Tag: Events

Harvard Law Review Accused of Race-Based Discrimination

In the latest salvo in the war between the Trump administration and Harvard University, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services launched Title VI investigations into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review for alleged race-based discrimination at the 138-year-old student-run publication.

“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor in a statement. “Title VI’s demands are clear: recipients of federal financial assistance may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin … The Trump Administration will not allow Harvard, or any other recipients of federal funds, to trample on anyone’s civil rights.”

The statement alleged that the editor of the Harvard Law Review wrote that it was “concerning” that the vast majority of people seeking to respond to an article about police reform “are white men.” It also accused another editor of suggesting that a submission receive “expedited review because the author was a minority.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon reposted a tweet from the Free Beacon that purports to show additional evidence of race-based decision-making at the Law Review.

“We will not allow recipients of federal funding to discriminate on the basis of race,” McMahon wrote.

Members of the Harvard Law Review have not publicly commented on the allegations. But an HLS spokesperson told Axios, “Harvard Law School is committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations.”

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April 30, 2025
Indiana Budget Bill Contains Sweeping Higher Ed Changes

Indiana state lawmakers have sent their governor a state budget bill that goes beyond setting funding levels. If Republican governor Mike Braun signs it into law, House Enrolled Act 1001 will require faculty at public colleges and universities to post their syllabi online and undergo “productivity” reviews.

The bill would also—among other things—prohibit faculty emeriti from voting in faculty governance organizations, place low-enrolled degree programs at risk of elimination by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and end alumni elections for three Indiana University Board of Trustees seats by filling them with gubernatorial appointees. In addition, it has a provision that would let Braun remove the currently elected board members before their terms expire.

“I think overreach doesn’t begin to describe the actions of the Legislature,” said Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus of education at IU Bloomington. “This is really a sweeping takeover of higher education in Indiana.”

The Republican-controlled Indiana General Assembly passed the legislation—which runs more than 200 pages—less than two days after revealing it Wednesday, April 23. The state House approved it around 12:45 a.m. Friday, followed by the Senate’s agreement at about 1:20 a.m.

“I know a lot of legislators … simply didn’t have enough time to fully read it,” Skiba said. “There was no opportunity whatsoever for any sort of public input.”

Matt Pierce, a Democratic Indiana House member who’s a senior lecturer at IU Bloomington, said the conference committee report revealing the budget bill wasn’t even released until Wednesday evening.

“As people began to kind of go through it, they discovered all these higher education provisions that had never been discussed anywhere,” Pierce said. To have “provisions of this magnitude” pass in the budget bill “with no hearing or public input, that was pretty shocking,” he said.

The budget bill’s higher education provisions echo those passed, or at least proposed, in other red states. But Indiana’s General Assembly continues to be in the vanguard among even GOP-controlled legislatures in its fervor for regulating public higher education. Last year, state lawmakers passed, and the former governor signed, a law threatening the jobs of nontenured and tenured faculty who don’t sufficiently foster “intellectual diversity,” as defined by campus boards of trustees.

These bills follow pro-Palestine protests at IU Bloomington and tensions between faculty and university president Pamela Whitten. And with a further reduction of tenure protections looming in the new bill, a tenured professor at IU Bloomington says he’s under investigation for allegedly violating a policy the university wrote to uphold last year’s intellectual diversity law.

Ben Robinson, an associate professor of Germanic studies and a prominent pro-Palestine campus protester, told Inside Higher Ed that an anonymous student filed a complaint against him in October. The unnamed student, according to a copy of the complaint Robinson provided, wrote that Robinson “talks negatively about the state of Israel and describes the war in untrue and unfair ways” and has discussed being arrested at a pro-Palestine rally “on numerous occasions.” The student also complained that Robinson had spoken “against Indiana University on several occasions” and used class time to say the university was restricting free speech.

This complaint was filed in IU’s bias incident reporting system, which wouldn’t have involved potential discipline, Robinson said, but university administrators appeared to refile it as an intellectual diversity–related complaint under the policy passed after the General Assembly’s intellectual diversity law. He said he thinks administrators “want to overcomply on particularly this ideological issue, because that’s what they’re being told they have to enforce” by the federal government.

“How can a professor know what’s going to be called bias?” Robinson said. He also said IU Bloomington is “a campus in which the witch hunts are alive and well, and I, along with many others, have been an open target of them.”

IU spokesperson Mark Bode, in response to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for an interview and written questions about Robinson’s situation, wrote in an email simply that “IU does not comment on personnel matters.”

Accusations of IU Involvement

Multiple critics have accused IU leaders of backing one or more of the 11th-hour budget bill’s higher education changes. When asked about this, Bode provided a written statement that didn’t say whether IU was specifically involved.

“Throughout the session, Indiana University engaged with state lawmakers to shape meaningful conversations about the university’s commitments to making higher education accessible to Hoosiers and driving the state’s economy through life-changing research and innovation,” the statement said. IU “will be working over the coming weeks to understand the full impact of state legislation and ensure compliance.”

