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Can the government ban controversial public holiday displays?

Last year, the Satanic Temple of New Hampshire put up a Baphomet statue (a part-human, part-goat satanic deity) in front of the State House in Concord. People vandalized it and knocked off its head. Concord vowed to review its policies after its mayor described the statue as “deliberately provocative and disturbing.” That raised major constitutional concerns.

FIRE wrote to Concord, arguing that the government could not discriminate against disfavored displays. In a victory for free speech, Concord kept the statue and arrested the perpetrators. This year, despite questions from public officials, Baphomet is back up in front of the State House.

New Hampshire’s backing of the Satanic Temple’s right to display its religious symbol illustrates a core First Amendment principle: When the government invites private holiday displays, the First Amendment bars viewpoint discrimination.

What the Free Speech Clause requires

The threshold question: who is speaking?

When the government — such as a town council or a public school — puts up holiday displays, it’s subject to the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. When the government opens up a public place to private groups or individuals to display their own religious symbols, it is subject to the Free Speech Clause.

Understanding public forum doctrine

If the government allows private groups or individuals to display their own symbols, the question is then one of forum. Public forum doctrine is a First Amendment framework that determines the level of constitutional protection afforded to speech on government property. Some forum types allow for more restrictions, but viewpoint discrimination is always constitutionally forbidden.

The Supreme Court identifies three types of public forums: traditional, limited, and designated. Traditional public forums are those historically used for public assembly, such as streets and parks, where regulatory ability is most limited. In these spaces, restrictions based on the content (not just viewpoint) of speech are almost always unconstitutional.

Designated public forums arise when the government intentionally opens public properties for expression. Once the government opens up a designated public forum, the same rules that apply to traditional public forums apply as long as the government keeps the forum open.

Finally, limited public forums are places the government opens for expression by limited groups or specific topics. The government can be slightly more restrictive here, with the ability to impose restrictions that are viewpoint neutral and reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum. For example, a city council might establish a public comment period at its meetings but require that comments be related to city business.

No matter which type of forum exists, viewpoint discrimination is prohibited

Courts have reached different conclusions on whether government properties (other than parks, sidewalks, or other traditional forums) opened up for holiday displays constitute limited or designated public forums depending on the circumstances. Regardless, even when the government can set subject matter limits, it can’t discriminate by viewpoint within those categories. The Supreme Court has long barred censorship merely “because public officials oppose the speaker’s view.” Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Educators’ Association (1983).

Last year in Gallatin, Tennessee, a library allowed 20 different organizations to decorate Christmas trees to display on its premises. The mayor directed the library to remove one of the trees with a gay pride message, citing a policy against “political” decorations. That type of policy is constitutionally suspect in a limited public forum like the library tree exhibition and the tree should not have been removed.

Just as constitutionally suspect are government attempts to limit religious displays in public forums for fear of endorsing religion. In Shurtleff v. Boston (2022), Boston allowed different groups to fly flags of their choice over Boston’s city hall. Some included foreign countries’ flags or the pride flag. When the city denied a request to fly a “Christian flag,” the Supreme Court treated that as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Put simply, religion is a viewpoint too. Boston could not approve a pride flag and deny a Christian one.

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Attempts to classify certain messages as offensive, disturbing, or otherwise not in the holiday spirit count as viewpoint discrimination. In other words, under the First Amendment, if the government allows people to publicly celebrate Christmas, it cannot dictate how they do so just because officials dislike a particular perspective.

Common neutral rules

That begs the question: what can the government do once it opens up a forum for holiday displays?

Usually OK — time, place, and manner rules

The government can usually impose what are known as “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech in public forums. In the holiday display context, this could mean limiting the size, height, and distance between displays — all without regard to the display’s content. In other words, cities can reasonably regulate logistics as long as they don’t police viewpoints.

Red flags — often viewpoint discrimination in disguise

Some rules masquerade as viewpoint neutral time, place, and manner restrictions, but are actually viewpoint discriminatory. Look no further than the New Hampshire Baphomet statue, where the mayor argued that the display was too provocative. On the surface, it might seem that the mayor advocated for a neutral “provocation” principle where any display that causes a reaction could be taken down. But that’s not a neutral principle at all — it means enabling a heckler’s veto over unpopular speech. Restricting speech because members of the public, rather than government officials, dislike its viewpoint is still viewpoint discrimination.

Perhaps the most common problem with holiday display policies are rules that feign neutrality by requiring “good taste” or “respect.” But what’s respectful to one religious group might be offensive to another. These rules invite subjective message policing by the government, which does not and should not have a dog in the fight when it comes to the tone of expression.

The bottom line

In the end, the government can choose whether to open up non-traditional public forums for public holiday displays or not. If it doesn’t, there is no free-floating constitutional right to put up a Satanic display or a Christmas tree as one pleases. For example, the government has not opened up court rooms for holiday displays, so one could not just walk up to the bench and place a giant menorah on it. But when the government solicits holiday decorations, it can’t discriminate between a menorah, a Christmas tree, or even a Satanic statue.

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December 18, 2025
Public Trust Requires Both Reform and Defense

To the editor:

We are grateful to Inside Higher Ed editor in chief Sara Custer in her recent column “Higher Ed Faces Competing Visions for Its Future” (Dec. 18, 2025) for mentioning Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education, the initiative we co-direct at the American Association of Colleges and Universities. We write to expand upon Custer’s review of the emerging responses to the trust problem and to clarify what our initiative is advocating and doing to invigorate public trust.

Higher ed cannot restore public trust in colleges and universities unless the sector reckons in a clear-eyed fashion with the causes of the current crisis. Simply put, the fundamental problem is that when the sector or its individual institutions draw public criticism, we are unable either to make quick changes in response, to explain compellingly why we should not do so, or to redirect public attention effectively toward the overall value and purpose of our work. Under increased scrutiny from the public and government alike, that paralysis is a recipe for a disastrous decline in public trust.

