The curious loss of a UNC grant that touched on white supremacy

The deal was done, and then it wasn’t. UNC-Chapel Hill has lost a grant promised from the federal government that would have been used to fund projects to undercut jihadist recruiting and other radical violence. The Trump administration canceled the grant, and some wonder if the $900,000 was lost because UNC’s application also said it would apply some of the same approaches to jihadist propaganda, in terms of undermining it, to white supremacists.

Applications approved under President Trump’s administration apparently focused only on jihadist movements to recruit potential terrorists. UNC researchers said they, too, would have focused on that primarily, but might have looked at white supremacy as well.

Given Trump’s right-wing base, this cancellation is curious. Are universities to be held to the ideological standards of Trump’s base? White supremacy, a movement which certainly seeks to recruit young people, is worthy of study, after all. It is a phenomenon that still exists in the United States and has been the subject of numerous academic works.

But the Trump administration apparently wants to focus its dollars on the more politically popular subject of jihadism.

This story was originally published June 27, 2017 at 11:10 AM with the headline "The curious loss of a UNC grant that touched on white supremacy."