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…