Lee Roberts, a former state budget chief with political connections but no experience leading a campus, was named interim chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Friday. The choice appears to reinforce simmering fears among some at the flagship that the groundwork is being laid to install a permanent leader without real input from the campus itself.
The pick may represent the culmination of a decade-long effort by the state’s Republican politicians to seize control of the UNC system’s governance and its flagship university. The American Association of University Professors issued a report last year condemning the politicization of the system.
Three sources previously told The Chronicle they expected Roberts to be named to the permanent post after serving as interim, a position typically filled by a senior administrator or someone with experience leading a campus. Roberts’s only higher-education leadership is his seat on the system’s Board of Governors.
“This is just completing what has been in the works for a while,” said Michael S. Harris, a professor at Southern Methodist University who studies higher education. “Normally, an interim is someone like a provost or an executive vice president who can step in and keep the momentum going on all the initiatives. Clearly, North Carolina isn’t a normal situation.”
Roberts has served on the system’s board since 2021. He resigned that seat in order to take the interim spot. He also was a former state-budget director for Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor. He will take over for Kevin M. Guskiewicz, who was hired as Michigan State University’s president earlier this month. Guskiewicz will start in East Lansing, Mich., in March. Roberts, the co-founder and managing partner of SharpVue Capital, a North Carolina investment firm, will start on January 12.
In a campus news release, Roberts pledged to do the best he could to lead the university. “First, do no harm, as it says in the Hippocratic oath. Second, ensure a smooth transition. Third, make sure students and faculty and staff have what they need. And fourth, leave the place a little bit better than how you found it.”
To be effective in this role, you need to be able to work with Republicans and Democrats and independents and everybody else. That’s what I’ve done in my past roles.
He also said he would do the job “in a nonpartisan way.” He added: “To be effective in this role, you need to be able to work with Republicans and Democrats and independents and everybody else. That’s what I’ve done in my past roles.”
The decision to appoint Roberts was made by the system’s president, Peter Hans, who before his presidency served a dozen years on the system board, to which he was appointed by the state legislature. He was chairman of the board from 2012 to 2014 and led the state’s community-college system from 2018 to 2020.
“Lee Roberts is a patient leader, a generous listener, and someone raised with the values of public service,” Hans said in a written statement. “He knows how to find common ground on challenging issues, and he brings out the best in everyone around him. He’s deeply committed to the university, and I’m excited to work alongside him in supporting the great work happening at Carolina.”
No Input
Members of the Chapel Hill community were concerned about the lack of input into the choice of interim chancellor. The campus’s Board of Trustees was not consulted at all or formally informed of the process or any details about the search for a permanent chancellor, sources with direct knowledge of conversations among board members said. (They declined to speak on the record because they had not been authorized to discuss the choice publicly.)
There was also concern before the appointment about Roberts’s lack of experience. The only other interim or acting Chapel Hill chancellor to take the role without traditional academic experience was William O. McCoy, then a retired vice president for finance for the UNC system when he was named Carolina’s acting chancellor for six weeks in 1999, while the permanent chancellor, Michael K. Hooker, was ill. Shortly after Hooker’s death, McCoy was named interim chancellor and served until James C. Moeser was named permanent chancellor, in 2000.
The search process for chancellors was recently tweaked to place more power over the searches in Hans’s hands. He picks the search committee, interviews the finalists, and makes the ultimate choice. A UNC-system spokesman previously told The Chronicle that rules are in place to ensure that the search-committee membership is representative of the campus.
But the appointment of an outsider occurs within an inescapable context: the Republican Party’s takeover of UNC-system governance over the last decade.
“Historically, the governance of UNC and its member institutions has been nonpartisan,” said Barrett J. Taylor, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Texas and the author of a 2022 book that looked at the politicization of universities, including in North Carolina. “Every step that is closer to political partisans’ running the university on a day-to-day basis is noteworthy and concerning.”
UNC isn’t the only university to have taken an unorthodox approach lately to interim leadership. When Kristina M. Johnson stepped down as Ohio State University’s president, the board didn’t appoint anyone to the vacancy during a national search. Instead, the trustees had administrators report directly to various board subcommittees.
Roberts’s selection as interim mirrors the choice of Darrell T. Allison as permament chancellor at the UNC system’s Fayetteville State University. According to media reports, Allison, who was a member of the system board, wasn’t recommended as a finalist by the search committee before Hans selected him to lead.
In a system news release, Guskiewicz said Roberts is “committed to the state of North Carolina and the important role of public higher education.” He added: “I look forward to working with him during our transition. He will build on the incredible work underway by our world-class faculty, dedicated staff, curious students, and passionate alumni.”
