Thread by @JeffreyASachs

Briefly breaking my Twitter fast because there's a lot of context to this @nhannahjones story that people should be aware of. Namely, the degree of absolute unhinged-ness within the UNC Board of Governors.

ncpolicywatch.com/2021/05/19/pw-…

There's a political valence to every university system's governing board. It's inescapable and in some ways desirable. But the issue in North Carolina is on a whole other level, and the only way to show you how is to barrage you with one horror story after another.

Last year, two members of the East Carolina Board of Trustees secretly approached a candidate for student body prez and offered to bankroll her campaign. In return, they expected her to support their "personal political agenda".

newsobserver.com/news/local/edu…

When exposed, they admitted to the whole thing but insisted they were acting in the university's best interest. The UNC BoG, which has supervisory power over ECU, refused to take any action on the grounds that essentially boys will be boys.

newsobserver.com/news/local/edu…

In 2019, an especially combative member of the BoG named Tom Fetzer (former chair of the state GOP) improperly interfered in the appointment of a new chancellor at Western Carolina University. (That bland summary doesn't do justice to how crazy this was.)

insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/0…

He did the same thing again at East Carolina University.

ncpolicywatch.com/2019/11/14/aft…

In 2017, the BoG passed a resolution barring university programs and institutes from engaging in litigation. The only such entity in the state was Chapel Hill's Center for Civil Rights, long reviled by conservatives for its supposed progressive politics.

insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/1…

As the AAUP and numerous other watchdog groups noted at the time, this action represented an indefensible attack on academic freedom. And I say "indefensible" because the BoG was literally unable to defend it. They went ahead anyway.

insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/2…

In 2019, the BoG independently created and secretly funded a Program for Public Discourse. Designed by hand-picked conservative profs with a focus on viewpoint diversity, it replaced the BoG's earlier plan to establish a center on conservative thought.

insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/1…

Something similar happened in 2016, when the Republican-controlled state legislature independently created an environmental policy research center at UNC Chapel Hill for the purpose of disseminating research and guiding state environmental policy.

insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/1…

The NC Senate president then had Jeff Warren, one of his own staffers, appointed as the center's first (and current) Executive Director. Warren, by the way, was the man behind a 2012 law barring NC policymakers from following climate science.

abcnews.go.com/US/north-carol…

Of course, the BoG doesn't just create centers and programs. It also shutters them. In 2015, it forced the closure of three academic centers that were longtime targets of conservative activists, including the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity.

nytimes.com/2015/02/28/us/…

At the time, the Board insisted it was acting merely to save taxpayer money. When critics pointed out that none of the centers received any money from taxpayers, they were ignored.

How does all this happen? How does the governance structure of a state's higher ed system go so wrong? No doubt the presence of activist groups like the James Martin Center is part of it. Certainly it was a factor in what happened to Nikole Hannah-Jones.

jamesgmartin.center/2021/05/uncs-1…

But the root cause of the problem is the state government, which has spent the last decade waging an all-out hyper-partisan war on higher ed. Whole state laws have been rewritten to lock those gains in and make the transformations permanent.

insidehighered.com/news/2016/12/1…

It's a disaster. An ongoing one, as Hannah-Jones knows firsthand. And North Carolina isn't alone. Idaho and Wisconsin are in some ways even worse. Each is a different example of what it looks like when one political party says fuck it, let's take over higher ed.

And there's no reason to think other states won't follow suit. Look at the politics. Look at the pushback. What do Republicans have to lose?

OK, that's it. Back to the Twitter fast.