Inside Higher Ed reports this morning:
Confusion Over a New Unit at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s board chairman told Fox News a new school would provide equal opportunity for right- and left-of-center views. Faculty, caught off guard, have expressed concerns, while the provost says it’s not what it sounds like.
Well, of course the faculty “expressed concerns”! What faculty could contemplate the creation of a new organization offering equal opportunity for right and left without concern?
The lede:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leaders have given mixed messages about what sounded, at least initially, like the university is trying to resurrect plans for a conservative campus center.
Interesting, revealing, but not surprising that faculty and journalists covering higher education would assume without a second (or even a first) thought that a new center providing equal opportunity for left and right would be “a conservative campus center.” But wait: if non-discriminatory equal opportunity for right and left is “conservative,” then institutional preference for some views and “concerns” about the presence of others must be … what? Institutional discrimination?
For background on the proposed, concern-inducing new center see here, here, here, here, and here.
