Fallout is continuing to grow from the UNC Board of Trustees’ inaction on a tenure application for Nikole Hannah-Jones — and now, a second UNC professor may also be facing sanctions for speaking out against racism on campus.
Eric Muller is a law professor who studies the history of racism in American law. He’s also spent the last ten years on the board of the UNC Press, including the last six years as chair.
But Muller was recently denied reappointment to a third five-year term by the UNC System’s Board of Governors, despite being recommended by Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. Muller blasted that move in a long statement this week, describing it as “unprecedented.”
NC Policy Watch reported on Monday sources close to the Board of Governors, including one board member, say the board likely denied Muller’s reappointment because he’s been a vocal critic of the university on issues regarding racial justice, transparency and the treatment of Hannah-Jones, an incoming journalism professor. The unnamed Board of Governors member told NC Policy Watch that Muller had had “a target on his back” for years.
Among other things, board members were reportedly upset that Muller had publicly challenged the legal validity of the UNC System’s settlement with the Sons of Confederate Veterans over the Silent Sam statue. A Superior Court judge later invalidated that settlement. Muller also has been outspoken about changing UNC campus buildings’ namesakes due to their ties to white supremacy.
The outlet obtained an email from one board member arguing that the UNC Press board should cycle its members out more frequently. But the Board of Governors confirmed reappointment for two other members of the UNC Press board — including one who, like Muller, was up for a third consecutive term.
Muller’s own research focuses on racism in American legal history. He’s written two books on the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
“I would hate to think [the Board’s action] had something to do with my public commentary in recent years on matters of law, race, and history,” Muller said in his statement on Monday. “I would hate to think it had something to do with my focusing public attention on ways in which the law has ignored and harmed the interests of African Americans – and still does. These are matters within my expertise as a legal scholar and historian, the very stuff of the work I do as a university professor.
“It would be an ominous sign,” Muller continued, “for the values of a leading research university and of a celebrated academic press if our System’s Board of Governors were to single out faculty members for punishment for voicing their views on matters within their expertise and research. Did they do that here? I’d like to hope not. But they knew nothing else about me. So it’s hard to imagine a different reason.”
Photo via the UNC School of Law.
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