Solving this crisis will require a multipronged approach that balances internal reform—although not along the lines of the administration’s ill-fated Compact—with better communication and collective defense strategies. Higher education must become better and nimbler at making changes that already have wide support but are held back by parochial interests; better at relentlessly prioritizing engagement with local communities; and better at offering a meaningful welcome to all students, including those with conservative views and others who feel alienated from our institutions. We also need to be better at mounting a vigorous and coordinated sectorwide defense when we are in the right, and at communicating our value and purpose clearly and effectively so that the public can put things into context when we inevitably make mistakes.

Our view is that internal reform, improved communication, and better defense are inseparable parts of a whole; higher education will not regain public trust, or reestablish productive partnerships with the government and our communities, unless we pursue all three goals simultaneously. Our vision is of a sector that is agile, responsive, invitational, humble and trusted to generate new knowledge and transform students’ lives. If colleges and universities act smartly and collectively, we believe that vision is within reach.

We look forward to sharing more specifics about our approach with Inside Higher Ed’s readers over the coming months.

Jeremy C. Young is Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, and Kathryn Enke is Vice President for Leadership and Strategy, at the American Association of Colleges and Universities

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December 18, 2025
DOJ plan to target ‘domestic terrorists’ risks chilling speech

Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly sent a memo two weeks ago indicating how the federal government intends to target “domestic terrorist organizations.” That memo outlines how the Justice Department plans to implement President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7.

To explain what’s wrong with Bondi’s memo, we need to bounce back and forth between it and NSPM-7. Think of it this way: NSPM-7 is an idea, and Bondi’s memo is a checklist in furtherance of that idea. At the same time, the memo isn’t quite a blueprint, because it still omits key details about what the Justice Department intends to do. But what it does include is alarming.

NSPM-7 was issued in late September and announced a federal government effort to identify “domestic terror organizations.” It also listed specific ideologies, like “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” as “common threads” motivating political threats and violence.

In the memo, the attorney general ordered all federal law enforcement agencies to “review their files and holdings for Antifa and Antifa-related intelligence and information” and turn it over to the FBI within 14 days. The FBI is directed to then report to the deputy attorney general which groups (if any) are engaged in acts that “may constitute domestic terrorism.”

Bondi’s memo also includes two new elements in this process: promoting the FBI’s terrorism tip line, and establishing a cash reward system for reports that lead to the identification and arrest of the leaders of domestic terrorism organizations.

A few problems jump out at me.

The Bondi memo, like NSPM-7, blurs the line between investigating crimes and ideologies

Like NSPM-7 before it, Bondi’s memo states that recent political attacks share common motivating ideologies, saying that groups are using terrorism to advance agendas like “radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.” As I said in September, the government has inappropriately targeted groups by ideology in the recent past:

During the Obama administration, the IRS targeted nonprofit groups with the words “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names, identifying groups by ideology and punishing them by subjecting them to extra processes. And its explanation was that this was just a “shortcut” — other organizations with similar profiles had violated IRS rules, so they jumped to targeting groups that used similar words.

In 2023, the FBI distributed an internal memo linking “ethnically motivated violent extremists” to traditional Catholic ideology, a call for viewpoint-based targeting that was only exposed by a whistleblower and oversight from Congress. In 2022, an internal FBI memo linked the Gadsden flag and other patriotic symbols to violent extremism. And while such links do exist, and it makes sense for law enforcement to identify them, it also risks sweeping up ordinary Americans.

These tactics create the risk that any member of any political movement could find themselves added to a government list and subjected to special scrutiny if others with the same ideology commit an ideologically motivated crime. But it’s not a crime (terrorism or otherwise) to hold “radical” beliefs about “gender ideology” or to take positions on core American values that contradict the government’s view.

This happened before during the McCarthy era. Communist rhetoric resonated with some 1950s Americans who wanted working people to have decent wages, but that did not mean most American socialists were Soviet spies or conspired to overthrow the government. Nonetheless, accusations of vast criminality were used to justify sprawling government investigations into groups that espoused socialist views.

You can’t vindicate American values against anti-American ideologies with un-American practices like warmed-over McCarthyism.

I want to be clear that saying ideology should not be the starting point of an investigation is not at all to diminish the very real, ideologically-motivated threats faced by government employees, politicians, and political actors. The memos mention Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the October shooting at a Dallas ICE facility among other incidents; they could just as easily include the assassination of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, or the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise. There are people who want to hurt or kill public officials and public figures for doing their jobs, and those people will often offer ideological reasons for doing that.

However, that some terrorists have an ideology does not make everyone with the same ideology a terrorist.

And that is the core problem with this whole endeavor. People who conspire to engage in actual criminal behavior should be investigated, arrested, and prosecuted. But these memos aren’t narrowly focused on groups that exist for the purpose of ideologically motivated violence, which act to bring about violence; they broadly condemn particular viewpoints and lay a foundation for a government watchlist of American groups which share those viewpoints. And where does that get us? You can’t vindicate American values against anti-American ideologies with un-American practices like warmed-over McCarthyism.

‘Domestic terrorist organization’ designation is still a matter of AG whims

While the phrase “domestic terrorist organization” sounds very official, it doesn’t have a statutory definition or accompanying due process protections, unlike its nominative counterpart, the foreign terrorist organization. NSPM-7 delegated to the attorney general the ability to recommend which groups should be so designated, but not whether they will be.

Bondi’s memo directs federal law enforcement to provide information to the AG’s office that would presumably guide those initial recommendations, but offers no further information on duration or appeals. It doesn’t even suggest that a group so designated would be given notice of that designation.

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NSPM-7 essentially argues a domestic terrorist organization is an organization with members who commit acts meeting the statutory definition of domestic terrorism. That definition includes unlawful “acts dangerous to human life” that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” It includes no requirement that the organization itself have unlawful aims or that the members’ actions are in furtherance of them.

