For almost a decade, the Higher Education Inquirer investigated right wing influencer Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point Empire. Kirk was groomed by Bill Montgomery (a surrogate for Richard Nixon in Florida for Nixon’s Reelection Campaign) and Steve Bannon when Bannon was at Breitbart. Kirk quickly learned the dirty tricks of the Nixon-Reagan era and the dog whistles of white supremacy and misogyny. He also quickly gained funding from right wing billionaire Foster Freiss.
In mid-2016, we communicated our concerns with Michael Vasquez at Politico, who later moved on to the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE). CHE later reported that Kirk created a plan to win student elections using outside (illegal) money. We also contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League who both listed TPUSA as a hate group.
Normally, back-to-school season means that the staff who lead federally funded programs for low-income and first-generation college students are kicking into high gear. But this month, the Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in TRIO grants, creating uncertainty for thousands of programs. Some have been forced to grind to a halt, advocates say.
Colleges and nonprofits that had already been approved for the award expected to hear by the end of August that their federal funding was on its way. But rather than an award notice, program leaders received what’s known as a “no cost extension,” explaining that while programs could continue to operate until the end of the month, they would not be receiving the award money.
Over all, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on supporting TRIO programs, estimates that the Trump administration has withheld about $660 million worth of aid for more than 2,000 TRIO programs. (Congress allocated $1.19 billion to TRIO for the current fiscal year.)
As a result of the freeze, COE explained, many colleges and nonprofit organizations had to temporarily pivot to online services or shutter their programs and furlough staff. Roughly 650,000 college students and high school seniors will lack vital access to academic advising, financial guidance and assistance with college applications if the freeze persists, they say.
“For many students, these first few weeks of the year are going to set the trajectory for their whole semester, especially if you’re an incoming freshman,” said COE president Kimberly Jones. “This is when you’re making critical choices about your coursework, trying to navigate the campus and just trying to acclimate to this new world. If you’re first-gen, you need the guidance of a program to help you navigate that.”
Jones said that Education Department officials said this week that the pause is temporary. However, the Department of Education did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.
TRIO Under Threat
Originally established in the 1960s, TRIO now consists of seven different programs, each designed to support various individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and help them overcome barriers of access to higher education.
Not all the TRIO programs have had funding withheld. Roughly 1,300awards for certain programs—such as Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services and any general Upward Bound projects with a June 1 start date—were disbursed on time, Jones said. But that’s only 40 percent of the more than 3,000 TRIO programs.
Other programs, including Upward Bound projects with a Sept. 1 start date, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers and Talent Search, are still waiting for checks to land in their accounts.
Policy experts added that funding for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement program, a TRIO service focused on graduate students, also has yet to be distributed. But unlike most of the programs, funding for McNair is not due until Sept. 30. Still, Jones and others said they are highly concerned those funds will also be frozen.
Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions. Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”
—COE president Kimberly Jones
President Donald Trump proposed cutting all funding for TRIO in May, saying that the executive branch lacks the ability to audit the program and make sure it isn’t wasting taxpayer dollars. But so far, House and Senate appropriators have pushed back, keeping the funding intact.
When confronted by Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and longtime TRIO advocate, at a budget hearing in June,McMahon acknowledged that “Congress does control the purse strings,” but went on to say that she would “sincerely hope” to work with lawmakers and “renegotiate” the program’s terms.
And while advocates hope that funds will eventually be reinstated, most experts interviewed remain skeptical. With 18 days left until the end of the fiscal year, any unallocated TRIO funds will likely be sent back to the Department of Treasury, never to reach the organizations they were intended for.
The Trump administration has tried to freeze or end othereducation-relatedgrant programs—including a few TRIO programs that were cut off in June—which officials said “conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”
And while some of the funding freezes have been successfully challenged in court, the judicial process needed to win back federal aid is slow. Most colleges don’t have that kind of time, the advocates say.
“Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions,” Jones said. “Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”
‘Crippling’ Effects
For Summer Bryant, director of the Talent Search program at Morehead State University in Kentucky, the funding freeze has been “crippling.”
Talent Search is a TRIO program focused on supporting middle and high school students with college preparation. And while the loss of about $1 million hasn’t forced Bryant to shut down her program quite yet, it has significantly limited her capacity to serve students.
After paying the program’s 10 staff members for the month of September, Bryant has just over $1,000 left—and that’s between both of the grants she received last year.
“It may sound like a lot, but when you take into account that we’re providing services to eight counties and 27 target schools, coupled with the fact that driving costs about 50 cents a mile and some of our schools one-way are almost 120 miles away, that’s not a lot of money,” she said. “So instead, I had to make a Facebook post notifying our students and their guardians that we would be pausing all in-person services until we receive our grant awards.”
Even then, Morehead TRIO programs are based in a rural part of Appalachia, so broadband access and choppy connections are also a concern.
