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  • You can’t eliminate real-world violence by suing over online speech

    You can’t eliminate real-world violence by suing over online speech

    With so much of our national conversation taking place online, there’s an almost reflexive tendency to search for online causes — and online solutions — when tragedy strikes in the physical world. The murder of Charlie Kirk was no exception. Almost immediately, many (some in good faith, and others decidedly less so) began to postulate about the role played by online rhetoric and polarization.

    Taking the stage at Utah Valley University to discuss political violence last week, Sens. Mark Kelly and John Curtis shared the view that social media platforms are fueling “radicalization” and violence through their content-recommendation algorithms. And they previewed their proposed solution: a bill that would strip platforms of Section 230 protections whenever their algorithms “amplify content that caused harm.”

    This week, the senators unveiled the Algorithm Accountability Act. In a nutshell, the bill would require social media platforms to “exercise reasonable care” to prevent their algorithms from contributing to foreseeable bodily injury or death, whether the user is the victim or the perpetrator. A platform that fails to do so would lose Section 230’s critical protection against being treated as the publisher of user-generated content — and injured parties could sue the platform for violating this “duty of care.”

    The debate over algorithmic content recommendation has been going on for years. Lower courts have almost universally held that Section 230 immunizes social media platforms from lawsuits claiming that algorithmic recommendation of harmful content contributed to terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and racist attacks. When faced with the question in 2023, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the scope of Section 230 — opting instead to hold the claims of algorithmic aiding and abetting at issue would not survive either way.

    Forcing social media platforms to do the dirty work of censorship on pain of expensive litigation and expansive liability is no less offensive to the First Amendment than a direct government speech regulation.

    But there’s an important question that usually gets lost in the heated debate over Section 230: Would such lawsuits be viable even if they could be brought?

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed making the case for his bill, Sen. Curtis wrote, “We hold pharmaceutical companies accountable when their products cause injury. There is no reason Big Tech should be treated differently.”

    At first blush, this argument has an instinctive appeal. But it ultimately dooms itself because there is a reason to treat social media platforms differently. That reason is the First Amendment, which enshrines a constitutional right to free speech — a protection not shared by prescription drugs.

    Perhaps anticipating this point, Sen. Curtis argues that the Algorithm Accountability Act poses no threat to free speech: “Free speech means you can say what you want in the digital town square. Social-media companies host that town square, but algorithms rearrange it.” But free speech doesn’t only protect users’ right to post online free of government censorship; it also protects the editorial decisions of those that host those posts — including algorithmic “rearranging,” to use the senator’s phrase. As the Supreme Court recently affirmed in Moody v. NetChoice:

    When the platforms use their Standards and Guidelines to decide which third-party content those feeds will display, or how the display will be ordered and organized, they are making expressive choices. And because that is true, they receive First Amendment protection.

    The “rearranging” of speech is just as protected as the speech itself, as when a newspaper decides which stories to print on the front page and which letters to the editor to publish. That is no less true for social media platforms. In fact, the term “content-recommendation algorithm” itself points to its expressive nature. Recommending something is a message — “I think you would find this interesting.”

    The Moody Court also acknowledged the expressive nature of arranging online content (emphasis added): “Deciding on the third-party speech that will be included in or excluded from a compilation — and then organizing and presenting the included items — is expressive activity of its own.” Similarly, while dismissing exactly the kind of case the Algorithm Accountability Act would enable, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held this past February: “Facebook’s decision[s] to recommend certain third-party content to specific users . . . are traditional editorial functions of publishers, notwithstanding the various methods they use in performing” them.

    The NO FAKES Act is a real threat to free expression

    In Congress, the “NO FAKES” bill claims to promise deepfake fixes, but their restrictions on expression would chill news, history, art, and everyday speech.


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    So the First Amendment is at least implicated when Congress institutes “accountability” for a platform’s arrangement and presentation of user-generated content, unlike with pharmaceutical safety regulations. But does it prohibit Congress from imposing the kind of liability the Algorithm Accountability Act creates?

    Yes. Two well-established principles explain why.

    First: As the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, imposing civil liability for protected speech raises serious First Amendment concerns.

    Second: Except for the exceedingly narrow category of incitement — where the speaker intended to spur imminent unlawful action by saying something that was likely to cause such action — the First Amendment demands that we hold the wrongdoer accountable for their own conduct, not the people whose words they may have encountered along the way.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concisely explained why these principles preclude liability for “negligently” conveying “harmful” ideas:

    If the shield of the first amendment can be eliminated by providing after publication that an article discussing a dangerous idea negligently helped bring about a real injury simply because the idea can be identified as ‘bad,’ all free speech becomes threatened.

    In other words, faced with a broad, unmeetable duty to anticipate and prevent ideas from causing harm, media would be chilled into publishing, broadcasting, or distributing only the safest and most anodyne material to avoid the risk of unpredictable liability.

