When North Carolina’s flagship university board of trustees voted to start a new school based on intellectual freedom to counter “woke” ideology, the backlash was swift.

On Jan. 26, it was widely reported the board of trustees for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted unanimously for the administration to accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership.

The school would feature for-credit courses on history, literature, and political science—from diverse viewpoints—and offer “freedom of expression, intellectual diversity and open inquiry,” according to the  American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

That sparked outrage from the UNC faculty, who said that it is their responsibility to determine curriculum—which illustrated to conservatives why the new school is needed.

Things got tenser when the president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS COC), Belle Wheelan, suggested publicly that UNC’s accreditation may be at risk if the trustees don’t revoke their mandate to develop the new school.

“We’re going to send a committee to talk to them and help them understand it and either get them to change it, or the institution will be on warning with us, I’m sure,” Wheelan said.

A video of her comments made at a Feb. 7 meeting of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina was obtained by The Epoch Times.

That shot over the bow from the accreditor was a warning that universities risked losing eligibility for students to use federal loans at the university if they didn’t align with “woke” ideologies, according to the  Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The conservative think tank recently condemned the threat and pointed out that a warning is often a step toward revoking accreditation.

And it illustrates the broader problem with accreditation agencies practicing “woke” ideologies intolerant or dissenting views—just like the universities they accredit, according to Jonathan Butcher, a fellow in education at The Heritage Foundation.

Universities and schools use euphemisms such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or progressivism to describe Critical Race Theory. This Marxist-based ideology divides people into oppressors or victims based on race or gender.

DEI proponents say it’s necessary to discriminate against whites to make up for past and present discrimination against minorities who are victims of systemic racism in America.

Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal think tank, wrote on Feb. 9 that accreditation threats to UNC have been used to “disempower university boards.”

Her article said that Wheelan and Margaret Spellings, past president of the UNC system, have a history of coordinating to pressure UNC’s Board of Governors from exercising its oversight authority.

Spellings is now co-chair of a public university governance committee created by Gov. Roy Cooper (D), where Wheelan spoke. It has no power over universities.

Appointments to the UNC system university boards are made through North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature or the UNC system Board of Governors, also appointed by the legislature.

Wheelan said UNC-Chapel Hill’s board would get a letter from the accreditor because it proposed a new curriculum without the administration’s or faculty’s input, according to Robinson’s article.

The article explained that Wheelan later told a trustee that Spellings had asked her to send a letter of inquiry to the board.

Spellings’ office in Dallas said that she would not be able to immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

Robinson told The Epoch Times that the trustee vote to expand the program took some faculty by surprise.

She believes the governor’s commission is meant to “undermine” the current board of trustees because Cooper wants the appointment process for trustees to look different.

Objections from faculty have been that such a school isn’t needed because they already teach civil discourse in their classes, Robinson said.

The other fear is viewpoint diversity, which would accompany the school of Civic Life and Leadership, she added.

“I think the faculty are interpreting that as, ‘oh, you’re going to hire a bunch of Republicans.’ And they don’t like that,” Robinson said.

While the accrediting board could withdraw accreditation from UNC-Chapel Hill, Robinson believes it’s unlikely.

Creating a school based on intellectual freedom and civil discourse has been discussed on campus for some time, she said. While professors are part of the input process when starting a new school, not all professors would need to approve it.

“The trustees are not going rogue here,” she said.

Wheelan emailed The Epoch Times on Feb. 21 that a letter had been sent to the university questioning the process after news of the school’s development broke.

She said the accrediting agency’s “unsolicited information” policy was triggered because SACS COC learned of the plan to develop a new school outside the usual channels.

Wheelan said that UNC-Chapel Hill trustees appeared to make curriculum decisions without faculty or administration input.

“There is nothing ‘political’ in SACS COC asking about the ‘process’ that was followed, which is what we’re asking,” she said.

However, Butcher said it appears accreditors may be using their power to keep universities anything but diverse when it comes to ideology.

“College accreditors have the same sort of DEI statements, commitments to antiracism, as the universities they accredit,” Butcher told The Epoch Times.

Another accrediting agency, Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, has an entire section on antiracist resources on its website, including one titled “Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms,” which tells professors to “recognize your implicit biases and remediate your racial illiteracy.”

Butcher said UNC’s board should be applauded because free speech and intellectual freedom are severely restricted on most college campuses nationwide.

He said UNC had conducted studies that revealed students didn’t feel free to speak their minds.

Likewise, The Epoch Times documented the experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university who reported discrimination against conservative ideas on campus.

The students described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.

“These woke kind of very aggressive critical race theory ideologies are part of all sorts of campus life,” Butcher said.

One way to curb Marxist ideology is to make universities responsible for providing a good education. Universities should help repay federal student loans that go into default because students don’t get a good education and can’t get a job.

He said the list of college accreditors needs to be expanded, allowing nonprofits and businesses.

Requiring universities to change accreditors periodically is another good idea, which has been part of the pushback against CRT in Florida, he said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also announced that Florida would no longer fund DEI programs or positions that adhere to divisive ideologies and plans to remake the “woke” New College in Sarasota into something akin to Hillsdale College.

The Florida governor wants university presidents and the university board of trustees to hold a post-tenure review on professors as needed and ban DEI oaths used in hiring where candidates pledge allegiance to oppressor-victim ideologies.

Other red states are attempting similar moves.

The Republican-controlled West Virginia House of Delegates introduced a bill last week to curtail various DEI initiatives in public higher education across the state.

In Texas, two House bills have been introduced to stop discriminatory DEI hiring practices and defund Texas universities that teach CRT.

This month, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) also directed his chief of staff to send a memo to state agency leaders and universities saying using DEI to make hiring decisions was illegal.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) has publicly said he wants to modify or remove tenure for professors teaching CRT, saying Sen. Brandon Creighton is expected to introduce a bill in the Senate.

Creighton led the effort to establish the new Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin—a think tank dedicated to free market principles, the First Amendment and intellectual freedom.

“I believe the mission of all colleges and universities should be to innovate and educate—not indoctrinate.

“Accreditation criteria should be merit based, and if Texas Universities stray from those goals, lawmakers will advance guardrails ensuring that it is followed and that alternative accreditation entities are relied upon.”

In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters recently asked state universities to account for money spent on DEI over the past 10 years, according to news reports.

South Carolina introduced a bill in January that prohibits public schools, colleges, and universities that benefit from state funds from promoting the narrative that “the United States was founded for the purpose of oppression, that the American Revolution was fought for the purpose of protecting oppression, or that United States history is a story defined by oppression.”