By asking the FBI to compile “a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” as defined by statute, Bondi’s memo at first seems to be more narrowly focused. But that limitation remains an exercise of discretion, and could change as directed by the president or a successor. And it’s not even entirely clear that the list provided by the FBI is the exclusive source in Bondi’s decision-making process, or what that process looks like after she received the list.

One reason to question how much this definition is cabined in practice is that the administration has designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. But Antifa is mostly an ideology, not a defined organization, as such. There might well be domestic terrorist organizations that hold Antifa-aligned tenets, but a philosophy is not an organization, even if some organizations refer to it in their names. Designating Antifa as a terrorist organization is a little like planning to meet someone at a restaurant and you pick the restaurant “hamburger.”

Doxing isn’t ‘domestic terrorism’

The Bondi memo also repeats, and expands on, NSPM-7’s decision to treat doxing (publishing information online that makes specific people identifiable) as a crime that counts as “domestic terrorism.” But as I said in September, it often isn’t:

Doxing is protected speech unless it violates some other existing law. After all, doxing describes much of the basic activity of news media, where otherwise unknown information is found and published, and frequently, that information is personally identifiable. That’s especially true when the “doxing” the government is upset about is information related to public employees in the course of their duties, such as the location of ICE agents.

Bondi does not agree. After someone developed ICEBlock, an app for users to share the locations of ICE activity, Bondi said in an interview: “We are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that’s not protected speech.”

Note that ICEBlock is, in fact, protected speech. The ability to share facts about public employees in the execution of their duties in public spaces is not a gray area under the First Amendment; it’s protected speech.

The theory under which Bondi seems to be operating is that if people know where ICE activity is happening, they will use that information either to engage in violence against agents or to evade lawful court orders. In July, congressional republicans sent Bondi a letter stating: “Sharing real-time locations of ICE officers paints targets on their backs, increasing the likelihood that they face immediate resistance.”

ICEBlock was removed from the Apple store in October (as were similar apps and groups on other platforms), with Apple saying it took that decision “based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock.” Earlier this week, ICEBlock’s developer sued the Trump administration, arguing that pressure from the government led to the app’s removal.

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ICE agents have indeed faced violence, including a July shooting at a facility in Alvarado, Texas and a September sniper attack in Dallas that left two detainees and the gunman dead. So far, however, there is no evidence these actions were related to ICEBlock or any other ICE-tracking app or website. And there are lots of legitimate reasons people might want to know the location of ICE activity that don’t involve violence or frustrating the enforcement of laws — like avoiding traffic delays or not wanting to be caught in the middle of a mass arrest that doesn’t involve them. An app that shows the location of ICE raids no more aids terrorism against ICE agents than a street map showing a residential area aids home invasions.

References to doxing as “acts of domestic terrorism” in the Bondi memo could be the administration doubling down on its condemnation of ICEBlock and similar apps, hoping to at least chill their use by implication, if not outright threaten to prosecute them for aiding domestic terrorism. Treating doxing (which is protected speech) as domestic terrorism opens the door to government investigations of people who oppose ICE with truthful, public information.

Anonymous tip line exacerbates potential for abuse

The president and AG have identified a number of ideologies shared by domestic terrorists, argued these shared ideologies indicate group sponsorship, and want to encourage people to make more reports (anonymous or otherwise) about the topic. The FBI already has a tip line, and it accepts anonymous reports. Bondi’s memo just directs that the FBI consider how to better promote it for this specific purpose.

But what is the specific purpose that the administration intends to promote? Both NSPM-7 and the Bondi memo seem to target both crime (which they should) and beliefs (which they should not). Blurring the line between the two could make this a hotline for reporting wrongthink. We have seen the effect of anonymous reporting hotlines for ideological wrongthink in the context of campus Bias Response Teams:

They frequently record accusations without providing a method of contesting their reports or even identifying the accusing party. Vague accusations of racism rooted in innocuous behavior is an exceptionally common feature of cancellation attempts. In promising to punish (potentially with police help) accusations of racism while obscuring the identity and motives of the accuser, BRTs are perfect engines for ideological abuse.

Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, and Stephen Miller have all recently called for punishing non-criminal behavior through either state power or cancel culture. An FBI hotline collecting reports of non-criminal activity (like doxing) would be a troubling escalation — one that should trouble even those who agree with the spirit of Bondi’s memo. That’s because the power the hotline grants would exist for the next administration, too, which might not see the world in quite the same way.

All of this creates a real chilling effect

As I wrote in September, “when the president uses his pen to take aim at anything, it will cause a chilling effect.” The attorney general’s pen is no less frosty as it conveys the message of likely or possible criminal prosecution.

In a footnote, Bondi’s memo says that “no investigation may be opened based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment” or other civil rights. But it also identifies protected speech — doxing — as a criminal act of terrorism. What other non-criminal activities might yield investigations? Presumably things related to the viewpoints listed in NSPM-7 and reiterated again in the Bondi memo. In turn, Americans will act rationally — and become less likely to say what they really think.

We might know more in 30 days, when the FBI reports to the deputy AG the results of its review of groups. Check back then for more.

(H/t to Ken Klippenstein for actually publishing the memo)

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December 18, 2025
InsightsEDU 2026: The Higher Ed Conference Built to Disrupt the Status Quo

The 2026 lan d scape makes one thing clear: institutions that rely on incremental change will not make it in this new era of higher ed.

Student expectations are shifting, competition is intensifying and AI is reshaping how people search, compare and choose. The Modern Learner is moving faster than most institutions—clear on what they want and decisive about where they spend time and money.

In this reality, doing a little more of what you’ve always done isn’t neutral. It’s a liability.

