UNC Formalizes Surveillance Policy After Secretly Recording – Then Firing

UNC Formalizes Surveillance Policy After Secretly Recording – Then Firing – Kenan-Flagler Professor

UNC Formalizes Surveillance Policy After Secretly Recording – Then Firing – Kenan-Flagler Professor

Kristy Bleizeffer

Fri, February 13, 2026 at 9:57 PM UTC

7 min read

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Bell Hall at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. University of North Carolina has formalized a policy allowing administrators to record classes without notice under certain circumstances.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has adopted a new policy explicitly allowing administrators to record classes without notifying instructors, a practice that first drew national attention after the university secretly recorded economics professor Larry Chavis.

The policy, which takes effect February 16, permits university officials to record or access classroom recordings without the instructor’s knowledge when authorized in writing by the provost and university counsel in order to investigate alleged policy violations or for other lawful purposes. Instructors must receive advance notice when recordings are used for routine evaluations such as tenure and promotion reviews, but not for investigations.

Chavis declined to comment directly and referred Poets&Quants to his attorney, Artur Davis. We have reached out and will update this story when we receive a response.

We also reached out to UNC media relations with a list of questions. They provided the following statement:

“The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Policy on Classroom Recordings has been finalized and published, with the purpose of providing procedural clarity for situations outlined in the policy, when and how classes may be recorded, and to protect both instructors and students. The policy was developed with feedback from across campus, including Faculty Governance, the Offices of Faculty Affairs, Human Resources, University Council and the University Compliance Office.”

ADMINISTRATORS RECORDED FOUR OF CHAVIS’ CLASSES

The new policy follows a nearly two-year controversy that began inside UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

In April 2024, administrators secretly recorded four sessions of Chavis’ undergraduate class using a classroom camera after receiving student complaints about course content and conduct. Senior associate dean Christian Lundblad informed Chavis that “notice is not required to record classes” during a formal review.

Chavis told Poets&Quants at the time the recordings appeared to contradict the business school’s own IT policy stating classes are recorded only with faculty permission. He also raised concerns about student privacy and academic freedom, arguing students discussed sensitive topics around race and belonging in his courses.

University officials said they followed applicable laws but declined to describe the complaints prompting the review. Chavis, a clinical professor of strategy and entrepreneurship who had worked at Kenan-Flagler for 18 years, told P&Q that he believed the recordings were in retaliation for publicly criticizing the school on issues such as faculty diversity and pay equity.

AN OUTSPOKEN CRITIC OF KENAN-FLAGLER

Larry Chavis

Chavis, who was a teaching professor at Kenan-Flagler, earned his PhD in economics from Stanford Graduate School of Management. He is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and often integrated issues of mental health, race and equality in his coursework and writing.

While he said starting work at Kenan-Flagler in 2006 felt like “coming home,” he was also a public critic when he thought he needed to be. In October 2022, Chavis was quoted in a news article for UNC’s student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, criticizing Kenan-Flagler’s record on race and gender as the school was in the middle of a search for a new dean.

“Carolina’s challenges with diversity and inclusion are well known across the country, and I think of Kenan-Flagler as the worst of the worst — or one of the worst,” Chavis told the newspaper. He added that there is an “old guard,” particularly of professors who are scared of the way the world is changing.

He called for more faculty diversity at Kenan-Flagler, better pay equity for women and minorities, and was chastised for telling students that wearing clothing from sports teams with Native American names or logos would violate the school’s honor code because it is disrespectful to indigenous students.

In April 2024, before he was recorded, he read aloud an email exchange between him and Kenan-Flagler’s new dean Mary Margaret Frank in his undergrad International Development course with a focus on indigenous issues. He cited it as an example of how not to build an inclusive environment in an organization.

“I conveyed (in the class discussion) that this was not a thing against our dean, but really as my problem fitting into two worlds, the kind of challenges that faculty from marginalized groups, particularly from Native American groups, have,” he told P&Q at the time. He believed it was this reading, along with other concerns, that prompted administrators to record his class.

On April 22, Kenan-Flagler senior associate dean Christian Lundblad emailed Chavis notifying him that school officials had recorded and reviewed several class sessions on four different days in response to student “reports concerning class content and conduct.”

TWO MONTHS BETWEEN RECORDING AND FIRING

Soon after receiving Lundbald’s email, Chavis went public. He made several LinkedIn posts on the recordings and spoke with Poets&Quants and other media several times.

Two months later, UNC notified Chavis his annual contract would not be renewed after 18 years. No reason was provided.

Chavis told P&Q the speed of the process — from April review to June termination — left him without a clear understanding of what happened.

A confidential evaluation cited a “misalignment” between course description and content and included student complaints that discussions focused too heavily on Chavis’ personal experiences. Chavis disputed the characterization, saying comments were taken out of context and positive evaluations were ignored.

The case drew campus-wide debate, and UNC’s provost said the university would develop a formal classroom recording policy — the same policy now adopted.

LAWSUIT ALLEGES RETALIATION

In September 2024, Chavis filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court alleging retaliation for his public criticism of the university on diversity, pay equity, and inclusion issues and claiming violations of his First Amendment rights.

The complaint argues the recordings themselves were unlawful because neither the professor nor students consented. North Carolina is a one-party consent state, raising questions about who — if anyone — authorized the recordings.

Chavis is seeking back pay, damages, and an injunction preventing similar practices.

As for tangible damages, Chavis is seeking back pay, front pay, and lost benefits as well as attorney fees in his lawsuit. He is also asking for a permanent injunction to prevent UNC from continuing the alleged unlawful practices that led to his termination.

Less tangibly, Chavis told P&Q last fall: “It’s certainly not about winning a case. It’s kind of a cliche – but I can see why the cliche exists now – but it’s about justice being served however a jury would see fit.”

Chavis joined Kalamazoon College in Michigan as a visiting assistant professor of economics in September 2025, according to his LinkedIn.

FACULTY PUSH BACK

The newly adopted rules largely codify the investigative recording authority UNC previously exercised in Chavis’ case, but with written procedures and oversight requirements.

Students, meanwhile, are prohibited from recording classes without instructor permission, except through approved disability or religious accommodations. Faculty who record their own classes must notify students. In cases where administrators record without notice, participants may only be informed afterward if the recording directly affects them in a disciplinary process.

The university also says it will publish an annual report disclosing how often it authorizes no-notice recordings.

According to reporting by Inside Higher Ed, the policy’s rollout has frustrated faculty across the university.

After Chavis went public about the secret recordings of his classes, then-provost Chris Clemens told professors a formal policy would be developed, but months passed without updates. Faculty leaders were only recently shown a draft, and many professors say they learned the policy had been finalized through their AAUP chapter and local news reports rather than direct university communication,. That has fueled more complaints about transparency and consultation in the process.

Mehdi Shadmehr, an associate professor of public policy at UNC, says allowing administrators to secretly record academic classes “is something that governments in Iran and Syria and East Germany and maybe military regimes back in the day in Argentina and Brazil would do,” he told Inside Higher Ed.

“But in the United States? That’s just crazy.”

DON’T MISS: INTERVIEW: THE PROFESSOR WHO WAS SECRETLY RECORDED — THEN LET GO — BY UNC AND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ADMITS DEPORTATION ERROR — BUT REFUSES TO RETURN BABSON STUDENT TO FINISH HER DEGREE

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