Before the bill passed, Pierce said, he texted an IU lobbyist asking the university’s position on it. The lobbyist replied that the institution didn’t have a position because it was still carefully reviewing the legislation, Pierce said.

“And right then and there I knew that IU was behind it,” Pierce said. He also questioned how lawmakers would have the “pretty esoteric” knowledge that emeritus faculty serve in some faculty governance organizations.

“You now have a convergence of the Republican attacks on higher education and the actual administration of Indiana University, and that’s a pretty shocking development,” he said.

The IU Board of Trustees currently has six gubernatorial appointees—including a student with a two-year term—plus three members elected by alumni. If Braun signs the budget bill, he and future governors will be able to appoint all nine members, the student member’s term will drop to one year and there will be no more alumni-elected members.

Braun has expressed support for this change, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

“I think it’s being done because the current process [has] not maybe yielded the proper results on the entirety of how you want that important part of our state to be run—from curriculum to cost to the whole way one of our flagship universities has been operating,” Braun said, according to the Capital Chronicle. “I want to get a board there that is going to be a little more rounded, that’s going to produce better results.”

Vivian Winston, one of the elected board members, who previously announced she’s not seeking re-election, said she voted against IU president Whitten’s contract extension and the university’s post-encampment protest restrictions. But she said she doesn’t know whether her votes were related to the board change part of the legislation—which, like the other higher ed provisions in the bill, caught her “unaware.”

“I found out through the media,” Winston said of the changes in the bill.

Rodric Bray, a Republican and Indiana’s Senate president pro tem, provided Inside Higher Ed a rationale for the part of the bill ending alumni elections.

“A very small fraction of the IU alumni have been participating in the election for the alumni seats on the IU Board of Trustees,” Bray said in an emailed statement. “Of the approximately 790,000 alumni around the world, only about 2.5% of alumni voted in the most recent election for trustee. Because the number is so small, it is not a fair representation.”

But some opponents of the provision don’t see it that way. Skiba, the IU Bloomington emeritus faculty member, said, “This is clearly payback for opposition of policies favored by the president of the university and the Legislature.” He said the change would “take those voices of opposition off the Board of Trustees and essentially give complete control of the Board of Trustees over to the governor.”

Over all, Skiba said, “this Legislature is following the Trump lead—wishing to put an airtight lid on free expression. And if you’re wishing to do that, universities are an obvious place to start.”

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April 30, 2025
Mellon Foundation Gives Humanities Councils Emergency Funds

The Mellon Foundation is giving $15 million in emergency funding to state humanities councils after the National Endowment for the Humanities eliminated $65 million in support for the councils, amid sweeping cuts to its grants and workforce, the foundation announced Tuesday.

These councils, established by Congress in 1971, are nonprofits that support educational programming for the public, such as literacy initiatives, lectures, book fairs and cultural programs. The support will go toward all 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils across the country in hopes of staving off possible deep cuts and closures. The foundation plans to allocate $2.8 million to challenge grants of up to $50,000 for each council, to be matched by other funders. And each council will received $200,000 in immediate operational support, The New York Times reported.

Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in the announcement that while the emergency funds can’t cover the full extent of cuts, it’s a show of support.

“At stake are both the operational integrity of organizations like museums, libraries, historical societies in every single state, as well as the mechanisms to participate in the cultural dynamism and exchange that is a fundamental part of American civic life,” Alexander said.

Phoebe Stein, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, called the foundation funding a “lifeline.”

“Mellon’s support allows us to not only preserve this vital network—it helps ensure that everyday Americans can thrive through lifelong learning, connection, and understanding of one another,” she said in the announcement.

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April 30, 2025
Student Loan Overhaul Clears House Committee

Over strong objections from Democrats, House Republicans on the Education and the Workforce Committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would make dramatic changes to the federal student aid system.

For a full Inside Higher Ed analysis of what provisions are included in the reconciliation bill, read here.

The sweeping 103-page bill, known as the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, passed on a party-line vote after more than five hours of debate. The legislation would cap the amount of federal loans a student can take out, cut off the Pell Grant for students who attend less than half time, consolidate income-driven repayment plans and introduce a risk-sharing program where colleges are partially responsible for unpaid student loans. The bill, which would also reverse multiple Biden-era student borrower protection regulations, could save more than $330 billion in federal funding over 10 years, committee Republicans say.

It’s just one section of a larger budget bill that lawmakers are planning to use to fund some of President Donald Trump’s top priorities, like lofty tax cuts for the wealthy and a major crackdown on immigration. But House Republicans said the changes were more than just a means to fund his MAGA agenda.

