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  • Harvard University devotes $250M to sustain research hit by federal cuts

    Harvard University devotes $250M to sustain research hit by federal cuts

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    Dive Brief:

    • Harvard University will put $250 million of its own funds toward research affected by the ongoing wave of federal cuts, according to a Wednesday announcement
    • Since last week, Harvard has received “a large number of grant terminations from the federal government,” President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning said in a campuswide message. The funding disruptions are halting “lifesaving research and, in some cases, losing years of important work,” they said.
    • Harvard is taking the same tack as Northwestern and Johns Hopkins universities, which announced in April they would use institutional dollars to cover the cost of ongoing research hit by cuts.

    Dive Insight:

    Northwestern and Johns Hopkins began self-funding some of their own research after hundreds of millions of their federal funding had been lost or frozen due to the Trump administration.

    Since Trump retook office, several federal agencies have abruptly changed their funding policies, cutting off billions in grants and contracts with little to no warning. The National Institutes of Health alone slashed $1.8 billion in a little over a month, according to findings published in JAMA last week. 

    Harvard is now similarly self-funding affected research. But the federal government’s attacks against it outpace those directed at many of its peers. 

    Last month, the Trump administration canceled over $2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard after the Ivy League institution publicly rebuked its ultimatums, arguing they overstepped the federal government’s authority. Among the demands, the administration sought a third-party audit of the viewpoints of university employees and students and wanted Harvard to selectively curtain the power of certain employees based on their activism. 

    The university is now bracing for even more cuts and mounting a legal battle against the Trump administration to regain its federal funding. 

    The university intends to fight the government’s “unlawful freeze and termination” of many of its grants and is doing what it can in the interim, Garber and Manning said Wednesday.

    “Although we cannot absorb the entire cost of the suspended or canceled federal funds, we will mobilize financial resources to support critical research activity for a transitional period as we continue to work with our researchers to identify alternative funding sources,” they said.

    They added that the university will advocate for “the productive partnership between the federal government and research universities” that has existed for over eight decades.

    Over 50 higher ed organizations, led by the American Council on Education, made a similar plea in a joint statement Wednesday.

    “The entire country benefits when policymakers and higher education leaders respect a common understanding of the vital role colleges and universities play in advancing the social, cultural, and economic well-being of the United States,” the organizations said.

    They argued that the release of research funds should not be contingent on which students colleges enroll, what programs they offer or how they oversee their instructors. The signatories also include the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the New England Commission of Higher Education, Harvard’s accreditor.

    Prior to its announcement Wednesday, Harvard had already implemented a hiring freeze for the spring semester. And dozens of faculty members have pledged 10% of their salaries to shore up against the “severe financial damage” the university faces as it takes the Trump administration to court.

    Garber recently made a similar pledge. He will take a voluntary 25% pay cut beginning in July, a university spokesperson said Thursday. 

    Harvard has not yet publicly disclosed the new president’s salary. But his predecessors have made north of $1 million annually, meaning his voluntary pay cut in fiscal 2026 would likely net the university six-figure savings.

    Garber, a longstanding Harvard employee, has taken a pay reduction during turbulent financial times before. As provost, Garber took a 25% cut in 2020 in response to the pandemic, as did the university’s then-president and executive vice president.

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  • Head Start turns 60: Alumni reflect on lifelong impact of early learning

    Head Start turns 60: Alumni reflect on lifelong impact of early learning

    In the six decades of Head Start’s existence, it has served nearly 40 million children and their families. But supporters and alumni are quick to point out that the program for children from low-income families provides more than preschool opportunities. 

    “It is more than child care and early learning, it’s a lifeline for children and families in our communities who face the steepest hills to climb to achieve success in school and in life,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director for the National Head Start Association, during a call last month with hundreds of supporters and advocates. The association represents program leaders, children and families. 

    Head Start serves children from various backgrounds

    In the mid to late 1960s when Head Start began, about 75% of the children served were not White, which is similar to these demographics from fiscal year 2023.

    “If we want to build a healthier, freer and more fair America, we have to start by giving every child a real shot, regardless of circumstances at birth, a head start in life, and that’s why programs like Head Start matter,” Vinci said.

    The call was held to rally opposition to an anticipated request from the Trump administration to eliminate Head Start in the fiscal year 2026 budget request. However, despite those reports, the program was not dropped in the top-line FY 2026 budget proposal released May 2. A more detailed budget proposal is expected within the next month.

    The Trump administration has been cutting spending across federal agencies to reduce what it considers waste and to give states more fiscal authority. Some Republicans in Congress and other critics have called Head Start unsafe and ineffective at boosting children’s academic performance.

    But NHSA and other Head Start supporters point to research and anecdotal stories demonstrating positive academic, social and economic returns from the long-time program

    When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the launch of Project Head Start on May 18, 1965, he said rather than it being a federal effort, the program was a “neighborhood effort.”

    Head Start funded enrollment grew over past 60 years

    In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to dips in funded enrollment.

    Today, Head Start serves nearly 800,000 infants, toddlers and preschool children a year. More than 17,000 Head Start centers operate nationwide. A companion Early Head Start program provides prenatal services.

    As the 60th anniversary approached, K-12 Dive spoke with three women who spent their preschool years in Head Start programs in the 1970s. They reminisced about supportive teachers, tasty meals and favorite songs. They also shared how that educational foundation impacted their life journeys, including how they still hold connections to the program.

    Sonya Hill has vivid memories of attending Head Start as a preschooler in the 1970s in Orlando, Fla. Now director of the same program, she’s pictured greeting children after speaking to Orlando government officials about the services on Oct. 8, 2024.

    Sonya Hill

    Sonya Hill

    Sonya Hill’s connection to Head Start has been a full-circle experience — from her participation as a child living in Orlando, Florida, in the 1970s to her role today as director of the area’s same Orange County Head Start program. 

