University snowflakes

Conservatives at UNC-CH are attacking free speech.

Not too long ago, conservatives were so concerned about their free speech being squashed at UNC-Chapel Hill that they established the School for Civic Life and Leadership to give themselves a safe space to express their views. Now, they’re trying to suppress the speech of the campus newspaper. What a bunch of hypocrites.

On April Fool’s Day, the Daily Tar Heel ran a series of satirical articles with titles like “Satire: Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents” and “Satire: UNC brings back DEI — for whites.” I couldn’t find the articles because they’ve been censored, but what’s offensive is that a school as powerful as the University of North Carolina would pressure the newspaper to pull them.

They also put up a video mocking white students who live on North Campus for having little contact with students on South Campus where the population is darker. I watched that video. I didn’t find it very funny, but I didn’t find it offensive, either. They were trying and they were exposing an issue that’s got more than a grain of truth to it.

The University issued a statement condemning the satirical edition, calling it “racist and insensitive.” I read it and it was neither. In a world where the so-called Secretary of Defense is demoting African American and women officers because of their race and gender, hand-wringing over the sensibilities of white students is ridiculous. The Harvard Lampoon would never make it on today’s campus.

I wish the Daily Tar Heel had stood its ground. The editor issued an apology and pulled the edition. I don’t fault her. She was under pressure from a behemoth. She shouldn’t have been put in that position.

The whole episode makes me want to go ridicule the administration. I suspect the real problem was the DEI article. It’s pretty close to true. Their School of Civic Life and Leadership is little more than confirmation bias for conservative, mostly white, students and faculty.

The conservative establishment is bringing its victim mentality to the Ivory Tower. They’ve captured the university system and now they are going to shut down anybody who’s mean to them.

I blame Chancellor Lee Roberts. He should learn to turn down jobs he doesn’t understand. He’s the preppy gopher the reactionaries running the GOP. He might be able to balance the books, but he has no familiarity with university culture. He’s doing the bidding of his conservative masters on the Board of Trustees and the General Assembly when he should be leading the next generation of North Carolina leaders, including those at the paper.

Back in September 2024, Roberts wrote an op-ed supposedly championing free speech. He wrote:

“[N]o one person’s freedom of expression is more important than another person’s right to teach, learn, discover, work or speak free from harassment and discrimination. No one has the right to disrupt campus operations, threaten or intimidate others or vandalize public property. Policies must and will be consistently applied to everyone, regardless of content or viewpoint, so that Carolina remains a steadfast supporter of free expression while fulfilling our mission of teaching, research and service to the state and society.”

As far as I can tell, the Daily Tar Heel didn’t “disrupt campus operations, threaten or intimidate others or vandalize public property.” They just put words on paper — or pixels, as it may be. They didn’t offend me. If they offended Roberts, then the articles are the epitome of the free expression he claims to support. I hope I’m offending him now.

Roberts should be standing up for the students. Instead, he seems to see his job as protecting the delicate feelings of the snowflakes paying his salary. He should do something useful like firing Bill Belichick or his girlfriend.