Tag: Administrations

  • How the Trump Administration’s FSA Notice Doubles Down on Student Debtors While Privileging the Higher Education Racket

    How the Trump Administration’s FSA Notice Doubles Down on Student Debtors While Privileging the Higher Education Racket

    The U.S. Department of Education, under the renewed influence of the Trump Administration and its deep-pocketed friends in the for-profit and debt collection industries, has issued a chilling reminder of just how little it cares for the tens of millions of Americans drowning in student debt. Cloaked in bureaucratic language and peppered with sanctimonious calls for “shared responsibility,” the Department’s latest notice is, in truth, a battle cry in its war to privatize higher education, scapegoat the vulnerable, and enrich corporate cronies at the expense of working families.

    Let’s call this what it is: a renewed assault on the student debtor class—the adjunct professors, the first-generation college students, the single mothers, the underemployed graduates who were sold a dream of economic mobility and handed a lifetime of debt servitude.

    According to the Department, only 38% of borrowers are current on their loans, and nearly a quarter of all loans are in default or severe delinquency. Rather than treating this figure as evidence of systemic failure—ballooning tuition, predatory lending, lack of loan forgiveness—the Department responds by resuming draconian collection measures like the Treasury Offset Program and Administrative Wage Garnishment. This means that the government will begin seizing tax refunds and garnishing wages of those already pushed to the economic brink.

    Worse, the Department has the audacity to wrap this cruelty in the rhetoric of “support” and “outreach.” Borrowers are told that they’ll be reminded of their “repayment obligations” as if they have simply forgotten—not that they’ve been buried under compound interest, stagnating wages, and fraudulent institutions that peddled worthless degrees. The supposed “enhancements” to income-driven repayment plans are little more than PR spin, insufficient to address the tidal wave of suffering inflicted by a broken system.

    Then comes the most insulting part: the Department deflects blame onto institutions while simultaneously pressuring them to track down and guilt-trip former students. Colleges are urged to contact former enrollees and remind them they’re obligated to pay. Why? Not out of concern for their welfare—but because high cohort default rates (CDRs) might threaten those institutions’ eligibility for federal aid money.

    So we see the real game here: this isn’t about protecting students. It’s about protecting the federal loan program as a revenue engine and shielding the reputations of colleges—especially the for-profit diploma mills that flourished under prior Republican administrations. These institutions can continue hiking tuition and churning out underprepared graduates because the government, under Trump and his Department of Education appointees, would rather collect on unpayable loans than hold schools accountable.

    Even more dystopian is the Department’s plan to publicly release “loan non-payment rates by institution.” While transparency sounds virtuous, this move will undoubtedly be weaponized—not to shut down abusive schools but to further stigmatize borrowers, especially those from marginalized backgrounds who attended underfunded schools with few resources.

    Nowhere in this document is there any meaningful discussion of debt relief, student protections, or reining in college costs. Nowhere is there a reckoning with the fact that federal student aid has been transformed from a tool of opportunity into a tool of coercion. Instead, the Trump Administration signals it is open for business—the business of extracting wealth from the poor and funneling it into the private sector.

    This notice is more than a policy update. It is a declaration of values. And those values are clear: Profit over people. Compliance over compassion. Privatization over public good.

    The Higher Education Inquirer stands with the debtors. We see through the lies of “fiscal responsibility” and “integrity.” And we will continue to expose every cynical maneuver designed to crush the educated underclass in the name of neoliberal orthodoxy.

    To student borrowers: You are not alone. You are not a failure. You are a victim of a system that was never built to serve you.

    Here’s the actual post from the US Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, dated May 5, 2025:

     

    The
    United States faces critical challenges related to the federal student
    loan programs. According to estimates from the U.S. Department of
    Education (Department), only 38% of Direct Loan and Department-held
    Federal Family Education Loan Program borrowers are in repayment and
    current on their student loans. We also estimate that almost 25% of the
    entire portfolio is either in default or a late stage of delinquency. 

    Given these challenges, the Department is taking immediate steps to
    engage student borrowers and support the repayment of their federal
    student loans. As announced in an April 21, 2025, press release,
    today, the Department will resume collections on its defaulted federal
    student loan portfolio with the restart the Treasury Offset Program and,
    later this summer, Administrative Wage Garnishment. The Department has
    also initiated an outreach campaign to remind all borrowers of their
    repayment obligations and provide resources and support to assist them
    in selecting the best repayment plan for their circumstances. The
    Department has also launched an enhanced income-driven repayment (IDR) plan process,
    simplifying how borrowers enroll in IDR plans and eliminating the need
    for many borrowers to manually recertify their income each year. 

    Maintaining the integrity of the Title IV, Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA)
    loan programs has always been a shared responsibility among student
    borrowers, the Department, and participating institutions. Although
    borrowers have the primary responsibility for repaying their student
    loans, institutions play a key role in the Department’s ongoing efforts
    to improve loan repayment outcomes, especially as the cost of college
    set solely by institutions has continued to skyrocket. Institutions are
    responsible for providing clear and accurate information about repayment
    to borrowers through entrance and exit counseling, and colleges and
    universities are responsible for disclosing annual tuition and fees and
    the net price to students and their families on the costs of a
    postsecondary education. The financial aid community has demonstrated
    its commitment to providing direct advice and counsel to students
    regarding their borrowing, but institutions must refocus and expand
    these efforts as pandemic flexibilities come to an end.

    Under section 435 of the HEA, institutions are required to
    keep their cohort default rates (CDR) low and will lose eligibility for
    federal student assistance, including Pell Grants and federal student
    loans, if their CDR exceeds 40% for a single year or 30% for three
    consecutive years. The Department reminds institutions that the
    repayment pause on student loans ended in October 2023, and CDRs
    published in 2026 will include borrowers who entered repayment in 2023
    and defaulted in 2023, 2024, or 2025. The Department further reminds
    institutions that those borrowers whose delinquency or default status
    was reset in September 2024 could enter technical default status / be
    delinquent on their loans for more than 270 days beginning in June and
    default this summer. As such, we strongly urge all institutions to begin
    proactive and sustained outreach to former students who are delinquent
    or in default on their loans to ensure that such institutions will not
    face high CDRs next year and lose access to federal student aid. 

    Given
    the urgent need to ensure that more student borrowers enter repayment
    and stay current on their loans, the Secretary urges each participating
    institution to provide the following information to all borrowers who
    ceased to be enrolled at the institution since January 1, 2020, and for
    whom they have contact information: 

    • Remind
      the borrower that he or she is obligated to repay any federal student
      loans that have not been repaid and are not in deferment or forbearance;

    • Suggest that the borrower review information on StudentAid.gov about repayment options; and 

    • Request that the borrower log into StudentAid.gov
      using their StudentAid.gov username and password to update their
      profile with current contact information and ensure that their loans are
      in good standing. 

    The
    Department urges that this outreach be performed no later than June 30,
    2025. We do not stipulate how institutions reach out to borrowers, nor
    the specific information provided, as long as it covers the three
    categories described above. 

    We also encourage institutions to focus their initial outreach on
    students who are delinquent on one or more of their loans in order to
    prevent defaults. We will provide additional information in the future
    to assist schools with identifying and communicating with these
    borrowers.

    The
    Department is committed to overseeing the federal student loan programs
    with fairness and integrity for students, institutions, and taxpayers.
    To that end, the Department believes that greater transparency is needed
    regarding institutional success in counseling borrowers and helping
    them get into good standing on their loans. 