    Hill, 52, has vivid memories of her own Head Start experience. One of her favorite activities was when all the children held onto the ends of a colorful parachute. They would shake it and run under it. Another special moment came when her father, who worked in a bakery, visited her class for a special event featuring community helpers — and brought doughnuts for all the students. 

    Her favorite teacher, she said, was Shirley Brown. 

    Years later, right after graduating from South Carolina State University with a degree in social work in 1994, Hill was waiting to be interviewed for a job at a Head Start program. Somehow she hadn’t made the connection that this was the same program she had attended as a child. And then Brown walked around the corner.

    “I hugged her so hard. It was the same feeling of hugging her when I was in her Head Start classroom, and I couldn’t believe it,” Hill said. 

    Hill got the job, and for the past 30 years, she has worked in various roles there, eventually being named director in 2016.

    As leader of the program, she travels to the Florida state capital and to Washington, D.C, to advocate for Head Start services, telling lawmakers about former students who have gone on to college and careers.

    “I’m just thinking this is a program that has impacted so many people across the United States, but I know firsthand that Head Start works,” Hill said.

    She credits her childhood Head Start experience with helping her become the first in her family to graduate college and also to earn a master’s degree.

    Her family — which she notes extends today from her grandmother to children of her nieces and nephews — is “extremely proud” of her, Hill says, and she doesn’t take that lightly. “I know I have a lot of responsibility to my family, to my community,” Hill said. “Head Start truly gave me my foundation, and that’s why I’ve stayed here, because I owe so much to the program, and I get to see firsthand how it’s changed lives.”

    Toscha Blalock remembers enjoying the routines in the Head Start program she attended in the 1970s in western Pennsylvania. She is currently the chief learning and evaluation officer at Trust for Learning.

    Toscha Blalock

    Toscha Blalock

    As a young child growing up in the small town of Monessen, Pennsylvania, Toscha Blalock’s home life was fun and welcoming, but hectic. She lived with nine relatives, including her mother, Gloria Anderson, who had Blalock when she was a teenager. As the youngest, Blalock remembers the adults and her cousins caring for her by braiding her hair and playing games with her. Even at a young age, her family labeled her “the smart one.”

    But the family struggled financially, she said. Her mother, who had negative experiences as a student during desegregation efforts, sought out the area’s Head Start program for her daughter, determined that she would have a better education.

    As a Head Start student in the 1970s, Blalock loved reading books. She also enjoyed the school day routines of learning, meal time and napping. By the time Blalock was ready for kindergarten, she was reading above her age level. In 1st grade, when she wasn’t included in the highest level reading group, Blalock’s mother spoke to school administrators, and the young student moved to the higher level group.

    “There were a lot of experiences like that in the school. There was a challenging racial dynamic in the town, and I think that spilled into how children were treated,” said Blalock, 53.

    In high school, Blalock was one of only two Black students in her 89-student graduating class enrolled in college prep classes. 

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  • AAERI seeks visa overhaul for Australia’s student system

    AAERI seeks visa overhaul for Australia’s student system

    The Association of Australian Education Representatives in India (AAERI), in a submission to the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Education, has urged the Labor government to link student visas to the institution of initial enrolment.

    The association, established in October 1996 to uphold the credibility of education agents recruiting students for Australian institutions, proposed that any change in course or institution should require a new visa application, with the existing visa automatically cancelled upon such a change.

    “This proposed reform means that a student’s visa would be directly linked to the education provider (institution) listed in their initial Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) at the time of visa approval. The student would be required to remain enrolled at that institution,” read a statement by AAERI.  

    The association expalined that if a student wishes to change their course or education provider, they must obtain a new CoE from the new institution, apply for a fresh student visa, and once again demonstrate that they meet all Genuine Student requirements.

    “Such a measure will strengthen the integrity of Australia’s student visa program, reduce exploitation in the education sector, improve compliance with Genuine Student (GS) criteria, and safeguard Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality international education,” it added. 

    “Additionally, this reform will support ethical education agents and reputable institutions by discouraging course-hopping and misuse of the student visa system, thereby enhancing student retention and sector stability.”

    Such a measure will strengthen the integrity of Australia’s student visa program, reduce exploitation in the education sector, improve compliance with Genuine Student (GS) criteria, and safeguard Australia’s reputation as a provider of high-quality international education.
    AAERI

    Based on AAERI’s submission, such a policy would align with Condition 8516, which requires students to remain enrolled in a registered course at the same level or higher than the one for which their visa was originally granted.

    As per reports, education loan applications from India, one of Australia’s biggest student markets, have quadrupled since the Covid pandemic, with the number of loan-seeking students expected to rise further.

    With many students relying on Indian public and private banks for education loans, changes in their courses in Australia have often led to their original loans being considered void, placing many at significant financial risk.

    “Based on our communication with several Indian banks, if a student changes their course or education provider after arriving in Australia, their loan arrangements may need to be reassessed, taking into account new course fees, institution credibility, and repayment ability,” stated AAERI. 

    “The original loan is void and stands suspended. This poses significant financial risks for students and impacts their compliance with visa conditions.”

    According to AAERI, the problem is also prevalent among Nepali students, with nearly 60,000 currently studying in Australia. 

    The association also highlighted examples from other study destinations that Australia can learn from in implementing the proposed framework. 

    While New Zealand allows course or provider changes but may require a variation of conditions or a new visa, especially for pathway visa holders or when moving to lower-level courses, in the UK, the student visa system is closely tied to licensed sponsors through the Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies, so changing institutions generally requires a new CAS and immigration permission.

    In Canada, stricter rules have been implemented requiring international students to be enrolled at the Designated Learning Institution named on their study permit, and to change institutions, students must apply for and obtain a new study permit, emphasising the importance of linking visas to specific institutions.

