Opinion: Margaret Spellings must defend her record in public

Margaret Spellings, the former U.S. Secretary of Education and leading candidate for UNC-system president, would be a troubling choice for the job. Even so, students, faculty and residents of North Carolina — and even some Board of Governors members — have barely had enough time to even begin to vet her.

The board should delay its decision until the public has the chance to examine Spellings’ qualifications for the job, and she has a chance to defend the disturbing parts of her record.

The public has known about Spellings’ potential to be the next UNC-system president for just over a week. In that time, serious concerns over her lack of experience working in university systems and her seeming intolerance toward the LGBT community have been put forward.

And this is all just in a week, too much time by the Board of Governors’ standards, apparently — reporting by Jane Stancill of the (Raleigh) News & Observer suggests they called their emergency meeting last week in an attempt to avoid getting Spellings’ name in the public eye.

If there was any serious consideration of other candidates for the job, the public hasn’t heard about it, and as recently as last week, neither had some members of the Board of Governors. This runs contrary to the board’s statement promising to follow the legislation sitting on the governor’s desk requiring consideration of at least three candidates.

But back to the worries about homophobia.

According to reporting by Lisa de Moraes, a columnist for The Washington Post, Spellings sent a letter to PBS CEO Pat Mitchell in 2005 warning to not air an episode of a children’s show because it featured a segment including gay parents living together.

“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode,” Spellings wrote in the letter. She also implied PBS was in danger of losing federal funding due to a lack of accountability.

This is certainly not acceptable behavior in any context from a policy leader. The public deserves an explanation. But if Spellings is coronated today, there will be little opportunity for Spellings to address these concerns.

And this is not the only legitimate concern about Spellings. Clearly she is an accomplished woman, but the signature policy of the U.S. education department while she was secretary, the No Child Left Behind Act, is widely regarded as a failure.

Spellings also has little direct experience in higher education besides a turn on the board of the for-profit online University of Phoenix. She also served as namesake of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which, while admirably advancing goals of affordability and accessibility, is also associated with promoting metrics for accountability that are not accepted as gospel.

The public deserves a more complete debate about these issues before Spellings is named UNC-system president. The board is asking the public to trust its decision-making, but given the series of embarrassing and ill-conceived decisions the board has made in its recent existence, the public has little reason to trust the board with important decisions without a robust public debate first.

The board should delay its decision. This is not what democracy looks like.