Board of Governors group recommends closing UNC Poverty Center

Yesterday, after months of review, a UNC Board of Governors working group recommended the closing of three UNC Centers or Institutes, including the UNC Center on Poverty and Work, headed by controversial law professor Gene Nichols. You can read more about how the BOG made their decision here.

Anyone who reads these pages knows Civitas has been a vocal critic of Nichols and the Poverty Center. Those reasons are spelled out here and here.

Simply stated, the Center for Poverty and Work is an entity that received state funds and benefits from a cloudy relationship with UNC. For too long the Center on Poverty and its director have been engaged in promoting the narrow partisan interests of a few. The Center’s biggest sin however is to have no practical impact on reducing the poverty it rails against.

For these reasons the full Board of Governors should adopt the recommendations.