UNC Gets Its Own Story Wrong

It is jarring for a litigant to parrot the false claims of its courtroom opponent. But that’s what The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has done in defending a news media lawsuit seeking disclosure of a confidential report of an outside law firm’s investigation into the university’s high-profile civics school.

A brief the university’s lawyers filed recently in support of its motion to toss the case, as well as an accompanying affidavit by the university’s top lawyer, state that Carolina’s volunteer Board of Trustees created the School of Civic Life and Leadership in a January 2023 vote. That is a claim the school’s critics and several of the suing media organizations have often made. And it is false.

Paul Newton, the university’s vice chancellor and general counsel, says on page 2, paragraph 7 of his affidavit: “SCiLL was established on January 26, 2023 as a new academic unit of the University through a unanimous vote of the University’s Board of Trustees.” The university’s brief on its motion for summary judgment repeats that verbatim on page 3. But that is wrong, as Newton and the university’s other lawyers should know.

Instead, on that date the Board of Trustees adopted a nonbinding resolution urging acceleration of the university’s administration’s long-percolating plan to establish SCiLL or something like it; as a matter of plain and simple fact, the trustees did not establish the school. (Nor could it have under campus and university system policies.)

Eight months later, in September 2023, the university’s professional administration established the school through a formal internal process with significant faculty involvement and the continued encouragement of the trustees. (And, we should acknowledge, with a funding mandate from the N.C. General Assembly.)

Former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz explained SCiLL’s origins at length in a March 17, 2023 letter to SACSCOC, the university’s then-accreditor, as we have reported before. In his letter, Guskiewicz noted:

“The [BOT] resolution was clearly advisory in nature—not a policy decision—and as such was consistent with the Board of Trustees’ role as specified by UNC System policy as well as the Board of Trustees’ own Bylaws,” Guskiewicz wrote. “The resolution notes the administration’s authority to identify and develop proposals to meet academic programming needs, acknowledges the necessity to comply with UNC System and UNC-Chapel Hill policy, and ‘requests’ that the administration accelerate the development of the proposed School. My colleagues and I share an interest with the Board of Trustees in considering what could be an important extension of and in alignment with the vision and values of our IDEAs in Action curriculum, which called for an offering that would give students the ability to learn and practice debate and public speaking.”

Guskiewicz’s letter to SACSCOC left no doubt that the civics school proposal had emerged over years as the university’s curriculum evolved—and that even then it was still a work in progress.

“Leaders in the College of Arts and Sciences are currently preparing the early steps to evaluate a proposed expansion of the curriculum around our successful Program for Public Discourse, including the eventual appointment of a faculty steering committee,” he wrote. “Following our Board of Trustees resolution, I wrote a message to the University community on January 27, 2023, making clear that when this feasibility review process moves forward, we will follow the appropriate steps described earlier in this letter.” Then, Gusekiewicz quotes himself:

“Any proposed degree program or school will be developed and led by our faculty, deans, and provost. Our faculty are the marketplace of ideas and they will build the curriculum and determine who will teach it, just as they determined the capacities laid out in our new IDEAs in Action Curriculum. I will be working with our faculty to study the feasibility of such a school and the ways we can most effectively accomplish our goal of promoting democracy in our world today.”

Guskiewicz’s letter to SACSCOC continued:

“UNC-Chapel Hill will make no decisions about the proposed curriculum expansion (e.g. a potential School of Civic Life and Leadership) without due diligence and proper planning alongside deans and faculty. During that thoughtful and thorough process, we will continue to update the Board of Trustees, as well as our faculty leaders and other interested stakeholders.

“It is worth noting that, though we are still very much in the beginning of the process, the 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. This planning included a site visit by senior leaders to the campus of Arizona State University in 2018 to learn about their School of Economic Thought and Leadership, among other objectives.”

The Arizona State visit occurred five years before the trustees’ resolution. Former Provost Chris Clemens, who had circulated an internal funding memo outlining the school’s proposed establishment before the BOT resolution’s adoption, for years was perhaps its most ardent proponent. 

To some, the question of who birthed SCiLL might seem unimportant. Regrettably, many news reports and much commentary on the school have misrepresented its origins. But the matter was far from trivial to Chancellor Guskiewicz and to SACSCOC.

SCiLL is a much-needed offering for Carolina’s students and a benefit to society. In the investigation report litigation, as in other matters, SCiLL’s supporters and critics alike deserve accurate representations, including from the university itself.

Jenna A. Robinson is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.