Blog

  • Clemson Settles With Professor Fired for Kirk Comments

    Clemson Settles With Professor Fired for Kirk Comments

    Bregy will resign from his position at Clemson on May 15, 2026, according to the settlement agreement.

    sbrogan/E+/Getty Images

    Clemson University has agreed to rescind the termination of Joshua Bregy, an assistant professor in the department of environmental engineering and earth sciences, nearly four months after dismissing him for resharing a post on his personal Facebook page that criticized the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

    Bregy sued after he was terminated on Sept. 26, claiming that his firing violated his First Amendment rights. As part of the settlement, Bregy will receive pay and benefits “throughout the original term of his employment,” the ACLU of South Carolina, which represented Bregy, said in a news release. In addition, Clemson provost Robert Jones agreed to “provide positive letters of recommendation to potential employers based on Dr. Bregy’s classroom teaching.” For Bregy’s part, he agreed to drop his lawsuit and resign from his position at Clemson effective May 15, 2026. He will not have any teaching, research or other faculty obligations through the spring semester, according to the release.

    Bregy was among the dozens of faculty members targeted by right-wing politicians and online commentators for making or sharing critical posts about Kirk after his death. The post Bregy shared said, in part: “I’ll never advocate for violence in any form, but it sounds to me like karma is sometimes swift and ironic. As Kirk said, ‘play certain games, win certain prizes.’”

    “We were honored to represent Dr. Bregy and to reach an agreement that restores his employment, allows him to continue to pursue research funding, and deters the university from violating the First Amendment rights of its faculty in the future,” Allen Chaney, legal director at the ACLU of South Carolina, said in a statement. “Politicians and university administrators come and go, but years from now we will still be here. So will the U.S. Constitution.”

    Source link

  • Officials in Connecticut Propose New Graduate Student Loan

    Officials in Connecticut Propose New Graduate Student Loan

    The loan program would need $30 million for its first year, based on calculations of how much Connecticut students take out in Grad PLUS loans.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Getty Images | Rawpixel

    After President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) overhauled federal student loans, college affordability advocates worried that those changes would severely restrict who has access to higher education—especially graduate programs. Now, lawmakers in Connecticut are taking steps to ensure students in the state can continue to afford those degrees.

    Rep. Gregg Haddad, a Democrat who co-chairs the Connecticut legislature’s Higher Education Committee, announced a plan last week to create a new state-level student loan program to fill in the gap left by the elimination of Grad PLUS loans, a 20-year-old loan program that helped expand graduate education for middle- and low-income students. The program will be open to any student studying at a graduate program in the state.

    Josh Hurlock, deputy director of the Connecticut Higher Education Supplemental Loan Authority (CHESLA), a quasi-public body that administers Connecticut’s state-level student loans, said the organization is hoping to launch the new program in time for students to take out loans for the 2026–2027 academic year.

    “The Grad PLUS program historically has had very little credit check, so it’s been accessible to students of all credit qualities,” Hurlock said. “So, with the program going away … we want to make sure that students and schools have financing options available for their graduate students, and students and schools need to know what’s available sooner rather than later as we approach the fall semester.”

    The program would require $30 million in funding for its first year, based on calculations that students in Connecticut take out between $90 million and $100 million in Grad PLUS loans annually. (Those already receiving the loans will be grandfathered in.) Two-thirds of that would come from a bond that CHESLA will issue, while the remaining $10 million would have to come from state allocations. Haddad said he is hoping the funds can be drawn from a $500 million emergency reserve the state created in November specifically to offset federal cuts.

    Interest rates and borrower fees have not yet been determined, “but we think we can come up with an attractive product and solve this problem for Connecticut students,” Haddad said.

    Eliminating Grad PLUS loans is just one of the restrictions on federal student loans included in the OBBBA. The legislation also placed caps on how much borrowers can take out in federal loans for graduate programs and on Parent PLUS loans for dependent undergraduates. Proponents of the limits argued that uncapped federal loans encouraged universities to increase their tuition fees, creating the student debt crisis. But supporters of federal student loan programs argue they opened the door to graduate education and careers in fields like medicine for students who previously would not have had those opportunities.

    Grad PLUS loans will officially end and the caps for other federal loans will go into effect in July. Administrators at several institutions with a large number of graduate students told Inside Higher Ed that they’re still working to figure out how to close funding gaps for their students.

    Filling in the gap left behind by Grad PLUS loans is especially important because Connecticut, like most U.S. states, struggles with a shortage of workers in certain professions, like nurses and teachers, Haddad said.

    “We have a keen interest in making sure that we have a robust pipeline of people who want to enter those professions,” he said. “And we’d like to remove any roadblocks to having them achieve and complete their degrees so that they can get to work providing the services that people need in Connecticut.”

    Peter Granville, a fellow at the Century Foundation who researches college affordability, said that it’s wise for states to consider how they can support students in the absence of Grad PLUS funding.

    “State leaders know that their economies depend on these students being able to attain degrees in fields like education and nursing,” he said. “States will be worse off if [they] completely depend on private lenders filling gaps that they may or may not be inclined to fill.”

    Haddad said that the proposed loan program has been received extremely well by both the public and his fellow lawmakers, whom he is hopeful will support the proposal once their legislative session begins in February.

    “I was struck when we had our press conference the other day—the room was filled with nurses and social workers, physical therapists and educators from across the state,” he said. “I think it’s an indication that there’s a real problem we need to fix.”

    Source link

  • Censorship Arrives on Campus

    Censorship Arrives on Campus

    It took 50 years for the secret transcripts of the McCarthy hearings to be released. Within these relics of the Red Scares, you can read all manner of hostile interactions, with people doing their level best to protect their careers and their futures (with some also explicitly fighting for the principles of freedom of speech and expression).

    In one hearing, Langston Hughes testified that his political interests, such as they were, sprang from trying to understand how he “can adjust to this whole problem of helping to build America when sometimes [he] cannot even get into a school or a lecture or a concert or in the south go to the library and get a book out.” That answer, grounded in the betterment of the United States, didn’t matter to his interrogators. Roy Cohn, an attorney working for Senator Joseph McCarthy, continued berating the poet using out-of-context snippets of his work while appearing to advocate for federally funded libraries removing it. This mistreatment was, unfortunately, not a rarity.

    The Red Scares were one of the most repressive periods of the 20th century, and yet we are seeing similar efforts to stifle free speech and punish political dissent in higher education today. As a professor who studies higher education policy, I want to better understand policymakers’ focus on resegregating the country, student protests, and why many key figures in higher education stay silent when political attacks target marginalized groups, especially trans scholars and scholars of color.

    That journey motivates this column, “Echoes in the Quad.” Here, I’ll explore what tethers our current higher education policy realities to past moments in history, leading to potential lessons on crafting an American higher education system that thrives within a multiracial democracy.

    I’ll begin with a three-part series on the Red Scares when, throughout the decades surrounding the World Wars, federal and state governments investigated thousands of people, including more than 100 academics, over their supposed links to the Communist Party. These investigations, or the threats of them, led to thousands of people losing their jobs and their friends and, in some cases, even taking their own lives. Throughout this crucible, most of academia, and the country, went along with or actively encouraged the purges and ostracization of “undesirables.”