    The Department maintains data on the repayment status of federal
    student loan borrowers and in the past has provided information in the
    College Scorecard about the status of each institution’s borrowers at
    several intervals after they enter repayment. The Department plans to
    use this data to calculate rates of nonpayment by institution and will
    publish this information on the Federal Student Aid Data Center later
    this month. The Department will provide more information about this
    publication process soon. 

    Thank you for your continued efforts to maintain the integrity of the Title IV, HEA
    loan programs. The Department values its institutional partners and
    looks forward to continued collaboration to place borrowers on the path
    to sustainable repayment of their loans.

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  • The Trump Administration’s War on Children – The 74

    The Trump Administration’s War on Children – The 74

    ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

    The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

    Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

    The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

    These stark reductions have been centered in little-known children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked.

    “Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs.

    The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children nationwide.

    The Department of Education, for instance, has rescinded as much as $3 billionin pandemic-recovery funding for schools, which would have been used for everything from tutoring services for Maryland students who’ve fallen behind to making the air safer to breathe and the water safer to drink for students in Flint, Michigan. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.

    At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems, including birth family visitation, caseworker training and more. The grants also fund day care, counseling and disability services for kids. (It is unclear whether anyone remains at HHS who would know how to get all of that funding out the door or whether it will now be administered by White House appointees.)

    Head Start will be especially affected in the wake of Kennedy’s mass firings of Office of Head Start regional staff and news that the president’s draft budget proposes eliminating funding for the program altogether. That would leave one million working-class parents who rely on Head Start not only for pre-K education but also for child care, particularly in rural areas, with nowhere to send their kids during the day.

    Some local Head Start programs are already having to close their doors, and many program directors are encountering impediments to spending their current budgets. When they seek reimbursement after paying their teachers or purchasing school supplies, they’re being directed to a new “Defend the Spend” DOGE website asking them to “justify” each item, even though the spending has already been appropriated by Congress and audited by nonpartisan civil servants.

    Next on the chopping block, it appears, is Medicaid, which serves children in greater numbers than any other age group. If Republicans in Congress go through with the cuts they’ve been discussing, and Trump signs those cuts into law, kids from lower- and middle-class families across the U.S. will lose access to health care at their schools, in foster care, for their disabilities or for cancer treatment.

    The Trump administration has touted the president’s record of “protecting America’s children,” asserting in a recent post that Trump will “never stop fighting for their right to a healthy, productive upbringing.” The statement listed five examples of that commitment. Four were related to transgender issues (including making it U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes and keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports); the other was a ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates at schools that receive federal funding.

    The White House, and multiple agencies, declined to respond to most of ProPublica’s questions. Madi Biedermann, a Department of Education spokesperson, addressed the elimination of pandemic recovery funding, saying that “COVID is over”; that the Biden administration established an “irresponsible precedent” by extending the deadline to spend these funds (and exceeding their original purpose); and that the department will consider extensions if individual projects show a clear connection between COVID and student learning.

    An HHS spokesperson, in response to ProPublica’s questions about cuts to children’s programs across that agency, sent a short statement saying that the department, guided by Trump, is restructuring with a focus on cutting wasteful bureaucracy. The offices serving children, the statement said, will be merged into a newly established “Administration for Healthy America.”

    Programs that serve kids havehistorically fared the worst when those in power are looking for ways to cut the budget. That’s in part because kids can’t vote, and they typically don’t belong to political organizations. International aid groups, another constituency devastated by Trump’s policy agenda, also can’t say that they represent many U.S. voters.

    This dynamic may be part of why cuts on the health side of the Department of Health and Human Services — layoffs of doctors, medical researchers and the like — have received more political and press attention than those on the human services side, where the Administration for Children and Families is located. That’s where you can find the Office of Child Support Services, the Office of Head Start, the Office of Child Care (which promotes minimum health and safety standards for child care programs nationally and helps states reduce the cost of child care for families), the Office of Family Assistance (which helps states administer direct aid to lower-income parents and kids), the Children’s Bureau (which oversees child protective services, foster care and adoption) and the Family and Youth Services Bureau (which aids runaway and homeless teens, among others).

    All told, these programs have seen their staffs cut from roughly 2,400 employees as of January to 1,500 now, according to a shared Google document that is being regularly updated by former HHS officials. (Neither the White House nor agency leadership have released the exact numbers of cuts.)

    Those losses have been most acutely felt in the agency’s regional offices, five out of 10 of which — covering over 20 states — have been closed by the Trump administration. They were dissolved this month without notice to their own employees or to the local providers they worked with. It was these outposts that had monitored Head Start programs to make sure that they had fences around their playgrounds, gates at the top of their stairs and enough staffing to keep an eye on even the most energetic little ones. It was also the regional staff who had helped state child support programs modernize their computer systems and navigate federal law. That allowed them, among other things, to be able to “pass through” more money to families instead of depositing it in state coffers to reimburse themselves for costs.

    And it was the regional staff who’d had the relationships with tribal officials that allowed them to routinely work together to address child support, child care and child welfare challenges faced by Native families. Together, they had worked to overcome sometimes deep distrust of the federal government among tribal leaders, who may now have no one to ask for help with their children’s programs other than political appointees in D.C.

    In the wake of the regional office cuts, local child services program directors have no idea who in the federal government to call when they have urgent concerns, many told ProPublica. “No one knows anything,” said one state child support director, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about the administration’s actions. “We have no idea who will be auditing us.”

    “We’re trying to be reassuring to our families,” the official said, “but if the national system goes down, so does ours.”

    That national system includes the complex web of databases and technical support maintained and provided by the Office of Child Support Services at HHS, which helps states locate parents who owe child support in order to withhold part of their paychecks or otherwise obtain the money they owe, which is then sent to the parent who has custody of the child. Without this federal data and assistance, child support orders would have little way of being enforced across state lines.

    For that reason, the Trump administration is making a risky gamble by slashing staffing at the federal child support office, said Vicki Turetsky, who headed that office under the Obama administration. She worries that the layoffs create a danger of system outages that would cause child support payments to be missed or delayed. (“That’s a family’s rent,” she said.) The instability is compounded, she said, by DOGE’s recent unexplained move to access a highly confidential national child support database.

    But even if the worst doesn’t come to pass, there will still be concrete consequences for the delivery of child support to families, Turetsky said. The staff members who’ve been pushed out include those who’d helped manage complicated, outdated IT systems; without updates, these programs might over- or undershoot the amount of child support that a parent owes, misdirect the money or fail to give notice to the dad or mom about a change in the case.

    When Liz Ryan departed as administrator of the Department of Justice’s juvenile division in January, its website was flush with opportunities for state and local law enforcement as well as nonprofits to apply for federal funding for a myriad of initiatives that help children. There were funds for local police task forces that investigate child exploitation on the internet; for programs where abused children are interviewed by police and mental health professionals; and for court-appointed advocates for victimized kids. Grants were also available for mentoring programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

    But the Trump administration removed those grant applications, which total over $400 million in a typical year. And Ryan said there still hasn’t been any communication, including in what used to be regular emails with grant recipients, many of whom she remains in touch with, about whether this congressionally approved money even still exists or whether some of it might eventually be made available again.

    A spokesperson for the Office of Justice Programs within the DOJ said the agency is reviewing programs, policies and materials and “taking action as appropriate” in accordance with Trump’s executive orders and guidance. When that review has been completed, local agencies and programs seeking grants will be notified.

    Multiple nonprofits serving exploited children declined to speak on the record to ProPublica, fearing that doing so might undermine what chance they still had of getting potential grants.

