Who Guides Carolina? The Influence of the UNC Board of Trustees

 

Detractors ignore the explicit role of the University’s governing board.

 

By Harrington Shaw

 

Few entities in the UNC System have received greater public and media scrutiny than the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. Without question, the board has played a key role in University affairs, drawing praise from those who have long hoped for policy reform and criticism from those who believe the faculty should guide the institution’s direction.

 

Indeed, Carolina has undergone significant changes since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and the Board of Trustees has been a catalyst for several reforms, programs, and governance decisions. Thus, an examination of the board’s role––both its statutory mandate and its recent actions––will add valuable information to the often heated discourse surrounding the University’s political and academic trajectory.

 

First, it is worthwhile to consider UNC’s institutional origins. The University was chartered by the North Carolina state legislature in 1789, and exists to fulfill the North Carolina Constitution’s mandate that it is the “duty of the State to guard and maintain” the people’s “right to the privilege of education.” The University’s first trustees were tasked with acquiring land and beginning construction of the school after being granted financial resources by the state legislature. The first building’s cornerstone was laid in 1793.

 

The Board of Trustees, tasked by the state legislature with starting the University, still acts as the institution’s guide, tethered to the people whom the University serves by their elected representatives. More recently, the growth of North Carolina’s university system as a whole necessitated a unified Board of Governors, which delegates some of  its shared oversight authority to each school’s board of trustees. Today, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees is composed of fifteen members. Six are appointed directly by the state legislature, while eight are appointed indirectly by the state legislature via the Board of Governors. The fifteenth member is the student body president.

 

State law grants UNC’s Board of Trustees the power to “promote the sound development of the institution within the functions prescribed for it, helping it to serve the State in a way that will complement the activities of the other institutions and aiding it to perform at a high level of excellence in every area of endeavor.” The Board of Trustees serves as advisor to the Board of Governors, and, importantly, as “advisor to the chancellor concerning the management and development of the institution.” The chancellor, in turn, is “responsible for carrying out policies of the Board of Governors and of the board of trustees.”

 

In evaluating the trustees’ recent actions and performance, one must consider the Board of Trustees’ statutory mandate. As a governing body tasked with guiding the University’s development and advising the chancellor, the board must effectively identify areas of concern and opportunity for the University. Then, it must work with and advise administrators, offering institutional guidance and serving as a voice for the people of the state. 

 

Chief among today’s challenges and opportunities for the University are free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity on campus––the same issues that spurred the development of the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance. On this front, the Board of Trustees has taken significant action. According to James G. Martin Center President Jenna Robinson, the board has been “proactive and effective” in its action on these issues “by adopting the Chicago Statement on Free Expression, committing to institutional neutrality, and supporting civil discourse on campus.” In this regard, Robinson says, the board has properly fulfilled its oversight role.

 

Others at Carolina, however, have criticized the trustees’ actions, arguing that they have extended their reach beyond their rightful powers and duties. The Coalition for Carolina Foundation and UNC faculty council, for example, criticized the trustees’ call for the accelerated development of the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL). 

 

Mimi Chapman, a co-founder of the Coalition and faculty chair at the time, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the trustees were overstepping by “trying to insert themselves into the running of the campus and the development of the curriculum.” While she cites deviations from the board’s degree of engagement in the past, she does not point to any way in which the board overstepped its statutory mandate or delegated powers by requesting that the new school be fast-tracked to operation. Neither Chapman nor current faculty chair Beth Moracco responded to UNC AFSA’s multiple requests for comment.

 

Mark McNeilly, a professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, argues that the trustees have positively impacted the school by “adopting institutional neutrality, supporting the formation of SCiLL and taking other actions.” McNeilly notes the board’s role in representing the voice of North Carolina’s taxpayers in University governance, stating that the trustees “cannot be a rubber stamp in the shared governance process but need to engage with the university in a dialogue to bring in that outside voice.” 

 

Critics like Chapman argue that the trustees' advocacy for SCiLL represents a departure from established norms of academic governance. Many faculty members at UNC, much like at other prestigious institutions, tend to view curricular matters as their domain. While the trustees did not unilaterally establish SCiLL, the perception of top-down pressure has fueled concerns about encroachment on faculty prerogatives.

 

In response to detractors such as those from the faculty council, McNeilly states that the board’s greater engagement in its advisory role in recent years “is a change from the past, so it’s not surprising that some faculty are unhappy.” Furthermore, plans for a school like SCiLL were in the works among faculty and administrators before the trustees’ call to accelerate SCiLL’s development, weakening Chapman’s insinuation that the school was created by board fiat.

 

The Board of Trustees’ SCiLL resolution was “meant to support and advance senior administrators’ budget memo outlining the program” following conversations between faculty and administrators regarding the expansion of the Program for Public Discourse. Former Chancellor Guskiewicz stated that “work regarding the curriculum expansion for the Program for Public Discourse derives from planning, conversations, discussions with faculty leaders, and site visits dating back to February 2018.” However, regardless of which campus constituency first conceived of SCiLL, the trustees were within their statutory authority to suggest how campus leaders might address pressing issues such as the lack of open discourse on campus.

 

UNC’s trustees are right to be concerned. Recent data from FIRE shows that 58 percent of UNC students feel somewhat or very uncomfortable expressing their views on controversial topics in class. Thirty three percent of students think that using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is at least rarely acceptable. At the same time, the public’s confidence in higher education has dropped precipitously.

 

Statistics like these paint a dark picture for an institution whose mission requires the open dissemination of knowledge and the free exchange of ideas within its community. As the voice of North Carolina’s citizens at UNC, the Board of Trustees should advocate for programs, schools, or other means of remedying threats to the mission of the University––both to regain public trust and to promote the “sound development of the institution.” Without such oversight and course correction, the people’s university could spiral out of control in the hands of a faculty increasingly aligned in viewpoint.

 

After the trustees recommended the acceleration of SCiLL, it became the role of the administration and the faculty to determine whether, and how, to construct such a program. In the time since, the new school has garnered the attention of a nation hopeful for positive change in higher education by offering courses pertinent to current national issues and assembling a talented faculty, including many internal hires, focused on open discourse and the pursuit of truth. In this regard, the new free-speech focused school is an example of shared governance at its finest.

 

Harrington Shaw is the managing director of the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance and an economics and philosophy graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Twitter/X: @harringtondshaw