    “Australia’s recent reforms, such as closing the concurrent CoE loophole and requiring CoEs for onshore visa applications, are steps in a similar direction but do not go far enough to address the core issue of unethical student poaching, misuse of student visa and provider switching,” stated AAERI. 

    AAERI’s call for action comes at a time when the return of the Labour government is viewed as “offering little comfort to an international education sector already under-siege”, as highlighted in a recent article by Ian Pratt, managing director of Lexis English, for The PIE News.

    In Anthony Albanese’s second term, the Prime Minister established a new role – assistant minister for international education – and appointed Victorian MP Julian Hill.

    “It’s important that students who come here get a quality education… This sector is complex and Julian Hill is someone who’s been involved as a local member as well, and I think he’ll be a very good appointment,” Albanese stated at a press conference this week. 

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  • Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Waivers Let Some N.C. Majors Keep “DEI” Requirements

    Shortly after the second Trump administration began attacking higher education diversity initiatives, the University of North Carolina system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” The system was targeting DEI even before Trump retook office—the UNC Board of Governors repealed the system’s DEI policy a year ago—and its general counsel pointed to the federal government’s newly threatened funding cuts to justify this further step.

    But the system’s kibosh on DEI requirements came with caveats. Majors could continue requiring courses with diversity themes if university chancellors provided waivers.The system gave chancellors the final say on which major-specific courses would continue to be mandated, and chancellors said waivers were needed because state or national accreditation and licensure criteria require diversity education.

    “Approximately 95 percent of the programs identified for waivers at the chancellor level had accreditation and licensure requirements attached to them,” said David J. English, the system’s senior vice president for academic affairs, during a UNC board committee meeting this week. English said these programs are in counseling, education, nursing, psychology and social work.

    According to documents attached to this week’s board meeting agenda and previously reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer, dozens of courses will remain necessary for certain majors in the UNC system, which includes all four-year public universities in the state. Among them are Feminist Theory at UNC Asheville; Multicultural Counseling at UNC Charlotte; Social Work Policy and Restorative Justice at UNC Greensboro; Teaching Reading to Culturally Diverse Children at Fayetteville State University; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Agriculture at North Carolina A&T State University; and Diversity in Higher Education at North Carolina Central University.

    The UNC system is one example of universities across the country being asked to comply with vague statewide and national demands to excise DEI. Lacking detailed guidance, they’ve had to define that term for themselves as they seek to show compliance.

    The UNC system never defined for its component institutions what it meant by the verboten “course credits related to DEI.” The universities were left to determine for themselves what they should stop requiring; some administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review.

    The Feb. 5 order from the system said universities’ general education requirements couldn’t include mandates for DEI-related courses at all. A few institutions, such as East Carolina University and UNC Asheville, responded by jettisoning broad diversity categories from their gen ed requirements. At UNC Chapel Hill, College of Arts and Sciences dean Jim White wrote that “Power, Difference, and Inequality”—a category within the gen ed curriculum there—“could be incorrectly read or understood to be ‘related’ to DEI,” so it was “streamlined” and is now called “Power and Society.”

    But when it came to specific majors’ mandates for DEI-related credits, the system let chancellors grant what it called “tailored waivers” to allow these requirements to continue.

    Appalachian State University’s acting provost initially asked the national Council on Social Work Education, which accredits social work programs, to waive accreditation standards that are specifically called “Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” But when the council refused, Appalachian State chancellor Heather Norris gave her university’s social work program a waiver to continue the education requirements.

    Halaevalu Fonongava’inga Ofahengaue Vakalahi, the Council on Social Work Education’s president and chief executive officer, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “We do not issue waivers except in very limited circumstances as defined by our Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Those circumstances are not applicable in this case.

    “What we have done, and are continuing to do, is work with programs and institutions to ensure they are both meeting the appropriate standards for accreditation while also staying within the boundaries dictated by law,” Vakalahi wrote. “Social work is about healthy individuals, healthy families, and healthy communities. We value inclusion because we believe that social work is for everyone—no exceptions.”

    While the waiver documents released this week show course requirements that survived, they don’t specify whether universities dropped major-specific requirements—and if so, which ones—instead of having their chancellors grant waivers. Universities didn’t provide interviews this week to Inside Higher Ed for this article. But the fact that the system ordered statewide changes to curriculum rather than have the faculties of individual universities propose them has raised academic freedom and shared governance concerns.

    ‘Faculty Were Not Pleased’

    Wade Maki, chair of the UNC Faculty Assembly, said the faculty senates or councils of all 16 universities, plus the one specialized high school in the system, ratified a resolution calling the order to end DEI course requirements “an unnecessary and intolerable breach of the principle of academic freedom” that “deeply undermines” the system’s mission “to serve the people of our state.”

    Defending the place of faculty in setting curriculum, the resolution says, “Faculty, who are trained at the highest level of our disciplines, collaborate within our departments, universities and communities to design and lead programs—including defining the core curriculum and graduation requirements—to ensure our students’ growth and success.”

    While “faculty were not pleased” about the order, they stepped up to take part in the course review, Maki said. Because the system “did not prescribe how” to comply, “it was up to faculty and administrators to work together to determine what to do,” he said.

    “Each major had to look and say, ‘Do we think we’re at risk of being out of compliance here, and what’s the best course of action?’” he said.

    Herle McGowan, chair of North Carolina State University’s Faculty Senate, said her university dropped a general ed requirement in response to the system’s order—a requirement that had been created by faculty with student input.

    “The fact that it changed without consultation from faculty is definitely concerning to me,” McGowan said.

    She said she personally believes academic freedom rights should cover “the broader curriculum,” not just individual faculty teaching and research. Within majors, she said experts should agree on what students need to learn, and when it comes to gen ed, there should be “collaboration from faculty experts all across the university” in determining what students need to be good, well-rounded citizens prepared for life and work.

    Regardless of her own views on academic freedom, McGowan said, the fact that the system handed down such an order points to a need for constituents—from faculty to board members—to come to a consensus on what academic freedom means.

