The Institute for Free Speech’s Bradley Smith and Brett Nolan join the show to discuss two upcoming Supreme Court arguments involving donor disclosure (First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin) and political party contributions to candidates (National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC).
The conversation also explores the broader landscape for political speech and campaign regulation, what legal battles may be next for the Supreme Court, and how both guests found their way into First Amendment advocacy.
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NCAN said mixed-status families must make their own decision regarding whether they feel comfortable filling out the FAFSA.
College access organizations are raising concerns about students from mixed-status families—families with members who hold different immigration statuses—who are filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“Although the Higher Education Act prohibits the use of data for any purpose other than determining and awarding federal financial assistance, [the National College Attainment Network] cannot assure mixed-status students and families that data submitted to US Department of Education (ED), as part of the FAFSA process, will continue to be protected,” NCAN, which represents college access organizations across the nation, wrote in new guidance.
The organization added that the Office of Federal Student Aid has said the Education Department won’t share information that breaks the law.
But “we understand many families’ confidence in this statement may not be as certain under the current administration,” the organization continued. The post advised families to consider whether to submit a FAFSA on a “case-by-case basis.”
The organization had previously published similar guidance before President Donald Trump even took office but updated it after the 2026–27 FAFSA opened late last month. Zenia Henderson, chief program officer for NCAN, said the organization has received a slew of questions about the security of the personal information entered into the FAFSA, and many of its member organizations are reporting that some of the families they work with are forgoing the FAFSA out of fear.
The Trump administration has also attacked programs and initiatives that help undocumented students themselves access higher education. The administration has demanded states stop offering in-state tuition to undocumented students and has attempted to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation certain undocumented individuals who were brought to the country as children and has opened the door to higher education for this group.
Other experts and advocacy groups agreed that there is cause for concern among mixed-status families.
“Concerns are very much warranted in light of how cross-agency collaboration has been weaponized against immigrant families in recent months—including but not limited to the ostensible collusion between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to vacate active asylum cases when parents and children are lawfully appearing in immigration court, so that they can be apprehended on the premises by immigration enforcement and placed in detention,” wrote Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, a nonprofit immigrant law center in Texas, in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “There is simply no indication that the Trump administration will adhere to legal precedent.”
Will Davies, director of policy and research for Breakthrough Central Texas, a college access organization, noted in an email to Inside Higher Ed that, even though the Trump administration’s immigration attacks have been especially worrying for mixed-status families, such families have long had to make difficult decisions about when to submit personal information to the government.
He also noted that FAFSA data is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and said that, to his knowledge, no undocumented parent has ever been targeted using FAFSA data.
Cutting Off Access
For many families, the choice is not as clear-cut as simply not filling out the FAFSA. Most institutions and states calculate their financial aid offerings using the FAFSA’s formula and require students to fill out the FAFSA to take advantage of that aid. If mixed-status families do not complete the FAFSA, they are essentially cutting themselves off from almost all sources of assistance in paying for college.
“It has the potential to close a lot of doors in terms of accessing aid that’s needed, from last-dollar scholarships to merit-based scholarships,” Henderson said. “There are so many folks that ask for FAFSA information and that [the] application be competed in order to check eligibility, because they may not have their own systems or processes in place. FAFSA really is the default way to prove need.”
Three states—California, New York and Washington—have developed their own financial need calculation tools for individuals who want to be considered only for state and local aid. All three address privacy concerns, stating specifically that the data will not be provided to the federal government without a court order.
“The opportunity to pursue an education is highly valued, and financial aid is the only way many students can afford college or training,” the Washington Student Achievement Council wrote in a message, released days after Trump entered office, about aid applicant privacy. WSAC administers Washington’s state aid calculator.
“We sympathize deeply with anyone concerned about their privacy in applying for financial aid, and we support students and families in making decisions that best fit their educational goals and risk considerations. While WSAC cannot provide guidance on what a family should do in a specific situation, we do encourage students, families, educators, and advocates to review the following resources that may provide helpful information.”
Alison De Lucca, executive director of the Southern California College Attainment Network, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that her organization is working with several families who are uncertain if they will fill out the FAFSA this year; an estimated one in every five individuals under the age of 18 in California comes from a mixed-status family.
One SoCal CAN student opted to fill out just California’s state aid form, the California Dream Act Application, this year in order to protect her mother—even though she thought she might have benefited from federal aid.
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Dive Brief:
Harvard University reported a $112.6 million net operating deficit in fiscal 2025, its first shortfall since the pandemic and the largest that the private nonprofit has racked up since 2011.
The deficit — a steep decline from last year’s surplus of $45.3 million — shows the toll the Trump administration’s financial war against the institution has taken on its finances.
Despite its fiscal challenges this year, Harvard remains the country’s richest university. At $82.4 billion, its total assets grew 7.3% year over year in fiscal 2025, thanks to donations and strong investment returns.