    In the 1950s, McCarthyism succeeded because of a two-part system of repression. In No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, Ellen W. Schrecker notes that the crackdown first required the federal government to identify “suspected Communists” and then higher education institutions to investigate and fire them. This targeting in tandem gives the game away. The attacks and firings were never about scholars’ fealty to Communism (which should have been protected under the U.S. Constitution, as later Supreme Courts ruled several times). Instead, they were about the expulsion of leftist ideals around worker rights, racial integration and more.

    As several characters in the classic 1990s movie Clue proclaim, when it came to the Red Scares, “Communism was simply a red herring.” Charisse Burden-Stelly, in her 2023 book Black Scare/Red Scare, skillfully outlines how Blackness, particularly Black radicalism and the fight for racial justice, became synonymous with Communism and the dreaded moniker of being “un-American.” This scapegoating strategy meant that faculty members could be fired for being a current or former member of the Communist Party or for such transgressions as advocating as a member of a labor union, fighting for racial integration, or being Black or homosexual.

    In No Ivory Tower, Schrecker demonstrates how elite members of higher education either actively worked to ensure that universities censored suspected political dissidents or neglected calls for help from targeted people. At the same time, a substantial share of rank-and-file members of academia allowed their colleagues to be harassed and ostracized, while helping to maintain a version of an academic blacklist—ensuring that people who had even the faintest taint of suspicion would not be hired at their institutions.

    These actions, whether driven by cowardice, complicity or some combination of the two, led to a world where professors and students targeted by the federal government began making plans for their eventual firing or, in some tragic instances, their own death.

    And so, the U.S. House of Representatives devoting precious time to passing bills “denouncing the horrors of socialism,” colleges firing or suspending faculty and staff because of their speech, and students getting grabbed off the street for writing opinion pieces seem like relics of the past. Yet these events are part of our current, dangerous escalation in repression. Auburn University, High Point University, and Texas A&M have all introduced tools or forms that assess whether courses violate vague policies meant to curtail discussions of concepts like racial integration. Just last week we learned that Texas A&M has flagged at least 200 courses& in its review for offenses as grave as assigning students to read Plato. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, universities investigated, and often ultimately suspended or fired, at least 50 members of the faculty and staff—sometimes simply for the transgression of quoting his own past statements. State policymakers frequently played a role in targeting and threatening either these people directly or the funding for universities that employed them.

    This is not solely a “red state” or “southern” problem. At the same time that University of Texas at Austin was firing staff members to satisfy ideological aims, Muhlenberg College fired a faculty member in a manner that led the AAUP to declare that the institution had “severely impaired the climate for academic freedom.” Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, fired four contingent faculty members, allegedly& due to their advocacy for Palestine. (Perhaps an homage to the 1940s Rapp-Coudert Committee, which led to the firing of dozens of faculty and staff at the City College of New York, also part of CUNY.) While some are quick to note Indiana University’s censorship of speech in the student newspaper, the same flavor of tactics has been used against student journalists at Columbia University, Dartmouth University, and Stanford University. And, who can forget the ignominious list of, at present count, six institutions that have signed agreements with the federal government containing different commitments—large fees, acceptance of recent Executive Orders aimed at reducing medical care and controlling teaching and hiring—all with the goal of curtailing speech and expression on their campuses.

    Most heartrending though, are the lives lost, sacrificed at the altar of authoritarian demagoguery. Middlebury College swimmer Lia Smith, who left the team due to attacks on trans athletes, died by suicide last fall. There is no direct evidence that this was caused by the ever-escalating vitriol hurled at trans people in the United States, but it strains credulity to believe that she was not impacted by this rise in hate, backed by the power of the government, and implemented by blue and red states alike.

    One of the loudest echoes of the Red Scares is perhaps the reality that libraries continue to remove books due to censorship. The federal government interrogated Langston Hughes because the State Department included his work in U.S. libraries abroad. McCarthy’s lieutenants traveled to Europe removing books that they determined to be “subversive” from these libraries. In another hearing, William Mandel, an expert on the Soviet Union forced out of his position at Stanford’s Hoover Institution during the Red Scares, stated, “This is a book-burning! You lack only the tinder to set fire to the books as Hitler did 20 years ago, and I am going to get that across to the American people!”

    The culture of fear created by Senator McCarthy and others served to silence ideas and beliefs that they disagreed with. The future is yet unwritten, but by understanding what political repression looked like then, we can recognize it and figure out how to fight it now. As Mandel noted, once we see censorship for what it is, it’s our responsibility to get that across to the American people.

    The next two columns in this series will focus on the organizations and people that made McCarthyism as effective as it was: the academic elite who worked hand in glove with the rank and file to ensure that, what the government started, higher education would finish.

    (Copies of No Ivory Tower are difficult to find, but several libraries stock it and, if you can’t get access there, here’s a lovely interview with the author.)

    Dominique J. Baker is an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware. You can follow her on Bluesky at @bakerdphd.bsky.social

    Source link

  • Faculty Are Often Unprepared to Teach About Race (opinion)

    Faculty Are Often Unprepared to Teach About Race (opinion)

    Faculty teaching about race do so in a moment when public scrutiny of higher education is heightened, federal policies are shifting, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are being dismantled. Even as the stakes continue rising, the instructional support for teaching race remains thin. Classroom missteps become fodder for political commentary, investigations and legislative action, not because DEI is failing—but because higher education has not prepared faculty for the instructional demands of this work.

    In recent years, a series of classroom incidents has sparked social media outrage and press coverage questioning whether faculty can responsibly teach about race and racism. This past fall, a federal civil rights complaint filed against Colorado State University objected to how two social-work instructors were teaching about race: The instructors reportedly detailed in a journal article how they treated discomfort as a measure of instructional success, characterizing student dissent as “whitelash” or an attempt to maintain “white emotional comfort.” And, in November, Texas A&M University adopted sweeping new rules restricting professors from advocating for “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” after an instructor’s lesson on gender identity drew political scrutiny.

    Similar conflicts, large and small, have surfaced at other institutions where comments, assignments or facilitation missteps around race have escalated into campuswide crises, legislative attention, or national media backlash. For critics of DEI work, the story is a familiar one, each conflict another example of what they believe is a misguided and coercive approach to discussing race in the academy.

    But these cases are not evidence that DEI is failing. They’re evidence that higher education continues to position instructors to teach about race without adequate preparation, support or instructional training. The result is predictable. Classroom conversations break down, students withdraw or react defensively, and faculty fall back on reductive frameworks that flatten complexity instead of deepening understanding. When the inevitable conflict arises, external critics seize on those moments as proof that DEI itself is the problem.

    As someone who has spent more than two decades teaching courses on race and racism, preparing PK-12 educators and school leaders, and facilitating difficult conversations across racial, political and socioeconomic contexts, I recognize many of the dynamics described in recent reports.

    I have seen classrooms fracture when conversations about race are mishandled. I have also seen classrooms strengthen and deepen when race is taught skillfully, developmentally and with transparency about the learning process—not with the goal of making certain students, based on their race, feel uncomfortable.

    Why Higher Ed Keeps Getting This Wrong

    Too often, instructors are left to navigate high-stakes, emotionally charged conversations with little guiding them beyond readings and good intentions. They confuse discomfort with learning or treat identity categories as complete explanations for how students respond. They assume that naming systemic racism is enough to foster insight. They treat emotional reactions as confessions rather than data. And they interpret dissent as avoidance rather than inquiry.