    For this reason, courts have — for nearly a century — steadfastly refused to impose a duty of care to prevent harms from speech. A few noteworthy examples are illustrative:

    • Dismissing a lawsuit alleging that CBS’ television programming desensitized a child to violence and led him to shoot and kill his elderly neighbor, one federal court wrote of the duty of care sought by the plaintiffs:

    The impositions pregnant in such a standard are awesome to consider . . . Indeed, it is implicit in the plaintiffs’ demand for a new duty standard, that such a claim should exist for an untoward reaction on the part of any ‘susceptible’ person. The imposition of such a generally undefined and undefinable duty would be an unconstitutional exercise by this Court in any event.

    • In a case brought by the victim of a gruesome attack alleging that NBC knew of studies on child violence putting them on notice that some viewers might imitate violence portrayed on screen, the court ruled:

    [T]he chilling effect of permitting negligence actions for a television broadcast is obvious. . . . The deterrent effect of subjecting [them] to negligence liability because of their programming choices would lead to self-censorship which would dampen the vigor and limit the variety of public debate.

    • Affirming dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that Ozzy Osbourne’s Suicide Solution caused a minor to kill himself, the court noted the profound chilling effect such liability would cause:

    [I]t is simply not acceptable to a free and democratic society to impose a duty upon performing artists to limit and restrict the dissemination of ideas in artistic speech which may adversely affect emotionally troubled individuals. Such a burden would quickly have the effect of reducing and limiting artistic expression to only the broadest standard of taste and acceptance and the lowest level of offense, provocation and controversy.

    • When the family of a teacher killed in a school shooting sued makers and distributors of violent video games and movies, the court rejected the premise of the suit:

    Given the First Amendment values at stake, the magnitude of the burden that Plaintiffs seek to impose on the Video Game and Movie Defendants is daunting. Furthermore, the practical consequences of such liability are unworkable. Plaintiffs would essentially obligate these Defendants, indeed all speakers, to anticipate and prevent the idiosyncratic, violent reactions of unidentified, vulnerable individuals to their creative works.

    In his op-ed, Sen. Curtis wrote, “The problem isn’t what users say, but how algorithms shape and weaponize it.” But the “problem” this bill seeks to remedy very much is what users say. A content recommendation algorithm in isolation can’t cause any harm; it’s the recommendation of certain kinds of content (e.g., radicalizing, polarizing, etc.) that the bill seeks to stymie.

    And that content is overwhelmingly protected by the First Amendment, regardless of whether the posts might, individually or in the aggregate, cause an individual to commit violence. When the City of Indianapolis created remedies for people who viewed pornography, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the municipality’s justification that pornography “perpetuate[s] subordination” and leads to cognizable societal and personal harms:

    [T]his simply demonstrates the power of pornography as speech. All of these unhappy effects depend on mental intermediation. Pornography affects how people see the world, their fellows, and social relations. If pornography is what pornography does, so is other speech.

    [ . . . ]

    Racial bigotry, anti-semitism, violence on television, reporters’ biases — these and many more influence the culture and shape our socialization. None is directly answerable by more speech, unless that speech too finds its place in the popular culture. Yet all is protected as speech, however insidious. Any other answer leaves the government in control of all of the institutions of culture, the great censor and director of which thoughts are good for us.

    And that’s why the Algorithm Accountability Act also threatens users’ expressive rights. There’s simply no reliable way to predict whether any given post might, somewhere down the line, factor into someone else’s independent decision to commit violence — especially at the scale of modern social media. Faced with liability for guessing wrong, platforms will effectively have two realistic choices: aggressively re-engineer their algorithms to bury anything that could possibly be deemed divisive (and therefore risky), or — far more likely — simply ban all such content entirely. Either road leads to the same place: a shrunken public square where whole neighborhoods of protected speech have been bulldozed.


    WATCH VIDEO: A warning label on social media? | So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

    “What a State may not constitutionally bring about by means of a criminal statute,” the Supreme Court famously wrote in New York Times v. Sullivan, “is likewise beyond the reach of its civil law.” Forcing social media platforms to do the dirty work of censorship on pain of expensive litigation and expansive liability is no less offensive to the First Amendment than a direct government speech regulation.

    Political violence is a real and pressing problem. But history has already taught us that trying to scrub away every potential downstream harm of speech is a dead end. And a system of free speech requires us to abstain from the temptation of trying in the first place.

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  • 2026 Spring Conference Cancellations and Substitutions

    2026 Spring Conference Cancellations and Substitutions

    2026 Spring Conference

    2026 Spring Conference Cancellations and Substitutions

    Use this form to cancel your conference registration or to designate a substitute attendee. See the conference registration policies for more information.

    The post 2026 Spring Conference Cancellations and Substitutions appeared first on CUPA-HR.

