On the evening of Jan. 15, 26 undergrads gathered for dinner in a common room at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to debate the fairness of college admissions post-affirmative action. The ground rules were clear: Nothing they said would leave the room. Nobody would be shouted down. No one would get ratted out on social media as “problematic.”
The students went at it with gusto. First-years from Hungary and Turkey lamented the systems in their home countries, where admissions are based purely on standardized tests rather than their interests or extracurriculars. A Black student from in-state criticized admissions based on test scores and GPAs for different reasons; given sharp disparities in secondary schools and family resources, some kids were already at a disadvantage. A couple of students praised the end of affirmative action, which they described as inherently unjust. The dinner officially wrapped up after an hour, but rather than dash out, most students stuck around, continuing the discussion in small clusters.
“A lot of us have memories from college of late-night conversations debating every topic under the sun, and a lot of students have felt as though that’s missing,” UNC’s chancellor, Lee Roberts, said in an interview. Students today, he explained, are looking for “the chance to debate a topic without debating whether you’ve somehow said the wrong thing.”
All this was taking place at CivComm, a residential hall affiliated with a program at UNC called the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL). The school, which opened in 2023, is part of a larger nationwide civic-thought movement, led by a mix of political conservatives, academic traditionalists and liberals alarmed by progressive overreach. The goal is to push back on what proponents see as an academic culture that has lost sight of the purpose of a liberal arts education—and to do so from within the university. On many campuses, they’ve encountered strong resistance.