At EducationDynamics, we think differently. We believe in the transformative power of education, and we believe higher ed can rise above the noise to better serve the Modern Learner.

That belief drives InsightsEDU. InsightsEDU 2026 gathers the leaders ready to reinvent—those willing to transform their programs, positioning and culture for the era ahead. From February 17–19 in Fort Lauderdale, presidents, marketers, enrollment leaders and more will come together not to trade small tweaks, but to rethink how their institutions serve learners, tell their stories and grow.

Why InsightsEDU Exists

We believe your institution’s why is its strongest enrollment tool. Yet on most campuses, brand, strategy and culture are owned by different teams and rarely viewed as one story—InsightsEDU is designed to collapse those silos and give leaders a holistic view of the learner journey from first impression to long-term outcomes.

Modern Learners don’t see your brand and enrollment funnel as separate. They experience one journey: a promise made in your brand, a reality in your programs and support and a decision shaped by how clearly you communicate value. When those pieces align, you build reputation and revenue. When they don’t, both erode.

InsightsEDU 2026 exists to close that gap. It’s the live expression of how we believe higher ed must operate now—designing around the Modern Learner, treating reputation and revenue as one integrated strategy, and running enrollment as a unified system that connects an institution’s entire ecosystem.

This isn’t another conference. It’s a launchpad for institutional reinvention.

The Future Unbound: Your Institution’s Growth Mandate

This year’s theme, The Future Unbound, is a mandate to stop waiting and start unbinding.

At InsightsEDU, that means letting go of the assumption that yesterday’s playbook will carry you through tomorrow. It means challenging structures and habits that separate brand, enrollment and student success even though students experience them as one continuum. It means pressure-testing who you serve, how they find you and whether your story still matches reality.

This conference is devoted to that mission: transformation in the face of uncertainty. Every session is intentionally crafted to equip leaders to navigate this environment and reinforce higher education’s value proposition.

What Makes InsightsEDU Different

You’ve been to enough events where you swap business cards, collect slide decks and go home unchanged. Explore how InsightsEDU 2026 is different by design.

A Keynote That Resets Your Why

At the center of InsightsEDU 2026 is a keynote from visionary Matt Dunsmoor from Simon Sinek’s The Optimism Company. He’s not here to offer feel-good inspiration you forget by next week. He’s here to confront a hard truth: when strategy and culture are disconnected, your why collapses—and your enrollment strategy with it.

The keynote will help you sharpen your institution’s why in ways that resonate with Modern Learners, expose where culture undercuts the story you tell and push you to reconnect purpose, people and plans so reputation and revenue move together.

An Exclusive First Look at the 2026 Modern Learner Report

If putting the Modern Learner first is non-negotiable, InsightsEDU is where you need to be.

Attendees receive an exclusive first look at EducationDynamics’ 2026 Modern Learner report, presented by EducationDynamics’ President of Enrollment Management, Greg Clayton, and Senior Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence, Katie Tomlinson. You’ll see what today’s students value in higher education and how that shapes their decisions; how brand and reputation influence their search; and how to engage Modern Learners where they are with messages that land.

The report shares insights from our survey of Modern Learners and lays out a framework for a strategic approach built on stronger reputation and smarter engagement.

InsightsEDU 2026 is grounded in this data—real students, real behavior and real tradeoffs. Throughout the conference, you’ll use these insights to test your messaging, rethink programs and refine your enrollment strategy so it reflects how students actually behave in today’s landscape, not how they used to.

A Clear Directive on What Actually Moves the Needle

Many conferences leave you energized but unfocused. InsightsEDU is built to narrow your focus to what truly moves the needle. Most conferences still split your reality into tracks—leadership talking mission in one room, marketing talking campaigns in another; enrollment trading tactics down the hall. InsightsEDU starts from a different assumption: in 2026, those divides are the problem.

The agenda is built around the idea that every function ultimately feeds your brand. By bringing everyone into the same general sessions and then into focus-specific tracks, InsightsEDU gives leaders a shared picture of the full enrollment ecosystem and a practical toolkit to decide which levers will actually change the trajectory of their institution.

Real Tactics from Real Higher Ed Leaders & Industry Pros

Reinvention doesn’t happen in theory. It happens when real people in real roles make different choices.

At InsightsEDU 2026, you’ll hear from higher ed leaders across enrollment, marketing, admissions and online education who are already reshaping how their institutions compete and serve learners. They’ll share strategies they’re testing, changes they’ve made and what they’d do differently next time.

You will also hear from platform insiders bringing expertise from the digital front lines of Google, Reddit, Snapchat, Meta and LinkedIn—the very places where Modern Learners search, scroll and decide what to do next. These leaders will unpack the trends and behavioral shifts they observe in the market, offering a tactical look at how these ecosystems are evolving and what that means for your institution’s strategy.

The result: a conference that doesn’t just tell you what to change but prepares you for the leadership required to make change stick.

Who InsightsEDU Is For?

In short, you.

You’re shaping the future of your institution. That’s why you belong at InsightsEDU 2026.

This conference is for leaders who feel the urgency of this moment and are ready to act—presidents and cabinet members responsible for both mission and margin; CMOs and marketing executives tired of disconnected campaigns that don’t translate into enrollment; enrollment leaders who live every day with the pressure of pipelines, outcomes and student success; and online, adult and continuing ed leaders who already live in the Modern Learner reality and want their institutions aligned to that same pace and expectation.

If you’re looking for another safe year of marginal change, you don’t need this conference. If you’re aiming for sustainable growth, stronger reputation and genuine student success, this is the room you need to be in.

What You’ll Take Back to Campus

When you leave Fort Lauderdale, you won’t just be inspired—you’ll know what to do next.

Expect to go home with:

A Modern Learner–informed strategy for 2026 and beyond
Concrete shifts in programs, positioning and experience based on fresh data about what students value, how they search and what drives trust.

