BREAKING: Univ. of North Carolina Board of Governors officially kills Chapel Hill's Poverty Center

For background on this story see the previous diary, Wealthy, vindictive, Republican UNC Board of Governors silences law school's Poverty Center.

In a meeting barred to protestors, the Republican-stacked Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina system voted this afternoon to act on a working group's recommendation to forcibly shut down three UNC academic centers:

• UNC Chapel Hill School of Law's Center on Work, Poverty and Opportunity
• East Carolina University's Center for Biodiversity
• Historically black North Carolina Central University's Institute for Civic Engagement
  

According to the Raleigh News & Observer:

UNC Chancellor Carol Folt, who attended Friday’s meeting, said she disagreed with the decision to close the Poverty Center. “What the faculty and students, I believe, are saying is that they are very fearful that this decision is having a chilling effect on their work and diverse perspectives on the area of poverty,” she said. Board of Governors member Hannah Gage said she felt the vote moved too far in management of individual campuses.

Faced with chanting, booing student protests organized by the North Carolina NAACP's Youth and College Division, the Board of Governors moved its voting session into a small private room, in apparent violation of the state's open meeting laws.

Gene Nichol, director of the Poverty Center, said his poverty work would continue in the law school, thanks to a new fund that will be created with donations from private donors and foundations. He called the vote “a dark day for the University of North Carolina” but said the board’s “censorship efforts” had led to an outpouring of support for his work on poverty.

“We will carry forward the work of the Center within the halls of the university, but with greater flexibility and increased resources,” he said in a statement. “North Carolinians are not easily cowered. They react poorly to petty tyrants. They always have. If the Board of Governors moves to block the creation of such a research fund – a turn that is not unlikely – I will be anxious to join them in federal court.”

In a statement published today on the Center on Poverty's university web page, Nichol said in part:

I  have no words to match the gratitude I feel for the astonishing support the Poverty Center has received, in recent weeks, from thousands across North Carolina and the nation. Students, faculty, alumni, engaged citizens, activists, social services providers, political, religious and institutional leaders, and perhaps most movingly, Tar Heels living at or below the edge of poverty have raised their voices and banners in protest. Whether pressing for research on economic justice, or, more broadly, for university-defining traditions of academic freedom, their words and actions have seared my heart and, not infrequently, moistened my eyes. They are not to be forgotten.

An ill wind blows across the UNC system. Its chill does not go unnoticed, as faculty members alter their research agendas and temper their investigations. Others launch plans to relocate to universities that, yet, embrace academic freedom. The members of the Board of Governors have demonstrated unfitness for their high office. Their actions represent a profound, partisan, and breathtakingly shortsighted abuse of power. They deserve our disdain, not our approval. Their decisions call for defiance, not supine submission. With many others, I’ll do my best to provide it.

Disappointed UNC alums seriously considering closing their wallets to the university until it re-establishes the principle of academic freedom can (and should) share these thoughts with its Director of Alumni Affairs, Douglas Dibbert, at doug_dibbert@unc.edu.