academic freedom

July 16, 2021 - Long before journalist Hannah-Jones' tenure fight with the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, the influential conservative policy network built and funded by millionaire businessman and GOP power broker Art Pope had turned its attention to her reporting on racism with attacks and distortions reminiscent of its dishonest treatment of climate science. Pope denied direct involvement in the tenure controversy, but his organizations' messaging carries weight in a UNC system where he's a major donor and serves on the powerful Board of Governors thanks to the Republican legislature he helped elect.

July 7, 2021 - Geeta N. Kapur, a North Carolina civil rights attorney and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who has a book coming out in August about the school's fraught racial history, says it should come as no surprise that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — a Black woman bold enough to speak truth to power — was initially denied tenure by the school and then granted it only begrudgingly. Tenure would have given her a degree of academic freedom to reveal other truths that some don't want to hear.

October 10, 2012 - The official paper trail suggests that an attorney involved in the American Tradition Institute's lawsuit against the University of Virginia seeking a prominent climate scientist's emails did not have the proper permissions to do the work from the Environmental Protection Agency, where he held a taxpayer-funded position at the same time.

September 18, 2012 - A Virginia circuit court judge rules that the school does not have to turn over former professor Michael Mann's e-mails to the American Tradition Institute, a fossil-fuel-funded think tank that works to discredit climate scientists. The case is now expected to move on to the state Supreme Court.

July 19, 2012 - The American Tradition Institute, a conservative think tank with ties to fossil-fuel interests, is continuing its campaign to discredit prominent climate scientists using freedom of information requests - and it's particularly interested in their communications with journalists.

December 22, 2011 - Our review of the top stories of 2011 here at Facing South continues. Next up: A new kind of attack on climate scientists, and the dirty-energy money behind it.

November 29, 2011 - FALL 2011 | A conservative think tank has filed a controversial Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the University of Virginia seeking emails and other documents related to former professor Michael Mann, a leading scholar of global warming. Facing South explores who the American Tradition Institute is and the implications of its actions.