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  • The case for treating adults as adults when it comes to AI chatbots

    The case for treating adults as adults when it comes to AI chatbots

    For many people, artificial intelligence chatbots make daily life more efficient. AI can manage calendars, compose messages, and provide quick answers to all kinds of questions. People interact with AI chatbots to share thoughts, test ideas, and explore language. This technology, in various ways, is playing a larger and larger role in how we think, work, and express ourselves. 

    But not all the news is good, and some people want to use the law to crack down on AI.

    Recent news reports describe a wave of lawsuits alleging that OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, caused adult users psychological distress. The filings reportedly seek monetary damages for people who conversed at length with a chatbot’s simulated persona and reported experiencing delusions and emotional trauma. In one reported case, a man became convinced that ChatGPT was sentient and later took his own life. 

    These situations are tragic and call for genuine compassion. Unfortunately, if these lawsuits succeed, they’ll effectively impose an unworkable expectation on anyone creating a chatbot to scrub anything that could trigger its most vulnerable users. Everyone, even fully capable adults, would be effectively treated as if they are on suicide watch. That’s a standard that would chill open discourse.

    Adults are neither impervious to nor helpless before AI’s influence on their lives and minds, but treating them like minors is not the solution.

    Like the printing press, the telegraph, and the internet before it, artificial intelligence is an expressive tool. A prompt, an instruction, or even a casual question reflects a user’s intent and expressive choice. A constant across its many uses is human agency — because it is ultimately a person that ends up deciding what to ask, what responses to keep, what results to share, and how to use the material it develops. Just like the communicative technologies of the past, AI has the potential to amplify human speech rather than replace it, bringing more storytellers, perspectives, and critiques with it. 

    Every new expressive medium in its time has faced public scrutiny and renewed calls for government intervention. After the famous 1938 Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast about a fictional alien invasion, for example, the Federal Communications Commission received hundreds of complaints urging the government to step in. Many letters expressed fear that this technology can deceive and destabilize people. Despite the panic, neither the broadcaster nor Welles, who went on to cinematic fame, faced any formal consequences. As time went on, the dire predictions never materialized.

    Early panic rarely aligns with long-term reality. Much of what once seemed threatening eventually found its place in civic life, revolutionizing our ability to communicate and connect. This includes radio dramas, comic books, TV, and the early web. 

    The attorneys filing lawsuits against these AI companies argue that AI is a product, and if a product predictably causes harm, safeguards are expected, even for adults. But when the “product” is speech, that expectation meets real constitutional limits. Even when harm seemed foreseeable, courts have long refused to hold speakers liable for the psychological effects of their speech on people that choose to engage with it. For example, composing rap lyrics or televising reports of violence can’t get you sued for the effects of listening or viewing them, even if they trigger people to act out.

    This principle is necessary to protect free expression. Penalizing people for the emotional or psychological impact of their speech invites the government to police the ideas, too. Recent developments in the UK shows how this can play out. Under laws that criminalize speech causing “alarm or distress,” people in England and Wales can be fined, aggressively prosecuted, or both, based entirely on the state’s claimed authority to measure the emotional “impact” of what was said. That’s not a model we should import. 

    A legal framework worthy of a free society should reflect confidence in adults’ ability to pursue knowledge without government intrusion, and this includes the use of AI tools. Extending child-safety laws or similar liability standards to adult conversations with AI would erode that freedom.

    Government AI regulation could censor protected speech online

    A Texas teen’s AI deepfake ordeal inspired the Take It Down Act — but its vague wording risks sweeping censorship.


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    The same constitutional protections apply when adults interact with speech, even speech generated by AI. That’s because the First Amendment ensures that we meet challenging, misleading, or even false ideas with more speech rather than censorship. More education and debate are the best means to preserve adults’ ability to judge ideas for themselves. It also prevents the state from deciding which messages are too dangerous for people to hear — a power that, if granted, can and will almost certainly be abused and misused. This is the same principle that secures Americans’ right to read subversive books, hear controversial figures speak, and engage with ideas that offend others.

    Regulating adult conversations with AI blurs the line between a government that serves its citizens and one that supervises them. Adulthood presumes the capacity for judgment, including the freedom to err. Being mistaken or misguided is all part of what it means to think and speak for oneself.

    At FIRE, we see this dynamic play out daily on college campuses. These institutions of higher education are meant to prepare young adults for citizenship and self-governance, but instead they often treat students as if discomfort and disagreement are radioactive. Speech codes and restrictions on protests, justified as shields against harm, teach dependence on authority and distrust of one’s own resilience. That same impulse is now being echoed in calls for AI chatbot regulation.

    Yes, words can do harm, even in adulthood. Still, not every harm can be addressed in court or by lawmakers, especially not if it means restricting free expression. Adults are neither impervious to nor helpless before AI’s influence on their lives and minds, but treating them like minors is not the solution.

