UNC's Board of Governors is threatening to silence Gene Nichol and close his Poverty Center

[octoberlib]

Crucified in Carolina

By Michael A. Cooper Jr.





The greatest threat to North Carolina, says Gene Nichol, director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, is a plague of wrenching poverty. Ten years ago, North Carolina ranked 26th in poverty; it's now 11th. Forty-one percent of minority children are poor, and in places like Charlotte, with the worst upward mobility of any American metropolitan, their lives will never change.But the Poverty Center is on the verge of shutting down. Nichol's criticism of Republican policies made him an enemy of the governor, a target of the state legislature and a victim of a conservative takeover of the university system.

Son of a Texas sharecropper, Nichol's worldview formed when influential boosters recruited the high school star to play college football. "My father was the most impressive person I knew, and these wealthy people thought he was inferior," says Nichol. "Even then, I knew it was fucked up."

******************

Then Republicans swept the 2010 election. Nichol decided, "given altered circumstances in Raleigh and Washington, it [was] essential to change directions ... we face an unfolding crisis in North Carolina for poor and working class folks." Nichol penned editorials in the News & Observer when Republicans cut unemployment benefits and refused the Medicaid expansion.

The criticism was not welcomed. On three occasions in 2013, UNC law dean Jack Boger relayed threats from the legislature. If Nichol didn't stop writing articles, they'd close the Poverty Center, move it to UNC-Pembroke, or he'd be fired. But he pressed on, accusing the GOP of an "unforgivable war on poor people," violating "our history, our ethics, our scriptures and our constitution."


http://clclt.com/charlotte/uncs-board-of-governors-is-threatening-to-silence-gene-nichol-and-close-his-poverty-center/Content?oid=3580985

[CurtEastPoint]

1. UNC is my alma mater and it's awful what those Repubes are doing to that great school.

Goddamn McCrory and Pope.

[octoberlib]

2. They're trying to turn it into Liberty University. It's disgusting.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm

[octoberlib]

4. +1

[gklagan]

5. Alums UNITE

I've seen posts about Art Pope becoming UNC pres and then this. I'm an alum and I know there are a bunch more of us bothered by this. Has anyone put together a proactive agenda for UNC that we'd like to see? With something like that in hand we can attach it to a petition site that commits us to $50.oo donation for adherence to the agenda and no donations for a year if the agenda is abandoned.

If someone has that I'd sign on. If not can we get some posts about what 5-10 things we'd want on that agenda?

[octoberlib]

6. Have you seen these FB pages?

https://www.facebook.com/unitedforunc




https://www.facebook.com/notime4politics


As far as an agenda , I'd start off with saving what they're trying to destroy.

Targeted centers include the Juvenile Justice Institute, Carolina Women’s Center, the UNC Center for Civil Rights, and the Sonja Haynes Center for Black Culture and History. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121062/north-carolina-republicans-battle-uncs-gene-nichol-poverty-center


I've also heard they want to shut down a bunch of research centers.

[gklagan]

7. nope

Last edited Fri Feb 20, 2015, 08:01 AM - Edit history (1)

hadn't seen those, thanks! They're having a rally at UNC Charlotte "Join us on February 27th as we go to the Board of Governors Meeting at UNC Charlotte to silently stand against these cuts. At this meeting they will move along with their plans to nominate and elect a new President, so this will be extremely important."

https://www.facebook.com/events/792644684136823/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. Republicans want to shut down poverty research in North Carolina

Republicans want to shut down poverty research in North Carolina

Wonkblog
By Emily Badger February 21
@emilymbadger

The Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill studies, among other things, the depths of poverty in a state with severe pockets of urban distress, the impact of foreclosure clusters on minority neighborhoods there, and the economic impact of legal aid for North Carolina's low-income residents.

Now the center may be shutting down, the target of a Republican-appointed committee recently charged with reviewing the state university system's research centers. The panel's recommendations, announced this week, have caused an uproar in the state over political retaliation against academia — and, more specifically, over the areas of research curiously singled out by the panel. As Inside Higher Ed points out, the three centers the committee wants to ax "reflect scholarly interests in poverty, the environment and social justice."

Conservative officials in the state have long groused that academics from North Carolina's public universities have attacked conservative politicians over policies such as the state's stringent voter ID law. Since 2010, Republicans have controlled both houses of North Carolina's state legislature, and the vast majority of the university board's members have been appointed by the legislature since then. Last year, the New York Times reports, legislators asked the board to reexamine funding for the more than 200 research centers affiliated with state schools.

[octoberlib]

9. This is an excellent article! Thanks for posting

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. De nada. It's what I do.

Thank you for the thanks.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

11. They closed it, but Nichols isn't silenced.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1069&pid=5744