“Columbia’s leadership continues discussions with the federal government in support of resuming activity on these research awards and additional other awards that have remained active, but unpaid,” university leadership wrote in a memo Tuesday morning. “We are working on and planning for every eventuality, but the strain in the meantime, financially and on our research mission, is intense.”
While federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have cut research funding at universities across the country, the Trump administration has specifically targeted a handful of high-profile universities, including Columbia, for allegedly failing to curb antisemitism on campus.
Columbia is taking a two-pronged approach to navigating the sudden deep cuts to federal research funding. The first focuses on “continued efforts to restore our partnerships with government agencies that support critical research,” and the university said the second prong is about taking “action to adjust—and in some cases reduce—expenditures based on current financial realities.”
Despite Columbia’s previous president acquiescing to Trump’s demands to enact numerous policy changes to address alleged unchecked antisemitism if it wanted its funding back, the university is still negotiating to recover it. In the meantime, the layoffs announced Tuesday represent about 20 percent of researchers who are funded “in some manner by the terminated grants,” according the statement signed by Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president; Angela V. Olinto, provost; Anne Sullivan, executive vice president for finance; and Jeannette Wing, executive vice president for research.
And the layoffs this week likely aren’t the end of the financial repercussions of the cuts to Columbia’s federal research funding.
“In the coming weeks and months, we will need to continue to take actions that preserve our financial flexibility and allow us to invest in areas that drive us forward,” the statement said. “This is a deeply challenging time across all higher education, and we are attempting to navigate through tremendous ambiguity with precision, which will be imperfect at times.”
For most of the past decade, many professors lived in fear of challenging progressive beliefs on elite college campuses, beliefs that, as linguist John McWhorter argues, have often attained religious status. Saying the wrong word, or liking the wrong social media post, perhaps especially if one was a vocal member of an unfashionable minority, like Jews, could evoke ostracism from peers and even Twitter mobs demanding termination, followed by star chamber hearings led by unaccountable administrators.
This was an inevitable consequence of ever-expanding conceptualizations of what constituted “harm” and various -isms (racism, sexism, etc.). University mandates requiring investigations for accusations of “harm” or “bias” inevitably incentivized some progressives, who are overrepresented in academia, to weaponize bureaucratic procedures to denounce, demonize and punish those they saw as violating sacred values. Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, reports that more professors were terminated for speech “offenses” in 2014–2023 than in the entire McCarthy era.
The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey found that 14 percent of the approximately 5,000 respondents reported having been disciplined or threatened with discipline by their institutions for their teaching, research or other speech. If that response generalizes to the population of American faculty, it means there have been tens of thousands of such investigations (or threats) over the last 10 years.
Now, thanks to the Trump administration’s—in our view questionable—policies regarding academia in general and elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard Universities in particular, policies that many plausibly view as political vengeance for leftist activism, higher education is rapidly approaching fear equity: The presidential right has joined the campus left in using intimidation to punish those whose speech they dislike. Now, everybody in academia gets to be afraid of being canceled, or at least having their grants canceled. Noncitizen students and faculty also have to fear being deported for expressing views that the Trump administration opposes. Conservative and centrist academics still have good reasons to fear their colleagues and students, as they have since 2014, but now, progressive peers have similar reasons to fear whatever comes next out of Washington.
Is this an opportunity for free speech advocates? At first glance, it seems not. The solution to erosion of protections for heterodox free speech and academic freedom cannot possibly be vengeful restrictions on progressive speech. That is the road to expanding authoritarianism and eroding free speech environments for all, a tendency many current leaders in Washington would seemingly welcome.
Academia’s Failure to Protect Nonprogressive Speech
Nonetheless, academia’s record of restraining the censoriousness coming from within its ranks over the last decade has been abysmal. The American Association of University Professors, once a nonpartisan bulwark against censorship, jettisoned its principled support for free speech in focusing almost entirely on threats from the right while, in higher education, our (and AAUP’s) primary concern, most censorship came from the left. The AAUP’s recent statements endorsing the use of DEI criteria in hiring and promotions and the legitimacy of academic boycotts are seemingly designed to cement progressive orthodoxy over the professoriate.
In just months, President Trump has demonstrated the error of AAUP’s “free speech for me but not for thee” positions, as Nat Hentoff put it in his book of that title. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the AAUP will interpret this as “time to take principled stances for speech and academic freedom for all of our faculty” rather than “Trump is evil incarnate, so we should double down on imposing progressive politics.”
