UNC-Chapel Hill Has a New Chancellor. He’s Already Got Critics.

Jon Gardiner, UNC-Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina System has tapped the interim chancellor of the Chapel Hill campus, Kevin M. Guskiewicz, to lead it permanently — a decision that comes as the latest Silent Sam controversy has rocked the university, and Guskiewicz has been faulted for his response to the blowback.

The emotions boiled over a week ago, during a Faculty Council meeting at Chapel Hill. The university system’s controversial settlement to rid the campus of Silent Sam — a stunning deal that gives a Confederate group $2.5 million and the statue — had enraged the university’s professors and many others.

Faculty members said they were embarrassed by the system’s actions, which were negotiated in secret and relied upon a questionable legal justification. The system agreed to pay millions in university funds to the Sons of Confederate Veterans group even though its lawsuit asserting ownership of the eight-foot statue of an unknown Confederate soldier had almost no chance of success. The system began negotiating the unusual payout even before the lawsuit had been filed.

Almost everyone at the Faculty Council meeting last week was angry. Some professors appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Guskiewicz, who was then interim chancellor, tried to calm the room, expressing sympathy but repeatedly declining professors’ pleas to speak more forcefully.

During one exchange, a professor asked: “Chancellor, will you or will you not commit to making a public statement tonight condemning the decision to pay off a white-supremacist group with university money? Yes or no?”

“Listen, I need to gather this information,” Guskiewicz said. “And I’m going to talk to our leadership team about this.”

It was a telling moment, and a week later, Guskiewicz was picked as Chapel Hill’s permanent chancellor. He will earn $620,000 annually.

T. Greg Doucette, a lawyer in Durham, N.C., who is seeking to overturn the Silent Sam deal, said Guskiewicz displayed “sheepishness” at last week’s faculty meeting, and appeared to be trying to stay in the good graces of state leaders who were about to decide whether to give him the permanent job.

“He lost the faculty at that point,” Doucette said. “And it’s a completely self-inflicted wound. There was no need for him to be that embarrassingly subservient about it, but he was anyway.”

Sherryl Kleinman, an emerita professor of sociology at Chapel Hill, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that Guskiewicz’s “lack of moral spine should have disqualified him from the job.”

A Distinguished Neuroscientist

Guskiewicz has had a distinguished career at Chapel Hill, spanning more than two decades. He is a neuroscientist who joined the faculty in 1995 and is a nationally recognized expert on sport-related concussions.

The Rise and Fall of Silent Sam

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.

• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Sparked a Backlash. Now a Judge Has Overturned the Deal.
• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Was Reached Quickly. The Blowback Might Last Longer.
• UNC Will Give Silent Sam to a Confederate Group — Along With a $2.5-Million Trust

Guskiewicz has also been a strong fund raiser during both his time as interim chancellor and, before that, as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

In announcing his permanent appointment, state leaders emphasized Guskiewicz’s qualifications and accomplishments while steering clear of Silent Sam.

“Not only is Chancellor Guskiewicz a visionary leader in his field of neuroscience, but he has already proven himself to be a visionary leader in the administration of UNC-Chapel Hill,” said the chair of the system’s Board of Governors, Randy Ramsey, in a written statement. “Under his leadership as both interim chancellor and dean, he has won praise from his peers as the university has celebrated many successes. Now that he is formally installed, the university will be able to harness this momentum and set a clear course for long-term achievement.”

The UNC Graduate and Professional Student Federation also praised the selection, saying in a statement that Guskiewicz had “worked tirelessly to address the needs of the university, mend divisions, and set a clear path forward that incorporates the many voices of stakeholders.”

Guskiewicz was named interim chancellor in February, after his predecessor, Carol L. Folt, abruptly resigned. Protesters had toppled Silent Sam during Folt’s tenure, and outrage over the statue’s offensiveness ultimately forced her to step down.

In a video posted Friday on Twitter, Guskiewicz said he was “humbled” to be permanently selected for the job.

“Carolina is my home,” he said. “I love this state, I love this university, and the opportunity to lead it is a profound honor.”

Guskiewicz called the university a community that “fights for the values that we believe in.”

Continued Blowback

The widening Silent Sam scandal will put those words to the test. In just the last few days, the latest developments have included the following:

• Attorney General Josh Stein sought to distance himself from the $2.5-million settlement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, with his office calling it “an excessive amount of money that should instead be used to strengthen the university and support students.”
• A national civil-rights group announced plans to intervene in the litigation that led to the $2.5-million deal, with the goal of overturning the payout. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argues that the Sons of Confederate Veterans misled the court by filing a lawsuit that it knew was meritless.
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a major academic donor, pulled a $1.5-million grant slated for Chapel Hill in response to the Confederate payout. The foundation told one North Carolina TV station that “allocating university funding toward protecting a statue that glorifies the Confederacy, slavery, and white supremacy — whether from public or private sources —runs antithetical to who we are and what we believe as a foundation.”

In a speech at Guskiewicz’s installation, the student-body president, Ashton Martin, pressed the chancellor to take a bolder stance against bigotry from now on. It is a message that the chancellor will almost certainly continue to receive.

“We want to see you publicly denounce hate,” Martin said, “and provide actionable solutions for the minority populations who have been harmed, time and time again, because of this statue.”

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.