UNC cuts all six area studies research centers, effective 2026 -- Maybe Not

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"The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies are all slated to close. These centers are the first of 14 total UNC centers and institutes to be cut. UNC Media Relations wrote in a statement to The Daily Tar Heel that “some programs have been identified to be sunset in 2026,” with additional cuts still to be finalized.

The six area studies centers have operated at UNC since the early '90s and 2000s. UNC's Burton Craige professor of political science Gary Marks co-founded the Center for European Studies in 1994 and served as its director until 2006.

.....

...they are slated for permanent closure following the loss of their Title VI funding, and that the decision came as the North Carolina legislature is engaged in cutting budgets for centers and institutes across the UNC System.

“The recommendation to close these Centers came out of deliberations led by UNC’s CFO, Nate Knuffman,” Lothspeich wrote. “Dean White and Senior Associate Dean Noreen McDonald stressed that the closure process would take time, and many issues are still to be sorted through.”

Changes to centers and institutes were initially projected to save $4.8 million, according to Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations Nate Knuffman’s presentation at the September Board of Trustees’ Budget, Finance and Infrastructure Committee meeting.

But at the November BOT Budget, Finance and Infrastructure Committee meeting, Knuffman said the University now plans to reduce $7 million in spending over the next several years, with approximately $3 million forecasted in near-term savings.

These increased cuts, he said, would be accomplished through decommissioning 14 centers and institutes total.
.....
Knuffman’s November presentation stated that evaluations included considering a center’s return on investment, how its mission and history align with the chancellor’s priorities, its research, service and instructional outputs, its “metrics of success” and considerations about units with special BOT, legislative or public interest priorities.

“We often know, sometimes, there's a storied history with several of these and we have to be mindful of that when we think about what might be possible here,” he said at the November meeting.

.....

“I think you're talking about literally hundreds of faculty who are going to be affected by this,” Marks said. “The centers are a real core element of the institutional structure of the University. It's like saying, ‘Look, I can't afford to have two hands, so I'm gonna have to cut one off.’”

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altmin said:
We spent more on Belichick than all those programs combined, and I suspect one of the Center employees probably could have coached us to more wins.
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I was going to say - I’m sure they will funnel this into football - a strong football program is the true purpose of any large University these days. Alabama is the goal, not a public Ivy.
 
ncst has over 40 centers including:

Lebanese Diaspora Studies
Center for Turfgrass Research and education
Center for Textile Comfort
Center for Pest Management
Center for Animal and Poultry Waste Management
Center for Family and Community Engagement
 
I think what will happen is that a white male will bring a case that will be reminiscent of the 1978 Bakke case which set the stage for the dismantling of Affirmative Action.

Roberts hates the Civil Rights Act. I can see a future where SCOTUS decides a case that strikes down Title VII and leads to the elimination of the EEOC
 
Thankfully, I finished when Gerhard Weinberg was still a younger man and the emphasis wasn't on what to think but on how to think about thinking.
 
Batt Boy said:
Thankfully, I finished when Gerhard Weinberg was still a younger man and the emphasis wasn't on what to think but on how to think about thinking.
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" thinking about thinking ? " That sounds like metacognition kinda stuff that requires a capacity for abstract thought. Do we really need profs emphasizing stuff that borders on esoterica and would confuse and intimidate the conservative concrete thinking students in the classroom ?
 
heelinhell said:
" thinking about thinking ? " That sounds like metacognition kinda stuff that requires a capacity for abstract thought. Do we really need profs emphasizing stuff that borders on esoterica and would confuse and intimidate the conservative concrete thinking students in the classroom ?
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we've been post-truth for a while, and it's all the MAGA really understand
 




"Thousands of admitted students and their parents will soon decide whether to accept their offer from UNC. For many, an academically rich semester abroad is an exciting prospect of a Carolina education, which guarantees a global education to every student.

But UNC has announced the elimination of the international area studies centers that organize and oversee learning about Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe/Eurasia. For decades, these centers have served as clearing houses for courses, events and financial resources for students who want to be knowledgeable about the world and study abroad. Parents need to understand that closing the centers will devastate international education at UNC. Knowledgeable travel is safe travel, and hollowing out the academic preparation of the more than 2,500 students who yearly participate in formal study abroad will dangerously impoverish their experiences.

What UNC is missing is that the small and efficient staff at these centers cultivate faculty networks across the University that play an invaluable role in preparing students for impactful, safe study abroad. This staff organizes curriculums to deepen regional knowledge in a way no individual major or department can. In this way, the centers save families countless dollars by making the most of precious credit hours. Eliminating the centers dissolves the faculty networks, information sharing, and student communities that enrich learning and maximize safe travel. Astonishingly, UNC has no plans to replace the lost educational opportunities except to scatter whatever is left of the centers, including scholarships that pay study abroad fees, to random departments where students will struggle to find them.

