Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Carolina Commitment Website Records #70154, University Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Collected in April 2023 (RT 20230417.2).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Jessica Venlet, June 2023

Encoded by: Dawne Howard Lucas, June 2023

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Cheating (Education)--Education--North Carolina--Chapel Hill.
• Education, Higher--North Carolina--History--21st century.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--History--21st century.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Public relations.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Department of African and Afro-American Studies.
• Wainstein, Kenneth L.

The Carolina Commitment website was created by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt's administration to share information regarding investigations of academic fraud in the department formerly known as African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM) and subsequent reforms implemented by the University.

This collection contains content shared on the Carolina Commitment website, which documents the University’s response to investigations of academic fraud in the department formerly known as African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM). The website provided updates to ongoing external and internal investigations and reforms as well as copies of public records requests and reports. The collection includes archived versions of the Carolina Commitment website, collected as part of the University Web Archives using Archive-It. The earliest archived version of the website is from 22 May 2014.

In addition, the collection includes eight batches of emails and electronic documents gathered during Kenneth L. Wainstein's independent inquiry of the allegations The records originated from a database of about 1.7 million unique electronic records compiled by Wainstein’s firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, and were made publicly available on the Carolina Commitment website. The University announced the release of the Wainstein investigation records in a 2017 blog post on the website. The records in this collection are saved in 277 PDF files.