    “Look at what happened to the law firms,” one official said, adding that time is running out to fund his program’s services for victims of child abuse for the upcoming fiscal year.

    “I never anticipated that programs and services and opportunities for young people wouldn’t be funded at all by the federal government,” Ryan said, adding that local children’s organizations likely can’t go to states, whose budgets are already underwater, to make up the funding gap. “When you look at this alongside what they’re doing at HHS and the Department of Education and to Medicaid, it’s undercutting every single effort that we have to serve kids.”

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  • Trump administration’s coercion at Columbia is unlawful and unconstitutional

    Trump administration’s coercion at Columbia is unlawful and unconstitutional

    FIRE today filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers in their lawsuit against the Department of Justice and other federal agencies. FIRE argues that the Trump administration’s actions against Columbia University are unlawful and unconstitutional attacks on freedom of expression, freedom of association, and academic freedom. The brief’s summary of argument follows.

    The federal government characterizes its abrupt revocation of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University — and the government’s threat to revoke billions more if its demands are not met — as necessary to address anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests that sometimes veered into unlawful activity. Addressing discrimination is a worthy end. But it cannot justify the government’s flatly unconstitutional means here. While Columbia’s response to campus misconduct may raise questions about the university’s obligations under federal anti-discrimination law, there is no question about the government’s failure to meet its obligations under the First Amendment. The administration’s coercion is a blatant end-run around statutory safeguards and a flagrant attempt to jawbone the university into surrendering its institutional autonomy to federal officials. For the sake of Columbia’s students, faculty, and our free society, this government intimidation cannot stand unanswered.

    The same federal statute that governs institutional responses to allegations of anti-Semitism — Title VI — requires funding recipients like Columbia to receive notice, a hearing, and an opportunity to come into compliance voluntarily before the government can terminate funding. These provisions protect students, faculty, and institutions from precisely the kind of repressive, capricious government overreach that now harms Plaintiffs. Yet despite its professed interest in addressing campus anti-Semitism, the administration chose to ignore entirely the lawful statutory means by which it may do so. Instead, it has instituted rule by fiat: arbitrarily declaring Columbia subject to punishment, cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and threatening worse to come, and leaving Columbia faculty and students at the mercy of unchecked federal authority under the specter of a hostile takeover.

    This is unlawful. Just last year, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the government cannot jawbone private actors into punishing speech that the First Amendment protects from state intrusion. Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 2024). But jawboning is exactly what the administration is doing to Columbia — except here, the government’s bullying is so extreme it might more accurately be called extortion. Wielding the threat of crippling financial consequences like a mobster gripping a baseball bat, the government forced Columbia to adopt a restrictive speech code that punishes disfavored or dissenting viewpoints. Not only would it be unconstitutional at a public university, the speech code also violates Columbia’s free speech promises and its right as a private entity to set its own rules regarding speech. The government further forced Columbia to surrender control of an entire academic department and to relinquish its right to make independent decisions about discipline and admissions — all of which violate longstanding precepts of academic freedom, institutional independence, and university self-governance.

    These demands are unconstitutional. Again, just last year, the Supreme Court reemphasized the limits the Constitution places on the government in its interactions with private institutions. “On the spectrum of dangers to free expression,” the Court wrote, “there are few greater than allowing the government to change the speech of private actors in order to achieve its own conception of speech nirvana.” (Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 2024). As Defendants trample constitutional barriers in seeking to effectively outlaw certain political views on campus, this grave danger that the Court identified is fully realized.

    The government’s gambit is not permissible simply because federal funding is involved. The Supreme Court long ago established that “even in the provision of subsidies, the Government may not ‘ai[m] at the suppression of dangerous ideas’” — and that the First Amendment demands judicial intervention if funding is “‘manipulated’ to have a ‘coercive effect.’” (Nat’l Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 1998) (quoting Regan v. Tax’n With Representation of Wash., 1983). Few things could be more manipulative or coercive than revoking grants in an explicit attempt to override the expressive and associational rights of a private institution of higher education, its students, and its faculty.

    This case illustrates the grave threat to core First Amendment freedoms posed by expansive — and here, extralegal and unbounded — conceptions of governmental power to address discrimination. For more than a quarter century, amicus FIRE has advocated against overly broad and impossibly vague campus speech codes promulgated under federal anti-discrimination law. To that end, FIRE successfully led the charge against the Obama administration’s attempt to pressure institutions to adopt a federal definition of “sexual harassment” — advanced as a national “blueprint” — that subjected wide swaths of protected speech to investigation and punishment. And yet as misguided as that initiative was, those pressure tactics pale in comparison to the scope and intensity of the unlawful shakedown Defendants mount here.

    The government’s aggression against Columbia is alarming not just because it is unlawful and unconstitutional, but because its plain aim is “suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life, its college and university campuses.” Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 1995). While Columbia was the first institution targeted by the administration, it has not been the last — the list of colleges facing coercive funding cuts and chilling demands is growing.

    Addressing anti-Semitism does not and cannot require violating the First Amendment. Left unchecked, the administration will continue to deploy its distorted conception of federal anti-discrimination law as a battering ram against institutional autonomy and to seize for itself power to control permissible speech and instruction on our campuses. The stakes are high: “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.” Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 1957). This Court must act now to protect freedom of expression, academic freedom, and our institutions of higher education from a hostile federal takeover.

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  • Harvard stands firm, rejects Trump administration’s unconstitutional demands

    Harvard stands firm, rejects Trump administration’s unconstitutional demands

    Last Friday, three federal agencies sent a demand letter to Harvard University laying out conditions for the university to continue receiving federal funds. The letter is unprecedented in its scope. It would essentially render Harvard a vassal institution, subjecting much of its corporate and academic governance to federal directives. 

    If Harvard acceded to these demands, faculty hiring, student admissions, student and faculty disciplinary procedures, university programming decisions, student group recognition processes, and much more would be transformed to align with the government’s ideological preferences.

    Among other things, the university would be required to:

    • Abolish ideological litmus tests in hiring and admissions practices and take steps to ensure viewpoint diversity in the faculty and student body. How Harvard can take both steps simultaneously and also commit to merit-based hiring and admissions, another directive, is unclear. FIRE opposes ideological litmus tests, but you can’t abolish them by trading one litmus test for another.
    • Deny admission to international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” These values go undefined. And, as any historian or Supreme Court observer would know, they’re subject to intense debate and varied interpretations. Ironically, this is also an ideological litmus test of the sort prohibited by the directive that Harvard abolish such tests.
    • Audit certain disfavored academic departments. The mandatory audit would include investigations into individual faculty members and would require Harvard to work hand in glove with the government to sanction faculty members who allegedly engaged in anti-Semitic discrimination or otherwise “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules.” The federal government’s definition of anti-Semitism incorporates the IHRA definition, which Harvard recently adopted and FIRE has long criticized as violating First Amendment standards.
    • Discontinue DEI. This would include shuttering all “programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives” relating to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These terms also go undefined in the letter, and while FIRE has been critical of many university DEI programs for their tendency to chill and censor speech, not all of them do, and many programs are within a university’s prerogative to create. This is especially true at private institutions.
    • Reform student disciplinary processes and procedures. The letter demands Harvard not fund or recognize any student group that “endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment.” This amounts to a federal requirement of viewpoint discrimination. While many would find these categories of speech abhorrent, the categories go undefined and would nevertheless be protected by the First Amendment so long as the speech stays confined to endorsement and promotion and the student groups do not themselves engage in any criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment. The letter also identifies specific student groups that must lose recognition and funding.
    • Implement a comprehensive mask ban. Masks can be used by criminals to commit crimes, the sick to stay healthy, and, yes, protesters to remain anonymous. A blanket mask ban is an overbroad requirement that infringes on individuals’ constitutional right to anonymous speech.
    • Risk double jeopardy. The letter demands that Harvard “carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years.” To the extent any student was already tried for these alleged violations, this requirement would amount to “double jeopardy,” violating the venerated and centuries-old principle of fundamental fairness, enshrined in the Fifth Amendment, that says no individual should be tried for the same infraction twice.
    • Generally reform corporate governance structure and practices, including by “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty” in its current structure. How Harvard governs its academic programs, and who should have a say in that governance, is up to Harvard, not the federal government. The First Amendment and basic principles of academic freedom require no less.

