News Release

Note: For notes on covering the ceremony, see end of story.

UNC residence hall to be named
in honor of Chancellor Paul Hardin

CHAPEL HILL – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will re-name a south campus residence hall on Tuesday (March 20) in honor of Paul Hardin, Carolina’s seventh chancellor.

The free public ceremony at 4 p.m. will include remarks by Chancellor James Moeser; Roger L. Perry Sr. of Chapel Hill, a member of the UNC Board of Trustees; retired UNC Provost Richard “Dick” Richardson; former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Donald Boulton and Hardin.

Known since its completion in 2002 as Morrison South, the four-story building will be dedicated as Paul Hardin Hall. A Carolina blue ribbon will be cut. Then refreshments will be served, and guests may tour parts of the building.

Hardin, who was chancellor from 1988-1995, led the five-year Bicentennial Campaign for Carolina, which raised $440 million in private gifts. The Duke University-educated lawyer was a staunch advocate for UNC and helped campaign successfully for greater fiscal and management flexibility for the state’s public universities.

A civil rights advocate who advocated integration of Durham’s public facilities in the 1960s, Hardin helped double minority representation on Carolina’s faculty. He also played a key role in the process of naming of the building housing the undergraduate admissions office in honor of pioneering black faculty members Blyden and Roberta Jackson.

He signed the agreement to build the Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) with Brazil and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories. Hardin also steered the university community through a controversy that ultimately led to the successful completion of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

Hardin’s awards have included the 1995 North Carolina Public Service Award, a General Alumni Association Distinguished Service Medal in 2003 and a 2004 William Richardson Davie Award from the UNC trustees, the highest honor bestowed by the board, for service to the university or society.

Hardin serves on the Carolina Performing Arts Society National Advisory Board, and he and his wife, Barbara, who still live in Chapel Hill, attend many performances in Memorial Hall.      

Born in Charlotte, Hardin grew up in numerous North Carolina towns as his father, a Methodist minister, moved from church to church. Hardin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Duke in 1952, then from Duke law school, first in his class. From 1954-56, he worked in counterintelligence for the U.S. Army.

Hardin then practiced law before joining the Duke law faculty – and higher education for the rest of his career. After retiring as UNC’s chancellor, he also taught in Carolina’s law school.

In between, he was president of Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C. (1968-72), Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas (1972-74), and Drew University in Madison, N.J. (1975-88).

Hardin Hall houses about 190 students and blends living with learning in its seminar rooms, lounges and study rooms. On Feb. 12, UNC named another of four such halls on south campus – that one in honor of George Moses Horton. Horton, a poet and slave in Chatham County in the 19th century, sold produce and verses in Chapel Hill to Carolina students and eventually gained his freedom.  

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Coverage notes: Media are invited to cover the ceremony and tour Hardin Hall, off Manning Drive just west of the entrance to the Smith Center. Turn north onto Paul Hardin Drive and park behind the Security Services Building, which houses the UNC Department of Public Safety. The building is beside Hardin Hall.

For more information on the halls, visit http://www.unc.edu/news/media/2002/HJNadvise080702.htm; for more on Horton Hall, visit http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/feb07/hortonhall020907.html

Housing and residential education contact: Rick Bradley, (919) 962-5240, rick_bradley@unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589