    Teaching about race is not the same thing as talking about race. It is not sufficient to have strong convictions, an antiracist syllabus or a set of readings that challenge dominant narratives. Teaching about race effectively, humanely and rigorously is adaptive work. It requires attention to the meaning-making capacities adults bring to the classroom, the emotional and cognitive demands of confronting unfamiliar histories, and the complex identity threats that discussions of racism can activate.

    Unfortunately, many college instructors are asked to lead these conversations without any formal preparation in adult learning theory, without much practice facilitating difficult dialogues, and without much exposure to exercising racial literacy skills. Graduate programs rarely include coursework on how adults learn, how to hold tension productively, or how to differentiate instruction for learners at different developmental stages. Faculty development programs typically focus on instructional tools, strategies or course design, not the psychological and relational capacities required to teach race well.

    The result is that many faculty default to one of two equally ineffective approaches: avoidance, in which the fear of mistakes or conflict leads instructors to sanitize discussions about race or eliminate them entirely; or overcorrection, in which instructors push students into discomfort prematurely, recast struggle as resistance or treat identity categories as proxies for understanding. Both approaches undermine learning. And both approaches, ironically, feed the narrative that DEI is coercive, dogmatic or intellectually fragile.

    Misinterpreting Discomfort

    A common misstep in teaching about race and racism is treating discomfort as the goal rather than the byproduct of learning. Discomfort emerges when students confront unfamiliar histories or grapple with the implications of structural racism. But causing discomfort without further reflection is not instructive. In fact, adult learning research shows that when learners do not understand why they feel discomfort, or when they interpret it as a personal indictment rather than information, they often shut down, deflect or retreat into defensiveness.

    Barbara Larrivee’s work on reflective teaching practice emphasizes that adults deepen their reflective capacity not when they are emotionally overwhelmed, but when they can connect feelings to meaning. Tyrone Howard is especially clear that reflective practice around race is emotionally demanding and must be scaffolded, particularly for students who have had limited or no prior engagement with racial analysis.

    Deborah Helsing, Annie Howell, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s research demonstrates that adults grow when they can safely examine their assumptions, not when they are forced into emotional exposure without a supportive structure. Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Martin Linsky’s concept of a “holding environment” underscores the importance of creating a space strong enough to contain tension and flexible enough to meet learners where they are developmentally.

    When instructors lack this grounding, discomfort can be misread as resistance, and resistance can be treated as evidence of fragility without further inquiry. The learning process collapses.

    Identity Is Context, Not Destiny

    Another pitfall revealed in some cases that escalate into public controversy is the assumption that a student’s response can be fully explained by racial or gender identity. While identity informs perspective, it does not predetermine it. H. Richard Milner IV consistently argues that classroom discussions of race must be deliberate, contextual and connected to students’ lived realities, structural inequities and institutional power.

    Treating students as illustrations of demographic categories rather than as complex thinkers with varied histories and meaning-making capacities undermines trust and flattens what should be a nuanced dialogue. It also discourages dissent and the kind of intellectual engagement that we are meant to cultivate. Students deserve classrooms where questions are welcomed, disagreements are examined rather than punished, and identity is treated as a lens, not a verdict.

    The Real Risk: We Are Handing Evidence to DEI’s Critics

    Faculty who teach about race are working in a political climate where the stakes are extraordinarily high. White House executive orders and state laws across the country have restricted what can be taught about race. Public trust in higher education is declining. DEI offices are being dismantled.

    In this landscape, when classrooms fall apart, the consequences extend far beyond a single course. They reinforce public misconceptions about DEI, embolden efforts to roll back equity-focused policies, and weaken institutional commitments to preparing students for democratic citizenship in a multiracial society.

    Conservative media has built a profitable outrage economy from these incidents, some real and some exaggerated. Every time a classroom implodes, the anti-DEI movement grows stronger with a new case affirming a preexisting narrative: DEI is dogma, DEI is coercion, DEI is emotional manipulation, DEI is identity reductionism.

    But these explanations are not the inevitable outcomes of teaching about race; they are the avoidable consequences of poorly designed learning environments and instructors’ unexamined assumptions. They describe the worst of DEI as if it were the whole of DEI. And colleges, by failing to teach race well, continue to hand DEI’s critics the evidence they need.

    Making the Pivot

    Adults do not grow when they are humiliated, cornered or shamed into silence. They grow when instructors make their reasoning visible, invite critique and create structured environments where difficult emotions can be examined rather than weaponized. Students learn when they are challenged in ways that help them make meaning of their experiences, not in ways that reinforce fear or defensiveness.

    Through trial, error and learning alongside colleagues committed to adaptive adult learning, I’ve found that effective teaching about race requires several related commitments:

    Instructional transparency: making our own assumptions, reasoning and uncertainties visible so that students understand the purpose and process of the learning.

    A shared framework for inquiry: establishing norms that distinguish exploration from accusation and help students make sense of emotional responses without weaponizing them.

    Developmentally aligned challenges: recognizing that students arrive with different capacities for complexity and designing learning opportunities that meet them where they are, while nudging them forward.

    Treating dissent as data: understanding pushback not as avoidance, but as information about what needs clarification, probing or more practical contextualization.

    When faculty practice these commitments, difficult conversations are not something to endure—they are opportunities for insight. Discomfort emerges organically rather than being imposed. Identity becomes context, not destiny. And students stay in the work long enough for significant learning to occur.

    If colleges and universities want students to think critically about history, identity, power and inequality, they must invest in preparing faculty for that work. That means faculty development centered on adult learning, racial literacy, adaptive teaching and facilitation of complex intergroup dialogue, not just compliance training or lists of “dos and don’ts.” It means recognizing that teaching about race is sophisticated instructional work, not a box to check.

    Without institutional support from university leaders, faculty will continue to be underprepared to teach subject matter deemed too politically controversial—despite its importance to preparing civic-minded, informed citizens capable of productive dialogue with people who have entirely different viewpoints and life experiences.

    A Call to Higher Education

    The recent controversies at Colorado State, Texas A&M or those yet to be reported should not discourage colleges and universities (or PK-12 schools) from teaching about race or lead them to abandon the faculty committed to doing so responsibly. If this moment helps us move toward a more rigorous, developmental and humane approach to teaching about race and racism, it will have done something important. It could challenge us to teach race far better than many of us do.

    John Pascarella is a professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and chief academic officer of the USC Race and Equity Center.

    Source link

  • Teaching in the age of generative AI: why strategy matters more than tools

    Teaching in the age of generative AI: why strategy matters more than tools

    Join HEPI and Advance HE for a webinar today (Tuesday, 13 January 2026) from 11am to 12pm, exploring what higher education can learn from leadership approaches in other sectors. Sign up here to hear this and more from our speakers.

    This blog was kindly authored by Wioletta Nawrot, Associate Professor and Teaching & Learning Lead at ESCP Business School, London Campus.

    Generative AI has entered higher education faster than most institutions can respond. The question is no longer whether students and staff will use it, but whether universities can ensure it strengthens learning rather than weakens it. Used well, AI can support personalised feedback, stimulate creativity, and free academic time for deeper dialogue. Used poorly, it can erode critical thinking, distort assessment, and undermine trust.

