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  • Risk-Sharing: Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — Implications for UK Higher Education

    Risk-Sharing: Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — Implications for UK Higher Education

    • By Peter Ainsworth, a consultant and writer on higher education finance, known for advocating structural reform that aligns university incentives with real-world graduate outcomes.

    Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” may sound absurd to British ears, but beneath the “very stable genius’s” promotional gloss lies a legislative change designed to reset the relationship between the US Higher Education sector and the state. The bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on 22 May 2025, includes the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Act (SSTSA) – which, if passed by the Senate, would be the world’s first statutory implementation of institutional risk-sharing in student loans.

    Historically, in both the US and UK, universities have been financially rewarded for their enrollment of students rather than for the practical benefits delivered to their customers. Success arises out of customer acquisition rather than service value-add. Students take out government-backed loans to pay tuition; institutions receive the money upfront regardless of whether or not their degrees lead to economic success. The result is a moral hazard: an incentive (payment) structure for universities that is not aligned with the employability gain that students want and taxpayers need. Systematically falling graduate premiums on both sides of the Atlantic reflect the impact of insulating universities from the employment risk their students face in a rapidly changing economy.

    The American reform seeks to realign incentives to better align risks and objectives. It introduces an Earnings-to-Price Ratio (EPR):

    EPR = (Median Value-Added Earnings) / (Median Total Price)

    Institutions with low EPRs – indicating poor graduate earnings relative to costs – will face a financial penalty in the form of an invoice from the US Treasury to cover the estimated student loan losses for the relevant cohort. If the Senate passes the reform, US universities will have a powerful incentive to transform their offer to ensure meaningful real-world earnings gains for their students.

    The SSTSA is an advance on the existing Cohort Default Rate (CDR) system, which merely threatened to deny access to federal loans to students of institutions with very high default rates. But there was no direct financial risk. Congress deemed it ineffective and so now proposes something more market-oriented.

    Meanwhile, the UK is two steps behind, only now looking to implement a version of the CDR model which the US is already moving away from. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) paper proposes regulating universities based on early-career graduate earnings proxies – like the CDR it is recognising the importance of career earnings outcomes but measuring them indirectly and using regulatory sanction rather than financial cost as the stick. The IFS proposes to use earnings in a three- to five-year window post-graduation to drive regulatory response. Like the CDR’s reliance on a technical definition of default, this short, near-term window will create heavily biased statistics, diminishing the value of professions with delayed earnings trajectories such as medicine and academia.

    Further, the IFS proposes to exclude from consideration graduates with very low earnings. This favours institutions whose graduates earn just below an arbitrary threshold level. They also rely on UK tax data which omits emigrants, undervaluing universities that succeed in preparing graduates for global careers.

    As Friedrich Hayek argued, complex systems cannot be centrally managed through proxies and aggregated metrics. Graduate career trajectories are dynamic, diverse, and unpredictable — precisely the kind of outcomes that defy simple measurement. Accepting that lifetime earnings are the relevant metric leads inevitably to the conclusion that no bureaucratic proxy will suffice.

    There is a cleaner alternative. Universities could be required to issue the loans themselves, something that Buckingham, for example, already does on a small scale. Where needed, to support cash flow, the government could lend to institutions rather than students. This would internalise the financial risk: institutions would have a direct, long-term stake in the earnings success of their graduates. Universities could be freed to set fees and loan terms based on the economic value they expect to deliver and would be incentivised to provide ongoing support — career services, retraining, alumni engagement — to minimise loan defaults over the full life of the loan.

    Such a model also addresses bigger challenges facing the higher education sector. Edward Peck, the new Chair of the Office for Students, recently argued that AI is making traditional assessment ineffective and universities must move from testing what students know to what they can do. Meanwhile, Diana Beech and André Spicer, writing for HEPI, have highlighted that universities now employ an average of 17.6 staff solely to handle regulatory compliance and warned that regulation is “multiplying and becoming less predictable.” In this context, risk-sharing offers a route back to institutional autonomy: tying funding to real-world success rather than the IFS’s proposal for even more bureaucratic box-ticking.

