UNC-Chapel Hill and its trustees have settled a lawsuit brought by former Provost Chris Clemens. Neither side admitted wrongdoing or will pay any penalties.
“The parties have mutually agreed to resolve the matter, with neither party recovering money from the other and each party bearing its own litigation costs,” they said in a joint statement through a UNC-CH spokesperson on Monday.
Both sides declined to comment further.
Clemens filed the suit in September, alleging that the university’s Board of Trustees routinely violated open meetings and public records laws. Among other incidents, Clemens claimed the board illegally entered closed session at a March 2025 meeting in which they decided to postpone consideration of faculty tenure cases.
He also claimed the board frequently used the encrypted messaging app Signal for university business with a feature that autodeletes messages, including for a discussion about whether Clemens had “denigrated” the trustees when he told faculty leaders about the tenure closed session.
“I have spent my whole career serving UNC because I believe in our mission and our people, especially my faculty colleagues,” Clemens told The Assembly at the time. “It is extremely disappointing that legal action is required to maintain the basic norms of transparency and good governance.”
A judge dismissed parts of the suit in January. The stalemate settlement brings a quiet end to a case that occasionally devolved into open rancor.
UNC-CH released multiple statements forcefully objecting to Clemens’ claims.
“Through their lawsuit, Clemens and his counsel attacked both the character and motives of the Board,” read a November statement from the university’s general counsel, Paul Newton. “They did so without even bothering to learn the true facts through a simple public records request. Their premature and ill-advised actions have forced the University, its Trustees, and—ultimately—taxpayers to bear the expense and distraction of responding to their baseless claims.”
(Clemens’ lawyer, David McKenzie, has also represented The Assembly in public records cases.)
The suit also shed light on conflict between Clemens, former board chair John Preyer, and Jed Atkins, dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership, who Clemens accused of telling Preyer about Clemens’ comments on the closed session. Clemens also claimed Atkins required associate deans in his school to use Signal for school business.
UNC-CH completed an investigation into the civics school that involved both Atkins and Clemens last month, but it declined to release the findings. Preyer resigned from the board in January.