UNC Faculty Response Below
Below are EXCERPTS only...Here is the link to the entire op-ed:
Op-ed: UNC professor responds to future SCiLL faculty member's New York Times guest essay
"In a recent opinion piece, Rita Koganzon of the School of Civic Life and Leadership railed against coddled college students who, she claims, routinely get away with bad behavior. She gave as examples the failure of campus police to arrest students who drink, the willingness of professors to give A's even for incoherent assignments and students' ability to protest the destruction of Gaza with minimal consequences. Prestigious institutions like UNC are the worst, she wrote, because “the more elite the school, the more acute the problem.” Koganzon seems especially bothered by universities' desire to create a safe environment that promotes growth but limits the opportunities for damage. She cheers the recent curtailing of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts."
"Professor Koganzon is one of 11 faculty members recently hired to help staff the SCiLL. Unlike the joint appointees with homes in other departments, the new faculty have no formal affiliation with existing departments. This school was created — via
Board of Trustees fiat, in flagrant disregard for the will and expertise of UNC faculty — for the express purpose of creating a safe environment for conservative thinkers. Although they may be fine people and scholars, the core faculty of SCiLL, lacking departmental affiliations, escaped the rigors of normal academic hiring practices. The school to which they were recruited is unconstrained by traditions of disciplinary expertise. It measures academic merit not by disciplinary standards but by one's location on an ideological spectrum. We can only assume that tenure and promotion decisions in the SCiLL will reflect similar priorities.
Though they would never admit it, the faculty of SCiLL benefited from affirmative action, but of the unjustifiable kind that works in reverse."
