Margaret Spellings Says ‘It’s Not Too Late’ for UNC to Take a Stand on Silent Sam

Margaret Spellings is ending her tenure at the University of North Carolina as she began it: mired in a fiery debate over a controversial state law.

The former education secretary started as the university system’s president in March 2016; a couple of weeks later, North Carolina lawmakers passed HB2, known as the “bathroom bill.” The law forced transgender people to use restrooms and other public facilities consistent with the gender specified when they were born. Lawmakers repealed the law last year but left some of its provisions intact.

Last week, at Spellings’s final UNC Board of Governors meeting, the board rejected a proposal for what should be done with Silent Sam, the Confederate monument that activists on the Chapel Hill campus tore down in August. The plan would have created a $5.3-million center at the institution to house the statue, but many students and professors rallied against it, saying Silent Sam doesn’t belong on the campus. One key issue is a state law that protects “objects of remembrance” on public land, requiring the statue to be returned to Chapel Hill.

Her take? The board’s decision to scrap the proposal was “absolutely the right thing to do,” she said.

Spellings announced in October that she would leave UNC, just three years into a five-year contract. Her tenure will officially end in March, but she will now leave office in January, making way for her interim successor, Bill Roper. Roper was the longtime chief executive of the UNC Health Care System and dean of the Chapel Hill medical school.

Spellings has given no specific reason for her departure, saying only that “all leaders are for a time.” Observers have chalked up her decision to a souring relationship with a divisive and meddlesome board, which has intervened in matters — like campus-chancellor searches — that typically fall under the president’s authority.

She will return to Texas, where she honed her political career working for George W. Bush. In the short term, she plans to help a new organization focused on public policy in Texas get off the ground and restart her consulting business.

Spellings is optimistic that the university will find a workable solution for Silent Sam. She is bullish on efforts she has spearheaded to improve accountability and affordability in North Carolina. But she is worried about the state of higher-education governance in general, and what that means for public-university presidents.

The Chronicle sat down with Spellings on Wednesday. Here are highlights of the conversation.

Once UNC board members hear from students and faculty members on Silent Sam, they might change their minds.

Asked whether she thought UNC would end up on the wrong side of history when it comes to Silent Sam’s future, Spellings turned the conversation to governance. The system’s board is appointed by the legislature. So it’s no surprise that board members are on the lawmakers’ side. Current state law requires the statue to be returned to the campus.

But, she said, “it’s not too late” for the university to take a stance against the law.

Spellings met with students and faculty members in Chapel Hill last week and talked about Silent Sam. She was joined by Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the Chapel Hill campus, and Harry L. Smith Jr., chair of the Board of Governors. It was “compelling,” Spellings said, to hear the personal accounts of why the statue’s presence on the campus was so offensive.

She believes UNC’s full board needs to listen to those same stories. So far, board members have been removed from the issue. “They’ve watched on TV, you know, Maya Little yelling at police officers and the toppling of the statue,” she said. Once they talk directly with students and professors, she continued, it could help board members come to the conclusion that it’s best for the statue to be moved off campus — and that the law should change.

“The board is not there yet,” Spellings said. “They deserve to hear firsthand what the implications are.”

That’s a more effective approach, in her view, than the decision by dozens of teaching assistants to withhold fall-semester grades in protest of the plan to return the statue to the campus. The protesters released grades for the fall after UNC’s board rejected the plan for Silent Sam, but they said they’d strike again in the spring, if necessary.

“The tactics that are being employed here, not giving grades to students who paid and worked hard — I mean, that’s outrageous. I’m sorry,” Spellings said.

The debate over the statue is an example of why higher-education governance needs reform.

It’s unclear who in North Carolina is in charge of making decisions about campus statues, Spellings said. “On Silent Sam — I mean, we’ve got a Board of Trustees, a Board of Governors, the historical commission, the legislature, the governor,” she said.

Spellings cited the University of Texas at Austin as an example of a place where the removal of Confederate statues went more smoothly, because “the authority and accountability have more clarity.” Gregory L. Fenves, Austin’s president, took down three monuments last year with little fanfare, citing the violent protests involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. Spellings was mentioned as a possible candidate for chancellor of the Texas system this year.

A lot of players have roles in North Carolina’s higher-ed governance structure, she said. Among them are 28 university-system board members, 17 university chancellors, 58 community-college leaders, and hundreds of campus trustees.

Another issue, she said, is the disconnect between the “people paying the bills” and the people on campuses. In a recent poll, a majority of North Carolinians said they wanted Silent Sam put back on its pedestal immediately. That’s not the prevailing view among students and faculty members in Chapel Hill.

“Higher-education leaders like me kind of stand between the reddest of the red in state legislatures and the bluest of the blue in the academy,” she said.

It’s tough to be a public-university president nowadays.

Spellings has said that the amount of time she’s spent at UNC is comparable to that of most public-university presidents these days. (The average tenure of a college leader has declined to 6.5 years, according to the American Council on Education.)

When there are shifts in priorities on a governing board, she said, it’s normal for new leadership to come in. Most of the UNC board members who hired her, in 2015, are no longer there.

But she acknowledged the consequences of the increasingly shorter tenures of presidents, especially when it comes to handling the most fundamental challenges facing higher education, like college access and completion. Loss of momentum, for one. And it’s expensive and time-consuming to start over with a brand-new leadership team.

What will improve the situation for college leaders, in addition to governance reform, she said, is “enhanced respect.” That means academic leaders need to listen to the lawmakers and board members who are demanding increased efficiency and cost containment. Conversely, those policy makers need to listen to the academic leaders who made the universities what they are today.

In the meantime, though, will public institutions suffer because qualified candidates no longer want to throw their names into the hat? “Only time will tell,” she said. “Good people want to work in places where they can be successful.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.