    The difference lies not in the tools themselves but in how institutions guide their use through pedagogy, governance, and culture.

    AI is a cultural and pedagogical shift, not a software upgrade

    Across higher education, early responses to AI have often focused on tools. Yet treating AI as a bolt-on risks missing the real transformation: a shift in how academic communities think, learn, and make judgements.

    Some universities began with communities of practice rather than software procurement. At ESCP Business School, stakeholders, including staff and students, were invited to experiment with AI in teaching, assessment, and student support. These experiences demonstrated that experimentation is essential but only when it contributes to a coherent framework with shared principles and staff development.

    Three lessons have emerged as AI rollouts have been deployed. Staff report using AI to draft feedback or generate case study variations, but final decisions and marking remain human. Students learn more when they critique AI, not copy it. Exercises where students compare AI responses to academic sources or highlight errors can strengthen critical thinking. Governance matters more than enthusiasm. Clarity around data privacy, authorship, assessment and acceptable use is essential to protect trust.

    Assessment: the hardest and most urgent area of reform

    Once students can generate fluent essays or code in seconds, traditional take-home assignments are no longer reliable indicators of learning. At ESCP we have responded by: 

    • Introducing oral assessments, in-class writing, and step-by-step submissions to verify individual understanding.
    • Asking students to reference class materials and discussions, or unique datasets that AI tools cannot access.
    • Updating assessment rubrics to prioritise analytical depth, originality, transparency of process, and intellectual engagement.

    Students should be encouraged to state whether AI was used, how it contributed, and where its outputs were adapted or rejected. This mirrors professional practice by acknowledging assistance without outsourcing judgement. This shift moves universities from policing to encouraging by detecting misconduct and teaching responsible use.

    AI literacy and academic inequality

    AI does not benefit all students equally. Those with strong subject knowledge are better able to question AI’s inaccuracies; others may accept outputs uncritically. 

    Generic workshops alone are insufficient. AI literacy must be embedded within disciplines, for example, in law through case analysis; in business via ethical decision-making; and in science through data validation. Students can be taught not just how to use AI, but how to test it, challenge it, and cite it appropriately.

    Staff development is equally important. Not all academics feel confident incorporating AI into feedback, supervision or assessments. Models such as AI champions, peer-led workshops, and campus coordinators can increase confidence and avoid digital divides between departments.

    Policy implications for UK higher education

    If AI adoption remains fragmented, the UK’s higher education sector risks inconsistency, inequity, and reputational damage. A strategic approach is needed at an institutional and a national level. 

    Universities should define the educational purpose of AI before adopting tools, and consider reforming assessments to remain robust. Structured professional development, opportunities for peer exchange, and open dialogue with students about what constitutes legitimate and responsible use will also support the effective integration of AI into the sector.

    However, it’s not only institutions that need to take action. Policymakers and sector bodies should develop shared reference points for transparency and academic integrity. As a nation, we must invest in research into AI’s impact on learning outcomes and ensure quality frameworks reflect AI’s role in higher education processes, such as assessment and skills development.

    The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) sets a prescriptive model for compliance in education. The UK’s principles-based approach gives universities flexibility, but this comes with accountability. Without shared standards, the sector risks inconsistent practice and erosion of public trust. A reduction in employability may also follow if students are not taught how to use AI ethically while continuing to develop their critical thinking and analytical skills.

    Implications for the sector

    The experience of institutions like ESCP Business School shows that the quality of teaching with AI depends less on the technology itself than on the judgement and educational purpose guiding its use. 

    Generative AI is already an integral part of students’ academic lives; higher education must now decide how to shape that reality. Institutions that approach AI through strategy, integrity, and shared responsibility will not only protect learning, but renew it, strengthening the human dimension that gives teaching its meaning.

    Source link

  • The schools where even young children change classes 

    The schools where even young children change classes 

    by Ariel Gilreath, The Hechinger Report
    January 13, 2026

    BATON ROUGE, La. — About two dozen second graders sat on the carpet at the front of Jacquelyn Anthony’s classroom, reviewing how to make tens. “Two needs eight!” the students yelled out together. “Six needs four!” 

    “The numbers may get a little trickier,” Anthony told them next. “But remember, the numbers we need to make 10 are still there.” The students then turned confidently to bigger calculations: Forty-six needs four ones to make a new number divisible by 10; 128 needs two to make 13 tens. 

    At the end of the hour, the second graders slung on their backpacks, gathered their Chromebooks and lined up at the door before heading to English and social studies class across the hall. While most schools wait until middle school to transition students from one class to another, kids at Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts do so starting at age 6 or 7. It’s part of a strategy known as departmentalizing, or platooning. 

    Anthony, rather than teaching all four core subjects, specializes in math. The school’s new facility, built in 2025, was designed with departmentalizing in mind: The classrooms have huge glass windows, so teachers can see their next class preparing to line up in the hallway.

    “Teaching today is so different than it was a long time ago, and there are so many demands on them. And the demand to be an expert in your content area is very high,” said Sydney Hebert, magnet site coordinator for the art-focused public school in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district. “We want to make sure that our teachers are experts in what they’re teaching so that they can do a good job of teaching it to the kids.”

    As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom strategy even for very young students. In recent years, more elementary schools have opted to departmentalize some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade classrooms operating on this schedule has doubled since the year 2000, from 15 percent to 30 percent in 2021. Often, that means educators will specialize in one or two subjects at most, such as fourth grade English language arts and social studies, or fifth grade math and science. The theory is that teachers who specialize will be more familiar with the content and better able to teach it. 

    That may be particularly important for math: Studies have shown that some early elementary school teachers experience anxiety about the subject and question their ability to teach it. Educators also say that the curriculum and standards for math and English in the early grades are changing rapidly in some districts and have become more complicated over time. In a departmentalized setup, it’s also far less likely that math instruction will get shortchanged by an educator who prefers spending time on other subjects.  

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education. 

    But while some schools swear by this model, the research on it is mixed.

    One prominent 2018 study on the practice in Houston public schools found it had a negative effect on test scores, behavior and attendance. The study doesn’t explain why that was the case, but the researcher said it could be because teachers on this schedule spend less time with individual students.

    Another study published in 2024 analyzing Massachusetts schools had different outcomes: Researchers found moderate gains in academic achievement for ELA and a significant boost to science scores for students in departmentalized classes. The results in math, however, showed few gains. 

    Generally, teachers specialize in the subject they are most comfortable teaching. When a school departmentalizes for the first time, principals typically look at each educator’s test score data over time to determine whether they should specialize in math or reading.

    “There are some arguments that, at least if it’s someone who likes the subject, who is passionate about the subject, you have a greater chance of them doing a better job of delivering instruction,” said Latrenda Knighten, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. “But you’ll find mixed reviews.”

    Yet there are a few reasons why the strategy is typically reserved for students in older grades, according to school leaders: Spending all day with one teacher increases the bond between the teacher and student, which is important for younger children. In Baton Rouge, Anthony teaches 50 students throughout the day instead of the same 25 students all day.

    “Teachers want to get to know their students,” said Dennis Willingham, superintendent of Walker County Schools in Alabama. The district departmentalized some fifth grade classrooms decades ago, but recently added third and fourth grade classes on this schedule. “You tend to see less departmentalization below third grade because of the nurturing element.” 