“Doing things over the phone or over a Zoom is just not as effective as doing it face-to-face—information is lost,” Bryant said. And because this freeze is happening during the most intensive season for college applications, “even a one month delay could lead to a make-or-break moment for a lot of our seniors,” she added.
It’s not just Bryant facing these challenges. Of Morehead’s nine preapproved TRIO grants, only four have been awarded. The same scenario is playing out at campuses across the country.
Democratic senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, along with 32 other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, demanded in a letter sent Wednesday that the administration release the funds. Collectively, they warned that failure to do so “will result in irreversible damage to our students, families, and communities, as many rely on the vital programs and services provided by TRIO programs.”
They wrote that TRIO has produced over six million college graduates since its inception in 1964, promoting a greater level of civic engagement and spurring local economies.
“The data proves that TRIO works,“ the senators stressed. “Students’ futures will be less successful if they do not receive their appropriated funds immediately.”
Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat and TRIO alumna, and 53 fellow House members sent a similar letter the same day.
The freeze is hitting community colleges particularly hard; they receive half of all TRIO grants, said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.
Baime said he has “no idea” why the department is withholding funds and added that while he is hopeful the federal dollars will be restored, there is an “unusual degree of uncertainty.”
Between a handful of TRIO grants that were terminated with little to no explanation earlier in the year and the recent decision to cancel all grant funding for minority-serving institutions, worries among TRIO programs are high, Jones from COE and others said.
Still, Baime is holding out hope.
“The department has gone on record saying that fiscal year 2025 TRIO funds would be allocated,” he said. “So despite the very concerning delays, we remain optimistic.”
Right-wing X accounts are pushing for universities to dismiss any employees that have disparaged Kirk in the days following his death.
Photo illustration by Inside Higher Ed | LeoPatrizi/E+/Getty Images
At least five faculty and staff members have been fired so far for comments they made in response to the death of Turning Point USA founder and conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University.
Investigators announced Friday they arrested a suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who is now being held in a Utah jail without bail. Utah governor Spencer Cox said during a press conference Friday that a family friend turned Robinson in to authorities after the suspect suggested to a relative that he’d killed Kirk. Robinson was not a student at Utah Valley.
The Utah Board of Higher Education said in a statement that Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and that he attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021.
Among the latest college employees terminated for their responses to Kirk’s killing, Lisa Greenlee was removed as a part-time instructor from Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., on Thursday after she made comments criticizing Kirk to students during an online class, saying, “I’ll praise the shooter; he had good aim.” A video of her remarks made the rounds on X, where right-wing accounts encouraged the college to fire her.
“We deeply regret that students, employees, and the community were impacted by her comments. Greenlee’s behavior is not consistent with the college’s values and mission to serve Guilford County. Her statement regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk does not support the open and respectful learning and working environment that GTCC provides every day,” GTCC president Anthony Clarke said in a statement. “We want to reiterate that supporting violence is reprehensible and will not be tolerated at the college.” Greenlee did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.
Two employees at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn., were dismissed Thursday for making “inappropriate comments on the internet related to the tragic shooting of Charlie Kirk,” university president Paul Stumb wrote in a statement posted on X. He identified the employees as Michael Rex, an English and creative writing professor, and Max Woods, an assistant esports coach, but he did not share what they said. Like Greenlee, both had been the subject of online campaigns advocating for their firing.
“This decision was not made lightly,” Stumb wrote. “We understand the importance and the impact of this action, and we want to emphasize that we conducted a comprehensive investigation prior to making our decision.”
Before Stumb’s statement was publicized, Rex posted an apology on his Facebook page. “No one deserves to be murdered,” he wrote. “I did not think about the pain and anger that my words would create. My comments were not meant to celebrate nor to foster political violence and for any traums [sic] my words caused, I am truly sorry.” Rex and Wood did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment.
The recent firings follow the dismissals of Laura Sosh-Lightsy, a student affairs administrator at Middle Tennessee State University, and an unnamed staff member at the University of Mississippi.
A Clemson university professor is also subject to an ongoing push by X users to have him fired for statements on Kirk’s death. On Friday afternoon, the university posted a statement that alluded to the situation. “We stand firmly on the principles of the U.S. Constitution, including the protection of free speech. However, that right does not extend to speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others. We will take appropriate action for speech that constitutes a genuine threat which is not protected by the Constitution.”
Approximately 1 in 5 children in the United States are estimated to be neurodivergent, representing a spectrum of learning and thinking differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. These children experience the world in unique and valuable ways, but too often, our education systems fail to recognize or nurture their potential. In an already challenging educational landscape, where studies show a growing lack of school readiness nationwide, it is more important than ever to ensure that neurodivergent young learners receive the resources and support they need to succeed.
Early support and intervention
As President and CEO of Collaborative for Children, I have personally seen the impact that high-quality early childhood education can have on a child’s trajectory. Birth to age five is the most critical window for brain development, laying the foundation for lifelong learning, behavior, and health. However, many children are entering their academic years without the basic skills needed to flourish. For neurodivergent children, who often need tailored approaches to learning, the gap is even wider.
