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Lily Tegner didn’t know what she wanted to do when she graduated from Oregon State University with a chemical engineering degree five years ago. She entered the workforce at a point when unemployment briefly skyrocketed and companies were freezing hiring because of the Covid pandemic. “I didn’t have a very clear direction as far as where I was going in life,” she said.
Like hundreds of thousands of other young adults, Tegner kick-started her career through AmeriCorps, a federal agency that sends its members to communities across the country to tutor students, help after disasters strike and restore wildlife habitats, among other activities. She took a position at the Alaska Afterschool Network, where her job was to help find ways to expand science, technology, engineering and math access in its programs. Four years later, she’s still there — now, as a full-time employee managing the nonprofit’s AmeriCorps program.
“This state became my home,” Tegner said, adding that her year in AmeriCorps “completely changed the trajectory of my career.”
An AmeriCorps member poses with a student in one of the Alaska Afterschool Network’s funded programs. The organization lost its AmeriCorps funding last spring. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Afterschool Network
This spring, Alaska Afterschool Network was one of hundreds of organizations abruptly notified that its AmeriCorps funding had been terminated. Federal funding cuts forced the nonprofit to eliminate three full-time positions and cancel 19 internships scheduled for this summer. Tegner’s job is also at risk, though the organization is trying to find a way to keep her on.
In late April, the Trump administration slashed 41 percent of AmeriCorps’ funding, cutting about $400 million in grants and letting go of more than 32,000 members serving in hundreds of programs across the United States. In June and also this month, judges ordered the government to restore some funding, but the ruling does not reinstate all the money that was taken away. Shrinking AmeriCorps is among the many steps the Trump administration has taken to curb what he has called “waste, fraud and abuse” of federal funds. More action is expected in the months ahead.
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Over the years, the program former President Bill Clinton created has deployed more than a million people.On top of gutting AmeriCorps, the cuts have diminished the reach of an agency that has been a critical path to a career for recent high school and college graduates at a time when entry-level jobs can be difficult to find.
AmeriCorps was created more than three decades ago to oversee expanded federal volunteer programs, incorporating existing projects including Volunteers in Service to America and the National Civilian Community Corps. Its members take on community service positions across the country that can last for up to two years. They receive a small living stipend, and full-time members are eligible for health insurance. At the end of their terms, members are awarded a grant that can be used to pay college tuition or student loans.
“AmeriCorps dollars have a powerful ripple effect, for both the AmeriCorps members and the students that they serve,” said Leslie Cornfeld, founder and CEO of the National Education Equity Lab, a nonprofit that brings college courses to high-poverty schools. “In many instances, it helps them define their careers.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
Federal surveys of AmeriCorps members from 2019, 2021 and 2023 show that 90 percent of members joined the national program in part to gain skills that would help them in school and work, and well over 80 percent said their experience in AmeriCorps helped further their “professional goals and endeavors.”
The Trump administration cited fraud as part of its reason for nearly halving the AmeriCorps budget. Audits of the agency have raised questions about its financial management.
Peter Fleckenstein, 23, joined Aspire Afterschool in Arlington, Virginia, through AmeriCorps last year after graduating from the University of Delaware with a degree in psychology. He saw AmeriCorps as a way to build out his resume; even the entry-level positions he encountered during his job search required experience in the field.
In his position at the after-school program, Fleckenstein leads daily activities for a group of about two dozen fourth grade students. The experience has helped him crystallize his career aspirations: Before AmeriCorps, he was considering clinical social work or teaching. Now, he wants to become a counselor.
“Working with the kids here is a lot of behavior management: problem solving, helping them regulate themselves,” Fleckenstein said. “Doing one-on-one work with them, building habits and routines with them — that is something that I could focus on more if I was in a counseling job.”
Fleckenstein’s position was cut in April before he could complete his one-year term set to end in August, but Aspire Afterschool was able to raise money through donations to hire him and some of the nonprofit’s other AmeriCorps members part-time to finish out their grant year.
The Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development lost half of its AmeriCorps funding this past spring when the federal agency was slashed. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
While some members have joined Americorps after graduating, student Deja Johnson, 24, joined as a way to help pay for college. Her term at The Scholarship Academy — a nonprofit in Atlanta helping low-income high school students navigate financial aid applications — was supposed to end with a $7,400 education grant. Because the terms were cut short, members have been told they’ll get only a prorated portion of the money.
“It’s a little bit of a shame,” said Johnson, who is using the education grant to pursue a bachelor’s degree in nonprofit leadership.
“That’s what a lot of us look forward to with this work that we’re doing, because we know how much of a sacrifice it can be at times. It’s that ‘pouring into our community’ — and that’s how our community pours into us,” Johnson said.
The AmeriCorps termination letters told grantees that their programs no longer met agency priorities, but the nonprofits were not told what those priorities are. Programs with different missions, in both Democratic- and Republican-led communities, were cut.
Sira Coulibaly, a member with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development’s Next Steps AmeriCorps program, packs bags of food for the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
The Hindman Settlement School, a nonprofit in rural Kentucky, was one victim of the cuts. The organization receives about $1 million a year from AmeriCorps for its program tutoring students with math and reading learning disabilities in more than two dozen schools. Losing that funding means drastically scaling back services, said Josh Mullins, senior director of operations at the Hindman Settlement School. He said he does not know why Hindman’s grants were terminated: The nonprofit regularly passes its audits, and its last annual report showed an average gain of seven months in reading levels among students in its dyslexia intervention program.
A statement published in January on an AmeriCorps webpage says the agency is in the process of “conducting a full review” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion in federal programs. But Mullins and other AmeriCorps grantees said diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were not listed anywhere as part of their operations.
“That’s what’s devastating,” Mullins said. “It was completely out of our control. There was nothing you could do.”
The administration also gutted 85 percent of the agency’s federal staff, which has caused problems even for programs that are still receiving AmeriCorps funding.
The federal government terminated about half of the AmeriCorps grants for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. The group uses the funding to place members in local nonprofits and to help develop community partnerships in high-poverty schools. Director Hillary Kane said she’s been experiencing delays from the national AmeriCorps office in getting members approved for the programs that are still operating.
“We need the humans in D.C. to do the stuff that they do, so we can do the stuff that we do,” Kane said. “The person we communicate with isn’t there.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
On June 5, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction ordering the Trump administration to restore AmeriCorps funding in states that had sued over the budget cuts. The lawsuit, which was filed by two dozen Democratic-led states in May, challenges the administration’s authority to cancel the funding without Congressional approval. But the judge’s injunction does not require the Trump administration to reinstate AmeriCorps’ federal employees, and funding is not being restored to programs in states that did not sign on to the lawsuit, including Alaska, home of the Alaska Afterschool Network, or Virginia, where Aspire Afterschool is based.
The Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky was one organization whose funding was restored this summer because of the lawsuit. Mullins said he’s hopeful the nonprofit will continue to receive AmeriCorps funding for the upcoming grant cycle in the fall.
For Kane, the injunction does not undo the chaos caused by the abrupt cancellation of half of her Philadelphia organization’s funding. Many terminated members that were with Kane’s organization have already moved on.
Programs whose grants were cut can apply again in the next grant cycle, but the president’s 2026 budget calls for shutting down AmeriCorps entirely.
While the debate in Washington rages, current and former volunteers mourn the potential loss of a program they said gave their lives meaning and led to employment. The avenue AmeriCorps provided for Tegner to start a career at the Alaska Afterschool Network gave her purpose in life, she said. She’s worried if the program ends, there won’t be another pathway on the same scale for young idealists who aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives.
“It helps young people of all ages grow and try new things,” Tegner said. “That’s very much what it was for me.”
Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].
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Communication is hard. Even in the best of circumstances, every interaction carries not just the message we intend to send but also our own assumptions, our students’ assumptions, and the ever-growing complexity of language and tone, not to mention the medium itself.
This complexity only multiplies in today’s higher ed environment, where faculty and staff are expected to reach students across multiple platforms — LMS announcements, emails, texts, apps — with messages that range from compassionate to corrective. Meanwhile, the rise of EdTech solutions promising “more reach” has, ironically, made it harder to ensure our messages are received in the way we intended. After all, reach does not equal resonance.
So how can we cut through the noise and actually connect with students?
Communication theory may sound abstract, but it offers a powerful lens for improving how we show up in these interactions. Becoming familiar with two frameworks in particular — Expectancy Violations Theory and Family Communication Patterns Theory — can help us better understand both ourselves and the diverse students we serve.
Want to Know Why Some Student Emails Irritate You and Others Inspire You?
Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) can help answer that question (Burgoon 1978). EVT helps explain why we react so differently to similar messages depending on who’s delivering them and how.
Very basically, EVT says we form expectations for how interactions will unfold. When those expectations are violated, we automatically shift attention to the violation and to the person who caused it. But we don’t all interpret those violations the same way. Whether we view them as pleasant surprises or annoying disruptions depends on two factors: (1) violation valence, or how positive or negative we feel about the behavior itself, and (2) communicator reward valence, or how much we value the person who violated our expectation.
In other words, if a student I perceive as motivated and respectful asks for an extension, I might feel proud they trusted me enough to ask. But if the same request comes from someone I’ve perceived (rightly or wrongly) as disengaged, I may feel frustrated even if the circumstances are the same.
Reflecting on EVT can help us surface our biases, hold ourselves accountable to equitable treatment, and better understand our own reactions. If you’ve ever wondered why you’ll go above and beyond for one student but feel resistant to another’s similar request, EVT might be a good place to start.
Want to Know Why Some Students Embrace Your Syllabus and Others Push Back?
Family Communication Patterns Theory (FCP) invites us to consider how students’ early communication environments shape how they relate to authority, rules, and classroom norms (Fitzpatrick and Ritchie 1994).
FCP theory identifies four types of family communication climates based on two key orientations: (1) conformity orientation, which emphasizes obedience, family harmony, and deference to authority, and (2) conversation orientation, which emphasizes open discussion, questioning, and individual voice.
Students from “protective” families (high conformity, low conversation) may be less likely to challenge your authority or seek clarification, while those from “pluralistic” families (low conformity, high conversation) may expect more dialogue, debate, and negotiation. Neither is better, but each brings different expectations to the classroom.
This is especially relevant when teaching first-generation college students, as so many of us do these days. These students often navigate new cultural territory not just academically but communicatively. If they come from family environments where questioning authority wasn’t encouraged, they may hesitate to speak up even when confused or struggling. On the other hand, some may challenge norms precisely because they’re breaking with family tradition.
FCP theory doesn’t give us a script, but it does offer a compass. Understanding that students come with different “communication upbringings” can help us meet them where they are, rather than assuming one-size-fits-all policies or approaches will be received as intended.
Five Communication Theory-Informed Tips for Faculty
Understanding communication theory is helpful but applying it is what truly makes a difference in the classroom. If EVT helps us become more aware of how we perceive student behavior, and FCP Theory helps us see the diverse assumptions students bring with them, what can we do differently?
Here are five practical ways to use these insights to communicate more effectively with your students, all the time but also especially when the message really matters:
Notice your gut reactions — then ask why. If a student’s email rubs you the wrong way, pause and reflect. Are you reacting to the content, or to a violated expectation? EVT reminds us that our perceptions are shaped by both the message and the messenger. Naming your bias is the first step toward equity.