The last 10 years have been disastrous for free speech on campus. As Occidental College professor and Free Black Thought cofounder Jake Mackey recently wrote in “The last four years were the most repressive of my lifetime,” “It was fear of retaliation from the left, not from a fascist leader, that caused me to lay awake at night on more occasions than I can count, terrified that a student might have misinterpreted something I said in class and initiated a cancelation campaign against me.”
Polling data bear this out, as Sean Stevens and his coauthors report in “Ostrich Syndrome and Campus Free Expression,” a chapter in our co-edited book, The Free Inquiry Papers (AEI Press, 2025). Conservative professors are more than twice as likely as liberal peers to report self-censoring. This is a rational response to reports showing that, within academia, “cancellation” attacks—attempts to punish faculty for their speech—are more likely to come from their left than their right. Risking one’s livelihood is not usually worth it.
There is also evidence raising the possibility that support for censorship and for antisemitism was spread in part through shadowy foreign donations. A 2024 report, which one of us (Jussim) co-authored, found that universities underreported billions of dollars in funding from foreign sources (revealed after a Department of Education investigation). Worse, receipt of funding from authoritarian regimes and from member states of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation was statistically associated with deterioration of free speech and heightened antisemitism on campus.
Follow-up research in progress is examining the hypothesis that this foreign financial assistance helped organize anti-Israel student groups and whole academic departments. As Lukianoff reported in “How Cancel Culture Destroys Trust in Expertise” at the recent Censorship in the Sciences conference held at the University of Southern California, protests by such groups were almost “exclusively responsible” for disruptions of campus speakers in 2024, which he called “the worst year we know of in history for campus deplatforming.” (To its credit, FIRE protects the rights of both pro- and anti-Israel speakers.)
Notably, some campuses are far worse on free speech than others. A FIRE faculty survey released last December revealed that a remarkable 63 percent of Columbia faculty reported self-censoring at least occasionally; they identified the Israel-Hamas conflict as the most difficult issue to discuss on campus, with affirmative action second. That the far left has imposed a regime of denunciation and fear on many college campuses is beyond doubt.
Trump’s Attacks on Free Speech and Academic Freedom
But under President Trump, the right is making up for lost time. The Trump administration’s attempt to cut indirect costs on grants could be viewed as a genuine attempt to reduce wasted tax dollars. However, given that they have not reported any analysis of how indirects are used, many see this as a straightforward attack designed to cut academia down to size for its leftist politics. The administration has also disrupted the academic study of topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, prejudice, inequality and oppression by defunding almost every grant to study these important issues. While faculty are not entitled to federal grant dollars and the federal government has the legitimate right to set funding priorities, the Trump administration has also attempted to ban any funding on any topic from universities that have DEI programs that the administration believes engage in discrimination. These policies will chill academic discourse.
Furthermore, even if ultimately found to be legal (which we doubt), the Trump administration’s targeting for deportation of immigrants who have allegedly expressed support for Hamas further retards the robust exchange of ideas on campus. And these efforts are succeeding; the rapid capitulation of institutions such as Columbia to Trump’s demands has been dubbed “The Great Grovel” by Politico.
Toward the Rediscovery of Principled Defenses of Speech and Academic Freedom
Is it possible that the new fear equity, with both left and right afraid to speak their minds, may be a necessary precondition to pave the way for a free speech renaissance? There is historical precedent for this possibility. It would be a mirror image of the way that McCarthy-era repression set the stage for a raft of Supreme Court cases that dramatically strengthened legal protections for free speech. Yet judges cannot be everywhere and lawsuits cannot change culture.
Now that censorship is bipartisan, both the left and right have incentives to rediscover principled defenses of free speech, including for their opponents. As James Madison counseled in Federalist Paper No. 51, the best protection of freedom is self-interest, and now, on free speech, all sides have it. Alternatively, to take a more positive view centered on political education, it may take having one’s own speech threatened, or that of one’s allies, before one fully understands the value of constitutional protections of free speech and institutional protections of academic freedom.
An Action Agenda
What can be done to reinvigorate a culture of free and open inquiry, debate, and speech on America’s college campuses? Quite a lot. Last year, as reported here, House Republicans passed a horribly titled (“End Woke Higher Education Act”) but conceptually sound campus free speech bill prohibiting ideological litmus tests in faculty hiring and institutional accreditation, protecting the rights of faith-based groups to determine their membership and assuring that speech limitations cannot be selectively enforced, as when conservative or pro-Israel speakers must pay “security fees” waived for liberal or pro-Palestine speakers. Just four Democrats voted yea and the then-Democratic Senate showed no interest. (In fairness to Senate Democrats, the House bill passed near the end of the congressional session.) Sponsor Burgess Owens, Republican of Utah, is expected to reintroduce the bill, and given Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Democrats’ newfound interest in free speech, its prospects for passing should be improved.
