On Tuesday, controversy exploded at the University of North Carolina.
Over 600 faculty members signed a letter protesting recent proposals by the North Carolina Legislature and UNC’s governing boards, including a North Carolina House bill that would require UNC students to take a class on American history and civics in order to graduate. The class would focus on central texts from American history, including the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
What’s wrong with this proposed requirement? According to the professors who signed on to the letter, the prospective civics course constitutes an assault on “core principles of academic freedom” and “substitutes ideological force-feeding for the intellectual expertise of faculty.”
