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Reading Choice Again Stirs Controversy
The summer reading program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has stirred controversy for a second year. Incoming first-year and transfer students are asked to read a particular book over the summer and to discuss it when they arrive on the campus in the fall. This year, the book selected was Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. A handful of students and state legislators protested, calling the book "liberal propaganda."
Last year, legislators angry about the university's choice of Approaching the Qur'án: The Early Revelations, by Michael Sells, inserted a rider to an early version of the North Carolina state budget bill denying state funds for "any course or summer reading program in any religion unless all other known religions are offered in an equal or incremental way." The rider was removed from the budget bill, and an effort to halt the program through a lawsuit was also unsuccessful. Molly Corbett Broad, president of the University of North Carolina, received the AAUP's Alexander Meiklejohn Award for Academic Freedom for her refusal to cancel the assigned reading of Sells's book and for her strong statement in favor of academic freedom to the university's board of governors.
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