    In addition to these demands, the university would be required to undergo frequent and highly intrusive audits to ensure compliance. In short, the federal government would effectively serve as president and provost of Harvard University.

    The ostensible justification for these demands stems from the government’s belief that Harvard has allowed for a hostile environment for Jewish students in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But federal law also dictates specific procedures for adjudicating alleged noncompliance — procedures the government circumvented here. 

    If allowed to stand, the government could revoke federal funding from any institution regardless of the merit of the government’s allegations. This processless approach is a loaded gun for partisan administrations to target institutions and individuals that dissent from administration policies and priorities.

    What Harvard does — for better or worse — others follow. Those of us who support free inquiry, academic freedom, and fair procedures on campus — not to mention institutional autonomy — can hope that maybe its action will inspire other institutions to grow a backbone.

    It’s true that institutions take federal funding voluntarily. But it’s also true that the government cannot condition federal funding on institutions giving up their autonomy and constitutional rights. A requirement that Harvard relinquish its authority to guide core academic programs certainly violates its free speech and academic freedom rights, as well as those of its students and faculty.

    It’s also true that Harvard doesn’t have clean hands. For the past two years, it has sat at the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, and it may well have violated Title VI by failing to meaningfully respond to conduct creating a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus. But just as with individuals, we don’t punish institutions based on allegations alone. And we cannot restore free speech with censorship.

    This isn’t the first time FIRE has objected to a presidential administration using federal civil rights law to violate rights. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, the federal government weaponized Title IX to erode campus due process and free speech protections. The fight over the Obama/Biden rules lasted over a decade, and has been largely resolved (for now) in court and with President Trump’s Department of Education promulgating federal rules that protect free speech and due process rights in campus sexual misconduct investigations.

    That’s why we’re deeply concerned that the administration doesn’t recognize that what was wrong and unlawful in the Title IX context is also wrong and unlawful in the Title VI context. Indeed, these federal requirements go even further than what we saw in the Title IX context.

    Fortunately, Harvard is fighting back. Yesterday, Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in an open letter:

    The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

    Garber’s response didn’t sit well with the federal government, which soon announced it was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to the university. The fight will continue.

    What Harvard does — for better or worse — others follow. Those of us who support free inquiry, academic freedom, and fair procedures on campus — not to mention institutional autonomy — can hope that maybe its action will inspire other institutions to grow a backbone.

    There is some evidence of that already. On the same day Harvard announced it was rejecting the administration’s demands, Columbia University’s new acting president announced Columbia would not agree to any federal demands that “require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”

    In addition to Columbia, the administration also froze grants at Cornell University and Northwestern University and is investigating nearly 60 other universities.

    Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. Until more universities stand alongside Harvard in opposing the government’s unconstitutional demands, we can be sure these demands won’t be the last.

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  • Harvard Faculty, AAUP Challenge Trump Administration’s $8.7 Billion Funding Threat

    Harvard Faculty, AAUP Challenge Trump Administration’s $8.7 Billion Funding Threat

    In what legal experts are calling a landmark case for academic freedom, Harvard faculty and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging unconstitutional attempts to control campus speech and governance through threatened funding cuts.

    The legal action, filed Friday, seeks to block the administration from withholding $8.7 billion in federal funding for Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals after demands that the university implement specific policy changes and restructure its operations.

    According to court documents, the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued a demand letter on April 3 outlining “immediate next steps” Harvard must take to maintain its “financial relationship with the United States government.” These demands reportedly extend far beyond addressing antisemitism, including new speech restrictions, elimination of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and mandatory cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.

    “The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” said Andrew Manuel Crespo, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants.”

    The lawsuit comes after the task force chair announced on Fox News in March that “the academic system in this country has been hijacked by the left, has been hijacked by the Marxists,” and threatened to “bankrupt these universities” by removing federal funding.

    Harvard professors involved in the lawsuit claim the administration’s threats have already begun to impact academic freedom on campus.

    “The research and teaching of Harvard faculty have already been chilled by the Trump administration’s attempt to coerce the university into changing its curriculum and governing structure,” said Dr. Kirsten Weld, professor of History and president of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “If Trump can threaten to withhold billions of dollars from our colleagues unless we stop teaching about diversity and inclusion, he can make the same threat to try and stop us from teaching about science, his critics, or anything else.”

    The plaintiffs have requested an immediate temporary restraining order to prevent any funding cuts while the case proceeds.

    The AAUP warns that allowing such governmental intrusion at Harvard could set a dangerous precedent for institutions nationwide.

    “Our students and faculty members across the nation are terrified,” said Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel. “If the administration’s lawless and unconstitutional attempts to control speech and governance at Harvard are allowed to proceed, then any one of our institutions could be next.”

    Dr. Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, characterized the administration’s actions as “an attack on democracy and economic mobility” with harms that “will be so irreparable that they will last generations.”

    At the heart of the case is whether the federal government can legally condition billions in funding on compliance with policy demands that appear to target specific viewpoints and academic content.

    Nikolas Bowie, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard and secretary-treasurer of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, argues there is no legal basis for the administration’s actions.

    “No law in this country permits President Trump to suspend billions of dollars from universities like Penn, Princeton, or Harvard simply because he doesn’t like their policies on transgender athletes, their research on climate change, or the constitutionally protected speech of their students and faculty.”

    Legal experts note that the case could potentially reach the United States Supreme Court, given its significant First Amendment and separation of powers implications.

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  • ‘Executive Watch’: The breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s threat to the First Amendment — First Amendment News 465

    ‘Executive Watch’: The breadth and depth of the Trump administration’s threat to the First Amendment — First Amendment News 465

    Given the Trump administration’s continued and varied assaults on the First Amendment, it is vital to monitor those attacks and then realize the gravity of the “sweeping and draconian sanctions” imposed by unconstitutional executive fiat. Vigilance is especially important, as New York Times investigative reporter Michael S. Schmidt has noted, because “Mr. Trump has employed tactics including lawsuits, executive orders, regulations, dismissals from government jobs, withdrawal of security details and public intimidation to take on a wide range of individuals and institutions he views as having unfairly pursued him or sought to block his agenda.” 

    Mindful of such matters, this installment of “Executive Watch” by professor Timothy Zick provides the most comprehensive and informed account of the current threats facing us up to now. 

    Of course, yet more posts are forthcoming. Meanwhile, it is worth heeding the sound advice recently offered by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky: “despite the risks of speaking out, silence itself comes at enormous cost.”

    — rklc

    My introductory post, which was published a little more than a month after Donald Trump took office for the second time, identified various areas in which his administration’s actions threatened First Amendment rights. At this point, even before the first 100 days of the second Trump administration have elapsed, we now have a much fuller picture of the nature and scope of the threat — and it’s even worse than we thought. 