“If there is any consensus when it comes to student loans, it’s that the current system is effectively broken and littered with incentives that push tuition prices upward,” Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and committee chair, said in his opening statement. Higher education is “on a fiscally unsustainable path, so we must deliver on the promise of economic mobility to our students and families. Taken together, the provisions in this package will do just that.”

Democrats on the committee argued the legislation is nothing more than a means to fund tax cuts for the wealthy that will force low-income and racial minority students to take on more debt and penalize the community colleges, regional universities and minority-serving institutions that educate those students. All in all, the bill will put the cost of a college degree out of reach for many, they said.

“I appreciate that my colleagues acknowledge that the cost of college is too high, and that Congress should reform the system. But the committee print before us today … seriously misses the mark of making college more affordable,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member on the committee. “Put bluntly, this Republican proposal will limit how much money middle- and low-income students can borrow from the federal government.”

Scott and other Democrats proposed 33 amendments—all of which Republicans voted down. They ranged from requests to prove the bill wouldn’t disproportionately affect certain institutions and increase costs for students to defending the Pell eligibility of part-time students and some consumer-protection regulations. Democrats also proposed replacing the income-driven repayment plan in the legislation with a more generous Biden-era alternative and striking the bill entirely. Other amendments touched on other issues unrelated to this section of the legislation, such as proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive data.

Republicans countered that Democrats’ allegations that the bill would make college less affordable were, as Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah said, “nothing further from the truth.” The proposed changes to the federal aid system will lead to better loan terms and repayment options that are also fair to taxpayers and avoid wasteful spending, they argued.

The bill will now head to the House Budget Committee, where it will be folded into a complex omnibus bill before it is sent to the floor for a full House vote.

But even if it clears the House, the legislation still has a long way to go. The House and the Senate have differing ideas about how much federal spending they wish to cut and what programs they are willing to slash. The Senate is aiming to make at least $1 billion in education cuts, which is less than 1 percent of the House committee’s $330 billion reduction.

This reconciliation bill only needs a simple majority vote, or 51 yeas, to pass the upper chamber, but that will require almost all Republicans in the Senate to agree, which experts don’t think is a foregone conclusion.

Risk Sharing

One of the more contentious proposals in the bill is the risk-sharing provision, which would require colleges to repay the government a portion of students’ unpaid loans.

Republicans on the committee described the risk-sharing proposal as critical, adding that it would penalize colleges for forcing their students into unmanageable debt and would incentivize them to lower their cost of attendance.

“The best way for us to do that is not to loan [students] more money, but to reduce the cost so that they don’t need the loans,” said Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, who has been active in higher ed in the Sunshine State. “That’s what this bill does over and over and over again.”

But Democrats said it is misleading to say the bill and provisions like risk-sharing would reduce costs and increase graduation rates, arguing it would actually incentivize colleges to accept fewer low-income students and increase tuition or cut critical student-support programs in order to foot the bill of new penalties.

Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat of North Carolina, called risk-sharing “a dire threat” especially to historically Black colleges and universities, which would have to pay an average of $1.7 million per year to account for the debt of their graduates.

The students at these institutions “started behind but are determined to get ahead,” Adams said, adding that they don’t default because they are failing; they default because they are “carrying the burden of generations of inequity.”

“This bill will tell colleges to take only the best students and leave the rest behind,” she added.

Multiple student advocacy and higher education groups opposed risk-sharing and other proposals in letters to the committee and fact sheets.

Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, noted in a memo Monday that the concept of risk-sharing “has a lot of intuitive appeal,” but the proposal “misses the mark for meaningful accountability.” Other provisions like loan limits and changes to the Pell Grant program will also “drive students into the private loan market,” the memo added.

And the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities told the committee that, if passed, risk-sharing would amount to a “staggering level of federal overreach” that penalizes colleges and universities for “decisions beyond their control.”

“The gravity of these changes would have a far reaching impact to current and future students,” APLU wrote. “There is a better way.”

If Republicans “truly believed” the bill would not raise the cost of college and the burden of debt for students, then they would have no problem passing proposed amendments that certify its impact on students and institutions, said Adams, the North Carolina Democrat.

“Let’s be clear about what this really means: This bill punishes students for being poor. It punishes students for needing to work. It punishes students for living in the real world,” she said. It transforms financial aid “from a bridge into a barricade.”

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April 30, 2025
Harvard Eyes Changes to Address Antisemitism, Anti-Muslim Bias

Harvard University is introducing changes to its admissions, curriculum and orientation and other aspects of campus life as recommended by two internal task force reports on discrimination and harassment released Tuesday. The goal is to support civil discourse and address concerns raised by the two task forces, which were convened more than a year ago to review antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias at the university.

The university also plans to initiate a research project on antisemitism and provide support for a “comprehensive historical analysis of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at Harvard,” officials announced Tuesday. Harvard will also invest in Jewish studies and organize events featuring experts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Deans will work with faculty to ensure students are treated fairly regardless of political and religious beliefs and prevent professors from taking political positions in class that create feelings of exclusion, according to the task force reports.

