As another school year gears up at High Point University, Carolina Forward is launching a campaign to urge university President Dr. Nido Qubein, as well as the university’s National Board of Advisors, to stand up for the United States Constitution by rejecting Mark Martin as the university’s founding law school dean.
Mark Martin, the Republican former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, played a central role in Donald Trump’s coup attempt against the United States government after his loss in the 2020 election. Martin was a principal architect of the attempt to set aside the 2020 election results and to illegally install Trump as president at any cost – up to, and including, abrogating the United States Constitution.
Carolina Forward’s campaign asking High Point University to rescind Martin’s appointment begins this week with a prominent billboard on I-74 in High Point directly adjacent to the university, as well as a focused digital campaign, and will continue throughout the fall semester.
“Mark Martin’s repeated attempts to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election were a blatant violation of basic Constitutional principles,” said Blair Reeves, Carolina Forward’s Executive Director. “Martin was an eager and willing participant in an effort to overthrow a duly-elected American government, and helped inspire the horror of January 6th’s right-wing terrorist assault against the U.S. Capitol. He is no longer fit to practice law, let alone guide the course of legal education based on a Constitution for which he shows pure contempt.”
Numerous well-sourced news reports, as well as evidence uncovered by the January 6th Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, have documented Martin’s repeatedly outrageous actions. As reported by the New York Times:
- Martin first crafted a strategy to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to permit state legislatures to nullify the elections in their states.
- When that failed, he then proposed the radical plan to allow the Vice President to personally reject state returns in the Senate as he saw fit.
- Phone logs show that Trump personally spoke twice to Martin on the very evening of the right-wing terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
Our future, and ultimately our democracy, depends on our best and brightest minds being empowered to be good citizens and stewards of our state and nation. Through his own actions to prioritize raw partisan power over the most basic Constitutional, legal and moral standards, Mark Martin has demonstrated that he lacks both the regard for our laws, as well as the personal integrity, required to lead. Carolina Forward calls on High Point University’s leaders to do the right thing by rescinding Martin’s appointment as the founding dean of their law school.
