Controversial bill is latest salvo in battle

A bill designed to protect students and faculty from political discrimination hit the N.C. Senate floor last week, but some say it’s unnecessary and potentially ineffective.

Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, introduced a bill that would require UNC-system schools to adopt an “academic bill of rights” protecting political beliefs on campus.

He said the document would provide students and faculty with equal protection in an academic setting.

“We don’t want our professors to discriminate on the basis of race, sex or religious beliefs,” he said. “Why should we then allow discrimination on political beliefs?”

The issue of academic freedom has been a hot one at UNC-Chapel Hill. Two debates on the summer reading program, as well as a controversy sparked by an English lecturer’s e-mail, have made the University one of the centers of a national debate.

Brock said his experiences at Western Carolina University, as well as incidents at UNC-CH and national support for academic bills of rights, inspired his action.

Under his bill, schools would adopt a nine-point policy including requirements to hire and fire faculty regardless of political belief and to provide students with fair grading.

George Leef, executive director of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, said he’s pleased that the bill outlines, in black-and-white terms, what is permissible at universities.

The John William Pope Foundation is in the spotlight at UNC-CH. It’s offered to help fund a curriculum in Western studies, but some faculty say its financial support of the conservative Pope Center — a group that has publicly criticized the University — is unacceptable.

But discrimination is a nationwide trend, Leef said — one occurring often enough that something should be done, even if it doesn’t happen all the time. “The notion behind the academic bill of rights is to turn down the degree of politicization in universities,” Leef said.

Incidents like the one last year involving UNC-CH English lecturer Elyse Crystall — in which she chastised a student via e-mail for views he expressed on homosexuality in class — might not have happened with such a law in place, Leef said.

But Thad Beyle, political science professor at UNC-CH, said bills like Brock’s are part of a national conservative movement pushing the matter. Though errors occur occasionally, they are not frequent enough to call for a state law, he said.

Eric David, a second-year UNC-CH journalism graduate student, said the bill would be ineffective and difficult to enforce. “It seems more like a feel-good bill,” he said.

David, who recently finished a thesis on the campus conservative movement, also said the bill’s vague language makes it hard to refute.

And incidents like the one involving Crystal wouldn’t have been prevented, he said, adding that schools already have guidelines preventing political discrimination.

But Brock said the bill encompasses more than current guidelines because it deals with students as well as faculty.

“It’s basically trying to create an equal protection for all,” he said. “You don’t want to have one student get in trouble for their views.”

 

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.