RALEIGH (August 9, 2024) – In an announcement that surprised absolutely no one, the UNC Board of Governors named interim chancellor and former Board of Governors member Lee Roberts today as the new Chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill.
Roberts has served as interim chancellor since January, pledging to run the campus in “a nonpartisan way.” The budget director for former Gov. Pat McCrory succeeded former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who left to become president of Michigan State University.
“The questions facing public higher education are wide-ranging, enormously complex, and likely to become magnified in the years ahead,” said UNC System President Peter Hans. “I am convinced those questions are best addressed right now by a set of fresh eyes….
“Lee Roberts knows how to maintain the humanistic core of a Carolina education while confidently exploring the frontiers of science and technology that are doing so much to shape our world, and perhaps cross-pollinating those two areas of strength,” Hans said.
“Lee Roberts understands that responsibility and he appreciates the productive tension of preserving an institution and pushing it forward at the same time.”
In late March, at the first meeting of the UNC-Chapel Hill search “advisory” committee, Hans told the committee he hoped the search could be completed by year-end.1
But the search accelerated rapidly in recent weeks, with the committee canceling previously announced listening sessions this fall. The search lasted less than five months.
FACULTY AND OTHERS have suspected Roberts would be the choice of the Board of Governors – all of whose members are appointed by the Republican-dominated General Assembly. But they’ve been impressed by his actions since since April 30, when pro-Palestinian campus protesters took down the American flag and replaced it with a Palestinian flag.
Roberts led a contingent of campus police to restore the U.S. flag.
“That flag will stand here as long as I’m chancellor,” he told reporters in a moment that went viral.
State House Speaker Tim Moore soon told reporters the university should immediately remove the term “interim” from Roberts’ title. And state Senate leader Phil Berger said there was “no question” Roberts should become interim chancellor.
The perception that the outcome of the search was pre-ordained could make Roberts’ job more difficult and undermine him, particularly with faculty – but politicians don’t often consider such consequences when they’re standing in front of microphones.2
“It seemed to me like a bit of an audition for people who approve of these kinds of politics at the state level,” history professor Erik Gellman, the interim vice president of the university chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told The Assembly this week.
“He was certainly, I think, for most of the campus, kind of an unknown quantity because he doesn’t come from within,” said Mimi Chapman, former chair of the Faculty Council.3
YET ROBERTS, who is registered as an unaffiliated voter and has a background in finance, has impressed some initial skeptics during his semester as interim chancellor, demonstrating a degree of independence.
He has made it clear he reports to Hans as the UNC System President – not to the campus Board of Trustees, which serves an advisory role and does not make policy, though members at times think otherwise.
He defended athletics director Bubba Cunningham after the Board of Trustees ordered an audit of the department, for example. And when the Board of Trustees voted to transfer funds from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, he and Hans made it clear the trustees didn’t have that authority.4
Others describe Roberts as an active listener and learner who sometimes surprises university constituents with calls to make sure he understands an issue.
“He is very willing to listen to people who don’t agree with him or who have a different position on an issue,” Beth Moracco, chair of the Faculty Council, told The News & Observer. “So that is encouraging.”5
“I have appreciated the kind of in-depth questions that he asks,” Moracco said. “I do think it reflects a desire to learn and to understand the perspectives of a variety of people who are engaged with the university.”6
During his time as a member of the UNC Board of Governors, Roberts distinguished himself more as a technocrat than a chest-thumping ideologue.
In a period of declining enrollment for some campuses, for example, he was deeply involved in the design of a new performance-based funding model that in part shifted funding away from enrollment-based funding for UNC campuses.
Roberts is the latest in a series of UNC System officials appointed as chancellor at UNC campuses.
Darrell Allison, a former member of the Board of Governors, was named chancellor of Fayetteville State University in 2021. And Kim van Noort, a former Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, was named Chancellor at UNC Asheville last year.
WHATEVER THE PRECONCEPTIONS, Lee Roberts listens. He’s smart. He actively seeks to learn and understand a complex, multi-billion dollar institution that is the first public university in this country and this state’s greatest asset.
UNC-Chapel Hill has had four chancellors in the last 11 years.7 It could use some stable leadership, and it might just find it with Roberts.
Let’s give him a chance.
1 https://publicedworks.org/2024/03/unc-ch-chancellor-search-launches/.
2 https://publicedworks.org/2024/05/dont-short-circuit-chancellor-search/.
3 https://www.theassemblync.com/education/higher-education/lee-roberts-chancellor-search-unc-chapel-hill/.
4 https://publicedworks.org/2024/06/chain-of-command-chancellor-answers-to-unc-president/.
5 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article290888149.html.
6 https://www.theassemblync.com/education/higher-education/lee-roberts-chancellor-search-unc-chapel-hill/.
7 https://alumni.unc.edu/history-of-the-chancellorship/.
J.R. Phillips says
I agree with what he is doing, I have known his family for over 65 years and what he said is exactly what he will do!!