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The American Association of University Professors chapter at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill issued a statement calling for the resignation of the campus's chancellor, Kevin Guskiewicz, Chapelboro.com reported. The statement follows revelations that the university’s controversial $2.5 million settlement with the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans to relocate a Confederate monument was negotiated by UNC system lawyers and Chapel Hill's vice chancellor of public affairs, Clayton Somers, not a five-member committee of the Board of Governors as previously reported.
“This news means that interim Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz was either inexcusably ignorant or deliberately dishonest in front of a large audience at the Faculty Council meeting in December of 2019, when he insisted that ‘we [at Chapel Hill] were not consulted’ about and did not ‘weigh in’ on the decision,” the AAUP statement says. The statement -- which also raises concerns about the university’s handling of campus crime reporting and its decision to reopen for in-person classes last fall against the advice of the county public health department director -- accuses the chancellor and his associates of “serial dishonesty.”
The university said in a statement that Guskiewicz has “demonstrated his commitment to the role of the faculty in our shared governance over his 25 years at Carolina, including eight years serving on the faculty leadership.”
In a separate message to the campus community last week, Guskiewicz said that he did not participate in negotiations for the 2019 settlement regarding the Confederate monument -- which has since been voided by a judge -- but that Somers had provided him with "general broad updates."
"I understood and accepted the UNC System and BOG’s authority to decide what to do with the monument and to negotiate, approve and implement the terms of the settlement," he wrote.
