In a partially divided vote, UNC-Chapel Hill faculty have adopted two resolutions formalizing their concerns about the university's School of Civic Life and Leadership.
More informally known as SCiLL, university administrators market the degree program as an "interdisciplinary home" where professors use a civics-based education to teach students how to debate and understand various sides of contentious issues.
The school has been controversial since the university’s Board of Trustees passed its own resolution to expedite its creation in 2023. At the time, then-BOT Chair David Boliek told media SCiLL was an effort to remedy a lack of "right of center views" on campus.
"A space for free speech, a culture of civil and open inquiry in which we as a university and faculty members and other students would recognize members of political outgroups as friends to learn from rather than foes to vanquish," said Boliek at a January 2023 BOT meeting.
Later that year, the state legislature mandated UNC-Chapel Hill administrators establish the school and hire outside faculty to teach within it — earmarking millions of taxpayer dollars for its installation.
Critics argue campus classrooms already involve diversity of thought and that the board's creation of the school circumvented typically faculty-led processes.
Over the years, SCiLL has been involved in a seemingly never-ending round of controversies — from its curriculum, allegations of biased hiring and retaliation at the hands of the school's dean, and the mass resignations of several inaugural faculty members and a former UNC-Chapel Hill Provost.
Most recently, faculty, students, and the media have been calling on Chancellor Lee Roberts to release a report detailing a $1.2 million investigation into SCiLL. It's the subject of one of the two faculty resolutions.
Maxine Eichner is one of the professors who created the resolution calling for the report's release. She said SCiLL has been a continual public embarrassment to the university.
"We've been concerned about media reports about the lack of rigor associated with SCiLL," Eichner, a law professor, told WUNC. "A recent New York Times report contained a frankly embarrassing account of a class on Men and Women, whose assignments included students going on a date, planning their marriage, and planning a ball together as a group project — those are not the classes that are normally taught by tenure-track faculty anyplace else in the university,"
"We want to understand what's happening," Eichner continued. "And to the extent that the report reveals that there were problematic actions happening, we want to know what the university is going to do to address them."
Shortly before the faculty voted to pass the resolution, several student organizations held a protest with faculty members also calling for administrators to release the SCiLL report.
"Students are done being sidelined, faculty are done being ignored. Communities are done being treated like an afterthought," said Nia Quigley, a member of UNC's Sunrise Movement. "When the faculty council raises concerns about governance and transparency that should not (be) something leadership brushes aside. Ignoring faculty isn't just dismissive; it undermines the entire idea of shared governance.
"If this school intends to represent itself as a research institution, as an institution of respect and higher learning, this is not how you conduct yourself," Quigley continued. "And it's unacceptable that these files have yet to be released."
Chancellor Roberts and the university's lawyers have maintained that they can not release the report because it contains private personnel information and is subject to attorney client privilege. Roberts didn't attend this month's faculty council meeting, due to a previously announced scheduling conflict.
"All of the allegations that the report was investigating or were about personnel processes and how different people had treated each other, what they had said to each other," Roberts said at last month's faculty council meeting. "The legal advice we suspected — and we were right — would be that you can't release this."
Eichner, however, said the university has released a similar report in the past. In 2014, the administrators waived privilege to publish an athletics report detailing UNC's infamous sports cheating scandal. She said they could do the same with SCiLL.
"What the chancellor called for publicly is a review of policy and processes — we are certain that review is in the report." Eichner said. "Public records law in North Carolina makes it very clear that if there is in any document a combination of material that can't be released with material that can be released, it is the responsibility of the government entity at issue to release the material that can be released, while redacting the rest of that material."
At last month's faculty council meeting, Roberts noted the sports cheating report was a special circumstance, brought about by external threats from the NCAA.
"There are a lot of people who came forward and in that report spoke in the expectation that what they said would be treated confidentially," Roberts said at the March meeting. "In many cases, their careers were subsequently ended once the report was made public. Or at minimum, they suffered significant embarrassment. And so that's the downside to waiving the privilege."
The vote to pass Eichner's resolution was divided, with several faculty members abstaining or choosing to vote against it. Multiple professors raised concerns about pushing for the files to be released, echoing administrative worries about retaliation against faculty who spoke up or a possible "chilling effect" that could hinder future external investigations.
Faculty were unanimously supportive, however, of the other resolution presented by the UNC Faculty Executive Committee.
Faculty Chair Beth Moracco introduced the measure and said it was asking for broader understanding around the development of any school at the university. The resolution notes that controversies surrounding SCiLL have revealed inconsistencies in UNC-Chapel Hill's overall oversight practices.
"Developments concerning the School of Civic Life and Leadership have raised alarms among faculty that warrant reflection, explanation, and clarification to resolve issues that affect faculty trust, comfort, and the effective functioning of shared governance," reads the UNC Faculty Executive committee-created resolution.
Back in October, faculty sent Roberts and other administrators a memo with several questions about SCiLL's appointment processes, performance evaluation, and reporting structures. University administrators, faculty said, have yet to answer them.
The resolution re-asks these questions and poses several more focused on the protocols for establishing any new school at the university. They also ask whether there's a blanket policy for hiring faculty, developing curriculum, and awarding tenure across schools.
"In the past five years, we've had very different trajectories for three different schools that have been established," Moracco said. "... Faculty should be involved in these processes, procedures, and the development of schools."
UNC-Chapel Hill's faculty resolutions come as the broader UNC System is funding targeted civil discourse programming across its 16 public universities.
System President Peter Hans first announced the move in February, saying the System is investing in several priorities from debate training, grants for faculty to develop civil discourse courses, and seed funding for student organizations who are engaging in civic life on their campuses. The initiative will be called the "UNC Common Ground Collaborative."
At UNC-Chapel Hill, administrators are planning to use federal money to launch a high school summer civics institute and public fellows program. The university most recently accepted a $10 million matching National Endowment of the Humanities grant to further efforts at SCiLL.
"SCiLL was created to strengthen civic knowledge, civil discourse, and principled leadership – values that are essential to a thriving democracy and central to Carolina's public mission," Chancellor Roberts previously stated in a press release. "The School will continue to evolve and improve, and the University will stand alongside it with confidence in its future."
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