    Finally, political and fiscal realities support this innovation. A shift to institutionally issued loans would remove the student loan portfolio from the government’s balance sheet, reducing annual write-downs by around £15bn per annum – a present value of around £300bn. That would go a long way to address the various fiscal challenges faced by the Labour government. With less bureaucratic interference, more strategic freedom, and appropriate incentives, the sector should be able to make student loans pay, ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future, and letting British universities blow past their American rivals like nobody’s seen before.

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  • Talking about Palestine a “career killer“: report – Campus Review

    Talking about Palestine a “career killer“: report – Campus Review

    Over 150 students and staff from 20 separate universities claim free speech about Palestine has been restricted on campus, according to a report released on Thursday.

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  • Co-creation of research agendas could strengthen policy research engagement

    Co-creation of research agendas could strengthen policy research engagement

    The University Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) recently announced that it had been successful in a UKRI bid to develop and expand UK policy to research infrastructure, facilitating connections and engagement between public and civil servants on one hand, and research organisations on the other.

    This call is a recent manifestation of a perennial and important interest in evidence-informed policymaking, and policy and research engagement. Policy engagement is also part of an increased focus on engagement with and impact of research, driven by the Research Excellence Framework.

    We recently published a journal article exploring what researchers and policymakers need to know and understand when engaging with each other, based on interviews with 11 experts working with higher education regulators, other major sectoral bodies, and higher education institutions who had extensive expertise across the UK higher education sector.

    University-based researchers and policymakers respond to different incentives in ways that are not always conducive to engagement. Interviewees described a wide range of influences on policy, including many types of research, much of which is produced outside the university sector. For some types of research, such as rapid research, researchers at higher education institutions were seen as being at a disadvantage. To address these considerations, our interviewees suggested that research co-creation – involving policymakers earlier in the process to develop research ideas and design projects – could promote engagement with policy.

    Engagement from the start

    In a typical research process, university-based researchers develop, conduct, and publish their research with a high degree of independence from the stakeholders of their research. Once the research is completed, researchers disseminate their findings, hoping to reach external stakeholders, including policymakers. In contrast, co-created research brings research stakeholders into the research process at the beginning and maintains stakeholder influence and co-creation throughout.

    When asked how researchers can increase engagement with policy, one participant said: :

    Co-designing projects with people involved in policy from the outset rather than, you know, what I often see, which is ‘we’ve done this stuff and now, who can we send it to?’ So, getting people involved from the outset and the running of it through advice.

    Because policy priorities shift and because research often takes a long time to complete, co-creation is not a perfect solution for policy research engagement. But co-creation may increase the likelihood that research findings are relevant to and usable for the specific needs of policymakers. Another benefit of co-creation is that, by taking part in the research process, policymakers are more likely to feel invested in the research and inclined to use its findings.

    Co-creation of research with policymakers requires access to and some form of relationship with relevant policymakers. While some researchers have easier access to policymakers than others, there are structures in place to facilitate the networking required to build relevant relationships, including through academic fellowship with the UK Parliament. Researchers can sometimes connect more easily to ministers and policymakers via intermediary organisations such as mission groups, representative bodies, think tanks, and professional organisations.

    Designing successful co-creation

    In a policy-research co-creation model, one of the questions that is worth asking is what is co-created: is research co-created, policy co-created, or both? For example, one participant in our study viewed researcher engagement with policymakers as policy-co-creation, rather than as research co-creation. Researchers can ask themselves: “What policy am I well-positioned to co-create based on my research?” as well as “How can my research benefit from co-creation with its stakeholders?”

    Our article highlights that one of the more frequent pathways for researchers based at universities to engage with policy is through conducting commissioned research. Commissioned research is often aligned with policy needs and facilitates co-creation. Yet independence, rigour, and criticality – markers of quality research – still need to be ensured even as part of co-created and commissioned research.

