The John William Pope Foundation has been generous to the University of North Carolina.
In 2011, for example, the foundation gave $3 million to help renovate the football stadium on the Chapel Hill campus — enough money to put Pope’s name on the academic-support center for athletes.
Last year the foundation donated $1.3 million to the university’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center — enough to endow a professorship in cancer research and three fellowships for aspiring researchers.
Roy Williams, men’s basketball coach at the flagship campus, even appears briefly in a video for the foundation, testifying to its largess: “When you see someone who’s given so much they can put their name on the building, that’s pretty impressive.”
But administrators and faculty members at the state’s public universities often associate something much different from philanthropy with the Pope name. The foundation, named for a retail-store magnate, also supports several libertarian think tanks, one of which is focused on reshaping public higher education.
The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, which gets most of its financial support from the foundation, describes its mission as making public colleges more accountable to the public, by holding them to their “chief goals of scholarly inquiry and responsible teaching.”
According to the center’s website, “taxpayers as well as students and their families pay hefty prices to support a system that often appears to provide little educational value.”
Jenna A. Robinson, the center’s president, calls the organization a watchdog for a university system that has become too expensive for many students because of ballooning administrative costs.
The center’s critics, however, see its influence as distorting the view of higher education in the state, especially among the Republicans who control both the governor’s mansion and the General Assembly.
For example, legislators recently considered a controversial bill that would have required university faculty members to teach eight courses a year. That bill has been watered down — it now asks the legislature to study the issue — and is unlikely to pass.
But its focus on professors’ workloads echoed concerns raised by the Pope Center in a report on faculty teaching loads across the state’s university system. Both the center and the lawmaker who introduced the bill say the report did not inspire the legislation. But it is the latest sign of the center’s alignment with the overall mood regarding public universities.
The center promotes “a very narrow, archaic view of what a university should be,” said James C. Moeser, who served as chancellor of the flagship campus from 2000 to 2008. “They’ve strongly influenced the direction of the Republican Party in the state. Most faculty are terrified of them.”
Family Affair
Free-market and libertarian organizations, like the Mackinac Center, in Michigan, and the Goldwater Institute, in Arizona, have popped up in states across the country.
What makes the Pope Foundation different is its founder’s extensive wealth and political connections in North Carolina.
John William Pope was a North Carolina native who earned a degree in commerce from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1947. Two years later, he took over his family’s five variety stores, eventually expanding them into a retail operation with stores in more than a dozen states.
Among other activities, Mr. Pope was a member of the Chapel Hill flagship’s Board of Trustees.
His son James Arthur, who goes by Art, graduated from Chapel Hill in 1978 with a degree in political science. He earned a law degree from Duke University in 1981 and has become a familiar figure in state politics, serving four terms in the General Assembly, from 1989 to 2002, and acting as budget director for Gov. Pat McCrory in 2013 and 2014.
Art Pope has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state’s Republican Party and its candidates through the years, according to information from the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
At his father’s direction, Mr. Pope started the family foundation in 1986. Its mission, according to the organization’s website, is to “protect and advance the liberties of North Carolinians” and give them “the freedom to create wealth for the benefit of all.”
The foundation has focused its grant activities on the arts, humanitarian causes, education, and public policy, with donations of nearly $7.3 million in 2013-14, according to its figures.
Among its education-related grantees are the Institute for Humane Studies, at George Mason University; the UNC-Duke Philosophy, Politics, and Economic Program; the Economic, Legal, and Political Foundations of Free Societies, at North Carolina State; the Center for the History of Economy, at Duke University; and the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.
But the bulk of its money — more than $4.5 million — went to public-policy groups in North Carolina, including more than $543,000 to the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
Political Shift
While the Pope Foundation and some of the groups it supports have been around for decades, their influence has been magnified in recent years by North Carolina’s shifting political landscape.
In 2010, Republicans took control of both chambers of the General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction. The party completed its takeover of state government two years later, when voters elected Mr. McCrory.
