UNC Schools US & Socrates On Free Speech

Rarely does a big university pull the rug out from under its woke echo chamber, but WSJ gave cudos to UNC’s “novel idea for creating a [new &] true marketplace for ideas called “The School of Civic Life & Leadership.”

As the editors noted: “Progressive politics has dominated elite universities since before the term woke was coined. But one university is trying to revive the academic ideal of a campus as a haven for free inquiry and debate.” As it happens, last month, the University of North Carolina board of trustees voted 12-0 to create a new school “committed to free expression in higher education.” As part of the effort, the influential school plans to hire professors “from across the ideological spectrum to teach in such academic departments as history, literature, philosophy, political science and religion.” The newspaper didn’t have to tell us these key disciplines “have become enforcers of ideological uniformity at most schools.” Board Chair David Boliek & Vice Chair John Preyer went so far as to assure the school’s idea is to end “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.”

Let’s hope so. And, that the UNC precedent is widely followed by supposedly centers of higher education elsewhere. As Socrates once said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

Davd Soul