“Affirmative Action for Conservatives”: The New Architecture of Academic Capture
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
April 6, 2026
I’ve been watching this unfold with a mix of disbelief and recognition—not because it is new, but because it is becoming normalized. At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a newly created School of Civic Life and Leadership promises “civil discourse” and “ideological diversity.” On its face, that sounds like the very essence of higher education. Who could object to a project that claims to broaden debate, to welcome disagreement, to cultivate thoughtful citizenship?
But as is increasingly the case in this moment, the language obscures more than it reveals. What is taking shape is not a neutral expansion of perspectives, but a re-engineering of the university—one that substitutes one form of ideological gatekeeping for another while insisting it is restoring balance.
The most telling evidence comes not from critics on the outside, but from participants within. Even some of the program’s early conservative supporters have begun to raise alarms. One faculty member described the hiring practices as “affirmative action for conservatives.” The phrase is striking, not simply for its irony, but for its clarity.
For years, affirmative action has been cast by the right as the ultimate symbol of unfairness—evidence of ideological distortion in higher education. And yet here we have a parallel structure, by their own account, designed to privilege a particular political orientation in hiring. This is not intellectual diversity. It is ideological substitution.
What we are witnessing is not simply hypocrisy. It is a pattern—one that can be understood as discursive inversion. Efforts toward equity and inclusion are first reframed as coercive, exclusionary, even dangerous. Then, under the banner of restoring neutrality, new systems of control are introduced—systems that are themselves deeply ideological, but now shielded by the language of “freedom,” “balance,” and “viewpoint diversity.”
In this case, reports indicate that hiring decisions have sidelined candidates for perceived ideological deviations, including something as basic as a land acknowledgment in a syllabus. So much for open inquiry. The issue is not the removal of litmus tests, but their reconfiguration.
If this were an isolated case, it would still be troubling. But it is not. Across the country, similar centers are being established, often through direct legislative mandate or donor pressure, or both. They are framed as correctives to so-called “leftist capture,” yet they arrive with substantial financial backing, preferential hiring pipelines, and built-in student recruitment incentives. At UNC, students are offered thousands of dollars in scholarships and residential perks to participate. Faculty critics have called it inducement. Others might call it strategic recruitment. Either way, it signals something deeper: this is not incidental. This is infrastructure.
And that distinction matters. Because policy today does not operate only through prohibition—through what is banned or dismantled. It operates just as powerfully through construction—through what is funded, incentivized, and scaled. At the very moment when programs in ethnic studies, gender studies, and related fields are being defunded, merged, or eliminated across states like Texas and Florida, these new centers are experiencing a windfall. State appropriations, private philanthropy, and even federal funding streams are being mobilized to build them out quickly. This is not a coincidence. It is a reordering.
If you are in Texas, none of this should feel distant. We have already seen how legislative interventions—SB 17, SB 37, and related measures—reshape the terrain of higher education by dismantling DEI infrastructures, weakening faculty governance, and narrowing the scope of permissible inquiry. What follows is not a vacuum, but a replacement. North Carolina offers a glimpse of that replacement in action.
The pattern is strikingly consistent: universities are declared ideologically “captured,” programs associated with equity and critical inquiry are dismantled, new centers framed around “civics” and “free speech” are installed, resourced heavily, staffed selectively, and used to attract students through targeted incentives. All the while, the project is framed as a restoration of neutrality.
But neutrality does not require ideological engineering.
Perhaps the most consequential effects are not the most visible ones. They show up in the subtle recalibrations of academic life: faculty second-guessing their syllabi, departments narrowing course offerings, scholars avoiding topics that may trigger scrutiny, students navigating an increasingly politicized curriculum landscape. This is governance through anticipation.
No formal ban is needed when the conditions for self-censorship are firmly in place. And when hiring itself becomes ideologically inflected, the long-term consequences deepen. Academic fields do not disappear overnight. They are slowly starved, restructured, and repopulated.
This is why the phrase “affirmative action for conservatives” matters so much. It is not just a critique; it is a diagnostic. It reveals that the project is not merely about opening space for conservative ideas—something that a genuinely pluralistic university should welcome—but about constructing an institutional apparatus that ensures those ideas are privileged, protected, and reproduced. In other words, it is about power. And like all durable forms of power, it is being built not only through rhetoric, but through policy, funding, hiring, and governance.
The stakes are not abstract. They are visible in who gets hired and who does not, in what gets taught and what quietly disappears, in which students are drawn into particular intellectual pathways and why, and in how universities define their public mission. At issue is whether higher education remains a site of genuine inquiry or becomes an arena of managed discourse.
We are often told that these interventions are necessary to save the university. But we should ask: save it from what—and for whom? When efforts to expand inclusion are recast as ideological capture, and when that framing is used to justify new forms of institutional control, we are no longer in the realm of reform. We are in the realm of reconstruction.
