Our Guest Speaker for this week’s meeting will be Jay Smith, history professor at UNC. Smith is best known for authoring Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports (Potomac Books, 2015) with co-author Mary Willingham, which provides an exposé of the UNC athletic-academic scandal and an assessment of the educational culture fostered in big-time sport programs.
More recently, in 2017, he tried to start a sports history class (History 383) at UNC that would include information about the UNC scandal. UNC administration intervened and would not allow the course to be taught, a decision that was ultimately reversed and the course was made available this year. Smith says that when he attempted to teach the class during the fall 2017 semester, his efforts were suppressed by administrative forces outside of the history department.
In July 2017, he filed a grievance with the University’s Faculty Grievance Committee, asserting that his academic freedom had been violated.
On April 20, 2018, the Board of Trustees issued the final say in the matter: the University’s administration did not violate Smith’s academic freedom in the case of History 383 being kept off the fall 2017 schedule.
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Mark Your Calendars
9/5/18 – Tubby Smith, Head Basketball Coach, High Point University
9/19/18 – Dwane Ballen, Television Journalist
10/3/18 – Special guest speaker!