Fired UNC Civics Associate Dean Breaks His Silence on Investigation

David Decosimo has been at the center of controversy around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Civic Life and Leadership for more than a year. But aside from announcing on X in September 2025 that he had been fired from his post as associate dean of the school, he has said next to nothing publicly.

An August 30 Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the school, also known as SCiLL, changed that. The editorial board argued that UNC-CH’s still-secret investigation into the school was the result of a “smear campaign” against its dean, Jed Atkins. 

Decosimo submitted a letter to the editor claiming that it was instead the result of failed, partisan leadership at the school and that people were punished for criticizing that leadership.

“SCiLL’s problems under its current dean have nothing to do with ‘progressive attacks,’ let alone ‘faculty who oppose its mission,’” he wrote in a draft, which he provided to The Assembly. Instead, faculty “handpicked by the dean,” including himself, had soured on the school as the result of ongoing problems, he wrote.

“The dean’s former supporters and I believe that hiring should be based on merit and mission rather than party or patronage, that free speech should be protected rather than punished…,” Decosimo wrote. “For defending these principles, we were maligned, marginalized or fired. Even writing this may mean facing renewed attacks.”

The Journal originally showed interest in Decosimo’s letter, and responded with edits and fact-checking notes over the course of a few days. But the letter, which Decosimo shared with The Assembly, was not published.

After Labor Day weekend, an editor wrote that they were “not ready to move forward at this time, although it’s still under consideration.” On September 10, Decosimo sent a follow-up email pointing out the Journal’s frequent, positive coverage of SCiLL. Refusing to publish a critical letter from a faculty member “is impossible to square with an honest or fair-minded approach to the School or an interest in the facts,” Decosimo argued.

The Journal’s SCiLL Fascination

The Journal editorial board has played a prominent role in promoting SCiLL. 

Its editorial board has written at least 10 pieces about SCiLL since its creation in 2023 and published two others by individual contributors, as well as eight batches of letters in response. The paper’s news division covered SCiLL once in that time–a story by Pamela Paul, a former conservative columnist at The New York Times. 

Other prominent civics centers have received much less attention. During the same period, the editorial board wrote once each about the programs at the University of Texas at Austin and Ohio State University. It didn’t write about civics centers at Arizona State University or the University of Florida at all, even though columnist Walter Russel Mead teaches at the latter.

The content of their coverage suggests they have an inside track on what is happening at SCiLL. Some faculty and staff first learned that the Board of Trustees “accelerated” SCiLL’s formation from an editorial in the paper published the same day as a surprise resolution. This spring, the editorial board revealed that SCiLL was being made an independent school before the university announced it. 

And the August editorial that Decosimo attempted to respond to echoed points made by SCiLL professor and outspoken Atkins defender Dustin Sebell in his first and only Substack post, which was published earlier that day.

“Each of these editorials has been more glowing than the last,” Decosimo wrote in one email to the Journal criticizing the decision not to run his letter. “As someone intimately familiar with and deeply involved in what has happened at SCiLL, the editorials read like propaganda created by Jed Atkins and his primary advisor and best friend Keegan Callanan.” 

Callanan, the higher education director for the foundation of the powerful conservative donor Paul Singer, has played a background role at SCiLL since before it was created, The Assembly has reported.

Decosimo also wrote in his email that he personally heard Callanan take credit for arranging the Journal’s extended 2024 interview between Atkins and opinion columnist Barton Swaim.

Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of the Wall Street Journal, responded, telling Decosimo: “Your intemperate note today is unwarranted and false in many respects, and it doesn’t inspire confidence in the accuracy of your claims about the UNC controversy. But we’ll still give your letter careful consideration.”

The editors did not respond to Decosimo’s subsequent requests for status updates. When The Assembly reached out to Gigot about its focus on SCiLL, any connections to the school, and Decosimo’s complaints, he provided a written statement.

“The Journal editorial page has had a longtime interest in higher education reform, including more intellectual diversity on campus,” he wrote. “UNC’s SCiLL program has been in the vanguard of this movement and it has faced campus opposition. This is news and we are in the news business. The same goes for the results of the recent UNC investigation.” 

“As for Mr. Decosimo,” he added, “our recent editorial didn’t mention him. As a general rule, we don’t comment on our editorial process or decisions.” 

Sebell, the author of the Substack post cited by the Journal editorial, dismissed Decosimo’s concerns about the decision to not publish his letter.

“If David is finding no success with letters to the editor, he might try his hand at tragic opera,” Sebell wrote in a text. “The plight of the incompetent, misunderstood associate dean, distrusted by colleagues and newspaper editors alike, has received surprisingly little attention in the canon of Western opera. Few could treat the theme with greater authority.”

In his letter, published in full below, Decosimo argued such dismissals resulted from a partisan loyalty test.

“Does criticizing a conservative leader make you a leftist and an enemy?” he wrote. “Are servility and flattery the price for a seat at conservative tables? At UNC, the answer seems to be yes.”

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David Decosimo’s full letter to the editor:

Regarding your editorial “The Fight for Free Thinking at UNC” (Aug. 31): Having faced down Ibram Kendi at Boston University, I joined the University of North Carolina to help lead the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL) and renew higher education.

The editorial board is mistaken: SCiLL’s problems under its current dean have nothing to do with “progressive attacks” or “faculty who oppose its mission.” The dean’s critics include the chief economist for the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission, a Jane Austen scholar trained under Leon Kass and Allan Bloom and the former provost, a self-described “astrophysicist for Jesus” who sponsors the college Republicans and was a driving force behind SCiLL’s very creation. We faculty were handpicked by the dean to serve him. None of us would accept that invitation again.

Bad leadership knows no party.

UNC’s investigation was $1.2 million of “attorney work product” for lawsuits it feared the dean’s leadership might provoke. And what lawyer wouldn’t claim that allegations “which could still form the basis of future legal proceedings” against their client were “unsubstantiated”?

We believe that hiring should be based on merit and mission rather than party or patronage, that free speech should be protected and not punished, and that a school devoted to leadership and virtue should model both. For defending these principles, we were maligned, marginalized or fired. Even writing this may mean facing renewed attacks.

Does criticizing a conservative leader make you a leftist and an enemy? Are servility and flattery the price for a seat at conservative tables? The answer—and not only at UNC—increasingly seems to be “yes.”