Storyline
How UNC chose a successor to Chancellor Christopher Fordham in 1987 and 1988: his announcement, the trustees’ search committee and its one public hearing, the outside management audit, the two finalists, the Board of Governors’ confirmation of Paul Hardin and his installation on University Day 1988.
In briefChancellor Christopher Fordham announced in August 1987 that he would step down the next June. A 14-member search committee held one public hearing and commissioned an outside management audit, and in March 1988 the trustees sent two finalists to President C. D. Spangler. After one withdrew, the Board of Governors confirmed Paul Hardin of Drew University in April, and he was installed as UNC's seventh chancellor on University Day 1988.
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At the trustees' meeting on August 28, 1987 Christopher Fordham, chancellor since 1980 and, the Daily Tar Heel noted, the first medical doctor in the post, said he would step down on June 30, 1988, so that a new leader could see the University's bicentennial celebration and six-year capital campaign through. The same meeting elected Robert Eubanks to succeed S. Bobo Tanner as board chairman. Eubanks named a 14-member search committee of trustees, faculty, one alumnus and one student, which held its first meeting on September 4; the trustees were to recommend at least two candidates to UNC system President C. D. Spangler, whose choice would go to the Board of Governors. At the committee's only public hearing, on October 7 in the Morehead Building's faculty lounge, it heard about 20 speakers; faculty members, retired professors and students asked for a scholar committed to undergraduate teaching and attentive to students.
On February 1, 1988 a 107-page management audit by a six-member team of outside educators, commissioned by the search committee, was released; the Daily Tar Heel reported it was the first such audit at a North Carolina university. It praised UNC's students and reputation but warned that the University was 'falling behind,' citing faculty salaries and benefits, library funding and several weak programs, and it recommended a tuition increase and a profile for Fordham's successor. On March 18, at a special meeting held mostly in closed session, the trustees gave Spangler two finalists, Paul Hardin, president of Drew University, and Jay Oliva, chancellor of New York University, according to Associated Press reports carried by the Daily Tar Heel. Provost Samuel Williamson was told his name would not go forward, and Oliva withdrew in a letter dated March 31, leaving Hardin.
On April 8, on Spangler's recommendation, the Board of Governors voted unanimously to make Hardin chancellor, to take office July 1 at $112,450 a year. A Charlotte native and Duke law graduate, he had been one of 105 people nominated. He had led Wofford College, Southern Methodist University, which he left in 1974 after reporting its football program to the NCAA, and Drew University. On University Day, October 12, 1988, the 195th anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone, he was installed as the seventh chancellor before about 5,000 people in front of South Building, with Chief Justice James Exum giving the oath. Hardin called for bold action to make UNC a leading American university while keeping its obligations to the state; the $36,000 ceremony was paid for with private money. He served until June 30, 1995, through the University's bicentennial and its fundraising campaign, the argument over a freestanding Black cultural center and the housekeepers' class action suit.
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Program for the inauguration of C. D. Spangler Jr. as president of the University of North Carolina system, held in Chapel Hill on October 17, 1986, with an itinerary of exhibits and musical events. 26 images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
A television program produced by Shannon Vickery and first aired on November 13, 1997, with Chapel Hill as its setting. It deals with the first Medical News Reporting Symposium, held in Chapel Hill that year, to Tom Linden, to C. D. Spangler Jr., and to the curriculum at East Carolina University, along with the schools of journalism and public health at the University of North Carolina.
Three presidents of the University of North Carolina system, Clemmie Dixon Spangler, Molly Broad and William Friday, together at UNC-Chapel Hill's University Award ceremonies in 1997. Photographed by Hugh Morton.
At Michael Hooker's inauguration as chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill on 12 October 1995, UNC system president C. D. Spangler speaks. Color 35 mm negative by Hugh Morton.
H. Keith H. Brodie takes a life cycle and case history approach to the American research university presidency in the late twentieth century, drawing on presidents including Paul Hardin III, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Subjects also cover college presidents in North Carolina and the administration of universities in the United States. Praeger Publishers, 2005, 347 pages.
Editorial cartoon drawn by Dwane Powell for The News and Observer on 14 August 1993, bringing together UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor Paul Hardin, the Nike company and education. From Powell's syndicate copies and clippings, folder 1993-29.
Paul Hardin, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, figures in this Dwane Powell cartoon on education, published in The News and Observer on 16 November 1993. Folder 1993-42 of Powell's syndicate copies and clippings.
Editorial cartoon by Dwane Powell, printed in The News and Observer on 10 October 1993, drawing together Bill Clinton, UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor Paul Hardin, the Nike company and education. Syndicate copies and clippings, folder 1993-37.
Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 pages.
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
The Duke and North Carolina basketball rivalry written together by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky, the latter a sports reporter who has followed it since his student days at UNC. The book opens with the 2014 season and moves through recruiting battles old and new, 'Black and Blue Sunday', 'Blood and Roses', and chapters on the rivalry's heroes, leaders and teachers, with a foreword by Jay Bilas and a photo gallery. Published by Triumph Books in 2014, 289 pages.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
Steven J. Tepper's chronicle of how the University of North Carolina marked its bicentennial in 1993 and 1994. An appendix reprints the University Day speeches of October 12, 1993, given by Paul Hardin, James B. Hunt Jr., C.D. Spangler, William C. Friday, Charles Kuralt and President Bill Clinton, plus bicentennial addresses by Li Lu, Francis S. Collins and Richard J. Richardson. Published by the university in Chapel Hill, 1998; 284 pages.
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Reviewed in History of Education Quarterly (1993), The Journal of Southern History (1993).
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
Scott Fowler gathers recollections from Carolina basketball players, decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, organized around Roy Williams and the question in the title. Contributors include Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Charlie Scott, Phil Ford, James Worthy, Brad Daugherty, Eric Montross, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Raymond Felton and Sean May, each entry giving position and playing years. Published 2010 by Triumph Books of Chicago, 270 pages, here as an e-book.
Archibald Henderson's history of the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its buildings and grounds from the founding in the 1790s onward. Henderson, a professor of mathematics and a prolific historian of the university, wrote it in the years around the university's sesquicentennial. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 412 pages with illustrations and bibliographical footnotes.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1949), South Atlantic Quarterly (1950).
Charles Phillips Russell's biography of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908), the Chapel Hill writer remembered for ringing the bell of South Building when the university reopened in 1875 after its closure during Reconstruction. It doubles as a history of Chapel Hill and the university. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 293 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1949).
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