At UNC faculty meeting, a sense of siege from lawmakers and Trump | Opinion

When the UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Executive Committee met this week, an online audience could watch through a camera set high above the members seated at tables assembled into a square.

The fixed view took in the whole group and included students and faculty who were drawn to the meeting to hear a discussion about why a pro-Palestinian mural had been removed from a campus art center.

Online, the scene of the meeting looked like a group crowded into a windowless bunker while a disaster unfolded outside.

That impression was fitting because faculty on the Chapel Hill campus and across the nation are under a siege being carried out by red-state lawmakers and the Trump administration. Faculty are facing scrutiny about what they teach. Their federal research grants are being suspended or blocked. And their traditional say in how universities are run is sometimes ignored.

As the political intrusion into university life has intensified, that sense of siege has become the new normal. That showed as the faculty committee moved through its agenda on Monday.

Before even getting to the mural issue, the members discussed how to come up with a definition of “academic freedom” that could be accepted across the UNC System and acknowledged by administrators, trustees and lawmakers. Just a few years ago, there was no need for a formal definition. It was broadly understood just as the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it: “Freedom to teach or to learn without interference (as by government officials).” Now the idea has to be parsed and is sometimes trampled.

The committee also discussed what to do about a conservative activist group’s freedom of information request for copies of course syllabi for 74 UNC-CH courses. The group making the request, The Oversight Project, aims to enforce President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting diversity policies.

Mike Howell, president of the group with roots in the conservative Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Tar Heel, “We want to see how the public policy changes that have been rolled out — the legal changes by the Trump administration — if and how they’re being implemented at the university level.”

The university is studying the request.

Also discussed at the meeting was the UNC System creating a new accrediting organization in conjunction with five other Southern states. The move will provide a more compliant accreditor who is unlikely to challenge moves that compromise academic freedom, eliminate courses or disregard the role of faculty in university governance.

Finally, as a last item, the committee heard from interim Provost Jim Dean about why a student-created pro-Palestine mural had been covered and then removed from the Hanes Art Center. Dean noted that the mural had been up for a year and that the removal made way for new artwork as part of yearly rotation. But Annette Lawrence, chair of the Department of Art, told Dean that the previous mural in that space had been up for four years.

Dean conceded that there was a problem with communication, but Beth Moracco, the faculty chair, said, “It feels like censorship. It’s chilling.”

Sherryl Kleinman, a UNC emeritus professor of sociology, said in an email after the meeting, “The administration’s actions communicate clearly: if powerful people do not feel comfortable about what’s hanging on the walls of any department, regardless of the decisions made by the faculty, administrators will cave and take the art down.”

What is most striking about the litany of troubles facing faculty is how little they can do to defend against political intrusions and the remaking of the university according to conservatives’ design.

After the meeting, I spoke with Belle Boggs, an N.C. State English professor and president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Boggs noted that professors’ options for fighting back are few.

“It is possible now to feel a little bit helpless,” she said. “The best answer is to talk about academic freedom to all who will listen – and to those who don’t want to listen.”

Academic freedom, she said, is at the heart of what makes a strong university. It’s a key to attracting top teachers and researchers. “It is essential to our state’s economy – the freedom to teach, research and speak out on issues that are of concern to us,” she said.

While UNC faculty can’t strike, Boggs said, they can organize. “The best thing faculty and all knowledge workers can do is join the AAUP,” she said. “We are doing good but we could do more with greater numbers.”

This is a struggle faculty should not face alone. Elected officials, foundations and the public should also come to their defense. This is not only about teaching and research. It’s about protecting the quality and the integrity of public universities that have contributed so much to the advancement of North Carolina and the nation.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com

This story was originally published August 28, 2025 at 10:49 AM with the headline "At UNC faculty meeting, a sense of siege from lawmakers and Trump | Opinion."