‘No one has provided me with clear answers’: Four inaugural faculty leave SCiLL

The School of Civic Life and Leadership, which is offering classes for the first time this semester, has undergone significant faculty turnover since its inception. 

The nine inaugural faculty members of the school were announced in an email by Jim White, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, in October 2023. Political science professor Sarah Treul was appointed as the interim director and dean of the school; the faculty she would oversee spanned eight different academic departments. 

Former director of Duke’s Civil Discourse Project Jed Atkins was named permanent director and dean of the School of Civic Life and Leadership in March, following a dean search involving Treul and two other candidates. Since the time Atkins was appointed, Treul and three other members of the original faculty told The Daily Tar Heel that they are no longer affiliated with the school.

“As a social scientist, my hope was that SCiLL would be a place that exposed students to a variety of viewpoints and ideas, with the goal of teaching them how to converse across difference[s]. I hoped its scholarship would be interdisciplinary and applicable to students from majors all across the College,” Treul said in an email statement. “The recent hires suggest SC[i]LL has narrowed its focus to the humanities with a further concentration in religion and historical political thought. This is not a space I have expertise in, so it was no longer a good fit for me.”

11 new faculty members joined the school in August, many of them experts in historical political thought and religion. Four have master's degrees in religion or theological studies. Atkins himself recently published a book titled “The Christian Origins of Tolerance.”

“I am extremely excited about the high caliber of faculty who are coming to join the School of Civic Life and Leadership. Attracting a team like this so quickly and outside the normal hiring cycle affirms both the vision for this school and its leadership,” Provost Christopher Clemens said in a statement . 

Some faculty said they felt the hiring process was highly irregular. History professor Jay Smith wrote an Op-Ed published in The Daily Tar Heel on Sept. 12, claiming that the new faculty “escaped the rigors of the normal academic hiring practices.”

“The school to which they were recruited is unconstrained by traditions of disciplinary expertise,” Smith wrote. “It measures academic merit not by disciplinary standards but by one’s location on an ideological spectrum.”

Smith also said the school was formed for the purpose of creating a safe environment for conservative thinkers. Similar claims have been leveled at SCiLL and other civil discourse initiatives around the country. 

Willow Taylor Chiang Yang, the only student representative on the SCiLL dean search committee, said that civil discourse initiatives at UNC in particular have a specific political valence associated with them, which worries her. She said that people who think civil discourse has a conservative valence are entirely justified in thinking that.

“Kind of ironically, it’s a topic that can polarize,” she said. 

Program for Public Discourse

Currently, some faculty concerns are centered around the lack of communication regarding the future of the school and its relationship with the Program for Public Discourse — SCiLL’s controversial predecessor. The program, founded in 2020, consists of the Abbey Speaker Series and the Agora Fellowship, aiming to prepare students for lives of civic leadership. 

"The Agora Fellows program provides undergraduate students a space to experiment with public discourse in a collaborative environment of their peers," according to the PPD website.

Chiang Yang, who was an Agora Fellow, said she has made amazing friendships through the program. 

From SCiLL’s conception, the school was intended to build on the work of the PPD. In the email which announced the inaugural faculty of the school, White wrote “The Program for Public Discourse itself will be a part of SCiLL.”

In an email obtained by The Daily Tar Heel, Atkins requested that PPD be moved into SCiLL in April, writing that at least one of the faculty members had mistakenly assumed that the program was already a part of the School. 

“I would love to go ahead and move the PPD into SCiLL right now, in which case the director of the PPD would report to me,” Atkins wrote. 

Although the program is currently listed on SCiLL’s website, some people have expressed confusion regarding the relationship between the two. The executive director of PPD, Kevin Marinelli, said he has not been able to get a straight answer regarding this question.

“I think the separation between PPD and SCiLL is something that they’ve been grappling with for a long time,” Chiang Yang said. “I think they started much more entangled than they’ve become.”

According to the originally proposed syllabus for SCLL 101: Practice of Civic Life and Leadership, students would be required to attend one PPD event and write a paper analyzing the speaker’s arguments. This syllabus was written by members of the inaugural faculty — in the current syllabus for SCLL 101, there is no such requirement. 

“I think in many ways, they could be excellent partners, SCiLL and PPD,” Treul said. 

Independence from the College of Arts and Sciences

There is also confusion among some faculty as to whether or not SCiLL will remain a part of the College of Arts and Sciences or become an independent school. 

Matthew Kotzen, another inaugural faculty member who left the school, sent an email to The DTH in which he said that his understanding of SCiLL changed when it became clearer that it would be an independent school rather than a College Arts & Sciences initiative. 

“As the College came to play a less central role in SCiLL, it became less clear to me that SCiLL’s mission was one that I would be able to contribute positively to,” Kotzen wrote. 

In an email statement to The DTH on behalf of White, UNC Media Relations wrote that "SCiLL is the only school within the College, and the director and dean have a second reporting line to the provost, as all deans do."

Atkins said that in his capacity as dean, he reports to Clemens in the context of hiring authority.

In an email obtained by The DTH, Treul reached out to Senior Associate Dean for Fine Arts and Humanities Elizabeth Engelhardt in June to express similar concerns regarding SCiLL's independence.

“When SCiLL resided in the College, I felt confident that PPD would be able to continue its mission and provide our undergraduates with opportunities to witness and practice robust public argument, as well as to engage with different perspectives,” Treul said in the email. “Although no one has provided me with clear answers regarding PPD and I am yet to see an organizational chart, it increasingly seems that SCiLL is no longer in the College.”

Currently, SCiLL is listed on the College of Arts and Sciences website. 

“As of now, SCiLL is in the College of Arts and Sciences,” Atkins said. 

When asked if this was subject to change, Atkins would not elaborate on the topic. 

Looking forward

Atkins also said that the school is planning to offer roughly 13 classes in the spring, a significant increase from the three classes being offered this semester. 

Although there are concerns surrounding the school, some feel the mission of civil discourse is important. Chiang Yang said that when civil discourse is done right and has the right intentions, it has the capacity to be very healing for the public and the community. 

“I do want to really emphasize that it has to be for the right motives,” she said. “It can’t be a political tool.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated which school Jed Atkins is the dean of. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.

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