    Commissioned research was not the only type of research discussed by our participants that led to policy engagement. Interviewees provided examples of researchers with an established and rigorous body of work that answered policy-relevant questions which were successful in shaping policy. Sometimes, a body of research developed over time and over multiple studies is better suited for policy engagement. Sometimes this takes the form of a systematic review designed to bring a large body of research literature to bear on a current policy problem.

    This raises an important consideration for mechanisms that incentivise engagement: how does incentivising engagement affect the multiple priorities that researchers based at higher education institutions need to meet? The danger here is that, as more policy engagement is incentivised, researchers at higher education institutions might prioritise forms and qualities of research which lend themselves to engagement over those which higher education is uniquely placed to offer.

    As current efforts to expand UK-wide policy to research infrastructure develop, it is important to consider the multiple complexities associated with policy research engagement. In our view, for policy and research engagement to be meaningful, policy to research infrastructure needs to support high quality research, targeted engagement, and have a clear sense of what each of these means in practice.

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  • Why gen-Z men are turning far right and women far left (Money & Macro-Dr. Joeri Schasfoort)

    Why gen-Z men are turning far right and women far left (Money & Macro-Dr. Joeri Schasfoort)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Why gen-Z men are turning far right and women far left (Money & Macro-Dr. Joeri Schasfoort)




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  • Inside Adelaide uni’s digital experience – Campus Review

    Inside Adelaide uni’s digital experience – Campus Review

    Digital platforms are a key part of a positive student experience and will be a major focus for the new Adelaide University (AU), its digital project lead told an audience of academics on Thursday.

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  • WSU wins impact rankings for fourth year – Campus Review

    WSU wins impact rankings for fourth year – Campus Review

    Western Sydney University (WSU) has ranked first in the measure of delivering community impact out of over 2000 universities globally in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings released Wednesday.

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  • NYU’s student success team talks AI – Campus Review

    NYU’s student success team talks AI – Campus Review

    John Burdick, Marni Passer Vassallo and Holly Halmo lead the New York University student success team.

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  • Causes and consequences of access disparities by ethnicity

    Causes and consequences of access disparities by ethnicity

    If you haven’t looked recently at the stats on the different rates of HE participation by ethnicity, you may find them quite striking.

    Today, young people from ethnic minority backgrounds are progressing to university in record numbers.

    According to the most recent figures from DfE, the proportion of school pupils in England of white ethnicity who progress to HE by age 19 (41.8 per cent) is comfortably exceeded by the corresponding proportions of school pupils of Asian (68.4 per cent), Black (62.4 per cent) and mixed (51.8 per cent) ethnicity.

    White school pupils now also have the lowest progression rate to more selective high tariff universities. Statistics concerning the intersection of ethnicity and socioeconomic background are even more striking – Black school pupils who are also free school meals (FSM) eligible, for example, have a higher HE participation rate (51.3 per cent) than white pupils who are not FSM eligible (45.1 per cent).

    Can these gaps be explained?

    Whilst as a sector we (quite rightly) focus more on the gap in degree-level attainment by ethnicity (where white students typically outperform those from ethnic minority backgrounds), it is still worth considering why gaps in HE access by ethnicity are so large and what the longer term ramifications of these gaps may be. I recently published a piece of academic research which sought to understand the drivers of HE participation gaps by ethnicity.

    This is a much less straightforward task than trying to understand the drivers of disparities in HE participation by socioeconomic background or gender. A number of statistical modelling exercises, using England’s rich administrative datasets, have shown that gaps in HE participation by FSM eligibility and gender tend to almost vanish once average differences in school attainment are controlled for statistically. Of course, this does not excuse such disparities, but it does help us to better understand why they exist.

    However, when it comes to the link between ethnicity, school attainment and the likelihood of going to university, the relationship here seems to be far from straightforward. For example, Black school pupils in England get slightly lower grades, on average, in their GCSE exams than their white counterparts. Yet at the same time Black pupils are (quite comfortably) more likely to end up progressing to university. At first glance therefore, these statistics appear somewhat counter-intuitive.

    In an analysis of linked National Pupil Database (NPD) and HESA data, I discovered that to better understand overall disparities in HE access by ethnicity, we need to investigate how these disparities vary at different points along the overall school attainment spectrum.