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  • School Specialty and College Football Playoff Foundation Celebrate Impact Across Schools Nationwide

    School Specialty and College Football Playoff Foundation Celebrate Impact Across Schools Nationwide

    New media center at North Dade Middle School marks milestone in initiative revitalizing learning environments to benefit the entire learning community

    GREENVILLE, WI– November 21, 2025 – School Specialty and the College Football Playoff (CFP) Foundation today announced the completion of a media center makeover at North Dade Middle School, marking the 100th learning space transformed in collaboration with the Extra Yard Makeover initiative. As a part of their nationwide effort to enhance learning environments for students and educators alike, the two organizations have now invested over $5 million into reinvigorating classrooms across the country.

    Miami will host the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship in January, and as part of its legacy work in the community, the CFP Foundation has committed to delivering more than 30 Extra Yard Makeovers alongside School Specialty to revitalize innovation spaces across schools in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. With this latest round of makeovers, the CFP Foundation will have helped enrich learning environments in every Miami-Dade middle school.

    “Changing our middle school libraries into modern learning spaces has had a tremendous impact on engagement and learning outcomes,” said Dr. Jose L. Dotres, Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “In addition to renovation, the transformation is an investment in our teachers, our students and our future. These new innovative spaces support hands-on learning for students of today and tomorrow, so they can develop greater curiosity for learning and lifelong skills.”

    These makeovers transform static spaces into flourishing learning environments, providing upgrades like flexible furniture, technology, supplies and even fresh paint or murals. Each school receives the School Specialty proprietary Projects by DesignⓇ experience, which includes comprehensive consultations to determine the type of space that best supports students, educators and the broader school community. Past rooms made over include STEM labs, broadcast classrooms, libraries, media centers, makerspace rooms, teachers lounges, wellness spaces, sensory rooms, multi-purpose rooms, an esports room and a mariachi room.

    “The transformation of our media center is truly invaluable to our students and staff,” said Nicole Fama, Executive Director at Phalen Leadership Academies, which received a makeover in 2024. “We are profoundly grateful to the College Football Playoff Foundation and School Specialty for this investment. Before the media center, we lacked a space that truly fostered community. Now, everything happens here—from senior breakfasts and college athlete signing days to family game nights and teacher appreciation events. It has become the heart of our community, a space we didn’t realize we needed until it was here.”

    These makeovers serve to benefit both students and teachers, allowing schools to improve their offerings, inspire innovation and modern learning, and directly counter some of the top issues in education today.

    “Addressing teacher burnout and maximizing student engagement starts with the physical environment,” said Jeremy Westbrooks, Director of Strategic Account Development at School Specialty. “The physical classroom is an educator’s primary tool, and by modernizing these spaces, the CFP Foundation and School Specialty are delivering a critical resource that empowers teachers to stay focused on their students’ growth and long-term success.”

    “We’re proud to work alongside School Specialty to bring these meaningful makeover projects to life,” said Britton Banowsky, Executive Director College Football Playoff Foundation. “Their expertise in the design of the spaces and incredible generosity make it possible for us to turn vision into impact for teachers and students.”

    In addition to the CFP Foundation and School Specialty, these makeovers have been supported over the years by Bowl Games, Conference partners, Sponsors and host committees of each College Football Playoff National Championship. To date, makeovers have taken place in 18 states across 58 counties.

    To learn more about the College Playoff Foundation’s Extra Yard Makeover initiative, click here.

    To learn more about School Specialty, click here.

    About School Specialty, LLC 

    With a 60-year legacy, School Specialty is a leading provider of comprehensive learning environment solutions for the infant-K12 education marketplace in the U.S. and Canada. This includes essential classroom supplies, furniture and design services, educational technology, sensory spaces featuring Snoezelen, science curriculum, learning resources, professional development, and more. School Specialty believes every student can flourish in an environment where they are engaged and inspired to learn and grow. In support of this vision to transform more than classrooms, the company applies its unmatched team of education strategists and designs, manufactures, and distributes a broad assortment of name-brand and proprietary products. For more information, go to SchoolSpecialty.com.

    About the College Football Playoff Foundation

    The College Football Playoff (CFP) Foundation is the 501(c)3 non-profit organization serving as the community engagement arm of the College Football Playoff and works in partnership with institutions of higher education, sports organizations, corporations and non-profits to support educators and improve student outcomes. The purpose of the CFP Foundation lies in supporting PK-12 education by elevating the teaching profession. The CFP Foundation inspires and empowers educators by focusing its work in four areas: recognition, resources, recruitment and retention, and professional development. To learn more, visit cfp-foundation.org and follow Extra Yard for Teachers (@CFPExtraYard) on social media.

    Media Contact
    Jon Kannenberg
    [email protected]

    eSchool News Staff
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  • When young people ask big questions and seek answers

    When young people ask big questions and seek answers

    Cliffrene Haffner attended the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her university applications were stalling and she felt stressed and anxious.

    “Life felt unstable, as if I were hanging by a thin thread,” Haffner said. But it was at ALA that she discovered News Decoder.