Dive Insight:
Harvard’s financials show strains from federal disruptions, with revenue from federal support dropping 8.4% to $628.6 million in fiscal 2025, which ended June 30.
“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a message accompanying the financial statements.
But the report understates the extent to which the Trump administration has tried to hurt the university as it pushes Harvard to enter a potentially expensive and far-reaching settlement.
The attacks began this spring with the cancellation of research grants over allegations that the Ivy League institution failed to protect students on campus from antisemitism.
In April, it froze $2.2 billion of Harvard’s grants and contracts after the university declined a settlement that would have given the federal government unprecedented say in academic operations
In a Thursday Q&A, Harvard Chief Financial Officer Ritu Kalra described an “abrupt termination of nearly the entire portfolio of our direct federally sponsored research grants.” That included $116 million in reimbursement for money Harvard already spent that “disappeared almost overnight.”
The Trump administration has threatened and attempted to do much more. The administration has also tried through multiple maneuvers to block Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who make up a little over a quarter of its student body.
A federal court overseeing Harvard’s litigation against the government has paused or blocked the above efforts, but the Trump administration has either filed or promised appeals over those decisions.
President Donald Trump’s government has also sought to weaken Harvard’s patent rights by licensing them out through an obscure regulatory process never used by the federal government before and. Additionally, it has threatened Harvard’s access to federal student aid if the university does not comply with an expansive data request about undergraduate admissions.The administration further sought a $500 million settlement to resolve investigations into the university, a proposal Garber dismissed.
All of that has come amid rising costs for the university and many others in the country. In fiscal 2025, Harvard’s total operating expenses rose 5.7% to $6.8 billion.
And starting in 2026 the university expects a tax bill on its endowment amounting to around $300 million a year going forward, after Republicans’ passed a massive spending package this year, which increased taxes on wealthy college endowments.
“That means hundreds of millions of dollars that will not be available to support financial aid, research, and teaching,” Kalra said.
To navigate the choppy, uncertain financial waters, Harvard has laid off employees, frozen hiring, kept salaries flat and slowed spending on new projects. Going forward, Garber said that Harvard has intensified efforts to expand its revenue pool and is “examining operations at every level of the University as we seek greater adaptability and efficiency.”
Endowment distributions and current-use gifts comprise 46% of its operating budget, far outpacing funds that the university receives from tuition or sponsored research.
In a scathing decision published Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that two federal agencies led a campaign to detain and deport international students and faculty for pro-Palestinian speech with the goal of chilling further protests, violating the First Amendment.
“There was no ideological deportation policy,” wrote senior U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, in the 161-page ruling. “It was never the Secretaries’ [Marco Rubio, of the Department of State, and Kristi Noem, of the Department of Homeland Security] immediate intention to deport all pro-Palestinian non-citizens for that obvious First Amendment violation, that could have raised a major outcry. Rather, the intent of the Secretaries was more invidious—to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.”
He also stated unequivocally that noncitizens in the U.S. have the same First Amendment rights as citizens—despite the Trump administration’s argument to the contrary during the trial.
The decision, which Young said may be the most important ever to fall within his district, comes about two months after the conclusion of a two-week trial in the case of American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, during which State Department and DHS employees explained that they had been tasked with identifying noncitizen pro-Palestinian activists to investigate and deport. Young wrote in his decision that the departments’ actions make it clear that they were working together to conduct targeted deportations with the goal of chilling speech—the repercussions of which are still being felt now.
The plaintiffs, which include the AAUP, three of its chapters—at Rutgers University, Harvard University and New York University—and the Middle East Studies Association, celebrated the win in a remote press conference Tuesday afternoon.
“That’s a really important victory and a really historic ruling that should have immediate implications for the Trump administration’s policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, the lead litigator on the case and a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “If the First Amendment means anything, it’s that the government cannot imprison you because it doesn’t like the speech that you have engaged in, and this decision is really welcome because it reaffirms that basic idea, which is foundational to our democracy.”
Still, despite the victory, several of the plaintiffs emphasized just how worrying the federal government’s crusade against pro-Palestinian noncitizen students and faculty is. Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, said he believes those actions, as well as the federal government’s other attacks against academic freedom, are an even greater threat to higher education than McCarthyism was.
“The only equivalents might be the Red Scare and McCarthyism, but this is even worse, right? Because it’s not only attacking individual speech, it’s also attacking institutional independence and speech, right?” he said. “The Trump administration’s attacks on higher ed are the greatest assault on this sector that we have ever seen in the history of this country.”
So, What Comes Next?
Young previously separated this case into two phases, one focused on the government’s liability and the other on relief for the plaintiffs. According to Krishnan, the judge will schedule a later hearing to determine that relief. The plaintiffs hope Young will forbid the government from continuing to target noncitizens based on their political views, making permanent an injunction that the judge granted in March.