Research indicates that early intervention, initiated within the first three years of life, can significantly enhance outcomes for neurodivergent children. Children who receive individualized support are more likely to develop stronger language, problem-solving, and social skills. These gains not only help in the classroom but can also lead to higher self-confidence, better relationships and improved well-being into adulthood.
The Collaborative for Children difference
Collaborative for Children in Houston focuses on early childhood education and is committed to creating inclusive environments where all children can thrive. In Houston, we have established 125 Centers of Excellence within our early childhood learning network. The Centers of Excellence program helps child care providers deliver high-quality early education that prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. Unlike drop-in daycare, our certified early childhood education model focuses on long-term development, combining research-backed curriculum, business support and family engagement.
This year, we are expanding our efforts by providing enhanced training to center staff and classroom teachers, equipping them with effective strategies to support neurodivergent learners. These efforts will focus on implementing practical, evidence-based approaches that make a real difference.
Actionable strategies
As educators and leaders, we need to reimagine how learning environments are designed and delivered. Among the most effective actionable strategies are:
Creating sensory-friendly classrooms that reduce environmental stressors like noise, lighting, and clutter to help children stay calm and focused.
Offering flexible learning formats to meet a range of communication, motor, and cognitive styles, including visual aids, movement-based activities, and assistive technology.
Training teachers to recognize and respond to diverse behaviors with empathy and without stigma, so that what is often misinterpreted as “disruption” is instead seen as a signal of unmet needs.
Partnering with families to create support plans tailored to each child’s strengths and challenges to ensure continuity between home and classroom.
Incorporating play-based learning that promotes executive functioning, creativity, and social-emotional development, especially for children who struggle in more traditional formats.
Benefits of inclusive early education
Investing in inclusive, high-quality early education has meaningful benefits not only for neurodivergent children, but for other students, educators, families and the broader community. Research indicates that neurotypical students who learn alongside neurodivergent peers develop critical social-emotional skills such as patience, compassion and acceptance. Training in inclusive practices can help educators gain the confidence and tools needed to effectively support a wide range of learning styles and behaviors as well as foster a more responsive learning environment.
Prioritizing inclusive early education can also create strong bonds between families and schools. These partnerships empower caregivers to play an active role in their child’s development, helping them navigate challenges and access critical resources early on. Having this type of support can be transformative for families by reducing feelings of isolation and reinforcing that their child is seen, valued, and supported.
The benefits of inclusive early education extend far beyond the classroom. When neurodivergent children receive the support they need early in life, it lays the groundwork for increased workforce readiness. Long-term economic gains can include higher employment rates and greater earning potential for individuals.
Early childhood education must evolve to meet the needs of neurodivergent learners. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of early intervention and tailored learning environments. If we are serious about improving outcomes for all children, we must act now and commit to inclusivity as a core pillar of our approach. When we support all children early, everyone benefits.
Dr. Melanie Johnson, Collaborative for Children
Dr. Melanie Johnson serves as the President and CEO of Collaborative for Children, where she leads groundbreaking initiatives in early learning enterprise systems across Texas’s Gulf Coast region. Her work focuses on improving school-readiness outcomes for under-resourced children from birth to age five through metrics-driven outcomes and digital transformation.
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The rollback of remote work policies across industries is reshaping labor markets, household economics, and ultimately, higher education. At the heart of this shift are competing forces: employers eager to reassert control over the workplace, families struggling with the cost of childcare, and an economy that risks losing productivity and talent when workers are forced into rigid arrangements.
For higher education, these developments are not distant trends—they directly affect students, employees, and the value of degrees in a labor market already strained by inequality.
One of the most pressing issues is the cost of childcare. In many parts of the United States, childcare now exceeds the cost of tuition at public universities. The rollback of flexible work means more parents—particularly mothers—face impossible choices between income and caregiving. Gender economists warn that this will have long-term consequences for workforce participation, with ripple effects on GDP.
When high performers, especially women in mid-career, exit the workforce due to a lack of flexibility, the loss is not only personal but systemic. Research has shown that reduced female participation translates into billions of dollars in lost GDP. For colleges and universities, this contraction weakens alumni networks, shrinks the pipeline of potential graduate students, and destabilizes family incomes that support tuition payments.
Higher education institutions are also employers. As universities push staff and faculty back into offices while offering minimal support for caregiving, they risk alienating the very professionals who sustain research and teaching. This compounds the long-standing crisis of adjunct labor and the broader erosion of academic working conditions. Many contingent faculty members already juggle multiple jobs while managing caregiving responsibilities—conditions made worse by rigid scheduling and the absence of benefits like paid leave or childcare subsidies.
The student debt crisis, too, is inseparable from these dynamics. Families already strained by high tuition and predatory lending practices cannot absorb the additional shock of rising care costs. For many working parents, pursuing higher education has become nearly impossible without flexible employment. In this way, the rollback of remote work further narrows access to education and entrenches inequality.
