Northwestern University will eliminate the only two staff positions in its 78-year-old Program of African Studies and move the program out of the Office for Research, effective Sept. 1, in a restructuring that the provost calls a path forward but that faculty and alumni say threatens the program's survival.

Associate Director Meagan Keefe and Business Administrator Kelly Coffey learned their jobs were being cut during an Aug. 5 Zoom call with human resources and Office for Research representatives, according to The Daily Northwestern. Keefe, who spent nearly 11 years with the program, told the student newspaper she was also told the program itself would close. The university reversed course on closure soon after, she said.

Provost Erik Luijten denied that closure was ever the plan, writing in a Thursday, Aug. 20 statement to The Daily Northwestern that he knows "with certainty that closing the program was never our plan." He did not attend the Aug. 5 meeting.

The program, founded in 1948 by anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits and regarded as the first academic program focused on Africa in the United States, will shift from the Office for Research to the Office of the Provost. Political science professor and department chair William Reno has been named interim director. Reno previously led the program from 2012 through 2018.

But Reno himself has described the move in blunt terms.

"The way that I view it is that the provost is a third party, and [the program] has to sit there for the time being because where it has been at doesn't want it," he told the Chicago Tribune.

The program's long-term home remains unresolved. It could return to the Office for Research, become a department within Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, or join the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. No decision has been made, according to university spokesperson Jon Yates.

Senior lecturer Jeff Rice, who said he was the first recipient of the university's certificate of African Studies in 1972, warned that placing the program in Weinberg could effectively downgrade it by reducing funding and limiting its ability to work across Northwestern's schools.

Keefe and Coffey were the program's only employees because PAS is interdisciplinary and has no teaching staff on its own payroll. Their duties will be absorbed by existing staff in the provost's office, according to Inside Higher Ed. The program's endowment will remain intact, and course offerings will not change, according to the provost's office announcement.

In an Aug. 13 email to PAS community members, Luijten wrote that the decision to eliminate the positions was based on "resources and activity levels." Grant applications from the program have declined since the pandemic, and in September 2025, the U.S. Department of Education notified universities of cuts to the International and Foreign Language Education initiative that had previously funded area studies programs nationwide.

Wildcat Courage, an alumni advocacy group led by Eva Jefferson Paterson (Weinberg '71), met with University President Mung Chiang and other administrators on Aug. 10 to press for commitments to the program. In a statement published Aug. 20, the group said preserving PAS must mean more than preserving its name.

Reno told the Chicago Tribune the university has roughly four months to demonstrate its commitment before a permanent director is appointed Jan. 1, 2027.