Don’t assume your clarity = their clarity. FCP theory suggests students arrive with different assumptions about how authority and conversation work. A policy you think is obvious may feel rigid to one student and open-ended to another. With this in mind, make space to clarify expectations, especially early in the term.
Reaffirm your approachability, even after pushback. When students challenge you, it may not be intended as disrespect. Rather, it might reflect a high conversation orientation. Keep the door open. A brief, calm response — for instance, “That’s a fair question — let’s talk through it” — can defuse tension and build trust.
Explain the “why” and the “what.” Students are more likely to comply with classroom norms when they understand the thinking behind them. Instead of “No late work,” try: “I don’t accept late work because feedback loops are tight in this class. I want you to get input quickly so you can improve in the next assignment.”
Choose connection over correction. Digital platforms can depersonalize your messages and make tone hard to read. When addressing an issue, lead with empathy before jumping to policy. A stern reminder might shut doors, while a check-in — think: “Hey, I noticed this assignment didn’t come through — everything okay?” — opens them up.
Of course, the goal isn’t to categorize our students, but to better understand them. Communication theory can illuminate patterns, but it can’t predict behavior. Each student, like each of us, is shaped by their own myriad of life experiences.
Still, theory offers a starting point. It helps us move from frustration (“Why don’t students read instructions?”) to curiosity (“What might be getting in the way of this message landing?”). And it reminds us that in a world of increasing technological mediation, the most important messages we send to students are often the most human: I see you. I hear you. I want you to succeed.
When we approach our communication with that intention, we’re more likely to teach and reach our students.
Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.
References
Burgoon, Judee K. “A communication model of personal space violations: Explication and an initial test.” Human communication research 4, no. 2 (1978): 129-142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1978.tb00603.x
Fitzpatrick, Mary Anne, and L. David Ritchie. “Communication schemata within the family: Multiple perspectives on family interaction.” Human Communication Research 20, no. 3 (1994): 275-301. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1994.tb00324.x
Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy. Picture: Martin Ollman
A tax write-off for small businesses that hire PhD graduates, lower course fees and higher PhD stipends are some of the ideas higher education’s peak body has put to the federal government ahead of its economic roundtable on productivity.
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A Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) analysis has found the post-pandemic international student boom only marginally drove up the price of rent and inflation.
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Sarah Henderson was demoted to the backbench after the Coalition lost the May 3 election. Picture: Jane Dempster
Former education opposition spokeswoman Sarah Henderson has broken rank with her party after she pushed for a flat indexation cap on Labor’s student debt-slashing Bill.
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To lead in higher education feels much like inhabiting a shifting identify.
One moment you are a strategist expected to speak in spreadsheets and scenario plans. The next, you are a listener, empathetic, calm, human, supporting a student in distress. You leave that conversation only to enter a room full of staff in which morale is flatlining and you are now a motivational figure, expected to energise and inspire. Finish all these, and it’s not even 10am! Before the day is over, you are potentially answering questions from university leaders who want metrics, mitigations and certainty.
If it feels like you’re performing multiple, sometimes conflicting roles across a single day, it is really because you are. And the deeper truth is that it is not a flaw – it is simply the job.
Increasingly, leadership in universities demands what feels like a professionally sanctioned form of adaptive multiplicity. I use the phrase carefully to name a reality that many senior leaders know intimately but rarely articulate. The constant emotional and intellectual switching, the need to adjust tone, style, even the way you put your values in practice depending on the room you are in, creates a kind of managed fragmentation. Over time, this potentially leaves many leaders with a nagging internal question: who am I really in this job, and how many versions of me are left?
Flex and strain
This phenomenon has intensified as the sector has grown more complex, even in the short period of time of the last 15 years since I joined academia.
Universities are now sites of competing expectations. Students see themselves as clients, citizens and many times co-creators of their learning – most of the time, all at once – and they rightfully expect to be treated accordingly. Staff expect authentic leadership that values their autonomy, but also want decisive action when systems stumble. Senior teams expect accountability, agility and strategic execution, while external bodies, in their usual “supportive approach”, demand ever increasing levels of compliance, assurance and visible grip.
