BY HANK REICHMAN

In an unprecedented move, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Board of Governors has refused to re-appoint a respected law professor to the University of North Carolina Press Board of Governors.  The reason seems to be the professor’s public statements on the legality of the UNC System’s controversial handling of the Silent Sam Confederate monument and UNC-Chapel Hill’s failure to deal appropriately with sensitive issues of race and history.

Eric Muller, the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law in Jurisprudence and Ethics, has served two five-year terms on the board of the Press, the last six of those years as chair, a position to which he was unanimously re-elected this year.

When the UNC Board of Governors’ University Governance Committee met last month, they approved two of the three reappointments submitted to them but declined to consider Muller for reappointment.  The committee and its chair, David Powers, gave no public explanation.

The UNC Board of Governors approves all appointments to the UNC Press Board of Governors.  But until now, the board has followed the recommendations of the campus level nominating committee and the chancellor.  On March 24, Chapel-Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz sent a letter to UNC System President Peter Hans approving the nominating committee’s recommendation for the reappointment of Muller, Linda Hanley-Bowdoin and Elizabeth  Engelhardt.  But on May 19 the UNC System office informed Guskiewicz and UNC Press Director John Sherer that the University Governance Committee would only consider Engelhardt and Hanley-Bowdoin.

Powers, chair of the committee, said in an email that the board wanted to “change the membership on some of these boards more frequently.”  However, although Muller was being appointed to a third term on the UNC Press board, so was Hanley-Bowdoin.  Englehardt was being appointed to a second full term.  The committee expressed no problem with either of their appointments.  The University Governance Committee asked Guskiewicz to advance another name for the board, but not Muller.  Guskiewicz declined to do so, but did not tell the UNC Press board or the director of the UNC press that he’d gotten this request.

A source close to the process provided e-mails related to the decision to NC Policy Watch and described some of  discussions of Muller’s nomination to which the anonymous source was privy.  “By any metric, Muller has done a remarkable job on that board and as chairman of the board,” the UNC System source said.  “There is no defensible reason not to reappoint him that is related to the actual work he has done and the work of the UNC Press.  But he’s also been outspoken on some sensitive political issues for the Board of Governors, especially on the Silent Sam deal with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, on the renaming of buildings on the UNC Chapel Hill campus.”

“He’s recently been outspoken on the Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure issue in his role on the Faculty Executive Committee at Chapel Hill,” the source said.  “The decision was already made to get rid of him by then, but this is the kind of thing they don’t want someone in that UNC Press role speaking out about.  Just strip him of that and he’ll either learn to shut up or the next person in that position will think twice about speaking out against them.”

Today, June 21, Muller, who had previously been silent on the controversy, issued a statement via Twitter:The move is part of a larger strategy to remove dissenting voices from prominent positions across the UNC System, the NC Policy Watch source said.  “The thinking is that if the board of governors makes these appointments, they would be stupid to continue appointing people who are going to be critical of decisions they are making for the UNC System as appointees of the North Carolina General Assembly,” the source said.  “There was a time when these things were thought of as separate and not connected to the politics.  But the way they’re looking at it now, they have no use for anyone who is going to be a critic to be in a prominent position if they can prevent that.  It’s just ‘You want to criticise the people who are running this system now and how they’re doing it?  You can do that, but you’re not going to do it from inside the tent. There are going to be consequences for that now.’”

“Muller has been on the radar of some of the board of governors members for a couple of years now,” an anonymous board member told NC Policy Watch.  “There was a lot of anger that there was a prominent UNC law professor talking about the deal with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and saying that it didn’t hold up legally.  There were members who really felt like it is not the role of law professors at the university to comment on legal matters involving the university, that they’re supposed to be teaching classes and not making statements to the press about what we do.”

“He has had a target on his back,” the board member said of Muller.  “I don’t personally think it is a smart move to go targeting appointments based on someone’s speech or viewpoint, which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment.  I think it’s asking for another lawsuit if we start getting into that with every board that we have any control over.  But we have seen that when it comes to politics, this board is fine facing lawsuits.  We may not win them, we may see certain things invalidated like with the deal over Silent Sam, but we’ll go to court.”

“You saw this with Nikole Hannah-Jones at Chapel Hill and you’re seeing it here,” the board member added.  “They didn’t vote down an appointment or refuse to appoint, they just decided not to deal with it at all.  They sort of killed it in committee.  They didn’t take any action, so they can argue that their hands are clean.  They didn’t do anything.  It’s non-action.  But it amounts to the same thing.  It’s not going to happen because they’re not letting it happen.  They’re standing in the way of the system and how it usually works.”