Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the U. of North Carolina at Chapel HillGerry Broome, AP Images
[Last updated, 1/14/2019, 8:15 p.m.]
Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is stepping down at the end of the academic year — and ensuring that what remains of the campus’s Confederate monument is gone before she goes.
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for less than $10/month.
Don’t have an account? Sign up now.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
If you need assistance, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com.
Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the U. of North Carolina at Chapel HillGerry Broome, AP Images
[Last updated, 1/14/2019, 8:15 p.m.]
Carol L. Folt, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is stepping down at the end of the academic year — and ensuring that what remains of the campus’s Confederate monument is gone before she goes.
In an email to the university, Folt said it was “the right time” for her to leave, and added that she had directed the removal of the remnants of the university’s Silent Sam statue, a Confederate monument that has sparked unrest at the flagship for more than a century. Protesters tore down the statue last year, but a nine-foot-tall base and commemorative plaques remained in place.
Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier, dominated the main entrance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than a century, despite decades of protests. But suddenly, in August 2018, the statue was yanked down by protesters. And in January 2019 the campus’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, removed the statue’s pedestal and other remnants. Here’s how Silent Sam moved from dominance to disappearance.
The toppling of the statue touched off a fraught process over what to do with the downed monument. Late last year the university proposed housing it in a new, on-campus history center. That recommendation prompted fierce protests from students, professors, and activists who said it would effectively re-erect a symbol of white supremacy. The proposal was eventually rejected by the university system’s Board of Governors, which then formed its own committee to consider the question.
Monday’s announcement suggests that Folt’s decision to remove the rest of Silent Sam may be connected to her resignation. In a statement on Monday night, the chair of the system board, Harry L. Smith Jr., said the governors had not been notified of Folt’s resignation before it became public. “We are incredibly disappointed at this intentional action,” he said. “It lacks transparency, and it undermines and insults the board’s goal to operate with class and dignity.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Smith added that the governors had been in an emergency meeting about “issues related to UNC-Chapel Hill’s leadership” when Folt’s announcement was made public.
In her message to the campus, Folt said the removal of Silent Sam’s pedestal was a matter of safety. “As chancellor, the safety of the UNC-Chapel Hill community is my clear, unequivocal, and nonnegotiable responsibility,” she wrote. “The presence of the remaining parts of the monument on campus poses a continuing threat both to the personal safety and well-being of our community and to our ability to provide a stable, productive educational environment. No one learns at their best when they feel unsafe.”
She added: “While I recognize that some may not agree with my decision to remove the base and tablets now, I am confident this is the right one for our community — one that will promote public safety, enable us to begin the healing process, and renew our focus on our great mission.”
In a statement the campus’s Board of Trustees said it had accepted Folt’s resignation and supported her decision to remove the statue’s base. “The chancellor has ultimate authority over campus public safety, and we agree Chancellor Folt is acting properly to preserve campus security,” the statement said. “Nothing is more important than keeping our campus community and visitors as safe as possible.”
Nothing is more important than keeping our campus community and visitors as safe as possible.
Still, the decision will probably also prompt questions about whether it complies with the law. A 2015 North Carolina law prevents the removal of “objects of remembrance” from public property in most cases. The university cited the statute in its recommendation to keep Silent Sam on the campus, saying its hands were effectively tied.
ADVERTISEMENT
That recommendation didn’t pass muster with the system’s governing board in December. After a three-hour discussion that was closed to the public, Smith said that the governors “applaud” the plan but could not support it, “given the concerns about public safety and the use of state funds” to build the proposed $5.3-million history center.
Five members of the system’s board were slated to work with Folt and the campus’s Board of Trustees to present a revised plan for the monument by March 15. It was unclear on Monday whether Folt would still be involved, though Smith, the chairman, said in his statement that the process was “unchanged.”
In the weeks before the system board’s vote, some teaching assistants pledged to withhold students’ grades in protest of the plan just as final exams were due to be graded. At the time Chapel Hill said it could not verify whether any grades had been withheld, and activists eventually said they had lifted the strike.
But they alluded to possible future demonstrations during the spring semester, and last week a group called Concerned Antiracist Graduate Students issued a call to their peers not to attend proposed meetings with Kevin M. Guskiewicz, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Direct action did this. Tremendous gratitude for the UNC students who have worked so tirelessly and who have sacrificed so much for our collective well-being to remove the structures and architecture of white supremacy at UNC. #SilentSamhttps://t.co/HMR0EBoFOB
Faculty members on Friday resolved to form a committee that would help provide instructors’ input on the new plan due in March, said Harry L. Watson, a professor of history and member of the Faculty Council. Folt was scheduled to speak at the meeting but was unable to attend, he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
When faculty members asked the provost, Robert A. Blouin, what the decision-making process would be, he didn’t have many details, Watson said. Blouin underlined that the “Board of Governors owns this process at this point,” a UNC representative said.
How the university’s new plan for the statue might include faculty and student voice is “definitely unclear,” said Watson. But he praised Folt’s decision to authorize the removal of the statue’s pedestal and plaque.
“I’ve had my differences with the chancellor, but I never doubted that she meant the best for Carolina,” Watson said. The statue’s presence and its base are offensive to much of the community, he added. “It’s a good thing that the statue’s gone. It is going to be a good thing when the pedestal is gone.”
“She faced a lot of controversy that I am quite sure she did not anticipate when she took the job,” Watson added, “and has worked very hard to deal with those controversies in her own way.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Folt has been Chapel Hill’s chancellor for more than five years. Previously the acting president of Dartmouth College, Folt took the reins at UNC in the turbulent aftermath of an academic-fraud scandal that shook the campus to its core. The breadth of that scandal was only revealed after Folt invited an external investigation that found a system of fake classes had been used to keep some athletes eligible to play.
Steven Johnson is an Indiana-born journalist who’s reported stories about business, culture, and education for The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