    It’s also generally more challenging for young students to quickly change classrooms, even for electives, which means lost instructional time. Smaller elementary schools may also struggle to hire enough teachers to schedule all of them on a departmentalized setup. 

    Related: These school districts are bucking the national math slump

    But increasingly, schools that are satisfied with this approach for older grade levels are trying it out with their younger grades, too. 

    After the pandemic, the San Tan Heights Elementary School in Arizona changed its curriculum to one that was more rigorous, and it became harder for the third grade educators to master the standards of all four subject areas, said Henry Saylor-Scheetz, principal at the time.

    He proposed that third graders be taught by separate math, English language arts and reading teachers. “I told them, let’s try it for a semester. If it doesn’t work at the end of the year, we’ll go back,” Saylor-Scheetz said.

    Ten days into the experiment, teachers told him they never wanted to return to the old schedule. In the subsequent years, the school added more classrooms on this model until, by 2023, all K-8 students were departmentalized. For the last few years, teacher retention at the school was 95 percent, according to Saylor-Scheetz.

    Saylor-Scheetz, who last year became principal of a nearby middle school, credited the change for helping the school improve from a C rating on its state report card — a rating it had stagnated at every year since 2018 — to a B rating as of 2022. Since then, more schools in his Arizona school district have shifted to this schedule. 

    “I’d love to see this become something we do as a nation, but it is a paradigm shift,” Saylor-Scheetz said. “There’s merit in doing it, but there has to be a commitment to it.”

    At Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, students in first through third grades have two partner teachers, one for math and science and another for ELA and social studies. The school has been operating on this schedule for third through fifth grade students for more than a decade. Eight years ago, its leaders decided to try it for first and second grade students, too, and were pleased with the results. 

    On a December morning at the school, young students talked quietly with each other in the hall as they lined up to go from math class to English language arts. All told, the switch took less than five minutes. “We’re at the end of the second nine weeks, so we’ve had a lot of practice,” said GiGi Boudreaux, the assistant principal. 

    The strategy has not always been successful, though.

    During the pandemic, administrators also attempted to departmentalize its kindergarten classes. It didn’t work as they’d hoped: It was a challenge to get the 5-year-olds to quickly change classes and focus on classwork again once they did. Parents also didn’t like it. The school then tried moving teachers from classroom to classroom instead of moving students, but the educators hated it. 

    “It was too much, so we didn’t do it after that,” said Hebert.

    The Baton Rouge school doesn’t have comparison data to show that students perform better in a departmentalized setup, but most educators in the school prefer it, Hebert said. Third grade test scores from 2015 — before the school departmentalized its younger grade levels — showed 73 percent scored “advanced” and “mastery” level on the state ELA test, and 56 percent scored advanced or mastery on the math test. In 2025, 80 percent of third grade students scored advanced or mastery in ELA and 55 percent in math.

    “I know that the teachers like it better, and the kids have adapted to it,” Hebert said. 

    Teachers meet weekly with their partner teachers and grade-level counterparts to discuss their classes and progress on the state standards. Once a quarter, all of the math teachers across the grades meet to talk about strategies and student performance. 

    Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety 

    At Deer Valley Unified School District in Arizona, departmentalizing some classrooms has helped reduce teacher turnover, said Superintendent Curtis Finch, particularly for early career educators, who can find it challenging to master the content and standards of all four subjects.

    “If you’re not confident in your subject, then you don’t have good examples off the top of your head. You can’t control the room, can’t pull the students in,” Finch said. 

    There are drawbacks though, Finch acknowledged. In a self-contained classroom, teachers can more easily integrate their different lessons, so that a math lesson might refer back to a topic covered in reading.

    And even though Anthony, the second grade math and science teacher in Baton Rouge, loves teaching math, she also misses the extra time she could spend with each student when she had the same 25 children in her class all day for the entire school year. 

    “It was a joy for me to be self-contained and to build that little family,” Anthony said. “I think the social emotional needs of students are best met in that type of environment. But being solely a math teacher, I do get to just dig in and focus on the nuance of the content.” 

    For Anthony’s partner teacher across the hall, Holley McArthur, teaching 50 students ELA and social studies is easier than having to teach 25 students math. 

    “This is my thing: reading books, comprehending and finding answers, meeting their goals,” said McArthur, who has taught in both kinds of classrooms over three decades in education.  

    While McArthur’s kids were at recess this mid-December day, the veteran teacher was grading their reading worksheets. A new student had transferred in from out of state midyear, and she was still evaluating his reading skills. 

    “I think you still get to know the kids, even if you just have them for three hours a day, because I’m not doing the hard math with them.” 

    Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].

    This story about departmentalizing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/the-schools-where-even-young-children-change-classes/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

    <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://hechingerreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=114257&amp;ga4=G-03KPHXDF3H” style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://hechingerreport.org/the-schools-where-even-young-children-change-classes/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/hechingerreport.org/p.js”></script>

    Source link

  • Universities need standards, not role models

    Universities need standards, not role models

    The debate about duty of care in higher education has been obscured by the repeated collapse of distinct legal questions into a single, unresolved argument.

    In particular, discussion of whether a duty of care exists is routinely conflated with questions about what responsibility would require in practice.

    That confusion has prevented sustained analysis of the standards by which conduct should be judged, which is where responsibility acquires real content.

    To address that problem, this article deliberately limits the scope of its analysis. It does not engage with the minimal, background obligation that applies to everyone not to cause foreseeable and substantial harm to others.

    That obligation is universal and requires very little: it is ordinarily satisfied by avoiding obvious risks in everyday activity, and it doerobert as not involve the design of systems, the monitoring of risk, or the anticipation of harm beyond what is immediately apparent.

    Nor does this article seek to resolve the threshold question of whether, and in what precise circumstances, an overarching institutional duty arises in higher education. That question turns on context and relationship and can be answered in different ways as a matter of law.

    This limitation is adopted for a reason. Disputes about the existence or outer boundaries of duty tend to obscure the more significant and unresolved issue of how responsibility should be exercised in practice.

    The analysis proceeds on the assumption that, as in other recognised institutional and professional contexts, a relationship-based duty may arise where organisations undertake defined functions and create foreseeable risks through their systems and decision-making.

    On that assumption, the central question is not whether duty exists, but how it should be discharged. The focus is accordingly on the standards by which responsibility should be assessed in a modern university, rather than on analogies or models of conduct borrowed from different fields.

    Duty establishes responsibility; standards give it content

    In law, a duty and the standard by which conduct is assessed perform different functions. The duty establishes that responsibility arises at all. It is a gateway concept, triggered where there is a sufficient relationship and a risk of foreseeable harm.

    Once a duty exists, it doesn’t prescribe outcomes or require the provision of any particular form of “care” in the everyday sense of that word. Rather, it establishes that those with responsibility must avoid carelessness in their actions or inaction, including in how systems are designed and how decisions are taken where foreseeable harm may arise.

    What counts as reasonable, and therefore what amounts to carelessness, is not determined by the existence of the duty itself, but by what is reasonably required in the circumstances, having regard to the role performed, the functions undertaken, and the context in which decisions are made.

    The practical consequences of this distinction are straightforward but often overlooked. Responsibility does not take a single, uniform form. What it requires depends on the nature of the activity undertaken, the role being performed, and the degree of reliance and risk created in the circumstances. The same underlying obligation not to act carelessly will therefore be expressed very differently in different settings.

