Former Provost Sues UNC Board of Trustees
Former UNC-Chapel Hill Chris Clemons filed a lawsuit on Monday, Sept. 22. According to the lawsuit, Clemons claims that university leadership asked him to resign after expressing concern about tenure debates in closed session.
Clemons, who stepped down from his position in May, claimed that trustees held closed-door portions of meetings and illegally took advantage of exemptions in the law to enter into closed session. It also claims that the Board continuously violated the law via the “deliberate destruction of public records,” according to the Daily Tar Heel.
The lawsuit cites a meeting in March 2025, where trustees discussed tenure voting on faculty promotions and raises. Instead, Clemons claims that the board “discussed individual tenure candidates” but that the discussion “immediately” moved to a debate over the “financial impact and existential value of tenure as an institution.”
The suit also claimed several instances of UNC Athletics having meetings in “closed session violations.”
The lawsuit also states that, the Board called an “emergency meeting” with minimal notice, then immediately entered closed session to approve hiring
football coach, Bill Belichick, whose “compensation package and entire hiring was already public.” It goes on to say that “the Board’s perfunctory return to open session for rubber-stamp vote demonstrates that substantive deliberation occurred in secret.”
According to the lawsuit, board trustees also conducted business by text and other messaging applications outside of accessible meetings.
“These electronic exchanges undertaken to discuss, coordinate, or advance Board matters-constitute public records based on their content and are subject to the Open Meetings Law’s requirements for notice, public access, and minutes, as well as the Public Records Law’s requirements for retention and access,” the lawsuit stated.
The suit requests that the court order mandatory training for “all Board members and relevant staff on Open Meetings Law and Public Records Law requirements within sixty (60) days of this Court’s order.”
Former Provost Sues UNC Board of Trustees was originally published on hiphopnc.com
