Jay N. Strong: UNC’s complicated denial

Bravo to Professor John Shelton Reed for his April 24 Point of View “Two UNC-CH cultures.” Understanding organizational and individual thought processes is essential to finding lasting solutions and a real a smack in the forehead of why people inside and outside UNC-CH cannot fully come to terms with the tragic derailment of the Carolina Way.

Rationalizing, trivializing and confronting are different tools that help people move forward – deny one group its needs, the wounds fester and cohesion suffers.

UNC’s management was slow and appeared deceptive and, as a result, was presumed to be unmoved by something so fundamental to some, a series of fundamental moral lapses, that it invited disaster.

Reed’s notions explain a great deal about UNC’s predicament and, more important, the world around us, such as how we can hold different points of view on abortion, voter ID, immigration, Common Core, welfare, budgets and the unknowns to fully explain global warming.

As humans, we process things differently – some more analytically collaborative and some more humanly reasoned. Like the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, we still seek beauty and truth expecting one thing above all else, that those who are most learned will admit what they don’t know and make it clear to us when they do.

This story was originally published May 4, 2015 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Jay N. Strong: UNC’s complicated denial."