Tag: Events

Rachel Toor and Gordon Gee

A Jewish atheist feminist columnist/professor and a devout Mormon bow tie–clad lawyer/university president walked into a bar.

Or at least, shared a Zoom screen to talk about higher ed. Hilarity ensued. Especially since both have the sometimes-job-ending though not career-killing trait of talking faster than they think and never, ever being able to resist a sarcastic crack.

The Columnist didn’t get the memo about being circumspect and careful and spouted off with abandon, often finding herself surprised when people actually pay attention to what she writes and praise her for being “brave” (What are you so afraid of that you don’t feel a similar freedom? she often wonders).

The President, on the other hand, has had the kind of career where if you asked any civilian to name a college president, they would likely mention him. They might even be able to conjure an image of a bow-tied guy, not of football player size, who nevertheless allowed himself to be carried aloft on the hands of the football fans that crammed the stadiums of the giant institutions he led.

Lead them he did, until his Achilles’ mouth and inability to refrain from cracking a joke kept getting him fired. And then rehired. Now that he may be done presidenting, he’s working a bunch of gigs to help fix higher ed, something the Columnist is also trying to do (though from the cheap seats).

This odd couple decided it might be fun to engage in some ~~witty banter~~ serious discussion (via text messages) of important issues facing an industry they both love and to which they have committed their lives.

Columnist: You became a president my sophomore year of college. When I graduated and started working in academic publishing, I began following your career. I feel like I’ve known you for decades, Gordon.

President: Wow!! I have been a president your whole professional life.

Columnist: And you’ve shaped my idea—and many others’—of the American university president. You unapologetically embraced the material rewards but never came off as pretentious, and you did hard things while always seeming to be having fun and taking the work, but not yourself, too seriously.

President: I view the presidency the same way you view being a faculty member. These are the best jobs in the country, and those who whine and complain about academic life are so out of touch with the gift we have been given. And, Rachel, that is why you and I, though from different planets, have found each other, because we both believe in the cause but do not take ourselves too seriously. The joyful odd couple indeed.

Columnist: Oy. I think that makes me Oscar. Somewhere there must be a Greatest Hits of Gee Gaffes. What’s your favorite of the many, many dumb things you’ve said?

President: Probably the most embarrassing and painful moment was when I was meeting with our athletic council at Ohio State and I started talking about Notre Dame joining the Big Ten again.

Columnist: Right. IHE reported on that.

President: That was stupid because I have great admiration for Notre Dame and Father Jenkins—the president is a dear man and great friend. Sometimes a sense of humor, which I believe is critical to leadership, can be painful. The good fathers forgave me, which made it even worse. Also, my crack about the Little Sisters of the Poor. Though I did become their single largest donor.

Columnist: Ah, money. Your salary has long been a topic of conversation. I’ve never aspired to an administrative post because I think I am paid handsomely for doing the best job in the world: teaching what I love. I don’t resent administrative salaries, because if someone is able to negotiate a good deal for themselves with a board, that’s who I want representing my institution. You made a lot and you were accused of lavish spending. Spill the beans, please.

President: I was compensated very well—

Columnist: [cough]

President: —but in turn I raised billions for the universities I served. So, no excuses other than pride and success. Truthfully, my goal always was to make as much money as my football coach, which I never did in 45 years. One time I received a letter from a fan who berated me for my salary and then railed against me for being so parsimonious as to only pay the football coach $4 million.

I am at that point in life where I own up to every mistake. But my irritation gets high when the “lavish spending” issue gets thrown around. It is a narrative developed by several newspaper reporters who wanted a story and decided to invent one. For example, they accused me of spending $65,000 on bow ties. I did not spend that money on bow ties but rather on bow-tie cookies that we distributed to students, families, friends and donors over a period of years.

Columnist: Stale cookies? Nice. Speaking of pride and success, what on earth were you thinking when you took on the presidency of Brown? That move seemed to reek of the kind of arrogance you’ve accused universities of.

President: I think the goal of many university presidents is to lead an Ivy. And I was no different. Heady stuff. But I had come from an institution of 65,000 students to one of 6,500 and soon felt like an antelope in a telephone booth. It was small and self-centered. It is undoubtedly a great university, but fit is important and I was not a good fit. What I learned was that the smaller the institution, the more politically intense it is for the president.

Columnist: Now I’m going to have at you, buddy. Let’s talk about the University of Austin, which you’ve been associated with from the beginning. Sure, it’s in some ways an innovative answer to the structural problems in our industry, and it’s also a horrific winding back of the social progress we’ve made toward become a more democratic and egalitarian society. I mean, WTF, Gordon?

President: In my view, there are two pathways to change the arc of U.S. higher education. The first is from the inside out, which, candidly, is like moving a graveyard. Or the other is to create a new university that can set the standard for change. That is what the University of Austin is attempting to do. By returning to the fundamentals of Western thought and focusing on a robust conversation across the intellectual spectrum, they will gain traction. It is a noble effort.

Columnist: Gordon, you ignorant slut. Excuse me while I puke.

President: Well, go ahead and puke. 🤓

Columnist: We’ll come back to why you think it’s noble 🤮 to return to the times when everyone only read dead white men and were taught by bow-tied white men.

How about a list of topics you’re now able to speak freely about? I mean, we agree on many things and disagree on others. What else can we discuss and push each other on to think harder?