A review of disciplinary policies and procedures is also planned.

The announcement comes as the nation’s wealthiest university is locked in a standoff with the Trump administration over how officials handled pro-Palestinian campus protests last spring, which has prompted the federal government to freeze billions in research funding for Harvard and led the university to fire back with a lawsuit. Now, amid withering federal scrutiny and an ongoing Title VI investigation, Harvard has released more than 500 pages detailing the recent concerns of Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students along with recommended improvements.

Of the two task forces, one focused on combating antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias while the other took on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. Those task forces, launched in January 2024, were asked to examine Harvard’s recent history, identify root causes of bias, evaluate evidence on the frequency of such behaviors and recommend steps to combat bias.

That work is now done. And the end result finds Harvard lacking—but aiming for improvement.

Harvard president Alan Garber noted that the report “revealed aspects of a charged period in our recent history” that required addressing. While the university has already made various changes since he became president last January, he noted the work is far from finished.

He also expressed concerns about the findings.

“Especially disturbing is the reported willingness of some students to treat each other with disdain rather than sympathy, eager to criticize and ostracize, particularly when afforded the anonymity and distance that social media provides. Some students reported being pushed by their peers to the periphery of campus life because of who they are or what they believe, eroding our shared sense of community in the process,” Garber wrote in a Tuesday statement.

The Findings

The dual task force reports show a campus sharply divided in the aftermath of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted a brutal counteroffensive in Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, children among them. The antisemitism task force report makes clear that tensions had been building on campus since the mid-2010s as the Israel-Palestine conflict became more divisive. The report found that after Oct. 7, “our Harvard community fell apart.”

Authors of that report noted that since the 2010s, pro-Israeli events and guests were targeted, and some Jewish students with pro-Israel views found themselves excluded socially. They also found that Jewish students and others on campus faced instances of bullying, intimidation and harassment and were shunned for expressing pro-Israel or moderate views. Students also alleged that university programming skewed in favor of Palestinian views. But then after Oct. 7, some Jewish students noticed a shift in the campus climate.

“My experience has been different before and after October 7th,” one student wrote to the task forces. “Before October 7th, being Jewish was largely irrelevant. It was not a barrier. I was proud to be Jewish. When it came up, it was positive. After October 7th, I experienced the following in this order: first there was pressure, then there was chaos, then hostility, and in certain spaces, the normalization of subtle discrimination like, ‘We’ll welcome you in this space if you align in a certain way. If not, you can’t come here.’ This has to do with the enforcement of rules.”

Jewish students also expressed concerns about speaking up.

“I do not feel mentally safe on campus. Though I am not Israeli, I have openly expressed sympathy for October 7th survivors and attended events for Holocaust survivors. I have faced many social consequences for not thinking in ways my classmates would deem progressive, which I find unreasonable,” one student wrote in response to a survey by the two task forces.

The task force exploring anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias yielded similar findings, with students and employees alike reporting threats and concerns related to their identities.

“The feeling over and over again for Palestinians is that their lives don’t matter as much,” one student said. “Sometimes it’s explicit. It’s really hard when it’s your family that matters less.”

Others expressed free speech concerns.

“It would be close to impossible to express views at Harvard sympathizing with Palestinians,” one Harvard faculty member said, as quoted in the report. “The idea of ‘antisemitism’ has been expanded so much that anything that even remotely expresses concern about the calamity that’s facing Palestinians is prohibited at Harvard. I’m not Arab/Muslim and have no ethnic or religious affiliations with Palestinians other than having a connection as a fellow human being.”

Both reports also expressed safety concerns regarding doxxing trucks and related online campaigns as well as about the role those outside the Harvard community had in amplifying campus divisions.

Respondents to task force surveys also saw Harvard as complicit in failing to address concerns.

“I’ve had positive interactions with the administration. They just don’t know what to do,” one graduate student wrote in a response. “They didn’t expect this level of anti-Zionism. [My school] didn’t expect having to draw a line between free speech and harassment. Anti-Zionism is considered an intellectual exercise and not as discrimination by some in the administration.”

The Next Steps

In his statement, Garber noted the university has already “made necessary changes and essential progress on many fronts” including campus protest rules and various other areas.

But more changes are coming as a result of the task force’s recommendations. On admissions, Harvard has committed to reviewing its processes to emphasize candidates who “engage constructively with different perspectives, show empathy, and participate in civil discourse.”

The university will also offer additional training for Office for Community Conduct staff on antisemitism and hire a staffer to oversee all antisemitism and shared-ancestry complaints. Mental health professionals at Harvard have already received cultural competency training on anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism to give them a better understanding of student needs.

Harvard has also committed to partnering with an Israeli university.

