Statement by UNCG-AAUP on BOG's Closing of UNC Law School Poverty Center

March 2, 2015

Statement by UNCG-AAUP on the UNC Board of Governors’

Closing of the UNC Law School Poverty Center

To be true to their mission public universities must serve all members of our society, the poor as well as the privileged.  Externally funded centers must be free to sponsor curricular and extracurricular programs and provide services to the public across the broadest range of perspectives and approaches.

--- AAUP Statement on Proposed Closure UNC Law School Poverty Center (2/24/15)

What side are you on? We’re on the freedom side.

When education is under attack what do you do? You stand up, fight back.

---  Members of NC Student Power interrupting the Board of Governors in the midst of voting to close the UNC School of Law’s Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity (2/27/15)

On Friday, February 27th, the UNC Board of Governors voted unanimously to shut down the Poverty Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. The heroes of the day were the NC Student Power activists who effectively spoke truth to power by reading aloud from a prepared text, thereby disrupting the proceedings before being escorted from the building by campus police. They (along with Professor Altha Cravey, UNCG-Chapel Hill and AAUP member) refused to abide by the established order that would allow the Poverty Center to be closed. Here is why we think their actions were justified:

The decision by the UNC Board of Governors to close the Poverty Center violates the fundamental tenets of academic freedom and shared governance that are the cornerstones of higher education in the United States. Yet the thirty-three duly appointed custodians of one of the oldest and most respected universities in the nation saw to it that there was never an opportunity for this argument to be made and deliberated upon. These business leaders, lawyers, and executives (overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy, and conservative) deployed speech acts as forms of power. Their communications proceeded by way of assertion without regard for the rules of logic and reason.

There is a profound disconnect between academic discourse and BoG oversight. We faculty keep thinking that our highest leaders will listen to reason. But it seems not in their interest, experience, or inclination to do so. The words they used at this meeting most often took the form of self-approbation, sound bite, and atmospherics. One marked exception turned out to be the most telling. It came when Hannah Gage voiced concern that, in recommending to close the Poverty Center, the BoG had "crossed a line" by interfering in the academic affairs of the University. She hoped they would be careful in the future. And then she voted along with all of her fellow board members to close the Poverty Center.

Under the rules of rational argument such a divorce of word from action is untenable. The reasoned response would have been: "The BoG has exceeded its authority (crossed the line), therefore I must vote "NO" on the recommendation to close the Poverty Center." As academics, we may want to expose this logical fallacy in the interests of making better choices, but the fact remains there are currently no structures in place by which we can insure the founding principle of shared governance, namely that faculty play a central role in all decisions concerning curricular matters. Even Gage, the best and bravest of the Board of Governors, remained aloof from any form of dialogue in which reason, truth, or justice had standing as mutually agreed-upon goals to be reached by way of communicative speech acts.

And so it was that the student protesters enacted outside closed doors their passionate dissent, chanting  -- "This is what democracy looks like!" -- a far more disruptive model of communication than formal rules dictate. Their interlocutors retreated into a small room where the public was not allowed, since, as President Tom Ross proclaimed, the Board of Governors must not be prevented from "conducting its business."

Members of UNCG-AAUP

Matt Barr

Deb Bell

Jim Carmichael

Susan Dennison

George Dimock

Michael Frierson

William Hart

Spoma Jovanovic

Hannah Mendoza

Elizabeth Perrill

Christopher Poulos

Jonathan Tudge

Anne Wallace

Andrew Willis