My school is withdrawing from the world

By Louis Perez, Jr. ,Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

News that the administration of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill plans to “sunset” six global education programs can be met with nothing less than disbelief and incomprehension. The six programs—Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe/Eurasia—centers of national prominence and international distinction, have long served as the programmatic hubs of global studies at Carolina.

The UNC administration appears to have decided that programs of international studies no longer sufficiently align with the larger Carolina mission to warrant continued support. The decision to close the global education centers is attributed to matters of budgetary exigencies: the need to reduce $7 million in spending over the next several years. However, it is not at all certain what budgetary analytics the administration has deployed to project a $7-million savings by closing the global programs. The centers operate efficiently on very modest budgets. The closing of the global education centers will most assuredly not yield a $7-million savings.

On the contrary, a calculus of a cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the global programs have obtained external funds in amounts that far exceed their operational cost to the University. Over the past 10 years, the global centers have combined to bring to Carolina from outside sources a total of $28 million in the form of government and non-government funds.

Notwithstanding the cost-saving rampages of recent months in Washington, D.C., the global programs have been resilient and resourceful, demonstrating entrepreneurial aplomb and fundraising savvy. In the past 10 years the global programs have secured substantial non-government funding in the form of grants from private foundations, endowments, donations, and gifts large and small. The three centers of Asia, Europe, and Latin America, for example, have obtained more than $7 million from non-governmental sources.

It is not certain that the administration fully grasps the reach and breadth of the centers’ contributions to the well-being of the University. Outside funds obtained by the centers have played a vital role in advancing the Carolina global mission, enabling the development of new global courses, strengthening foreign-language competencies, expanding study-abroad opportunities, enriching undergraduate education, advancing graduate student training, and fostering faculty professional development. External funds have served to sponsor campus visits of scholars of distinction, prominent journalists, practitioners of statecraft, celebrated writers and poets, and world-leading figures in the performing and visual arts, thereby enriching the intellectual and cultural life of the University community. Resources provided by the centers have enabled sponsorship of international conferences and national symposia addressing global issues of critical national importance. Almost none of the above would have been possible without the centers.

The closing of the centers is inimical to Carolina’s long-term strategic interests and incompatible with its lofty aspirations “to be the leading global, public research university in America.” The planned closure of the centers will diminish global education opportunities and impair institutional capacity to sustain global programming initiatives. The attending elimination of global education staff positions threatens the loss of irreplaceable professional expertise and invaluable administrative experience upon which the Carolina global education mission depends.

Reasonable observers can only pause in a state of numb incomprehension at the yawning chasm between the professed global mission of the university and the proposed elimination of global centers. No programs are better prepared to enable Carolina fulfill its mission than the global education centers. How does the University presume to “help solve the world’s problems” by eliminating the very programs through which to understand the world’s problems?

Simply stated, Carolina cannot sustain a plausible commitment to a “comprehensive, global education” without the collaboration of the global program centers. The proud University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among the top ten public universities in the United States, secure in its stature as a cosmopolitan university, is poised to withdraw from the world. The administration’s plan to “sunset” the global education programs does indeed darken the horizon.

How utterly anomalous: Carolina with aspirations to become “the leading global, public research university in America” turning its back on the globe. One can only hope that the Board of Trustees will save Carolina from itself.

Louis A. Pérez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and past Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas. This opinion piece first appeared in The News and Observer, January 6, 2026