Mary Willingham, UNC Prof Pen Book On UNC Scandal

The UNC scandal, aside from all the obvious fallout, simply never goes away.

There's nothing new to report, no big revelations from the N&O or anything, but there is this: there's a new book out by Jay Smith, a UNC professor, and Mary Willingham, the whistleblower who was fired and who has filed suit against UNC.

We're curious to read it for all the obvious reasons, but also because, as the N&O suggests, it hits on something we've suspected but not known enough to state well.

From the N&O: "Smith and Willingham give an insider’s view of the university’s early reaction to the scandal and its failure to unearth the truth. It also outlines a racial history at UNC-CH that created an environment for benign neglect in the department of African and Afro-American Studies, where the academic fraud was centered."

Benign neglect isn't the phrase we'd choose. We don't think the university took the department seriously and simply left it alone. That's a couple of bolgias closer to the center than benign neglect.

The authors also apparently suggest a new detail we hadn't heard before, which is intriguing: that former AFAM chair Julius Nyang'oro sat behind the UNC bench for home games at the Dean Dome. Wonder how he got those tickets?