Each of these communities needs something different from their leaders. They do not all speak the same language, and thus leaders become translators, switchboards and even shape-shifters. It is not performance in the sense of fakery but it is code-switching as a leadership survival strategy.
But even though this capacity to flex and adapt is a strength and should be firmly encouraged, it is also a source of strain. You learn to adapt so well, so naturally, that you risk forgetting what it feels to be still. You begin to filter your words so frequently that spontaneous speech starts to feel dangerous. You work hard to be authentic in different spaces but wonder whether your authenticity looks different depending on who is watching. And while you may pride yourself on being emotionally intelligent, you notice that your own emotional reserves deplete faster than they can replenish.
This kind of labour (emotional, relational, cognitive) is almost entirely invisible in institutional language. It doesn’t appear on strategic plans or in KPIs and metrics. It is not listed in job descriptions or annual reviews. How could it even be? It is not something that can be easily defined.
But, somehow, it is the glue that holds teams, cultures and people together. When a leader gets the tone wrong in a difficult moment, it can take weeks to rebuild trust. When they get it right, there is often no visible outcome because good leadership so often manifests as the evident absence of crisis. This is a key leadership paradox: when you do this work well, very few notice. When you falter, everyone does.
Shifting registers
The multiple selves of leadership are, in many ways, shaped by the multiple identities of the university itself. Higher education is a place of intellectual freedom, but also of bureaucratic machinery. It is a workplace, a community, a brand and a battleground for values. In this context, leaders are asked to be both deeply human and relentlessly strategic. You must lead with your heart while justifying decisions with data. You must be decisive without being authoritarian, empathetic without appearing weak and consistent without being rigid. All leaders will tell you it is a delicate calibration and no two days are the same.
The benefits of this kind of psychological pluralism are real though. Leaders who are able to shift between registers can build bridges between otherwise disconnected parts of the institution. They are more likely to hear what’s not being said and they are better equipped to hold space for complexity, to manage contradictions without defaulting to simplistic solutions. In short, they are able to lead courses, curriculum areas, departments, schools, faculties, campuses or universities that are themselves fractured, plural and dynamic. But none of this is possible without deep self-awareness. Without a strong internal compass, an anchoring sense of purpose and principle, adaptive leadership risks becoming reactive or hollow.
In my own leadership journey, across multiple roles, I have come to both respect and rely on this kind of multiplicity. It has certainly challenged me; it can be uncomfortable and exhausting to change shape so often. But it has also been one of the most professionally rewarding experiences of my life. I have learned more about people, influence, systems and purpose than I could have ever imagined. The act of switching roles deepened my empathy, sharpened my judgement and forced me to become a more deliberate values-led leader. The very difficulty of the work is in many ways what makes it so meaningful.
What leadership in higher education increasingly requires is not just charisma, but presence. The ability to think carefully before acting, to sit with ambiguity rather than force resolution, and to adapt without losing coherence are not signs of weakness but more a mark of maturity. These are not qualities that always show up in leadership frameworks but they are often what hold institutions together when pressure mounts. In a sector where trust is easily lost and change rarely pauses, the capacity to lead with both flexibility and integrity has become more essential than ever.
Don’t panic
For anyone stepping into, or considering, a formal leadership role in higher education (at whatever level!) I would suggest this: know that the title does not prepare you for the internal work.
You will be stretched in ways no leadership framework fully captures. You will need to hold contradiction, manage ambiguity and shift gears constantly. And this will be not just between meetings and conversations, but sometimes within the same sentence. It is demanding, to put it lightly, often invisible work and it can be lonely.