The rollback has been framed by some employers as a way to restore collaboration and productivity. But the evidence suggests the opposite may occur if flexibility is stripped away without accounting for the realities of modern family life. Gender economists argue that the choice is not simply between home and office but between an inclusive economy and one that sidelines caregivers.
For universities, the lesson is clear. If higher education is to prepare students for the future of work, it must also examine how it treats its own employees, how it supports student-parents, and how it positions itself in debates about labor, family, and equity. Ignoring the economics of care will only deepen inequality and accelerate the ongoing college meltdown.
Families, educators and advocates of children and youth who are both blind and deaf are scrambling to reclaim abruptly canceled federal funding that they say is a “lifeline” for students’ educational and developmental progress.
A notice of noncontinuation from the U.S. Department of Education recently went to four deafblind projects in Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and a consortium of New England states including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. Advocates say the notice was sent Sept. 5, although a letter reviewed by K-12 Dive is dated Aug. 27.
The noncontinuation notice to Oregon’s deafblind project fiscal agent, for example, said continuing the project “would be in conflict with agency policy and priorities, and so is not in the best interest of the Federal Government.”
The notice quoted from the project’s 2023 grant application, which said the grant’s partners “are committed to working to improve strategies, interventions, processes to address inequities, racism, bias, and system marginalization of culturally, linguistically, or dis/ability groups.”
Combined, the four projects’ grants were to total about $1 million for the coming fiscal year, according to figures provided by deafblind advocates. The grants in those states serve about 1,365 children and their families, advocates said.
The projects are going into the third year of a five-year grant. The federal funding supports deafblind youth who attend public, private, and charter schools or are homeschooled. It is used for teacher training and professional development, family resources and training, educational materials and technology, and other activities.
The Education Department’s notice to the fiscal agent of Oregon’s deafblind project gave the grant manager seven days to request reconsideration.
The Trump administration has been eliminating programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion at the K-12 and higher education levels — and across the government. As such, the disability rights community has been concerned that those moves would also target efforts that support students and people with disabilities.
Moreover, education programs have been singled out as the Education Department under President Donald Trump has pushed to reduce federal red tape and bureaucracy by giving states more control over how they spend federal funds.
Serenity Elliott receives services at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., in March 2025.
Permission granted by Candice Elliott
Deafblindness and the DEI debate
According to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a national child count conducted Dec. 1, 2023, showed 10,692 children and young adults from birth to age 26 were eligible for state deafblind project services.
Deafblindness is a low-incidence disability, meaning it’s not considered common. The combination of hearing and vision impairments “causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that students cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness,” according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Deafblindness is one of the disability categories that qualify for IDEA services. The recent notices of noncontinuation of the IDEA Part D grants to state deafblind projects do not impact IDEA Part B and Part C services for developmental and educational supports to infants, toddlers, children and young adults with disabilities.
Most states have their own deafblind projects that receive federal funding through IDEA, although some states partner in a multistate consortium, according to the National Center on DeafBlindness, a federally funded technical assistance center.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids.”
Jill Underly
Wisconsin state superintendent
The Oregon DeafBlind Project had expected to receive $133,543 for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The state serves about 114 children and youth with deafblindness.
Project Director Lisa McConachie said the noncontinuance is “nonsensical,” especially since an annual report she submitted earlier this year had no mention of DEI. She said in 2023, at the time of the project’s application under the Biden administration, grantees were required to add language about DEI as part of the application.
McConachie is employed by Portland Public Schools, which is the fiscal agent for the grant. She said on Tuesday that she was planning to file an appeal for reconsideration to reinstate the grant.
“We’re just kind of stuck for a minute,” McConachie said.
Although the project is funded through September, she said she worries about what could happen to children if the grant doesn’t continue. “To stop support and services right during school is just so disruptive. It’s time that will be lost and never recovered.”
Portland Public Schools only became the state’s fiscal grant manager for the deafblind project in the last two years, even though the grant has been ongoing for decades. In that time, the school system and its partners have been building connections and developing more educator, student and family supports, McConachie said.
“We’ve made all these connections and started to really move the dial for folks, and now we’re going to be stopped,” she said.
In Wisconsin, state Superintendent Jill Underly blasted the grant termination.
“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids,” Underly said in a Tuesday statement. “Wisconsin had planned work with these funds that includes direct support for deafblind learners and their families and efforts to recruit and retain new special education teachers. We are asking for a reconsideration to protect these valuable projects.”
Underly said the state’s five-year grant totals more than $550,000 and helps serve 170 children and youth from birth through age 21.
In a statement to K-12 Dive, Savannah Newhouse, U.S. Education Department press secretary, said the department re-awarded over 500 IDEA Part D grants and did not continue fewer than 35 grants that do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities.
Examples from the applications for grants that weren’t continued, according to Newhouse, include:
An early childhood technical assistance center that indicated itsframework must “address the systemic racism that permeates all aspects of society,” to be achieved by “enhancing equity content within early childhood preparation programs.”