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  • U.S. Universities Eye Branch Campuses as Way to “Survive Trump”

    U.S. Universities Eye Branch Campuses as Way to “Survive Trump”

    Establishing branch campuses abroad—often used as a crisis mitigation strategy—could become more important for U.S. universities facing increasing threats at home, but scholars are divided on their likelihood of success.

    Illinois Institute of Technology has announced that it is to build a campus in Mumbai, while Georgetown University, one of six U.S. universities with satellite campuses in Doha, recently renewed its contract in Qatar’s Education City for another 10 years.

    Research-intensive colleges and universities in the U.S. are faced with “new and profound uncertainties” over future funding and the strength of their endowments under the Trump administration, said Geoff Harkness, formerly postdoctoral teaching fellow at Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon Universities’ Education City campuses.

    “This means that R-1 institutions will have to seek alternative sources of revenue, including partnering with nations in the Middle East. For Georgetown, which has a long-established branch campus at Education City, the renewal was a no-brainer in 2025.”

    It comes just a year after Texas A&M closed its campus in Education City, citing “instability” in the region. However, academics said the decision was more likely a reflection of growing pro-Israel politics in the U.S. and unease with Qatar’s role mediating for Hamas in the Gaza conflict.

    Harkness, now associate professor of sociology at Rhode Island College, said the Israel-Palestine conflict put Qatar in a difficult position but warned that Texas A&M could regret its decision to leave from a fiscal perspective.

    “The nation’s vast resources and relative political moderation make it an appealing partner for U.S. colleges and universities, particularly in light of current economic uncertainties.”

    Although not all partnerships are as lucrative as those with the Qatar Foundation, research by Jana Kleibert, professor for economic geography at the University of Hamburg, found that uncertainty around Brexit triggered U.K. universities to explore opening campuses in continental Europe—as Lancaster University did in Leipzig, Germany.

    “Branch campuses are often used as a crisis mitigation strategy by universities,” she said.

    “In this sense, it is no surprise to me that in situations of financial and geopolitical turbulence, branch campuses become more attractive to decision-makers at universities.”

    University leaders hope that overseas campuses can contribute financially to the well-being of the overall institution, either through direct transfers from these sites to the main institutions or through accessing a broader pool of students, said Kleibert.

    Recent figures show that U.S.-Chinese collaborative campuses have experienced record-breaking application numbers from both domestic and international students over the past few years.

    Illinois Tech began planning its Indian outpost long before President Trump’s unprecedented assault on the U.S. higher education system. But Nigel Healey, professor of international higher education at the University of Limerick, said Trump’s culture wars could increase the “push factors” toward overseas expansion in the future.

    “In the medium to long term, branch campuses may offer elite U.S. institutions an alternative way of maintaining their internationalization, accessing international talent and maintaining a global profile at a time when Trump is fostering a new national culture of xenophobia and isolationism,” he said.

    However, he warned that the risks of being pushed into a strategy by suddenly changing political winds is that poor, reactive decisions might be made.

    “The winds may change in the opposite direction, leaving the institution with a branch campus that is suddenly a white elephant.”

    Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College, agreed that there are significant risks in establishing branches overseas and that they are not a high priority for elite universities right now.

    “In the current situation of total instability in U.S. higher education due to the Trump administration, U.S. universities will not be thinking much about branch campuses but about their own survival.”

    Although partnering with many countries may be politically safe, he said universities are unlikely to want to risk making “controversial political moves in the current environment.”

    “Top U.S. universities are more interested in establishing research centers and joint programs overseas that can help their research and be a kind of embassy for recruiting students and researchers for the home campuses.”

    And Kevin Kinser, professor of education and head of the department of education policy studies at Pennsylvania State University, said overseas partners are not free from scrutiny from the White House.

    “The turmoil in the U.S. also includes scrutinizing foreign donations, contributions, collaborations and investments. Looking overseas does not create a safe haven for current federal attention.”

    As a result, he said, Texas A&M may have gotten ahead of the narrative on foreign activities by universities by quitting Education City when it did.

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  • Misinformation Course Teaches Ethics for Engineering Students

    Misinformation Course Teaches Ethics for Engineering Students

    Nearly three in four college students say they have somewhat high or very high media literacy skills (72 percent), according to a 2025 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab. Students are less likely to consider their peers media literate; three in five respondents said they have at least somewhat high levels of concern about the spread of misinformation among their classmates.

    When asked how colleges and universities could help improve students’ media literacy skills, a majority of Student Voice respondents indicated they want digital resources on increasing media literacy or media literacy–related content and training embedded into the curriculum.

    A recently developed course at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering teaches students information literacy principles to help them develop tools to mitigate the harms of online misinformation.

    The background: USC offers an interdisciplinary teaching grant that incentivizes cross-campus collaboration and innovative teaching practices. To be eligible for the grant, applications must include at least one full-time faculty member and faculty from more than one school or division. Each grantee receives up to $20,000 to compensate for applicants’ time and work.

    In 2023, Helen Choi, a faculty member at USC Viterbi, won the interdisciplinary teaching grant in collaboration with Cari Kaurloto, head of the science and engineering library at USC Libraries, to create a media literacy course specifically for engineering students.

    “By focusing on engineering students, we were able to integrate a component of the course that addresses a social issue from an engineering perspective in terms of technical know-how and the professional ethics,” Choi said, which helps students see the relevance of course content to their personal and professional lives.

    What’s the need: Students tend to receive most of their news and information on online platforms; Student Voice data found a majority of learners rely on social media for news content (72 percent), and about one in four engage with news apps or news aggregator websites (27 percent).

    Choi and Kaurloto’s course, titled Information Literacy: Navigating Digital Misinformation, builds academic research skills, teaches information literacy principles and breaks down the social issue of online misinformation.

