Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz announced the launch of the 15-member Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward in a Wednesday email to the UNC community.
The Commission is the broader successor to the Chancellor’s Task Force on UNC-Chapel Hill History created by former Chancellor Carol Folt. Its mission is to help the University study and heal from its past by promoting campus reconciliation.
The Commission will be funded by the University's $5 million Build Our Community Together Fund.
“Our University is many things, but our core mission is fostering teaching, learning and research that improves the human condition,” Guskiewicz said in his email message. “To accomplish this, we need a strong, stable and welcoming community, where everyone feels emboldened to do their best work and all are dedicated to fostering an environment of inclusive excellence.”
The Commission’s multi-year work will begin at its first meeting on Feb. 7, where one of its first tasks will be to establish guiding values and principles that will steer its work. The group will then begin deciding which projects to undertake.
“A lot of the work around University history — studying it, interpreting it, reinterpreting it — has been going on for a long time, and with students often leading the way,” commission member and University archivist Nicholas Graham said. “But it’s exciting to me that this new initiative is coming from the Chancellor’s office and I hope it’s an opportunity for the entire campus to engage with the history of the University in a way that we haven’t really done before.”
The group will focus on three main areas: archives, history, research and curation; curriculum development and teaching; and engagement, ethics and reckoning.
“I think we are at a time, not only at this University but also in this country and the world, where we need to address those questions and think about how we start to repair and bring justice, and what better place to do that than at a public institution that’s committed to those values,” co-chairperson Patricia Parker, a professor in the communications department, said.
A top priority of the Commission is fostering student and community engagement throughout its work, co-chairperson and Honors Carolina dean Jim Leloudis said.
