Guest Post by Lance McCord
You'd think that when a private organization offers several million dollars to a public university, the faculty would be grateful. Not in this case. The donor is, the Pope Foundation, is behind the Pope Center for Higher Education, an offshoot of a conservative Raleigh think-tank, the John Locke Foundation. The Pope Foundation's offer has strings attached -- they want to see the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill develop a minor in Western civilization. A large faculty contingent is concerned that a political advocacy group is engaged in secret negotiations with a public university's administration to develop a curriculum with an agenda. Art Pope, son of the Pope Foundation's founder, says "[w]e're not going to let a handful of left-wing faculty stop the students from benefiting from the program."
You can download the Pope Foundation's draft curriculum proposal in PDF format at Perpwalk.net (links at the end of that post). It's an interesting read, but it leaves some important questions unanswered: is public curriculum for sale? What precisely is the need for a special curriculum focusing on the impact of Western Europe and the U.S.?