Additionally, deans will work with faculty “to define shared expectations for teaching excellence,” a process intended to ensure “appropriate focus on course subject matter” and to ensure “that students are treated fairly regardless of their identity or political/religious beliefs.” That effort also aims to promote “intellectual openness and respectful dialogue among students” and urges faculty members to refrain “from endorsing or advocating political positions in a manner that may cause students to feel pressure to demonstrate allegiance.” The stated aim of a related curriculum review is to uphold “standards of academic excellence and intellectual rigor.”

The university will also host a series of events on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Harvard is further investing in Jewish studies, including hiring additional personnel. The university will make similar investments in Arabic language and cultures and Islamic and Palestinian studies.

Harvard is also “exploring the creation of a major initiative to promote viewpoint diversity.”

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April 29, 2025
At Least 15 Florida Institutions Have ICE Agreements
At least three members of the Florida College System have signed agreements with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow their campus police departments to enforce immigration law, bringing the total to 15 institutions across the state.

Florida SouthWestern State College, Northwest Florida State College and Tallahassee State College have all signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, which allows the agency to delegate immigration enforcement powers to other law enforcement agencies, such as campus police. Those three agreements have been approved by ICE, according to a federal database. Others approved as participating agencies are the police at Florida A&M University, New College of Florida, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida and the University of West Florida.

None of the three latest colleges responded to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

Santa Fe College also has a draft agreement in place that has not yet been signed, a spokesperson said, noting the earliest that would be done is at a May 20 board meeting. A spokesperson for Pensacola State College said its campus police are considering an application to partner with ICE.
Other institutions that have already signed agreements with ICE are:

Florida A&M University

Florida Atlantic University

Florida Gulf Coast University

Florida International University

Florida Polytechnic University

Florida State University

New College of Florida

University of Central Florida

University of Florida

University of North Florida

University of South Florida

University of West Florida
While all 12 institutions in the State University System have signed on with ICE, Florida SouthWestern State, Northwest Florida State and Tallahassee State appear to be the first of the 28 members in the Florida College System to enter such arrangements.

Not all of the state colleges have campus police departments. But of those that do have campus police departments, signing on with ICE isn’t a given. For instance, Florida State College of Jacksonville and Polk State College told Inside Higher Ed that neither have a memorandum of agreement with ICE.

Leaders Defend Agreements

The agreements with ICE come amid an immigration crackdown driven by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature. In February, DeSantis directed state law enforcement agencies to sign agreements with ICE “to execute functions of immigration enforcement within the state” to make deportations more efficient, according to a news release.

Florida colleges and universities soon followed by signing memorandums of understanding with ICE that will deputize campus police officers to carry out immigration duties on campus. Institutions have largely declined to speak publicly about the arrangements. However, a recent Faculty Senate meeting at Florida International University with FIU chief of police Alexander Casas yielded insights into why agreements were signed but left many lingering questions.

Casas argued at the April 18 meeting that it would be better for university police to carry out immigration enforcement duties on campus than outside agencies.

“I can’t control what ICE does. I can’t control what a state agency does that has jurisdiction. But if I don’t enter the agreement, I don’t even have the opportunity to say, ‘Call us first, let us deal with our community.’ That’s not even an option,” Casas said. He added he wanted to be “in the driver’s seat” but “without the agreement, I’m not even in the car.”

FIU interim president Jeanette Nuñez, the former lieutenant governor under DeSantis, also defended the deal, telling the Faculty Senate the ICE agreement follows similar arrangements “at almost all of the state universities and many other universities across the country.”

Immigration experts have told Inside Higher Ed they are unfamiliar with such agreements at universities in other states. Only Florida institutions appear in an ICE database that tracks active and pending 287(g) agreements. (FIU did not respond to questions about Nuñez’s claims.)

FIU Faculty Senate members, however, did not seem swayed by Casas or Nuñez. Several professors spoke about their distrust for ICE—some clearly emotional—and referenced recent questionable actions by ICE, such as the widely publicized arrest of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, an American citizen who was detained earlier this month and falsely accused of illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.” Federal officials later blamed Lopez-Gomez for his arrest.

Ultimately, the Faculty Senate approved a resolution calling for the university to withdraw from the ICE agreement, which members argued ran counter to the values of the institution.

Statewide Concerns

Concerns about such agreements have also emerged at universities across the state.

Students and faculty have protested such agreements at FIU, FAU and elsewhere. United Faculty of Florida, a union that represents professors across the state, condemned the agreements with ICE as a betrayal of the core values of higher education in a recent statement.

“Our campuses must be institutions of learning, critical inquiry, and inclusion—not instruments of surveillance and state-sponsored oppression,” United Faculty of Florida officials said in a statement last week. “The presence and involvement of ICE on our campuses sows fear among students, staff, and faculty, particularly those from immigrant, undocumented, or international communities. It undermines the very mission of our higher education system: to foster open dialogue, intellectual freedom, and the free exchange of ideas across borders and identities.”

