Jay Schalin of the Martin Center argues that the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus serves as a sanctuary for a man tied to detestable left-wing groups.
The continued employment of an unhinged, violent anarchist as a lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says a whole lot about the university system’s standards when deciding who should influence the next generation. That is, such standards are non-existent—at best.
Dwayne Dixon, who this fall will be teaching ASIA 150, a large-lecture introductory course, is a member of an organization known as the Redneck Revolt that promotes violence as a political means. Dixon has twice been arrested at local events: Once in Durham for bringing a gun to a protest and once in Chapel Hill for assaulting a conservative reporter. Dixon bragged on Facebook about confronting James Fields with an AR-15 rifle, moments before Fields drove his car into a crowd of protesters at the Charlottesville, Virginia protests (and in doing so, perhaps pushing Fields’ emotions past the point of reason). During Fields’ trial, though, Dixon changed his story, claiming it was not Fields’s car he approached with his weapon, but another one.
And, especially important for his employment at UNC, there is email evidence that he uses his teaching position as a means to promote his particular brand of political activism—a clear violation of academic norms.
Taking each of these claims and the likely objections in order, Dixon is a member, or rather, a leader of the Silver Valley Redneck Revolt chapter in central North Carolina. Redneck Revolt has roughly 30 chapters around the country. It is aligned with another radical organization known as the John Brown Gun Club; some groups seem to use both names interchangeably.
One member of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club in Washington recently made national headlines for being killed while attacking an occupied government building, the Tacoma Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, with a rifle and Molotov cocktails.
One may be tempted to argue that the Tacoma event had nothing to do with Dixon’s North Carolina chapter, or that it was merely the action of a single disturbed individual. Yet, neither one of those things is true.