Create a 10-word scroll-stopping headline for: UNC-Chapel Hill Trustees Reject Hiring of Tenured Women’s Studies Professor | Vibe NC

This story has been updated with comments from Kiran Asher.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees on Wednesday voted against hiring and granting tenure to a women’s studies professor who had gone through the university’s standard hiring process, an escalation of the board’s actions against the lifetime appointments that are considered a hallmark of academia.

Kiran Asher, the former chair of the department of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was set to be hired as a distinguished professor in the UNC-CH department of women’s and gender studies. 

Asher’s potential hiring had been considered and approved by the women’s studies department, the College of Arts & Sciences, which houses the department, and a committee overseeing the appointment and tenure process. On Wednesday, she was part of a slate of six professors that the Board of Trustees considered for new tenured appointments. The board takes the final vote on all tenure cases after the provost signs off, according to a presentation former interim Provost Jim Dean gave the trustees last summer.

But when the board emerged from closed session on Wednesday, it only approved five of the outside hires, plus more than 25 promotions from within the university and a joint appointment. They considered Asher’s appointment separately, and the majority of the trustees voted against hiring her in a voice vote. Two trustees, Ralph Meekins and Student Body President Devin Duncan, told The Assembly they voted in favor of Asher’s appointment. 

The trustees did not name Asher or the other professors up for appointment or promotion during the public votes because they were personnel matters. Multiple people told The Assembly that Asher was the singled-out case.

In a Thursday email to the advisory board for the women’s and gender studies department, obtained by The Assembly, interim chair Tanya Shields said Asher’s tenured hire was rejected: “I do not have any information regarding the reasoning behind this decision, and when I asked whether an appeal was possible, I was told it is not.” 

Dean Stoyer, UNC-CH’s vice chancellor for communications, said the university would not “acknowledge the name of the person who was denied tenure.” But he confirmed in an email to The Assembly that “there is not an appeals process for tenure approvals after the Board of Trustees votes.”

Asher told The Assembly she learned her case had been denied when she saw her name was not included on the list of approved personnel actions after Wednesday’s meeting. She applied for the job when it was advertised last academic year, looking for a change after more than a decade at UMass and excited about the possibility of returning to North Carolina after earning her master’s degree at Duke University in 1990. 

“Everything about it was aligning really well,” Asher said.

Last week, though, Asher received a call…