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Conservative group seeks UNC professor’s records

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished professor of law and Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He teaches courses in constitutional law and federal courts. Photography by Steve Exum of Exumphoto on September 5, 2012.
Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished professor of law and Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He teaches courses in constitutional law and federal courts. Photography by Steve Exum of Exumphoto on September 5, 2012.

UNC faculty have come to the defense of University law professor Gene Nichol after the conservative Civitas Institute filed a large public records request Oct. 25 targeting him.

Civitas asked UNC for all of Nichol’s email, phone correspondence and calendars from Sept. 14 to Oct. 25, offering no specific reason for the move.

In response, Eric Muller and Maxine Eichner, both UNC law professors, wrote a letter, signed by 28 other current and retired UNC faculty, defending Nichol that ran in The Chapel Hill News last week.

“We deeply admire Gene Nichol’s commitment to protecting and speaking for the state’s poor and disempowered,” the letter said. “The only comfort we take from this sorry request by Civitas is our confidence that it will increase his passion.”

Muller said Civitas is simply relying on the fact that they have the legal right to make the request through the Freedom of Information Act.

“I don’t see an explanation for why they are choosing to make this request other than to push back at him as a result of his outspoken opinions,” he said.

Eleven days before the request was filed, Nichol, also the director of UNC’s Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity, wrote an op-ed in The (Raleigh) News & Observer criticizing Gov. Pat McCrory.

“The Civitas move is, unfortunately, an easy ploy,” Nichol said in an email. “You don’t like what someone writes, so you hit him or her with one of these massive open records requests.”

Mitch Kokai, a political analyst at the conservative John Locke Foundation, said it is unusual for a public university professor to be the subject of this kind of records request. Still, he said any public employee who chooses to be politically active should be aware of the possibility.

Though UNC must legally comply, there is no defined timetable for doing so, Kokai said.

Francis DeLuca, president of the Civitas Institute, wrote a post on the Civitas website citing actions by Nichol that he said were questionable.

“Nichol’s nastiness and increasingly unhinged partisanship — legally allowable but an embarrassment to the University of which he is a part — reflects an arrogance and radicalism that have been building for years,” DeLuca wrote.

DeLuca could not be reached after multiple attempts Wednesday and Monday. Civitas was closed Monday morning.

Nichol said the whole situation is “a pretty classic, old-fashioned free speech issue.”

“You don’t like what someone says about the way things are being done. Then, lo and behold, your paid thugs over at Civitas go out and decide to teach your critic a lesson or two.”

state@dailytarheel.com

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