Is the woke backlash rebelling and is it being heard? (skills, degree)

[Lillie767]

Have things gone too far in academia that UNC feels that it must start a new school that fosters open discussions and debate? Do they feel that the current campus environment is too limited and too parochial to provide the critical thinking skills college graduates should have?

Maybe the pendulum has swung towards open discussions and free discourse.


UNC Chapel Hill to launch School of Civic Life to advance civil discourse, open inquiry

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will work to develop a School of Civic Life and Leadership to teach students in an age of cancel culture and censorship how to develop the knowledge and skills needed to advance and support a healthy democracy.

The Board of Trustees voted 12-0 on Thursday to support the creation of the school, with Chair David Boliek stating prior to the vote the school would ideally embed within the campus community an environment in which to learn from one another rather than to see each other as “foes to vanquish.”

https://www.carolinajournal.com/unc-...hy%20democracy.



Of course, the professors in the uber liberal environment of the university are fighting this plan.

"The UNC Echo Chamber Fights Back"

"The Daily Tar Heel documents the angst in the Chapel Hill faculty lounge in a Jan. 30 story that is unintentionally hilarious in its ivory-tower indignation. The reporter quotes UNC law professor Eric Muller as saying, “I thought: how on Earth? How on Earth could The Wall Street Journal know this.”

Here on Earth, it’s called journalism.

Chair of the Faculty Mimi Chapman told the Tar Heel she is “flabbergasted” at the trustees’ decision and tweeted that UNC alumni are “leading and civically engaged left, right and center” with the hashtag #solutioninsearchofaproblem.

All of this umbrage is over the board’s decision—without a dissenting vote—to establish a new School of Civic Life and Leadership dedicated to encouraging open-minded study in history, literature, philosophy, political science and religion. These are among the most politicized disciplines at nearly all universities these days, and the new school will hire at least 20 new professors to teach in a way that encourages study without ideological blinders.

You’d think the faculty would be pleased at the new job openings for academics in non-science fields. You’d also think that, if they’re right that there’s no intellectual conformity on campus, the faculty has nothing to fear. But the outrage gives away that it’s precisely the prospect of intellectual diversity that has the professors sputtering.

The UNC trustees also apparently violated modern academic protocol by taking their governance roles and the school’s educational mission seriously. “The board doesn’t have any ability to propose a class, to propose a degree, or—for God’s sake—to propose a school,” Holden Thorp, who served as UNC’s chancellor from 2008 to 2013, told the student newspaper."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/univers...es-11675203324


Sounds almost like SNL in its heyday.

[Avondalist]

I think a majority of professors embrace open dialogue, but are cowed by the loud minority that doesn't. Administrators are more of a problem than professors as far as being sinecured ideologues.