A school for the blind that indicated it “must embed the values of diversity, equity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.”
Embedding of ‘cultural humility’ as a significant aspect of all training provided to federally funded agencies supporting adults with disabilities.
“Many of these use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to,” Newhouse said. “The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
The Lydon family, from Dallas, Ore., pose for a photo in October 2024.
Permission granted by LB Photography Ink
Educational and family supports
Parent Candice Elliott said connecting with the close network of deafblind families, educators and experts in Oregon was “life-changing” when she adopted her daughter Serenity seven years ago. Serenity, now 12, has deafblindness and other medical challenges. She was also the only deafblind student in her school district.
“Our deafblind kids have a lot of problems, and you just don’t meet other people who have issues like this,” Elliott said. She said her family benefited from experts who helped her communicate with her daughter and also connected her with other families in the same situation. Those parents lean on each other for expertise and emotional support, she said.
Now, Elliott is the one mentoring new families. She was working with others to organize an annual family weekend in October that would bring families from across the state together to hear from national experts, learn about high school transition services, and gain parent-to-parent advice and support.
Because the funding is ending, the project canceled the parent weekend. However, Elliott said, parents are organizing one on their own.
“What’s really important is that we learn,” Elliott said about the family weekend. “We have an education we get. We learn about how to support our kids. We learn about just how to help each other.”
Audra Lydon lives in rural Dallas, Oregon. She was a police and fire dispatcher and a single mother when she brought her daughter, Aingelise, home from the hospital 20 years ago. In addition to being deafblind, Aingelise is quadriplegic and has multiple, complex medical needs.
“I had no experience, really, with anything related to either her medical needs or her communication needs, and specifically the deafblindness,” Lydon said.
After connecting with the state’s deafblind project, she learned strategies for communicating with Aingelise and what supports work best for her daughter. The project also helped her connect with other families who could understand and empathize with the joy and challenges of raising Aingelise.
Lydon said she worries that the sudden stop to funding will cause Aingelise’s teacher to move away. Deafblind teachers are highly specialized to work with students with deafblindness who require supports in communication, access and literacy.
The loss of funding will harm the development of many children, Lydon said. “You can’t just pull services for two years from kids. And I think what people also don’t understand is developmentally, if kids lose out for two years during a really important developmental stage, recouping that for any child is difficult,” but would be especially challenging for students with deafblindness, she said.
Lydon added, “Pulling services without notice or plan is entirely unethical and frankly speaks to the deep lack of understanding of the deafblind community.”
“The non-continued grant funds are not being cut; they are being re-invested immediately into high quality programs that better serve special needs students.”
Savannah Newhouse
U.S. Education Department press secretary
In Washington state, parent Lanya Elsa said the IDEA Part D grant has been vital, because children with deafblindness have complex and individualized needs.
“There’s just no way for a school district to have the qualified personnel and knowledge needed for something that’s so rare, because they may only have one child in that district” with deafblindness, she said.
Elsa, parent to two sons ages 26 and 17 with deafblindness, is a special education researcher and former director of the Idaho Project for Children and Youth with Deaf-Blindness. Because of the supports her sons and her family received, she said, her older son, Conner, is employed at a major company, and her younger son, Dalton, is a high school senior preparing for college.
“I look at my kids and what they’ve been able to accomplish, ” said Elsa, adding that she worries about families newly adjusting to a deafblindness diagnosis. “What if these families don’t have the same opportunities that our family had? I can’t even imagine, because we have nothing else.
The horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University is an unspeakable crime. But we must speak about its causes and how we can seek to reduce violence of this kind—and also how we must not seek to silence free speech in response.
Obviously, murder is an evil act in itself. But a political assassination of this kind is many magnitudes worse than the all-too-common murders we encounter every day in America.
Political violence undermines the sense of safety that’s essential to free and open debate. If controversial views inspire murder, then most of us will be reluctant to speak out honestly. Political violence and threats can be a powerful source of self-censorship. We need to end support for political violence of every kind on every side, from this terrible murder to the threats of violence against professors from all sides who express controversial views.
Political violence also breeds administrative censorship. Many of the campus bans on protests and suspensions and banishments of those accused of misconduct are done using the excuse of fear of violence. Safety becomes a simple defense for every act of repression, and Kirk’s murder may be used by campus officials to ban controversial speakers from all sides and to prohibit the kind of public discussion that Kirk was admirably engaged in when he was killed.
And political violence inspires political censorship, particularly when elected officials are looking for any excuse to suppress their ideological opponents. Donald Trump announced a campaign of retribution against leftists who harshly criticized Kirk: “For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it …”
It’s appalling that Trump would call for unconstitutional repression of this kind to “find” and “stop” any leftist who ever used mean rhetoric—and the organizations that fund or support them. Even if you believe (as I do) that prominent political leaders such as Trump—one of the worst offenders at nasty political rhetoric—should tone down their hatred, that doesn’t mean that everyone should restrain their rhetoric, and it certainly does not allow the government to punish those who choose to say harsh words.