    “Students examine ways they can navigate online information using their research skills, and then extend that knowledge by considering how they, as prospective engineers, can build technologies that mitigate the harms of online misinformation while enhancing the information literacy of users,” Choi explained.

    USC faculty aren’t the only ones noticing a need for more education around engagement with digital information; a growing number of colleges and universities are making students complete a digital literacy course as a graduation requirement.

    In the classroom: Choi and Kaurloto co-teach the course, which was first offered in this spring to a class of 25 students.

    The students learned to develop effective search strategies and critically examine sources, as well as ethical engineering principles and how to apply them in designing social media platforms, Kaurloto said. Choi and Kaurloto employed active learning pedagogies to give students hands-on and real-life applications including writing, speaking and collaborative coursework.

    One assignment the students completed was conducting library research to develop a thesis paragraph on an information literacy topic with a short, annotated bibliography. Students also presented their research to their peers, Kaurloto said.

    Learners also engaged in a group digital literacy project, designing a public service campaign that included helpful, research-backed ways to identify misinformation, Choi said. “They then had to launch that campaign on a social media platform, measure its impact, and present on their findings.” Projects ranged from infographics on Reddit to short-form videos on spotting AI-generated misinformation and images on TikTok and Instagram.

    The impact: Student feedback said they found the course helpful, with many upper-level learners saying they wished they had taken it sooner in their academic career because of the library research skills they gained. They also indicated the course content was applicable in daily life, such as when supporting family members “who students say have fallen down a few internet rabbit holes or who tend to believe everything they see online,” Choi said.

    Other librarians have taken note of the course as a model of how to teach information literacy, Choi said.

    “We’ve found that linking information literacy with specific disciplines like engineering can be helpful both in terms of building curricula that resonate with students but also for building professional partnerships among faculty,” Choi said. “Many faculty don’t know that university librarians are also experts in information literacy—but they should!”

    This fall, Choi and Kaurloto plan to offer two sections of the course with a cap of 24 students per section. Choi hopes to see more first- and second-year engineering students in the course so they can apply these principles to their program.

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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  • Harvard Medical Researcher Detained by ICE Faces Charge

    Harvard Medical Researcher Detained by ICE Faces Charge

    The Harvard Medical School research associate and Russian native detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement three months ago and sent to Louisiana now faces a criminal charge—for allegedly trying to smuggle frog embryos into the U.S.

    The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the charge in a news release Wednesday, saying it could mean “a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, a term of up to five years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.”

    Prosecutors allege that after the researcher, Kseniia Petrova, arrived from Paris at Boston’s Logan International Airport, a law enforcement canine “alerted its handler to the defendant’s checked duffel bag on the baggage carousel.” The release said Petrova “initially denied carrying any biological material in her checked baggage.”

    Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement Thursday that “less than two hours after the Vermont judge set a hearing on Kseniia’s release, she was suddenly transferred from ICE to criminal custody. This is not a coincidence. It is an attempt by the government to justify its outrageous and legally indefensible position that this scientist working for the U.S. on cures for cancer and aging research has somehow become a danger.”

    The government said in court Wednesday that it intends “to deport Kseniia to Russia,” Romanovsky said, “where it knows she will face grave danger for opposing the Putin regime.”

    He said he expects Petrova will be transferred to Massachusetts in the next few weeks. Romanovsky has previously said Petrova was transporting “a non-hazardous scientific sample,” for which authorities could’ve merely fined her instead of detaining her and revoking her visa.

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  • A New Project to Preserve HBCU History

    A New Project to Preserve HBCU History

    A group of Claflin University students were perusing old campus photos when one image caught a student’s eye—it was a picture of his grandmother from her college days. He knew they attended the same historically Black university in South Carolina, but he had never seen a picture of her in her younger years.

    For Cassandra Illidge, vice president of global partnerships and executive director of the HBCU Grants Program at Getty Images, such moments both drive and affirm the company’s expanding work with HBCUs to preserve photos, documents and records in partnership with the genealogy website Ancestry.

    Identifying his grandmother gave that student “a deeper connection with that institution, with the history and that legacy,” Illidge said, “and that’s what we’re hoping everyone will enjoy with this relationship and this partnership.”

    Funded by Getty Images’ HBCU Grants Program, which started in 2021 with four institutions, the new partnership aims to digitize HBCU archival materials ranging from photos to student newspapers to course catalogs. Getty and Ancestry are working with 10 HBCUs—and counting—to create searchable digital archives for each institution, accessible to students and staff on Ancestry’s website. HBCUs maintain full copyright ownership of all their materials, and any money made from licensing the photos goes back into the digitization project. Meanwhile, students on each campus, who can receive stipends provided by the restaurant chain Denny’s, help to identify documents and photos to preserve and digitize them using scanners donated by Epson.

    The companies are also preserving current documents and records for students and alumni of the future.

    “You’ll see campus queens from the1950s and campus queens from 2025,” Illidge said, referencing a time-honored HBCU tradition of crowning royal courts.

    The project is an expansion of Getty Images’ ongoing work to preserve HBCU photography through its HBCU Grants Program. Illidge had long wanted to put HBCUs’ archival materials on Getty but found the institutions didn’t necessarily have the resources or technology to digitize their rich photography collections. The grant supported that work, but she soon realized that HBCUs needed resources to immortalize pieces of their histories beyond imagery, and Ancestry seemed like the right partner.

    “There were so many stories that needed to be told,” she said. “There’s so much material that still needs to be uncovered for research purposes, for licensing, for storytelling.”

    ‘History Coming to Life’

    Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the first degree-granting HBCU in the country, was also the first to participate in the joint project. So far, about 700 of its archival photos have been digitized, with plans to add documents and records, dating back to its charter in 1854.

