Silent Sam beats Carol Folt and her feel good gaffe

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IHE says: Stunning Departure at Chapel Hill

My choice of headline might have been more anodyne: "Carol Folt breaks the law and flees the scene."
So much for commitment to the integrity of responsible academic governance. Opponents of Silent Sam should be more careful about what they wish for. But on to the analysis.
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This is way more complicated than knee jerk encomiums for Folt's (irresponsible) action. Indeed, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to argue that Folt has done more for the reactionary right than they can do for themselves. But it is pretty obvious that she hasn't really learned much in her short years in NC, so I won't go there. Here is the deal:
The neo-authoritarians in legislature passed this monuments law in 2015 to punish Chapel Hill -- and the Faculty Assembly warned the Board of Governors and the Chancellors that it would bring chaos to the campuses. At the time, Tom Ross was a lame duck hobbled by a terminal contract, and there were much bigger problems to address. John Fennebresque was a bull-in-the-china-shop BoG chair, and he just said flat out he didn't care about the warnings we gave him. The Boards of Trustees -- political creatures for the most part -- were (as usual) silent. And the Chancellors were not in a position to say anything, since most of them were desperately trying to protect their campuses from the craziness in the legislature and BoG. Moreover, every Democrat in the Senate (yes, every f*^%#@+ one!) voted with the Republicans to pass the damn thing. The Democrats in the House couldn't muster the wherewithal to make a meaningful stink. (Look it up: you can see the bill's history online at the legislature website.) The coward Pat McCrory signed the thing despite pleas that he veto it.
But it was when the reactionaries on the BoG ran off the rails and tried to use the law to quash campus protests, that the tables turned.
Perhaps shamed by the legacy these gaffes might leave him, Harry Smith started reeling in the authoritarians. At the insistence of faculty (among others), the BoG sent the Sam matter back to the Chapel Hill campus. It took 2 hours behind closed doors for the moderates to do that work. Only Goolsby the arch-authoritarian opposed that resolution.
But Folt screwed up the opportunity to make that work. And so the faculty -- and even Folt herself after realizing the screw up -- had to insist that the BoG reject the CH proposal. And they did, after a 3 hour closed door meeting that again indicated the reactionaries were being beaten back. A BoG committee was formed -- with ONE token reactionary in the membership.
The endgame was to find a legal workaround (not likely), or get the legislature to back off the law, and get Sam gone. That was in sight. Now that Folt has taken the law into her own hands (watch for reactionary calls to "lock her up!"), there are things way bigger than moving Sam now that will now be in jeopardy:
Spellings resigned because she was no longer useful for the push back against the reactionaries. (And save the hyperpartisan claptrap: she is a Republican, but she is not an authoritarian kook. Hell, just look at all the shit coming out of the National Review and the Martin/Pope Center for Reactionary Education that calls her all kinds of names). The moderates slipped Roper in as Interim before the reactionaries could rally. That would have made it possible to get good Chancellors at Western, help the HBCUs get back on sound footing, fix the Chancellor mess at ECU, replace Carol Folt (yes, she was a goner; last winter I predicted that would be by the end of this academic year), and if necessary drag out the President search to find someone who has a brain and some independence.
Folt's action may feel good right now, but it could cause a lot more, and a lot more critical, heartache later on. All she had to do was take a few more months of anger, stand pat, and let the endgame unfold.
Righteous indignation is a good tool for tearing down things that are wrong, and need to go. But getting to a better place takes different skills. But here we are, and the question now is whether the fairweather radicals who couldn't see beyond that statue will have the strategic sense to run with this opportunity. That means: get rid of the monuments law by sueing for violations of both US and NC constitution equal protection provisions, demand that the appointment method for the BoG be changed (that has been the real problem since William Davie warned about it back in 1804), and vote good people into office (and remember that if the Republicans are mean and ignorant about the University, the Democrats are stupid and inept about protecting public higher education).

Sometimes it helps to make strategy for the war instead of assuming the battle at hand is all there is.

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