The irony is hard to miss. In seeking to dismantle what is described as politicized education, these initiatives risk entrenching a new form of it—one that is no less ideological, but far less willing to name itself as such. The question is not whether universities should host disagreement. They must. The question is whether that disagreement will remain genuinely open—or whether it will be curated, incentivized, and quietly constrained under the banner of “freedom.”
Because when “diversity” becomes selective, when “balance” becomes engineered, and when “freedom” becomes a governing script rather than a lived practice, we should recognize the shift for what it is.
Not a correction.
A capture.
A University of North Carolina program was intended to promote civil discourse and ideological diversity. Some of its early conservative supporters say it is doing the opposite.
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| The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opened a new school focused on civics two years ago. It has drawn controversy almost since the beginning.Credit...Cornell Watson for The New York Times |
By Stephanie Saul Photographs by Cornell Watson
The syllabus for SCLL 230-001, also known as “Men and Women,” describes requirements different from the typical college course. Students in the class, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, must go on a date, plan their own weddings and organize a ball (a group project).
Guest speakers last fall included Chloe Cole, an activist against gender treatment for minors; Dr. William B. Hurlbut, a former White House bioethics adviser who warned about the dangers of premarital sex; and several married couples, one with a baby who was passed around to students.
The class reading list includes ideas from both the right and left, and the course is billed as a chance to openly debate issues affecting the genders in the age of a “masculinity crisis in the modern West.” But some students who took the class said it tilted toward promoting traditional gender roles in dating, marriage and family life.
The class is among the offerings at the U.N.C. School of Civic Life and Leadership, one of more than 40 academic programs that have sprung up across the country as part of a movement among conservatives to combat what they see as excessive leftism on college campuses. While the centers vary in curriculum, they emphasize Western thought, America’s founders and civil discourse.
The centers have built excitement — and drawn big-ticket donors — among those looking for a counterweight to classes on feminism, social justice and systemic oppression. Nine state legislatures in red-leaning states have passed laws requiring the opening of similar programs. In announcing the creation of a center at Ohio State University, lawmakers attacked “a monopoly of left-wing ideology” on campuses.
But the centers have also drawn controversy and criticism, including from some initial supporters. Shiri Spitz Siddiqi, chief researcher for the nonprofit group Heterodox Academy, which released a report on the programs last year, said the centers had generated “a lot of distrust among mainstream academics.”
The School of Civic Life and Leadership building at U.N.C. In several Republican-led states, legislatures have required universities to open similar programs.
At U.N.C., some conservative faculty members say the program has been hypocritical. The school, they argue, is mimicking the same problems that conservatives have said are endemic to left-leaning campuses, such as applying ideological litmus tests in hiring to keep out professors who don’t fit a certain political profile.
Jonathan Williams, a U.N.C. professor of economics who was appointed chief economist for the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission in January, supported the school at first. He noted that he had worked for a decade to fight “wokeness” on campus.
But last year, he called the school an “unmitigated disaster” in an email resigning from its advisory board, accusing the school of ignoring hiring protocols that are important to professors. The board did not respond to a request for comment.
Jed Atkins, the school’s dean, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in a written statement, he said that the school did not apply “political or religious litmus tests” to hiring.
‘Affirmative Action’ for Conservatives
The idea for the U.N.C. program predated the start of President Trump’s second term, which supercharged a movement to overhaul college campuses. In 2023, the state legislature pledged $4 million over two years and ordered the hiring of up to 20 faculty members for the new school.
But it faced controversy almost from its start. Dr. Atkins, a Greek and Roman scholar who came from Duke University, has clashed with faculty and advisers over how professors have been hired and what some believe is a set of courses too narrowly focused on the American story and religion.
Several of his hires are theology experts, including the professor who teaches “Men and Women,” John Rose, who has a Ph.D. in theology and who also came from Duke. He also teaches a course called “The Christian Story,” which examines the life of Jesus and what it means to be human, among other things, according to the syllabus.
Other professors teach classes with Christian themes, including a course about C.S. Lewis, the Christian author, and another called “Pursuing the Good Life,” in which readings include the Bible. The course ponders questions such as, “How should I live?” and “Whom and how should I love?”
Jed Atkins, dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership, clashed with professors over hiring.
Faculty expertise includes Greek and Roman political theory; Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures and thought; and American history and literature, Dr. Atkins said in a statement.
The school “educates citizens and leaders for constitutional self-government through free inquiry and civil discourse,” he added, “equipping students with the knowledge, judgment and habits to lead wisely, deliberate across differences and live with purpose in a pluralistic American democracy.”
Among the school’s first hires was David Decosimo, an opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs who had been recruited from Boston University. Within a year, though, he clashed with Dr. Atkins over hiring decisions, suggesting the school was applying “affirmative action” for conservatives.
“Schools devoted to civil discourse must exemplify it, starting at the top,” he posted in a long thread online. “They must welcome disagreement, not punish it.”
He remains a professor at U.N.C. but has been fired as associate dean.
