Message from Chancellor Holden Thorp

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Dear Carolina community,

Today the University received the two independent, outside reviews that we commissioned in response to the academic irregularities found in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. I strongly encourage you to read both reports, posted at academicreview.unc.edu and covered on the University’s homepage, www.unc.edu.

The review conducted by former North Carolina Governor James Martin, also a former professor at Davidson College, was independent, objective and thorough. We cooperated fully.

His findings are sobering: The irregularities in the department date back to 1997.

Governor Martin confirmed that there were no problems in other departments in the University, and that only the two individuals we had previously identified in the African and Afro-American Studies department were implicated.

Governor Martin was assisted in his review by Baker Tilly, a management consulting firm with extensive national experience in academic performance procedures and controls. In a second report, Baker Tilly reviewed and validated the many improvements we have put in place to ensure that we never face problems like this again.

This is an important day for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For years, we’ve been proud that we did things the right way. We probably took too much for granted. We became complacent, and we made some mistakes. We acknowledge that. Now we have to get better.

We are embracing these findings, and we are moving forward as a much stronger university. I hope that ultimately we will be judged not only by what happened but by what we’re doing about it.

Sincerely,

Holden Thorp