President: 1. Need to address the four tyrannies: tenure, departments, colleges and leadership gerontocracy. 2. How do we stop university faculty and others from hiding behind academic freedom and start accepting academic responsibility? 3. Exploding the myth of shared governance and creat[ing] a new model of collective responsibility that creates agility and speed by doing away with internal processes that are calculated to preserve the status quo. 4. How to create a standard of excellence in appointing members of Boards of Governors by moving it out of the political process. 5. How to make certain that the selection process of a new president produces the best candidates rather than individuals who have offended the fewest people the longest period of time.

Columnist: All that and I can add another 15 or 20 things. Plus, we both hate the ocean, both married people younger and hotter than us (I win because Toby is 14 years my junior), and you were an Eagle Scout—

President: Why did you marry a younger hot guy?

Columnist: Because I’m no fool, Gramps. Anyway, and you were an Eagle Scout—

President: I think only because I’m almost certain my dad paid off the scoutmaster to get it for me.

Columnist: —and I was a Brownie for about a week (loved the outfit) but got fired because I refused to pledge allegiance to the flag (Vietnam).

This will be fun. I say our next text exchange is “Majors Are Dumb.” And as we’ve already established, I’m the boss. Let’s talk and text again soon.

Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox. She is also a professor of creative writing. E. Gordon Gee has served as a university president for 45 years at five different universities—two of them twice. He retired from the presidency July 15, 2025.

Source link

January 14, 2026
Catholic Briefly Banned Popular Social Media Site Reddit

About half of 18- to 29-year-olds use Reddit, according to Pew Research.

Illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed

Students returning to the Catholic University of America Monday were outraged to discover that the university had blocked campus internet access to the popular social media site Reddit. But by Tuesday afternoon, administrators had reversed the ban, saying it had been automatically restricted by a third-party source that controls access to pornographic sites.

The site had been available to students at the end of last semester, according to Felipe Avila, a nursing student and a member of the student government. But when students returned from break to the Washington, D.C., campus this week, they found they could no longer access the site. No other social media sites seemed to have been affected, he said, and administrators did not notify students or faculty of the change.

When Avila discovered Reddit had been restricted, he submitted a ticket to the university’s Technology Services Support office to ask if it was a glitch or if the site had been blocked intentionally.

“When I checked with our security they said that it was blocked because of certain content on the platform and also because of phishing and malicious links that are on that site,” a staff member responded in an email to Avila.

The ban wasn’t entirely out of left field: In 2019, Catholic University banned access to the 200 most popular pornography websites after the student government passed a resolution advocating for such a ban. But Reddit isn’t a pornographic site; it’s a social media site with well over 100 million daily active users who can read and post in forums called subreddits dedicated to specific topics. According to Pew Research, 48 percent of individuals aged 18 to 29 surveyed in early 2025 said they use Reddit at least occasionally.

Reddit is one of just a few social media sites that allow users to post sexually explicit material, although it must be labeled appropriately and explicit images appear blurred until a user opts to reveal them. Other social media platforms that allow such content, such as X, which has allowed users to post sexual content since 2024, remained accessible on Catholic’s campus.

Restriction Reversal

After two days without answers from administrators, Avila said, the university reversed the ban, attributing the situation to an automated system that restricts access to a list of pornographic sites, university spokesperson Karna Lozoya said in an emailed statement. That list is compiled by a third-party organization, she said, which recently added Reddit.

“The site was flagged in accord with a policy established in 2019—at the recommendation of the Student Government Association—to block access to the top pornography sites from the University network. Student leaders at the time noted their concerns about the risks of these sites, including exploitation of individuals, addiction, and security risks,” she said.

The sites that were previously banned were “almost exclusively dedicated to serving pornography,” Lozoya noted. The university decided to reverse the ban on Reddit because its primary purpose is not to share explicit content.

“In the interest of allowing access to its legitimate uses, access to Reddit.com has been restored to the campus network,” she wrote. “However, the University is taking this opportunity to remind students of the need for prudence, and to avoid consuming exploitative and degrading content.”

Avila said the short-lived ban sparked outrage among students, some of whom use the platform as an academic resource. Students can join subreddits dedicated to different academic disciplines, like r/StudentNurse, a community of over 180,000, where nursing students can connect with their peers at institutions worldwide to vent or ask for advice.

Dominic Coletti, a program officer with the free speech advocacy organization the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, warned that preventing students and faculty from accessing certain sites infringes on freedom of expression and academic freedom.

“We’re concerned about this censorship for two reasons: First, Catholic promises its students free speech. That should include the ability to communicate anonymously with others at the university and in their community about what’s happening. That includes not-safe-for-work content, to be sure, but it also includes a wide swath of discussions about topics core to the work of a university,” he wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Catholic also promises its faculty academic freedom. That includes the freedom to perform research online and to teach students using online resources. Banning social-media sites like Reddit infringe on faculty members’ ability to perform that research and to use these resources in teaching.”

“The university did not have to promise its students and faculty members these expressive freedoms,” Coletti added. “Now that it has, it must protect those freedoms.”

Before the ban was lifted, Avila and another student senator filed a resolution calling on the university to make its standards for web filtering more transparent and asking to be notified in advance of any new bans. Even though Reddit is now accessible again, they’re planning to move forward with the resolution.

“Reversing the ban fixes the outcome, but not the oversight. We must codify protections for student expression to ensure that academic freedom is guaranteed by policy, not just public pressure,” he wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “We look forward to working with the university to see this implemented.”

Source link

January 14, 2026
Morris Brown College Fires President

Morris Brown College president Kevin James fought to regain the college’s accreditation. Now he’s out of a job without explanation.

