Over the last couple of months, I have accumulated a number of articles on the matter of how our regional universities have been conducting themselves. Here are the findings:
- UNC Chapel Hill and Duke are cited by a report for participating in a Chinese Communist Party exchange program for students intended to influence American students.
- Duke Law School is warned by the US Dept of Justice because it has probably been discriminating against white and Asian applicants;
- Duke and UNC Chapel Hill have research partnerships with the US Department of War, and that Department ordered them to audit their various entanglements with the Chinese Communist Party;
- Faculty within the UNC system have been making a fuss over being required to post online the syllabi for the courses they teach;
- A report at City Journal suggested that the UNC Board of Governors’ efforts at reform are being subverted among faculty and administrators at Chapel Hill.
That’s all for now. Arguably, it’s enough.
In August 2002 and July 2007 I wrote letters to the Greensboiro News & Record and the Carolina Alumni Review which were published. I think they are still topical today.
Here they are below:
( 1 ) Greensboro News & Record
August 2002
News and Record
Letter to the editor
Greensboro.NC
8-22-02
 YE OLDE UNC
I am writing in response to the editorial (Aug. 17) “Scholarly inquiry is
affirmed at UNC,’ concerning the controversy over the required reading by
incoming freshmen of the book “ Approaching the Qur’an. “
 I must be missing something, but the last time I checked, the UNC-Chapel
Hill Department of Religious Studies was offering more than 110 undergraduate
elective courses, including some on Islam. Perhaps the Board of Governors
should select a representative sample of these and make them mandatory before
awarding of degrees. No doubt the federal courts would go along and squash any
objection to such a policy. Would the News & Record then find this something of
educational value?
Back in the dark ages, August 1962 to be exact, I graduated
from UNC. On this occasion my alma mater presented me with a King James version
of the Holy Bible along with a note from then Chancellor William B. Aycock.
Guess what? I was not required to read it in order to walk away with my
sheepskin. I am curious if this practice is still followed today. Anyway, here
is a lesson from the past.
Fred H. Gregory
UNC Class of 1962
( 2 ) Carolina Alumni Review
July-2007
Turbulent ’60s Also Marked By Start of Conservative Revolt
I found Peter Filene’s article, “Personally
Authentic,” (May/June Review) nostalgia for the protests of the ’60s, personally overwrought. In his concluding paragraphs, subtitled “Aftermath,” and specifically in the section subtitled “Antiwar,” he recalls the 1973 U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam but neglects to mention one of the consequences -the slaughter of 2 million humans in Cambodia by the Communist Khmer Rouge.
Inasmuch as Filene drew inspiration and a title for his piece from the Students for a Democratic Society’s Port Huron Statement, please let me inform the readers that there was during those turbulent times a movement that had a different world view. The Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) adopted their founding statement on Sept. 11, 1960, at Sharon, Conn.
The full statement is online at
http://www.fiu .edu/_:-yaf/s_b ron.html. Included below are pertinent portions:
“We, as young conservatives, believe:
‘That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
‘That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
“That when government ventures beyond those rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
“That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
‘That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and
“That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?”
The Sharon Statement and the YAF were the polar opposites of the SOS and their ilk and were the seed corn of the conservative revolution led by Ronald Reagan: It. was, indeed, a defining time in Chapel Hill and at other universities, and although the radicals had the spotlight, a new breed was arising that saw things differently . To.quote Wikipedia: “The two manifestos would frame the ideological struggles on the American college campuses throughout the 1960s” … and beyond.
Fred H. Gregory ’62
Greensboro
Fred, you were ALL OVER the liberal/ socialist sympathies at the universities many years ago. It is hard to reform such large institutions when they are so compromised.