Yet federal legislation can never solve the whole problem. Norms and social practices matter more than law with respect to creating a free speech culture on campus. What can institutions of higher education do to strengthen an intellectual culture of freewheeling discourse, inquiry and debate? First, they can adopt a formal statement of their commitment to free speech and academic freedom, such as the Chicago principles or the Princeton principles.
Second, campuses can restrict the bureaucratic overreach of DEI bureaucracies and institutional review boards, both of which can and do threaten and erode faculty free expression. Third, the best way to limit overreach of existing bureaucratic units may sometimes be to create another bureaucratic unit explicitly designed to do so. An Office of Academic Freedom that is mandated to ensure faculty rights are not infringed by DEI units, IRBs, chairs, deans or anyone else, might go a long way toward protecting faculty.
We would prefer deep and principled commitments to free speech and academic freedom to be the font from which such reforms spring. But if the only way we will get reforms is through fear equity, we’ll take it.
Lee Jussim is a Distinguished Professor of psychology at Rutgers University and creator of the Unsafe Science Substack. Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Together, they were among the co-editors of The Free Inquiry Papers (AEI Press, 2025) and among the co-founders of the Society for Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science.
A coalition of universities and trade groups is suing the National Science Foundation over the independent federal agency’s plan to cap higher education institutions’ indirect research cost reimbursement rates at 15 percent.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the same day the NSF’s new policy went into effect, the coalition argued that a cut would risk the country’s standing “as a world leader in scientific discovery” and “the amount and scope of future research by universities will decline precipitously.”
It warned that “vital scientific work will come to a halt, training will be stifled, and the pace of scientific discoveries will slow” and that “progress on national security objectives, such as maintaining strategic advantages in areas like AI and quantum computing, will falter.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and 13 universities, including Arizona State University, the University of Chicago and Princeton University.
They attest that the NSF violated numerous aspects of the Administrative Procedure Act, including bypassing Congress to unilaterally institute an “arbitrary and capricious” 15 percent rate cap and failing to explain why it’s only imposing the policy on universities.
The NSF awarded $6.7 billion to some 621 universities in 2023.
Indirect costs fund research expenses that support multiple grant-funded projects, including computer systems to analyze enormous volumes of data, building maintenance and waste-management systems. In 1965 Congress enacted regulations that allow each university to negotiate a bespoke reimbursement rate with the government that reflects institutional differences in geographic inflation, research types and other variable costs.
Typical negotiated NSF indirect cost rates for universities range between 50 and 65 percent, according to the lawsuit.
And while the Trump administration has claimed that indirect cost reimbursements enable wasteful spending by universities, the plaintiffs note that an existing cap on administrative costs means that universities already contribute their own funds to cover indirect costs, “thereby subsidizing the work funded by grants and cooperative agreements.” In the 2023 fiscal year, universities paid $6.8 billion in unrecovered indirect costs, the lawsuit read.
The NSF is the third federal agency that has moved to cap indirect research costs since President Donald Trump took office in January; federal judges have already blocked similar plans from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy.
“NSF’s action is unlawful for most of the same reasons,” the lawsuit read, “and it is especially arbitrary because NSF has not even attempted to address many of the flaws the district courts found with NIH’s and DOE’s unlawful policies.”
“we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.” —X post by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, March 11, 2025
I like to focus on whatever people are talking about most.
How long did it take you to write your latest novel?
Thirty minutes, but based on days of research.
Where did you get the model for your female protagonist?
She’s a combination of many women out there.
Do you revise a lot?
Only when prompted.
How do you deal with rejection?
I don’t take it personally.
Who’s your favorite author/book?
Too many to count.
Who are your major influences?
Any author whose work appears 1,000,000 times in a web scrape.
How do I get published?
Scan through the 729,567 publications out there and simultaneously submit to them all.
Who’s your agent?
Secret agent, agent of change, Agent Orange— Sorry, reboot.
If you were to give advice to a young writer, what would you say?
Read everything you can.
What’s your next project?
I don’t know—you tell me.
David Galef is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University.His latest book is the novelWhere I Went Wrong (Regal House, 2025).
Transfer students often face challenges integrating into their new college or university. Despite having previous experience in higher education, transfer students—particularly those from nontraditional backgrounds—can find it difficult to navigate student supports, build community and get engaged. These challenges can result in lower rates of completion among upward transfers.
A fall 2020 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research found that fewer than 20 percent of four-year institutions reported providing sufficient social integration services for transfer students. About half indicated they supply enough academic support to transfer students who enroll.