    “Joining News Decoder helped me rebuild my voice,” she wrote. “It created a place to write honestly and with purpose whilst supporting others in telling their stories. At a time when the world felt numb and disconnected, we used storytelling to bring back hope on campus by sharing our fears, thoughts and expectations.”

    At News Decoder, students work with professional editors and news correspondents to explore complicated, global topics. They have the opportunity to report and write news stories, research and present findings in global webinars with students from other countries, produce podcasts and sit in on live video roundtables with experts and their peers across the globe.

    Many get their articles published on News Decoder’s global news site.

    A different way of seeing the world

    Out of these experiential learning activities, they take away important skills valuable in their later careers, whatever those careers might be: How to communicate clearly, how to recognize multiple perspectives, how to cut through jargon and propaganda and separate facts from opinion and speculation.

    One milestone for many of these is our Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise process, which we call PRDR. In it, students pitch a story topic to News Decoder with a plan on how to research and report it. We ask them to identify different perspectives on problems they want to explore and experts they can reach out to for information and context.

    Then we guide them through a process of introspection, if the story is a personal reflection on their own experience, or a process of reporting and interviewing. News Decoder doesn’t promise students that their stories will get published at the end of the process. They have to work for that — revising their drafts until the finished story is clear and relevant to a global audience.

    One student who went through the process was Joshua Glazer, now a student at Emory University in the United States. Glazer came to News Decoder in high school as an exchange student in Spain with School Year Abroad.

    “I think the skills that I got out of that went on to really change the course of my education and how I view the world,” Glazer said. “Because when you step into the world of journalism you learn a different way of seeing the world.”

    Recognizing our biases

    Glazer learned that for journalism, he had to be less opinionated. “You have to really approach things kind of as they are in the world,” Glazer said. “And that is hard to do. That is not an easy skill that we can do as humans because we inherently have biases.”

    He said it challenged him to look inwards and recognize his biases and counter them with evidence.

    “So I think those skills have really changed the course of how I view having an argument with somebody because all of a sudden, you know, when you have an argument with someone, it’s all opinion,” he said.

    For Haffner, who is now a business administration student at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, News Decoder reshaped how she and her peers understood storytelling.

    “It taught us to let go of rigid biases and to make authenticity the centre of our work,” Haffner said. “Students from different backgrounds found a space where their voices were heard, respected and valued. Our stories formed a shared map, each one opening a new room to explore, each voice strengthening the collective journey we were on. In that chaotic period, we created something meaningful together. Something bigger than us.”

    Working through the complexity of a topic

    Marouane El Bahraoui, a research intern at The Carter Center in the U.S. state of Georgia, also discovered News Decoder at the African Leadership Academy. At the time, he was interested in writing about the effectiveness of the Arab Maghreb Union — an economic bloc of five North African countries. He grew up in Morocco but didn’t want to approach the topic from a purely Moroccan perspective.

    “It was like a very raw idea,” he said.

    He pitched the story and worked with both News Decoder Founder Nelson Graves and correspondent Tom Heneghan to refine the idea. They guided him in the reporting and writing process.

    “One aspect that I liked a lot from my research was the people that I had the chance to talk to,” he said. “It was during Covid and I was just at home and I’m talking to, you know, professors in U.S. universities, I’m talking to UN officials, experts working in think tanks in D.C. and I was thinking oh those people are just so far, you can’t even reach them. And then you have a conversation with them and they’re just normal people.”

    He also found writing the story daunting. “It was a little bit overwhelming for me at the time,” he said. “You know, you’re not writing like an academic essay.”

    Graves encouraged him to write in a straightforward manner. In school, he had been taught to write in a beautiful way to impress.

    “From News Decoder, something I learned is to always keep the audience in mind who you are speaking to, who are you writing to,” he said.

    He took away the importance of letting readers make their own conclusions. “You’re not writing to tell the reader what to think,” he said. “You are writing to give them ideas and arguments, facts and leave the thinking for them.”

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  • Phil Honeywood, IEAA

    Phil Honeywood, IEAA

    Describe yourself in three words or phrases.
    Optimistic global citizen.

    What do you like most about your job?
    My job represents my life journey: teenage exchange student in Japan, government minister for multicultural affairs and higher education, and then running two international education colleges. The journey’s culmination being IEAA CEO!

    Describe a project or initiative you’re currently working on that excites you.
    As convenor of our National Council for International Education, advocating and negotiating with government to maximise exemptions (for all providers) from the recently imposed enrolment limits (caps) policy.

    What’s a piece of work you’re proud of – and what did it teach you?
    Travelling to India with our federal education minister, I pointed out to him that we could not promise that students who commence their Australian degree in our offshore campuses might then be guaranteed the opportunity to complete their course in Australia because of his government’s planned enrolment limits policy (caps) policy.

