to eliminate requirements that journalism majors take certain basic courses in economics, U.S. government, and American History since 1865 is troubling. If the people who are supposed to keep us aware are unaware themselves, how can we know how to stand up for ourselves?
Given that the included content is overwhelmingly anti-American, that the course omits some of the most essential perspectives, and that the professor is a hard-left ideologue, the only proper conclusion can be that the course was crafted to present a biased picture. It is time for the Trustees of UNC-Chapel Hill to step up and end this politicized abuse of the curriculum. And in doing so, establish themselves as the voice of reason, since the administration seems incapable of proper judgment in many curricular matters.
Are the humanities in trouble on American campuses? That is certainly the impression one gets from the media today; articles in publications of both left and right describe the increasing flight from the humanities into other disciplines. But is it all hype? After all, the blogosphere is always full of “next big things” or “imminent collapses” that never come to pass. And many academics scoff at the idea that the humanities are suffering from any sort of existential crisis. To find out the real situation, I explored what is going on in one of the main humanities disciplines, English. Concentrating on English departments and their faculties in the University of North Carolina system, I used a mix of empirical and qualitative methods to look behind all the rhetoric and wagon-circling.
Authored by director of policy analysis Jay Schalin, the report investigates current trends in English departments, including why student enrollment has declined in English departments at American universities and how both internal and external pressures have led to widespread changes in the discipline’s curriculum.
Rising student default rates at University of North Carolina schools are rising, with particularly troubling rates at the system’s HBCUs.
Shortly after the Center for Work, Poverty, and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill’s law school was closed, Gene Nichol, a controversial law professor who served as the center’s director, announced the creation of a “Poverty Fund” that may be a continuation of the Poverty Center by another name. The Pope Center’s director of policy analysis, Jay Schalin, penned an ardent critique of the new Poverty Fund. This led to a response by John K. Wilson, an editor for Academe Blog, an online publication of the American Association of University Professors, who regularly writes on academic freedom issues. At Wilson’s suggestion, Schalin prepared a second response. The Pope Center presents both responses in this special feature.
The reopening of UNC–Chapel Hill Law School’s Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity as the “North Carolina Poverty Research Fund” by law professor Gene Nichol shows great contempt for the UNC system Board of Governors, the state legislature, and the people of North Carolina. It also may be illegal.
The North Carolina Senate is taking a responsible stance by not funding unnecessary new building projects for the UNC system.
The most important decision that the University of North Carolina system’s Board of Governors will make this year is the selection of the next system president. Board members have an excellent opportunity to find someone willing to initiate a badly needed departure from the university establishment’s status quo.
If certain subjects are studied less in the academy, they will be studied more outside of it, and by those who are seriously interested. And that may turn out to be for the best. After all, many top poets, such as T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, and many important thinkers, from John Locke to Edmund Burke to John Stewart Mill to Eric Hoffer, had non-academic day jobs when they produced their greatest works. A shift to the life-long learning model, using resources both inside and outside the academia, may very well initiate a flowering of culture instead of decay.