    Media stories and commentary have covered a range of Trump administration policies and actions that threaten speech and press rights. Commentators have examined the attacks on media, law firms, government employees, and universities, among others. My last post discussed Trump’s abuse of the civil lawsuit to punish the media and others.

    Considered in isolation, these actions raise troubling First Amendment concerns. But the whole threat to the First Amendment is far greater than the sum of its damaging parts. Combined, the administration’s actions represent a whole-of-government and whole-of-society effort to control whether and how Americans talk about certain ideas. 

    Trump 1.0 and the First Amendment

    As it concerns the First Amendment, the fundamental difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is the extraordinary use of the levers of governmental power to suppress, dictate, and coerce viewpoints the president disfavors.

    During the first administration, the threat to the First Amendment emanated primarily from the president’s own statements and threatened actions. Trump talked about “opening up” the libel laws to make it easier to sue media defendants. He waged a constant war on the press, which he referred to as “the enemy of the people.” He demanded loyalty, attacked those who disagreed with his views on patriotism and dissent, and threatened to punish media outlets by revoking their licenses. He also threatened to shut down social media platforms that fact-checked him.

    Prof. Timothy Zick

    During the 2016 presidential election, Trump called for de-naturalizing and jailing protesters who burned the U.S. flag. As president, he routinely denigrated protesters. During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to call up U.S. military personnel to quell protest-related civil unrest. He sent federal agents to Portland and other cities to police and quell protests. At one point during the demonstrations, Trump reportedly asked his then-secretary of defense why protesters couldn’t be shot. And, of course, after he lost the 2020 election he used his own speech to incite the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

    It was clear during his first term that Trump had little or no tolerance for dissent, and a strong desire to impose his will on the media and other institutions. However, for the most part, he either didn’t or couldn’t effectuate that agenda. Perhaps this was because members of his administration talked him out of it, or perhaps because he was not yet familiar with the levers of power.

    Trump 2.0 and executive orders

    Trump 2.0 has been a vastly different story. Past presidents, including Trump, have used executive orders to exercise or augment their executive powers. They have set important agendas for the executive branch of government. However, no president has ever used executive orders to attempt to control what Americans can discuss, or how they speak about concepts regarding diversity, patriotism, anti-Semitism, gender, and other matters of public concern. And no president has been as successful at extending such an agenda across not just the federal bureaucracy but nearly every aspect of society.

    Thus far, President Trump has issued eighteent Executive Orders, plus several accompanying “Fact Sheets,” that implicate First Amendment rights. Although some of the Orders are vague and/or thin on specifics, many target expression based on its viewpoint – a quintessential violation of the First Amendment.  

    • Five of the Executive Orders target law firms based on their representation of clients and advocacy for causes the President disfavors.
    • Three Orders prohibit universities, companies, and others receiving federal funds from maintaining “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies and practices – including training, teaching, and supporting those ideas.
    • Trump’s Orders also target “anti-Semitic” speech by federal grantees and encourage universities to monitor “pro-jihadist protests” and campus “radicalism.”
    • An Executive Order requires that K-12 schools adopt “patriotic” curricula and further vows to withhold funding from any schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”
    • Other Orders provide that resident aliens who express “hatred for America” or “bear hostile attitudes toward [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” are subject to deportation.
    • Two of Trump’s Executive Orders single out transgender individuals, banning them from military service and imposing restrictions on the genders they can use on U.S. passports. These Orders raise important equal protection concerns, but also bar individuals from communicating about their own gender identity.
    • Finally, the Administration’s cost-cutting and desire to control the flow of information have deeply affected the availability and distribution of information in the United States. Trump has ordered the disbanding of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, important outlets for furthering American interests abroad. Trump’s spending cuts have also decimated libraries, which are critical distributors of information. Trump recently issued an Executive Order that purports to remove “anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Museum.

    TRUMP’S FIRST 80 DAYS
    Executive orders affecting free speech and press: 18
    Federal agencies involved in enforcement: 20
    Lawsuits raising First Amendment challenges: 30

    The whole-of-government campaign

    Standing alone, Trump’s executive orders represent a serious threat to the First Amendment. But the orders are backed by agency enforcement powers that drastically expand the danger.

    Think of the executive orders as a general blueprint for an ideological and retributive campaign aimed at punishing enemies for speech, imposing governmental orthodoxy regarding race, gender, and other matters, and controlling the distribution of information. That blueprint is being enforced by all federal agencies under the president’s command. So far, that includes some twenty separate agencies, including:

    • The Federal Bureau of Investigation
    • The Department of Justice
    • The Department of Health and Human Services
    • The Department of Education
    • The General Services Administration
    • The Department of Homeland Security
    • The State Department
    • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
    • U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
    • The Federal Communications Commission
    • The Office of Personnel Management
    • The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
    • The United States Agency for Global Media
    • The Federal Trade Commission 

    In contrast to Trump 1.0, during Trump 2.0 the entire agency alphabet soup is fully committed to enforcing executive orders that require adoption of official orthodoxies and ideologies, or punish individuals or institutions for their viewpoints. Pursuant to these executive orders, federal agencies have investigated employers and universities based on their support for DEI, targeted law firms based on their clients and causes, arrested international students based on their political advocacy, investigated broadcast stations based on the content of their shows, and removed scientific papers from public databases because they include forbidden words about gender or diversity. 

    Agencies across government are involved in enforcing Trump’s executive orders in areas ranging from private business to immigration. Ironically, the president’s ability to control and punish expression is due, in large part, to the size of the federal government he has targeted for downsizing or eradication.

    The whole-of-society impact of the executive orders

    Trump’s executive orders bind all federal agencies under his command. Agencies across regulatory areas have moved swiftly to scrub websites of offensive DEI language. Their efforts to comply with Trump’s directive have at times been comical. The Defense Department apparently removed material about the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, because of its name. Agencies have also removed information about Jackie Robinson and other material that celebrates the accomplishments of black people and women. Taking a “chainsaw” approach to language in public-facing websites, agencies have removed information that does not comport with the president’s preferred terms and viewpoints.

    “In a pre-election poll, respondents ranked ‘free speech’ among the top issues that were ‘very important’ in influencing their vote for president.”

     FIRE/NORC poll of 1,022 Americans conducted Oct. 11-14, 2024

    The federal government is an important source of information for issues relating to public health, the armed forces, employment, and other matters. Governments can determine what messages they want to communicate, including on websites they control, but those efforts can have harmful effects on the distribution of information to the public. 

    Trump’s orders have also limited the availability of information, both at home and abroad. They have silenced the nation’s voice in international spheres, cut off aid to libraries, and even demanded that museums change exhibits that convey “anti-American ideology.” Again, no president has ever used executive orders to so comprehensively control what can be seen, heard, or viewed. 

    Trump’s executive orders have also affected millions of individuals, entities, and institutions beyond federal agencies. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the breadth and depth of the activities covered by the existing executive orders — and they continue to be issued almost daily. The orders have already extended into every boardroom, classroom, breakroom, and laboratory in the United States. Businesses have shut down activities recognizing the value of a diverse workforce. Universities have scrubbed websites and materials of any references to the values of diversity in education. Legal counsel at some hospitals have even warned staff not to use “triggering” words like “vulnerable” or “diverse” to describe patients. 

    How Trump has expanded his power over expression

    Four things account for the extraordinary scope and effect of the Trump administration’s campaign to control what Americans see, hear, and say regarding gender, race, and American history.