A Unified Enrollment Framewrok
A practical model for breaking down silos and aligning marketing, enrollment and student success into one system that drives reputation and revenue.

A Playbook You Can Actually Use
Top priorities you’ll pursue immediately supported by metrics that create alignment across leadership, marketing and enrollment teams.

A Network You Can Activate
Connections with peers and industry partners you can tap long after the conference—people who will share results, compare notes and help you keep pushing your strategy forward.

The Conference for Transformation

You don’t need another conference that leaves your strategy unchanged.

InsightsEDU 2026 is built for leaders who are ready to confront what’s not working, commit to the Modern Learner and move their institutions from incremental adjustment to true reinvention.

If you’re ready to move beyond tweaks and start the work of institutional reinvention, join us in Fort Lauderdale for The Future Unbound.

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December 18, 2025
Managing Technology Infrastructure to Anticipate the Future

Hundreds of things that can go wrong with technology. Here’s our recipe for keeping your educational solution stable, secure, and scalable.

Your edtech product roadmap depends on infrastructure that just works. But when was the last time you thought about what ‘just works’ actually requires? It means orchestrating a complex symphony of services, security measures, and continuous monitoring and analysis. Here’s what really goes into keeping these mission-critical systems running smoothly.

The Infrastructure Pie

Modern cloud infrastructure provides managed database services, scalable storage, server-less computing capabilities, secure API gateways, and content delivery networks that ensure fast load times everywhere.

What does it take to maintain the myriad of moving parts that constitute edtech infrastructure? We recently analyzed where our infrastructure and engineering teams invest time across a typical year. The results reveal just how multifaceted this work really is:

Feature Management (36% of effort): Building new capabilities, enhancing existing features, addressing accessibility, and planning feature definitions represents nearly a third of our work. This isn’t just about adding functionality—it’s about architecting solutions that scale, perform, and integrate securely with the broader system. When edtech infrastructure is architected thoughtfully from the start, features ship faster because they’re built on solid foundations rather than working around technical debt.

Maintenance and Operations (20% of effort): This category happens behind the scenes—bug fixes, scaling and performance optimization, refactoring code for maintainability, testing and quality assurance, and managing the dependency upgrades, DevOps processes, and required migrations that keep systems current and secure. This effort is what prevents the 2:00 am emergency calls that derail your release schedule. It’s what keeps your product stable during peak back-to-school season. Consistent maintenance means predictable performance.

Security, Monitoring, and Support (21% of effort): Security and compliance work combines with systems monitoring, penetration testing and vulnerability scans, incident research and analysis, and client support to ensure systems remain secure and responsive. This is what protects your company’s revenue and reputation. A single data breach can sink an edtech company—just ask any VP who’s had to notify districts that student data was compromised. This investment keeps you compliant with evolving regulations, maintains customer trust, and ensures your sales team never has to answer uncomfortable security questions they can’t address confidently.

Strategic Investments (23% of effort): Stability and scalability investments as well as sunsetting obsolete features represent the forward-thinking work that prevents problems before they occur. This is your insurance policy against the “success disasters” that plague growing edtech companies. When that large district or statewide deal gets signed, and suddenly you have 50,000 users hitting your system simultaneously, this investment is why your platform doesn’t buckle. It’s also what allows you to confidently enter RFPs that require specific performance guarantees.

Security and Privacy: Non-Negotiable Priorities

In K-12 education, we’re not just managing technology—we’re safeguarding sensitive student data. This responsibility shapes every aspect of our approach.

Processes First: Cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and encryption. It’s about building robust processes that become second nature—regular security audits, patch management protocols, access control reviews, and incident response plans. Every system update, every configuration change, and every new integration goes through our internal security review process.

Data Privacy by Design: Educational applications must comply with dozens of federal and increasingly complex state-level privacy laws. We help clients navigate and comply with Data Privacy Agreements required by their customers, translating legal requirements into technical controls and operational procedures. This isn’t a one-time checkbox—it’s an ongoing partnership that evolves as regulations change. For example, in our work with Family Engagement Lab, we spent a sprint implementing robust logging of security events such as user logins and admin masquerade to comply with one large customer’s requirements.

Automation, Monitoring, and the Pursuit of Performance

Manual infrastructure management doesn’t scale, and it introduces risk. That’s why automation is woven throughout our operations—from configuration management that ensures deployments are identical and repeatable to automated backup processes that provide reliable recovery points. Our DevOps practices enable us to deploy updates safely and efficiently.

But automation is only part of the equation. Continuous monitoring provides the situational awareness needed to maintain healthy systems. We track performance metrics, server health, application errors, and security events in real time. We measure infrastructure and application performance telemetry, and network traffic to alert us when something deviates from expected norms. This allows us to respond quickly, before issues affect the user experience.

Meeting performance standards isn’t aspirational; it’s operational. We methodically evaluate and choose the right tool for the job. For one database-intensive application, we deployed an auto-scaling database to handle traffic ebbs and flows. But we didn’t stop there—we implemented an automated database bump to warm it up for the US school day. Then, at the end of the day when traffic is lower, we saved the client money by scaling it down. The effort we invest in scaling and performance optimization ensures applications remain responsive as usage grows and evolves.

The Work You Don’t See

The best edtech infrastructure is invisible—systems that work so reliably that users don’t think about them at all. That invisibility, however, requires visible expertise, constant vigilance, and a commitment to getting hundreds of small things right every single day.

Behind every smooth user experience, every fast page load, and every secure transaction are many distinct areas of effort our team manages continuously. Some, like feature development, are obvious. Others, like system monitoring or scaling, work precisely because they’re invisible to end users.

