Shadmehr, Mehdi

UNC Service

In addition to routine participation in department committees, together with Anna Bassi and Santiago Olivella from the political science department, we have co-founded and co-organized the inter-disciplinary Formal and Quantitative Seminar series (https://tarheels.live/faqs/schedule/). I've also been a member of the Advisory Committee for Persian Studies since 01/2022.

Candidate Statement

If 5 women faculty consecutively left a department in a comparable university, red flags would be raised and reforms implemented, likely with a change in the department’s leadership; unfortunately, not at UNC, and not even when there are complaints of a hostile work environment. Such shocking situations would be unacceptable at various other public and private universities/institutions that I’ve been associated with, e.g., UCalgary, Princeton, UChicago, and the Institute for Advanced Study. It’s one symptom of a sub-culture that normalizes discriminatory behavior, perpetuated by the exclusionary distribution of decision-making power at UNC. This damages academic productivity and efficiency and violates DEI principles. My aim is to put this urgent problem on the agenda and contribute to fixing it.