UNC-Chapel Hill trustees recognize new campus leaders and affirm freedom of speech

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees on Thursday recognized a set of new leaders taking the reins this fall, including new deans at the university’s graduate and journalism schools.

Longtime UNC-CH professor Dr. Beth Mayer-Davis will step into the role at the graduate school.

Raul Reis will lead the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in the aftermath of the school’s national controversy over journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s tenure case that recently concluded with a legal settlement.

“This past year it was easy sometimes to forget that we are one of the very best schools of journalism and media in the country,” Reis said at the board meeting Thursday.

He said his main goal in the next couple of months will be to redirect the focus and the attention to the excellent work students, faculty and staff are doing at Carolina and build on that. Reis plans to meet with Hussman faculty in August to work on an action plan to “bring us together as a group, to build a better and stronger community and to move us forward as a school,” he said.

The board also recognized Dr. Nancy Messonnier as the new Dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health and Stanley Ahalt as the inaugural dean of the UNC School of Data Science and Society that launches this fall.

Trustees approved Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz’s recommendation of Kamrhan Farwell as the new vice chancellor for communication. Farwell, a former journalist, comes to UNC after serving as vice chancellor and chief marketing and communications officer for the University of Missouri and the University of Missouri System.

“I am inspired by the quality of the scholarship at UNC-Chapel Hill, the integrity of the leadership, and the enthusiasm of faculty, staff, students and alumni,” Farwell said in a statement. “I’m anxious to do my part in sharing the university’s compelling story and global impact with the world.”

The board solidified its own leadership by re-electing Dave Boliek as chair, John Preyer as vice chair, Malcolm Turner as secretary and Chris McClure as assistant secretary.

Commitment to free speech

The board passed a resolution affirming academic freedom and freedom of speech that came out of the joint University Affairs and Strategic Initiatives committee meeting Wednesday. The resolution reiterated the university’s commitment to protecting and promoting free speech and maintaining institutional neutrality on “social and political issues.”

Trustee Perrin Jones, a former Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, presented the resolution to the committee Wednesday. He suggested that many feel the university has strayed from its mission of supporting an “impartial pursuit of knowledge” and students are “learning what to think, rather than how to think.”

The resolution, Jones said, is intended to “realign the Carolina community with our founding principles” and “reinvigorate the trust and confidence of our fellow citizens.”

“By putting our principles out in the open, then everyone can clearly understand what we believe are important values for the university to live up to,” he said.

After the resolution was approved by the committee, Faculty Chair Mimi Chapman questioned whether institutional neutrality would prohibit school leadership from issuing statements in response to issues such as racial profiling or abortion access.

Statements from university leadership have “been described to me as balm, soothing something that is quite painful. Neutrality and its cousin silence is often experienced as dismissal,” Chapman said. “Perhaps [leaders are] speaking to their campus community when they speak, and not for them when these statements are issued.”

Those committees also heard from UNC-CH faculty researchers who have been working on a report about free expression at UNC system campuses and how comfortable students feel sharing their views on political issues.

The researchers found that most students felt that faculty encourage participation from liberals and conservatives alike. Students were more likely to be worried about reactions from their peers, and the report found that conservative students faced “distinctive challenges” in that this group was more likely to harbor concerns about sharing their political views.

Still, the first finding “pushes against the caricature that faculty at U.S. institutions of higher education, including UNC, are quite motivated to push political agendas in their classes, maybe in particular progressive, liberal” ideas, said Associate Professor of Political Science Timothy Ryan, who was one of the researchers behind the report.

The free speech resolution was approved as part of the consent agenda, alongside a resolution that makes a current UNC-CH student government practice — to distribute money from mandatory student fees in a viewpoint-neutral manner, in accordance with the law — a university policy. Student leaders cannot make funding decisions based on the particular view of a student group, organization or activity.

Other board business

The board also approved appointments to the Board of Trustees of the Endowment Fund and the UNC Foundation Board of Directors, and ratified appointments of upper-level administrators.

In his role as board chair, Boliek certified UNC-Chapel Hill’s spot to compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference and Guskiewicz’s role in representing the university in the ACC and NCAA.

Guskiewicz thanked taxpayers and the state legislature for raising faculty and staff salaries another 3.5% and approving additional campus building renovations, including more than $5 million for the nursing school.