The American Association of University Professors, a national organization of faculty, is investigating “a pattern of egregious violations of principles of academic governance and persistent structural racism” in the UNC System, particularly at UNC-Chapel Hill.
A special committee, announced in late September, will prepare a report on several issues, including the “mishandling” of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s tenure case. Her hire at UNC-CH sparked a national controversy related to race and politics in North Carolina.
Hannah-Jones was set to join Carolina as a Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, which is historically a tenured position at UNC-CH. However, she turned down the offer after a stalled tenure vote by the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, the threat of a discrimination lawsuit and public disputes over her hire and her work on The 1619 Project. Instead, she took a similar job at Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington D.C.
Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on The 1619 Project, which reframes U.S. history through the legacy of slavery and Black Americans’ contributions. It has become a trigger for highly politicized debates about US history, race and slavery.
The AAUP’s special committee will also look into the “influence of the gerrymandered state legislature” on the UNC System Board of Governors and campus boards of trustees across the state. The individuals on those governing boards are largely appointed by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The committee will examine “how the use of political pressure has obstructed meaningful faculty participation in the UNC system.”
The UNC System did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
AAUP review reflects faculty concerns
The AAUP’s concerns are similar to those recently made by UNC-CH faculty, former system leaders and other stakeholders as part of the Coalition for Carolina. They’re working to defend the university from political interference, which they say has led to campus controversies, including Hannah-Jones’s tenure, the handling of the Silent Sam Confederate monument and re-opening plans and vaccine protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also want campus administrators and faculty to have more autonomy to make decisions that affect their campus.
Michael Behrent, the president of the North Carolina State Conference of the AAUP, said this investigation was prompted by “longstanding and widespread frustration from faculty” at campuses across the system who called attention to the systemic problems.
Behrent is a history professor at Appalachian State University and member of that campus chapter.
Hannah-Jones’s tenure case and the chancellor selection at Fayetteville State University caught the attention of the national organization, according to Behrent. But the problems have built up over the past 10 years across the system as it has become more politicized, he said.
Other issues include votes of no confidence in chancellors at App State and UNC Wilmington, a new UNC System policy that gives the president more control in selecting chancellors and the closing of three university-based centers focused on poverty, the environment and voter engagement.
Behrent said governing boards and chancellors have “wildly departed from professional norms” related to shared governance and ignored faculty concerns.
“The basic logic is to make it clear to chancellors that the only people they have to be loyal to are the Board of Governors,” Behrent said, and to a lesser extent the campus boards of trustees.
Report could initiate censure
If the AAUP report finds violations, it could censure the university system. The principle behind that is that faculty and academic professionals are informed of the censure and encouraged not to apply for jobs there, Behrent said.
The AAUP has published special committee reports on a variety of issues related to academic freedom at universities over the past 70 years. They range from how college campuses treated faculty when dealing with communism during the McCarthy Era in the 1950s, segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s and national security in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
This Special Committee on Governance and Related Issues in the University of North Carolina System plans to publish its report in early 2022. Nicholas Fleisher, an associate professor of linguistics at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Afshan Jafar, a sociology professor at Connecticut College, will co-chair the committee.
Other committee members include 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).
Kate Murphy: 919-829-4842, @KateMurphyNews