UNC Non-Tenure-Track Professor’s Nonrenewal Upheld

From Chavis v. UNC, decided Tuesday by Chief Judge Catherine Eagles (M.D.N.C.):

Dr. Larry Chavis was a non-tenured professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School. In 2024, UNC declined to renew his teaching contract. He alleges that decision was based on his race, made in retaliation for his reports of discrimination and outspoken criticism of UNC on diversity issues, and violated his First Amendment rights….

The facts as recited are either undisputed or viewed in the light most favorable to Dr. Chavis, as required at this stage of the proceedings.

Dr. Chavis began working at UNC in 2006 …. During the summer of 2022, Dr. Chavis taught a graduate microeconomics course at UNC. One student in that class left course feedback stating in part:

Even though as a social liberal I agree with 90%+ of [Dr. Chavis’s] personal observations about our society today – I think you would be better served to not share everything that you do during class. If I had wanted a degree in some sort of Native American studies or African American studies I would not have pursued an MBA. While I was not the least bit offended by your observations, I suspect there were some of the class that were.

When Dr. Chavis learned about the comment, he posted an excerpt of it on LinkedIn and stated that it was “just mean and walks right up to and probably crosses a line into being offensive.” There is no evidence to indicate UNC took any action based on the evaluation or Dr. Chavis’s post, and at the end of the 2022-2023 school year, UNC renewed Dr. Chavis’s contract for another year….

As part of meeting with faculty and conducting focus groups, [Business School] Dean Frank met with Dr. Chavis in February 2024 to discuss his thoughts about the business school and his position. In an email sent shortly after that conversation, Dr. Chavis expressed frustration with his lack of career advancement at UNC and explained that he limited his time and interactions at the business school because of his perception that other faculty members “hate [him] for being too truthful and too supportive of equity.”

When Dean Frank did not respond to the email by early April, Dr. Chavis read it aloud to some of his classes. In a follow-up email, Dr. Chavis informed Dean Frank that he had read the previous email to his students and that he planned to post about the email on LinkedIn….

[In Spring 2024], several graduating students told Associate Dean Dr. Shimul Melwani that they had serious concerns about Dr. Chavis’s undergraduate international development class. They reported that the course content did not align with its description in the course catalog; that the course was poorly organized and “essentially was a stream of consciousness conversation” about Dr. Chavis’s personal issues; and that Dr. Chavis humiliated certain students because of, for example, their race and fraternity affiliation. The students who spoke with Dr. Melwani expressed fear that Dr. Chavis would retaliate against them if he knew they had reported their concerns, and several students who spoke with Dr. Lundblad reported the same fear, including that Dr. Chavis would share their course evaluations publicly, as he had done in the past.

Following those complaints, Dr. Lundblad and Associate Dean Dr. Brad Staats decided to record Dr. Chavis’s classes, to see if the student complaints were accurate. After receiving permission from UNC’s human resources department and with no objection from Dean Frank, Drs. Lundblad and Staats arranged to record several of Dr. Chavis’s class sessions; they did not tell Dr. Chavis in advance that these recordings would occur.

In March 2024, Dean Frank asked Dr. Lundblad to initiate a “Teaching Evaluation” of Dr. Chavis. As part of that process, Dr. Chavis learned about the recordings and protested that they violated UNC policy. He also gave a series of interviews about the recordings with local and online news outlets, and posted on social media about articles covering the incident….

In [its report evaluating Dr. Chavis], the responsible school leadership made several findings.

First, Dr. Chavis had changed the course’s content to focus on indigenous issues without approval and without revising his syllabus, course name, or course catalog description.

Second, Dr. Chavis had replaced the course content with discussion of his personal and professional situation and his dissatisfaction with some of UNC’s decisions, which created an environment that required students to discuss his personal circumstances during class and created a fear of retaliation if he disapproved of a student’s contributions. {Specifically, the evaluators found that Dr. Chavis used class time to talk about how he was “wronged by the business school” and to “read from his manuscript on his life;” that he “stated that he was going to ‘burn this b*tch down’ ” if a UNC hiring process went a certain way; that he asked students “to comment on his life and personal circumstances” in a way that felt pressuring to students and made them fear he would retaliate by giving a poor participation score, which accounted for 35% of a student’s grade; and that he told students not to go to the administration if they had complaints about his class but to come to him directly.}

Third, in course evaluations, several students expressed concerns about Dr. Chavis’s course content and teaching methods, though the report noted that there were also many positive evaluations.{In his brief, Dr. Chavis states that the report “[l]eft unmentioned … a larger number of highly positive observations from students.” That is not an accurate account of the record. See [record document] (evaluation stating that “there are a number of positive evaluations from students who appreciate Prof. Chavis'[s] approach and topics.”).

Finally, during in-person teaching observations, Dr. Chavis “covered content inconsistent with” the course description, including “some limited discussion of his personal situation.”

The evaluators concluded that the examination “uncovered several issues regarding content and conduct, including students reporting safety issues and fear of retaliation.” When UNC sent Dr. Chavis the evaluation in May 2024, he disputed many of its findings and posted the evaluation and his response on social media.

Dean Frank reviewed the teaching evaluation and decided not to renew Dr. Chavis’s contract for the coming academic year….

Chavis sued, but the court rejected his claims. Here’s a discussion of Chavis’s claims that the school retaliated against him based on his race-discrimination-related complaints:

Dr. Chavis identifies his protected activity as his interviews with local media outlets and online publications and his postings online in the spring of 2024 criticizing the recording of his classes without his knowledge, which he contends was linked to racial discrimination. He points to the temporal proximity of those public complaints to the decision not to renew his contract as supporting an inference of causation. The defendants dispute both contentions.

Assuming without deciding that Dr. Chavis has made out a prima facie case for retaliation, the defendants have articulated a legitimate, nonretaliatory reason for their actions. All available evidence shows that Dean Frank’s decision not to renew Dr. Chavis’s contract was based on the findings made during the teaching evaluation of his international development class. In her deposition, Dean Frank, the decisionmaker, testified that the “deciding factor” for not renewing Dr. Chavis’s contract was that he “had chosen to teach material that had not gone through the process of being approved, and that [he] was thus teaching content that was not what we were expecting in the program.” {Dr. Chavis himself admits that he did not obtain approval for the changes he made to the syllabus, and he acknowledges that he “began to shift the content of his academic offerings” in 2023 and 2024.} She has also testified that concerns about the physical and psychological safety of UNC’s students motivated her decision.

In sum, her proffered reason for not renewing Dr. Chavis’s contract was “the litany of concerns that were discussed in the Teaching Evaluation.” Those concerns constitute a legitimate, nonretaliatory reason for not renewing his contract….

Multiple students reported that Dr. Chavis was using class time on subjects well outside the syllabus, and classroom observations by other faculty substantiated those reports. Several students credibly reported that his teaching methods caused some students to fear embarrassment and retaliation based on required class participation. An internal evaluation supported the conclusion that Dr. Chavis did not follow UNC’s procedure for changing his course content. Those are valid reasons for not renewing a professor’s contract….

The court concluded, citing similar reasons, that there wasn’t enough evidence supporting Chavis’s race discrimination claim and First Amendment retaliation claim.

Jeremy David Lindsley (N.C. DoJ) represents the university.