    Crucially, it also requires that foreseeable risks are addressed rather than deferred – responsibility is not discharged by ignoring warning signs, postponing decisions, or allowing procedural drift to substitute for timely action where intervention is reasonably required.

    The distinction is often easiest to see through the lens of professional systems. A stranger has no obligation to warn you of an approaching storm. An airline, by contrast, has invited you into its system and possesses the radar to see the danger. It can’t stop the storm, and it’s not your parent – but it does have a responsibility arising from how it manages risk.

    Borrowed standards obscure, rather than clarify, responsibility

    Discussions of responsibility in higher education are frequently derailed by the use of inappropriate comparisons.

    When questions are raised about what universities should reasonably be expected to do, the response is often to reach for an existing and familiar model from elsewhere – parenting, custody, clinical practice, or institutional supervision. These comparisons are then used to argue that universities either cannot, or should not, be held responsible in similar ways.

    This mode of argument rests on a basic mistake. It assumes that responsibility must always be understood by analogy to some other established setting, and that the only question is which existing model should be imported (never mind that none of them quite fit). The result is a debate conducted by comparison rather than analysis, in which standards developed for very different purposes are treated as benchmarks against which responsibility in higher education is judged.

    The problem is not that these other standards exist. It is that they are being used in the wrong way.

    One obligation, assessed differently across contexts

    Across the law, there is not a proliferation of different duties corresponding to different institutions. In each case there is an underlying obligation not to act carelessly where responsibility arises. What varies is how that obligation is assessed in different contexts. The law doesn’t ask whether an institution resembles a parent, a prison, or a hospital. It asks what avoiding careless conduct reasonably requires, given the role performed, the functions undertaken, and the risks created.

    Standards developed in other settings reflect those settings. Parental and apprenticeship standards arose where there was dependency and close supervision. Custodial standards reflect confinement and control. Clinical standards reflect specialist expertise, regulation, and professional judgement. Each provides a way of judging conduct in its own context. None is a universal template, and none can be transplanted wholesale into a different institutional environment without distortion.

    Using these standards as analogies for higher education therefore tells us very little about what universities should reasonably be expected to do. At best, such comparisons show what higher education is not. They don’t tell us what it is.

    In loco parentis explains the past – it does not define the present

    The continued invocation of in loco parentis illustrates this problem clearly. Parents owe a duty to their children, but they are judged according to a parental standard shaped by dependency, authority, and control. In loco parentis did not create a special or additional duty. It applied that parental standard to educational institutions at a time when students were young, dependent, and subject to close supervision.

    The difficulty today is not that universities are being asked to revive this model. It is that in loco parentis is still treated as a reference point, either to be defended or rejected, rather than as a historical example of how responsibility was once assessed in very different circumstances. Once that is recognised, arguments about universities “becoming parents” lose their relevance. The parental standard is neither applicable nor required.

    Control calibrates responsibility – it does not create it

    Control is often introduced at this point as a decisive factor. Universities, it is argued, do not exercise the level of control found in prisons, hospitals, or schools, and therefore should not be subject to responsibility of any comparable kind. This argument again mistakes comparison for analysis.

    Control doesn’t determine whether responsibility arises. It influences what avoiding careless conduct reasonably requires. Where control is extensive, expectations are correspondingly more intrusive. Where control is partial or situational, expectations are more limited. Where control is absent, responsibility may still arise, but its practical demands will be constrained. This is how responsibility already operates across institutional contexts, including prisons, hospitals, and schools.

    Control, in this sense, isn’t all-or-nothing. A university doesn’t control where a student chooses to walk late at night, but it does control the lighting on its own campus paths. Responsibility attaches to what falls within that sphere of influence, and the standard is calibrated accordingly.

    The same reasoning applies to higher education providers. The question is not whether they resemble other institutions, but how responsibility should be assessed having regard to what they actually do, how they are organised, and the risks their systems and decisions create.

    In professional systems, responsibility includes designing processes that can respond when risk escalates beyond routine conditions. Where systems lack clear escalation pathways, or where exceptional circumstances cannot override ordinary procedure, responsibility may fail not through indifference, but through inertia. Standards of care are tested not only by what institutions do in normal conditions, but by whether their systems enable timely and proportionate action when those conditions no longer apply.

    Seen in this light, comparisons with parents, prisons, or hospitals do not advance the debate. They obscure it. Higher education doesn’t need to borrow someone else’s standard in order to avoid responsibility, nor to justify it. What is required is a clear articulation of the standard that fits higher education as it exists now, rather than as it once did or as something else entirely.

    A professional standard in practice

    Modern universities are professional institutions operating through differentiated roles, delegated expertise, and organisational systems. Avoiding carelessness in this context doesn’t require staff to act beyond their competence. Academic staff are not clinicians, and non-academic staff are not responsible for making safeguarding judgements beyond their role.

    Clarity of role is not a threat to academic freedom but a condition of it. By defining where responsibility properly sits, academic staff are protected from being pressed into quasi-clinical or pastoral roles for which they are neither trained nor authorised, allowing them to focus on teaching and scholarship while institutional systems manage risk. Academic freedom is therefore not incompatible with responsibility – it depends on responsibility being allocated clearly and appropriately.

    What avoiding careless conduct does require is that roles are clearly defined, that concerns are recognised and escalated appropriately, and that institutional systems are designed to manage foreseeable risk without leaving responsibility to chance. Harm frequently arises not from dramatic acts, but from omissions – fragmented information, unclear responsibility, or decisions taken without regard to known risk. These are questions of institutional competence rather than individual moral failing.

    The difference between a parental approach and a professional one can be illustrated simply. Under a parental standard, a student’s unexplained absence might prompt direct personal intervention – phone calls, door-knocking, or demands for explanation. Under a tertiary professional standard, responsibility is exercised differently.

    The focus is not on intrusion, but on systems – whether attendance data, engagement with digital resources, or other indicators trigger an appropriate institutional response in line with defined roles and protocols. The question is not why the student has disengaged, but whether the institution’s systems are functioning competently to recognise and respond to foreseeable risk.

    Naming the Tertiary Professional Standard

    The standard by which responsibility in higher education should be assessed can be described as the Tertiary Professional Standard. This term identifies the particular way in which responsibility is judged in the higher education context, reflecting its professional, role-sensitive, and institutional character.

    It is neither parental, custodial, nor clinical. It aligns responsibility with competence and control, reflects the realities of adult education, and recognises that universities act through systems as well as individuals. The Tertiary Professional Standard protects students without infantilising them, and it protects staff by defining the limits of what can reasonably be expected.

    It replaces confusion with clarity. Higher education doesn’t need to revive outdated models or deny responsibility altogether. It needs to articulate, clearly and honestly, the standard by which responsibility is already exercised. That is the conversation now worth having.

    Source link

  • Are we reducing research security risk, or just shifting it around?

    Are we reducing research security risk, or just shifting it around?

    In an era of heightened geopolitical tension, research security has shot to the top of policy agendas worldwide. Governments and institutions are implementing new measures intended to safeguard sensitive science against threats like espionage, theft, and undue foreign influence.

