Professor Lisa Lindsay surely got more than she bargained for upon becoming department chair in summer 2018. Right before the first day of classes, student protestors toppled the “Silent Sam” monument. Graduate students in the department played a prominent role in the antiracist activism that compelled the university to remove the confederate statue. They were met with fierce intimidation and even online threats from far-right figures, not to mention violations of their civil rights. The agenda on Lindsay’s plate was like something out of a managerial nightmare, as former Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Brett Whalen, notes: “Lisa was dealt a challenging hand in terms of her time as the leader of the department. Budget freezes, security and safety concerns related to turmoil on campus over UNC’s legacies of racism, tons of staff turn-over, the Covid pandemic, the switch to remote teaching—the list goes on.”
That’s not all. Pauli Murray Hall was mostly empty after the university shut down in March 2020. The Covid era was in full swing, a season of lockdowns, quarantines, isolation, mental (and physical) health crises for many of our students, and an ugly controversy roiling the nation, and the state, over masks and vaccines. Among the causes for concern was talk in the state legislature of a financial emergency, with the prospect of drastic budget cuts to academic programs. Many who remember those difficult years will agree with the recollection of Professor Benjamin Waterhouse, who served as acting chair in 2020-2021. “Everybody’s mental health was hurting, our existential view of the university was scattered.” Even the optimists among us privately entertained fears for the worst. As Waterhouse recalls: “We knew funding was going to be crazy and up in the air.” The graduate students, in particular, “were in a very precarious position.” Archives and libraries were closing right and left, rendering historical research untenable. Dissertation research came grinding to a halt, and most graduate students in the program wondered how they would ever do the work necessary to finish.
The department desperately needed leadership, and Professor Lindsay stepped up to the plate. The department’s faculty took the courageous and unprecedented decision to halt graduate admissions for the 2021-2022 admissions cycle. The department used the savings, and tapped substantially into its endowment, to grant two years of extra funding to all graduate students enrolled in the program. Many of the graduate students in the program have used the funding for research travel that was impossible during the Covid years. As Waterhouse notes, this decision stemmed from our “real conviction that the teaching and scholarly mission of the department is fundamentally rooted in the graduate program, which needed to be supported better.”
Getting the graduate program back on its feet is only one of Lindsay’s accomplishments as chair. She also got the social life of the department moving again, too. And despite the forbidding budgetary climate, the department has extended eight offers of employment to new faculty. As Director of Graduate Studies Eren Tasar notes, few are aware of the intensive, behind-the-scenes labor required to make these hires a reality. “Lisa has an exceptional feel for the opportunities and constraints created by the particular way in which the university bureaucracy works. She has put this talent to the service of the department every working day during her tenure as chair.”
Another of Lindsay’s great contributions is fundraising. She was part of a group of faculty administrators advocating for an increase to the base graduate stipend for several years. These efforts finally bore fruit last Fall, when the Provost increased the stipend by $3,000 across the university. Closer to home, and much further behind the scenes, Lindsay has effectively reached out to alumni to support the program. During her tenure, she was able to secure retention offers for several faculty members who had competitive outside offers from prestigious universities. “It’s characteristic of Lisa’s leadership style,” Tasar comments, “to hide her light behind a bushel. Few people in the department are aware just how much work Lisa is doing – on a daily basis – to attract funding to the department and direct resources our way, to ensure our department is positioned competitively to benefit from whatever opportunities might come down the pipeline.” Current Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Katie Turk, adds that Lindsay “has attended to the details of the job while thinking big and taking strategic steps to protect our department’s future. Always, she champions her people and the good work we do.”
As Lindsay concludes her tenure as chair and prepares for a year of research as a fellow at the National Humanities Center, the department looks forward to building on her many successes under the leadership of its new chair, Professor Miguel LaSerna, who summarizes the sentiments of many colleagues: “Our department has been through a lot these past five years: a global pandemic, turnover in every staff position, and the passing of our beloved accounting technician, Joyce Loftin, to name a few. It’s during times like these when a department really needs a strong leader, one with the compassion, humanity, and perseverance to navigate it through choppy waters without losing sight of the north star. Lisa has been that leader for the UNC History Department. She has not only guided us through the most troubling times, but she has done so while putting our collective interests first and setting us up for success in the years to come.”