The agreements also prompted pushback from the Florida Advisory Council of Faculty Senates, which issued a resolution that urged universities to withdraw from existing agreements with ICE.

“To effectively protect our universities, campus police cultivate a unique relationship with campus communities,” council members wrote in a recent resolution. “They come to know our students, our educational spaces, and our communities. They are present at peaceful protests, in classrooms, and at student events. Repurposing this unique trust for federal immigration enforcement makes our campuses less safe, puts our officers in an untenable position, and chills students’ access to the support services they critically need to succeed.”

That resolution has already been endorsed by some faculty senates, including at FAU.
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April 29, 2025
AAUP Report Backs Tenured Pro-Palestine Prof. Who Was Fired

A new American Association of University Professors investigative report concludes that Muhlenberg College violated the academic freedom of a tenured associate professor who said the institution fired her for pro-Palestinian speech.

Maura Finkelstein’s situation made headlines last year as the first instance that major academic freedom advocacy groups had heard about of a tenured faculty member being fired for pro-Palestine or pro-Israel statements. Complaints against Finkelstein also became the subject of a U.S. Education Department Office for Civil Rights investigation.

Finkelstein previously said she was fighting her May 2024 termination and was continuing to be paid during the appeals. But a college spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed this week that Finkelstein has now “resigned from the college to pursue other scholarship opportunities.” Finkelstein didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment.

Finkelstein, who is Jewish, had said a panel of faculty and staff recommended axing her over her Instagram repost that told readers not to “normalize Zionists taking up space” and called Zionists “genocide-loving fascists” who shouldn’t be welcome “in your spaces.”

Members of the college’s Faculty Personnel and Policies Committee later unanimously concluded that Finkelstein shouldn’t be fired, according to the AAUP report released Tuesday. The report is from a Committee of Inquiry composed of three faculty from other higher education institutions, and it’s been approved by the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

The report concludes, among other things, that “by initially dismissing Professor Finkelstein from the faculty solely because of one anti-Zionist repost on Instagram and without demonstrating—in fact, without ever seeking to demonstrate” that she was professionally unfit, “the Muhlenberg administration violated Professor Finkelstein’s academic freedom of extramural speech.” The report says the firing has “severely impaired the climate for academic freedom” at the college.

A college spokesperson said the institution “has not been afforded the opportunity to review the amended report,” but pointed to the administration’s response to an earlier AAUP draft. That response, included in the final AAUP report, says Finkelstein “was afforded a fair and equitable process” and that “the cumulative effect of Professor Finkelstein’s conduct and post that called for the shaming of Zionists and to ‘not welcome them into your spaces,’ violated College policy.”

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April 29, 2025
Ex-NIH Director Says Trump Silenced Him, Others

A former director of the National Institutes of Health—who resigned in February—told CBS ’s 60 Minutes that working at the agency became “untenable” after President Donald Trump started his second term Jan. 20.

Like “every other scientist, I was not allowed to speak in any kind of scientific meeting or public setting,” Francis Collins, a geneticist who had worked for the biomedical research agency since the 1990s, said during an episode that aired Sunday. He believed staying at the agency wouldn’t have helped. “I would have been pretty much in the circumstance of not being able to speak about it.”

Over the past few months, the Trump administration has announced sweeping budget cuts and ideologically driven policy changes at numerous agencies across the federal government, including at the $47 billion NIH. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, sending about 80 percent of its budget to universities, medical colleges and other institutes in the form of extramural grants that support research on fatal diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

But scientists and medical research advocates say the work of the NIH—and the millions of patients it supports—is in jeopardy.

In late January, the NIH temporarily froze spending and communication and halted most reviews of grant applications; so far in 2025 it’s awarded about $2.8 billion less than usual at this point over the past five years. It’s also announced a plan to cap indirect research cost rates, which universities say would create gaping budget holes and slow the pace of medical breakthroughs. (A federal judge has since blocked the guidance.)

The agency has also fired some 1,300 employees and terminated roughly $2 billion in grants—many focused on the health of women, LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities—that no longer effectuate “agency priorities.” (Researchers have since sued over the grant terminations). And earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that an internal White House budget proposal outlined plans to cut $20 billion from NIH’s annual budget and consolidate the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into eight.

Although research advocates have protested the cuts, the drastic changes have created an environment of fear and anxiety for both university scientists and the remaining NIH employees who support them and conduct their own medical research.

“I’ve never seen the morale of an institution change so abruptly to where we feel fear,” said an NIH researcher who spoke to 60 Minutes on the condition of anonymity. “You can’t run an organization as complicated as NIH without a support system … That has now been decimated … This doesn’t feel like a strategic plan to make the NIH better and more efficient. It feels like a wrecking ball.”