Last fall, Indiana University Indianapolis launched an orientation program exclusively for incoming transfer and adult learners, designed to help familiarize them with the institution, build connections to peers and boost their confidence in attending the university.
What’s the need: About 30 percent of undergraduates at IU Indianapolis are transfer students, said Janice Bankert-Countryman, assistant director of student services at the Center for Transfer and Adult Students. A significant number of transfers come in as juniors, having already obtained an associate degree.
First-Year Bridge, IU Indianapolis’s orientation for new students, has historically supported all incoming students in the fall term. Staff created Bridge to Your Future: Transfer Bridge exclusively to serve the diverse needs of undergraduate transfer students, including military-affiliated students, working students and parenting students.
“The core of Transfer Bridge is creating and maintaining relationships,” Bankert-Countryman said. “We all need relationships to survive as humans, and we certainly need relationships to thrive as students. So how do we connect students to the right people at the right time to receive the right resources that will empower them to thrive at our campuses?”
How it works: Transfer Bridge is a coordinated effort among the Center for Transfer Students, First-Year Programs, Orientation Services, Student Transitions and Mentor Initiatives, Housing and Residence Life, and the Division of Enrollment Management.
First-Year Bridge is required of all first-year students, but transfers can opt in to Transfer Bridge. Students learn about the opportunity through emails and meetings with their admissions counselors and academic advisers, as well as through other orientation presentations, Bankert-Countryman said.
The pilot took place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. over three days during orientation week—designed to accommodate the needs of working and caregiving students, Bankert-Countryman said.
First-year orientation is a full five days, and transfer students participate in some of the larger programming, like workshops on how to join student organizations, engage in career development or understand finances. Many also join the field trip to the Indianapolis Zoo.
In addition to receiving support from Bankert-Countryman and other staff members, transfer students engage with two peer mentors, who provide insight and advice as students navigate their transition into the university.
Beyond orientation week, transfer students receive support through regular peer mentoring sessions, transfer student events and a Transfer Bridge fall celebration. Bankert-Countryman and the peer mentors use Canvas, email and social messaging to keep in touch with students, she said.
The impact: Of the 25 transfer and adult students who attended the inaugural orientation, 10 were 23 years old or older, two were military-connected and 12 had transferred from the local community college, Ivy Tech.
Sixty percent of the students who participated in Transfer Bridge have a 3.0 or higher, and many have joined student organizations or hold on-campus jobs.
Feedback from 14 participants showed that they found the program useful as they integrated into campus, saying it helped them to feel at home.
“This was a worth-it experience especially as someone who tends to get anxiety to new environments and overwhelmed easily,” one participant wrote in a postorientation survey. “In a nutshell, this was a good slow introduction before the first day of school.”
What’s next: This fall, staff will scale the program to offer three sections. The university will pay for three instructors and three peer mentors to lead the additional sections.
One section will be offered to students in the pre–Health and Life Sciences program to highlight academic planning and career development. Another section, Cyber Sandbox, will focus on tech tools on campus, introducing learners to available systems and technologies from 3-D printing to virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The third section, Connections, will center on a book, The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna, to help students connect their current learning to future goals.
Nearly 100 senior faculty members at Harvard have committed to taking a pay cut to support the institution’s legal defense against the federal government.
The Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funding, threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and said it would end the institution’s ability to enroll international students.
Last month, Harvard filed a lawsuit to halt the federal freeze on $2.2 billion in grants after university officials refused to comply with a sweeping list of demands from the government.
On Friday, President Trump repeated his calls to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial.
Harvard president Alan Garber said taking away the institution’s nonprofit tax exemption would be “highly illegal” and that its mission to educate and research would be “severely impaired” if the status were revoked.
In their pledge, 89 senior faculty signatories said they would take a 10 percent pay cut for up to a year to protect the institution, as well as faculty and students who are more exposed to efforts to shore up costs, including by limiting graduate student enrollment and implementing hiring and salary freezes.
“The financial costs will not be shared equally among our community. Staff and students in many programs, in particular, are under greater threat than those of us with tenured positions,” the pledge says.
Ryan Enos, a signatory and professor of government at Harvard, estimated that the donations could amount to more than $2 million.
The group said it intends to move quickly but has not decided how the salary cuts will be implemented.
“We envision that faculty who have made the pledge will hold a vote and if the majority agrees that the university is making a good faith effort to use its own resources in support of staff, student, and academic programs, faculty will proceed with their donation.”
Last week the institution announced changes to its admissions, curriculum and disciplinary procedures after two internal task forces launched last year investigating anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism on campus found the university’s response lacking.