But here’s what makes this work truly strategic: every one of these efforts isn’t just about maintaining today’s systems—it’s about building infrastructure that’s ready for tomorrow’s challenges. When we invest in refactoring code, we’re creating a foundation that can adapt to new requirements. When we perform vulnerability assessments and install security patches, we’re taking proactive steps to protect client data. When we document our systems and automate our processes, we’re ensuring knowledge doesn’t become a bottleneck as teams and technologies evolve.

The educational technology landscape never stands still. New compliance requirements emerge, usage patterns shift, pedagogical approaches evolve, and technology capabilities expand. Infrastructure that merely maintains the status quo becomes a liability. Infrastructure that anticipates change becomes a competitive advantage.

Ready to talk about edtech infrastructure that adapts and anticipates your needs? Let’s discuss how your product roadmap could benefit from partnership with our team. We handle today’s complexity while building tomorrow’s capability, allowing your customers to focus on what matters most: helping students learn and grow.

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December 18, 2025
2025 Holiday Book List, Plus New WonkyFolk, and Virginia – Eduwonk

In Eduwonk today, new WonkyFolk, some VA news, 2025 holiday books. This is probably the last post of the year. There was some noise about a possible big announcement from the administration before Christmas but sounds less likely. So thank you for reading, see you in early January.

Jed and I did a holiday –themed WonkyFolk, but he’s a grinch. Seriously. He showed up with an Elf on the Shelf. We covered a lot of ground, 2025 reactions, tech and cell phones, Rod Paige, and why education conversations are so stunted.

You can listen or read here, and see the notes, or wherever you get podcasts.

Or watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

New Dominion?

On Tuesday Virginia’s non-partisan legislative analysis body, JLARC, released its look at the new school accountability system. Important to policymaking in VA. Not going to belabor that here, it’s the holidays. But, some quick reax here and here.

Holiday books.

Which brings us to….it’s that time of year again. Here are some books I read in 2024 that stuck with me — useful, provocative, or just enjoyable. No themes except worth your time and good for a gift. Not too late to shop for Christmas. Past years here for more ideas.

First, on education:

The Future of Tutoring — Liz Cohen

Cohen takes what was, at least until Trump stormed back on the scene and AI exploded, the biggest intervention/fad/issue in education and actually explains what works, what doesn’t, and why. If you want to cut through the hype, the vendor fog, and evolving definitions of what “high-dosage” means, then this book is the best tutor around. Sorry. Liz is a policy person, but the book feels like a school book.

No Adult Left Behind — Vlad Kogan

Kogan is one of the sharpest analysts of how schools really operate in terms of education politics (spoiler, adult interests often trump what might help kids as you might have inferred from the title). He’s an academic but he writes in English. And with a clarity you don’t often see in the space. Probably the most straight ahead book on education politics since Joe Williams. (Deep cut). Kogan breaks down the incentives that shape school governance, politics, and decision-making.

Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives — Timothy Shanahan

Reading is power. There is a reason that throughout history when someone wanted to control others they went after literacy. Down the street from where I live is the grave of a guy who was hunted by Confederates for years, and ultimately murdered, for teaching Black Americans to read up to and during the Civil War. It’s a sober reminder of why this matters. But as is our way in this sector, we’ve created Republican and Democratic ways to teach reading. We’ve ignored decades of research. We even argue sometimes about how important it is. As a result, we’ve sentenced millions of Americans to diminished lives. The Science of Reading is the latest, encouraging, effort to get that right. Shanahan lays out why the complaints about reading, and what kids are reading in schools are not a side show but must be a central education issue.

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More general books:

The Barn — Wright Thompson

Did you like Pappyland? This is not Pappyland. It’s a deep dive on the murder of Emmett Till from the same writer. The Barn includes a lot of new information and specifics that even if you’re familiar with this atrocity beyond the broad contours will probably be new to you. We wasted a lot of time and energy on flaky DEI books over the past decade, read a book like this instead.

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs — Ian Leslie

My wife and I decided to see Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney in the same calendar year this year. We succeeded. I’m not an obsessive Beatles fan, but their genius and influence is undeniable. Leslie looks at Lennon and McCartney not as icons but as human beings in relationship with each other. It’s hard to think of a new angle on the Beatles, but he finds one: The songs they wrote to each other, that’s the conversation. So read this one for two reasons. First, it’s lovely. You might even find the room getting dusty at points. Second, anyone who has worked in close professional partnerships will learn from and reflect on the tale. A bonus? You learn the intimate history of some of the greatest songs in the songbook.

The Uncool — Cameron Crowe

I think two of the best books on 80s youth culture were Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times and Patricia Hersch’s A Tribe Apart. Here, Crowe tells his life story. Is this an unsparing take on things. Of course not, that was never Crowe’s thing. He partied with the bands. He wasn’t merciless. But it’s brain candy, a fun-well written read, with great stories, and some insights. This is for the music or movie lover in your life.

American Vikings — Martyn Whitlock

OK, for a guy who says I’m not a Viking guy I do recommend Viking books from time to time. A few years ago it was the fantastic The Long Ships. And I will say that seeing actual Viking ruins in Iceland fascinated me. This year for the beach I read American Vikings, a look at the evidence of Viking exploration in North America and how they show up today. The history of Vikings in North America turns out to be more interesting — and more contested and more present — than you might think on first glance.

Why Nothing Works — Marc Dunkelman

The past few weeks have seen an upsurge in Dunkelman discourse. It’s an important book and argument. I suggested this book along with two others earlier this year as valuable markers of where we are and how we got here. Whether you agree in whole, part, or not at all, this is an important book and contribution to the discourse about how we go forward.

That Book Is Dangerous — Adam Szetela

Book banning is one of those issues that most people aren’t really against. They’re against banning of stuff they like, less concerned with stuff they don’t. Today’s conservatives are for free speech except around issues of race, gender, and so forth. Today’s left is against book banning and censorship except around some issues of gender, race, and so forth. Because it’s about power not first principles. Szetela looks at this in the context of publishing. It’s an echo of Diane Ravitch’s 2003 Language Police.

