NC Republicans caught again meddling with the UNC System. They should leave it alone

In North Carolina, shared governance in higher education can be little more than an illusion. The Republican-controlled state legislature has a habit of micromanaging the UNC System and its many campuses, demolishing the wall that ostensibly separates public universities from the politicians who fund them.

A particularly blunt example of this political interference was highlighted this week by The Assembly and WHQR, which broke news of House Speaker Tim Moore’s attempt to meddle in the search for a new chancellor at UNC Wilmington.

Moore, apparently, abruptly removed former state Rep. Holly Grange from her position on the UNCW Board of Trustees three years before her term was meant to expire. The reason? Grange did not support Moore’s preferred candidate for the open chancellorship.

“I was removed simply because the Speaker of the House could not secure the chancellor’s position for his chosen person,” Grange wrote to a member of UNCW’s senior staff, according to emails obtained by The Assembly and WHQR.

That chosen person, apparently, was Clayton Somers — Moore’s former chief of staff who has been a senior administrator at UNC-Chapel Hill since 2017.

Moore and his political allies reportedly threatened consequences if the chancellor search committee did not name Somers as a finalist — consequences that could affect UNCW’s budget.

UNC-CH has apparently received backlash for its own treatment of Somers, who was recently reassigned from his role as the university’s vice chancellor of public affairs. In retaliation, Somers used his leverage in the state legislature to cut funding that had been promised to UNC-CH in this year’s compromise budget, according to The Assembly and WHQR’s story.

These are deeply troubling revelations, and they’re part of what might be a larger pattern for Moore. In 2020, members of the East Carolina University Board of Trustees said that Moore was seeking ECU’s open chancellor position. The year before, there were also persistent rumors that Moore himself wanted to be the next UNC System president.

Since Republicans gained control of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010, they have shaped the UNC System in their image. Trustees of UNC System campuses are hand-picked by the legislature, as are members of the Board of Governors. Those appointments are overwhelmingly former Republican lawmakers — as in the case of Grange — or their allies.

A special report released in April by the American Association of University Professors detailed the “pervasive and overtly partisan political control” of the UNC System since Republicans took power, from institutional racism to threats to academic freedom. The organization’s governing board later passed a joint resolution “resoundingly” condemning the university system.

Many of the highest-profile scandals, such as last year’s Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure debacle, have involved UNC-CH, the system’s flagship. Rumors swirled in July 2021 that state politicians and the UNC System Board of Governors were looking to remove UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and replace him with a more “political” figure like Somers. Later that year, UNC-CH faculty chair Mimi Chapman wrote in an op-ed in The Daily Tar Heel that Guskiewicz was under “significant pressure” from trustees and the UNC System to make a particular choice in the search for the university’s new provost.

“This place is not broken. It is under siege. If you love Carolina, leave it alone,” Chapman wrote. The Board of Trustees eventually appointed UNC-CH professor and “outspoken conservative” Chris Clemens to the position in December 2021 in a secret and possibly illegal vote.

But as Moore’s alleged behavior at UNCW reminds us, Republican interference bleeds far beyond Chapel Hill. Lawmakers like Moore seem to think the people’s university is their kingdom, and they’ve weaponized it in their quest for power and revenge.

Is this what we want our public university system — long regarded as one of the nation’s best — to be known for?

This story was originally published October 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "NC Republicans caught again meddling with the UNC System. They should leave it alone."