Since we do not yet know who murdered Kirk or what the motives were, it’s bizarre to assign ideological blame for this violence. But even if the murderer turns out to be a leftist inspired by hateful essays about Kirk, we must not punish (or even condemn) people who denounced Kirk.
We need to condemn horrible violence of this kind from any source, but we cannot blame those who engage in political critique for the crimes of lunatics. Words do not cause violence, and censorship does not stop it. It’s bizarre that the party of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is now suggesting that mean tweets kill people.
Other Republican politicians urged repression as the response. Rep. Clay Higgins (a Louisiana Republican) called for massive censorship of anyone who “belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” calling for them to be “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER,” to have their business licenses and permits and driver’s licenses revoked, and be “kicked from every school.”
By far the most disturbing finding in the latest free speech survey of college students released this week by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression was that the proportion of students willing to support physical violence to stop an offensive speaker on campus grew from 20 percent in 2022 to 34 percent in 2025. FIRE chief research adviser Sean Stevens noted, “This finding cuts across partisan lines. It is not a liberal or conservative problem—it’s an American problem.”
In FIRE’s survey, the growth in willingness to use violence to stop an offensive speaker over the past few years tracks directly with the growth in willingness to shout down speakers (from 62 percent to 71 percent) and to physically block students from attending a speech (from 37 percent to 54 percent).
The willingness of people to silence speech is connected to their willingness to support violence as just one further step to achieve that repression. Stopping political violence can’t be seen in isolation from stopping political censorship of all kinds. We need to view a commitment to free speech as an essential tool to help reduce political violence.
Censorship can become the training wheels for political violence. Once you are willing to dehumanize someone by stripping away their rights and silencing their speech, the kind of dehumanization necessary to violently attack them becomes easier to imagine. And once you’re willing to use political violence, the reality will always become more likely.
Alice Dreger at Heterodox Academy noted that after the problems we’ve seen with the heckler’s veto, “The shooter’s veto is a whole new level of terrorism endangering political speech in America.” But what if the shooter’s veto is just the logical extension of the heckler’s veto?
It’s worth noting that in another of the rare cases of violence against a campus speaker—at Middlebury College in 2017, when Charles Murray was attacked and Professor Allison Stanger was injured—the violence followed in the wake of the students shouting down Murray. Censorship and violence are often linked together, and both are common weapons of totalitarian regimes.
That’s why we must reject political violence in all its forms and begin with the steps of censorship that often lead to it. That’s also why we must reject censorship as an answer to political violence. Because censorship is the foundation of political violence, we cannot cure it with more censorship.
I disagreed with many of Kirk’s political views, but I liked some of his methods—organizing students and publicly engaging in debates on campus with critics (as he was doing when he was murdered).
As I noted back in 2017 for why colleges must recognize TPUSA chapters, “Although Professor Watchlist is morally wrong and a threat to academic freedom, that is not a good reason for a university to de-recognize a student group associated with it. Free speech applies even to those who oppose free speech. And the right of students to form organizations is an essential part of student liberty, even if that means criticizing faculty.” I wrote about those leftists who supported repression, “If you think only your political enemies will be subject to censorship by administrators, I think you are very mistaken.”
We need colleges to be safe spaces in the sense of physical safety from political violence and physical threats. We also need safety from professional retaliation, to ensure that people are not fired or silenced or punished for their beliefs. We must reject the use of repression to protect people from hearing offensive ideas, whichever side is being censored. By rejecting censorship, and making the open exchange of ideas an essential part of campus life that no violent act can take away, we can reduce the culture of political violence that endangers all of our voices.
The best tribute to Kirk would be for colleges and politicians and advocates on all sides to imitate the best of what he did—to create and approve student organizations that express controversial views and debate those who disagree, asking them to “prove me wrong.”
The government watchdog explored what went wrong with the 2024–25 FAFSA in a new report.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | sdominick/Getty Images | Ake/rawpixel
The Education Department is on track to release the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid by Oct. 1, but a government watchdog warned this week that future forms are at risk of technical issues.
The Government Accountability Office, in its second report on the botchedlaunch of the 2024–25 FAFSA, found that the department has yet to implement a number of its recommendations from the first report released in September 2024. Additionally, the agency needs to improve its oversight of contractors. The GAO also noted that the department doesn’t have a plan for testing future FAFSAs and that staff overseeing the application lack key experience and training.
“Until [the Office of Federal Student Aid] makes progress in these important areas, [the FAFSA Processing System] is at risk of not functioning as intended in future releases, leading to students having trouble in obtaining timely aid,” the report states. “Further, the FPS contract is at risk of overexpenditure and potentially wasting taxpayer dollars. These risks are compounded by reductions in staff that likely impact the agency’s ability to carry out its mission to manage and oversee student financial assistance programs.”
FSA officials took issue with parts of the report and recommendations in a response to the agency.