In response to the efforts, a White House official told CNN, “Harvard’s steps so far to curb antisemitism are ‘positive,’” but “what we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut.”
Jennifer Berne, provost of Oakland Community College in Michigan, has been appointed president of Madison College in Wisconsin, effective July 1.
Carlos Carvalho, a professor of statistics at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, has been named the second president of the University of Austin.
Philip Cavalier, the provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee at Martin, will become the president of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, effective July 6.
Jim Dlugos, who retired as president of St. Joseph’s College of Maine in 2023, became president of Landmark College in Vermont on May 1.
Joyce Ester, president of Normandale Community College in Minnesota, has been selected as president of Governors State University in Illinois, effective July 1.
Christopher Fiorentino, former interim chancellor and president of West Chester University, became chancellor of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education on April 11.
Jim Hess, interim president of Oklahoma State University since February, has been appointed permanent president of the institution.
Dee McDonald, vice president for enrollment and marketing at Crown College in Minnesota, has been named president of Bethel University in Indiana, effective July 1.
Summer McGee, president of Salem Academy and College in North Carolina, has been selected president of Lenoir-Rhyne University, effective July 1.
Bethany Meighen, vice president for academic and student affairs for the University of North Carolina system, has been appointed president of Concord University in West Virginia, effective July 1.
James Milliken, who has served as chancellor of the University of Texas system since 2018, has been named the next president of the University of California system, effective Aug. 1.
Martin Pollio, superintendent of the Jefferson County public school district in Louisville, Ky., has been elected president of Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, effective July 1.
Thomas Powell, who has formerly served as president at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland, Glenville State University in West Virginia and Frederick Community College in Maryland, assumed the presidency at Averett University in Virginia on May 1.
Ritu Raju, president and CEO of Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin, has been appointed president of South Central College in Minnesota, effective July 1.
Brett Sanford, former North Dakota lieutenant governor and interim president of Bismarck State College, assumed the role of interim chancellor of the North Dakota University System on April 30.
Brock Tessman, president of Northern Michigan University, has been named president of Montana State University, effective July 1.
Willie Todd, president and chief executive officer of Denmark Technical College in South Carolina, has been appointed president of Talladega College in Alabama, effective July 1.
John Zerwas, executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas system, has been named acting chancellor of the UT system— replacing Milliken, who is departing for the top job at the University of California—effective June 1.
April brought deep cuts to universities in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere.
Although changes driven by the Trump administration that have included cutting grant funding and capping research reimbursement costs have driven hiring freezes and other changes, the cuts below are not directly tied to Trump. However, Trump’s agenda has directly prompted some job losses. For example, the University of Montana eliminated 42 positions after Congress excluded the Defense Critical Language and Culture Program from a government funding bill.
But most of the below job cuts, program eliminations and other changes are instead tied to declining enrollment, rising operating costs and other factors challenging the sector.
Jacksonville University
Some of the deepest cuts in April were at Jacksonville University, which slashed 40 faculty jobs.
Officials also announced plans to shutter JU’s music and theater programs in a cost-cutting effort, which, coupled with faculty layoffs, is expected to save the private university $10 million.
President Tim Cost called the move “the most robust strategic review of our academic offerings we have ever done” in an April 15 video posted to Facebook where he cast the cuts as “strategic recalibration.” Cost argued that the move would improve academics and “streamline” expenses.
Cost argued that higher education as a sector is beset with challenges and referenced hard choices at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Pennsylvania State University. However, with the exception of Penn State, hiring freezes and other changes at those institutions have been driven by changes to federal research funding. (Jacksonville is not a research university, while those institutions are.)
Unmentioned in Cost’s video were concerns that the university could close, which were raised in JU’s most recent audit. Specifically, auditors noted that the university fell out of compliance with its debt agreements. Violations of such covenants can result in debt becoming due immediately. Jacksonville had nearly $144 million in debt at the end of fiscal year 2024.
Despite the university’s financial challenges, enrollment is up. In fall 2015, JU enrolled 4,048 students, federal data shows. This spring, that number was 4,601, according to a bond filing.
JU’s deep cuts have been met with anger and a sense of betrayal from faculty members.
“I really believed that this was a place that believed in its mission,” an anonymous faculty member who was laid off told local media. “And now it is so completely changing that mission. And what’s worse is they are gaslighting us into pretending like this has always been the plan.”
Although faculty voted no confidence in Cost, college officials have argued that changes at JU have followed its shared governance processes, which included faculty input, and that such changes are necessary to drop low-performing programs and prioritize other academic offerings.
Concordia University
The private Christian university plans to lay off 46 employees across two states.