Morris Brown College

Morris Brown College, a historically Black institution in Georgia, removed its president, effective immediately, after seven years on the job, the Board of Trustees announced Monday.

In a news release, the board thanked Kevin James for his leadership.

James “played a meaningful role in guiding the institution through critical seasons of growth, resilience, and transformation,” the release read. The board “wishes him well in his next chapter.”

The board’s announcement offered no explanation for James’s termination.

“Morris Brown College remains firmly committed to its students, its mission, and its long-term strategic vision,” Bishop Michael Mitchell, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “This transition in leadership will help to ensure continuity as we move forward with the important work of strengthening and advancing the College.”

Under James’s tenure, the struggling college regained accreditation after nearly 20 years without it, restoring students’ access to federal financial aid. Enrollment also grew from about 20 students to more than 540, James wrote in a Facebook post Monday.

He said the Board of Trustees terminated his contract, which is slated to end in 2029, “without providing specific cause or substantive explanation” after a positive annual evaluation and strong performance reviews throughout his presidency.

He stressed that the timing is “troubling” for the college, which faces an accreditation-reaffirmation review in just a few weeks.

“I dedicated myself fully to the restoration and resurgence of Morris Brown College, and I stand firmly behind the progress we achieved together,” James wrote. “While I am deeply disappointed by the Board’s decision, I am grateful for the overwhelming support I have received from alumni, faculty, staff, students, and community partners. Thank you for believing in the vision and the work.”

The board named trustee Nzinga Shaw as the college’s interim leader.

Source link

January 14, 2026
Nebraska Chancellor’s Hasty Exit Raises Questions

Weeks after pushing through deeply unpopular program cuts, University of Nebraska–Lincoln chancellor Rodney Bennett has left his role six months early—with a $1 million golden parachute.

His exit at Nebraska has prompted faculty concerns about executive spending as questions linger about whether program cuts driven by Bennett were avoidable. NU system officials, however, have defended the cuts as necessary due to a recurring budget deficit and argued that Bennett’s exit package is what was owed to him—a mix of unpaid leave, deferred income, health-care benefits and the remainder of his contract set to expire in June.

For Bennett, this marks the second time since 2022 that he has left a job early, departing his role as president of the University of Southern Mississippi a year ahead of schedule after nearly a decade at the helm there.

(A UNL spokesperson said Bennett was not available for an interview with Inside Higher Ed.)

Now UNL will soon embark on a new chancellor search as tensions simmer over recent events, though NU system President Jeffrey Gold noted a “need for healing” before that process begins.

Contentious Cuts

Bennett’s budget-reduction plan was unveiled to much faculty dismay in November.

While he initially proposed cutting six programs, that was later whittled down to four: statistics, earth and atmospheric sciences, educational administration, and textiles, merchandising and fashion design. Four more programs will be “realigned” into two new schools, under the plan.

The program eliminations will cut 51 jobs at UNL, most from the faculty ranks.

Other actions taken include faculty buyouts, which are expected to save $5.5 million; budget reductions at four of UNL’s colleges; and the elimination of some administrative and staff roles.

Those cuts, already unpopular, sting more now after Bennett officially stepped down Monday with an exit package of $1.1 million—prompting faculty outrage over spending priorities.

“The university cannot credibly claim that it lacks the resources to sustain academic programs and faculty positions while simultaneously paying over a million dollars to a failed chancellor,” Sarah Zuckerman, president of the UNL chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said in a statement sent to Inside Higher Ed and other media outlets. “This payout exposes the administration’s financial crisis narrative as a matter of priorities, not necessity.”

But Gold, NU system president since July 2024, notes the exit package will not be funded by taxpayer dollars and said the decision to leave early was “mutually discussed” with Bennett, his family and senior leadership and was made with the “best interests” of the campus in mind.

“The separation agreement—all components of it—will not be funded either from state appropriations or tuition funds, but rather entirely through other university discretionary resources, meaning privately raised dollars,” Gold told Inside Higher Ed. “It’s always a balance, but an attempt was made, and I think in this instance, successfully, to not use the same dollars that are used to support our faculty and our staff and, most importantly, our students.”

Many faculty members are also seething about what they see as fuzzy math to justify the cuts.

An outside analysis, conducted by the AAUP, argued that instructional spending across the system has declined in recent years while administrative pay rises and that the cuts fell disproportionately on the academic side. The analysis also suggested that by increasing its endowment draw by 1.3 percent, bringing it up to 6 percent, UNL would have been able to avoid cuts.

Gold said that “perhaps the campus has seen that analysis,” but he has not. He largely dismissed the notion of increasing the endowment draw, noting such a move is “at the discretion of the Board of Directors and senior leadership of the [University of Nebraska] Foundation.” Gold also underscored that two of the four program closures were supported by the Academic Planning Committee, a group of faculty, staff, students and administrators—though that fact has done little to assuage the concerns of others who have protested the cuts as needless or flawed.

Faculty Tensions

Faculty have also accused Bennett of steamrolling them in the process to determine the cuts. In November, UNL’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in Bennett and urged Gold to evaluate Bennett’s “continued fitness to serve” as chancellor.

The no-confidence resolution blasted Bennett for “failures in strategic leadership, fiscal stewardship, governance integrity, external relations, and personnel management.” Those concerns are among many complaints from faculty during Bennett’s tenure.