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April 29, 2025
Beware Illusions of Campus Normalcy This Spring (opinion)

It’s nearing the end of the academic year at Harvard University, where I teach in the Graduate School of Education. Students are preparing for final exams and finishing up capstone projects. Awards ceremonies are being held and celebrations, formal and informal, have begun. The weather has finally warmed up in Cambridge, and the outdoor tables at restaurants and coffee shops are crowded. The women’s tennis team clinched the Ivy League title.

It all feels normal. Yet it all feels discordant, like a scene in a M. Night Shyamalan movie that infuses the quotidian with a barely detectable feeling of dread.

This discordance is of course especially powerful at Harvard, the current epicenter of a ferocious and lawless attack on higher education that might make Viktor Orbán blush. But it is not unique to Harvard. At colleges and universities across the country, classes continue, clubs meet and Frisbees are being tossed even as the government sows fear and confusion by revoking, then restoring, then warning that it might again revoke the visa statuses of more than 1,800 international students.

Lawyers continue to do what lawyers do, while large firms are essentially signing on to be instruments of the government, individuals are being targeted because the president of the United States holds a grudge, bigly, and court orders are being ignored.

Doctors continue to treat patients while billions of dollars of funding for medical research and experimental trials are being withheld and the secretary of Health and Human Services is declaring that autism is preventable and the measles vaccine is maybe, sort of OK.

We get in our cars or on our bicycles and go off to work while the government is pressing before the courts an argument that would allow it to send anyone, citizen or noncitizen, to a foreign prison without cause or legal recourse.

When many of us think about authoritarian takeovers, we imagine military coups and declarations of martial law. But the truth is that the most powerful tool of the aspiring authoritarian is not shock, but normalcy. How bad can things be if we can still shop at Costco or take our families out for Italian food? How bad can they be if we can still download Maya Angelou onto our Kindles or watch Jimmy Kimmel Live!? How bad can they be if I can still publish a piece like this one, critical of the federal government?

Look around not only at the campuses, but at the streets and bars and hardware stores in any city or town in America and it appears to be the same as it was last year and the year before. The NBA playoffs have begun and there’s a new film starring Michael B. Jordan. Normal.

Except it is not, in ways of which we are vaguely aware but unable or unwilling to fully credit.

For most people—the ones not scooped off the street by men in masks or ousted from their jobs with the federal government without cause or forced to stop their research because of the loss of National Institutes of Health funding—life feels more or less the way it did when we were a reasonably functional democracy. This is the way it works: Keep 99 percent of the lives of 99 percent of the people undisturbed for as long as possible so that they will remain unaware of or indifferent to what is happening at the margins. By the time they recognize that the edges of normalcy have drawn closer, it will be too late to do anything about it because the guardrails will have been destroyed.

Begin with the least sympathetic targets. Who will shed tears for the fate of Venezuelan gang members (real or imagined)? Does anyone really like Big Law? Government employees are the problem, not the solution. Harvard, with its giant endowment and Ivy League arrogance, is rarely anyone’s idea of an underdog. Why should we concern ourselves with any of this on the way to McDonald’s or Starbucks? I work at Harvard and most of the time I find it difficult to take seriously the reality that the federal government is trying to destroy a private university simply to prove that it can and because its appetite for both control and chaos appears to have no limits.

Be sure to cite rules and regulations that few people care to understand. What is 501(c)(3) status anyway? “Indirect costs” seem sort of like a scam. The “Alien Enemies Act” sounds like something pulled from the latest Marvel movie. Then cloak it all in the guise of causes to which it seems difficult to object—fighting antisemitism, because Donald Trump and the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Proud Boys are the first things that come to mind when one thinks about protecting Jews. Or perhaps national security, given the threat to the republic posed by international students co-authoring op-eds for the campus newspaper.

Above all, lie. Constantly, relentlessly, shamelessly lie. Since most people don’t spend a majority of their time lying about a majority of things, they appear to find it difficult to recognize when other people do. It’s hard to question a time-tested strategy.

The fight against our current level of inertia is painfully difficult because the allure of the normal, the desire to believe that things are just fine, is so powerful. A tank in the street is hard to ignore. A steady eroding of legal and ethical norms just beyond the limits of our daily vision is easy to miss.

Our greatest hope might be the tendency of authoritarians and those without any moral compass to overreach. If they can change life by 1 percent without much resistance, why not five or 10 or 20? If they can, through executive actions, free hundreds of convicted felons and strip away environmental protections, why not impose arbitrary and irrational tariffs? What made the reaction to tariffs different and what has, at least for the moment, slowed their progress is the fact that they tore a hole in the illusion of normalcy. Plummeting retirement accounts and worries about the cost of groceries will disrupt the normal in a way that canceling student visas or defunding Harvard will not. It was a mistake, and they will, out of arrogance and stupidity, make more.

The set of demands sent to Harvard, for instance, which Harvard refused to comply with, resulting in headlines around the globe, was apparently sent in error. You could make that up, but no one would believe you.