    This can be done using a really straightforward method. First, take an entire cohort of all state school pupils in England (I used the one who took their GCSE exams in 2015) and divide them up into five attainment quintiles based on their grades in their best 8 GCSE subjects. Then, within each of these attainment sub-populations, investigate how HE participation varies by ethnicity.

    For higher attainers, the results were largely unremarkable. But for those with slightly below average attainment, the results were truly staggering.

    The participation gulf for those with lower school attainment

    Young people from ethnic minority backgrounds with high attainment are more likely to end up at university than their high-attaining white British counterparts, but only slightly so. For example, 81.2 per cent of those pupils who were both white British and in the highest quintile of attainment ended up at university, compared to 83.3 per cent of high attainers of Black Caribbean ethnicity and 87.7 per cent of high-attainers of Pakistani ethnicity. So far, so “meh”.

    But consider what happens at the second lowest quintile of attainers. This time, only 9.7 per cent of all white British students in this attainment bracket end up at university. At this same level of attainment, the HE progression rate for those of Pakistani ethnicity is 38.4 per cent, while the rate for those of Black African ethnicity is 52.1 per cent.

    You can take a look at all the percentages here in Table 4 of my paper if you’re really keen, but I can sum it up for you quite simply. While young people from ethnic minority backgrounds with high school attainment are slightly more likely to go to university than high attainers from white British backgrounds, lower attainers from ethnic minority backgrounds are considerably more likely to end up at university than their lower attaining white British counterparts.

    And when I say considerably, I mean considerably.

    Implications

    The upshot of all this is quite simple. Rightly or wrongly, once you get below a certain level of attainment, young people of white British ethnicity just don’t seem interested in going to university anymore. On the other hand, lower attainers from ethnic minority backgrounds are still quite keen to participate in HE, even though their level of attainment might mean that they may face a somewhat constrained choice of different institutions and courses.

    This leads us then to another question – why are young people from ethnic minority backgrounds (especially those with lower attainment) – so much keener to go to university? One somewhat unhelpful answer to this question was offered in the controversial Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report which was commissioned by the previous Conservative government. In the view of the commissioners, many people in ethnic minority communities have “an exaggerated respect for the academic route as the only path to success and economic safety on the part of ethnic minorities”. This perspective of course conveniently ignores another explanation which is well grounded in the sociological literature, which is that within ethnic minority communities, becoming as well-qualified as possible is seen as a necessary strategy to adopt in order to counteract the effects of racial discrimination in the labour market.

    Those of white ethnicity, in contrast, may enjoy more latitude to follow alternative pathways with the confidence that they are likely to fall on their feet in the end whatever happens.

    Aesop’s fables

    One thing we know for sure is that, for those with slightly lower school attainment, white and ethnic minority students seem to be making different choices on average at age 18. How might this all pan out in the longer term? Or, to put it another way, how do graduates with lower school attainment fare in the jobs market, compared to non-graduates with lower school attainment?

    When I look at analyses of the LEO earnings data for answers to this question, what I see reminds me of that familiar tale of the race between the tortoise and the hare. School leavers with lower attainment (defined here as not having at least 5 A*-C grades at GCSE) who do not go to university are the hares who dash out of the traps fairly quickly, typically earning wages (albeit fairly low ones) between the ages of 18-21. They have typically enjoyed slightly higher total earnings by age 30 than those lower attainers who went to university, who tend to enjoy only a fairly limited graduate earnings premium at first.

    But the graduate tortoises tend to plod their way to greater career earnings in the end, since graduates are much more likely to enjoy wage increases through midlife, whilst the non-graduate hares take an earnings siesta.

    Of course, most analysis of LEO so far concerns cohorts of people born in the mid to late 1980s. Without a crystal ball, young people today with lower school attainment can’t really be sure whether going to university (from a career and earnings perspective) will be a smart move or not. Either decision could be justified.

