I don’t know why this professor doesn’t like conservatives. Every analysis I’ve ever read about charitable giving in America suggests conservatives give more than liberals.

Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Who Is Being Political?

There is wide agreement in North Carolina that Gene Nichol is an articulate and forceful advocate for the impoverished of his state, unafraid to criticize political leaders who in his opinion aren’t doing enough about poverty. Nichol does so from an academic perch. He is a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and leads the university’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

On Wednesday, a committee of the board of the University of North Carolina System voted to kill the center, along with a biodiversity center at East Carolina University and a civic engagement and social change center at North Carolina Central University. Conservatives in the state have long complained that some UNC centers (and especially the poverty center) were being used for political attacks on Republican politicians and so had no place in the university.

But supporters of the centers contend that it’s the board that is playing politics. Of the 240 centers reviewed by the board panel, it wants to kill 3 that reflect scholarly interests in poverty, the environment and social justice. And 13 other research centers at which the panel wants to seek changes (but not eliminate) include programs that focus on diversity, the environment, women’s issues, aging and teaching and learning.