UNC-CH AAUP chapter president Michael Palm sat down with 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck to discuss the fight for tenure at UNC. The UNC-CH chapter and statewide NC AAUP and the national AAUP president have called on the UNC Board of Trustees to provide more transparency and a full explanation after an unusual months-long delay in approving tenure applications for dozens of faculty members earlier this year.

Listen to the discussion at Chapelboro.com.

In the 2024–2025 academic year, the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL) established a record that should cause embarrassment to UNC’s leaders. Of the nine Chapel Hill faculty initially brought on board to staff the SCiLL, at least six have already resigned, citing defective leadership, mission drift, and shocking procedural irregularities.

The expansion of SCiLL and the legislature’s design to exclude current UNC-CH faculty from planning and decision-making comes as other programs actually created by faculty and staffed by scholars with genuine disciplinary expertise will probably be placed on the chopping block.

Read more: https://unc-ch-aaup.org/scill

In a statement released today, national AAUP President Todd Wolfson congratulated the thirty-three faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools who finally received a tenure vote, after having been denied one without announcement or explanation by the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

Wolfson notes that the state of academic freedom and faculty governance at North Carolina’s flagship school, the first public university in the United States, is now in question:

The thirteen-member UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees … has significant work to do to repair the damage to academic freedom and the reputation of the university. Faculty members and their departments, who expected a transparent and honest tenure review, deserve answers to their questions: Why didn’t the board approve these faculty members in March? Why were humanities, social sciences, and professional school faculty targeted? What will be done to ensure this kind of delay does not happen again?

Read the full statement on the national AAUP site.