    Going to university has always tended to pay off (on average) so far, even as naysayers have continued to argue that the jobs market is becoming too saturated with graduates. On the other hand, continued (and very much welcome) increases in the salaries of less-educated workers (brought about in part by successive real-terms increases to the National Living Wage) may serve to both reduce the size of the graduate earnings premium for lower attainers whilst also increasing the opportunity cost (though foregone earnings) of attending university.

    Only the longitudinal studies of the future will confirm whether young people today with lower school attainment will turn out to be better off in the jobs market by going to university or not.

    However, if the fortunes of lower attaining graduates turn out to be different on average to the fortunes of lower attaining non-graduates, we can be pretty confident that disparities in fortunes by ethnicity will follow.

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  • How To Write A Media Pitch Examples

    How To Write A Media Pitch Examples

    How to Write a Media Pitch

    Pitching compelling storylines and sources are the crux of any public relations strategy. In the higher education digital marketing space, we at Archer Education leverage the expertise of professors from our partner institutions to help increase the school’s visibility, student enrollment, thought leadership, and brand awareness. 

    Professors make excellent sources for stories through unmatched expertise and experience in their respective fields, but without the correct messaging and communication strategy, this opportunity could be missed. 

    In this article, we’ll go over how to write a media pitch in higher education and review the most common types of media pitches.

    What Is a Media Pitch?

    Media pitches in higher education are strategic communications sent to journalists, editors, or media outlets to promote faculty expertise, research, or institutional initiatives. These pitches typically highlight faculty insights on current events, groundbreaking studies, or thought leadership in their field.

    These pitches are particularly key to faculty promotion because they enhance visibility, establish credibility, and position faculty as subject matter experts. Media coverage can lead to invitations for speaking engagements, collaborative research opportunities, and increased citations — all of which contribute to professional advancement for the faculty member and enhanced institutional reputation.

    How to Create Your Media Pitch 

    Before we dive into best practices, tips, and examples of PR pitching, let’s go over some of the basics of how to structure a media pitch. Creating a set standard for yourself and your team will not only streamline the process and allow you to be as efficient as possible, but it will also ensure consistency amongst your team and allow for smooth training programs.

    Select the Right Type of Journalism Lead

    Before you even start writing a pitch, you want to make sure you find a lead that will entice whoever you are reaching out to. The lead is the angle into your story that makes everything relevant. You can look for two types of leads that are applicable throughout journalism:

    1. A news peg is a trending story or topic in the news that relates to what you’re pitching. For example, leveraging a political debate or a new medical study that was just released. This allows you to hook the reader with a relevant and widespread story.
    2. A time peg represents an upcoming date or event. For example, anniversaries of days like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, days or weeks dedicated to specific causes like “Health IT Week” or “Mental Health Awareness Day,” or even months like “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.”

    These types of dates and events can be easily leveraged for PR purposes as media outlets will often shape content around significant or relevant time pegs. In order to keep track and take advantage of these dates, it’s helpful to create and consistently update an internal editorial calendar with your team.

    Develop Your Pitch Structure

    Below is the basic outline/structure you should consider when writing a media pitch: 

    • As mentioned above, start with the lead. This should be the first thing the reporter or editor reads. An enticing lead that is relevant to their beat will ensure they continue through your pitch.
    • The second part is your call-to-action. This is the action you want your audience to take. Whether it is writing a product review, publishing a piece of content, or conducting an interview, it’s important to make your intention here as clear as possible.
    • Next comes your value proposition. This is a key piece of the puzzle as it will be the meat of the pitch; this is where you can showcase the value of what you are offering and why they should be interested in it. It is essential in differentiating yourself from the hundreds of other pitches they receive.
    • The last piece of the pitch is your conclusion. This is a straightforward recap that includes a  recap of the call-to-action and a thank you. 

    Use the Right Subject Line for Your Pitch Email

    Subject lines are the first and sometimes only thing that a media contact will see — often determining whether they will even bother to open your email or not. Ensuring that your subject line is clear, concise, and enticing is critical. According to Omeda, subject lines with 20 characters or fewer achieve the highest open rates, averaging 29.9%. Open rates decline to 17.3% for subject lines between 20 and 124 characters. 

