The Assembly

1 week ago | theassemblync.com | Matt Hartman

Jed Atkins’tenure as dean and director of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Civic Life and Leadershipbegan a little over a year ago, and another school is already trying to lure him away. The Assembly obtained an email that the University of Austin, the “anti-woke” private school that welcomed its first class of students last year, sent earlier this spring to faculty, staff, and students listing Atkins as one of two finalists to become the school’s second president.

1 week ago | theassemblync.com | Sarah Nagem

Kathleen DuVal has a lot to say about early American history. Her latest book, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, spans more than 700 pages and walks readers through early civilizations to a rebirth of Indigenous culture and tradition. In May, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history.

2 weeks ago | theassemblync.com | Sayaka Matsuoka |Joe Killian

For the last two years, Angela Baldwin has been one of many in Greensboro who depend on a local food pantry to make ends meet. In her tight-knit Glenwood neighborhood, the pantry is run out of the carport of the old United Methodist Church on Glenwood Avenue. The city purchased the property back in 2023 and has worked with the neighborhood association and the grassroots group Food Not Bombs to provide food. “I relied on it daily,” said Baldwin, who spoke to The Thread from her front porch.

2 weeks ago | theassemblync.com | Matt Hartman

Richard Kahlenberg has been enthralled with the multiracial, working-class coalitions envisioned by Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin since he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Decades later, Kahlenberg says those ideals led him to an unexpected alliance with conservatives in their fight to end race-based affirmative action.

2 weeks ago | theassemblync.com | Gale Melcher

On the outskirts of Guilford County in the town of Oak Ridge, there’s a long alleyway of grass stretching between the trees as far as the eye can see. Brenda Chaney’s farmhouse is in the middle of the path. Far beneath the surface: three pipes full of natural gas, mostly methane, obtained through hydraulic fracturing or fracking. The Williams Companies’ Transco natural gas pipeline, stretching from New York City to the southern tip of Texas, channels it underneath properties like Chaney’s.