The Genius Myth — Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis is a fantastic writer on almost any topic. Here she looks at “genius” through a historical ens (you get a Beatles cameo here, too). What really makes what we think of as genius possible? And why can’t we accept what Lewis calls its, “random, unpredictable nature?”

I Wish Someone Had Told Me… — Dana Perino.

I’m not a huge fan of self-help books, though I did recommend Mark Manson’s Subtle Art a few years ago. This one, though, might be good for a young person in your life. It’s pretty straightforward, you could read it on an airplane. It’s a lot of people’s take on how to be successful in work and life around some key issues as well as her experience. Given the randomness of social capital it’s not a bad primer for young people moving into professional life.

The 5 Types of Wealth — Sahil Bloom

OK, maybe I do read more self-help books than I think? This book isn’t about how money won’t make you happy – it’s about how it’s not the only thing that will and it’s not enough. Another quick read, and another good one for young people.

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December 18, 2025
NCAA Football Is Dirty… And It Always Has Been

For more than a century, college football has wrapped itself in pageantry, school colors, marching bands, and the language of amateur virtue. It has sold itself as character-building, educational, and fundamentally different from professional sports. Yet from its earliest days to the present NIL era, NCAA football has been marked by exploitation, corruption, racial inequality, physical harm, and institutional hypocrisy. The truth is not that college football has recently become “dirty.” It has always been this way.

College football emerged in the late 19th century as a violent, chaotic game played almost exclusively by elite white men at private Northeastern universities. By the 1890s, dozens of players were dying each season from on-field injuries. In 1905 alone, at least 18 young men were killed. The brutality became so extreme that President Theodore Roosevelt summoned university leaders to the White House, demanding reforms to save the sport—or shut it down entirely. The NCAA’s predecessor organization was born not to protect players, but to protect football itself.

From the beginning, control and image management mattered more than athlete welfare.

As the sport spread nationally in the early 20th century, universities discovered football’s power as a marketing and fundraising engine. Gate receipts financed campuses, built stadiums, and elevated institutional prestige. With that money came cheating. Schools openly paid players under the table, provided fake jobs, and created academic loopholes to keep athletes eligible. The NCAA responded not by ending exploitation, but by codifying “amateurism”—a concept designed to deny players compensation while preserving institutional profit.

That amateur ideal was always selective. Coaches became highly paid public figures, administrators gained power and prestige, and universities used football to attract donors and students. Players, meanwhile, were expected to risk their bodies for scholarships that could be revoked, often steered into academic programs that prioritized eligibility over education. The system worked exactly as intended.

Race made the exploitation even starker. For much of the 20th century, Black athletes were excluded outright or limited by quotas, especially in the South. When integration finally occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, it did not bring equity. Black players disproportionately filled the most physically punishing positions, generated enormous revenue, and remained shut out of coaching, administrative leadership, and long-term financial benefit. The plantation metaphor—uncomfortable as it is—has endured because it fits.

Throughout the postwar era, scandals became routine. Academic fraud at powerhouse programs. Boosters laundering payments. Universities covering up recruiting violations while publicly moralizing about rules and integrity. The NCAA positioned itself as a regulator, but enforcement was inconsistent and often political. Blue-blood programs negotiated slaps on the wrist while smaller schools were hammered to make examples. Justice was never blind; it was strategic.

Meanwhile, the physical toll on players worsened. As athletes grew larger, faster, and stronger, the sport became more dangerous. Concussions were downplayed for decades. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was ignored until it could no longer be denied. Players suffering brain injuries were dismissed as weak, while universities and conferences cashed ever-larger media checks. The NCAA claimed ignorance, even as evidence mounted and lawsuits piled up.

The television era transformed college football into a billion-dollar entertainment industry. Conference realignment chased broadcast revenue, not regional tradition or student well-being. Athletes were asked to travel cross-country on school nights, miss classes, and perform under relentless pressure—all while being told they were “students first.” The hypocrisy became harder to conceal.

By the early 21st century, the contradictions finally cracked. Legal challenges exposed the NCAA’s amateurism rules as a restraint of trade. Courts acknowledged what players had long known: universities were profiting massively from their labor while denying them basic economic rights. Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) was not a revolution—it was an overdue concession.

Yet even in the NIL era, the dirt remains. The system still lacks transparency. Booster-driven collectives operate in legal gray zones. Players are encouraged to chase short-term deals without long-term protections. There is no guaranteed healthcare beyond enrollment, no pension, no real collective bargaining for most athletes. Coaches can leave at will; players are scrutinized, transferred, or discarded.

The NCAA insists it is reforming. Conferences promise stability. Universities speak the language of athlete empowerment. But the underlying structure remains unchanged: unpaid or under-protected labor generating extraordinary wealth for institutions that claim educational mission while operating like entertainment corporations.

College football’s defenders often say, “It’s always been this way,” as if that excuses the harm. In reality, that phrase is an indictment. From the deadly fields of the 1900s to the concussion-ridden stadiums of today, from Jim Crow exclusion to modern NIL chaos, the sport has been built on control, denial, and profit.

The problem with NCAA football is not that it lost its way. It never had one.

What is new is not the dirt—but the visibility. Players now speak openly. Courts intervene. Fans question the myths. The mask is slipping, and the century-old fiction of purity is harder to maintain. Whether that leads to real change—or merely a cleaner narrative over the same exploitative core—remains to be seen.

But history is clear. College football did not fall from grace.

It was born compromised.