“We believe that GAO’s analysis teaches the wrong lessons and, as an unintended consequence, reinforces the exact practices that led to the FAFSA’s initial challenges,” wrote Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program.
Lemon-Strauss said GAO is applying a “more traditional, and somewhat outdated, project-based model that does not support modern technology development for scaled systems like the FAFSA.” He went on to outline a number of changes that the department made to improve the system, as well as the key challenges they faced.
Among other things, he noted that FSA had no internal engineering expertise until last year and that contractors working on different pieces of the process used different tools that didn’t integrate with each other.
“The team is still working to unwind these parallel environments and the technical debt created by these decisions today,” he wrote.
GAO officials disagreed with some of the department’s statements and proposed changes to their recommendations, countering that the review was based on both federal and department guidelines and that ED needs a way to hold its contractors accountable.
“As our report notes, FSA was not appropriately overseeing the work of its contractor and did not adequately ensure rigorous testing of the system,” officials wrote. “By not doing so, FSA put the FAFSA modernization effort at risk of failure, which their letter points out.”
An estimated 59 percent of all college students have experienced some form of housing or food insecurity in the past year, according to 2024 data from the Hope Center at Temple University. Closer to three in four students have lacked access to other basic needs, such as mental health care, childcare, transportation or technology.
At Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, it was students who first noticed their peers needed additional resources.
Spencer Moser, MCLA’s assistant dean for student growth and well-being, teaches a leadership capstone course in which students complete a community-based service project. “One group of students was aware that some of their peers were attending classes hungry,” he recalled.
As part of their assignment, students researched available resources to address basic needs insecurity and identified the need for a campus pantry.
“The program started as a drawer at my desk,” Moser said. “Then it grew to fill a shelving unit, a closet and eventually its own space on campus.”
Now, MCLA hosts an Essential Needs Center (ENC) on campus for any student who may face financial barriers to acquiring food, housing or other necessary items.
How it works: Located in the campus center, the Essential Needs Center is open 24 hours a day from Monday to Thursday, with more limited hours on Fridays. The center provides students with food, housing and transportation assistance, seasonal clothes, and more.
Students can utilize a variety of resources to address food insecurity, including grab-and-go or instant meals and free meal swipes for the dining hall, as well as help with their SNAP applications. The center’s website also provides links to recipes using MCLA food pantry staples to help students with minimal cooking experience prepare nutritious meals.
One of the unique offerings of MCLA’s center is a build-a-bundle initiative that allows students to request a variety of personal health, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom or cleaning items, as well as school supplies. Students can submit a form online requesting supplies ranging from a first-aid kit to baking supplies and a bath mat.
The pantry has a small budget from the college, which is supplemented by grants, a partnership with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and donor support. Interested donors can give nonperishable food items, toiletries or monetary contributions.
Student supported: The ENC first started with students looking to support their classmates, and student leadership continues to be at the heart of the center’s work.
“Students manage the inventory, make sure their peers know about this resource, staff the center,” Moser said. “The center is student-run and -managed, designed to be student-centric due to the belief that students know best what students’ needs are.”
The pantry sees 400 to 500 students use the pantry regularly, for a total of 1,313 visits between November 2023 and January 2025, Moser said.
In fall 2024 alone, ENC logged 729 visits—including from 96 first-time visitors—and distributed over 2,600 items.
Other Models of Success
Basic needs insecurity impacts college students across the country, hindering their academic progress and forcing them to choose between educational pursuits and personal needs. Here are some examples of how other colleges and universities are promoting student well-being.
Anne Arundel Community College students in Maryland created a cookbook featuring items exclusively from the campus pantry, many reflecting their traditions and cultures.
Pace University offers a monthly mobile market for students, faculty and staff to receive free food items that cannot be stored for longer in the permanent campus pantry.
The University of California, Davis, piloted a discounted food truck on campus at lunchtime, allowing students to receive a hot meal at a pay-what-you-can price.
Virginia Commonwealth University established mini pantries across campus with grab-and-go food items, modeled off the concept of a little free library.
As our fall semester begins, college students are filled with excitement and nervous anticipation. By my lights, they are getting ready to practice freedom in the service of learning. Back in the 18th century, the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that enlightenment was freedom from self-imposed immaturity, describing how the process of education was the practice of freedom. When people learn—embarking on the journey of thinking for themselves in the company of others—they are experimenting with choice, autonomy, relationship and discipline.
I (usually) find it thrilling to watch students experiment in these ways, and I occasionally get to join in. They are relinquishing—not completely, and certainly not all at once—their childish ways and trying on what it means to be an adult. They begin to experience that freedom from immaturity and figure out, provisionally, the kinds of lives they want to live. This normally includes, but is not limited to, the kind of work they are prepared to do. Facing this very practical issue is part of growing up, and colleges provide various opportunities for doing just that.
