SHiLL

The conservative safe space at UNC will fail. It probably already has.

This is pretty funny. The School of Civic Life and Learning, SCiLL as it’s called, started because conservatives complained that they didn’t have enough of a voice at UNC-CH. Dave Boliek, the current State Auditor who was chair of the Board of Trustees at the time, said that the school started to encourage “freedom of expression and ideas and the exchange of ideas.” He implied that conservatives were hiding their points of view out of fear of something.

Now, the free speech warriors are trying to hide a $1.2 million report on possible misconduct at the school that taxpayers paid for. Freedom of expression apparently only goes so far.

Conservatives have long complained that they don’t have enough influence over academia. A few years ago, a study showed conservative students withheld their views because they were concerned that their peers might think less of them. However, the study found that students did not believe professors or teachers pushed ideological views.

No matter, though. That was enough for Republican victimization. Instead of looking for ways to boost conservative students’ confidence or focus on liberal students’ acceptance, they spent millions of taxpayer dollars imposing a new school on the university. They created a safe place for conservatives. I wonder if they have trigger warnings for music or art.

Anyhow, the school is barely off the ground and already a mess. Conservative professors who advocated its creation now complain that it’s imposing its views on students and faculty. They complain that there are litmus tests for hiring. One of its first hires called the school “affirmative action” for conservatives. That’s about right.

The school claims that it’s doing well and that it’s growing. They claim to have attracted new students and increased enrollment from 84 in 2024 to 487 this year, according to a New York Times report. Of course, they are paying students to sign up, offering $12,000 scholarships for students who minor in the program.

In another dust-up, a former provost of the university sued the school claiming the Board of Trustees violated open meetings and public records laws. The suit was settled last week, but now the Board of Trustees is denying access to public records. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

It’s all predictable. There was never a groundswell of support for a school for conservative snowflakes in the first place. No students or faculty demanded it. They already had a fraternity and sorority system and campus faith organizations where students could find plenty of like-minded peers. Conservative students didn’t say they felt uncomfortable on campus.

The school was imposed on the university by the geniuses in the legislature and on the Board of Trustees who’ve embraced the conservative movement’s victim mentality. Then, they took the least conservative approach to addressing the problem and used Big Government to address something that’s really not there. It would be pretty funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

The legislature and Board of Trustees have ignored the fundamental culture of public universities and put Lee Roberts, a graduate of Duke and Georgetown, at the helm of the state’s flagship university. He had no experience in academia before taking over. They hired another guy from Duke to head up SCiLL. The idea that they can impose values on an institution as old and large as UNC with people who fundamentally don’t understand the culture is fatally flawed.

The whole thing is just folly. The School of Civic Life and Leadership will limp along for another decade or so, propped up by conservative benefactors with more money than sense and Republican legislators sure they can use state law to change people’s world view. Eventually, it will get absorbed into other programs or departments until it’s basically gone. Anybody who’s watched universities for any length of time has seen this show before.

I’ve been watching UNC-CH my whole life. I am the third generation of my family to live in the shadow of the university. It’s always been a bit of a messy place because it’s a bastion of new ideas, not conservative ones. It’s where students and faculty push the boundaries of conventionality so that we make discoveries in science, art, literature, and more. It’s about developing the next generation of leaders, not the last generation of leaders. That’s inherently progressive.

They aren’t going to fill universities with conservatives. Conservatives don’t go into academia because they go into business. They value private enterprise and money more than big ideas. They get their jollies from profits more than from discovery.

Finally, the modern conservative movement has become an anti-intellectual movement. They’ve embraced the anti-vaccine movement, denied climate change, and chosen fundamentalist Christianity over science. Until they can reconcile those contradictions, they won’t find much respect among the researchers in the academy.

I've watched UNC my whole life and I've never seen an idea take hold there because somebody in the legislature demanded it. Ideas spread because they're compelling. That's not something you can legislate, and it's not something SCiLL is going to change.