The governor has been clear about his disdain for the “educational elite” and for courses not geared directly to developing job skills.
Meantime, the Republican-controlled legislature has appointed nearly all the members of the university system’s Board of Governors. And the speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Rep. Tim Moore, sits on the Board of Directors of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.
The result has been a series of board actions and legislative proposals that higher-education advocates fear are undermining the reputation of the university system.
Last year the board approved a policy that caps at 15 percent the portion of tuition revenue that each campus can use for financial aid, saying the aid money was driving tuition increases and provided too much benefit for nonresident students. The policy change was supported by the Pope Center.
This year the Board of Governors ousted the system’s president, Thomas W. Ross, just five years after he was hired. The move came with no explanation, prompting allegations that the dismissal had been politically motivated. Mr. Ross had spoken out against the governor’s criticism of the liberal arts.
The board has also voted to close a small group of academic centers that focus on politically progressive issues, most notably the University of North Carolina’s Center for Poverty, Work, and Opportunity. Its director has been an outspoken critic of the state’s Republican leaders.
John C. Fennebresque, chairman of the Board of Governors, was not available to comment, said a spokeswoman for the university system.
Last month the legislature took up the bill that would have required most faculty members across the university system to teach eight courses per year.
The Pope Center has written about faculty workloads, arguing that increasing teaching requirements could lead to increases in budget efficiency.
Several lawmakers, including the chairmen of the education committees in both chambers of the legislature and the bill’s primary sponsor, did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Control What Is Taught’
Critics of the Pope groups have cited those actions as evidence that the organizations are undermining both the university system and public higher education in general.
“I don’t believe they support a well-funded public-university system for the people of North Carolina,” said Chris Fitzsimmon, founder and executive director of the left-leaning NC Policy Watch. “They are unabashed in their view that far too many people go to college.”
Thomas Mills, a longtime political consultant who writes a blog about state politics, said Mr. Pope and the organizations he supports are applying an ideological agenda and trying to micromanage the university system.
“To be fair, Art Pope has been very generous with his money in supporting the university,” Mr. Mills said. “I don’t think he is anti-public education. But he wants to control what is taught in higher education.”
Mr. Pope said that the notion he is controlling the Center for Higher Education Policy — or any other group supported by the foundation — is preposterous.
“This whole image of Art Pope, through the Pope Foundation, directly directing all these organizations and institutes, what they should do, and some vast right-wing conspiracy — it’s just silly, ridiculous,” he said in an interview. “There’s not enough time today, and it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Nor is there a conflict between his criticism of the university system’s spending and his desire to see it do well, he said. “To question and try and improve the university is not being critical, much less any type of conflict or dichotomy,” he said. “They’re one and the same thing.”
In fact, not all of the Pope Center’s positions are at odds with those of higher-education constituencies. The center sided with student groups in supporting a recent move by the university system’s Board of Governors to make its votes open to the public.
And commentaries on the Pope Center’s website that criticize the federal government’s regulatory oversight of higher education are similar to many complaints from campus leaders and administrators.
Faculty members, too, may find themselves largely agreeing with the center’s argument that administrative bloat is what’s driving up costs for students.
Mr. Moeser, now chancellor emeritus at Chapel Hill, said his view of the center and the Pope Foundation is not simply black and white. He finds Mr. Pope “intellectually honest and a very pleasant fellow.”
The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy serves a useful service, Mr. Moeser said, “because they speak and write strongly from their point of view.”
But, he went on, the center has damaged the perception of the university system through its influence with policy makers who have a limited appreciation for higher education.
“While they’re thoughtful,” Mr. Moeser said, “they’ve allied themselves with the know-nothing crowd in the legislature that doesn’t even like universities.”
Correction (5/1/2015, 1:58 p.m.): This article originally suggested that a bill that would have required public-university faculty members to teach eight courses a year had been inspired by the Pope Center’s research. In fact, both the center and the lawmaker who introduced the bill say it was not inspired by the center’s work. The article has been updated to reflect this.
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