Still, many in America have doubts about whether today’s college student is, in fact, learning to be a free adult. Some have been persuaded that college campuses no longer value the open exchange of ideas but instead demand allegiance only to ideas deemed progressive. Others see colleges as failing to practice what they preach. Children of alumni or wealthy donors have a much better chance of getting admitted to highly selective colleges than ordinary Americans; the paths to colleges believed to offer the best educations are paved with gold.
The charge of unfair admissions—like the criticism of political groupthink or mindless grinding away to get grades and internships—attacks the integrity of learning as a path to freely thinking for oneself. If colleges are unfair or corrupt in choosing their students, then the value of the education offered is undermined. If one only learns to imitate the views of one’s professors in order to win their favor, then one is wallowing in immaturity and not practicing freedom.
Unquestionably, there has been a loss of trust in higher education, and— while less dramatic, perhaps, than the loss of trust in the judiciary, the media or Congress—it undermines the ability of colleges to teach their students. No matter how much teachers emphasize critical thinking, learning requires trust. It requires that we open ourselves to ideas and people that might have an impact on how we live. This can, of course, sometimes be disturbing, even offensive, but the deepest learning often involves reconsidering our assumptions and deeply held beliefs.
I see this regularly in the class I teach, Virtue and Vice. I see undergraduates willing to stress test their moral intuitions against thinkers as varied as Aristotle and Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche and Danielle Allen. I see students considering how they want to live by thinking with some of the central texts of our traditions. Each week they practice one of the traditional virtues and discuss this with their fellow students. They read, think, practice, discuss. Reconsider and repeat.
Critics prone to exaggeration have claimed that this kind of traditional humanistic work is no longer possible because today’s colleges have been captured ideologically by the woke left. Of course, there have been pernicious examples of close-mindedness from progressive purists, but the current attempt at ideological capture by the Trump administration is far more dangerous, as well as dishonest. Since President Trump’s inauguration, scores of colleges are being investigated for deliberately ignoring the harassment and intimidation of their Jewish students. These investigations, I have argued, are just vehicles for the White House to put pressure on higher education.
As a Jewish teacher and university president, it pains me to see the fight against antisemitism used as a cudgel with which to attack centers of teaching and research. I’ve been very aware of antisemitism since I was a little boy, when a fellow fourth grader told me the only thing wrong with Hitler was that “he didn’t finish the job.” I reported this to my dad, and he told me to punch the kid at the next opportunity, which I did. I got in trouble at school, but my father was not displeased. I’ve never expected antisemitism to go away, and so its recent resurgence is concerning but not surprising.
I am genuinely startled, though, by the ways Christian nationalists in the American government use Jew hatred as a vehicle to advance their authoritarian agenda. That’s what we are witnessing today: the exploitation of anti-antisemitism by a White House determined to extort money and expressions of loyalty from higher education. Sensing opportunity, some universities see a marketing advantage in portraying themselves as “good for the Jews,” offering protest-free environments (all the while singing the praises of free speech).
As academic leaders, of course we must support students of faith generally, and we have a particular obligation to acknowledge religious minorities who have traditionally been targets of abuse. This, of course, includes but is not limited to Jews. Not a few of my students are interested in the topic “virtue and vice” because of their religious beliefs, and I find they are at least as capable of thinking critically about their faith as secular students are when asked to reconsider their own values. They join in the process of reading, thinking, practicing, discussing. Reconsider and repeat. As we practice a virtue each week, all my students learn how moral ideas might play a role in their daily lives. How much of a role, of course, is up to them.
When I write it’s “up to them,” I imagine their choices as part of the process of leaving behind self-imposed immaturity. Sometimes, unfortunately, parents contribute to a student remaining a child, especially when they try to run interference for cherished offspring whenever an obstacle arises. But most of the time I see undergraduates practicing freedom in a safe enough environment—not too safe that they aren’t pushed to reconsider their choices, but accommodating enough that they can explore possibilities without feeling in danger.
This environment is threatened by the enormous pressure the federal government is putting on higher education to “align its priorities” with those of the president. I am worried about the normalization of this authoritarian effort to reshape the ecosystem of higher education. Too many opportunists and collaborators have been responding by noisily preaching neutrality or just keeping their heads down.
Some faculty, student and alumni groups, however, have begun to stand up and make their voices heard. Whether refusing to apologize for diversity efforts or simply standing up for the freedom of scientific inquiry, there is growing resistance to the administration’s attempt to control civil society in general and higher education in particular.
The groups defending their campuses from governmental intrusion are not just shielding the status quo. They are resisting attempts to undermine education as the practice of freedom, safeguarding the various ways that learning can allow students and teachers to open their minds and their hearts to new ideas and ways of living.
We don’t want the government thinking for us, telling us what the president’s priorities are so that we can imitate them. We want to learn to think for ourselves in the company of others, leaving behind a dependence on authority. Authoritarians would see us impose immaturity upon ourselves. As the new school year begins, we in higher education must redouble our efforts to model and defend the enlightenment ideals of education and freedom—while we still can.