Regina Werum, a UNL sociology professor and member of UNL’s AAUP chapter, told Inside Higher Ed by email that Bennett had “no rapport with faculty” and was rarely seen on campus.

“The Chancellor’s style is best described as disengaged from and more accurately as disdainful of faculty, staff, and students. He keeps himself insulated and largely invisible on campus, making sure to be present for photo ops with superiors and dignitaries,” Werum wrote.

A former Southern Miss official who worked with Bennett at that campus offered a similar take. Speaking anonymously, the former official said Bennett was a rare sight on campus and tended to offer scripted remarks to faculty. That official also criticized Bennett’s inexperience with teaching and research, noting he stepped into the job with a student affairs background.

“The problem was he didn’t want you to know that he didn’t know things, and because of that, he wouldn’t ask questions,” the anonymous official said. “It was a conundrum. You would try to help him understand what was going on, but he didn’t want to admit that he didn’t understand it all.”

Bennett also enacted program cuts at Southern Miss, axing dozens of positions.

The former official said Bennett’s cabinet encouraged him to consider other options at Southern Miss, but he wasn’t interested in having those conversations and saw cuts as the only route to plug budget holes. The anonymous administrator also said Bennett often ignored faculty advice.

“When he reorganized the Gulf Coast campus, he put together two large committees, 30 people each, that worked for six months coming up with recommendations,” they said. “And then when he rolled out the plan for the Gulf Coast, there was a lot of stuff in there that none of the committees had ever discussed. People felt like they wasted a lot of time on these committees, and they were designed to give him cover for the changes he was going to make anyway.”

The former USM official believes it was an enrollment collapse at that campus, known as Southern Miss Gulf Park, that hastened Bennett’s exit from a job he had held since 2013. Bennett initially announced in January 2021 that he planned to step down when his contract ended in June 2023. However, Bennett was officially out by June 2022, with no explanation.

Months later, a member of the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, which oversees Southern Miss and other universities, told local media he was “embarrassed” by the enrollment collapse at the satellite campus, which plunged by more than 50 percent from 2011 to 2022.

Despite sharp faculty criticism, Gold praised Bennett for his time as chancellor.

“For the 18 months that I had the privilege of working with Chancellor Bennett, I really enjoyed working with him. I found him to be very thoughtful, easy to work with, a very solid human being with a very strong love of higher education, and particularly public higher education,” Gold said.

But if Gold felt differently, he wouldn’t be able to say so.

A nondisparagement agreement in Bennett’s separation agreement prevents certain university and system officials, including Gold and members of the Board of Regents, from making “any negative or disparaging comments or statements” about the now-former Nebraska chancellor.

Source link

January 14, 2026
Calif. College of Arts to Close, Sell Campus to Vanderbilt

As part of its national expansion, Vanderbilt has purchased the California College of the Arts campus, which is closing.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed

California College of the Arts will close by the end of the 2026–27 academic year amid enrollment declines that have rendered its business model unsustainable, officials announced.

But the Wednesday announcement at a press conference at San Francisco’s City Hall came with surprising fanfare. Though CCA is going away, Vanderbilt University is stepping in to purchase its campus, giving the private institution in Tennessee a foothold on the West Coast.

Following the closure, Vanderbilt will assume ownership of the campus and “establish undergraduate and graduate programming, including art and design programs,” and maintain archival materials from the college, CCA president David C. Howse wrote in an announcement.

The move comes after recent financial struggles for CCA, which laid off 23 employees in 2024 and closed other vacant positions to address a $20 million budget gap. While the private college raised nearly $45 million recently, those funds were evidently not enough to stave off closure.

CCA enrolled 1,308 students in fall 2024, according to recent federal data, down from a recent high of nearly 2,000 students in fall 2016.

Officials have not made details of the transaction publicly available.

Vanderbilt’s takeover of the San Francisco campus is the latest national push from the university, which has pursued an ambitious growth plan in recent years. Vanderbilt is currently leasing a campus in New York City and building another in West Palm Beach, Fla., as announced in 2024.

Vanderbilt chancellor Daniel Diermeier told Inside Higher Ed last fall that the university was exploring a site in San Francisco and noted the booming artificial intelligence scene in the city was part of the appeal for a campus there.

While at least 16 nonprofit institutions announced closure plans last year, California College of the Arts appears to be the first to do so in 2026, coming less than two weeks into the new year.

Source link

January 14, 2026
UNC’s App Redesign Drives Student Engagement

What was once an underused mobile app at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been rebuilt to serve as a central hub for student information and services.

The app, Hello Heels, was relaunched during first-year orientation last fall after undergoing a redesign following input from students through advisory boards, focus groups and surveys.

Since the relaunch, the app now draws about 90,000 page views per week from roughly 37,000 users—up from 10,000 page views and 6,000 users before the redesign.

Elizabeth Poindexter, executive director of communications and special projects in UNC’s Office of Student Affairs, said students rely on the app for “real-time” updates on everything from bus tracking to dining hall offerings.

“Nothing thrills me more than running to the dining hall to grab my own lunch and seeing a student using the app or talking to their friends about it,” said Poindexter.

She added that student feedback has allowed the app to become a multifaceted “dynamic space,” featuring modules on career services and health and wellness and an up-to-date events calendar.

Poindexter also said the redesigned app has proven cost-effective, saving more than $40,000 in new student and family programs by eliminating the need for duplicative services. Instead of costly printed materials, the app provides real-time agenda updates and announcements.

“The more people hear about that cost savings, the more interested in and engaged with the app they become,” said Poindexter.

