RALEIGH -- A proposal to create a constitutional law center at N.C. Central University in Durham has been withdrawn after generating controversy because it would have been financed by a foundation with close ties to Raleigh businessman Art Pope.
The project was the brain child of Robert Orr, a former N.C. Supreme Court justice and former GOP candidate for governor, who hoped to create one of the few centers in the country devoted to the study of state constitutional law. Orr's proposed source of funding for the center was $600,000 in grants from the John William Pope Foundation, the family foundation headed by Art Pope, who has overseen the expenditure of millions of dollars to finance conservative causes and Republican politics.
After a number of alumni of N.C. Central's law school objected to Pope's involvement, Orr said he decided to withdraw from the project.
"I'm disappointed," Orr said in an interview Friday. "I thought it was a really good proposal. I thought it was important for the law school and important for the state. There is really nothing out there that adequately addresses research on the state Constitution."
He added, "Some folks just don't like Art Pope. Art was simply trying to help."
Pope said Friday that even though Orr had withdrawn his proposal, he was still open to a proposal by the NCCU law school for a constitutional center.
"It was Bob Orr's decision to withdraw his role in the proposal," Pope said. "If N.C. Central wants to proceed with a proposal for a center on North Carolina constitutional law without Bob Orr, they are free to do so and submit it to the John William Pope Foundation. I would look forward to receiving such a proposal."
Raymond Pierce, the law school dean, said the constitutional center was Orr's project, and with the law school facing so many other needs, it was unlikely that officials would pursue it.
Law school benefactors
Pierce praised Orr and Pope, both of whom, he said have been benefactors of the law school. Orr is a longtime adjunct law professor there and a member of the Board of Visitors. As a Supreme Court justice, he hired interns from the school. Pope facilitated the visit of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, funded a speaker series and commissioned a mural celebrating the Constitution.
"We've had a relationship with Art Pope for three or four years," Pierce said.
Pope, who heads a regional retail chain, has become a political lightening rod because he - through his family foundation - has poured tens of millions of dollars into a network of conservative organizations both in North Carolina and nationally. He also was the major financial backer of the Republican takeover of the legislature last year.
He has gained such prominence that he is scheduled to be the subject of a major profile in The New Yorker magazine next week - something usually reserved for national figures.
A proposal at UNC-CH
This is not the first time there has been controversy regarding a proposal by the Pope foundation. In 2005, the foundation offered to donate $4.9 million for the study of Western cultures at UNC-Chapel Hill. After faculty opposition the offer was withdrawn.
The Popes through their foundation have given a considerable amount of money over the years to UNC-CH, N.C. State University, Campbell University and other campuses, including $2.3 million to UNC-CH in 2006, most of which went to the sports program.
Orr, a student of the state Constitution, is executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, an organization funded in large part with Pope-foundation money, which has education projects but also has an advocacy role in filing litigation.
Orr said that for several years he has considered setting up a separate education center - with no advocacy function - that would be associated with a university and that would work in collaboration with the N.C. School of Government. He said the only similar organization is a center at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
The center as he envisioned it would have conducted scholarship research on the history and development of the N.C. Constitution and contemporary issues, provide educational programs for educators, lawyers and elected officials, and become a repository for historical information. Orr would have been the center's director.
Orr helped arrange for $200,000 per year or $600,000 over three years from the Pope Foundation. The proposal was pending before the law school's faculty curriculum committee when Orr sent his Sept. 27 letter withdrawing it.
Reaction from law school alumni was mixed, Pierce said.
"You had some alumni say it was a good idea for the law school," Pierce said. "And then you probably had more alumni expressing concern with some of the activity and affiliations of Art Pope. That gave some folks a cause for concern."
But Pierce said alumni pressure never entered into the faculty curriculum committee's deliberations.
