Thought Police Steal a Victory from UNC-Chapel Hill
Free speech had already carried the day when a UNC-Chapel Hill instructor attacked a student by name in a classwide email. So why get the feds involved?
Author Profile
Jon Sanders
Jon Sanders is Director of Regulatory Studies at the John Locke Foundation. Before assuming his current responsibilities, Sanders served as JLF's Associate Director of Research. He also researched issues in higher education for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy and has been an adjunct instructor in economics at North Carolina State University. Sanders has been widely published, appearing in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, ABC News online, Townhall.com, FrontPage Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, the Philadelphia Inquirer as well as numerous newspapers across North Carolina. A native of Garner, N.C., Sanders holds a masters degree in economics with a minor in statistics and a bachelors degree in English literature and language from N.C. State.Articles by Jon Sanders
UNC’s five-step process to carp about budget ‘cuts’
Here we go again. For the UNC system, a struggling economy means budget cuts. So we will be told, repeatedly. But this is by now a familiar process.
Report cites campus ignorance of constitutional protection of religious liberty
College students and administrators don’t know that the First Amendment protects religious liberty, according to survey results published in a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Comedy, tragedy and diversity — here at the base of the slope
The diversity movement was supposed to promote social harmony, but instead it has furthered racialist thinking, heightened identity-group balkanization, increased resentment, and nurtured a preposterous touchiness and sensitivity to perceived slights. It has also fostered a new generation ever seeking newer ways to divide people. The new diversity extremists are now protesting each other when they fail to recognize the most recently identified groups of the exponentially expanding diversity pantheon. It’s a practice you might call More-Sensitive-Than-Thou.
Students: Tuition increases mean … we pay more!
UNC schools are discussing raising tuition again, some schools by up to $300. For many UNC students, it is their first taste of hardship, and for many parents of UNC students, it could mean their last gasp at shielding their fledglings from hardship. “I may have to give up flying home,” says Weinlaud. “And if I drive to Florida for Spring Break, that’ll cut out two whole days of partying. It’s not fair!”
Christian student’s opinion in UNC-CH class labeled
A student in Elyse Crystall’s “Literature and Cultural Diversity” class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was accused of making “violent, heterosexist comments,” uttering “hate speech” and creating a “hostile environment” in class, according to an e-mail sent to all members of the class by the professor. What the student, identified as Tim, had done was answer the question posed by the day’s lecture, from his perspective as, in the professor’s description, a “white, heterosexual, christian male (sic).”
UNC students publish a tear-jerker on tuition increases
The prospect of a tuition increase inspired a few students attending University of North Carolina schools to fight back. Their tack? Inundate the proposal with their tears.
Specifically, they have published 500 copies of a book entitled “The Personal Stories Project: Faces, Not Numbers,” which is a collection of some 800-odd sob stories about tuition costs.
AAUP Report Sees Threats to Campus Freedoms from Patriot Act
A report by the American Association of University Professor describes potential threats to academic freedom since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
A key portion of the report, which was prepared by a special committee tasked with “assessing risks to academic freedom and free inquiry posed by the nation’s response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,” looks at provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which the report states “gravely threaten academic freedom.” In general, the report states, “The speed with which the law was introduced and passed [in October 2001], the lack of deliberation surrounding its enactment, and the directions it provides for law-enforcement agencies have raised troubling questions about its effects on privacy, civil liberties, and academic freedom.”
The fictional world of Arundhati Roy
Indian novelist Arundhati Roy is full of rage against the United States, snidely dismissive of free-market capitalism, and an unrepentant Marxist — and in the halls of academe, she’s believed to be one of the most important voices in the world.
New Student Orientation and Racial Identification at N.C. State
“Greetings! Your first step towards academic success at NC State University begins with your orientation to the university. The University requires all first-year students to attend New Student Orientation, during which you will be introduced to the academic opportunities available to you. As part of your orientation we invite you to attend the White Folks Symposium. Faculty and staff members, as well as the Symposium Counselors will be on hand to assist you and to answer your questions about NC State’s academic programs and campus activities.