    Harry Stinson III, interim vice president of institutional advancement at Lincoln and the executive director of the university’s foundation, said prior to 1910, U.S. Census records for African Americans weren’t well-kept, but Lincoln has “impeccable records” of its students dating back to 11 years before Emancipation. So, the university is now digging up documents and information about people’s ancestors they’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, and making those materials available to students, employees and Ancestry users outside of campus.

    Lincoln University students and staff edit an edition of the campus newspaper, The Lincolnian, in 1954. 

    Lincoln University/Getty Images

    Stinson hopes people use Lincoln’s digital archive to “find their own story of themselves. That’s what college is for,” he said. The archive can “help you connect the dots of your family and your history, your heritage. We want people to learn more about themselves.”

    Meanwhile, students working on the project get to try their hand at archival work, photography restoration and other skills and learn about potential career paths.

    Already, people are uncovering their families’ stories. When Maryland governor Wes Moore came to campus recently to speak at commencement, for example, he was able to see his grandfather’s writing in Lincoln’s student newspaper, as well as his grades and photos.

    Stinson has also been excited to uncover photos of well-known Lincoln alumni and visitors to campus, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall studying and actor Paul Robeson, whose father and grandfather attended Lincoln, coaching football.

    “It’s just seeing history coming to life,” he said.

    The Political Moment

    The project comes at a time when preserving and sharing Black history, and American history more broadly, has become a contentious political issue.

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which took issue with portrayals of the country as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” The order accuses the Smithsonian museums of adopting a “divisive, race-centered ideology” and calls to “remove improper ideology” from these institutions—including the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

    A January executive order aimed at K-12 schools also demanded children be provided a “patriotic education” and included guidelines for the teaching of history. Further, the administration recently fired the librarian of Congress, in part for doing “concerning things” in “pursuit of DEI,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

    Meanwhile, many companies and academic institutions have backed off initiatives or projects focused on Black communities and perspectives amid a broader federal backlash to any initiatives officials perceive as DEI-related.

    Lincoln University Professor Willie Williams teaches students in a classroom.

    Lincoln University professor Willie Williams teaches students, 1970.

    Lincoln University/Getty Images

    Some civil rights groups have adopted a fighting stance against federal attempts to dictate how history is remembered and taught. For example, a coalition of groups, including the African American Policy Forum, the National Urban League and the National Action Network, signed an “affirmation in defense of Black history, texts and art” and held a demonstration earlier this month in support of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

    “We must protect our history not just in books, schools, libraries, and universities, but also in museums, memorials, and remembrances that are sites of our national memory,” the affirmation reads. “Racial inequality remains real; if we are not able to understand it, tell its history, and honor those who have risked everything to solve it, then we lose our capacity to carry the legacy, brilliance and resilience of these freedom fighters in our lives and to future generations.”

    Stinson said it feels “fulfilling” to collect and digitize Lincoln’s history right now, and it’s “ideal timing.” He believes the documents and photos being preserved through Getty Images and Ancestry are of value to all Americans. He highlighted the fact that Thurgood Marshall and other Lincoln alumni are historical figures not just for Black Americans but for the country at large.

    “We’re not just talking about Black history, we’re talking about American history,” he said. The images and records collected show “what African Americans have been able to achieve when given the space and the opportunity to learn and to thrive.”

    Illidge emphasized that Getty Images is working to “preserve history … Black history, all history.”

    “This amazing material that’s coming from HBCUs is just another line of history that we can share with the world,” she said. “Regardless of administration, or any other changes, we’re not changing our goals and mission.”

    (This story has been updated to correct the sport Robeson coached.)

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  • Lessons of the Fountain Pen (opinion)

    Lessons of the Fountain Pen (opinion)

    For the past two years, during the twilight of my academic career, I have become a devotee of the fountain pen, often pondering this seemingly retro act of putting pen to paper.

    Composing again by hand forced me to admit how often I succumb to the internet’s never-ending temptations. In the past, some of my best prose has come forth at 40,000 feet, while I was strapped in for a long flight—with no contact outside the streaking metal tube. But the wily digital devil never rests. Most jets now offer Wi-Fi, enticing you to check your email or the Yankees–Red Sox score as you cross the North Atlantic.

    My longing to write by hand, though, was undermined by largely illegible penmanship, a lifelong consequence of my naturally lefty self having been forced to write right-handed. No pen ever seemed to work for me, and I have tried most. Gel pens are the worst, producing a script that even I cannot decipher. Even so, during a research trip to Europe in fall 2022, where Wi-Fi was often unavailable, I found myself relying on a bound notebook during the day and my computer at night. The illegibility of my notes and journal entries made typing them out especially onerous and time-consuming, all the more so after I had returned home two months later. Then I remembered a fountain pen that my mother had gifted me so long ago—was it for my 50th birthday in 2005?—that its ink cartridges had dried up. A trip to Staples yielded a small pack, and I realized right away that there was enough friction between the nib and page to slow me down—enough for me to be able to decipher what I had written.

    Like most brainstorms, this one proved ephemeral. To write by hand and then enter text into a computer—with my mediocre keyboarding skills—was just too burdensome. Those who started their academic journeys during the typewriter era will remember with a whiff of despair those late-night, hours-long sessions spent typing the final draft. Correction tape, erasable bond, Wite-Out—my heart sinks just listing those essential tools from another era. If you want a taste of those times, just sample the acknowledgments in academic books or dissertations from the decades before computers, in which women, typically wives, are thanked for having typed the manuscript. The acknowledgements from Sacvan Bercovitch’s The American Jeremiad, which I just pulled from a shelf, reflect more rarefied academic circumstances, as the author notes the grant provided by the English Department at Columbia University “for the typing of the manuscript.”