But Young noted in his ruling Tuesday that he is unsure what a remedy for the plaintiffs might look like in an era when the president consistently seems able to avoid recourse for unconstitutional acts.
“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” he wrote, concluding the decision.
Texas A&M University President Dr. Mark A. Welsh III announced his resignation Thursday following intense political pressure from state Republican leaders over a viral confrontation involving gender content in a children’s literature course—the latest in a series of incidents that underscore the mounting challenges facing academic freedom and diversity efforts at public universities across Texas.
Welsh’s departure came just over a week after state Rep. Brian Harrison amplified a video on social media showing a student confronting Professor Melissa McCoul about course content. Despite initially defending McCoul’s academic freedom, Welsh terminated the professor the following day under pressure from Harrison and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
The incident represents part of a broader Republican-led campaign to exert political control over university curricula, faculty hiring, and campus speech—efforts that education advocates warn are undermining the foundational principles of higher education.
Welsh’s tenure, which began in 2023, was marked by repeated clashes with state political leaders over diversity and inclusion initiatives. In January, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened Welsh’s position after the university’s business school planned to participate in a conference aimed at recruiting Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous graduate students. Under pressure, Welsh withdrew the university from the conference entirely.
The pattern reflects what faculty and higher education experts describe as an escalating assault on academic autonomy.
Despite strong support from faculty and students, Welsh’s position became untenable under sustained political attack. On last Wednesday, the university’s Executive Committee of Distinguished Professors—composed of 12 faculty members holding the institution’s highest academic honor—sent a letter urging regents to retain Welsh.
“All members of this Committee write this letter collectively to strongly urge you to retain President Mark Welsh in the wake of recent events,” the faculty letter stated.
Student leaders also rallied behind Welsh, with dozens of current and former student government representatives praising his “steadfast love and stewardship for our University” and expressing “faith and confidence in his leadership.”
However, these expressions of campus support proved insufficient against external political pressure.
Welch’s predecessor, M. Katherine Banks, had resigned following the botched hiring of journalism professor Kathleen McElroy, whose employment offer was undermined after regents expressed concerns about her work on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Faculty and staff members at Auburn University, Eastern New Mexico University–Roswell and Coastal Carolina University are among those who have been punished for their comments on Charlie Kirk’s death.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | Nordin Catic/Getty Images/The Cambridge Union | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
College faculty and staff members have become popular targets of the right-wing doxing firestorm that ignited in the hours after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed last week during an event at Utah Valley University. As of Thursday afternoon, Inside Higher Ed had identified 37 faculty and staff members who are being harassed online for allegedly critical or insensitive social media posts about Kirk. So far, at least 24 of those employees have been terminated, suspended or put on administrative leave, including employees at Auburn University, Eastern New Mexico University–Roswell and Coastal Carolina University.
The force and scale of the doxing campaigns—and the speed with which institutions have moved to suspend or terminate their targets—paints a grim picture of free speech rights on public college campuses. Widespread doxing as a political tool to punish universities and academics is not a new phenomenon, but right now it’s particularly virulent, explained Keith Whittington, a professor at Yale Law School and an expert on free speech. “The size of the activity, the pressure campaign and the … short period of time is highly unusual,” he said. “Universities feel like they’re under intense pressure to mollify right-wing activists and try not to draw negative attention from the [Trump] administration.”
Most of the higher education targets of doxing campaigns have been identified first by users on X, Facebook or other social media sites. Then anonymous accounts broadcast their name, employer, photo and contact information, along with calls for their firing. A group that calls itself the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation has also asked the public to submit via email or online the names, identifying information and screenshots of any person who has criticized Kirk or appeared to celebrate his death. On Sunday, the group claimed to have received more than 63,000 unique names.
The first call-outs that gained traction were particularly inflammatory. For example, a University of Toronto professor—who has since been placed on leave—posted in a comment on X, “shooting is honestly too good for so many of you fascist cunts.” This type of speech is often “universally condemned,” but it should still be protected by universities committed to First Amendment values, Whittington said. (Or Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.) Now, doxers are attacking even those who engage in mild criticism of Kirk or his supporters, as well as those who merely quote Kirk’s own views on gun control and other topics in juxtaposition to the news of his death.
“We do seem to see a pattern in which activists are very quickly moving beyond [more egregious] instances to much more marginal cases, where … we might not think that these particular examples of speech violated any widespread view that it is inappropriate or beyond the pale,” Whittington said.
A staff member at Wake Forest University in North Carolina was doxed and later terminated after posting on social media the lyrics, “He had it coming, he had it coming” from the Chicago song “Cell Block Tango.” One University of South Carolina professor was targeted by doxers for a critical Facebook comment about a state representative who supported Kirk and was later relieved of teaching duties because of it. A faculty member at East Tennessee State University was put on administrative leave after posting, “You can’t be upset if one of those deaths in [sic] yours #charliekirk” in response to a news headline that quoted Kirk saying, “It’s worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” Inside Higher Ed has opted not to name employees that haven’t been confirmed by their university in order to prevent further harassment.