The approach: Poindexter said student input came from a diverse group, including undergraduates and graduate, transfer and international students.

“We really had a good spread of students who are representative of the student body at large, and they had some incredible recommendations,” said Poindexter, including suggestions to “overhaul” and “refresh” the health and wellness and career services modules.

She added that other features, such as real-time updates on recreation center occupancy, dining hall hours and integration with academic tools like Canvas, also arose directly from student feedback.

The app includes an opt-in messaging feature that allows campus offices to send targeted updates to students who choose to receive them. Poindexter said the most popular channels come from the financial well-being center and the mental health and wellness center.

The financial well-being center sends weekly money tips and appointment reminders, while the mental health and wellness center shares well-being messages during high-stress periods like finals, which she said students respond positively to.

The app also gathers in-app survey responses. Of roughly 250 respondents, 98 percent said they plan to continue using Hello Heels.

“That is why it’s been so successful,” Poindexter said. “We have student voices integrated every step of the way.”

What’s next: Poindexter said part of the redesign involved partnering with UNC’s business school to ensure the app’s long-term sustainability and continued improvement.

“It’s been really wonderful to see that we can have this universitywide impact and improve the student experience in how we communicate with them,” she said.

Poindexter recommended that higher education leaders take a close look at their own media, from mobile apps to online newsletters, and use student feedback to make sure those tools are actually engaging and informing their target audience.

“Our best advocates are our students, and they have really useful insights decision-makers should consider,” she said.

Get more content like this directly to your inbox. Subscribe here.

Source link

January 14, 2026
Supreme Court Considers Laws Banning Trans Women in Sports

For years, state laws prohibiting transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams matching their gender identity have proliferated, along with legal challenges to these bans.

But now, the U.S. Supreme Court may settle what’s become a national controversy.

On Tuesday, the high court considered the legality of the bans in Idaho and West Virginia.

In more than three hours of oral arguments, the justices and attorneys debated when there should be exceptions allowed to broad legislation that discriminates against specific groups, how the presence or absence of medical testosterone regulation and biological performance advantages affect the legality of these prohibitions, whether sex should be defined as biological sex under Title IX, and what Title IX’s allowance for sex-segregated teams means if transgender women are allowed to play on women’s teams.

“You don’t think we should have an operating definition of sex in Title IX?” Chief Justice John Roberts said at one point to an attorney representing a trans child.

Lawyers representing the students who have challenged the bans said the cases were about access to athletics for a small number of transgender people, including those who are regulating their testosterone. Kathleen R. Hartnett, an attorney challenging the Idaho ban, said her client “has suppressed her testosterone for over a year and taken estrogen,” saying the Idaho law “fails heightened scrutiny” as applied to such trans women “who have no sex-based biological advantage as compared to birth sex females.”

Twenty-seven states ban trans women from participating at some level of athletics, according to lawyers both defending and arguing against such prohibitions. Repeatedly Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked whether states that don’t have such bans are breaking the law or should be allowed discretion—suggesting he’s considering a ruling affecting more than the restrictions in Idaho and West Virginia.

Kavanaugh asked whether states without prohibitions are violating Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and whether sex under Title IX could reasonably be interpreted to allow different states to define it differently. He said trans participation can harm girls who don’t make the cutoff for teams, but also expressed hesitancy to rule nationally, asking why the court should “constitutionalize a rule for the whole country while there’s still … uncertainty and debate.”

Justice Samuel Alito didn’t ask many questions, but when he did, he homed in on how sex should be defined under Title IX. He asked how the court could determine discrimination based on sex without determining what sex means. He also asked whether female athletes who oppose transgender women on their teams should be considered “deluded” or “bigots.”

At one point, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that “I’ve been wondering what’s straightforward after all this discussion.” Regarding whether puberty blockers eliminate all competitive advantage, Gorsuch said there’s a “scientific dispute about the efficacy of some of these treatments.”

Almost a year ago, long after West Virginia and Idaho passed their laws, President Trump signed an executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports and threatening universities with loss of federal funding if they disobey. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy restricting “competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”

The Trump administration has since pressured institutions to bar trans women. In April, for example, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a trans woman to compete on a women’s sports team—presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, in accord with NCAA policies at that time.

Idaho and West Virginia

The court took up two cases Tuesday, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. These suits, which center on whether anti–transgender participation laws violate Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, have been ongoing for years.

In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass a law outright banning trans girls and women from participating in school sports matching their gender identity. Lindsay Hecox is a trans woman who was nevertheless able to participate in women’s club running and club soccer at Boise State University because she sued that same year and a district court blocked enforcement of the law against her.

In 2024, her lawyers wrote that she tried out for the university’s women’s cross-country and track teams but didn’t make it, “consistently running slower than her cisgender women competitors.” Her attorneys stress that her “circulating testosterone levels are typical of cisgender women.”

Hecox’s attorneys had opposed the Supreme Court taking up the case, previously writing that it’s “about a four-year-old injunction against the application of [the Idaho law] with respect to one woman, which is allowing her to participate in club running and club soccer.” Then, in September 2025, her lawyers argued the case had become moot, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and “committed not to try out for or participate in any school-sponsored women’s sports covered by” the state law.

“In the five years since this case commenced, Ms. Hecox has faced significant challenges that have affected her both personally and academically,” including an illness and her father’s death, her lawyers wrote. They said she’s “come under negative public scrutiny from certain quarters because of this litigation, and she believes that such continued—and likely intensified—attention in the coming school year will distract her from her schoolwork and prevent her from meeting her academic and personal goals.”