Sources

– National Collegiate Athletic Association, History of the NCAA

– Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle

– Taylor Branch, “The Shame of College Sports,” The Atlantic

– Allen Sack & Ellen Staurowsky, College Athletes for Hire

– ESPN Investigations and NCAA Infractions Reports

– Boston University CTE Center research on football-related brain injury

– U.S. Supreme Court, NCAA v. Alston (2021)

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December 18, 2025
Fewer than half of transgender, nonbinary youth report others use their pronouns

Fewer than half — 46% — of transgender and nonbinary young people ages 13-24 report that most or all of the people in their lives use what they consider to be their pronouns, according to data released by The Trevor Project last week. For teens ages 13-17, that percentage drops to 40%.

Transgender and nonbinary young people who were addressed by their pronouns had lower rates of suicide attempts in the past year compared to those whose pronouns were ignored — 11% vs. 17%. That’s a 31% less chance of a past-year suicide attempt, according to the nonprofit that provides crisis support services for LGBTQ+ people.

The study surveyed over 12,000 youth ages 13 to 24. Its findings come as the Trump administration increasingly cracks down on LGBTQ+ issues such as pronoun and facility usage in schools, and as federal lawmakers continue to be divided over whether privacy laws protect a students’ transgender or nonbinary identity from being revealed to their parents.

“Our data show that something as simple as respecting a young person’s pronouns is linked to significantly lower suicide risk for transgender and nonbinary students,” said Steven Hobaica, research scientist at the Trevor Project, in a statement to K-12 Dive. “Our data show that this small, everyday act can make a real life-saving difference in a young person’s life. This is a public health issue that we cannot ignore.”

Hobaica added that using the pronouns that the students themselves use could help improve their sense of belonging and create a positive and safe climate.

“At the same time, educators should not be placed in positions where they must choose between following a law and protecting a student’s well-being,” said Hobaica. “This dilemma calls for evidence-based guidance at the district level with protections for educators and policies that prioritize student safety while navigating local legal constraints.”

Many controversial issues related to transgender student rights and their inclusion in school are pending in the court system, making school policies a patchwork across the nation. Legal challenges include whether transgender students should be able to use facilities and play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity, whether parents should be alerted about their pronoun use or names in school, and whether books on LGBTQ+ issues should be removed from shelves.

Approximately 7% of transgender youth ages 13-17 live in states that require revealing transgender students’ identities to their guardians before school staff can use a student’s preferred name or pronouns, according to the Movement Advancement Project.

Another 7% in that age group live in states that require their identities be revealed to parents or guardians if they make specific disclosures or requests about their gender identity to school staff.

In another survey released by The Trevor Project last year, an overwhelming majority of LGBTQ+ students said their mental health was negatively impacted by anti-LGBTQ+ policies in schools.

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December 18, 2025
Trump celebrates returning education to the states in national address

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In an address to the nation on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump celebrated increased state involvement and decreased federal oversight in education — a task he said his administration has accomplished in the last 11 months.

“We have broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools,” he said, “and control over those schools is back now in the hands of our great and loving states, where education belongs.”

Trump, however, remained silent on his education plan for 2026.

Increased state control over education — partly by gutting the U.S. Department of Education — loomed large among U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s priorities when entering the office in March. McMahon has since announced at least two rounds of layoffs at the department, pauses in some federal funding, and reorganization and outsourcing of key parts of the department itself.

Trump’s comments come a month after the Education Department announced six interagency agreements, shifting management of major programs to other federal agencies. The agreements included sending the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the U.S. Department of Labor.

However, increasing state control over education and decreasing federal oversight has deeply divided the education community.

While Republican-led states have celebrated Trump’s education agenda as allowing them to tailor education to local needs, Democratic-leaning states and lawmakers have said decreased oversight will create more challenges.

Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education, speaks during a spotlight forum on the Trump administration’s impact on education on Dec. 16, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono

“After a year that included mass firings, canceling critical grant funds for our local schools, and cutting access to student loans, the Trump administration is trying to make good on their promise to shutter the Department of Education,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., according to a statement from a forum convened by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a day before the president’s address.

Van Hollen added, “While there are many ways to improve our education system, dismantling the department piece by piece only threatens our longstanding goal of ensuring that every child has access to a quality education.”

Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island commissioner of elementary and secondary education, told Van Hollen and other lawmakers at the Dec. 16 forum that by stepping back from federal support of education, the Trump administration has created “chaos and concern.”

Red states, meanwhile, have already begun submitting waiver requests to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bipartisan measure passed under President Barack Obama that gave increased flexibility to states compared to its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Indiana, Kansas and Iowa are among those that have so far sought waivers, and the Education Department’s response to them could pave the path for future waivers in other states.

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December 18, 2025
The Higher Ed CFO’s Guide to Building a High-Performing IT Operation [eBook]
Lead technology transformation with confidence, clarity, and control.

IT isn’t just a cost center. It’s a critical enabler of your institution’s strategic goals. But too often, campus technology operations are under-resourced, fragmented, and reactive. That leaves CFOs in the dark about what’s working, what’s wasted, and where to invest next.

We built this free guide specifically for higher ed finance leaders who are ready to shift from maintenance mode to a more strategic, future-ready approach.

What you’ll learn:
- Why most institutions struggle to modernize their IT function—and how to break the cycle
- How to assess infrastructure health, team capabilities, and tech ROI using a practical evaluation framework
- Where to find hidden costs, duplication, and vendor inefficiencies
- What a high-performing IT operation looks like—and how to build one at your institution
- Steps you can take today to align IT investments with institutional priorities
Who it’s for:
- CFOs and finance leaders
- COOs, CIOs, and enrollment executives involved in tech decision-making
- Presidents and provosts seeking better visibility into IT performance
Whether you’re facing outdated systems, overwhelmed teams, or rising IT costs with unclear returns, this guide will give you the insight and structure to lead with impact.

Submit the form on the right to get your free copy.
Our mission is to enable impact in higher education. We help our partners achieve more, deliver superior experiences, and drive impact across the entire student lifecycle by leveraging and aligning data, technology, and talent.

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December 18, 2025