UNC records show that 43% of Tar Heels participate in formal study abroad. These students didn’t randomly wander into the UNC Study Abroad office and throw a dart at a map. They were led there by their courses, which inspired and prepared them. Global area studies center faculty and staff encouraged them. UNC Study Abroad excels in the logistics of program management. But they work hand and glove with the global studies centers. Without them, UNC will send these students abroad less prepared and remarkably less safe than they presently are.

Only 35% of our students' study abroad programs are UNC-led. Partner universities and third parties make up the rest, but these programs are competitive and value region-specific courses in their admissions. Without the threatened centers to make these easily accessible, our students will be less attractive to these programs, and the most prestigious and safest of these will slip from reach. Families must ask: when the Fall 2026 semester begins, will UNC be the leader in global education that it is today? Will the class of 2030 have the educationally solid study abroad opportunities of UNC students these last many decades?

Chancellor Roberts will not change course if parents do not write him and their legislators to express their concerns. UNC promises parents and students the finest global education. It is breaking that promise now."

— Todd Ramón Ochoa, Professor of Religious Studies at UNC
 
From above
What UNC is missing is that the small and efficient staff at these centers cultivate faculty networks across the University that play an invaluable role in preparing students for impactful, safe study abroad. This staff organizes curriculums to deepen regional knowledge in a way no individual major or department can. In this way, the centers save families countless dollars by making the most of precious credit hours. Eliminating the centers dissolves the faculty networks, information sharing, and student communities that enrich learning and maximize safe travel. Astonishingly, UNC has no plans to replace the lost educational opportunities except to scatter whatever is left of the centers, including scholarships that pay study abroad fees, to random departments where students will struggle to find them.

UNC records show that 43% of Tar Heels participate in formal study abroad.
 
Isnt the Civic Whatever thing a giant "center" with faculty supossedly "collaborating" all over campus ?
 
heelinhell said:
ncst has over 40 centers including:

Lebanese Diaspora Studies
Center for Turfgrass Research and education
Center for Textile Comfort
Center for Pest Management
Center for Animal and Poultry Waste Management
Center for Family and Community Engagement
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I don't much about the Center thing today at UNC-CH
A few decades ago I certainly did
Then , a legitimate "angst" was they each had a Chief Administrator-with a Dept Chair type salary Some were not faculty
Obviously that is not the issue today , as shown by the Nclol situation
 

Federal funding may return too late for UNC's soon-to-be consolidated area studies centers​

By Satchel Walton
Senior Writer
March 13
Leaders of UNC’s six area studies centers are continuing to negotiate the future of their disciplines with UNC administration, after it was announced in December that they would be closed down after the loss of federal funding under Title VI of the National Higher Education Act. Recently, Vice Provost Barbara Stephenson told the Faculty Council that UNC “is moving forward with implementation” of a plan to consolidate the centers into one unit.

Now, universities will be able to reapply for Title VI grants after Congress reinstated funding for the program. But UNC's new home for global education will likely start with far less funding than the six area studies centers had before.

Consolidation of the centers ​

The administration had two preconditions for starting negotiations for a consolidated area studies unit, according to Graeme Robertson, director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies.




One is that the new entity cannot be known as a “center” or “institute.” In an email to The Daily Tar Heel, UNC Media Relations did not comment on whether or why the new organization is barred from being called a “center” or “institute,” or on other issues related to the future of the area studies centers.

The second condition, Robertson said, is that two-thirds of the University-allocated funding for the six centers would be cut when they merge. Since announcing a budget cut plan over summer 2025, the University has been finding ways to trim $86 million from its annual spending.

The University has said that the area studies centers were cut largely due to the loss of federal funding and concerns regarding their long-term financial viability. However, Robertson said that the loss of federal funding was “always an excuse rather than a reason” to cut the centers. The real reason, he thinks, was pressure from 30 miles east of Chapel Hill.

“There is a political demand coming out of Raleigh — and it’s there in Project 2025 — to cut and close centers and institutes for reasons that are political and have nothing to do with the nature of the centers or institutes. When the proposal to close our centers was made, it was very clear to us that University administration had no idea what we actually did,” Robertson said.

The current proposal for a new hub, put forward by a working group of the centers’ faculty and staff, is called the “International Program for Scholarship, Innovation, Training, and Education,” which would be abbreviated INSITE. The working group has prepared an organizational structure, preliminary budget and business operations model for the new program. After three months packed with meetings in South Building, the details are still being worked out.

“To be honest, it’s a little bewildering to be negotiating with the same actors, and being encouraged to create a new unit that protects the work that was in place,” Gabriela Valdivia, director of UNC’s Institute for the Study of the Americas, said.

Valdivia hopes that INSITE will be able to preserve scholars’ deep regional expertise while promoting dialogue between scholars with focuses on different international areas. But Robertson worries that its prospects for securing outside funding have already been damaged by the perception that UNC is pulling back from global education.

“No one wants to give money to a dying program, and so by botching the rollout of these changes, the administration put us behind the eight ball to start with,” Robertson said. “Because by announcing that the centers were going to be closed, that’s the word that got out nationally and internationally.”


Title VI funding​

The loss of federal funding was cited as a reason for closing the centers — specifically, funding from Title VI of the National Higher Education Act.

Title VI funding traces its roots to 1958, when the federal government began pouring money into scientific research at universities in an effort to catch up with the Soviet Union in the Space Race. In the same law, Congress set aside funding for the study of global regions and languages. Many of the country’s diplomats, national security officials and international businesspeople have since come through Title VI-funded programs. In every budget for nearly 70 years, Congress reauthorized the funding for foreign language and international education, which totaled $86 million in 2025.

The second Trump administration quickly put this funding in jeopardy. In May 2025, the entire office that administered the grants was functionally dissolved during cost cuts led by the Department of Government Efficiency. Many grants were delayed over the summer, and in September, the Department of Education terminated them.


Brian Cwiek worked for the Department of Education administering Title VI grants until he was laid off in March 2025. He said his office worked smoothly under the first Trump administration and that he did not expect it to be cut.

“There was no reasoning provided,” Cwiek said. “And you know, all of our subsequent efforts to try to get some sort of reason documented yields nothing, which is unsurprising, I would say par for the course.”

A September DOE letter to universities receiving Title VI money stated that the grants “are inconsistent with Administration priorities and do not advance American interests or values.” Without congressional approval, the administration reallocated all the funds into a one-time investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

This caused financial trouble for some of the country’s premier area studies centers, including the six in Chapel Hill. Only four schools — the flagship universities of Indiana, Michigan, California and Wisconsin — had more centers receiving the prestigious federal grants.


When many of UNC's area studies centers’ federal grants were cut by the Trump administration, the University stepped in to financially support the centers in the spring semester of 2025 by paying salaries for affected staff. While Robertson and Valdivia’s centers did not rely mostly on federal funds, much of the staff who worked at the centers were paid through Title VI.

“What has been affected is the infrastructure of the centers — who does the programming, who carries out the initiatives, who talks with students, who tells them about what study abroad programs are best or not,” Valdivia said.

Additionally, UNC administration told the centers' directors that the N.C. General Assembly, in its budget shortfall, had requested that $1.5 million of state funding used on area studies center salaries be returned, Valdivia said. She added that without the funding to pay salaries for affected staff, many positions within the area studies centers were set to be cut by July.

Louis A. Pérez Jr., a professor of history and former director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, said that his center had significant endowments and grants from other sources that would have allowed it to support itself without Title VI funding.

“No one was privy to the conversations and the deliberations that accompanied this decision. It was made by an anonymous ‘working group’ of — they said — faculty and staff. But at the time, no one knew who these people were,” Pérez said.

This January, UNC revealed the four-person advisory committee’s members, all of whom hold primarily administrative roles as a vice chancellor, associate provost, vice dean and senior associate dean.

Now, funding has been reinstated by Congress. But in this new round of Title VI grants, there is also uncertainty; they will now be administered through the U.S. State Department rather than the Department of Education, and they will likely focus more on Trump administration priorities.

UNC hopes to be well prepared to put in strong grant proposals with its new home for global education, according to Vice Provost Barbara Stephenson. But people like Robertson worry that the consolidation of the area studies centers will decrease UNC’s competitiveness for such grants.


Pérez said UNC’s decision to sunset UNC’s centers left him wondering if the University had decided to make global engagement a lower priority.

“Does the decision to close the centers speak to a larger redefinition of the purpose of the university at large: its programs, its place in institutions of higher learning?”

Pérez said. “Is that what this signifies — a turning away from what had been the aspiration of the University for many years to be a global player?”
https://www.dailytarheel.com/articl...udies-closure-federal-funding-update-20260313
 
altmin said:
We spent more on Belichick than all those programs combined, and I suspect one of the Center employees probably could have coached us to more wins.
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This is one of the main reasons why I've grown less interested in following college sports generally. I'm not opposed to paying players, but the current free-for-all Wild West system is ultimately not going to be compatible with the academic side of universities, imo. People can defend it however they want, and I know the money is largely coming from separate sources, but there is simply something gross about watching a great university cannibalize and eliminate entire academic departments on the excuse of "we don't have the money to support them anymore" while they're also paying increasingly large sums of money to kids to spend a year playing ball at their school and paying over-the-hill football coaches enough money to fund the departments they're gutting or abolishing several times over. It's not a good look, no matter how it is explained - and it's happening in public universities across the country, not just at UNC.
 
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