The resignation of James Moeser, the chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was not unexpected. Seemingly within minutes of his announced retirement during his 2007 State of the University Address, a 19-member search committee for his replacement was formed, and a promise was made to have a successor by the time he leaves at the end of June 2008.
Moeser’s replacement will have big shoes to fill, for the current chancellor left a large footprint on the Chapel Hill landscape. Moeser’s robust leadership was praised by students, officials and the media, yet his years at the helm were not without controversy, and his vision for the future of the university was not shared by all.
Moeser’s resignation gives UNC President Erskine Bowles and the Board of Governors a chance to consider whether the future of UNC-Chapel Hill will be to follow the tone and tenor of Moeser’s administration or to move in a different direction. Moeser’s administration was extremely successful in a number of ways, but some of his policies may not be sustainable, and the critical issue of undergraduate education seemed of secondary importance.
Fundraising is often a chancellor’s first priority, and Moeser was a star, raising some $2.2 billion during his seven-year stint as head of the university. While he was gifted at attracting contributions, he was equally quick to spend, committing the university to an aggressive building program totaling $2.1 billion.
This building program is not only adding six million square feet to the main campus. The university is contributing to the research campus at Kannapolis, North Carolina, orchestrated by entrepreneur David Murdock, which will combine research by UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, UNC-Charlotte, and Duke. Moeser has also promoted the Carolina North campus, an expansion of the Chapel Hill campus that has introduced “town and gown” conflicts and controversy because it will eliminate an airport used by physicians for emergency transport and training tours. The initial estimate of the cost of the infrastructure alone for the 900-acre tract is $220 million, with trustees anticipating that the state will pick up most of the cost.
While the university’s grants and contracts for research now total $610 million after doubling over the last decade, much of the income for research comes from government grants. In his resignation speech, Moeser said that National Institutes of Health funds, which have accounted for over half of all research funding in recent years, were “drying up.” The volatility of research funding suggests that over-reliance on research grants, especially in periods of economic downturn, could make expansion a costly extravagance, with taxpayers footing the bill.
Moeser was the driving force behind UNC-CH’s innovative “Carolina Covenant” scholarships, which assures that low-income students can complete their degrees debt-free, largely through federally funded work-study programs. It has been copied by over 40 universities. While Moeser received considerable acclaim for making a college education more accessible for some, he was also instrumental in an unsuccessful attempt to raise tuition for most students, with the goal of increasing faculty compensation.
More successful was his promotion of a state law that allows scholarship students from outside the state to pay only in-state tuition. This provides an enormous break for scholarship donors, shifting the extra costs onto taxpayers. A key lobbyist for this benefit was a well-funded political action committee, Citizens for Higher Education, one of whose members, Nelson Schwab, is now the head of the search committee that will seek Moeser’s successor.
Moeser’s impact on the university was not limited to finances.. He gained the national spotlight briefly for his approval of a controversial choice for the school’s summer reading program. In 2002, with tensions still heightened by the World Trade Center catastrophe, the school required incoming freshmen to read “Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations,” by Michael Sells. This book, which featured selected passages from the Moslem holy book, was considered overly sympathetic to Islam, as it omitted many passages from the Qu’ran that present a grimmer version of Islam. Offended students filed a lawsuit against the school. Undeterred, Moeser not only supported the choice of this book, but he himself led a classroom discussion of it.
Some heralded Moeser as a champion of academic freedom; others viewed his actions as supporting a rosy and unrealistic view of Islam that was completely inappropriate following the September 11 destruction carried out in the name of Islam. The Qu’ran incident illustrates what is perhaps a more fundamental characteristic of Moeser’s reign – his failure to challenge what many see as an increasingly leftwing or radicalized faculty. Indeed, during his time in office there seemed to be no acknowledgement that the issue even exists.
Yet, as many articles – including two recent essays [story 1] [story 2] from the Pope Center – illustrate, a number of UNC-Chapel Hill faculty disparage American society and its philosophical underpinnings. Some students even complain of being penalized for expressing conservative viewpoints.
No administrator can serve the needs of all constituencies equally. The selection committee, however, has the opportunity to provide some balance to the policies of the last seven years. This balance could be accomplished by choosing a new chancellor likely to put the educational experience of undergraduates and the concerns of taxpayers at the center of his or her strategic plans.
Editor’s Note: Jay Schalin is a writer/researcher for the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh.