The Quad: Lee Roberts’ Long Game

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Lee Roberts’ Long Game

The first interview I had with UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts came a few days after the “interim” was scratched off his title last August. Sitting in his South Building office on a sweltering summer afternoon, Roberts and I covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes, from his top priorities to the upheaval in athletics to tensions surrounding DEI.

But what I remember most is the one subject that he described as “near and dear to his heart” in that conversation: Deferred maintenance on university buildings.

After I reported on Roberts’ interim term and sat down with him last August, I became The Assembly’s point person on the new chancellor, with the goal of writing a profile examining how a politically connected business executive would ultimately lead the country’s oldest public university. It only seems fitting that one of my last stories at The Assembly tackles that question.

In pursuing his goal of making UNC-CH the No. 1 public university in the nation, Roberts has been laser-focused on the institution’s growth, from expanding enrollment to developing the university’s real-estate footprint. But Roberts’ tenure at UNC-CH could be remembered more for President Donald Trump’s dramatic cuts to research funding and trustee battles over tenure than for his plans to revamp the university’s finances.

In my most recent interview with Roberts this month, it became clear that despite doubts about his business-driven approach and massive uncertainties surrounding higher ed writ large, he is sticking to the plan he laid out a year ago.

“There is significant disruption. There is significant dislocation,” he told me. “I think it represents an opportunity for Carolina.”

— Erin Gretzinger

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Thanks for reading The Quad, a higher education newsletter written by Matt Hartman and Erin Gretzinger and edited by Emily Stephenson. Reach us with tips or ideas at highered@theassemblync.com.

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So Long Slavic Studies

When I got a tip that Duke Libraries staff said the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies was being eliminated, I thought the first major domino in Duke University’s “strategic realignment” was falling. Except the department isn’t being eliminated. According to Duke, library leaders got it wrong.

Still, all of the department’s staff left during the ongoing buyouts and layoffs, and the new chair is a faculty member from the Department of German Studies—which has been in discussions about merging with Slavic and Eurasian Studies for more than a year.

Read more about that here.

I’ve now spoken with dozens of Duke faculty and staff, and I keep hearing similar confusion, rumors, and misinformation about what is changing in this time of disruption across the campus. Two areas in particular stand out:

1. What does faculty governance mean? While many Duke professors have lamented the lack of faculty input, including over which staff got buyouts and layoffs, others say the university engaged appropriately with the Academic Council. The core of the issue, as one professor described it at a June council meeting, is whether faculty governance requires the administration to consult faculty while developing plans or merely inform faculty about them.
2. What’s the strategy behind the strategic realignment? Duke leaders have been clear that these cuts will mean the university will do less. But many on campus have expressed confusion about what, exactly, is being prioritized. “Throughout the process we have not heard once about what the vision for Duke University as an educational institution is,” Jewish Studies professor Shai Ginsburg told the council in June.

— Matt Hartman

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Abandoning the ‘Gold Standard’

When the UNC System in February ordered state universities to spike any graduation requirements that called for diversity, equity, and inclusion-related content, it came with a caveat. Chancellors could approve waivers for programs that had to teach students about diversity issues. 

Ultimately, 95 percent of the waivers that university leaders approved were for social work, nursing, education, counseling, and psychology programs. And most of those, school officials said, had to teach DEI content because of the licensure and accreditation requirements for those degrees under North Carolina law.

Sen. Michael Lee, the Senate majority leader, may try to change that.

In emails obtained by The Quad, Andrew Smith, a policy advisor to Lee, discussed modifying the language of professional licensing standards for degree programs that qualified for waivers with Dan Harrison, the UNC System’s vice president of academic and regulatory affairs.

Smith wrote that his research had confirmed that state law requires all social work programs to be accredited by the Council on Social Work Education, which includes competency standards such as “demonstrate anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work practice.”

“Just to make sure I am aligned with your needs and our conversation, we are looking to change that element, right?” Smith wrote to Harrison. “Would you prefer it completely stricken, edited to allow other accrediting bodies, or another option?”

He added: “Additionally, are there other programs/degrees you’d like us to consider changing language? Talk soon.”

A few days later, Harrison wrote that the UNC System identified similar laws requiring programmatic accreditors for four other fields: mental health counseling, educator preparation, psychology, and nursing. Smith thanked Harrison for “looking into the programs that need legislative support.” The pair also scheduled another meeting to discuss the issue further.

The UNC System said the conversation about the degree programs was routine. “The UNC System Office routinely gets requests from legislators and their staff to provide factual information on a range of topics. This was one such request, to which Dan Harrison provided the information requested,” said Andy Wallace, director of media relations.

Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Wade Maki, chair of the UNC System faculty assembly and philosophy professor at UNC Greensboro, said he recognized that the legislature can change state statutes but cautioned that, if lawmakers did so, people who have not undergone the rigor of accredited programs could enter those fields.

Maki said that what’s common across the programs identified in the emails is that all five require graduates to understand and navigate differences, skills that are important when considering the needs of communities in the state.

“If this is the gold standard that has been used, and the state has recognized that in law… why would you lower standards?” Maki asked.

—Lucas Lin and Erin Gretzinger

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Assigned Reading

Hidden Figures: The Daily Tar Heel reports that a pro-Palestinian mural created by students in an art class was boarded up overnight and subsequently removed at the direction of Roberts and interim UNC-CH Provost Jim Dean. The art department chair told DTH the mural, which had been displayed for more than a year, was concealed without any department consultation. Student Body President Adolfo Alvarez and Faculty Senate Chair Beth Moracco wrote to Roberts that the move “threatens academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus.”

At-Risk Status: After Luis Alonso Juárez, a well-known bus driver at Duke, discovered he was at risk of losing his immigration status, local Durham advocacy groups rallied to support him, NC Newsline reports. While Juárez, who is from Honduras, was granted Temporary Protected Status in 1998, his status is set to expire on Sept. 8 after a Trump executive order eliminated that protection for Hondurans.

‘Gyro Zone’: The Duke Chronicle asked DukeGPT, the school’s new artificial intelligence bot, some questions that revealed its limitations. The bot hallucinated a “mediterranean Chipotle” restaurant on campus that it named “Gyro Zone,” and it imagined a non-existent East Campus dorm. The writer also described the AI’s rankings of hot campus spots as “unconventional at best.”

Let us know what’s on your radar at highered@theassemblync.com.

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