The number of doxing campaigns targeting educators is on the rise. Experts say higher ed employees can stay safe by keeping work and personal accounts separate, using email masks, and removing personal information from data broker sites. For more tips, see our story here.
So far no higher ed institution has faced as swift and fierce a condemnation from conservatives online as Clemson University, which, in response to the political pressure, has now terminated two faculty members and one staff member over their social media posts about Kirk. An assistant professor at Clemson was among the first to be named and shamed. On Sept. 10, the day Kirk was shot and killed, they posted, “Today was one of the most beautiful days ever. The weather was perfect, sunny with a light breeze. This was such a beautiful day.” Kirk’s supporters interpreted this comment as a celebration of his death. The Clemson professor also reposted jokes about the killing—including “no one mourns the Wicked” and “[N-word] worried about DEI and DIED instead.”
From there, the doxing machine roared to life. The student group Clemson College Republicans was the first to identify the professor and share their posts, according to U.S. representative Russell Fry, whose Sept. 11 post on X about the professor garnered 1.2 million views. The post was amplified by hundreds of right-wing accounts and other politicians, including U.S. representative Nancy Mace, who has commented on and reposted dozens of similar call-outs. Clemson officials issued a statement on Sept. 12, writing that “the deeply inappropriate remarks made on social media in response to the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk are reprehensible and do not reflect the University values and principles that define our University community.” They made no mention of disciplining the employees involved and noted only that the university will “take appropriate action for speech that constitutes a genuine threat which is not protected by the Constitution.”
The pressure campaign continued. Two other employees of the public university—a staff member and another professor—were also targeted for their posts about Kirk’s death, and Republican politicians called for their firing, too. Clemson officials issued another statement a day later, stating that an employee had been suspended and reiterating that officials would take action “in cases where speech is not protected under the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.”
The university did not name any employees or say what the suspended employee posted. However, the posts circulating online from the three Clemson employees in question appear to be protected speech, according to the way most First Amendment scholars interpret it.
Over the weekend, U.S. representative Ralph Norman, the X account for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Republicans and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina joined in the calls for the employees’ firing, and some politicians called for the State Legislature to defund Clemson. So did President Donald Trump, who reposted a Truth Social post from South Carolina state representative Jordan Pace that said, “Now Clemson faculty is inciting violence against conservatives. It’s time for a special session to end this. Defund Clemson. End Tenure at State colleges.”
Clemson officials did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment. The university’s academic freedom policy for faculty states, “When they speak or write as private persons, faculty shall be free from institutional censorship or disciplinary action, but they shall avoid creating an impression that they are speaking or acting for the University.” The Faculty Handbook doesn’t outline any clear exceptions to this rule but does note that “as professional educators and academic officers, they are aware that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence, faculty members should endeavor to be accurate, to exercise due restraint, to show respect for the utterances of others, and, when appropriate, to indicate that they are not officially representing Clemson University.”
On Monday, Clemson announced it had terminated the staff member and removed both faculty members from their teaching duties. By Tuesday, all three employees had been terminated. South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson told Clemson’s president he had the “full legal authority” to terminate the employees, writing in a statement, “The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it does not shield threats, glorification of violence, or behavior that undermines the mission of our state institutions.” This contradicts what experts at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and other free speech experts have said in recent days: that speech, even if it’s poorly timed, tasteless, inappropriate, controversial or a nonspecific endorsement of violence, is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
While these name-and-shame campaigns constitute a particularly harsh attack on campus speech, they are nothing new. In fact, they’ve increased in frequency since 2023, when many pro-Palestinian academics were targeted, said Heather Steffen, a humanities professor at Georgetown University and director of the American Association of University Professors’ Faculty First Responders group.
“Faculty who speak about certain issues have been more vulnerable to doxing for a long time,” Steffen said. “So anyone who talks about issues of race or racism, gender and sexuality, or Palestine tends to be more likely to be doxed or somehow otherwise attacked in a politically motivated fashion, as do academics who are faculty of color, or queer faculty, or trans faculty or pro-Palestinian faculty.”
Ultimately, it’s not about what the employees said, Whittington explained. It’s about the political outcomes.
“This is primarily about exercising political power and trying to silence and suppress people who disagree with you politically,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that the offense is trivial … What matters is you’re identifying people that you politically disagree with and you have a moment in which you can exercise power over those people. And there are lots of people willing to take advantage of those opportunities.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the House Select Committee on the China opens its landmark hearing, “Authoritarians and Algorithms: Why U.S. AI Must Lead,” Committee leaders are unveiling new bipartisan legislation to confront the CCP’s growing exploitation of artificial intelligence.
Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) today announced the House introduction of the “No Adversarial AI Act”—bipartisan legislation also being championed in the Senate by Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Gary Peters (D-MI). The bill would prohibit U.S. executive agencies from acquiring or using artificial intelligence developed by companies tied to foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party. The House legislation is cosponsored by a bipartisan group of Select Committee members, including Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Darin LaHood (R-IL).
“We are in a new Cold War—and AI is the strategic technology at the center,” said Chairman Moolenaar.“The CCP doesn’t innovate—it steals, scales, and subverts. From IP theft and chip smuggling to embedding AI in surveillance and military platforms, the Chinese Communist Party is racing to weaponize this technology. We must draw a clear line: U.S. government systems cannot be powered by tools built to serve authoritarian interests.”
What the No Adversarial AI Act Does:
Creates a public list of AI systems developed by foreign adversaries, maintained and updated by the Federal Acquisition Security Council.
Prohibits executive agencies from acquiring or using adversary-developed AI—except in narrow cases such as research, counterterrorism, or mission-critical needs.
Establishes a delisting process for companies that can demonstrate they are free from foreign adversary control or influence.
“Artificial intelligence controlled by foreign adversaries poses a direct threat to our national security, our data, and our government operations,” said Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi. “We cannot allow hostile regimes to embed their code in our most sensitive systems. This bipartisan legislation will create a clear firewall between foreign adversary AI and the U.S. government, protecting our institutions and the American people. Chinese, Russian, and other adversary AI systems simply do not belong on government devices, and certainly shouldn’t be entrusted with government data.”
Senator Rick Scott said, “The Communist Chinese regime will use any means necessary to spy, steal, and undermine the United States, and as AI technology advances, we must do more to protect our national security and stop adversarial regimes from using technology against us. With clear evidence that China can have access to U.S. user data on AI systems, it’s absolutely insane for our own federal agencies to be using these dangerous platforms and subject our government to Beijing’s control. Our No Adversarial AI Act will stop this direct threat to our national security and keep the American government’s sensitive data out of enemy hands.”
The legislation marks a major action in the Select Committee’s AI campaign, which aims to secure U.S. AI supply chains, enforce robust export controls, and ensure American innovation does not fuel authoritarian surveillance or military systems abroad.
Today’s hearing and legislation continues the series of new proposals and messaging the Committee will roll out this summer to confront the CCP’s exploitation of U.S. innovation and prevent American technology from fueling Beijing’s AI ambitions.
On May 6, Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), along with Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Jim Justice (R-WV), and Pete Ricketts (R-NE), introduced the Overtime Wages Tax Relief Act, which is intended to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on overtime pay. The proposal provides an income tax deduction for overtime pay up to a certain threshold. Marshall explained that his goal with the legislation was to target the benefit to lower- and middle-income workers in industries and occupations that traditionally pay overtime.
Under the proposal, individuals would be able to deduct up to $10,000 of overtime pay from their income taxes. For married couples, the cap would be set at $20,000. This is an “above-the-line” income tax deduction, so workers would have the ability to claim the deduction whether they itemize their deductions or take the standard deduction.
Additionally, the proposal phases out the benefit for top earners, identified as individuals earning $100,000 or more and married couples earning $200,000 or more. The deduction is reduced by $50 for every $1,000 in income the individual or married couple earns above their respective threshold.
The legislation also includes reporting obligations for employers “to ensure transparency and accuracy in claiming the deduction.” Employers will be required to report overtime earnings to employees in their annual wage and tax statements.
Marshall is hoping to have the legislation included in the Republican’s fiscal year 2025 budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to cover everything from border security to extensions for the expiring 2017 tax cuts President Trump signed into law during his first term.
CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of additional updates on this bill and others related to overtime laws and regulations.
Mark Carney’s whirlwind start as Canadian prime minister has seen his party surge in the polls against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threats but has provided little time to flesh out the newcomer’s policies on higher education and science.
When Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January, the Liberal Party was trailing the Conservatives by more than 20 percentage points and was only narrowly ahead of the New Democratic Party.
But since Trump started a trade war with what he has belittled as his “51st state,” the Liberals have rebounded remarkably in the polls and are now favorites to retain power in the snap election on April 28.
Although the federal government is the primary player when it comes to investments in research and innovation in Canada, higher education has seldom been a major issue in national elections, said Glen Jones, professor of higher education at the University of Toronto.
“Not surprisingly, the entire election is focusing on the trade war that has been initiated by President Trump,” he said.
“The Carney platform, at least to date, has largely been about providing support and stability to individuals and industries that will be directly impacted by tariffs.”
Carney has been focusing primarily on positioning himself as the leader best able to respond to the new, evolving relationship with the U.S.—a strategy that seems to be working, added Jones.
Sarah Laframboise, executive director of Evidence for Democracy, a science policy nonprofit organization, said Carney’s background—as a former United Nations special envoy for climate action—suggests that he will remain committed to his views on climate policy, and that his pro-economic growth platform could translate into targeting investments in research, innovation and artificial intelligence.