One contentious point, several professors said, involved an Ohio State University historian, Sean Anthony, who had been recruited to apply. He complained that he’d been eliminated because his syllabus included a “land acknowledgment” recognizing that O.S.U. occupied the former home of Native Americans.
“I was rejected because of an ideological litmus test,” Dr. Anthony, a professor of Near Eastern and South Asian cultures, wrote in a letter of complaint to U.N.C. officials obtained by The New York Times.
Several administrators criticized the hiring process, including the university’s provost, Christopher Clemens, an avowed conservative who helped set up the program. He was forced out as provost after ordering a pause in hiring at the school, a decision that was ultimately overturned.
“A hiring process that relies on ideology would provide an excuse and even an incentive for the rest of the faculty to isolate, neglect, or even actively undermine the center’s efforts,” Dr. Clemens, an astrophysicist, wrote in a soon-to-be-published book chapter.
Tension over hiring came to a head during a vitriolic meeting in February 2025, when faculty members complained that the hiring committee’s recommendations were being overruled, according to meeting records obtained by The New York Times.
“I was supportive of the school,” Dr. Williams, who was on an advisory panel, told Dr. Atkins during the meeting. “I was openly mocked for supporting it. And if this process is not squeaky clean, our reputations are ruined on campus.”
The university ordered an outside investigation into the school. This month, the university said the findings of the 400-page report, which cost more than $1 million, would not be disclosed.
In a statement, the university’s chancellor, Lee H. Roberts, issued a vote of confidence in Dr. Atkins, noting his resolve and the fact that he had secured a major donation.
A Deal for Students
Some of the centers have had difficulty recruiting students. But the U.N.C. school says it has grown, from 84 students in the fall of 2024 to 487 this semester.
The curriculum attracted Devin Duncan, the student body president-elect, who said he decided to minor in the school after taking a course on the Federalist Papers. He said it posed “really large questions” such as: “What is the American experiment? What makes a good leader and what makes for a bad one?”
Other students have been skeptical. A progressive U.N.C. group called TransparUNCy called for a boycott of the school. One of the group’s leaders, Toby Posel, called it a “key element of Donald Trump’s MAGA agenda.”
Some of the classes are nearly at capacity, according to enrollment information obtained by The New York Times. But classes like “Seeking a Just Society” and “Classics of Civic Thought” filled fewer than half their seats. (The school did not respond to questions about enrollment for specific classes.)
Some students have been drawn to the school because of special financial offers. Students who pursue minors are eligible for the Libertas Scholarship, valued at $12,000 over four years. Tuition at U.N.C. is about $7,000 a year for in-state students and about $43,000 for out-of-state students.
Before freshmen arrived on campus last fall, the school had offered another deal for them, even if they hadn’t signed up for the minor.
“Students: we offer a $3,000 scholarship, transformational programming (including a tech-free retreat in the NC mountains), and superb faculty leadership,” the promotion read. To receive the money, students had to live in a residential “civil discourse” community — called Civ-Comm — connected to the school.
Clockwise from top left, Toby Posel, Noa Roxborough, Emma Serrano, Christina Huang and Pragya Upreti are members of TransparUNCy, a progressive U.N.C. group that called for a boycott of the civics school.Credit...Cornell Watson for The New York Times
Erik Gellman, a history professor, calls the offers bribery. “If you join us in this school, we will throw money at you,” said Dr. Gellman, a leader of the American Association of University Professors chapter on campus.
A spokesman for U.N.C. said similar scholarships had been offered at other schools.
Kirstin Crump lives in the residential community, has taken two courses and also applied for the scholarship for those declaring minors. “I’ve had a really positive experience with the courses themselves,” she said. But she said she was concerned by allegations circulated on campus that the school was created to push specific ideologies.
“It’s probably just going to come down to financial considerations,” she said. “It’s a lot of money.”
The offers come during a period when U.N.C., one of the nation’s most prestigious public universities, is facing millions of dollars in cutbacks.
The School of Civic Life and Leadership has seen a windfall, however, with funding from the state, private donations, an Education Department grant of nearly $1 million, and more than $10 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund “a world-class civics faculty.”
Dr. Hurlbut, a Stanford medical doctor who spoke to Dr. Rose’s class last semester about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, said the school’s professors were steering their students through important debates.
“I think John Rose is trying to get students to really talk to one another so they can find common ground,” said Dr. Hurlbut, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics.
The U.N.C. civics school has grown quickly. Some students were drawn to enroll by financial incentives.
Dr. Rose said in a statement that he was introducing diverse perspectives to encourage healthy discourse. During one class, students heard both from Simone and Malcolm Collins, an activist couple who promote having more babies, and from Amy Glaser, a North Carolina State University professor who founded an L.G.B.T.Q. organization.
Outside the Civ-Comm residential community, Sasha Widman, an aspiring nurse, said she had accepted the $3,000 residence scholarship, enticed by what she believed would be vibrant, organized discussions.
Still, she does not plan to declare a minor.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily where I want our society to go, or where I want my education to go,” Ms. Widman said.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
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