    This conversation directly led to successful negotiations to permit TNE students to, for the most part, not be counted in an education providers’ annual enrolment limit if they come to Australia to complete their studies. This experience taught me to keep travelling with relevant ministers whenever possible!

    What’s a small daily habit that helps you in your work?
    A triple shot flat white coffee (Melbourne being the coffee capital of the world) on my way to the office!

    What’s one change you’d like to see in your sector over the next few years?
    We need a concerted and coordinated public relations campaign that effectively educates the wider community on the benefits that world class international education delivers.

    What idea, book, podcast or conversation has stayed with you recently?
    My recent meeting in Beijing with China’s minister of education, Huai Jinpeng, reminded me that education is the most wonderful topic that builds bridges across cultures and breaks down misconceptions. 

    What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting out in this field?
    Be willing to put your hand up for new job challenges as often as possible in our dynamic sector. However, if you are going to be a marketing and recruitment “road warrior” be kind to yourself and prioritise family as much as possible!

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  • Week In Review: Fallout from the Education Department’s breakup

    Week In Review: Fallout from the Education Department’s breakup

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Most clicked story of the week:

    The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that it is transferring management of six programs to other federal agencies as the Trump administration continues pushing toward the agency’s closure. The move, the administration said, will give states more control over education funding decisions.

    Among the program shifts are the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the U.S. Department of Labor, and international education and foreign language studies programs to the U.S. Department of State.

    Number of the week:

     

    58%

    The percentage of schools in the U.S. that offer algebra by the 8th grade, according to a study released Tuesday by assessment and research organization NWEA. Beyond that slim majority, access to 8th grade algebra is much lower in rural areas, high-poverty schools and schools with more than 75% Black or Latino students, the study said. High-achieving Black students in particular are “systematically less likely” than other high-achievers to be placed in 8th grade algebra when it is offered.

    Ed Dept split raises concerns

    • Reaction to the Education Department’s announcement that it is shifting the management of a handful of programs to other federal agencies ranged from celebration to condemnation. As many stakeholders praised or criticized the management shift, several others said they want more details about logistics and exactly what would change.
    • On Thursday morning, a coalition of more than 850 local, state and national organizations released a joint commitment to support federal special education law and to protest any move that separates services for students with disabilities from the Education Department. Coalition members, who also include individual advocates, support keeping the department as an independent agency that is fully staffed and funded to oversee federal laws including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504.

    Religion in schools is once again in front of the courts

    • The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 17 refused to hear a case on whether a Christian school should be allowed to broadcast a pregame prayer over a football stadium’s loudspeaker before a state championship game. The decision comes on the heels of several other First Amendment decisions by the high court in recent years related to school prayer and speech.
    • A federal judge on Nov. 18 ordered about a dozen Texas school districts to remove any displays of the Ten Commandments in classrooms by Dec. 1. The preliminary injunction temporarily prohibits these districts from carrying out a state law that requires the schools to display the religious text while related cases are pending in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
    • Another religious school — this time Jewish — has applied to operate a virtual public charter school in Oklahoma next year, reviving the debate of whether religious schools can be considered public just months after a similar effort by a Catholic school was blocked by a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court.

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  • Why empowering students sets the best course for future success

    Why empowering students sets the best course for future success

    Key points:

    When middle school students make the leap to high school, they are expected to have a career path in mind so their classes and goals align with their future plans. That’s a tremendous ask of a teenager who is unaware of the opportunities that await them–and emerging careers that have yet to exist.

    Mentors, parents, and educators spend so much time urging students to focus on their future that we do them a disservice by distracting them from their present–their passions, their interests, their hobbies. This self-discovery, combined with exposure to various career fields, fuels students’ motivation and serves as a guidebook for their professional journey.

    To meet their mission of directing every student toward an individualized post-secondary plan, schools need to prioritize recognizing each student’s lifestyle goals. That way, our kids can find their best-fit career and develop greater self-awareness of their own identity.

    Give students greater autonomy over their career exploration

    The most problematic aspect of traditional career-readiness programs is that they’re bound so tightly to the classes in which a student excels.

    For example, a high schooler on a technology track might be assigned an engineer as a mentor. However, that same student may also possess a love for writing, but because their core classes are science-based, they may never learn how to turn that passion into a career in the engineering field, whether as a UX writer, technical editor, or tech journalist. 

    Schools have the opportunity to help students identify their desired lifestyle, existing strengths, and possible career paths. In Aurora Public Schools in Nebraska, the district partnered with our company, Find Your Grind, an ESSA Tier 2 validated career exploration program, to guide students through a Lifestyle Assessment, enabling them to discover who they are now and who they want to become. Through this approach, teachers helped surface personalized careers, mentors, and pathway courses that aligned with students’ lifestyle goals.

    Meanwhile, in Ohio, school districts launched Lifestyle Fairs, immersive, future-ready events designed to introduce students to real-world career experiences, industry mentors, and interactive learning grounded in self-discovery. Hilliard City Schools, for example, welcomed more than seventh-grade students to a Lifestyle Fair this past May. 