Concordia University—which has its primary campus in Wisconsin—informed the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity in a letter it would move forward with plans to lay off 41 employees at its Ann Arbor campus on May 31 or “during the 14-day period thereafter.” Another five employees will be laid off in Wisconsin, according to a similar filing there.
Concordia announced last summer that most Ann Arbor academic programs would go online.
Concordia has navigated financial struggles in recent years and closed three campuses it operated in Wisconsin in 2023. However, officials have sought to reassure community members that there are no immediate plans to close the Ann Arbor campus.
“Concordia Ann Arbor will continue to offer a variety of degree options in 2025 and beyond,” reads a university page on frequently asked questions. The page added that “Concordia can no longer sustain multi-million-dollar operational losses at the Ann Arbor campus.”
California State University, Sacramento
Facing state budget cuts, the public university in California made a series of personnel changes in April.
“Due to the severe state budget cuts and the escalating labor costs we are facing for the upcoming fiscal year, 28 management (MPP) positions have been eliminated, merged, or not retained. These actions included 15 MPP employees who were released from their positions today,” Sacramento State president Luke Wood wrote to the campus community April 7.
More changes are on the horizon as Sac State navigates a $37 million budget deficit, amid cuts to state appropriations that will ultimately hit all 23 California State University system members.
The private Pennsylvania institution laid off staff members in the library, as well as areas such as facilities and event services, but appeared to spare faculty, according to a list obtained by the news outlet. Officials told LancasterOnline that F&M was exercising “responsible management” by “reducing the number of our employees to better match the size of our student body.” (Like many other colleges, Franklin & Marshall’s enrollment has slipped in recent years from 2,209 students in fall 2014, according to federal data, to around 1,900 currently.)
Some other jobs were also changed from a 12-month to a 10-month schedule.
University of Akron
Amid efforts to trim $22 million from its budget by the end of fiscal year 2026, the University of Akron is eliminating its physics and anthropology departments, Cleveland.com reported.
Approximately 20 full-time faculty members across the university have also accepted voluntary separation agreements, the news outlet confirmed. An advisory committee to help steer faculty cuts and ideas for generating revenue has pitched buyouts as a possible alternative to layoffs.
University of Toledo
Elsewhere in Ohio, the University of Toledo is suspending nine programs due to a state politics and policies.
The public university announced last month that it’s pausing admission to the Africana studies, Asian studies, data analytics, disability studies, Middle East studies, philosophy, religious studies, Spanish and women’s and gender studies programs, to comply with legislation, Senate Bill 1, that recently passed and became law.
All affected programs will remain available as minors, according to the university website.
SB 1—controversial and sweeping legislation that affects both program offerings and campus speech—bans diversity efforts in higher education and requires colleges to drop undergraduate programs that yield fewer than five degrees annually, on average, over a three-year period.
Unrelated to SB 1, Toledo also announced it was suspending admissions to a dozen other undergraduate and graduate programs, following a recent review of academic offerings.
Portland Community College
More than a dozen programs could be cut at Oregon’s largest community college.
Portland Community College is currently weighing a plan to eliminate as many as 14 programs in a cost-cutting effort, local CBS affiliate KOIN reported. So far, PCC has identified two programs that will be eliminated within two years: music and sonic arts, and gerontology.
Other potential programs on the chopping block at PCC are anthropology, art, Chinese, criminal justice, electronic engineering technology, English for speakers of other languages, general science, German, machine manufacturing technology, Russian, theater arts and welding.
Middlebury College
Officials at the private liberal arts college in Vermont announced a series of cost-cutting moves last month, including employee buyouts, in an effort to plug a projected $14 million budget hole.
Middlebury officials blamed the deficit on declining enrollment and increased operating costs.
Other fiscal moves include reducing Middlebury’s retirement matching contributions, shedding rental property leases and evaluating health insurance plans for possible changes. Altogether, officials said initial efforts are expected “to realize more than $10 million” in savings.
Canisius University
The private Jesuit university in Buffalo, N.Y., is offering buyouts to staff as part of a plan to identify $15 million in savings across the next two fiscal years, NBC affiliate WGRZ reported.
Harvard has about $9 billion in grants and contracts from the federal government.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images
Harvard University won’t be getting any new grants, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a blistering letter to the institution that was posted on the social media platform known as X.
“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote. “You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.”
McMahon didn’t specify what grants she was referring to in the letter, sent Monday evening, but other media outlets reported that the Trump administration was cutting Harvard off from new research grants.
The move escalates the Trump administration’s war with Harvard University. After the university rejected sweeping demands, the administration froze $2.26 billion of Harvard’s estimated $9 billion in grants and contracts. Harvard then sued. Trump also has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll international students.
