The following is a joint statement from the North Carolina state conference of the AAUP and the national AAUP.

Last Friday (February 27, 2026), UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts reversed UNC-Chapel Hill's surveillance policy that would have allowed administrators to hijack cameras and microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This welcome decision was the result of sustained pressure from UNC-Chapel Hill's AAUP chapter and the North Carolina AAUP state conference, as well as a host of other campus groups.

The chancellor's reversal is a victory for all who care about higher education in North Carolina and beyond. "This policy would've created a Big Brother atmosphere in the classroom that would stifle the free exchange of ideas, chill student discussion, and suppress the requisite willingness to ask questions and take intellectual risks," said AAUP President Todd Wolfson. "Unethical surveillance policies have no place in higher education."

The proposal to surveil UNC-Chapel Hill classrooms comes amidst a broader environment of higher education censorship both within the UNC System and nationally, which has degraded shared governance and subverted academic freedom through policy fiat.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, AAUP members decisively pushed back. Several members worked with the faculty council for nearly a year to design a classroom recording policy to mitigate the worst effects of surveillance. Despite considerable progress across campus, UNC's interim provost announced a surprise policy on Monday, February 9, to go into effect one week later. This version added a new clause allowing secret recording for "investigation into alleged violations of University policy".

In response, UNC-CH AAUP moved quickly to produce a statement and an op-ed illustrating the impact such a classroom surveillance policy would have. AAUP members, graduate workers, and students, as well as groups like TransparUNCy and UE-150, worked tirelessly through direct emails and committees to convince the chancellor and provost to change the policy. Additional pressure through faculty protest and press around the board of governors' redefinition of academic freedom boosted direct efforts to end the surveillance policy.

North Carolina is home to the fastest-growing AAUP state conference in the nation. This attempt to quash academic freedom at UNC-Chapel Hill shows how faculty and students can push back-and win-against policy that evades shared governance even in a university system co-opted by partisan politics.

The AAUP is affiliated nationally with the 1.8 million member AFT. AFT President Randi Weingarten said: "The idea of Big Brother surveillance being deployed in UNC classrooms is an affront to the values of free and open inquiry that are a bedrock of our nation's colleges and universities. Trying to police speech by secretly videoing and recording students and faculty has a chilling effect on debate and discussion that would have hurt student learning. I am proud of all those on campus who acted quickly to get this damaging and unwarranted proposal overturned."