    Interestingly, subject lines exceeding 174 characters see a slight recovery in open rates, averaging around 23%. However, due to potential display issues and the risk of being cut off, it’s generally recommended to keep subject lines concise. Prioritizing brevity ensures better visibility across various devices and enhances the likelihood of engagement.

    While creating a subject line that produces an “open” should always be the goal, you should make sure to avoid using “click-bait” phrasing as a tactic to draw in the recipient, as this is considered unprofessional. The last thing you want to do is mislead your audience or appear spammy.

    How to Pitch the Media: Communication Strategies

    Now that you understand the basics on how to write and structure a media pitch, let’s cover some media pitching strategies that can lead to greater success. 

    Use Timely Stories and Research               

    Don’t deprive yourself of using relevant news pegs or research as your hook for your pitch. It’s no secret that the media lives off of news pegs, trending topics, and new research to tell their stories. To increase the chances of someone showing interest in your pitch, it’s important to make their job as easy as possible. It’s a good idea to spell out the story for them so that your source or story fits in seamlessly with trending news topics and their target audience’s interests.

    Reporters and editors receive hundreds of pitches every day, so providing them with a story that their readers will be interested in and offering sources to help supplement that story will make them more compelled to move forward with the conversation. 

    Along these same lines, always try to include hyperlinks to any research or statistics that you reference in your pitch. You don’t want them to shy away from expressing interest or continuing the conversation simply because they don’t have time to do the legwork to track down the sources themselves.

    Know the Reporter’s Beat 

    You can have the best pitch in the world, but if it doesn’t align with the reporter’s beat (the types of stories they cover), then it will provide no use or value to them. In fact, it will only blatantly show that you are sending out mass email distributions and aren’t doing the appropriate research and legwork before pitching them. While it’s not always realistic or feasible, personalize pitches whenever possible and mention any related articles that they recently wrote.

    Keep it Concise and Know Your Story

    As previously mentioned, media contacts receive hundreds of pitches a day. If you’re lucky enough to get yours opened, the worst thing that someone with very little time can be confronted with is an unnecessarily long pitch. Find out how to say everything that you need to say in a paragraph or less (with rare exceptions). The more specific and focused you can be, the better. It’s also crucial to understand and communicate the story you’re trying to tell and how it aligns with the larger media trends yet provides a unique angle to the storyline. 

    Follow Up Is Key to Media Pitching

    Following up on initial email pitches is one of the most crucial elements of the pitching process. This is where most of your interest and responses will come from, so ensure that you schedule reminders to follow up. 

    Generally, it’s appropriate to wait about one week until you send follow-ups out; this will ensure that the media contact has sufficient time to get through their emails and respond if they are planning to. If the story is incredibly time-sensitive, you can follow-up a bit sooner. Similarly, if it is not a time-sensitive story at all, then waiting a little longer than a week can be a good strategy.  Just be sure to include your original pitch at the bottom of your follow-up email to help jog the recipient’s memory and provide more context. 

    Media Pitch Examples

    Now that you have the information that you need to be successful with your pitch writing, here are some real-life examples of media pitches and pitch letters that our team sent to the media. 

    1. Cold Pitch

    A cold pitch is an unsolicited email or message sent to a journalist or media outlet with whom there is no prior relationship. It typically introduces a faculty member’s expertise or research in hopes of securing media coverage.

    2. Pitch for Established Contact/Relationship

    This type of pitch is sent to a journalist or media contact with whom a relationship already exists. It builds on past interactions, making it more likely to be well received and result in coverage.

    3. Personalized Pitch

    A personalized pitch is tailored specifically to a journalist’s interests, past work, or the needs of their publication. It demonstrates a clear understanding of their audience and increases the chances of engagement.

    4. Follow-Up Pitch

    A follow-up pitch is sent after an initial pitch to reinforce interest, provide additional details, or remind the recipient about the story idea. It’s essential for maintaining momentum and increasing response rates.

