Every few years, Republicans come up with a new way to crusade against anything that might threaten white males from assuming leadership roles. In their latest moral panic, they’ve tried to weaponize the term “DEI” (short for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) and turn it into a slur. If there is a black person or woman at the head of an organization, the usual suspects proclaim that person a “DEI” hire who is unqualified and should be replaced by someone more qualified (e.g., white and male). Natalie Burke spelled out what they truly mean on MSNBC last week: it’s a “targeted effort to attack policies and practices that have created pathways to leadership and power for people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, and others.”
But if we want an example of an actual scenario where the leader of an organization is not the most “highly qualified” candidate, look no further than the new chancellor of UNC Chapel Hill, Lee H. Roberts. Roberts has had a successful career in investment management and private equity–he is still listed as managing partner of a private equity firm based in Raleigh–and has served as interim chancellor for a few months, after the Board of Governors forced out his predecessor. But it’s hard to see how that qualifies him to run the oldest public university in the United States, and one of its most prestigious.
No one should indulge the fiction that the Board of Governors led a national search that concluded he was the most highly qualified individual to be installed as chancellor. Roberts was chosen because he’s a good Republican who served as Pat McCrory’s budget director (where he helped to support scummy deals with some of McCrory’s political contributors, and got to burnish his resume with an appointment to the Golden Leaf Foundation board of directors on his way out).
On his LinkedIn page, he follows topics on real estate, management, valuation, venture capital, and real estate development, and is in groups related to commercial real estate and distressed real estate. Notably, he doesn’t follow anything related to higher education. He serves on the board of Variety Wholesalers, the company of longtime conservative funder (and member of the Board of Governors) Art Pope. He was included as a final candidate by an executive search firm which has come under criticism. He was selected by a Board of Governors that is comprised of members whose only real qualifications for being on the board was their fealty to the Republican leadership of the state House and Senate, demonstrated by their donations to Senate president Phil Berger, House speaker Tim Moore, and other Republican lawmakers and judges in excess of $1,000,000. Roberts himself donated $5000 to Phil Berger’s Senate Majority Fund and $1000 to the North Carolina Republican Party in 2022.
The members of the Board of Governors are certainly not the people most qualified in the state to oversee UNC Chapel Hill. Their selection of Lee Roberts reflects the fact that they are not looking for a leader of particular qualifications, but someone who will not put up the resistance that former chancellors Holden Thorp, Carol Folt, and Kevin Guskiewicz did to some of the board’s asinine directives. (If Throp, Folt, and Guskiewicz were so terrible, it’s hard to understand why all three had no trouble landing high-level academic leadership roles directly after departing UNC.) He is someone who will generally hew closely to the ideological preferences of the Republican leadership of the state and fully support their major initiatives, such as the new School of Civic Life that the Board of Governors and state legislature created without consulting with the university’s faculty.
One imagines that many candidates who would have been excellent chancellors did not even apply for the job because they knew the fix was in. The odds that the Board of Governors would conduct a national search and choose someone who was not aligned with their conservative ideology are laughably low. Can you imagine Art Pope voting in favor of a candidate who donated to Josh Stein’s or Kamala Harris’ campaigns?
Lee Roberts seems like a thoughtful man, and like all UNC alums, I hope that the university continues to thrive under his leadership. Let’s not pretend, though, that his elevation to the chancellorship is anything other than a politically motivated selection.