Meanwhile, I wonder whether we can afford to wait. Is it sufficient to hope that they will make things abnormal enough for a large enough group of people to provoke resistance, or do we have to do the difficult work of wrenching ourselves, somehow, out of the reassuring comforts of familiar routines? David Brooks, hardly a radical, has called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to counter the war being waged on our national civic fabric. Do people, organizations and institutions in the United States, so certain for so long about the permanence of its democracy, even have the energy or the will? Can that happen here or is it something that happens in Seoul or Istanbul and is shown on CNN?

Meanwhile, I have laundry to do and a class to teach this week. Maybe I’ll catch something on Netflix. Pretty normal stuff.

Brian Rosenberg is president emeritus of Macalester College, a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press, 2023).

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April 28, 2025
Colleges, Students Prefer Inclusive Access Models for Books

College affordability is one of the chief concerns of students, families, taxpayers and lawmakers in the U.S., and it extends beyond tuition prices.

Costly course materials can impede student access and success in the classroom. Over half of college students say the high price of course materials has pushed them to enroll in fewer classes or opt out of a specific course, according to a 2023 survey.

A new report from Tyton Partners, published today, finds that affordable-access programs that provide necessary materials can save students money and improve their outcomes. The report pulls data from surveys of students, administrators and faculty, as well as market research on the topic.

The background: Affordable-access programs, also called inclusive-access programs, bill students directly for their textbooks as part of their tuition and fees. Through negotiations among publishers, institutions and campus bookstores, students pay a below-market rate for their course materials, which are often digital.

This model ensures all students start the term with access to the required textbooks and course materials, allowing them to apply financial aid to textbook costs, which removes out-of-pocket expenses at the start of the term. A 2023 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed found that over half of respondents have avoided buying or renting a book for class due to costs.

The first federal regulations for affordable-access programs were set in 2015 to help cap course material costs and spur utilization of inclusive access on campuses. In 2024, the Biden administration sought to redefine inclusive access by making models opt-in to provide students with greater autonomy, but the plan was ultimately paused. Most colleges have an opt-out model of affordable-access programs, requiring students to elect to be removed, according to Tyton’s report.

Critics of affordable-access programs argue that an across-the-board rate eliminates students’ ability to employ their own cost-saving methods, such as buying books secondhand or using open educational resources. Students often lose access to digital resources at the end of the term, limiting their ability to reuse or reference them.

Findings from Tyton Partners’ research point to the value of day-one course materials for student success, which can be provided through opt-out inclusive-access models.

The report: Affordable-access programs are tied to lower costs for participating students, according to the report. The average digital list price for course materials per class was $91, but the average price for course materials for students in an inclusive-access program was $58 per class. (A 2023 survey found the average student spent about $285 on course materials in the 2022–23 academic year, or roughly $33 per item.)

Opt-out affordable-access models have also placed downward pricing pressure on the market; the compound annual growth rate of course materials declined from 6.1 percent to 0.3 percent since the 2015 ED regulations.

A student survey by Tyton found that 61 percent of respondents favor affordable-access models compared to buying (13 percent), renting (11 percent) or borrowing (10 percent) course materials.

Another Angle

The Tyton Partners report identifies opt-out affordable access as one intervention that can ensure all students have access to course materials on day one, which is tied to better student outcomes.

Open educational resources, which are not mentioned in the report, are another method of ensuring students have access to digital course materials at the start of the term at no additional cost to the student.

Among students participating in inclusive access, 84 percent said they felt satisfied or neutral about their user experience, according to a survey by the National Association of College Stores. Students who had a positive view of inclusive access cited the convenience of not shopping for materials (80 percent), day-one access (78 percent) and knowing all their course materials are correct (71 percent) as the top benefits.

Among colleges that do offer inclusive access, those with opt-out models see higher student participation than those with opt-in models (96 percent versus 36 percent, respectively). Administrators report that some students, especially first-year and first-generation students, are less likely to engage in opt-in models and may then struggle because they lack the required materials, which researchers argue enables gaps to persist in student outcomes.

Researchers compared two community colleges and found that students who participated in an opt-out equitable-access program had higher course completion and lower withdrawal rates, compared to their peers who opted in. Learners from underrepresented minority backgrounds, including Black and multiracial students, saw greater gains as well.

While a majority of students indicated a preference for inclusive-access models, it’s still paramount that institutions help students fully understand the benefits of participation and offer them seamless opportunities to opt out, according to Tyton’s report.

After adopting inclusive access, institutions were likely to increase offerings and expand the number of courses within the model. A majority of surveyed faculty members (75 percent) said their institution should maintain or increase affordable-access model usage.

Report authors noted a higher administrative burden in an opt-in model, because costs are applied and resources given to each individual student who opts in, rather than simply removing students who opt out. “Since no technology currently automates the opt-in process, most institutions would need to expand their academic affairs, faculty affairs and information technology teams to handle the increased workload under opt-in models,” according to the report.

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April 28, 2025