Dive Brief:
- The board of the University of North Carolina System on Wednesday voted to close the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the Chapel Hill campus, a biodiversity center at East Carolina University, and a civic engagement and social change center at North Carolina Central University.
- Critics say the board's moves are political, considering that the three centers focus on poverty, environmental, and social justice issues, Inside Higher Ed reported.
- A board panel also wants changes at 13 other centers that conduct research in diversity, environmental issues, women's studies, aging, and teaching and learning.
Dive Insight:
The board's ouster of Tom Ross as president of the University of North Carolina System last month has also been seen as politically motivated. Gene Nichol, head of the closed poverty center, has been criticized by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy conservative think tank. Nichol said in an op-ed piece in the News & Observer that his center was closed because its findings offended politicians, and pointed out that because the center is privately funded, the board's move didn't save any money. "Personally, I’m honored to be singled out for retribution by these agents of wealth, privilege and exclusion," Nichol wrote. John Charles Boger, dean of the law school at Chapel Hill, called the closing of the poverty center a "betrayal of the university’s finest historical traditions and its future promise."
