The end of the 2024-25 school year was a time of celebration for UNC, as more than 6,000 students received their diplomas – and the Tar Heel women’s lacrosse team brought home an NCAA championship for good measure. University officials say they’re excited about the future as well, with more students arriving in the fall and a brand-new dorm slated to be built to accommodate them – not to mention all the buzz around Tar Heel football as the Bill Belichick era officially begins.
But it’s also a time of great tension and uncertainty on campus, not just in Chapel Hill but at colleges and universities nationwide. The Trump administration has attempted to slash and rescind federal funds for research, with potentially major negative impacts not only on scientific and technological advancements, but also on the financial models of universities themselves. Academic freedom is also under fire, with professors feeling targeted not just for their research but also for what they choose to teach in the classroom. And international students are being targeted even more directly, with federal officials attempting to revoke student visas, often without any explanation – as in Chapel Hill in April, when six students had their visas abruptly revoked before they were restored three weeks later amidst a public outcry.
With all of that (and more) in mind, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck sat down with UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts for a wide-ranging conversation about many of the critical issues facing UNC in particular and higher education in general.
Click here to listen to their conversation in full. What follows is an edited transcript of Part 1 of that conversation.
Highlights From 2024-25
Aaron Keck: What are your thoughts as we come to the end of the semester and the end of the school year?
Lee Roberts: It’s been a great school year, great semester. We had a phenomenal commencement. If you did not see Mia Hamm’s commencement speech, do yourself a favor (and) look it up on YouTube. It’s inspiring. We had over 6,000 students graduate, (and) it went exceptionally well. I’ll tell you, as inspiring as Mia Hamm was, the most inspiring thing I did that day was attend our ROTC commissioning ceremony to watch these young people become commissioned as second lieutenants. That was pretty uplifting, pretty inspiring. The chancellor gets to do a lot of fun things, but that was right up there at the top.
Keck: Other than that, any particularly memorable moments from the last semester that stand out to you?
Roberts: This past weekend was pretty great for any fan of Tar Heel sports: I got to be in Boston for both the (NCAA) semifinals and finals for our women’s lacrosse team, winning its fourth national championship. Our head coach Jenny Levy: this is her 30th year coaching the Heels, she’s the only head coach we’ve ever had in women’s lacrosse, and there’s no one better.
Threats to Research Funding
Keck: You’ve been in DC speaking with federal officials and lawmakers about the importance of research on campus and federal funding for research on campus. How have those conversations gone?
Roberts: I’ve spent an awful lot of time on that, as you’d expect. I was actually just up in DC again (this week), making the case for all the great work that’s going on here at Carolina. And it sounds a little grandiose to say it this way, but the research that we do at Carolina makes a meaningful difference to the future of humanity. That’s not an exaggeration. The work that we’re doing on curing disease, on addressing critical public health problems – it’s not only groundbreaking lifesaving research. It also creates and supports thousands of jobs here in the Triangle and across North Carolina.
You know, we just had a professor at Carolina, a physician named Jeff Stringer, win the Max Gardner Award from the Board of Governors. That’s the award given across the UNC system to an outstanding faculty member. The work he’s doing on fetal and maternal health across North Carolina and across the world is going to make a meaningful difference to the health of children globally. It’s hard to overstate the importance of that. So it’s a rewarding case to be able to make.
Keck: That said, do you think your conversations have moved the dial in a positive direction?
Roberts: I think there’s broad understanding of not just the great work that we do at Carolina, but the importance of federal research funding more generally. We have an enormously supportive North Carolina delegation in Washington. We spend a lot of time with them and with administration officials, making the case for Carolina and for federal research funding more generally.
Keck: You’ve been focusing on health research and cancer research, and I think you told the Board of Trustees that was (a) conscious move. I worry that we’ll end up at a point where UNC gets the funding back for cancer research and it feels like a win, but then any non-health research still ends up getting short-shrifted. How do you prevent that?