But it is also deeply rewarding, transformative and full of purpose. Especially if you approach your leadership role with humility, clarity of values and a willingness to learn, unlearn, and then adapt some more. And while I believe everyone in HE is already a leader, whether they hold a title or not, those who accept formal leadership positions, regardless of the level, carry a particular responsibility – not to have all answers but to cultivate the space in which people can thrive. It is not about becoming someone else but about learning how to show up differently without ever losing who you are, what values define you.
There is also a deeper cultural discomfort at play. History, and most frameworks, tend to favour the idea of singular leadership identity. But in a sector where the demands are multiple and shifting, I feel consistency is rarely a strength. True leadership authenticity in our sector lies not in being the same person in every room, but in being consistent in your values even as you adapt your delivery. It means having a clear sense of what matters, educationally, ethically, institutionally, and allowing that to shape the different selves you need to inhabit.
And this is not about abandoning coherence – it is about redefining it. Leadership in HE is not a single performance, repeated daily; it is a catalogue of performances. Those who do well – again, regardless of the level which they are at – understand that they will be read differently by different audiences, and that this is not only inevitable but highly necessary. The most successful leaders are those who can integrate their different selves into a single, strategic identify, not fixed, but rooted in the same core values that act as a driving force.
So if you, as a leader in higher education, sometimes feel like you are playing a cast of characters like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, do not panic. You are not alone, and you are not doing it wrong. You are doing what the job requires. You are developing a professionally disciplined multiplicity.
Not a flaw, but a capacity. Not a weakness but a way through huge complexity. It is this ability to hold multiple selves in tension, without losing sight of the core values uniting them, that defines successful leadership in HE today. And that, just maybe, is the most authentic thing of all.
The U.S. Department of Educationannounced Monday that it has opened a civil rights investigationinto Duke University and its law journal, based on allegations that the institution racially discriminates to select the publication’s editors.
Separately, the Education Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also sent a letter Monday to university officials saying they’re reviewing allegations that Duke’s medical school and Duke Health racially discriminate in their hiring, admissions, financial aid and recruitment practices.
The probes come less than a week after U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said officials hoped that Columbia University’s $221 million settlement with the federal government would be a “template for other universities around the country.”
Dive Insight:
Like with the federal government’s previous Columbia probes, the Education Department has opened an investigation into Duke University to determine whether it has violated Title VI, which prohibits federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.
The department said its probe is based on recent reporting that Duke Law Journal racially discriminates against students applying to be editors. It comes one month after The Washington Free Beacon,a conservative publication, alleged that Duke Law Journal potentially gave students applying to be editors an edge if they held leadership positions in affinity groups or if they explained how their “membership in an underrepresented group” would help them promote diverse voices.
Duke Law Journal shared this information only with the law school’s affinity groups, according to the Beacon.
The letter from HHS and the Education Department doesn’t provide the source of the allegations of racial discrimination against Duke’s medical school and Duke Health.However, it says Duke Health would be “unfit for any further financial relationship with the federal government” if the federal government determines they are true.
In their letter, officials suggested they want to cut a deal with the university.
“Our Departments have historically recognized Duke’s commitment to medical excellence and would prefer to partner with Duke to uncover and repair these problems, rather than terminate this relationship,” McMahon and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote.
The two Cabinet secretaries demanded that the university review and reform policies at Duke Health to ensure they don’t include illegal racial preferences, including by making “necessary organizational, leadership, and personnel changes.”
They also asked Duke to establish a Merit and Civil Rights Committee, which would be delegated authority from the university’s board, to conduct the review.
“The Committee must be made up of those members of Duke’s leadership and medical faculty most distinguished in and devoted to genuine excellence in the field of medicine, and the members chosen must satisfy the federal government as to their competence and good faith,” McMahon and Kennedy said in their letter.
McMahon and Kennedy threatened Duke with enforcement actions if the federal government and the Merit and Civil Rights Committee reach an impasse — or if they don’t change the “alleged offending policies” within six months.