    Rather than rely on a conventional booth-style setup, Hilliard offered interactive activations that centered on 16 lifestyle archetypes, including Competitor, Explorer, Connector, and Entrepreneur. The stations allowed students to engage with various industry leaders and participate in hands-on activities, including rocket launch simulations and creative design challenges, to ignite their curiosity. Following the Fair, educators reported increased student engagement and a renewed enthusiasm for learning about potential career paths.

    Create a fluidity path for future success

    According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030, 97 million jobs will be displaced by AI, significantly impacting lower-wage earners and workers of color. At the same time, 170 million new jobs are expected to be created, especially in emerging fields. By providing students more freedom in their career exploration, educators can help them adapt to this ever-changing 21st-century job market.

    Now is the time for school districts to ensure all students have access to equitable career planning programs and work to close societal disparities that hinder professional opportunities. Instead of setting students on a predetermined pathway toward a particular field–which may or may not exist a decade from now–educators must equip them with future-proof and transferable core skills, including flexibility, initiative, and productivity, in addition to job-specific skills. As the job market shifts, students will be prepared to change direction, switch jobs, and pivot between careers. 

    In Hawaii, students are taking advantage of career exploration curriculum that aligns with 21st-century career and technical education (CTE) frameworks. They are better prepared to complete their Personal Transition Plans, which are required for graduation by the state, and have access to micro-credentials that give them real-world experience in different industries rather than one particular field.

    For decades, career planning has placed students in boxes, based on what the adults in their lives expect of them. Ensuring every child reaches their full professional potential means breaking down the barriers that have been set up around them and allowing them to be at the center of their own career journey. When students are empowered to discover who they are and where they want to be, they are excited to explore all the incredible opportunities available to them. 

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  • Week in review: The beginning of the end for the Education Department?

    Week in review: The beginning of the end for the Education Department?

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    Most clicked story of the week: 

    Trump administration officials took major steps toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education last week, announcing they were moving several programs to other federal agencies. 

    Those include moving TRIO and Gear Up grants — programs that help low-income students prepare for and persist through college — to the U.S. Department of Labor, according to an agency fact sheet. Also moving to the Labor Department are grant programs that help higher education institutions bolster their academics and financial stability. 

    Number of the week: $740M+ 

    The amount billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated to colleges since mid-October. Scott is on another gifting spree, giving hundreds of millions of dollars to over a dozen historically Black colleges and universities and at least one tribal college. 

    Fall 2025 enrollment trends: 

    • A survey of 825 colleges found that their international enrollment declined 1% this fall, driven by a 12% drop in graduate students, according to the annual Open Doors report. Those institutions reported an even steeper decline — a whopping 17% drop-off — in foreign students attending U.S. colleges for the first time. 
    • The State University of New York system reported that its international enrollment declined 3.9% this fall, dropping to around 20,600 students. However, SUNY reported an overall enrollment increase of 2.9%, resulting in nearly 387,400 students and the system’s third straight year of growth. 
    • Meanwhile, Drexel University, a private nonprofit in Philadelphia, reported a roughly 19% decline in first-year enrollment this fall, dropping to some 1,900 students, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. However, the research university’s overall headcount only dipped by roughly 1%, falling to roughly 20,900 students, with gains in graduate students offsetting some of the first-year enrollment dip.

    Texas State upholds professor firing: 

    • Texas State University’s governing board on Thursday upheld the decision to fire Thomas Alter, a tenured professor who it terminated after comments he made at a socialist conference went viral, according to News 4 San Antonio. 
    • In one video of the conference, Alter condemned “insurrectional anarchists,” according to The Texas Tribune. But a shorter, more widely circulated clip of his comments included only part of his ideas, showing Alter saying, “Without organization how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world — that of the U.S.?”
    • Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse argued that Alter’s comments amounted to inciting violence. Alter in turn is suing the university, alleging his firing violates his free speech rights. 
    • The Texas State Employees Union condemned Thursday’s decision amid other political disciplinary actions against other faculty in the state. Union President Ilesa Daniels Ross described Alter’s termination to KVUE as part of a coordinated political effort in Texas “silencing educators, suppressing dissent, and turning our public institutions into tools of ideological control.”

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  • Beyond efficiency: Building procurement agility in higher education

    Beyond efficiency: Building procurement agility in higher education

    Higher education leaders face a constant balancing act. Shifting enrollment, tightening budgets, and rapidly evolving technology create pressure to stay nimble while maintaining operational excellence. In this environment, procurement teams are playing a new strategic role, moving beyond cost-cutting to become enablers of institutional agility.

    The most agile institutions understand that procurement agility isn’t just about faster purchasing. It means building systems that anticipate needs, optimize every dollar in real time, and empower campus-wide decision-making. When procurement teams can redirect spending toward emerging priorities while maintaining compliance and transparency, they create institutional resilience: the ability to respond confidently to whatever comes next.

