Halfway through a tasting at an April food gathering, the founder of a nonprofit focused on encouraging local cultivation of crops made an impassioned speech about squash that left everyone feeling like the plant could save the world.
Across the Southeast, diners are demanding more meaning and connection from food festivals, which were once unapologetic frenzies of debauchery. Industry experts say an emphasis on context and culture is indicative of where food festivals are heading.
But there’s another big challenge: money. Lining up corporate sponsorships is proving difficult for many festival organizers, Emma Castleberry reports.
“What you really need is cash,” said Terri Terrell, director of development for the nonprofit Utopian Seed Project. “That is what is so needed, without strings attached.”
Turning on a Dime
Food festivals have tried to correct for exploitation and elitism, but still struggle financially. The demise of Asheville’s Chow Chow is just the latest.
Have a news tip for our team? You can reach us at scoops@theassemblync.com.
UNC-Chapel Hill Fires Professor It Spied On
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School informed economics professor Larry Chavis earlier this week that it would not renew his contract when it expires at the end of this month.
The Assembly wrote about Chavis in April, when we learned that Kenan-Flagler had secretly recorded his lectures—in violation of the school’s own IT guidelines—as part of an investigation into his “class content and conduct.”
Chavis, a non-tenured professor who worked on an annual contract, confirmed his termination to The Assembly this week, though he declined to comment further. He posted to LinkedIn on Tuesday, “I’ll just say now that life is hard. Harder professionally than it has ever been or that I could have ever imagined. I’ll bounce back, but a few tears will flow first.”
A UNC-Chapel Hill spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Chavis, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina who had called for more diversity at Kenan-Flagler, has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill since 2006. Though senior associate dean Christian Lundblad had told him in a February email that the business school planned to renew his contract, Chavis said he suspected his position was in jeopardy.
In May, Lundblad sent Chavis an evaluation that cited a handful of student complaints from course reviews in 2023 and 2024 that he’d focused too much on Indigenous issues and racial discrimination in the school. One student reported feeling unsafe because Chavis reportedly said he was going to “burn this b*tch [sic] down,” referring to the business school building, according to the evaluation.
In an email, Chavis told Lundblad that the negative evaluation came from a student with “an ax to grind.”
The Assembly’s review of student comments showed that the complaints represented a minority of his students; most rated him an excellent professor and said his course was a useful addition to Kenan-Flagler’s roster.
Ultimately, that was not enough to save Chavis’ job.
Last month, Provost J. Christopher Clemens told the Faculty Executive Committee that while the campus had no policy governing whether or when administrators could secretly record professors’ lectures, he would develop one.
—Jeffrey Billman
What We’re Reading
For the Birds: Mandy Cohen, who led the state response to Covid-19 and now runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells NC Health News the government is now better equipped to handle bird flu.
Ew, David: A Cary woman undergoing cancer treatment said she was accosted—and coughed on—by a man who called her a liberal for wearing a face mask at an oil-change service station, per WRAL.
Now Body Roll: “My jaw dropped,” pop star Chappell Roan told the INDY after a TikTok of a Durham church playing “Hot to Go” on the bells for Pride month went viral.
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