    First, in contrast to Trump 1.0, the president has relied more extensively on executive orders as a means of governing. Trump’s more than 100 executive orders cover everything from the types of straws that can be used in federal buildings, the legitimate causes law firms can pursue, and the content of displays at the Smithsonian Museum.

    “There . . . can be no question that the demands the administration is making of Harvard are intended to suppress protected expression, of various kinds. To avoid the loss of federal funds, Harvard will have to refrain from advocating for, or empowering others to advocate for, the viewpoint that diversity, equality, and inclusion are important educational and social values. It will have to change how it oversees faculty research and teaching, and what kinds of scholarly viewpoints it hires and promotes. And it will have to suppress student speech and association, including core political expression, more severely than it has chosen to do so far—or at least it will have to promise to do so.”

    Genevieve Lakier

    Second, the orders use the threat of lost federal funding as an enforcement mechanism. Federal funding touches nearly every aspect of American life. That includes education at all levels, health care, immigration, the practice of law, scientific research, and even farming. 

    Third, because the executive orders lack any meaningful specificity about concepts and ideas it targets, including “DEI” and “anti-Semitism,” no federal grantee can be sure which words, phrases, or ideas will result in a denial of critical funding. This lack of clarity has produced significant uncertainty at universities, hospitals, businesses, and other funding recipients. And that uncertainty has led to anticipatory compliance on a scale that federal anti-discrimination and other laws do not require.

    Fourth, the administration has not provided the process required by federal law to deny or remove federal funding. This enhances the chill of agency enforcement by speeding up the denial of funds, leaving grantees with little recourse to contest allegations or charges prior to loss of funding.

    Fifth, for many of the above reasons, the Orders have engendered a repressive fear in federal fund recipients — a fear, as Ronald Collins points out, that is “born of direct or veiled demands for loyalty” and the specter of punishment for dissent. Thus, words and phrases must be removed, lectures canceled, and “deals” inked that trade away law firms’ First Amendment rights for relief from facially retributive and unconstitutional Executive Orders. 

    To be sure, some will challenge these executive orders on First Amendment grounds. Indeed, nearly 30 lawsuits raising First Amendment claims have already been filed. But many more grantees will decide, as Columbia University and the Paul Weiss law firm recently have, to negotiate a settlement or comply with unlawful orders. Many others will comply in advance, lest they remain targets of the president’s ire and risk their funding and livelihoods. 

    This underscores just how widespread the effects on First Amendment rights and principles will turn out to be. By virtue of their breadth, vagueness, and procedural violations, Trump’s executive orders and threats of agency enforcement will produce far more suppression of speech than normal agency action — which is limited by, among other things, resource considerations and legal process requirements. Although lawsuits are an important check, the chilling and suppressive effects of the Trump administration’s campaign are much broader and deeper than courts alone can address or resolve. 

    The daily chaos of Trump 2.0 can readily distract us from the fuller picture in terms of threats to free speech. As Professor Stephen Vladeck has correctly observed, “it seems that chaos and disruption are themselves central to President Trump’s objective.” However courts ultimately rule after tiresome and delayed litigation, much damage will already be done, some of it even irreversible.  

    Make no mistake: What we have seen in the early days of Trump 2.0 is an unprecedented government-wide and society-wide broadside against fundamental First Amendment commitments. And there is no indication that the Trump administration’s campaign is going to end any time soon. 

    2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases

    Cases decided 

    • Villarreal v. Alaniz (Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
    • Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
    • TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)

    Review granted

    Pending petitions 

    Petitions denied

    Free speech related

    • Thompson v. United States (decided: 3-21-25/ 9-0 with special concurrences by Alito and Jackson) (interpretation of 18 U. S. C. §1014 re “false statements”)

    Last scheduled FAN

    FAN 464: “Free speech in an age of fear: The new system loyalty oaths”

    This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.

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  • Columbia University’s Interim President Resigns Amid Trump Administration’s Pressure Over Campus Activism

    Columbia University’s Interim President Resigns Amid Trump Administration’s Pressure Over Campus Activism

    Columbia University’s interim president, Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong, resigned on Friday, just days after the university made significant concessions to the Trump administration in exchange for the restoration of $400 million in federal research funding. Armstrong’s resignation follows a tumultuous period for the institution, already reeling from the departure of her predecessor, Minouche Shafik, in August 2024.

    Armstrong, who had stepped into the role of interim president during a time of political and social unrest, faced mounting pressure over the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian student activism, which sparked national controversy and calls for accountability from political leaders, including former President Donald Trump and his administration. Armstrong’s resignation marks the latest chapter in a series of leadership shifts at Columbia as it navigates the increasingly polarized political environment surrounding campus protests.

     

    Effective immediately, Claire Shipman, co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, has been appointed acting president. David J. Greenwald, chair of the Board of Trustees, praised Armstrong for her dedication to the university, acknowledging her hard work during a time of “great uncertainty.” Greenwald’s statement highlighted Armstrong’s contributions to the university, saying, “Katrina has always given her heart and soul to Columbia. We appreciate her service and look forward to her continued contributions to the University.” Armstrong, who will return to lead the Irving Medical Center, had taken on the interim presidency in a period marked by increasing tensions on campus over political activism and its fallout.

    Political Pressure and Concessions to the Trump Administration

    The resignation comes amid significant political pressure, as the Trump administration imposed a set of demands on Columbia in exchange for the release of crucial federal funding. Earlier this month, the administration presented the university with nine conditions to restore the $400 million in research grants that had been frozen over accusations of antisemitism linked to campus protests.

    In an effort to regain the funding, Columbia conceded to these demands, which included a ban on students wearing masks to conceal their identities during protests, except for religious or health reasons. Additionally, Columbia agreed to hire 36 new campus security officers with the authority to arrest students involved in protests. The university also committed to increasing institutional oversight by appointing a new senior vice provost to monitor the university’s Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies.

    Perhaps most notably, Columbia pledged to adopt a stance of “greater institutional neutrality,” a policy that the university said would be implemented after working with a faculty committee. The decision was seen as an attempt to quell political tensions while navigating the contentious issues surrounding student activism.

    A Leadership Crisis at Columbia University

    Armstrong’s resignation follows the departure of Minouche Shafik, who faced widespread criticism for her handling of campus protests against the war in Gaza. Under Shafik’s leadership, Columbia became a focal point of national debates about free speech, activism, and the role of universities in responding to global conflicts. Shafik ultimately resigned after facing intense scrutiny for her handling of the protests and the occupation of an academic building by students, an incident that ended with NYPD officers forcibly removing the students.

    In Armstrong’s case, her tenure was similarly marred by controversies surrounding the university’s response to the growing political activism on campus. The university’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests, particularly those related to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, led to calls for stronger action from political figures, especially within the Republican Party. Armstrong’s decision to oversee negotiations with the Trump administration over the university’s federal funding placed her at the center of a storm of political and social unrest, further intensifying the pressure on her leadership.

    Columbia’s Future Amidst Political Turmoil

    The resignation of Armstrong is a significant moment for Columbia, as the institution grapples with the broader implications of political activism within academia and the increasing role of government in shaping university policies. As the university enters another phase of leadership instability, the question remains: how will the next president balance the competing demands of activism, free speech, and political pressures from outside forces?

    Columbia’s decision to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality and increase security measures reflects the complex and polarized environment that universities are navigating in today’s political climate. The growing influence of political figures like Trump and the scrutiny placed on universities over their responses to student protests signal a new era for higher education, one where the lines between campus activism and political power are increasingly blurred.