    The Flagship EU Conference on Research Security, held recently in Brussels, underscored the urgency: for the first time, the European Union announced plans to anchor research security in EU law via a forthcoming European Research Area. It also confirmed proposals for a range of new support measures including a European Centre of Expertise, an international collaboration due diligence platform, and a common resilience testing methodology.

    Yet amid these proactive steps lurks a critical question: are current research security frameworks genuinely reducing risk, or merely redistributing it across borders? There is growing evidence that without careful coordination, well-intentioned safeguards in one country can simply deflect threats to less-regulated arenas. In its recent note on “Research Security as a Shared Responsibility”, conference co-organiser CESAER noted the need to build resilience in Europe through “collective responsibility and trust.” It emphasised that “making a level playing field across the continent” is essential. But why should the level playing field stop there?

    The waterbed effect

    Across the world – and even within Europe – research security frameworks vary wildly. This fragmentation is more than just a bureaucratic quirk; it can actively undermine the intention to reduce risk. If one institution or country imposes rigorous security checks, a hostile actor can simply target a more permissive collaborator elsewhere, bypassing the tightest gate by entering through an unlocked side door.

    Research managers from across European countries and beyond recently voiced a clear message through the “Stronger Cooperation, Safer Collaboration” project: divergent national approaches are creating duplication, confusion, and vulnerability in research security. Some nations have strict regulatory frameworks; others rely on informal guidelines and self-regulation, and some have yet to implement any framework at all. This disharmony forces collaborating institutions to navigate a patchwork of rules. Crucially, it creates a race to the bottom: “The first to act loses out,” as one research manager put it, meaning institutions that impose tougher controls risk losing collaborations or talent that underpin their institutions impact and financial resilience. Conversely, overly open environments risk becoming safe havens for those trying to evade stricter jurisdictions, leading to longer term losses through knowledge leakage from the same global collaborative projects.

    This dynamic has played out in anecdotal reports: one trusted research manager at a research-intensive university in the UK shared that they had experienced a recent case in which a PhD candidate who had unsuccessfully appealed an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) refusal told their UK institution not to worry, as they had received an offer from elsewhere in Europe. Colleagues elsewhere in the UK and in Denmark confirmed similar experiences – Denmark and the UK being two countries now taking a firm line on vetting international research ties.

    The pattern highlights a potential unintended consequence: was the risk eliminated, or was it shifted to another institution? It raises the question as to whether early inward-facing approaches have inadvertently created a “waterbed effect”: press down on risk in one place, and it pops up elsewhere, undermining the overall goal of a safer global research environment.

    Shifting risk to the Global South

    The “risk transfer” phenomenon in research security isn’t just a North Atlantic or European problem. It can play out globally, often to the detriment of researchers in the Global South. Many high-income countries (such as the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and some EU states) have ramped up protections for their own institutions. This includes stricter export controls on sensitive technologies, visa vetting of foreign researchers, requirements for disclosure of overseas ties, and due diligence on international partners. But those seeking access to advanced research can respond by targeting less fortified partners in countries where such measures are not yet in place or enforced.

    This dynamic means that Global South collaborators sometimes become passive recipients of risk. I spoke with Dr Palesa Natasha Mothapo, Director of Research Support and Management of Nelson Mandela University and an alumnus of the Women Advance Research Security Fellowship, who has led initiatives to engage institutions in South Africa and beyond on research security. She noted that South Africa has a thriving research and innovation ecosystem with highly sensitive research, but discussions on research security remain at a very early stage. Even so, Mothapo noted that institutions in South Africa generally benefit from greater financial security due to national investment and infrastructure and colleagues from elsewhere in the Global South feel even more exposed to the risks.

    When working with international funders, institutions are often forced to accept onerous funding terms and conditions set by wealthier partners and conditions which aim to shift responsibility and liability downward. Those terms and conditions have often not been formulated fully considering the local context or capacity. For example, a major research funding agreement from a US or European sponsor might require the African or Asian sub-grantee to comply with strict cybersecurity protocols, international export-controls or vetting of staff. Lacking an equal say in drafting these terms, the partner institution does its best to comply, effectively shouldering the security burden – but it may not have the inhouse experts, resources or infrastructure that its counterparts are able to rely on. But if something goes wrong, who bears the blame or consequences? If our actions only result in shifting the blame but fail to mitigate the likelihood or consequences, they have failed altogether. This inequity can erode trust and perpetuate harm.

    To counteract this erosion, changes in terms and conditions need to accompanied by the capacity strengthening, partnership and co-creation that accounts for what each collaborator values and seeks to protect. In the last three years, I have worked with researchers, research managers, innovation professionals and policy makers from over 50 different countries on capacity strengthening in research security. While the contexts vary greatly, there are still commonalities in the challenges we face and significant opportunity for cooperation and knowledge exchange. Raising standards everywhere is not a zero-sum game but creates a more stable, level playing field for all. This is the solution to truly reduce risk globally, instead of shifting it around.

    Towards harmonisation and mutual support

    If current research security measures risk shifting problems around, what is the remedy? The experts and stakeholders convened in Europe and elsewhere seem to converge on a key principle: harmonisation and capacity-building. Rather than each country acting in isolation (or worse, in competition) on research security, there’s a call for joint action to raise the floor globally and key actions have begun in this direction.

    There is also a growing recognition that culture change is as important as policy change. The concept of research security is relatively new in academia’s culture of openness. We need to foster a culture where security is seen not as a hindrance or a nationalist agenda, but as a shared duty to protect the integrity of science. That means those implementing security must do so in a way that is transparent and respects values like academic freedom and open science.

    To return to our original question: are we actually reducing risk or just shifting it elsewhere? At present, the answer is: a bit of both. The flurry of research security policies in recent years has plugged many gaps that were previously exploitable. Major economies are certainly harder targets for espionage and IP theft than they were a decade ago, thanks to these efforts.

    However, as protections evolve so do threats and tactics and there is little room for complacency. Some of those same efforts have diverted actors to take different approaches, including in some cases exporting the risk to less prepared quarters, or creating new frictions in the research enterprise. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and right now the “chain” of global science has some weak links open to exploitation. The good news is that the solution is within reach through international cooperation.

    We reduce research security risk only when we reduce it for everyone. If instead we simply push the risk around, it will eventually circle back and hit us from behind. The current trends – increased awareness, dialogue, and alignment – give reason for optimism. The UK government has indicated that international capacity strengthening will form part of their anticipated research security strategy.

    The next few years will be critical in translating these insights into practice. If we succeed, we will be on track to celebrate a genuinely safer, more collaborative global research environment – one where risk is tackled collectively, not passed like a hot potato.

    Source link

  • Top Hat and Wiley Partner to Enhance Student Engagement in Psychology and Anatomy & Physiology

    Top Hat and Wiley Partner to Enhance Student Engagement in Psychology and Anatomy & Physiology

    Combining trusted content from Wiley with Top Hat’s powerful student engagement platform gives educators new opportunities to personalize instruction, foster active learning, and improve outcomes.

    TORONTO – January 12, 2026 – Top Hat, the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education, today announced a strategic partnership with Wiley, a global leader in authoritative content and research intelligence, that combines Wiley’s academic expertise and Top Hat’s innovative engagement tools. As part of the collaboration, select titles from Wiley’s widely respected Psychology and Anatomy & Physiology catalogs will be seamlessly integrated into the Top Hat platform, giving educators access to powerful features to personalize content, enhance student success, and save time on course preparation and delivery. 

