Executive Excess

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  The Right Changes for UNC Steven Bachenheimer and Stephen Leonard The UNC Strategic Planning process has always been an occasion to recommit ourselves to the ideals for which public higher education in North Carolina was established. Today, it appears to have become the occasion for implementing radical changes favored by a handful of individuals in the state legislature, on the UNC Board of Governors, and in various Washington and Raleigh think tanks. Against all evidence to the contrary, and against the long and venerable tradition that has made public higher education in North Carolina a model for the nation and the world, the changes being promoted suggest that the widely available, broadly accessible, and readily affordable system of higher education we have is an extravagance North Carolina does not need. For example, Board of Governors member Fred Eshelman, described by pundits at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy as “leading the charge” for radical change,
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The Silent Sam settlement snafu

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The conflicts over the Silent Sam settlement are all over the place, and this posting will have to be updated later on, but it is worth remembering a couple fundamental governance points about this issue. First: while the Legislature and the BoG have lawful authority here, in this case both the cause of these difficulties and their resolution entail unlawful (and arguably unconstitutional) acts of failure on the part of the BoG. I will be brief.         The initial failing is that the Board did not sue the legislature for remedy when the monuments legislation (NCGS 100) was enacted. The purpose of the enacting legislation for the University and the authority of the Board (NCGS 116) is to enable the realization of the  education provisions of the NC Constitution (NC Constitution Article IX) and by legal precedent the equal protection provisions of the US Constitution (14th Amendment). By failing to remove the confederate monument the BoG followed NCGS 100 and did not protect t
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How Not to Cogitate on Disciplinary Identity

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  Alex Contarino once again demonstrates why history and facts are critically important things for talking about the academy -- and especially when cogitating about the state of the academic disciplines. There is something odd about contemporary (so-called) conservative attitudes toward history: they are all for understanding the past, but they always interpret the past in presentist terms.  Lamenting the absence of "balance" in UNC Chapel Hill Economics courses, Contarino makes the all-too-common student mistake of confusing their myopic experiences in college with an authoritative view of what universities -- and especially big, complicated research universities like Chapel Hill -- have to offer. Apparently blinkered by his aversion to courses in the other social disciplines, Contarino takes the Economic faculty to task for not teaching what he wants. What he should have been doing is looking for what he wants in other departments, and if he doesn't like the partic
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