RALEIGH, N.C. — A national organization of university faculty members released a report Thursday criticizing the University of North Carolina System, saying it violates standards of shared governance, threatens academic freedom and fosters institutional racism.
“The University of North Carolina system is in trouble, and not the kind of trouble that record enrollments or good rankings can fix,” the report from the American Association of University Professors says. “It is the kind of trouble that festers and spreads.”
The special committee outlined examples of how it says the system is operating under ”pervasive and overtly partisan political control” with the state legislature “meddling in academic matters for political reasons” through the UNC System Board of Governors.
From the selection of chancellors to decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic to the tenure case for Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC-Chapel Hill, the group cites what it calls the damaging effects of subtle and overt political pressures that faculty have been wary of for years.
In response to the release of this report, the North Carolina Conference of the AAUP is holding a news conference Thursday at UNC-Chapel Hill to discuss the “mounting political interference at UNC” and what the system can do to address problems.
‘Falling woefully short’
The three main issues are best understood against “the background of political interference that has recently characterized the entire UNC System,” the report says.
Through its interviews, the group says, it found that a new era of the system began in 2010 when Republicans took over the state legislature and sought power through the system’s Board of Governors. State political leaders have historically made board appointments but after 2010, those appointees were “more uniformly Republican, more interested in the political ideologies of campus actors, and less experienced with higher education than their predecessors,” according to the report.
Governance problems combined with long-standing patterns of institutional racism make the UNC System a “hostile environment for faculty, staff and students of color,” particularly at UNC-CH, according to the report.
“We hope that this report may spur university leadership to action: our interviews suggest that any steps they may currently be taking to address institutional racism are falling woefully short.”
The report was produced by a special committee of AAUP members, led by Nicholas Fleisher, an associate professor of linguistics at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Afshan Jafar, a sociology professor at Connecticut College. Monica Black (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Emily Houh (University of Cincinnati), Henry Reichman (California State University, East Bay), Charles Toombs (San Diego State University) and Brian Turner (Randolph-Macon College) also served on the committee.
They interviewed more than 50 individuals across the UNC System, including faculty, former campus trustees, administrators and system staff members.
UNC System President Peter Hans, Board of Governors Chair Randy Ramsey, UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and UNC-CH Board of Trustees Chair David Boliek declined to be interviewed for the report.
University governance issues
The report says the Board of Governors and other administrative bodies are “exerting undue pressure and influence on those below them, often in reports to, or in anticipation of, political interference from the legislature.” And it argues that administrators are intruding into faculty responsibilities.
The report offers examples of how at Appalachian State University, the chancellor took “unilateral action” to appoint the provost, increased enrollment and chose not to attend faculty senate meetings after the group took a vote of no confidence in her.
The report also pointed out the controversial appointment of Fayetteville State University chancellor Darrell Allison, a former member of the Board of Governors who reportedly lacked support from the search committee. It mentions the lack of transparency in the vote to hire Chris Clemens as UNC-CH provost that followed concerns about pressures to appoint the conservative faculty member to the role. And it criticizes the previous East Carolina University and Western Carolina University chancellors searches and interference by former Board of Governors members Harry Smith and Tom Fetzer.
In 2020, the board gave the system president the power to select finalists for chancellor positions over the objections of search committees, which faculty called a “power-grab” at the time.
The “degradation of shared governance” across the UNC System also heightened conflicts between faculty and administration over university responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the report says. Faculty and student bodies at universities across the system were consistently at odds with university leaders over policies related to COVID, including vaccinations, testing and in-person classes each semester.
North Carolina AAUP conference chair Michael Behrent told the committee that the “onset of the pandemic precipitated a further loss of campus autonomy and accentuated a trend toward centralized and opaque decision-making by the UNC system and board of governors.”
Reluctance to criticize
Faculty leaders at several campuses said professors’ academic freedom for research or advocacy is not at risk. But some faculty members interviewed complained about low morale and a reluctance to publicly criticize their university.
“Where academic freedom has been threatened, the pressure has often been indirect — but chilling nonetheless,” the report says.
In 2015, the Board of Governors closed three university-based centers focused on poverty, the environment and voter engagement. The centers at UNC-CH and North Carolina Central University were headed by faculty members who had been vocal critics of state leadership, according to the report. The review for those centers came from the legislature to find cost savings, but the centers were largely privately funded and there was no academic assessment before they were closed, according to the report.
The board also voted to bar campus centers from engaging in litigation, which was targeted at the UNC-CH law school’s center for civil rights, according to the report.
Those actions “not only reinforced institutional racism by denying legitimacy and status to certain kinds of scholars and scholarship but also reinforced structural racism and classism within the state of North Carolina by denying valuable resources to its underserved, underprivileged, and marginalized populations,” the report says.
The report also highlights the board’s refusal to reappoint law professor Eric Muller to the UNC Press Board, which faculty feared was retaliation for him speaking out about issues of race and law within the system and at UNC-CH.
The committee found that while most faculty members enjoy academic freedom, actions by the board and campus administration puts that in “growing jeopardy.”
Institutional racism at UNC
The report points to three key cultural and structural issues in the UNC System related to race:
— The racial climate, which the report detailed through the recent controversies of the Silent Sam Confederate statue and tenure case for Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC-CH.
The committee found that a secret $2.5 million deal to give the statue to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which was later overturned by a judge, may have caused irreparable damage to the sense of trust and belonging for people of color.
The tenure case for Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer prize-winning Black journalist, also shed light on political and racial issues on campus. The UNC-CH trustees’ delayed vote on her tenure, the interference by mega-donor Walter Hussman and the way student protesters were treated on campus eventually led her to to turn down the position.
— Lack of racial diversity in system and campus leadership because those in power are mostly white and mostly male. The report noted that faculty say there is not equitable access to leadership and promotion opportunities, which limits professional advancement for faculty of color.
— The system’s inability to retain talented faculty and staff of color. The report mentioned several examples of actively engaged professors in leadership positions who left UNC-CH and App State.
Those departures are in part fueled by a “culture of exclusion, a lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making, the chilling of academic freedom, discounting certain kinds of scholarship and teaching and the constant threat of political interference,” according to the report.
Institutions across the nation are confronting similar issues, but the committee found the UNC System leadership’s “consistent mishandling — and exacerbation of — race-related issues” alarming.
The system is working toward acknowledging and fixing some of these issues through its Racial Equity Task Force, which was created in 2020. The task force has published two reports with recommendations and 28 action steps that campuses are implementing.
Leadership can change things
The report detailed “patterns of political interference by the North Carolina legislature into the administration of the UNC system, overreach by the board of governors and boards of trustees into specific campus operations, outright disregard for principles of academic governance by campus and system leadership, institutional racism, and a hostile climate for academic freedom across the system.”
While some of these issues reflect national trends, the mismanagement and “frequency and intensity of controversies” is unique to UNC, according to the report.
The AAUP proposed a solution that involves “strong and independent leadership at all levels” that respects and defers to the faculty, protects and defends academic freedom through political pressure and embraces equity beyond lip service.
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