The University of North Carolina Fight Escalates The school’s accreditor issues an implicit threat against the board of trustees for creating a new school to protect free inquiry.
The kerfuffle we reported two weeks ago over a new school for free expression at the University of North Carolina keeps getting more complicated, and not in a good way. Opponents are now suggesting that UNC’s accreditation could be in jeopardy over the board of trustees’ plan to create the new School of Civic Life and Leadership without the blessing of the faculty.
At a meeting Tuesday of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina, accreditation official Belle Wheelan declared that the UNC board would be getting a letter from her agency. Ms. Wheelan is president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), which accredits UNC, and she referred to “a news article that came out” on the plan to create a new school.
“We’re waiting for them to explain that, because that’s kind of not the way we do business.” she said, according to a report by HigherEd Works. “We’re gonna . . . either get them to change it, or the institution will be on warning” with SACS. Ms. Wheelan also brought slides to illustrate “What a Board Member is NOT,” including “Solver of all problems” and “One who runs the institution.” Instead, the role of board members should be “Eyes in, hands off.”
In a phone call with UNC Trustee Marty Kotis the following day, Ms. Wheelan said that her agency would be sending a letter to UNC because she was encouraged to do so by Margaret Spellings, who was Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, “I was asked to mention it . . . I will tell you it was Secretary Spellings who asked me to mention that.”
The phone call was reported by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and we have confirmed the content of the conversation. Ms. Wheelan adds on the call that she hasn’t reached any conclusions on the UNC proposal and that SACS has only issued a letter of inquiry. We spoke to Ms. Wheelan Friday, and she says Ms. Spellings told her about the article and suggested the topic of the UNC school might come up at the meeting.
Asked if UNC’s accreditation could be at risk, Ms. Wheelan said her organization’s standards “give the faculty the role of developing the curriculum,” and that the accreditor would seek more information from UNC about what happened. What happens next, she said, would “depend on the documentation they send back.” She reiterated that “nobody is threatening anybody” and “we assume institutions are innocent until proven guilty.” That’s not reassuring.
Ms. Spellings was UNC president from 2015 until she resigned in 2018. She told us in a statement Friday that she had advised Ms. Wheelan to be prepared to speak about UNC’s new school “given the national media interest,” but that “there was no discussion of a letter.”
Ms. Wheelan and SACS have a history of political meddling in university governance. As the main accreditor for the Southern states, SACS has tangled with the University of South Carolina, schools in Florida, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In August Mr. DeSantis signed a bill requiring Florida universities to periodically change accreditors, in an effort to break the SACS stranglehold on state schools.
Threatening UNC’s accreditation swings a hammer because schools can’t receive federal financial-aid dollars without it. Not long ago, accreditation was handled by regional monopolies, and a single agency could deal a death blow to a school. The Trump Administration changed the rules so colleges and universities may now be accredited by any regional accreditor.
Ms. Spellings and Ms. Wheelan’s involvement is a boost for UNC faculty who are angry that the trustees created the school without their assent. But the North Carolina state constitution delegates responsibility for universities to the Legislature, which “shall provide for the selection of trustees . . . in whom shall be vested all the privileges, rights, franchises and endowments heretofore granted or conferred upon the trustees of these institutions.”
In other words, the UNC trustees are doing their duty under the law to protect the best interests of higher education in the state. They want to protect free inquiry, and a separate school at UNC is one strategy for doing it in this age of politicized academic conformity.
The accreditation threat is a political power play that deserves to be denounced by the Legislature and Governor. Former University of Chicago President Hanna Holborn Gray once said that a school of higher learning “should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.” The UNC trustees believe in that principle even if too many on the faculty don’t.
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