Former Chancellor: "Welcome to the club Kevin. Another victim of UNC's middle schooler

(Editor's note: This column, written by former UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, was first published in the News and Observer, December 8th)

For the second time in 10 years, a University of North Carolina Chancellor ordered a green tie online and put it on for a press conference. I did that when I went to Washington University in St. Louis, and Kevin Guskiewicz did it when he went to Michigan State.

In the middle, former Chancellor Carol Folt donned maroon to go to the University of Southern California. We all left for more money and better job security. In all three cases, it was a failure of good governance that led to our departure.

Since 2010, the governing boards of the University of North Carolina System have shown that they’ve been watching too much “House of Cards.” If the leaking, undermining and bad governance don’t stop, they could easily make it 4-for-4 in a few years.

On any functional board, the only board member who speaks to the media is the board chair and that is done with full knowledge and cooperation of management. I worked for the board at Washington University in St. Louis, which included many prominent conservative members, and I’ve had the honor of serving on the boards of the St. Louis Symphony, Saint Louis University and PBS. On none of these boards would it be tolerated for a board member other than the chair to speak to the media either on or off the record.

But in North Carolina, it is now standard practice for board members to carry out their own public relations efforts separately from the administration. While this certainly happened before 2010, it has now become rampant. The irony is that many of these board members think that the university should be run more like a business, but they conduct themselves in a manner no business would tolerate.

In recent months, the UNC Board of Trustees have carried out their own public relations campaign to gain credit for launching the School of Civic Life and Leadership, a potentially commendable effort that could easily have been achieved without induced bedlam.

Instead, members of the Board of Trustees introduced a surprise resolution and then went on Fox News and bragged about it. They had their own public relations firm separate from the UNC communications staff that helped with all of that.

More recently, after it got out that Kevin was a finalist at Michigan State, the board leaked and then said on the record that they had been discussing Kevin’s exit with him. This was like a middle schooler saying, “You can’t break up with me, I’m breaking up with you!”

All they had to do was sit quietly and let him go, but you have to assume that they wanted political credit from their conservative friends.

Add to all of this something that is a long-standing problem, which is the chaos of having separate, politically appointed boards for both the UNC System (Board of Governors) and the campus (Board of Trustees). As far as the statutes are concerned, the BOG has far more power, and this leads to competition between the two boards.

In my case, the BOT asked me repeatedly to stay right up to the end (for which I am eternally grateful), but the BOG never did. In North Carolina, where chancellors do not have contracts, it made no sense to stay unless both boards wanted me to. In Kevin’s case, it was the other way around; his BOT mistreated him at every turn, but the BOG, although unfortunately silent, was not his problem. The complex political skills required to keep both boards aligned all the time with all this competition are rare. Yes, NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson has done it, but he is one of very few.

Don’t worry about Kevin, Carol and Holden. We all went to better jobs with more job security, more money and more influence. In North Carolina, we’re all seen as failed chancellors who got run out. In the other 49 states, we’re survivors who did the best we could in the midst of pandemonium.

If the boards continue their “look at me” behavior with the new chancellor, he or she will be welcome to join our club.

Holden Thorp is the Editor-in-Chief of Science and served as UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor from 2008-2013. This story was originally published December 8, 2023, 1:35 PM.

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article282830838.html#storylink=cpy