    As the search for a permanent president continues, Columbia University will need to chart a course that both addresses the concerns of its diverse student body and faculty while navigating the external pressures that have shaped the university’s recent trajectory. The role of universities in fostering open dialogue, supporting activism, and protecting the rights of students will likely continue to be a central issue in higher education for years to come.

    Conclusion

    The resignation of Katrina Armstrong adds to a growing list of university presidents who have faced intense political pressure and scrutiny over campus activism, particularly surrounding Middle Eastern and global conflicts. Columbia’s next steps will be crucial not only for the future of the institution but also as a bellwether for how universities across the country navigate the increasingly complex landscape of political activism, academic freedom, and government intervention. The institution’s response to these challenges will undoubtedly have long-term implications for the role of higher education in a polarized society.

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  • Trump administration’s reasons for detaining Mahmoud Khalil threaten free speech

    Trump administration’s reasons for detaining Mahmoud Khalil threaten free speech

    It’s been three days since the government arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. This afternoon, the administration finally stated the basis for its actions. Its explanation threatens the free speech of millions of people.

    Yesterday, an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law.” This was confirmed today by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who announced Khalil is being targeted under a law that she characterized as allowing the secretary of state to personally deem individuals “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”

    Leavitt said Khalil “sid[ed] with terrorists,” “organized group protests” that “disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe,” and distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda.” She also said the Department of Homeland Security is trying to track down “other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity” at Columbia University.

    The law Leavitt appears to be citing requires the secretary of state to have “reasonable ground to believe” the person’s “presence or activities in the United States . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

    The administration is wielding this standard — deportation for people whose activities could cause “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” — to arrest and detain an individual graduate student. In explaining how he met this standard, the administration did not allege Khalil committed a crime. But it did explicitly cite the content of his speech,  characterizing it as “anti-American” and “pro-Hamas.” Protesting government policy is protected by the First Amendment, as is rhetorical support for a terrorist group (if not directly coordinated with it, which the government has not alleged here).

    Disrupting college classes and harassing students is not protected expression, to be sure, and Leavitt stated that Khalil organized protests that may have done so. But the administration has not detailed Khalil’s specific actions with respect to those protests, so it remains unclear whether Khalil himself violated any campus rules against discriminatory harassment. Whether any such violation justifies detention and deportation is a separate question. In either adjudication, Khalil must be afforded due process. 

    There are millions of people lawfully present in the United States without citizenship. The administration’s actions will cause them to self-censor rather than risk government retaliation. Lawful permanent residents and students on visas will fear a knock on the door simply for speaking their minds. 

    If constitutionally protected speech may render someone deportable by the secretary of state, the administration has free rein to arrest and detain any non-citizen whose speech the government dislikes. The inherent vagueness of the “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” standard does not provide notice as to what speech is or is not prohibited. The administration’s use of it will foster a culture of self-censorship and fear. 

    This is America. We don’t throw people in detention centers because of their politics. Doing so betrays our national commitment to freedom of speech.

    FIRE social media post about the government’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil, March 10, 2025.

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  • Coming soon: ‘Executive Watch’ — Tracking the Trump Administration’s free speech record — First Amendment News 456

    Coming soon: ‘Executive Watch’ — Tracking the Trump Administration’s free speech record — First Amendment News 456

    To lift a line from the songwriter extraordinaire of our era, “the times they are a- changin’.” Indeed, they are — and this is certainly true in our own corner of the world, the world of free speech. 

    For better and worse, Donald Trump and his agents are rearranging the structure of free expression in America. Only a few weeks into his presidency, things are proceeding at a breakneck speed, with a flurry of executive orders flying out the windows of the White House. Even early on, there is a sense that what will follow may well mark one of those pinpoints in our history when that “experiment” of which Holmes spoke is tested. Whatever else happens, it is important that there is some record of these times and what happened in them. To that end, we will soon launch a new segment within FAN called “Executive Watch” to track it all: the President’s orders, the executive agencies’ actions, the activities of the President’s affiliates, and Mr. Trump’s personal undertakings.

    Enter Professor Timothy Zick, the William and Mary Law School Robert & Elizabeth Scott Research Professor and John Marshall Professor of Government and Citizenship. 

    Prof. Timothy Zick

    Zick is the author of five books on the subject: “Speech out of Doors: Preserving First Amendment Liberties in Public Places,” “The Cosmopolitan First Amendment: Protecting Transborder Expressive and Religious Liberties,” “The Dynamic Free Speech Clause: Free Speech and its Relation to Other Constitutional Rights,” “The First Amendment in the Trump Era,” and “Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protest.” He is also the co-author of a First Amendment casebook, “The First Amendment: Cases and Theory.”

    For all of the above reasons and others, Professor Zick is well suited to undertake the “Executive Watch” bi-monthly feature of First Amendment News. 

    Even at this early stage, this project comes a time when news stories like the following 21 surface with increasing frequency:



    WATCH VIDEO: Trump Calls For Changes To First Amendment, Demands “Mandatory One-Year In Jail” For U.S. Flag Burning.

    By chronicling such information and then analyzing it, the hope is that our readers will have a more informed sense of the state of free speech at a time when so much is in flux. There is the hope that “Executive Watch” will prompt further discussion of that vital freedom that is at the core of constitutional government in America.

    FBI agents file First Amendment class action

    While FBI agents may be at-will employees who can, generally speaking, be fired for “any reason or no reason,” they can’t be fired for an unconstitutional reason, or as punishment for the exercise of their constitutional rights (e.g. he can’t fire all the African-American agents, or all the agents registered as Democrats).

    The Complaint, filed in DC District Court, is posted here. Plaintiffs are “employees of the FBI who worked on Jan. 6 and/or Mar-a-Lago cases, and who have been informed that they are likely to be terminated in the very near future for such activity.” They “intend to represent a class of at least 6,000 current and former FBI agents and employees who participated in some manner in the investigation and prosecution of crimes and abuses of power by Donald Trump, or by those acting at his behest.”

    Knight Institute on need for fact-checking platform

    [Recently] Meta announced changes . . . to its content moderation policies, including that it’s replacing third-party fact checking with a Community Notes model that allows users to publicly flag content they believe to be incorrect or misleading. 

    The following can be attributed to Katherine Glenn Bass, the Knight Institute’s research director:

    Katy Glenn Bass Research Director Knight Institute

    Katy Glenn Bass

    “Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement today is a stark reminder that many of the biggest platforms we use to communicate about issues of public importance are owned by billionaires who are not accountable to us. Apart from the obvious effort to signal political allegiance, the impact of the announced changes will not be clear for some time. But if we have any hope of measuring or understanding what is happening on these platforms, we need strong protections for the independent researchers and journalists who study them, and better mechanisms for ensuring they can access platform data.”

    In 2019, more than 200 researchers signed an open letter in support of the Knight Institute’s efforts to persuade Facebook to amend its terms of service to establish a “safe harbor” for public-interest journalism and research on the platform. Read more about that effort here.

    Shibley on Harvard’s anti-Semitism settlement

    Robert Shibley

    Robert Shibley

    Just one day after President Trump took office, Harvard agreed to settle two lawsuits brought against it by Jewish students that alleged the university ignored “severe and pervasive anti-Semitism on campus” and created “an unbearable educational environment” in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza.

    While the settlement language itself does not appear to be public, a press release filed on the official docket of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law v. President and Fellows of Harvard College included some details. Most notably, Harvard agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) definition of anti-Semitism. FIRE’s worry, shared by many others — including the definition’s primary author — is that, when added to policies used to punish discriminatory harassment on American campuses, the definition is too likely to be used to punish speech that is critical of Israel or its government but that is not motivated in animus against Jews or Israelis.