“While playing women’s sports is important to Ms. Hecox, her top priority is graduating from college and living a healthy and safe life,” they wrote.

But attorneys defending the Idaho law have argued not to dismiss the case—a position that may allow a national ruling from the high court.

Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices heard arguments in two cases concerning trans athletes.

Ryan Quinn | Inside Higher Ed

On Tuesday, Alan M. Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, argued that the case wasn’t moot, saying Hecox’s plans about whether to play sports have changed before and may change again. Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged this, saying Hurst was asking the court to “force an unwilling plaintiff … to continue prosecuting this case.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “it’s a little odd that a defendant would not want a case dismissed.”

Hurst argued that Idaho’s law wasn’t about excluding transgender people, saying the Legislature there instead “wanted to keep women’s sports women-only.” He also said testosterone doesn’t reliably suppress performance.

“Sports are assigned by sex because sex is what matters in sports,” Hurst said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether Hurst was arguing to allow separation by biological sex of even 6-year-olds in sports. Hurst replied that even at that age, boys have a small advantage, but co-ed sports could be an option.

The West Virginia case was filed by the mother of Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a transgender sixth grader, back in 2021. Judges blocked enforcement of the Mountain State’s law against the student.

“In West Virginia’s telling, it passed [its law] to ‘save women’s sports’ by staving off an impending tidal wave of ‘bigger, faster, and stronger males’ from stealing championships, scholarships, and opportunities from female athletes,” the student’s lawyers wrote. “In reality, West Virginia’s law banned exactly one sixth-grade transgender girl from participating on her school’s cross-country and track-and-field teams with her friends.”

Her attorneys wrote that the sports she’s participated in are non-contact, and that she “has received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of girls, with all the physiological musculoskeletal characteristics of cisgender girls and none of the testosterone-induced characteristics of cisgender boys.”

They wrote that she “wants to play sports for the same reasons most kids do: to have fun and make friends as part of a team.” She’s participated in post-season shot put and discus, “where her performance is well within the range of cisgender girls her age,” they wrote.

Lawyers defending the West Virginia law, though, wrote that “male athletes identifying as female are increasingly competing in women’s sports, erasing the opportunities Title IX ensured.” They wrote that “women and girls have lost places on sports teams, surrendered spots on championship podiums, and suffered injuries competing against bigger, faster, and stronger males.”

Michael R. Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, said the state’s law “is indifferent to gender identity because sports are indifferent to gender identity,” and said “we don’t have an actual transgender exclusion.” He also argued that Title IX defines sex as biological sex because that was the understanding at the time Congress passed it.

Barrett suggested West Virginia’s arguments could be used by a state to argue for separate math classrooms if it produced a study saying women’s presence in calculus was holding men back. Gorsuch made similar arguments.

Federal Intervention

In both cases Tuesday, the federal government defended the state laws. Hashim M. Mooppan, the U.S. principal deputy solicitor general, said Title IX regulations “say you can separate based on sex … the circulating testosterone levels are just legally irrelevant under the regulations.” He also said transgender women aren’t “being excluded from participating on the boys team.”

During and after the oral arguments, hundreds of proponents for trans athletes and opponents held dueling rallies right next to each other outside the Supreme Court, each with their own sound systems and speakers. Education Secretary Linda McMahon was among those who spoke in favor of the state bans.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks outside the US Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.

Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images

In her remarks, McMahon praised a legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, that was defending the bans, and touted the Trump administration’s actions to “restore common sense by returning sanity to the sexes.” She also criticized the Biden administration’s regulations that declared that sex-based discrimination, which is barred under Title IX, includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A federal judge vacated those Title IX regulations in early 2025.

“In just four years, the Biden Administration reversed decades of progress, twisting the law to argue that ‘sex’ is not defined by objective biological reality, but by the subjective notion of ‘gender identity,’’’ she said. (The Title IX regulations took effect in August 2024 but federal courts had already blocked them in dozens of states.)

McMahon added that while the Supreme Court deliberates, the administration will continue enforcing Title IX “as it was intended, rooted in biological reality to ensure fairness, safety, and equal access to education programs for women and girls across our nation.”

“As President Trump has made clear, America is in its Golden Age, one where female students and athletes have equal access to fair and safe competitions and female-only intimate spaces, free from divisive and discriminatory ideologies,” she said.

Source link

January 13, 2026
Censorship Arrives on Campus

It took 50 years for the secret transcripts of the McCarthy hearings to be released. Within these relics of the Red Scares, you can read all manner of hostile interactions, with people doing their level best to protect their careers and their futures (with some also explicitly fighting for the principles of freedom of speech and expression).

In one hearing, Langston Hughes testified that his political interests, such as they were, sprang from trying to understand how he “can adjust to this whole problem of helping to build America when sometimes [he] cannot even get into a school or a lecture or a concert or in the south go to the library and get a book out.” That answer, grounded in the betterment of the United States, didn’t matter to his interrogators. Roy Cohn, an attorney working for Senator Joseph McCarthy, continued berating the poet using out-of-context snippets of his work while appearing to advocate for federally funded libraries removing it. This mistreatment was, unfortunately, not a rarity.

The Red Scares were one of the most repressive periods of the 20th century, and yet we are seeing similar efforts to stifle free speech and punish political dissent in higher education today. As a professor who studies higher education policy, I want to better understand policymakers’ focus on resegregating the country, student protests, and why many key figures in higher education stay silent when political attacks target marginalized groups, especially trans scholars and scholars of color.

