The UNC-Chapel Hill chapter of the American Association of University Professors calls upon Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Chris Clemens to publicly support and defend UNC students, faculty, and staff who are supportive of Palestinian rights or critical of Israeli policies and practices. In this particular case, in this political climate, blanket statements about the first amendment, such as the one circulated at the beginning of the semester, are not enough.
See the full UNC-CH AAUP statement calling on Chancellor Guskiewicz and Provost Clemens to support free speech supportive of Palestine.
The American Association of University Professors has released a report of the Special Committee on Governance, Academic Freedom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina system. The report considers the influence of the North Carolina state legislature on the systemwide board of governors and campus boards of trustees. It discusses how political pressure and top-down leadership have obstructed meaningful faculty participation in the UNC system, jeopardized academic freedom, and reinforced institutional racism.
The special committee focused in-depth on UNC‒Chapel Hill as the flagship campus, but also examined events across the entire system. Through interviews with more than fifty individuals across the UNC system, the report details the pattern of political interference from the legislature and unilateral decision-making from university leadership that has increasingly come to affect the entire UNC system, with clear violations of AAUP-supported principles of academic governance set forth in the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
See the recording of the press conference at UNC Chapel Hill announcing the release of the report.
The report has received local and national press coverage: