The UNC Board of Governors voted unanimously in Charlotte on Friday to close three academic centers in the UNC System.

The affected centers are the UNC-Chapel Hill Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity; the Center for Biodiversity at East Carolina; and the Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change at N.C. Central University.

Friday’s proceedings at UNC-Charlotte were, at times, hard to hear, due to chanting outside by protesters.

Opponents of the move to close the centers accuse the Board of Governors of playing politics, particularly with the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, which receives no direct funding from the state. Members of the BOG have refuted such accusations.

That center’s director, UNC Law Professor Gene Nichol, has long been the subject of scrutiny from BOG members and conservative think tanks. He’s participated in Moral Monday protests; and he angered BOG members in late 2013 with an op-ed piece in the News & Observer that compared Gov. Pat McCrory to segregationist governors of the past.

In Friday’s News & Observer, Nichol responded to the BOG decision with an op-ed piece, in which he expressed gratitude for supporters, and disdain for the Board of Governors. Nichol warned that “an ill wind blows across the UNC System.”

He added that “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.”

Nichol also announced that, despite what he characterized as a move by the BOG to punish him and censor free speech, donors have stepped up to ensure that the work of his poverty center, if not the center itself, will go on.

Last year, the Republican-controlled NC General Assembly called for a review of all 247 UNC centers and institutes, in an effort to save $15 million. The three centers to be shut down receive a total of $6,000 directly from the state.

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