We hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and are enjoying the start of the holiday season.
We’ve been thankful to share some exciting and encouraging Carolina news with you recently – from three UNC students being awarded prestigious Rhodes Scholarships to Chancellor Lee Roberts taking bold leadership by rejecting the Trump administration’s higher education compact.
There’s so much to be proud of when it comes to Carolina. And then there’s the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL).
SCiLL is in the news again, and as we’ve come to expect, it’s not for good reasons.
We previously covered the SCiLL saga – from its creation with improper input by the UNC Board of Trustees and without input by UNC faculty to more recent controversies that have led to the school being the subject of an independent investigation.
Now, the most recent revelations are detailed in The Daily Tar Heel piece “’Dictatorial powers’: SCiLL dean ignored vote of the School’s advisory board.”
As the DTH outlines:
The School of Civic Life and Leadership hired seven new faculty members in June as a result of its spring hiring search — despite a near-unanimous vote of the School’s advisory board against the entire slate of candidates.
Three of those five board members resigned shortly after the vote, citing a lack of transparency throughout the hiring search and abuses of power on the part of Jed Atkins, director and dean of the school. SCiLL has had no shortage of resignations and controversy since its inception, and is currently being investigated by an outside firm.
Through multiple credible sources, the story makes even more clear what has been evident for some time now: Jed Atkins is unfit to lead SCiLL. The school has been home to a revolving door of faculty and advisory board members – many respected professionals who have come and gone quickly.
After resigning, one SCiLL advisory board member wrote that he had seen “incivility and dysfunction, biased and unfair processes, a complete disregard for governance, and a willingness to deceive and misrepresent that is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my 15 years in academia.” Another resigning board member said she had seen “improprieties, slander, vindictiveness and manipulation.”
Carolina continues to lead the way in higher education, and SCiLL only continues to serve as an embarrassment. SCiLL’s formation was controversial. But SCiLL is here now, and it’s important the school add something to the University other than headaches and PR disasters. It’s time for new leadership at SCiLL if the school is destined to have any sort of positive impact on Carolina and its mission.