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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: ?Chancellor doesn’t have to close center

TO THE EDITOR:

Chancellor Carol Folt’s email last week regarding the closing of the UNC Poverty Center reads like a concession speech: It’s too bad the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity has to close down, the Board of Governors has spoken after all.

We share the disappointment of the chancellor and the provost that the BOG working group recommended that the poverty center be closed. And we are glad that, in their words, they recommended against the working group’s recommendation.

But we are wondering why our chancellor and provost, if they are so “very disappointed,” don’t just use the authority granted them to keep the Poverty Center open — to say nothing of protecting our campus from censorship.

The Appropriations Act of 2014 — the purported impetus for this working group — empowered the “Board of Governors and the campuses” to “consider reducing state funds for centers and institutes, speaker series and other nonacademic activities by up to 15 million dollars” to redistribute those funds to distinguished professorships and the strategic plan. Nothing there about closing centers for any reason.

The Board of Governors, it turns out, already has a policy regarding the regulation of centers within constituent campuses — though you couldn’t tell from how it’s acting lately. Chapter 400.5(R) of the UNC Policy Manual says, “Full authority for the oversight of institutional centers and institutes rests at the campus level, including establishment, management and discontinuation.” Section 5 of that chapter covers discontinuation specifically, providing that the process for discontinuation of centers be found in “campus-level policies.”

UNC-Chapel Hill has developed specific procedures for closing centers on our campus. And you can find those on the provost’s website. They are entitled, plainly enough, “Policies and Procedures Governing Centers and Institutes.” They describe who approves discontinuation of centers — the executive vice chancellor, the provost and, ultimately, the chancellor.

You see, the recommendations are just that — recommendations. The BOG does not have the authority to close the centers in this way. The chancellor does.

Chancellor Folt: A recent Daily Tar Heel editorial asked what you really think about the most important issues facing the University community. We call on you to show us where you stand when it comes to academic freedom and BOG overreach. We recommend that you follow your own policy, or, better yet, say that as chancellor, you refuse to close the Poverty Center on the grounds of academic freedom. You can do otherwise, but that’s just the nature of recommendations.

Joe Polich

Class of '04

Tim Longest

Class of ’13

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