That journey motivates this column, “Echoes in the Quad.” Here, I’ll explore what tethers our current higher education policy realities to past moments in history, leading to potential lessons on crafting an American higher education system that thrives within a multiracial democracy.

I’ll begin with a three-part series on the Red Scares when, throughout the decades surrounding the World Wars, federal and state governments investigated thousands of people, including more than 100 academics, over their supposed links to the Communist Party. These investigations, or the threats of them, led to thousands of people losing their jobs and their friends and, in some cases, even taking their own lives. Throughout this crucible, most of academia, and the country, went along with or actively encouraged the purges and ostracization of “undesirables.”

In the 1950s, McCarthyism succeeded because of a two-part system of repression. In No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, Ellen W. Schrecker notes that the crackdown first required the federal government to identify “suspected Communists” and then higher education institutions to investigate and fire them. This targeting in tandem gives the game away. The attacks and firings were never about scholars’ fealty to Communism (which should have been protected under the U.S. Constitution, as later Supreme Courts ruled several times). Instead, they were about the expulsion of leftist ideals around worker rights, racial integration and more.

As several characters in the classic 1990s movie Clue proclaim, when it came to the Red Scares, “Communism was simply a red herring.” Charisse Burden-Stelly, in her 2023 book Black Scare/Red Scare, skillfully outlines how Blackness, particularly Black radicalism and the fight for racial justice, became synonymous with Communism and the dreaded moniker of being “un-American.” This scapegoating strategy meant that faculty members could be fired for being a current or former member of the Communist Party or for such transgressions as advocating as a member of a labor union, fighting for racial integration, or being Black or homosexual.

In No Ivory Tower, Schrecker demonstrates how elite members of higher education either actively worked to ensure that universities censored suspected political dissidents or neglected calls for help from targeted people. At the same time, a substantial share of rank-and-file members of academia allowed their colleagues to be harassed and ostracized, while helping to maintain a version of an academic blacklist—ensuring that people who had even the faintest taint of suspicion would not be hired at their institutions.

These actions, whether driven by cowardice, complicity or some combination of the two, led to a world where professors and students targeted by the federal government began making plans for their eventual firing or, in some tragic instances, their own death.

And so, the U.S. House of Representatives devoting precious time to passing bills “denouncing the horrors of socialism,” colleges firing or suspending faculty and staff because of their speech, and students getting grabbed off the street for writing opinion pieces seem like relics of the past. Yet these events are part of our current, dangerous escalation in repression. Auburn University, High Point University, and Texas A&M have all introduced tools or forms that assess whether courses violate vague policies meant to curtail discussions of concepts like racial integration. Just last week we learned that Texas A&M has flagged at least 200 courses& in its review for offenses as grave as assigning students to read Plato. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, universities investigated, and often ultimately suspended or fired, at least 50 members of the faculty and staff—sometimes simply for the transgression of quoting his own past statements. State policymakers frequently played a role in targeting and threatening either these people directly or the funding for universities that employed them.

This is not solely a “red state” or “southern” problem. At the same time that University of Texas at Austin was firing staff members to satisfy ideological aims, Muhlenberg College fired a faculty member in a manner that led the AAUP to declare that the institution had “severely impaired the climate for academic freedom.” Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, fired four contingent faculty members, allegedly& due to their advocacy for Palestine. (Perhaps an homage to the 1940s Rapp-Coudert Committee, which led to the firing of dozens of faculty and staff at the City College of New York, also part of CUNY.) While some are quick to note Indiana University’s censorship of speech in the student newspaper, the same flavor of tactics has been used against student journalists at Columbia University, Dartmouth University, and Stanford University. And, who can forget the ignominious list of, at present count, six institutions that have signed agreements with the federal government containing different commitments—large fees, acceptance of recent Executive Orders aimed at reducing medical care and controlling teaching and hiring—all with the goal of curtailing speech and expression on their campuses.

Most heartrending though, are the lives lost, sacrificed at the altar of authoritarian demagoguery. Middlebury College swimmer Lia Smith, who left the team due to attacks on trans athletes, died by suicide last fall. There is no direct evidence that this was caused by the ever-escalating vitriol hurled at trans people in the United States, but it strains credulity to believe that she was not impacted by this rise in hate, backed by the power of the government, and implemented by blue and red states alike.

One of the loudest echoes of the Red Scares is perhaps the reality that libraries continue to remove books due to censorship. The federal government interrogated Langston Hughes because the State Department included his work in U.S. libraries abroad. McCarthy’s lieutenants traveled to Europe removing books that they determined to be “subversive” from these libraries. In another hearing, William Mandel, an expert on the Soviet Union forced out of his position at Stanford’s Hoover Institution during the Red Scares, stated, “This is a book-burning! You lack only the tinder to set fire to the books as Hitler did 20 years ago, and I am going to get that across to the American people!”

The culture of fear created by Senator McCarthy and others served to silence ideas and beliefs that they disagreed with. The future is yet unwritten, but by understanding what political repression looked like then, we can recognize it and figure out how to fight it now. As Mandel noted, once we see censorship for what it is, it’s our responsibility to get that across to the American people.

The next two columns in this series will focus on the organizations and people that made McCarthyism as effective as it was: the academic elite who worked hand in glove with the rank and file to ensure that, what the government started, higher education would finish.

(Copies of No Ivory Tower are difficult to find, but several libraries stock it and, if you can’t get access there, here’s a lovely interview with the author.)