Roberts: Well, we make the case for research funding across the board. The National Institutes of Health is the most important federal funder for Carolina. We receive over $600 million in federal research funding just from NIH. But we have other important federal funding agencies as well, and we continue to make the case with them and with Congress about the importance of that funding to our work and the importance that research has.
Academic Freedom and the Role of Universities
Keck: Faculty members nationwide are concerned (not just) about research funding, but also about academic freedom in general: what they teach in class, what books they choose to assign. What have you heard from faculty here in Chapel Hill about that?
Roberts: You know, I think it’s natural to be a little bit unsettled. There is a lot of change underway. I think it’s always tempting to think that you’re in a time of exceptional change – and I actually would not be surprised if we look back 20 years from now and say this was a time of unusual change in higher education, because you have two very large long-term forces (at work). One, the federal funding profile is clearly changing. It’s not clear to me exactly by how much and over what period of time, but the way in which federally funded research is funded is in flux. And that will change the model, for us and other universities. You also have the impact of artificial intelligence, and I think we’re just beginning now to understand how comprehensive and how fundamental that will be to all of higher education. We’re a leader. We have a responsibility to lead and to grapple with the, the implications not just for instruction, but for research and for our operations. And so those twin forces, I think are exerting significant long-term change on higher education.
Keck: Your pre-pre-predecessor Holden Thorp wrote a book with Buck Goldstein, called “Our Higher Calling,” about the partnership between universities and society. Their argument is that there is a partnership that was established, made explicit in the 19th century and carried through most of the 20th century, where government provides resources and gives scholars the freedom to research (and teach) what they want. And in return, the university teaches students to be better citizens and better people, prepares them for the economy, and then shares its research with the public and makes sure it’s commercializable and can be used for public benefit – as opposed to just publishing in a journal that three people will read and forgetting about it. Their argument is that this is the partnership that should be the foundation for the concept of the university going forward and the relationship with the government and society at large. I’m wondering what your thoughts are about that kind of approach to that relationship.
Roberts: I consider both Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein friends, they’ve both been exceptionally generous and helpful to me. And you can’t argue with the premise that the United States developed, particularly in the post-war period, a remarkably successful model for funding research. We consciously decided as a nation that we would use federal funds to support research at leading universities around the country, rather than the government trying to do it all themselves. And that’s been an effective partnership for decades, that’s led to countless research breakthroughs and made U.S. higher education the envy of the world. There’s a reason the best and the brightest from all over the world come to the United States for college and graduate school. I think it’s a little early to say that that model is going to transform fundamentally. But I do think the way in which federal research dollars are allocated, the grant process – the reimbursement rate, which has gotten a lot of attention recently – those are certainly subject to change.
Keck: Do you think they’re positive changes? Negative changes?
Roberts: It’s probably a little early to say. I will say, I hear from a lot of folks on our campus who say that the federal research grants making process is cumbersome and could stand some streamlining, and that federal research funding priorities could be updated. Those two changes, I think, would be positive. And that’s been part of our dialogue with policymakers.
Keck: On a related note, there’s a letter, which I’m sure you’ve seen, from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. This is from last month, and hundreds of college presidents have signed it: “we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” You didn’t sign the letter in part because UNC isn’t in that association – but what are your thoughts about it?
Roberts: We’re not a member of the organization, (so) we weren’t asked to sign. We are a member of the AAU (Association of American Universities), which did sign on behalf of its membership. But more broadly, I think there is broad receptivity, certainly among the North Carolina federal delegation, certainly among the policy makers with whom I speak, certainly among our state legislators in Raleigh, about the importance of federal research funding in general and more specifically, and more importantly, the importance of Carolina to the future of this state. This is our 231st year, (and) I’m pretty confident that for every one of those 231 years, this has been the most important institution on which we build a better future for North Carolina’s families. And that’s going to be true for the next 200 years. And it’s our job to keep it that way.
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