    FIRE has repeatedly proposed steps to address anti-Semitic discrimination on campus that would safeguard students from harassment while protecting freedom of speech, most recently in our inauguration-day letter to President Trump. Getting this right is important; any proposal that chills or censors protected speech on campus won’t pass constitutional muster at public universities, won’t square with free speech promises at private universities (like Harvard), and won’t effectively address anti-Semitism.

    Nevertheless, attempts to codify the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into laws or regulations are nothing new. FIRE posted a roundup of the widespread civil libertarian opposition to its codification last year, when Congress considered adopting it as federal law. Among those opponents is the definition’s primary author, Kenneth Stern, who spoke at length with FIRE’s Nico Perrino on our So to Speak podcast about why it’s not the right tool for the job of regulating speech. As Stern wrote back in 2016 for The New York Times: “The definition was intended for data collectors writing reports about anti-Semitism in Europe. It was never supposed to curtail speech on campus. . . . And Jewish students are protected under the law as it now stands.” (Perhaps “as it is now written” would have been more precise; whether colleges follow the law is a different issue.)

    As Stern predicted in that piece:

    If this bill becomes law it is easy to imagine calls for university administrators to stop pro-Palestinian speech. Even if lawsuits alleging Title VI violations fail, students and faculty members will be scared into silence, and administrators will err on the side of suppressing or censuring speech.

    Stern’s prediction is about to receive ground testing at Harvard, and likely at other universities that may follow its lead.

    Forthcoming book: New edition of Neier’s ‘Defending My Enemy’

    A new edition of the most important free speech book of the past half-century, with a new essay by the author on the ensuing fifty years of First Amendment controversies.

    Cover of the book "Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America" by Aryeh Neier

    When Nazis wanted to express their right to free speech in 1977 by marching through Skokie, Illinois — a town with a large population of Holocaust survivors — Aryeh Neier, then the national director of the ACLU and himself a Holocaust survivor — came to the Nazis’ defense. Explaining what many saw as a despicable bridge too far for the First Amendment, Neier spelled out his thoughts about free speech in his 1977 book Defending My Enemy.

    Now, nearly fifty years later, Neier revisits the topic of free speech in a volume that includes his original essay along with an extended new piece addressing some of the most controversial free speech issues of the past half-century. Touching on hot-button First Amendment topics currently in play, the second half of the book includes First Amendment analysis of the “Unite the Right” march in Charlotteville, campus protest over the Israel/Gaza war, book banning, trigger warnings, right-wing hate speech, the heckler’s veto, and the recent attempts by public figures including Donald Trump to overturn the long-standing Sullivan v. The New York Times precedent shielding the media from libel claims.

    Including an afterword by longtime free speech champion Nadine Strossen, Defending My Enemy offers razor-sharp analysis from the man Muck Rack describes as having “a glittering civil liberties résumé.”

    Praise for Defending My Enemy

    “Aryeh Neier’s Defending My Enemy is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. The book is a powerful reminder of why free speech matters—not just for the voices we agree with, but for the voices we abhor. Neier’s story of defending Nazis’ rights to speak in Skokie underscores a timeless truth: If we want to preserve freedom for ourselves, we must be willing to defend it for others, no matter how deeply we disagree. At a time when censorship is on the rise globally, Defending My Enemy stands as a bold and principled call to action. Every advocate of free expression needs to read this book—and more importantly, live its lessons.” — Greg Lukianoff

    Forthcoming scholarly article: ‘Output of machine learning algorithms isn’t entitled to First Amendment protection’

    Stanford Law Review logo

    Machine learning algorithms increasingly mediate our public discourse – from search engines to social media platforms to artificial intelligence companies. And as their influence on online speech swells, so do questions of whether and how the First Amendment may apply to their output. A growing chorus of scholars has expressed doubt over whether the output of machine learning algorithms is truly speech within the meaning of the First Amendment, but none have suggested a workable way to cleanly draw the line between speech and non-speech.

    This Article proposes a way to successfully draw that line based on a principle that we call “speech certainty” – the basic idea that speech is only speech if the speaker knows what he said when he said it. This idea is rooted in the text, history, and purpose of the First Amendment, and built into modern speech doctrines of editorial discretion and expressive conduct. If this bedrock principle has been overlooked, it is because, until now, all speech has been imbued with speech certainty. Articulating its existence was never necessary. But machine learning has changed that. Unlike traditional code, a close look at how machine learning algorithms work reveals that the programmers who create them can never be certain of their output. Because that output lacks speech certainty, it’s not the programmer’s speech.

    Accordingly, this Article contends that the output of machine learning algorithms isn’t entitled to First Amendment protection. With the Supreme Court signaling its intent to address unresolved questions of online speech, we are poised to enter a new era of First Amendment jurisprudence in the coming years. As we do, scholars, practicing attorneys, and judges can no longer ignore how the algorithms underlying online speech actually work – and how they have changed with the advent of machine learning. 

    Without recognizing this paradigm shift in algorithmic speech, we risk sleepwalking into a radical departure from centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence. By failing to distinguish between traditional and machine learning algorithms, current consensus about algorithmic speech suggests that the Constitution should, for the first time in its history, protect speech that a speaker does not know he has said. Speech certainty provides a novel and principled approach to conceptualizing machine learning algorithms under existing First Amendment jurisprudence. 

    Related

    More in the news

    2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases

    Cases decided 

    • Villarreal v. Alaniz (Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
    • Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
    • TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)

    Review granted

    Pending petitions

    Petitions denied

    Last scheduled FAN

    FAN 455: “Eight free expression cases pending on SCOTUS docket”

    This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.

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  • Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Administration’s Title IX Rule

    Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Administration’s Title IX Rule

    by CUPA-HR | January 9, 2025

    On January 9, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky Court vacated the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations. The order strikes down the regulations nationwide, reverting enforcement back to the 2019 Title IX regulations set by the Trump administration.

    Background

    The Biden administration’s Title IX final rule was released in April 2024 and was set to take effect on August 1, 2024. Soon after the rule was published, several states filed legal challenges against it, resulting in preliminary injunctions that blocked the rule from taking effect in 26 states and hundreds of schools in other states that did not challenge the regulations.

    The Biden administration appealed the preliminary injunctions to the Supreme Court, requesting that the court limit the scope of the preliminary injunctions placed by the lower courts to block only those provisions that related to gender identity. They argued that the lower courts’ decisions to grant the preliminary injunctions were based on concerns with the expanded protections for transgender students and that other provisions like the new grievance procedures and training requirements set forth by the final rule should be able to take effect. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the Biden administration’s request, arguing that the gender identity provisions were “intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.”

    District Court Judge’s Ruling

    In the ruling that vacates the rule nationwide, the federal judge stated that the Biden administration’s Title IX rule is unlawful because Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination does not include the scope laid out in the regulations, which include expanded protections for pregnancy or related conditions, gender identity and sexual orientation. The order also states that the rule violates the First Amendment and that it is “arbitrary and capricious.”

    Looking Ahead

    The judge’s order almost certainly ends any hopes for the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations to take effect nationwide. The Biden administration may decide to appeal the decision to a higher court, but efforts to reinstate the rule will likely be unsuccessful given the few days they have left in office and the incoming Trump administration’s unwillingness to defend the rule in court. Alternatively, the Trump administration may seek to update their 2019 Title IX regulations, though any urgency to do so may be diminished now that the 2019 regulations are back in place.

    CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for Title IX updates and keep members apprised via Washington Insider Alert emails and the blog.



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