    “At Wiley, we believe great content is the foundation of great teaching,” said Lyssa Vanderbeek, Wiley Group Vice President, Courseware. “Through our partnership with Top Hat, we’re delivering our respected titles in key disciplines through another avenue, a platform specifically designed to spark classroom engagement and support evidence-based teaching practices.”

    Key Benefits of the Partnership

    Easily Customize Trusted Wiley Content: Educators gain the flexibility to adapt select Wiley psychology and anatomy & physiology textbooks using intuitive content customization tools to rearrange, edit, delete or enrich with multimedia so course materials emphasize what matters most.

    Promote In-Class Engagement: Wiley’s selected textbooks and ancillaries become the foundation for in-class engagement. Educators can use built-in classroom engagement tools, including 14 interactive question types, to make learning active and more impactful.

    Make Learning Active Outside the Classroom: Wiley-authored teaching resources like question banks, slides and videos can be directly integrated within the textbook, to create a richer, more cohesive learning experience. 

    Enhance Teaching and Learning with Built-In AI Support:  Ace, Top Hat’s AI-powered assistant, expands the impact of Wiley content by generating tailored polling questions, discussion prompts and relatable examples, while students benefit from on-demand study help and unlimited practice questions tied to assigned readings.

    Support Student Success with Real-Time Data: With Top Hat, every interaction—from attendance, to readings and assessments—generates real-time insights, providing a holistic picture of student performance, and enabling timely interventions to help more learners succeed.“We are proud to partner with Wiley through a shared goal of supporting educators and students,” said Maggie Leen, CEO of Top Hat. “Together we’re redefining what’s possible with course materials and reimagining how courses can be delivered by making content more flexible, personalized, and accessible—taking another big step toward our vision to make learning personal for every student.”

    Top Hat and Wiley share a common belief that by sparking better teaching and learning, we open up opportunities for fulfilling careers, better lives and a brighter world. Through this partnership, both organizations address the evolving needs of higher education, ensuring educators and students benefit from innovative, flexible and personalized learning experiences. For more information, visit tophat.com/partnerships/wiley.

    About Top Hat

    Grounded in learning science and powered by AI, Top Hat is the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education. We enable educators to adopt evidence-based teaching practices through interactive content, tools, and activities across in-person, online, and hybrid classrooms. Top Hat also provides access to thousands of digital textbooks and OER resources, along with authoring tools that let instructors customize or create their own accessible, interactive course materials. More than 1,500 institutions and thousands of faculty use Top Hat to support the learning of over three million students each year. To learn more, please visit tophat.com.

    Source link

  • The United States as guardian or bully

    The United States as guardian or bully

    The recent United States military incursion into Venezuela and abduction and subsequent arrest of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in New York is a major geopolitical event. Like all major geopolitical events, it has several components — historical, legal, political and moral.

    And like all major geopolitical events, it has very different points of view. There is no grandiose “Truth” about what happened. There are many truths and points of view.

    What can be said is that on 3 January 2026, the United States military carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores. The two were then flown to the United States where they were arrested and charged with issues related to narcoterrorism.

    The United States’ intervention in a Latin American country has historical precedents as well as current foreign policy implications.

    Under President James Monroe, the United States declared in 1823 that it was opposed to any outside colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Now known as the Monroe Doctrine, it established what political scientists refer to as a “sphere of influence”; No foreign country could establish control of a country in the United States-dominated Western Hemisphere.

    (This was indeed one of the central issues in the 13-day October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States established a blockade outside Cuba to stop the installation of Soviet missiles on the island.)

    The Trump Corollary

    In the latest U.S. official security strategy document — National Security Strategy 2025 — the Monroe Doctrine was presented in what has been labelled “The Trump Corollary.” In it, the government said that defending territory and the Western Hemisphere were central tasks of U.S. foreign policy and national interest. The document clearly stated that activities by extra-hemispheric powers would be considered serious threats to U.S. security.

    As such, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine is the justification of the military action in Venezuela based on stopping Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela. In addition, it can be seen as the justification for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, resume control of the Panama Canal and stop narcotics and illegal migrants coming into the United States from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

    But the Corollary and Doctrine are mere national strategic statements. Are they legally justified? The U.S. military operation in Venezuela has been highly criticized by international lawyers as well as United Nations officials. The United Nations Charter, of which the United States is a signatory, clearly forbids the use of force by one country against another country except in the case of self-defense and imminent threat.

    In an interview with New Yorker magazine reporter Isaac Chotiner on 3 January, Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway noted that when the UN Charter was written 80 years ago, it included a critical prohibition on the use of force by states. “States are not allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other states,” she told Chotiner. “It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to.”

    Hathaway said that in the pre-UN Charter world, you could use force if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you and come up with legal justification that that was the case. “But the whole point of the UN Charter was basically to say, ‘We’re not going to go to war for those reasons anymore’,” she said.

    The legality of an ouster

    Besides the international legal issue, there is also a domestic legal question about the Venezuelan military action. The 1973 War Powers Act was enacted to limit the power of the U.S. president to use military forces with the approval of the Congress.

    It was enacted following the Vietnam War during which the president engaged troops without Congressional approval or a formal declaration of war. The Act clearly requires the president to notify Congress before committing armed forces to military action.

    Trump did not consult with members of Congress before and during the military action in Venezuela. The political implications of the Venezuelan strikes and abduction also have international as well as domestic implications. Internationally, there is a dangerous precedent being set.

    If the United States asserts its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, what is to stop the Russian Federation from claiming a similar sphere of influence in the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as Ukraine?

    Similarly, what about Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and especially Taiwan? If the United States claims domination in one geographic region, why can’t other powers like Russia and China do the same?

    The Westphalian system

    Within the United States, there have also been serious reservations about President Trump’s actions. That was to be expected from the opposing Democratic Party. But, several members of Trump’s Republican Party as well as loyal members of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement argue that Trump was elected on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” One of the pillars of that movement is a focus on internal problems instead of foreign interventions.

    Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used to be one of Trump’s staunchest supporters. On 3 January she told interviewer Kristen Walker on the NBC show “Meet the Press” that America First should mean what Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2024.

    “So my understanding of America First is strictly for the American people, not for the big donors that donate to big politicians, not for the special interests that constantly roam the halls in Washington and not foreign countries that demand their priorities put first over Americans,” Greene said.

    Other criticisms have centered on President Trump’s focus on restoring business in Venezuela for the U.S. oil industry, which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie warned that “lives of U.S. soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

    Finally, there are moral arguments against the use of force in Venezuela as well as Trump’s threats of the use of force in Colombia, Cuba and elsewhere. There is no question that Venezuelans had suffered under the rule of Maduro; statistics show the rapid decline in the economy as well as a significant democratic deficit.

    Fundamental to today’s notion of international order is what’s known as the Westphalian system of the integrity of state sovereignty. The world has seen an order since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations. That order was based on respect for the rule of law. There are other means for states to act against other states, such as sanctions, below military intervention. One country invading another goes against the basis of the Westphalian system.

    The Venezuelan strikes and abduction have set a dangerous precedent.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is meant by the “Monroe Doctrine”?

    2. When is one country considered part of a “sphere of influence” of another country?

    3. How do you define “national security”?

    Source link