UNC-Chapel Hill Concludes Civics School Investigation, Won’t Release Findings

The external law firm hired to investigate the School of Civic Life and Leadership has concluded its work. But UNC-Chapel Hill wouldn’t say what it learned about the months of faculty tension that boiled over into public view, or what steps it took in response.

UNC-Chapel Hill General Counsel Paul Newton said in a statement that K&L Gates spent seven months interviewing dozens of people and reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents relating to “allegations and concerns” about the school, which is also known as SCiLL. The resulting report is more than 400 pages long, a professor who helped with the investigation said in an update to faculty in January.

“The University has unwavering confidence in the comprehensiveness, integrity and objectivity of that review,” Newton said. 

The estimated cost of the review is $1.2 million, a university spokesperson said. But the university did not disclose specific findings nor any actions resulting from it, citing privacy laws. Nor did it specify which allegations and concerns K&L Gates investigated.

“The University is committed to taking all steps appropriate to ensure that any necessary corrective actions are taken,” Newton added. “Among the issues under review were a series of allegations that implicate sensitive and confidential personnel information that is protected by state law and University policy. In accordance with applicable law and policy, the University does not plan to offer any further public statements about the details of the Review.”

But Amanda Martin, supervising attorney of Duke University’s First Amendment Clinic, said there is likely much the university could legally release.

“Even if it contains personnel information, that does not mean the entirety of the report is exempt from the public records law,” she said. “The statute is clear that an agency has an obligation to produce nonconfidential information even when it is co-mingled with confidential information. In this case that likely means there is a significant amount of information related to process and policy that needs to be released. I can’t believe out of 400 pages there’s no information that can be shared.” 

Newton said that the university is “fully confident in the continued strength and success of SCiLL” under the leadership of its current dean, Jed Atkins.

The Board of Trustees also provided a joint statement expressing its “strong confidence” in Atkins, saying his “stewardship has helped establish the school as one of the most promising and distinctive new initiatives in civic education at a major public university.”

SCiLL has been controversial since it was first proposed. Trustees described it as an effort to bring conservative viewpoints to campus, and faculty have made allegations of bias and improper hiring against Atkins since he was hired as the school’s dean in 2024. A scholar of classical political philosophy, Atkins joined UNC-CH from Duke after advising on the creation of SCiLL. He has consistently denied allegations and said all hiring followed university policy.

But conflict reached an apogee last spring.

It centered around a SCiLL hiring search early last year, which then-Provost Chris Clemens attempted to cancel after the school’s two associate deans, Inger Brodey and David Decosimo, raised concerns about the process. Chancellor Lee Roberts overruled his decision.

Brodey resigned from SCiLL, telling The Daily Tar Heel the school was marked by “improprieties, slander, vindictiveness and manipulation,” and Decosimo was fired from his administrative position in June. (He remains on faculty.) In an X post in February 2026, Decosimo noted that his firing came weeks after he publicly argued at a conference that “the greatest threat to civic schools was internal: a strand marked by will-to-power & scornful of just means, free speech, & civic virtue.”

SCiLL professor Dustin Sebell, on the other hand, wrote in an internal email that Atkins’ critics were improperly seeking jobs for their friends. He also accused Clemens of trying to cancel the job search in an effort “to demoralize and defame the Dean, a man of singular goodness and integrity.”

Roberts announced in a September faculty meeting that the university would investigate the drama around the school after widespread media reports about the issues.

At the time, Newton said the review began at Atkins’s request and the university hired outside counsel to “conduct a thorough process and policy review.” The Assembly reported in October that the attorney leading the investigation, Nathan Huff, represented General Assembly leaders in at least 10 cases, including three in which an Atkins associate who advised SCiLL served as expert witness.

University officials emphasized that Huff and his team investigated every claim related to the school.

“K&L Gates met with anyone who expressed a desire to share a perspective—positive or negative—about SCiLL, often meeting with individuals multiple times,” Newton wrote in his statement.

Now that it’s complete, the university aims to move forward with SCiLL, which has continued hiring and recently received a $10 million matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It has hired 20 faculty in the past two years and launched a residential community.

“The completion of this process provides clarity,” Atkins wrote in a statement. “I am thankful for the care with which it was undertaken and for the University’s commitment to due process and institutional integrity.”