Barring a drastic change in our political climate or an act of God, the outcome of the 2024 presidential election will likely come down to the behavior of a handful of swing states. In this century, North Carolina has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election but one — 2008 when Barack Obama flipped North Carolina to blue by a razor-thin margin.
Even given that history, political pundits and candidates alike think that the Tar Heel state will be a pivotal one in the 2024 election, with the Trump and Harris campaigns both making multiple stops in the state. The bottom line: North Carolina is up for grabs.
It’s no secret that institutions of higher education tend to sway overwhelmingly to the left — and UNC-Chapel Hill is no exception, as has been my experience and that of many others. Based on data collected by UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro professors, The Daily Tar Heel reported in 2022 that the majority of UNC’s conservative students were self-censoring their political beliefs in the classroom. If that isn’t the antithesis of a rigorous and free-spirited intellectual climate, I don’t know what is.
Like many members of the student body who lean left politically, I am incredibly comfortable in most classrooms at UNC. I can’t help but wonder if this comfort is afforded to me at the expense of valuable intellectual discourse. Confronting our convictions is supposed to be uncomfortable. Rigorous investigation of ideas is supposed to be uncomfortable.
More than that, universities and colleges are supposed to be the very bastions of such ideals. The notion that we could be failing at that endeavor is one that I find incredibly disquieting.
Political discourse beginning and ending with liberalism is not reflective of our student body — or of our state, which will play a crucial role in November. To that end, I’d argue that each of us has a responsibility to facilitate meaningful dialogue at UNC. In a battleground state, constructing intellectual echo chambers can only come from a place of profound privilege.
Steeped in our comfort, we accomplish nothing and sway no one. It may well be true that UNC’s student body has predominantly liberal values. Regardless, that presumption should not underscore the vast majority of our discourse. In part because it serves a privileged majority and in part because it does not reflect the full political persuasions of our campus and state.
It’s easy to issue edicts from a moral high ground — to pretend that allegiance to one party is an ethical imperative. Welcoming dissent is harder, but we owe it to each other. That’s what we’re here to do, after all.
I don’t mean that we should condone vehement bigotry or cruelty; constructive dialogue cannot exist without compassion. Instead, consider not gasping in horror when a peer says they’re considering voting for the GOP candidate, or that they are not a tried and true leftist. What I’m calling for from left-leaning members of our student body is tolerance — the very thing that we crow from the rooftops. To fail to grant it during a deadlocked political race would be a disservice to ourselves and to democracy.
