Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a 2018 speech apologized for the university’s role in slavery.Ethan Hyman, The News & Observer via AP Images
Carol L. Folt stares down a throng of heartless racists and tells them exactly where they can shove their Confederate statue. She’s not putting it back up, she tells them, and if they don’t like it, they can fire her.
Many people at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Folt has struggled as chancellor to relocate a Confederate monument known as Silent Sam, would buy tickets to that movie. They’d line up to see the satisfying final act, when Folt finds the intestinal fortitude to defy the state legislature and the law, daring the system’s president to terminate her for standing on principle.
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a 2018 speech apologized for the university’s role in slavery.Ethan Hyman, The News & Observer via AP Images
Carol L. Folt stares down a throng of heartless racists and tells them exactly where they can shove their Confederate statue. She’s not putting it back up, she tells them, and if they don’t like it, they can fire her.
Many people at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Folt has struggled as chancellor to relocate a Confederate monument known as Silent Sam, would buy tickets to that movie. They’d line up to see the satisfying final act, when Folt finds the intestinal fortitude to defy the state legislature and the law, daring the system’s president to terminate her for standing on principle.
What’s played out at Chapel Hill has been decidedly less cinematic. Since August, when protesters toppled the statue, Folt has faltered in search of an equitable compromise. She has sought to respect a 2015 law, which she interprets to mean that the statue must stay on the campus, while acknowledging the grievances of those who say that Silent Sam is a monument to white supremacy. The result is a plan, approved last week by Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees, that would house the statue in a new $5.3-million facility, rather than return it to a pedestal of prominence near a campus entrance — or retire it as a symbol of a bygone era.
Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier, dominated the main entrance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than a century, despite decades of protests. But suddenly, in August 2018, the statue was yanked down by protesters. And in January 2019 the campus’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, removed the statue’s pedestal and other remnants. Here’s how Silent Sam moved from dominance to disappearance.
On Friday the systemwide Board of Governors will consider the proposal, which has been met with anger and resistance. Far from defusing the conflict, the plan has escalated it. Dozens of teaching assistants have joined a “grade strike,” pledging to withhold more than 2,000 final grades unless the trustees scrap the plan.
ADVERTISEMENT
At a tense Faculty Council meeting last week, an African-American student who had earned a scholarship named for Martin Luther King Jr. angrily confronted Folt and called the chancellor “a disgrace.”
“You handed me the Martin Luther King Student Scholarship Award this year,” Angum Check, a senior, told Folt. “And I want to tell you, you are a disgrace. Never utter MLK’s words ever again.”
Folt, hands clasped in front of her, gave a wounded expression and said nothing. Captured on video, the moment crystalized a core dilemma for Folt, who, by seeking compromise, has invited attacks on her moral authority.
If the chancellor wanted to claim the high ground, some observers say, she should risk her job and side with the hundreds of UNC professors and students who have said there is no place on the Chapel Hill campus for a Confederate monument. Were Folt to take such a stand, history might well look fondly upon her. But then what?
‘Impossible Situation’
Theodore M. Shaw, who directs the campus law school’s Center for Civil Rights, has played out the scenarios in his mind. He can picture the heroic moment when the chancellor dares the powers that be to fire her; and then he can picture them doing just that.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I would cheer her if she said that,” said Shaw, who has litigated civil-rights cases for 40 years. “I also know that this Board of Governors and the legislature behind it wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of her. I’m weighing the value of a moment of a moral stand against the reality that it would open the door to something even worse.”
Shaw said it’s unfortunate that Folt has drawn criticism that ought to be aimed at the legislature for enacting a law that protects “objects of remembrance,” which the chancellor says prevents her from removing the statue from the campus. Shaw, who attended the Faculty Council meeting last week when Folt was publicly admonished, described the moment as “painful.”
“She is in a position that, if it’s not impossible, is close to it,” Shaw said.
“I don’t like the position that the university has taken,” he continued, “but I understand the politics of that position.”
ADVERTISEMENT
William A. (Bill) Keyes IV, a Chapel Hill trustee, said the board and the chancellor are in an “impossible situation.” Defying the Board of Governors and the legislature wouldn’t change that, he said.
“Chancellor Folt pounding her chest and threatening her bosses that she would only do what she thought best would not have solved anything,” Keyes said on Thursday in an email to The Chronicle.
The difficulties are compounded, Keyes said, because activists continue to move the “goal posts.”
No matter what we proposed, we’d make a lot of people angry.
“No matter what we proposed, we’d make a lot of people angry,” wrote Keyes, who is the only African-American trustee. “We did the very best we could to thread the needle. It seems to me that moving the statue from the so-called front door of the campus to an indoor facility on the far outskirts of the campus achieved what the anti-Silent Sam forces wanted while satisfying the pro-Sam folks as well, which was the preservation of the monument.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Too bad,” he continued, “so few people were willing to see the brilliance of our proposal, declare victory, and fight on for continued progress.”
The solution proposed by Folt and the trustees is similar to the approach taken by the University of Texas at Austin, where statues of Confederate leaders were moved to a campus museum.
Civil Disobedience
Given Folt’s interpretation of North Carolina law, activists are essentially arguing that she should engage in civil disobedience by refusing to publicly display Silent Sam. Harry L. Watson, a history professor, said he initially thought that the chancellor’s proposal to move the statue to a new campus center was about the best anyone could have expected. But the reactions of recent days have convinced him that the campus cannot heal if Silent Sam is on display.
“Remove the pedestal, remove the statue, and seal them up where nobody can find them; and let things cool down for a generation,” Watson said. “That would be breaking the law. But it would be breaking the law in a spirit that we cannot comply and still be a decent educational institution. We’re going to put our educational mission first, because that’s the legal responsibility that we have that is the most important.
Create a new political reality, instead of caving in to everybody else’s political reality.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Create a new political reality,” Watson continued, “instead of caving in to everybody else’s political reality.”
The most damaging aspect of the Silent Sam controversy is that it has invited questions about the sincerity of Chapel Hill’s stated ideals on matters of race and inclusion. Dominque L. Brodie, a member of a student group called the UNC Black Congress, said Folt could signal her commitment to those ideals by refusing to resurrect the statue — no matter what the personal cost.
“Given the image that Chancellor Folt has painted for herself and the university as these bastions of justice and equity,” Brodie said, “it would be noble and admirable for her to say, ‘I can’t carry this out, and I will resign because I can’t.’”