UNC’s National Security Center Hit By DOGE Funding Cuts

This story is republished from NOTUS as part of our partnership with the D.C.-based outlet.

The Department of Homeland Security has cancelled congressionally authorized funding for research into domestic national security threats like active-shooter scenarios and the spread of dangerous diseases.

At least two of the eight universities that house DHS-funded Centers of Excellence have stopped their work, NOTUS confirmed Tuesday. 

One of the centers, housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, modeled flooding and hurricane risks. The other, housed at Arizona State University, was responsible for designing improvements to border control. 

DOGE cut off tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for at least seven Centers of Excellence, which are responsible for coordinating research on critical infrastructure, terrorist threats, severe weather and criminal networks, as of April 8, according to DOGE records posted online. DHS and five of the centers did not immediately respond to requests for comment about their status. 

The administration appears to have given at least one university reprieve: the Alaska center, which investigates Arctic security issues, was told Friday that its funding levels have already been restored, according to a University of Alaska Anchorage spokesperson. 

DOGE has repeatedly backtracked on funding cuts, at times on appeal from lawmakers who have been frustrated by the slash-and-burn tactics impacting their districts. All eight centers are still listed on the DHS website, which touts the centers as institutions that conduct “groundbreaking research resulting in rigorous, objective knowledge products and timely solutions for DHS Components.”

George Washington University, whose center offers an MBA program in security technology, was not clearly listed among the April 8 DOGE cuts. 

The Centers of Excellence have existed since 2002, when Congress mandated their creation as part of the Homeland Security Act passed after 9/11. The first Trump administration repeatedly proposed cutting the centers’ budgets—and specifically proposed closing the UNC Chapel Hill Center—but Congress never acted on those proposals.

Now, the centers are shuttering without congressional approval.

The Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency at ASU had taken on a number of projects for DHS aimed at strengthening border security, including one that helped DHS identify early warning signs that a country might be pursuing chemical warfare. Another researched how DHS could optimally allocate resources to address stress along the border. 

Ronald Askin, professor emeritus at ASU and the center’s executive director, was working with the Transportation Security Administration and IBM on Plan of Day, a tool that manages the operation of TSA’s technology and personnel to bolster checkpoint security. Askin lost his job when the funding was cut. 

“We were in the process of working with them to transition our research to have IBM implement it in a platform that would be rolled out to airports” across the country, he said. “It was an ongoing development process, and we just stopped our involvement as of April 8, because we were told to stop work.” 

At UNC, the Coastal Resilience Center runs a system that predicts water levels and risks of storm surge during major weather events. The system updates at least four times daily and the data is used to inform National Hurricane Center updates for state and federal agencies. It is also used for planning how to protect roadways and critical infrastructure from possible flood risks. It’s unclear what will happen to that system now that the Coastal Resilience Center is closing. 

The other centers scheduled for termination by DOGE in early April included one focused on reducing the threat of attacks in public places like stadiums and train stations, which is based out of Northeastern University, and another at Texas A&M University that traced how goods move across U.S. borders and what threats, like diseases, they could carry with them. A third, at George Mason University, studied how criminal networks like drug and human trafficking rings form and how to stop them. 

All of the universities that spearhead these centers partnered with other institutions and researchers across the U.S. and worked directly with DHS to address specific national security needs. 

It’s not clear if the administration has a legal basis to terminate the funding for these centers, given that Congress requires that they exist in some form. 

Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS. 

Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.