The letter didn’t cite any legal authority for cutting off new funds to Harvard, so it’s unclear if McMahon can follow through on her threat.
McMahon accused Harvard of failing to follow federal law and abide “by any semblance of academic rigor.” She also raised questions about why the university was offering an introductory math course to address pandemic learning loss and criticized the decision to scrap standardized testing requirements.
“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest level of mathematics, are being rejected?” McMahon wrote.
Over all, she wrote that Harvard had “made a mockery of the country’s higher education system,” referencing in part the plagiarism allegations against the university’s former president. To McMahon, it all shows “evidence of Harvard’s disastrous management” and an “urgent need for massive reform.”
Trump administration officials told Politico that to restore the flow of federal funds, Harvard “would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy the government that it’s in compliance with all federal laws.” (The government has yet to release any finding or evidence showing that Harvard isn’t complying with federal laws, though officials have made plenty of accusations.)
McMahon wrote that the administration stands by its demands for “common sense” reforms such as merit-based admissions and hiring decisions and an “end to unlawful programs that promote crude identity stereotypes.” Those changes “will advance the best interests of Harvard University,” she added.
DEI is under fire—not just from politicians, but from within the academy itself. What began as a push for equity now faces an existential crisis. Faculty, students and even longtime advocates are questioning whether DEI has lost its way—whether it’s become too symbolic, too scripted or too powerless to make real change.
I spent five years as a DEI officer in higher education. I pushed for change in an academic system that claimed to want it. I still believe in DEI. Yet, I’ve seen how often it fails—not because the ideas are wrong, but because the execution is. Diversity, equity and inclusion, when thoughtfully and strategically embedded, can be transformative. But when they become symbolic gestures, checkbox exercises or top-down mandates imposed without trust or buy-in, they often backfire. I’ve seen both.
This isn’t a takedown. I write this because I still believe in the work—and because belief without scrutiny is dangerous. DEI doesn’t need to be dismantled. It needs to be reformed, strengthened and made more honest. We need fewer slogans and more substance. Less signaling and more systems. And above all, more humility about the complexity of this work.
One of the biggest problems I’ve seen is the reduction of diversity to only race, ethnicity or gender. These are important dimensions, but they’re not the whole picture. When diversity becomes a proxy for visible identity markers alone, we miss what actually makes institutions stronger: a wide range of lived experiences, skill sets and worldviews. Inclusion isn’t about agreement—it’s about making space for people who see the world differently. The danger of focusing too narrowly is that we create institutions that look diverse yet whose members still think the same—and that kind of monolith doesn’t solve complex problems. It makes us worse at solving them.
We live in a time of extraordinary complexity. Whether we’re addressing climate change, artificial intelligence, mental health or global conflict, these challenges require collaboration across differences. Research shows that diverse teams produce better results. They’re more creative, more innovative and more likely to challenge assumptions that would otherwise go untested. But it only works when inclusion is real—not performative. Diversity without inclusion is like assembling a symphony and never letting half the musicians play.
This is why we can’t afford to get DEI wrong. Because when we do, the consequences ripple out—not just in missed opportunities for innovation, but in eroded trust, disengagement and backlash. And some of that backlash, while politically weaponized in many cases, is also fueled by real problems with DEI itself.
We need to be honest about one of those problems: the silencing of dissenting views. When DEI is framed in a way that suggests there is only one acceptable perspective—or when people who raise legitimate critiques are dismissed as regressive—it undermines the very values of inclusion and dialogue. True equity work must make space for disagreement, especially when it’s respectful and grounded in a shared desire for improvement.
When critical questions are treated as threats, or when people fear professional consequences for expressing dissent, we risk undermining the values of intellectual rigor and inclusion that DEI is meant to uphold. It’s a short path from ideological clarity to rigidity, which can shut down the kind of dialogue that progress requires. Inclusion must mean inclusion of unpopular opinions, too. This is one lesson I learned the hard way.
Another challenge that continues to undermine trust in DEI efforts is the perception of the so-called diversity hire. The phrase is loaded, toxic and—when DEI is done badly—not entirely baseless. In institutions where hiring is reduced to checking demographic boxes, this perception takes hold. And with it, the person hired is immediately set up to fail. Not because they lack qualifications, but because their colleagues are convinced they were chosen for the wrong reasons. It erodes trust, breeds resentment and delegitimizes the entire process.
But that’s not what DEI is supposed to be. When done right, it broadens the search process. It doesn’t lower the bar. It means casting a wider net, doing targeted outreach and making sure the applicant pool reflects the full range of talent that exists. It means interrupting the biases that shape hiring—especially in homogeneous departments. And when you do that, the candidate pool becomes more diverse and more competitive.
