I’ve been part of the UNC System for 30 years now, starting as a graduate student several years after Friday retired. I remember him primarily from his public television show North Carolina People. I knew he was a major figure but not the details. 

 

Friday himself was highly influential though not a particularly exciting person, but the book offers a lot in terms of how effective leadership happens. Friday is a good listener, speaks with everyone regardless of their views, and finds consensus whenever possible. He is clearly one of the most genuinely nice people you’re likely to come across and eventually one of the most influential in the state (and even nationally). 

 

Link’s positivity, however, sometimes means we lose broader context. He writes in painstaking detail about how Friday worked with the seemingly impetuous Governor Scott to figure out how to govern the university at a time when the baby boomer generation needed more options. The outcome—the creation of the modern UNC System—is framed as a disappointment because Friday opposed it. But in fact, Friday had a remarkable lapse of vision because the UNC System is one of the greatest accomplishments of the state. Scott was right. Indeed, Friday does often seek to protect UNC Chapel Hill at the expense of the other schools. 

 

In that sense, Friday was a bit more of a manager than a leader. I’d say his driving vision was that a public university should be shielded from political influence and he worked diligently to counter political intrusion. But he had an old-fashioned view of the university, where Chapel Hill would be the center of the universe, not seeing how much the state was growing and how the state required a stronger system of higher education. 

 

The positivity can also leave him one-dimensional. We learn that Friday works hard, generally 80 hours a week. But he also spends lots of time with his daughters. Elsewhere, Link notes that Friday didn’t much like vacations and his wife started going abroad without him. Something here is getting a bit exaggerated. 

 

Lastly, there are significant chunks of this book that are really more a history of the UNC System than a biography. The development of a medical school at East Carolina University is one such example, as is desegregation. The details are considerable (and frankly sometimes tedious) and for the most part aren’t really all that connected to Friday. Nonetheless, I come away from this book with a much enhanced understanding of the UNC System.