“We will also likely see an increased focus on defense-related research, particularly around Arctic security and collaborative defense technologies. However, it remains unclear if this will extend to basic research,” said Laframboise.
“Additionally, his restrictive stance on international student admissions could have significant consequences for Canada’s higher education sector.”
Carney, who has never previously held elected office, earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in the U.K. before later going on to become governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020.
“The investment fell short of reinvigorating funding for science, tech and the innovation sector,” he said.
“If the Carney Liberals are elected to power, I think we can expect the previous government’s investment to stay … but will they double down on that investment?”
Having examined Carney’s website—which mentions artificial intelligence 11 times, innovation once and science not at all—Johnson said the prime minister’s priorities in future funding seemed fairly clear.
With either Carney or Poilievre in charge, he said the next government will have an “amazing opportunity” to invest in science, technology and innovation.
“Given the USA’s deep cuts to science funding, Canada has the opportunity to leap forward as a global leader in strategic areas, but only if we increase our investment in science, training, technology and mobilization of the innovations that come from these activities.”
Maraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and the principal of the elementary school Escuela de la Communidad Jaime C. Rodriguez for the past seven. She never knows how much money her school in Yabucoa will receive from the government each year because it isn’t based on the number of children enrolled. One year she got $36,000; another year, it was $12,000.
But for the first time as an educator, Caraballo noticed a big difference during the Biden administration. Because of an infusion of federal dollars into the island’s education system, Caraballo received a $250,000 grant, an unprecedented amount of money. She used it to buy books and computers for the library, white boards and printers for classrooms, to beef up a robotics program and build a multipurpose sports court for her students. “It meant a huge difference for the school,” Caraballo said.
Yabucoa, a small town in southeast Puerto Rico, was one of the regions hardest hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017. And this school community, like hundreds of others in Puerto Rico, has experienced near constant disruption since then. A series of natural disasters, including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and landslides, followed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, has pounded the island and interrupted learning. There has also been constant churn of local education secretaries — seven in the past eight years. The Puerto Rican education system — the seventh-largest school district in the United States — has been made more vulnerable by the island’s overwhelming debt, mass emigration and a crippled power grid.
Maraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and is now the principal of an elementary school. Her school has been slated for closure three times because of mass emigration from the island. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report
Under President Joe Biden, there were tentative gains, buttressed by billions of dollars and sustained personal attention from top federal education officials, many experts and educators on the island said. Now they worry that it will all be dismantled with the change in the White House. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the U.S. territory, having reportedly said that it was “dirty and the people were poor.” During his first term, he withheld billions of dollars in federal aid after Hurricane Maria and has suggested selling the island or swapping it for Greenland.
A recent executive order to make English the official language has worried people on the island, where only 1 in 5 people speak fluent English, and Spanish is the medium of instruction in schools. Trump is seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and has already madesweeping cuts to the agency, which will have widespread implications across the island. Even if federal funds — which last year made up more than two thirds of funding for the Puerto Rican Department of Education, or PRDE — were transferred directly to the local government, it would likely lead to worse outcomes for the most vulnerable children, say educators and policymakers. The PRDE has historically been plagued by political interference, widespread bureaucracy and a lack of transparency.
And the local education department is not as technologically advanced as other state education departments, nor as able to disseminate best practices. For example, Puerto Rico does not have a “per pupil formula,” a calculation commonly used on the mainland to determine the amount of money each student receives for their education. Robert Mujica is the executive director of the Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board, first convened under President Barack Obama in 2016 to deal with the island’s financial morass. Mujica said Puerto Rico’s current allocation of education funds is opaque. “How the funds are distributed is perceived as a political process,” he said. “There’s no transparency and there’s no clarity.”
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In 2021, Miguel Cardona, Biden’s secretary of education, promised “a new day” for Puerto Rico. “For too long, Puerto Rico’s students and educators were abandoned,” he said. During his tenure, Cardona signed off on almost $6 billion in federal dollars for the island’s educational system, leading to a historic pay increase for teachers, funding for after-school tutoring programs, hiring of hundreds of school mental health professionals and the creation of a pilot program to decentralize the PRDE.
Cardona designated a senior adviser, Chris Soto, to be his point person for the island’s education system to underscore the federal commitment. During nearly four years in office, he made more than 50 trips to the island. Carlos Rodriguez Silvestre, the executive director of the Flamboyan Foundation, a nonprofit in Puerto Rico that has led children’s literacy efforts on the island, said the level of respect and sustained interest felt like a partnership, not a top-down mandate. “I’ve never seen that kind of attention to education in Puerto Rico,” he said. “Soto practically lived on the island.”
