The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will not hold campus forums this fall to allow the UNC community to weigh in on the ongoing chancellor search, The News & Observer reported.
UNC Chapel Hill held listening sessions for community members in the spring and announced it was planning to do so again in the fall. But last week officials reversed course; search committee chair Cristy Page, executive dean of the UNC School of Medicine and chief academic officer of UNC Health, told reporters the fall forums were off.
According to The News & Observer, Page said the committee had already received enough feedback from forums and an online survey and didn’t believe there would be “added value” in more sessions.
Critics of the decision told the newspaper that they think the committee is sold on interim chancellor Lee Roberts, who they expect already has the job locked down. Roberts, a former Republican state official, was elevated to the interim role from his seat on the UNC Board of Governors. As interim, Roberts has received both praise and criticism for his decision to march with police as they clashed with pro-Palestinian campus protesters who removed an American flag from a flagpole and temporarily replaced it with a Palestinian flag.
North Carolina Republicans have since pushed for Roberts to be given the job permanently.
The final decision on UNC Chapel Hill’s chancellor search will go to the Board of Governors, on which Roberts served from 2021 until this past January, when he took the interim chancellor job after Kevin Guskiewicz departed to become president of Michigan State University. Roberts, who served as state budget director under Republican governor Pat McCrory from 2014 to 2016, previously taught at Duke University but has no prior administrative experience in higher education.