Following Columbia’s controversial agreement with the federal government — which also included vast policy changes — law and free speech scholars warned that the Trump administration may attempt to increase their pressure campaigns against other universities to cut deals.
“The Trump administration has made clear that while Columbia is first in line, it intends to reach comparable agreements with other schools — to scale the Columbia shakedown into a broader model of managing universities deemed too woke,”David Pozen, a Columbia law professor, wrote in a blog post. “As has already occurred with law firms, tariffs, and trade policy, regulation by deal is coming to higher education.
Tom Lehrer never needed to shout to be heard. He just sat down at the piano, smiled sweetly, and sang about nuclear war, venereal disease, or killing pigeons. His satire wasn’t angry or bitter either. It was playful, subversive, and cheerfully delivered in a musical theater voice.
Earlier this week on July 26, Lehrer passed away at the age of 97 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As we say goodbye to this legend, we celebrate a man who reminds us that free speech isn’t just a legal concept. It’s a cultural one. One that lives or dies not just in the courts, but in our collective willingness to laugh, to listen, and to be challenged.
To younger audiences, his name might not register immediately. But Lehrer deserves a place alongside George Carlin and Lenny Bruce as one of the best satirists of the 20th century. And like those comic greats, he too loved skirting the line between the humorous and the offensively irreverent. But, of course, there was an art even to being offensive. “Irreverence is easy,” he once said, “but what is hard is wit.”
Still, even when witty, that irreverence often came at a cost. And Lehrer was always witty. His debut album was banned in the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland. The BBC banned 10 of its 12 songs. In the United States, his work was treated as radioactive. Lehrer’s albums sold well, but were rarely played on the radio. One teacher in New York was fired for playing Lehrer’s song “The Vatican Rag” to a seventh-grade class as an example of satire.
First you get down on your knees, Fiddle with your rosaries, Bow your head with great respect, And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
All the while, Lehrer worked as a professor — first of mathematics at Harvard and MIT, and later of musical theater and satire at UC Santa Cruz. He spent his life in the classroom and the public square, two places where free expression remains contested. Today, professors face mounting scrutiny and increasing pressure for challenging orthodoxies, whether in their research, teaching, or posts on social media. In many ways, Lehrer was ahead of his time not just in subject matter, but in the risks he took simply by speaking freely.
He showed us the monsters under our beds, and then taught us to laugh at them. He helped us think the unthinkable. And he showed us that the freedom to speak only matters when we’re willing to use it.
In 2022, Lehrer made perhaps his most powerful statement: He released his entire body of work into the public domain, freely sharing his art for others to use without asking for anything in return. In other words, he didn’t just practice free expression, or take it to its legal limit. He also helped fuel it. And by handing his work over to the public, he also bypassed would-be censors. “So help yourselves,” he said in his statement announcing the decision, “and don’t send me any money.”
One of his most pointed songs, Smut, takes on the morality police and defenders of “decency” with cheerful contempt. The song begins:
I do have a cause, though; it is obscenity. I’m for it! Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what’s really involved: dirty books are fun!
The song is a defense of intellectual freedom, rejecting the notion that we must be protected from dangerous ideas, and insisting instead that culture doesn’t need a filter. That satire is more than entertainment. That humor is the most enjoyable form of honesty and the best test of whether we truly believe in free expression.
Lehrer’s legacy reminds us that censorship isn’t just imposed from above. It can also be enforced from below — through silence, shame, or the threat of social and professional ruin. But the antidote, then as now, is clear: Speak honestly. Laugh loudly. Share freely. Or as Lehrer himself wrote in the liner notes to the 1997 compilation “Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer”:
If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
He was, as always, joking around — while being entirely serious about the power of satire to stir people to action. So today, we remember the late Tom Lehrer not just for his brilliance, but for his bravery. He showed us the monsters under our beds, and then taught us to laugh at them. He helped us think the unthinkable. And he showed us that the freedom to speak only matters when we’re willing to use it.
