Last April, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill appeared to the nation as an affront to freedom and civil society. YouTube videos showed an angry crowd of protesters overcrowding a small lecture hall to shout down former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, calling him a racist for his stance against illegal immigration, and chasing him from the podium. Writers described how the jubilant protesters issued a chilling threat to the student group that invited Tancredo to campus, chanting, “We know where you sleep at night.”
The leftist mob ruled the campus, or so it seemed. And there had been other incidents that suggested that alternative opinions, particularly conservative opinions, were not welcome on the Chapel Hill campus.
Yet half a year later, Chapel Hill seems more like a shining beacon of free speech than a repressive state imposing an extreme version of political correctness. In a recent two-week period, student groups and faculty supporters of free speech brought to campus a veritable feast of alternative views.
First up, on Sept. 28, was conservative author and National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg, brought by the College Republican Club. Goldberg drew approximately 300 people to hear his lecture on the subject of his book Liberal Fascism, in which he argued that fascism, long assumed to be an ideology of the right, is actually an ideology of the left.
Then came First Amendment Day — Oct. 1 — produced by the Center for Media Law and Policy (a joint venture of the School of Law and School of Journalism). The event was conceived last spring when UNC-CH’s Media Law Center was contacted by the Liberty Tree Initiative, a coalition of media professionals and academics who seek to promote awareness of free speech, according to journalism professor Cathy Packer, who was in charge of the daylong event. “This seems like a good idea generally,” she said of the Initiative’s promotion of First Amendment awareness, “and the Tancredo incident had just occurred, so we thought students would be especially interested in free speech issues.”
Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, was the keynote speaker, which drew several hundred people. Another highlight was a panel “debate” featuring the only student arrested for the Tancredo protest, Haley Koch, and the current president of the group that invited Tancredo, Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), Nikhil Patel. During the discussion, Koch openly rejected the right to free speech of those with whom she disagreed, drawing a negative reaction from both the audience and fellow panel members.
On Oct. 7, the Christian Apologetics Club held a debate between conservative author (and Christian) Dinesh D’Souza and liberal religion professor (and an agnostic) Bart Ehrman, It was sold out long before the curtain rose at UNC-CH’s 1,400-seat Memorial Hall — for a scholarly campus debate entitled “God and the Problem of Suffering.”
And despite the weighty topic, Ehrman’s and D’Souza’s comments were frequently punctuated with appreciative applause. The two men were genial toward one another, even as they argued about perhaps the single most divisive and emotional issue there is — whether God exists.
There was considerable apprehension before former U.S. Treasurer Bay Buchanan’s Oct. 8 campus appearance. The YWC were again the sponsors of the event, as they had been for Tancredo, and Buchanan was essentially taking Tancredo’s place as an anti-illegal immigration spokesperson. Would protesters launch an all-out effort to silence her? After all, Haley Koch had publicly stated on First Amendment Day said that Buchanan’s appearance would be met with opposition, and suggested that “sometimes things get messy.”
As it turned out, the new protest fizzled. The effects of the administration’s precautions, the media attention, and First Amendment Day had taken their toll on the dwindling ranks of the protesters — there were no more than a dozen or so at the Buchanan event.
Finally, on Oct. 13, the Carolina Students for Life presented another debate, this time on the abortion issue. Nadine Strossen, the former president of the ACLU, squared off against pro-life activist Scott Klusendorf. The event drew approximately 100 people.
While other major universities around the country continue to garner attention for their inhospitality to conservative speakers, the Chapel Hill campus is instead opening itself up to them, and students are coming out to hear them in large numbers.
Jay Schalin is a senior writer with the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy (popecenter.org).