Soto also worked closely with Victor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez, the president of the teachers union, Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, or AMPR, which resulted in a deal in which educators received $1,000 more a month to their base salary, a nearly 30 percent increase for the average teacher.“It was the largest salary increase in the history of teachers in Puerto Rico,” Bonilla said, though even with the increase, teachers here still make far less money than teachers on the mainland.
One of the biggest complaints Soto said he heard was how rigid and bureaucratic the Puerto Rico Department of Education was, despite a 2018 education reform law that allows for more local control. The education agency — the largest unit of government on the island, with the most employees and the biggest budget — was set up so that the central office had to sign off on everything. So Soto created and oversaw a pilot program in Ponce, a region on the island’s southern coast, focusing on decentralization.
For the first time, the local community elected an advisory board of education, and superintendent candidates had to apply rather than be appointed, Soto said. The superintendent was given the authority to sign off on budget requests directly rather than sending them through officials in San Juan, as well as the flexibility to spend money in his region based on individual schools’ needs.
In the past, that wasn’t a consideration: For example, Yadira Sanchez, a psychologist who has worked in Puerto Rican education for more than 20 years, remembers when a school got dozens of new air conditioners even though it didn’t need it. “They already had functioning air conditioners,” she said, “so that money was lost.”
The pilot project also focused on increasing efficiency. For example, children with disabilities are now evaluated at their schools rather than having to visit a special center. And Soto says he tried to remove politics and increase transparency around spending in the PRDE as well. “You can improve invoices, but if your political friends are getting the work, then you don’t have a good school system,” he said.
A school bus under a tree that fell during Hurricane Maria, which hit the island of Puerto Rico in September 2017. More than a year later, it had not been removed. Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images for Lumix
Under Biden, Puerto Rico also received a competitive U.S. Department of Education grant for $10.5 million for community schools, another milestone. And the federal department started including data on the territory in some education statistics collected. “Puerto Rico wasn’t even on these trackers, so we started to dig into how do we improve the data systems? Unraveling the data issue meant that Puerto Rico can properly get recognized,” Soto said.
But already there are plans to undo Cardona’s signature effort in Ponce. The island’s newly elected governor, Jenniffer González Colón, is a Republican and a Trump supporter. The popular secretary of education, Eliezer Ramos Parés, returned earlier this year to head the department after leading it from April 2021 to July 2023 when the governor unexpectedly asked him to resign — not an unusual occurrence within the island’s government, where political appointments can end suddenly and with little public debate. He told The Hechinger Report that the program won’t continue in its current form, calling it “inefficient.”
“The pilot isn’t really effective,” he said, noting that politics can influence spending decisions not only at the central level but at the regional level as well. “We want to have some controls.” He also said expanding the effort across the island would cost tens of millions of dollars. Instead, Ramos said he was looking at more limited approaches to decentralization, around some human resource and procurement functions. He said he was also exploring a per pupil funding formula for Puerto Rico and looking at lessons from other large school districts such as New York City and Hawaii.
While education has been the largest budget item on the island for years, it’s still far less than any of the 50 states spend on each student. Puerto Rico spends $9,500 per student, compared with an average of $18,600 in the states.
The U.S. Department of Education, which supplements local and state funding for students in poverty and with disabilities, has an outsized role in Puerto Rico schools. On the island, 55 percent of children live below the poverty line, compared with 17 percent in the 50 states; for students in special education, the figures are 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively. In total, during fiscal year 2024, more than 68 percent of the education budget on the island comes from federal funding, compared to 11 percent in U.S. states. The department also administers Pell Grants for low-income students — some 72 percent of Puerto Rican students apply — and supports professional development efforts and initiatives for Puerto Rican children who move back and forth between the mainland and territory.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s new education secretary, has reportedly said that the government will continue to meet its “statutory obligations” to students even as the department shuts down or transfers some operations and lays off staff. The U.S. Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
Some say the Biden administration’s pouring billions of dollars into a troubled education system with little accountability has created unrealistic expectations and there’s no plan for what happens after money is spent. Mujica, the executive director of the oversight board, said the infusion of funds postponed tough decisions by the Puerto Rican government. “When you have so much money, it papers over a lot of problems. You didn’t have to deal with some of the challenges that are fundamental to the system.” And he said there is little discussion of what happens when that money runs out. “How are you going to bridge that gap? Either those programs go away or we’re going to have to find the funding for them,” Mujica said.
He said efforts like the one in Ponce to bring decision making closer to where the students’ needs are is “vitally important.” Still, he said he’s not sure the money improved student outcomes. “This was a huge opportunity to make fundamental changes and investments that will yield long-term results. I’m not sure that we’ve seen the metrics to support that.”
Puerto Rico is one of the most educationally impoverished regions, with academic outcomes well below the mainland. On the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test that students across the U.S. take, just 2 percent of fourth graders in Puerto Rico were proficient, the highest score ever recorded for the island, and zero percent of eighth graders were. Puerto Rican students don’t take the NAEP for reading because they learn in Spanish, not English, though results shared by Ramos at a press conference in 2022 showed only 1 percent of third graders were reading at grade level.
