RALEIGH - This past month, the new dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at N.C. State University, Toby Parcel, requested a meeting with the John William Pope Foundation to discuss additional private funds for academic programs at N.C. State University.

In response, a few -- few, but vocal -- faculty members at N.C. State publicly attacked me and the Pope Foundation for, among other things, using "dirty money," having "profoundly anti-democratic values" and being against public funding of education.

There is no factual basis for this. The hard-earned funds the Pope Foundation has received from my family and our company represent earnings from decades of general merchandise retailing in North Carolina and beyond that have provided thousands of jobs and served millions of satisfied customers. Rather than being "anti-democratic," I have served the state as an elected public official. As a legislator I have voted for billions of dollars in education funding, including for scarce public dollars for repairing or replacing outdated and often-hazardous engineering facilities at N.C. State.

I have voted against state budgets that did not fund the state's priorities and in fact led to shortfalls and forced reversions of university funds in the middle of the academic year.

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GIVEN THE COMPLETE LACK of any factual basis for these charges, why are these faculty members viciously attacking me and the Pope Foundation, especially when it was N.C. State University that approached the Pope Foundation for donations, not the other way around?

One critic, N.C. State professor Catherine Warren, raised a concern that donors may fund programs and curricula that fit a "particular ideology." Professor Warren is head of Women's and Gender Studies at N.C. State. The program's courses have included "Feminist Thought in the Social Sciences" and a course on the "in-depth exploration of the feminist perspectives on issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, work and mothering, among others."

Perhaps Warren's real concern is that private funds may support academic programs that do not conform to her own feminist ideology.

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I MAKE NO APOLOGY that the Pope Foundation prefers to support academic programs in the traditional liberal arts and humanities, including economics, history, political science and philosophy, rather than feminist studies. Funding from the Pope Foundation has allowed N.C. State University to bring to its campus Nobel Laureate economist James Buchanan, Nobel Laureate economist Vernon Smith and pre-eminent Harvard historian Harvey Mansfield for academic programs and lectures.

Professor Warren and other critics may disagree, even disapprove, of the academic work of such outstanding scholars as Buchanan, Smith and Mansfield. However, their response should be to engage in open, civil academic debate, rather than to try to shut off voluntary funding for points of view that do not meet their litmus test.

Indeed, the real losers in this are the students at N.C. State, who will lose educational opportunities that could be supported by voluntary private funding, if a course of study, scholar or the donor does do not pass the test of political correctness from a few faculty members with an ideological agenda of their own.

I hope that the university trustees, the majority of the faculty, students, parents and citizens of North Carolina will not stand silently by, as the quality of higher education deteriorates, the costs escalate and voluntary donors are driven away by the attacks of a few dogmatic faculty members.

(James Arthur "Art" Pope is a former state legislator, president of the John William Pope Foundation and CEO of Variety Wholesalers Inc.)