    How to Write Media Pitches That Consistently Convert

    In today’s media landscape, consistent PR exposure is essential for faculty members looking to establish themselves as thought leaders and elevate their institution’s brand. At Archer Education, we specialize in crafting strategic media pitches that align with timely news cycles, ensuring professors and researchers receive the visibility they deserve. Whether through cold outreach, leveraging existing media relationships, or personalized pitches, we help faculty secure media placements that enhance their credibility, attract prospective students, and showcase their expertise to a broader audience.

    Our experience in higher education marketing allows us to effectively position faculty members in conversations that matter, increasing opportunities for interviews, guest articles, and thought leadership features. Don’t let valuable media opportunities go untapped — connect with us today to develop a custom PR strategy that amplifies your faculty’s impact and strengthens your institution’s reputation.

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  • WVU cracks down on dangerous idea: free books

    WVU cracks down on dangerous idea: free books

    Passing out copies of a book on a college campus should not prompt a formal investigation. But that’s exactly what happened to freshman Eliyahu Itkowitz at West Virginia University. His experience illustrates how easily students and staff can weaponize a university’s investigative process to silence views they dislike. 

    In December 2024, Itkowitz was handing out copies on campus of Alan Dershowitz’s book, “The Ten Big Anti-Israel Lies: And How to Refute Them with Truth.” But after he gave one to a Muslim dining hall employee, she reported him to campus police and the university’s Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. His crime? Giving her an “anti-Muslim book.” The employee also requested that Itkowitz be banned from the dining hall. (The employee’s request to ban Itkowitz was not granted, probably because handing out books is not misconduct.) 

    The employee said she recognized Itkowitz from the Muslim Student Association’s social media posts in October, warning students to stay away from Itkowitz after he expressed disagreement with the anti-Israel slogans MSA members had painted on protest signs.

    The next time Itkowitz visited the dining hall, that employee falsely claimed to her manager that Itkowitz had been banned for anti-Muslim speech. The employee then called campus police while her manager told Itkowitz he had to leave. Itkowitz objected and started recording the encounter, before eventually sitting down to eat with his friends. 

    In her reports to police and DDEI, the employee claimed that Itkowitz engaged in “racially inappropriate” speech, calling her “anti-Jewish” and telling her to “do [her] fucking job.” Itkowitz denies making any of these comments, none of the witnesses present heard any of the alleged comments or saw Itkowitz interact with the employee at all, and the video footage of the encounter does not support the employee’s claims. 

    The employee added that he had also called her a “terrorist” months earlier. He denies this too.

    Nevertheless, WVU issued a no-contact order prohibiting any interaction between the two and launched an investigation into Itkowitz for religious discrimination and harassment. After completing that investigation, WVU eventually dropped the case against Itkowitz last month. 

    But the investigation never should have happened in the first place. 

    Even if the university found that every single one of the dining hall employee’s allegations were 100% true — and there are good reasons to doubt her account of events — the alleged conduct falls well short of the legal standard for discriminatory harassment. Quite simply, even if the allegations are true, the conduct would nevertheless be protected by the First Amendment.   

    As we explained in a letter to WVU sent today, even if a school changes course later, launching an investigation and slapping students with a no-contact order based on protected expression is guaranteed to chill speech by making students think twice before speaking up in the future. Instead, universities that receive such complaints should first conduct internal reviews, and if they confirm the allegations concern wholly protected expression, close the matter without notifying the speaker — thereby avoiding a chilling effect — while offering support to the complainant. 

    Otherwise, WVU is allowing students and staff with ideological disagreements to use its complaint process as a cudgel to silence opponents. Itkowitz’s case was not the first. In fall 2023, WVU launched a 10-month investigation into a student for counterprotesting at pro-Palestinian demonstrations based on a complaint from the Muslim Students Association that similarly alleged wholly protected speech. 

    Universities must not allow weaponization of DEI investigations to inhibit the free exchange of ideas.

    A university campus that investigates students every time someone is offended cannot function as a home for rational dialogue and debate. Administrators must accept that students will sometimes be offended when confronted with views different from their own. At the very least, handing out books on a university campus should never be cause for investigation. 

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