Residence Hall to Be Named for Former Chancellor Hardin

Posted on March 16, 2007

Carolina will re-name a south campus residence hall on Tuesday in honor of Paul Hardin, Carolina’s seventh chancellor.

Known since its completion in 2002 as Morrison South, the four-story building will be dedicated as Paul Hardin Hall. It houses about 190 students and blends living with learning in its seminar rooms, lounges and study rooms.

The free public ceremony at 4 p.m. will include remarks by Chancellor James Moeser; trustee Roger L. Perry Sr. ’71, retired UNC Provost Dick Richardson, former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Donald Boulton and Hardin. A Carolina blue ribbon will be cut, refreshments will be served, and guests may tour parts of the building.

Hardin, who was chancellor from 1988 to 1995, led the five-year Bicentennial Campaign for Carolina, which raised $440 million in private gifts. The Duke University-educated lawyer is noted as being as a staunch advocate for UNC and helping campaign 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 completion of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

Hardin’s awards have included the 1995 N.C. 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.

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 to ’56, he worked in counterintelligence for the U.S. Army.

Hardin practiced law before joining the Duke law faculty and then began a career in higher education administration, serving as president of Wofford College, Southern Methodist University and Drew University before coming to UNC. After retiring as UNC’s chancellor, he taught in Carolina’s law school.

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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Related coverage is available online:

• Horton Residence Hall Dedication to Honor Slave and Poet
  News report from February 2007

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