Dominique J. Baker is an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware. You can follow her on Bluesky at @bakerdphd.bsky.social

Source link

January 13, 2026
Officials in Connecticut Propose New Graduate Student Loan

The loan program would need $30 million for its first year, based on calculations of how much Connecticut students take out in Grad PLUS loans.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Getty Images | Rawpixel

After President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) overhauled federal student loans, college affordability advocates worried that those changes would severely restrict who has access to higher education—especially graduate programs. Now, lawmakers in Connecticut are taking steps to ensure students in the state can continue to afford those degrees.

Rep. Gregg Haddad, a Democrat who co-chairs the Connecticut legislature’s Higher Education Committee, announced a plan last week to create a new state-level student loan program to fill in the gap left by the elimination of Grad PLUS loans, a 20-year-old loan program that helped expand graduate education for middle- and low-income students. The program will be open to any student studying at a graduate program in the state.

Josh Hurlock, deputy director of the Connecticut Higher Education Supplemental Loan Authority (CHESLA), a quasi-public body that administers Connecticut’s state-level student loans, said the organization is hoping to launch the new program in time for students to take out loans for the 2026–2027 academic year.

“The Grad PLUS program historically has had very little credit check, so it’s been accessible to students of all credit qualities,” Hurlock said. “So, with the program going away … we want to make sure that students and schools have financing options available for their graduate students, and students and schools need to know what’s available sooner rather than later as we approach the fall semester.”

The program would require $30 million in funding for its first year, based on calculations that students in Connecticut take out between $90 million and $100 million in Grad PLUS loans annually. (Those already receiving the loans will be grandfathered in.) Two-thirds of that would come from a bond that CHESLA will issue, while the remaining $10 million would have to come from state allocations. Haddad said he is hoping the funds can be drawn from a $500 million emergency reserve the state created in November specifically to offset federal cuts.

Interest rates and borrower fees have not yet been determined, “but we think we can come up with an attractive product and solve this problem for Connecticut students,” Haddad said.

Eliminating Grad PLUS loans is just one of the restrictions on federal student loans included in the OBBBA. The legislation also placed caps on how much borrowers can take out in federal loans for graduate programs and on Parent PLUS loans for dependent undergraduates. Proponents of the limits argued that uncapped federal loans encouraged universities to increase their tuition fees, creating the student debt crisis. But supporters of federal student loan programs argue they opened the door to graduate education and careers in fields like medicine for students who previously would not have had those opportunities.

Grad PLUS loans will officially end and the caps for other federal loans will go into effect in July. Administrators at several institutions with a large number of graduate students told Inside Higher Ed that they’re still working to figure out how to close funding gaps for their students.

Filling in the gap left behind by Grad PLUS loans is especially important because Connecticut, like most U.S. states, struggles with a shortage of workers in certain professions, like nurses and teachers, Haddad said.

“We have a keen interest in making sure that we have a robust pipeline of people who want to enter those professions,” he said. “And we’d like to remove any roadblocks to having them achieve and complete their degrees so that they can get to work providing the services that people need in Connecticut.”

Peter Granville, a fellow at the Century Foundation who researches college affordability, said that it’s wise for states to consider how they can support students in the absence of Grad PLUS funding.

“State leaders know that their economies depend on these students being able to attain degrees in fields like education and nursing,” he said. “States will be worse off if [they] completely depend on private lenders filling gaps that they may or may not be inclined to fill.”

Haddad said that the proposed loan program has been received extremely well by both the public and his fellow lawmakers, whom he is hopeful will support the proposal once their legislative session begins in February.

“I was struck when we had our press conference the other day—the room was filled with nurses and social workers, physical therapists and educators from across the state,” he said. “I think it’s an indication that there’s a real problem we need to fix.”

Source link

January 13, 2026
Clemson Settles With Professor Fired for Kirk Comments

Bregy will resign from his position at Clemson on May 15, 2026, according to the settlement agreement.

sbrogan/E+/Getty Images

Clemson University has agreed to rescind the termination of Joshua Bregy, an assistant professor in the department of environmental engineering and earth sciences, nearly four months after dismissing him for resharing a post on his personal Facebook page that criticized the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

Bregy sued after he was terminated on Sept. 26, claiming that his firing violated his First Amendment rights. As part of the settlement, Bregy will receive pay and benefits “throughout the original term of his employment,” the ACLU of South Carolina, which represented Bregy, said in a news release. In addition, Clemson provost Robert Jones agreed to “provide positive letters of recommendation to potential employers based on Dr. Bregy’s classroom teaching.” For Bregy’s part, he agreed to drop his lawsuit and resign from his position at Clemson effective May 15, 2026. He will not have any teaching, research or other faculty obligations through the spring semester, according to the release.

Bregy was among the dozens of faculty members targeted by right-wing politicians and online commentators for making or sharing critical posts about Kirk after his death. The post Bregy shared said, in part: “I’ll never advocate for violence in any form, but it sounds to me like karma is sometimes swift and ironic. As Kirk said, ‘play certain games, win certain prizes.’”

“We were honored to represent Dr. Bregy and to reach an agreement that restores his employment, allows him to continue to pursue research funding, and deters the university from violating the First Amendment rights of its faculty in the future,” Allen Chaney, legal director at the ACLU of South Carolina, said in a statement. “Politicians and university administrators come and go, but years from now we will still be here. So will the U.S. Constitution.”

Source link

January 13, 2026