In recent weeks, UNC-Chapel Hill’s “Literature of 9/11″ course has become a national controversy. Shortly after a Chapel Hill freshman wrote a piece in the College Fix suggesting that the course has an anti-American bias, the school responded with a “fact sheet” attempting to address “misinformation” and the growing concern on the part of some conservatives that the course is slanted. Media Matters, a liberal “fact-checking” site, even chimed in with its own analysis of the course. In today’s Pope Center article, Jay Schalin sifts through the political rhetoric coming from liberals and conservatives to find out what’s really going on. He recently pored over the course’s various assignments, reading articles and watching movies outlined on the course’s website. His findings are disturbing, and should be a wake up call to the university’s trustees.

Schalin points out that 19 of the course’s readings are “explicitly anti-American,” and only 2 are pro-American. Furthermore, says Schalin, the course’s teacher, Neel Ahuja, is a left-wing activist, not a scholar, which calls into question his ability to present all of the major perspectives on this massive topic in an even-handed way. “Given that the included content is overwhelmingly anti-American, that the course omits some of the most essential perspectives, and that the professor is a hard-left ideologue, the only proper conclusion can be that the course was crafted to present a biased picture. It is time for the Trustees of UNC-Chapel Hill to step up and end this politicized abuse of the curriculum. And in doing so, establish themselves as the voice of reason, since the administration seems incapable of proper judgment in many curricular matters.”