There are some encouraging efforts. Flamboyan Foundation, the nonprofit in Puerto Rico, has been leading an island-wide coalition of 70 partners to improve K-3 literacy, including through professional development. Teacher training through the territory’s education department has often been spotty or optional.
The organization now works closely with the University of Puerto Rico and, as part of that effort, oversees spending of $3 million in literacy training. Approximately 1,500 or a third of Puerto Rico’s K-5 teachers have undergone the rigorous training. Educators were given $500 as an incentive for participating, along with books for their classrooms and three credit hours in continuing education. “It was a lot of quality hours. This was not the ‘spray and pray’ approach,” said Silvestre. That effort will continue, according to Ramos, who called it “very effective.”
A new reading test for first through third graders the nonprofit helped design showed that between the 2023 and 2024 school years, most children were below grade level but made growth in every grade. “But we still have a long way to go so that this data can get to teachers in a timely manner and in a way that they can actually act on it,” Silvestre said.
Kristin Ehrgood, Flamboyan Foundation’s CEO, said it’s too soon to see dramatic gains. “It’s really hard to see a ton of positive outcomes in such a short period of time with significant distrust that has been built over years,” she said. She said they weren’t sure how the Trump administration may work with or fund Puerto Rico’s education system but that the Biden administration had built a lot of goodwill. “There is a lot of opportunity that could be built on, if a new administration chooses to do that.”
Another hopeful sign is that the oversight board, which was widely protested when it was formed, has cut the island’s debt from $73 billion to $31 billion. And last year board members increased education spending by 3 percent. Mujica said the board is focused on making sure that any investment translates into improved outcomes for students: “Our view is resources have to go into the classroom.”
Betty A. Rosa, education commissioner and president of the University of the State of New York and a member of the oversight board, said leadership churn in Puerto Rico drives its educational instability. Every new leader is invested in “rebuilding, restructuring, reimagining, pick your word,” she said. “There is no consistency.” Unlike her New York state position, the Puerto Rican education secretary and other positions are political appointments. “If you have permanent governance, then even when the leadership changes, the work continues.”
Ramos, who experienced this instability when the previous governor unexpectedly asked to resign in 2023, said he met McMahon, the new U.S. secretary of education, in Washington, D.C., and that they had a “pleasant conversation.” “She knows about Puerto Rico, she’s concerned about Puerto Rico, and she demonstrated full support in the Puerto Rico mission,” he said. He said McMahon wanted PRDE to offer more bilingual classes, to expose more students to English. Whether there will be changes in funding or anything else remains to be seen. “We have to look at what happens in the next few weeks and months and how that vision and policy could affect Puerto Rico,” Ramos said.
Ramos was well-liked by educators during his first stint as education secretary. He will also have a lot of decisions to make, including whether to expand public charter schools and close down traditional public schools as the island’s public school enrollment continues to decline precipitously. In the past, both those issues led to fierce and widespread protests.
Soto says he’s realistic about the incoming administration having “different views, both ideologically and policywise,” but he’s hopeful the people of Puerto Rico won’t want to go back to the old way of doing things. “Somebody said, ‘You guys took the genie out of the bottle and it’s going to be hard to put that back’ as it relates to a student-centered school system,” Soto said.
Cardona, whose grandparents are from the island, said Puerto Rico had seen “academic flatlining” for years. “We cannot accept that the students are performing less than we know they are capable of,” he told The Hechinger Report, just before he signed off as the nation’s top education official. “We started change; it needs to continue.”
Principal Carabello’s small school of 150 students and 14 teachers has been slated for closure three times already, though each time it has been spared in part because of community support. She’s hopeful that Ramos, with whom she’s worked previously, will turn things around. “He knows the education system,” she said. “He’s a brilliant person, open to listen.”
Escuela de la Communidad Jaime C. Rodriguez is a Montessori school in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, that did not have any sports facilities for its students. It recently began work on a multipurpose sports center, made possible by federal funds under former President Joe Biden. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report
But the long hours of the past several years have taken a toll on her. She is routinely in school from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. “You come in when it’s dark and you leave when it’s dark,” she said. There have been many new platforms to learn and new projects to implement. She wants to retire but can’t afford to. After decades of the local government underfunding the pension system, allowances that offset the high price of goods and services on the island were cut and pension plans were frozen.
Now instead of retiring with 75 percent of her salary, Carabello will receive only 50 percent, $2,195 a month. She is entitled to Social Security benefits, but it isn’t enough to make up for the lost pension. “Who can live with $2,000 in one month? Nobody. It’s too hard. And my house still needs 12 years more to pay.”
Carabello, who is always so strong and so optimistic around her students, teared up. But it’s rare that she allows herself time to think about herself. “I have a great community. I have great teachers and I feel happy with what I do,” she said.
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