    And then a light went off as I sat in my study, one that has changed my life as a writer. After struggling with incipient carpal tunnel syndrome a few years ago, I purchased voice recognition software. Dragon Naturally Speaking was powerful, especially if you spoke in complete phrases and sentences. My copy of the software is now old—it will not work with Windows 11—but proved a godsend with unexpected benefits. While dictating my notebook pages, I could hear the awkward sentences; I could conjure the better word on the spot, and I could detect those places where the tone needed adjusting. Sometimes inspiration would bless me and a new sentence or two would emerge like Athena.

    I’m no neo-Luddite longing to smash all computers, even when Windows or MS Word betray me, as they so often do. I recognize the realities and benefits of our digital age. But wielding a fountain pen these past two years has prompted me to wonder whether some challenges the humanities face regarding writing and reading might be overcome by heeding the pen’s simple lessons.

    The Importance of Touch

    For millennia the act of writing has been tactile. From Babylonian cuneiform on clay tablets to elaborate Medieval script on vellum and modern calligraphy on heavyweight wedding stationery, writing has always meant touching the surface, with words being physically imprinted as the pen journeys across. When I write well, my hands seldom leave the page. And when I stop to consider the right word or a more felicitous phrase, my pen often poises a mere quarter inch above, ready to strike.

    Compare this to composing on a laptop, where pauses can lead to disaster. Distractions fill your field of vision—apps, task bars, weather forecasts and seemingly never-ending notifications that another email has arrived or another appointment looms. When you grasp for the right combination of words, it’s all too easy to seek them beyond the screen, or, even worse, to succumb to the program suggesting what it believes should come next. And unless you are vigilant about shutting off endless features, the software will insist upon indicating that you just misspelled a word or used a questionable grammatical construction. Most of us then dutifully correct the “mistake,” only to lose the rhythm and even essence of our prose. More and more, the virtual page seems to be doing the writing.

    The Value of Tangibility

    We have all had the experience of composing and revising a document on a computer only to lose the effort because of a crash, a software freeze or a moment of forgetfulness in which we clicked “no” instead of “yes.” What might have seemed so real to us for an hour or more vanishes like a genie who returns to his bottle without granting our wish.

    When I compose by hand, my efforts are right in front of me. The crossed-out word—which turns out to be the right one—can still be recovered. The history of moving paragraphs, those arrows and circles that sometimes fill the page, are not lost as they would be in computer drafting. Even more satisfyingly tangible for me, however, is the physical evidence of my labors: the blue ink stains on my right hand, the ritual of refilling my pen from the bottle when I have gushed out a pool of words, the celebratory occasion when I empty a bottle of ink and need to open a new one. A similar mood of celebration arises when I fill the last page of my wide-ruled notebook and place it on the shelf next to its predecessors. Scrolling through thousands of documents and folders on my computer is certainly a humbling experience, as they represent the literal steps in a multidecade academic journey, but I regret not having found my fountain pen niche many years before. What a collection those notebooks would’ve been.

    The Pleasures of Portability

    Coinciding with my return to compositional roots has been my regular presence at a place where my words seem to flow so easily, the Hall Street Bakery in Grand Rapids. During my sabbatical, I was there at least five days a week and now continue to show up on nonteaching days. All I need is my notebook, a folder with ideas or drafts, a full pen and my regular—a large house coffee and a cranberry-almond scone—to set me up for a solid hour of writing. Conversations bubble from nearby tables, kids run around hopped up on sugar, drivers retrieve DoorDash orders—all set against the occasional counterpoint of the hissing espresso machine—and I am in my element. No need for Wi-Fi passwords or the elusive table next to an electrical outlet. I can walk across the room to speak with someone, order a refill, visit the men’s room—all without fearing that my laptop will disappear. And spilling coffee on my notebook or dropping it onto the floor is a minor inconvenience, not an expensive technological catastrophe. Traveling light, I can sweep up my possessions in an instant and head out the door.

    The Relevance to Reading

    In thinking about writing as a physical act that produces something you can hold, I recognized anew how relevant these same qualities are to reading. We seem today to be awash in words, yet paradoxically find ourselves in the midst of a reading crisis that extends from the youngest learners to those at America’s universities.

    An article by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” convinced me that my experience with the fountain pen might be relevant to the challenges she describes.

    Horowitch reports that students at elite colleges, who have already proven their ability to read complex texts, seem less and less able (or willing) to read long literary works. She mostly ascribes this to high schools emphasizing standardized tests, to teens distracted by smartphones and to college students who view their educations in strictly transactional terms, as means to specific, often exceedingly specific, ends—which seldom include pushing through Middlemarch.

    She may be right, but the teachers and faculty she interviewed offer little beyond assigning shorter texts: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening instead of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye instead of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. A book or two at most from The Iliad or Paradise Lost.

    Let me argue, though, that the very elements I associate with composing by hand—its tactile and tangible nature, its simple conveniences—should be drawn upon when encountering long, complex and sometimes life-changing texts. And that the cool distance of the digital interface works against these very qualities.

    Yes, I know it is possible to put all your books on a single device where you can search and annotate the texts. Even if you lose your Kindle, your digital library can be retrieved from the cloud. Yet the experience of reading on the screen tends to flatten all writing, making each screen much like any other, so that the unique feel and heft of Moby-Dick, for example, is lost, making Melville’s incandescent prose indistinguishable from any Substacker’s, and probably less visually enticing.

    Even if you can resist distraction on your laptop, you never get the sensory experience unique to each book: how it feels in your hands, how its page design pulls you in or pushes you away, how its very smell when brand-new or decades old can evoke its distinctive qualities, how the satisfying sound of turning pages reaches a crescendo when you get to the end and close the cover with a resonant thump. Like the angry slam of a telephone receiver, it’s a sound beyond our digital age. And it all leads to a final moment when you place the book on a shelf to stand as a tangible reminder of your ever-changing reading life—no internet connection required.