During my time as DEI officer, we developed a faculty hiring tool kit to address these challenges. It supported broader outreach and inclusive job ads and helped search committees examine how bias can influence evaluations. The tool kit was adopted across the university and became the basis for a peer-reviewed publication. Search committees reported feeling more confident, and hiring outcomes began to reflect that intentionality. That’s what it looks like when DEI becomes a tool for excellence rather than a threat to it.
But even the best tools can’t fix a broken structure. Many DEI leaders are hired to drive change but denied the power or resources to do so. They’re tasked with transforming the institution but positioned on the margins of decision-making. And when change doesn’t come fast enough, they’re blamed. I’ve felt that pressure. And I’ve seen how it erodes trust—not just for those doing the work, but for the communities they’re meant to serve. If we’re serious about equity, we have to stop treating DEI as both a priority and an afterthought. It can’t be the institution’s conscience and its scapegoat at the same time.
The truth is that a DEI office or officer does not matter in the slightest. What matters is what these offices and individuals are empowered to do—and how the institution responds. Too often, DEI structures are set up with grand titles but little actual authority. They’re underfunded, overburdened and expected to carry the weight of transformation without the tools to do it. Worse, they’re sometimes used for symbolic signaling while real decisions happen elsewhere.
Here’s a hot take: Land acknowledgments are one of the clearest examples of symbolic DEI gone wrong. Even many DEI advocates are uneasy about saying this out loud—but it’s a conversation we need to have. Originally intended as respectful recognition of Indigenous peoples, they’ve too often become formulaic, superficial and devoid of follow-up. When institutions recite them without engaging Indigenous communities, investing in their successes or addressing systemic issues affecting them today, the gesture rings hollow. Sometimes it’s even counterproductive—giving the appearance of moral action without the substance. That’s the danger of symbolic DEI: It feels good in the moment, but it can do more harm than good by masking the real work that needs to be done. Respect requires more than words. It requires meaningful engagement, resource investment and sustained commitment.
Another hot take: Sometimes constraints make the work better. Guardrails—even legal ones—can force us to get more creative, more deliberate and more focused on what actually works. In my home state of California, DEI work has operated under the legal constraints of Proposition 209, passed in 1996, which prohibits public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity in admissions, hiring or contracting. In 2020, a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 209 failed—leaving the status quo intact, but reigniting debate about what equity should look like in a race-neutral legal landscape.
Rather than marking a shift, the 2020 vote reaffirmed the challenge California institutions have been navigating for nearly three decades. Public colleges and universities have spent years adapting—expanding outreach and pipeline programs, revamping search processes, and investing in mentorship and faculty development—all without using race-conscious criteria. Without relying on the most legally vulnerable tools, they were pushed to build models of reform that were legally sound, broadly applicable and less susceptible to political attack.
California is not alone—some other states have adopted similar restrictions. And while the state is not immune from the scrutiny and investigations now facing institutions across the country, the constraints of Prop 209 forced a more intentional and durable approach to equity—one that may offer useful lessons for others.
As backlash to DEI spreads—through lawsuits, legislation and public discourse—it’s easy to dismiss it all as reactionary. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s a response to real flaws: lack of transparency, ideological rigidity, symbolic efforts with no outcomes. The solution isn’t to abandon DEI. It’s to do it better. With more rigor, less theater. More results, fewer slogans. We need to distinguish between bad DEI and good DEI. Between what divides and what unifies. Between what placates and what transforms.
Here’s the reality: The alternatives to diversity, equity and inclusion—uniformity, inequity and exclusion—aren’t values any institution should embrace. Few people, even DEI skeptics, would argue otherwise. The real debate isn’t about the values themselves—it’s about how they’ve been implemented, and whether the methods we’ve used actually advance the outcomes we claim to care about. If DEI is to survive, it has to evolve. Not into something shinier or trendier—but into something real. Built on trust, not performance. And that trust won’t come from more committees or statements. It will come from showing our work, owning our mistakes and staying committed to the values that brought us into this field in the first place.
That’s what I’ve learned. And I’m still learning. But I haven’t lost hope. The ground is shifting—but that disruption brings opportunity. It’s fertile soil for building something better. If we bring more humility to our certainty, more evidence to our strategies and more courage to our conversations, this might not be the end of DEI. It could be the beginning of something stronger.
Michael A. Yassa is a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine. He served for five years as associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion and continues to work on institutional reform and mentoring in higher education. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of UC Irvine.
