ATLANTA — An Emory University dean announced that he has decided to shut down the Atlanta school’s journalism program, a move that was criticized by the veteran journalist who heads it.

Dean Robin Forman announced his decision Friday in a letter to the College of Arts and Sciences community. The division of Educational Studies and departments of physical education and visual arts are also being closed.

Currently enrolled students will be able to complete their courses.

The director of the Emory Journalism Program called the decision unwise.

“I disagree with his decision,” Hank Klibanoff told The Associated Press. “This is about whether he values our program, and he does not. He has not shut the door on teaching journalism there in the future, but there will not be a journalism program at Emory.”

The program has nearly 160 students, more than one-third of them co-majors and minors.

“This semester, nearly every class is full and had to turn students away,” he wrote.

Klibanoff, who won a Pulitzer Prize in history in 2007 for a book he co-wrote on press coverage of the civil rights movement, said faculty members were astonished and disappointed by the action.

As for the suggestion that the program doesn’t fit into the college’s focus, Klibanoff wrote, “I am not sure why preparing our students to be critical thinkers, professional journalists and better-informed citizens, as we do, carries a negative connotation.”