    Closing higher ed’s agility gap

    Traditional procurement creates bottlenecks precisely when agility is needed most: lengthy approval cycles that delay critical purchases, fragmented systems that prevent comprehensive spend analysis, and limited visibility that leaves leaders making decisions without complete financial data.

    The stakes are significant. With 25% of operating budgets flowing through procurement—possibly more for institutions with extensive outsourcing—efficiency directly impacts your ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances.[1]

    There’s encouraging momentum, though. In a survey of nearly 3,500 procurement and organizational leaders, 24% of senior leaders identified “becoming more agile or resilient” as a priority above reducing spend (19%).[2] This signals growing recognition that adaptability drives long-term institutional success more than cost-cutting alone.

    Five pillars of agile procurement

    So how can institutions actually close this agility gap? Many procurement leaders are turning to technology solutions, and for good reason. The right tools can magnify agility across campus operations, but only when they address the right fundamentals. These five pillars provide a framework for building procurement systems that enhance rather than hinder institutional responsiveness:

    Unified systems: Consolidated purchasing transforms how campuses operate, improving user experience, spend transparency, and analytics. Administrators should be able to track campus-wide purchasing patterns, identify savings opportunities, and make data-driven decisions across all departments. When the University of Washington (UW) consolidated purchasing across its numerous academic departments through a single master account, it gained the visibility and simplified management that had previously been impossible.

    Streamlined interfaces: A centralized purchasing interface removes manual work and complexity, allowing staff to focus on higher-impact activities while maintaining oversight. Ray Hsu, executive director of procurement services at the University of Washington, explains: “Imagine you’re managing the drama department and your scene shop needs to find ten different things to outfit your next production. Imagine how many different sources you visit to find costumes, supplies, and other items for that use case. Centralize that.”

    Aligned purchasing: The right tools enable alignment with shifting institutional priorities—sustainability goals, minority-owned businesses, compliance requirements—through preferred vendor selection in a way that’s frictionless for buyers. Hsu describes how this works at UW: “When people search for items, they don’t even know they’re searching for a sustainable product. It just comes up in their search results, supporting our policy without them having to be mindful of it.”

    Smart comparison: Pricing, delivery, and vendor comparison mechanisms help buyers to easily identify their most cost-effective options without searching multiple sources or juggling spreadsheets. Time saved on research translates to faster response when priorities shift.

    Real-time monitoring: Proactive systems flag overspending or policy compliance issues before they become problems, giving administrators the breathing room to focus on strategic opportunities.

    Real-world impact

    The University of Washington example illustrates how these pillars work together in practice. Beyond the streamlined purchasing process described earlier, the transformation also revealed deeper lessons about building sustainable agility.

    When UW decided to modernize its procurement, it faced a familiar challenge: staff were already purchasing from multiple vendors without central oversight. Instead of changing staff behavior, the university introduced a centralized system that preserved the flexibility departments valued while adding the visibility and control the university needed.

    “There’s a saying, ‘I want an Amazon-like experience.’ We thought, let’s just go get the real thing and bring Amazon to our campus,” Hsu recalls.[3]

    The shift delivered more than operational efficiency. “With Amazon Business Analytics, I can visualize information on an intuitive dashboard and have a conversation with my boss: ‘Here’s how we’re doing at a glance,’” says Hsu. That visibility changes how procurement conversations happen, moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategic discussions.

    Perhaps most importantly, UW discovered that agility doesn’t require forcing behavior change. When the right systems build compliance and best practices into everyday workflows, adoption happens naturally. The drama department gets what it needs faster. Sustainability goals are met through preferred policies. And procurement leaders gain the strategic insights they need to guide institutional priorities.

    Building sustainable agility

    Building more agility into your procurement operations starts with a few key fundamentals:

    Start with visibility into spend. Understand where your money goes. With 25% of operating budgets spent on goods and services, visibility is essential for agile resource allocation.[4]

    Centralize for control. As Hsu notes, “Chances are your internal customers are already buying from Amazon in a decentralized and unmanaged fashion. My suggestion is to centralize that management into a unified system.”

    Simplify user experience. Make compliance and best practices seamless. “Make it easy so it’s not a conscious decision—just part of their everyday buying experience,” advises Hsu.

    Focus on consolidation. Look for opportunities to consolidate processes. Listen to solution providers who are experts in this area and implement their suggestions when they make sense to your organization, Hsu adds.

    Agility as an institutional advantage

    Agile procurement enables both resource optimization and faster response to opportunities. The goal isn’t just efficient purchasing, but procurement that enhances decision-making.

    When procurement teams can redirect resources quickly, spot savings in real time, and adhere to campus purchasing policies, they free their institutions to focus on mission and seize opportunities as they arise.

    ▷ Learn how your peers are using Amazon Business to build procurement agility: business.amazon.com/education

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