RALEIGH, N.C. — A professor claims he was unfairly fired from the North Carolina Governor’s School for speaking out against the program’s use of "critical race theory."
David Phillips charges in a lawsuit filed this month in Wake County Superior Court that he was fired in 2021 after some staff members complained about his seminars criticizing critical race theory. Phillips claims he was fired because he says the Governor’s School is hostile toward white, male, cisgender, conservative Christian students and staff.
“By firing him, Defendants trampled on his constitutional rights to free speech, retaliated against him for refusing to adopt the Defendants’ radical ideology. and discriminated against him because of his race, sex and religion,” according to the lawsuit filed on Phillips’ behalf by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy organization.
The lawsuit names the state Department of Public Instruction and several current and former DPI and Governor’s School employees as defendants. DPI runs the Governor’s School.
“Mr. Phillips was an employee of Governor’s School during summer 2021,” DPI said in a statement. “The Department of Public Instruction maintains that it fully complied with all legal requirements. However, as this is a personnel matter, no additional information can be shared at this time.”
The Governor’s School is a 5 1/2-week program with campuses at Meredith College in Raleigh and Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem for gifted high school students pursuing academic and artistic endeavors.
The program was started in 1963 by Gov. Terry Sanford and is recognized as the oldest program of its kind in the nation and a model for other states.
“The Governor’s School we know and strongly support has brought together 40,000 students from across our state over 60 years to cultivate their passion for learning,” Lee Conner, president of the board of directors of the North Carolina Governor’s School Foundation, said in a statement.
“Decade after decade, Governor’s School has challenged students to explore a wide variety of intellectual theories and viewpoints and encouraged them to critically analyze the world around them. Supporting robust civil discourse has always been a hallmark of the Governor’s School experience.”
But Phillips, who was an English instructor at the Governor’s School West campus from 2013 to 2021, contends that the reality is that the program promotes a “one-sided” approach that has an “anti-conservative bias.”
“The Governor’s School embraces an ideology, sometimes called ‘critical race theory’ or ‘critical theory,’ that views everyone and everything through the lens of characteristics like race, sex, and religion, labeling people as perpetual oppressors or perpetual victims based on group membership alone,” according to the lawsuit.
Critical race theory is a “scholarly framework that describes how race, class, gender and sexuality organize American life,” according to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history department. The lawsuit comes amid a national debate over whether critical race theory, also known as CRT, is being taught in K-12 classrooms.
In the lawsuit, Phillips says that the Governor’s School increasingly infused CRT into his curriculum and the selection and treatment of students and faculty.
High school students are nominated by their schools, with the Governor’s School making the final selection decision.
Phillips says that from 2015 to 2021 he served as a faculty reader of applications. During those student selection meetings, the lawsuit says other reviewers favored applicants because of the student’s race, sex or sexual orientation and/or gender identity despite not having the academics records normally required for admission.
“Because admission is a zero-sum game with more applicants than admission spots, this necessarily resulted in bias against students with better academic records but characteristics that the faculty reviewers deemed ‘privileged’ such as being white, male, cisgender and/or heterosexual,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit charges that reviewers “expressed bias against overtly Christian students and students expressing conservative viewpoints.” As an example, the lawsuit says a reviewer dismissed a white male applicant as “sheltered” because he wrote an application essay critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Once students were accepted into the program, the lawsuit says faculty “promote and indoctrinate” students with “racist” concepts. The lawsuit points to a task force formed by Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson that issued a report in 2021 accusing teachers across the state, including at the Governor’s School, of trying to indoctrinate students.
The report included a section focused on the Governor’s School, including how a “flying gender unicorn” graphic was used to ask students questions about their sexual identity and to say that gender is nonbinary.
The report cites other examples at the Governor’s School that it says were part of an overarching theme of “white shaming.” As an example, it says the school told students that a person who is white, heterosexual, able-bodied, male, cisgender, financially stable and Christian is a “prince of privilege.”
Beginning in 2015, the lawsuit says Phillips began hearing from students with “privileged” characteristics about being discriminated against, harassed and silenced in class. For instance, the lawsuit says that an informal class poll of Phillips’ students “unanimously agreed the Governor’s School was more concerned with ideological indoctrination than with education.”
“Students with ‘privileged’ characteristics and/or conservative views were also told their views were categorically wrong and unwelcome in the Governor’s School community,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says Phillips frequently shared these concerns with the school leadership, including asking in 2019 for a campus survey on the scope of the hostility that students with “privileged” characteristics and/or conservative views were facing. The lawsuit claims the concerns were not addressed.
The lawsuit says things came to a head in the 2021 summer session when Phillips gave three optional seminars. The seminars touched on topics such as critiquing concepts from critical race theory and “the increasing ideological bias and lack of viewpoint diversity in higher education.”
The lawsuit says Phillips had offered versions of those seminars in prior years. But that summer, the lawsuit says students and faculty members came to the seminars “making comments that referenced whiteness, maleness, heteronormativity and Christianity” and saying they disagreed with Phillips’ views.
Phillips said that, despite the “open hostility,” he stayed long after the lecture period ended to answer questions.
The day after the seminar on viewpoint diversity in higher education, Phillips said he was told that his employment was being terminated effective immediately. Phillips said he was surprised because he had received glowing performance reviews without a single negative comment up to that point.
When Phillips asked why he was being fired, the lawsuit says he was told that the school was not at liberty to say. But the lawsuit says Phillips learned that at least one staff member had complained to the school about his seminars.
“The sequence of events — coming on the heels of an optional seminar at which staff members made their disagreement with and hostility to Dr. Phillips’s views clear — shows that the Defendants terminated Dr. Phillips because of the views he expressed,” the lawsuit says.
Phillips applied to work at the Governor’s School in 2022 but was not hired.
In the lawsuit, Phillips is alleging racial and religious discrimination, saying he was unfairly treated due to his views as a white male Evangelical Christian. He’s asking for, among other things, to be reinstated as an instructor at the Governor’s School and to be awarded back pay and damages for the pain and suffering he experienced.
Phillips has received the support of conservative groups such as the North Carolina Values Coalition, which says that he was wrongfully terminated.
“Our taxpayer funded educational institutions should be teaching students how to think critically and promoting a diversity of viewpoints, instead of censoring ideas competing with far-left ideology,” Tami Fitzergerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, said in a statement.
“I strongly support ADF’s challenge to Dr. Phillips’ termination and hope justice is served for Dr. Phillips. If proven correct, the school should be brought to task not only for teaching Critical Race Theory but for also punishing those who challenge it.”
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