    The physical book, that container that our society, try as it might, cannot cast into the electronic darkness, will live on. At least I hope so. A recent visit to my university’s beautiful library leaves much room for doubt. In the popular Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons—sorry, but that’s its official name, sans commas—hundreds of students gather at any given time. But to stroll through its busy floors soon makes this book lover feel like Diogenes in search of an honest man. My lamp has seldom shined upon a student with a physical book in hand; instead, they tap and scroll their way through reading assignments in much the same way they engage daily life.

    I see them as we share the bus that travels between our university’s two campuses, filling each moment with the small screens they find far more interesting than the passing world—the season’s first snowflakes, the glow cast upon the road as dusk approaches, the deer in a harvested cornfield who look up with more curiosity than my fellow travelers.

    With a sigh—and nod to the deer—I open my copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, touching its familiar pages with my ink-stained hands, and try to remember to text my wife that I’m on my way.

    After 37 years as a professor of English at Grand Valley State University, Rob Franciosi recently retired to devote his time to writing.

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  • McMahon Sharpens Tone on Accreditation

    McMahon Sharpens Tone on Accreditation

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made clear in recent public statements that the current system of college accreditation needs to change.

    She’s accused current accreditors of hindering innovation and called for new actors to join the system. Her comments follow an executive order signed last month that targeted diversity, equity and inclusion standards in accreditation; made it easier for colleges to change accreditors; and opened the door for new entrants.

    Firing accreditors is one of the many promises—or threats—President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail as he accused such agencies of failing to hold universities accountable and vowed change. McMahon offered full-throated support for that vision this week, but her comments also raise questions about her understanding of the system she’s aiming to overhaul.

    McMahon Pushes Change

    McMahon criticized the American Bar Association and accreditors broadly in a recent interview with the conservative website PragerU, arguing that such agencies wield too much power and the marketplace would benefit from competition.

    (Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, ABA declined to comment.)

    Her remarks came in response to a question about why more universities aren’t opening. She noted that accreditation was a barrier to launching new institutions and argued that there is “a monopoly on accreditors,” singling out the ABA as the sole accrediting agency for law schools.

    “The president has said, ‘Nope, we need more competition,’” McMahon said.

    Since taking office in March, McMahon has said little about her vision for accreditation changes as she focused on other priorities such as laying off the department’s staff and targeting Columbia and Harvard Universities. But rethinking accreditation is expected to be a top priority for her agency, especially after Trump’s executive order.

    McMahon also argued accreditors have stifled innovation and implied that the accrediting system is still regional.

    “Universities in certain areas of the country can only use that accreditor that’s in that area, so the president is opening it up and he’s saying, ‘Nope, pick any accreditor that you want, anywhere in the country,’ so you’re not bound, then, by that geographical boundary—what’s working, what’s been thought of that you have to do, like, in the Northeast or the Southeast or whatever. That’s really, I think, going to change and open it up for more competition for universities to open as well,” McMahon said in the interview posted Wednesday.

    Regional accreditation was broken up in 2019 during the first Trump administration, and universities have not been bound to regional accreditors since the rules officially changed six years ago. Several institutions have either changed accreditors since then or are in the process of doing so.

    The University of Arizona, for example, jumped from the Higher Learning Commission to the WASC Senior College and University Commission, a move that was announced in 2022. Various Florida institutions are also in the process of decamping from their accreditor, though state officials complained last year that the Biden administration had slowed the process. The Trump administration has since released new guidance to make the process of switching easier.

    Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the progressive Century Foundation and a member of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the education secretary on accreditation, told Inside Higher Ed by email that McMahon’s talking points seem dated.

    “It does seem that Secretary McMahon is using some talking points from five or six years ago. The regions are history. That said, accreditation is a complicated and obscure topic, so I’m not surprised that it is taking a while for her to grasp it all while awaiting the confirmation of an undersecretary with more higher education policy experience,” Shireman wrote.

    McMahon also needled the ABA and accreditors broadly in a Wednesday appearance at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., where she was featured in a conversation about shutting down the Department of Education. There she was asked about improving accreditation.

    “It’s a really big topic and a big issue right now. In fact, we are looking at expanding the number of accreditors in the Department of Education, which takes a couple of years,” McMahon said.

    She again called out the ABA for being “almost a monopoly” before zooming out broadly and repeating the claim from the PragerU interview that universities were tied to regional accreditors.

    “There are accreditors who are assigned to different regions of the country. So if you’re in Florida and you have an accreditor, that’s part of the Southeast, but you really don’t feel like you’re getting your fair shake from these accreditors, and they may be putting all kinds of demands on you that are not necessarily what are looked at by another group of accreditors, and so you’d like to change your accreditation group, you’re not allowed to do that,” McMahon said.

    Education Department officials offered some clarity Thursday in response to questions from Inside Higher Ed.

    “While accreditors are no longer regional, the pre-clearance requirement put in place by the Biden Administration made it almost impossible for institutions to change accreditors. The President’s EO and Secretary McMahon’s actions will bring additional competition and innovation to the marketplace,” an unidentified department spokesperson wrote by email.

    The spokesperson also included a link to McMahon’s comments on last month’s executive order.

    A New Accreditor?

    On the same day McMahon took shots at accreditors, the University of North Carolina system’s president made a surprise announcement that UNC is “exploring the idea” of establishing a new accrediting agency. That effort, he said in remarks at a UNC Board of Governors committee meeting, would be in conjunction with other public university systems, which he did not name.

    “There are frustrations with the cumbersome, expensive, time-consuming burden the current approach places on our campuses, especially smaller institutions that must dedicate significant resources to the process,” Peter Hans said Wednesday, as first reported by The News & Observer.

    The UNC system is considering a foray into the accreditation world following state legislation passed without debate in 2023 that would require public institutions in the state to change accreditors every cycle. Florida passed similar legislation in 2022 that mandated changing accreditors.

    Both North Carolina and Florida have legislatures with strong Republican majorities. The legislation in both states followed questions from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges over shared governance and presidential hiring processes.

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