Tag: Events

mRNA Vaccine Research Cuts Blow to Innovation

Academic researchers are worried that the government’s plans to stop investing in the development of messenger RNA vaccines, a technology university scientists first used to help develop the COVID-19 vaccines, will undermine the United States’ standing as a global leader in biomedical research and development.

As promising as mRNA technology may be for treating a range of maladies, including numerous types of cancer and autoimmune diseases, its role in developing the COVID vaccine has thrust it into a political crossfire, fueled by the Trump administration’s smoldering criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic.

Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., director of the Department of Health and Human Services, who frequently cites misinformation about vaccines and other public health issues, announced that the department is winding down mRNA vaccine research under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and canceling $500 million worth of contracts and grants with numerous biotech companies and Emory University in Atlanta.

“We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted,” Kennedy, a lawyer by training, said in a statement, claiming that “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”

Jeff Coller, director of the RNA Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins University, whose own graduate student helped develop Moderna’s COVID vaccine, said that “mRNA technology is incredibly misunderstood by the public and many of our politicians.”

Despite that, “the science has always been consistently clear about the powerful medical benefits of the mRNA platform,” he said. “It’s saved millions of lives, is incredibly safe, has huge potential and will revolutionize medicine in the next 100 years. Yet, we’re ceding American leadership in this technology.”

The half-a-billion-dollar cut comes at the same time that the Trump administration has withdrawn support for federally funded scientific research that doesn’t align with its ideological views, including projects focused on vaccine hesitancy, LGBTQ+ health and climate change.

According to a report from STAT News, the 181-page document Kennedy cited as his evidence that mRNA vaccines aren’t safe or effective references disputed studies written by other skeptics of COVID mitigation protocols, including stay-at-home orders and vaccines.

Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who criticized the NIH’s pandemic guidance in 2020, has also publicly defended the decision on Fox News, Steven Bannon’s podcast War Room and in an opinion article he published in The Washington Post Tuesday.

In his op-ed, Bhattacharya acknowledged that mRNA is a “promising technology” that “may yet deliver breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer,” but that “as a vaccine intended for broad public use, especially during a public health emergency, the platform has failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”

“Unfortunately, the Biden administration did not manage public trust in the coronavirus vaccines, largely because it chose a strategy of mandates rather than a risk-based approach and did not properly acknowledge Americans’ growing concerns regarding safety and effectiveness,” he wrote.

‘Political Shot Across the Bow’

The vast majority of scientists agree that the mRNA-based COVID vaccine—which was created in record time as a result of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, launched in 2020—is generally safe and effective.

“I’m concerned about [the cut] weakening our country and putting us at a disadvantage,” said an mRNA researcher who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. “The promise of mRNA is almost limitless, and I’d like to see those advances being made in this country. But currently it seems those advances are more likely to come from Europe and Asia. I’m also worried about the impact this could have on our economy—this is a growing field of industry.”

Coller, of Johns Hopkins, said Kennedy’s decision to withdraw funding for mRNA vaccine research has more than financial implications.

“It was a political shot across the bow of the entire research community, both in industry and academia,” Coller said. “What it says is that the government doesn’t want to support this technology and is going to make sure it doesn’t happen. If you’re an academic thinking about starting a new program in mRNA medicines, don’t waste your time.”

And now it will be even easier for political whims to drive the government’s scientific research priorities. Last week, Trump issued an executive order that will put political appointees—rather than subject-matter experts—in charge of federal grant-making decisions.

Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said that while Kennedy’s decision won’t end all of the nation’s mRNA research, “the indication that a certain technology or scientific area won’t be pursued regardless of the progress made so far is worrisome as a concept.”

That’s in part because “when we unilaterally close the door on a specific type of research or technology, we don’t know what would have come from that,” she said. “It’s not to say that every research project using every technology and scientific tool will necessarily lead to a cure or breakthrough, but the initial funding of these projects shows that there was promise that made it worth exploring.”

Both Kennedy and Bhattacharya have said the government will continue to support research on other uses of mRNA technology unrelated to infectious disease vaccines. But experts say separating those research areas isn’t so simple.

“They’re all interconnected,” said Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “If you take away funding in the infectious disease space and innovation doesn’t happen there, it’s also not happening in other spaces where mRNA technology is used.”

That will create a “huge problem for researchers,” he added, “because a lot of fields are using this technology, and if it’s not moving forward, it closes doors.”

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August 15, 2025
Judge Keeps Alabama’s Anti-DEI Law in Place for Now

The judge denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to block the anti-DEI law.

Just_Super/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Ruling in part that professors lack First Amendment protections in the classroom, a federal judge denied an effort from college faculty and students in Alabama to block a 2024 state law that banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs as well as the teaching of so-called divisive concepts.

The plaintiffs, who include students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and professors at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, argued in court filings and at hearings that the legislation known as Senate Bill 129 amounted to state-sponsored censorship and infringed on their rights under the First and 14th Amendments. The professors alleged that they had to cancel class projects or events and faced other questions about their classroom conduct from administrators because of the law. They’ve also changed course material as a result.

R. David Proctor, chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, found that while the professors and the Alabama NAACP had standing to sue, they weren’t likely to succeed at this time. For instance, he ruled that the professors aren’t protected by the First Amendment because their “in-class instruction constitutes government speech.”

Furthermore, Proctor wrote, based on other rulings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, “when there is a dispute about what is taught in the classroom, the university’s interests outweigh those of a professor, and the professor’s interest in academic freedom and free speech do not displace the university’s interest inside the classroom.”

The plaintiffs said Proctor’s ruling was disappointing.

“I feel incredibly dismayed that SB 129 is allowed to continue going into the new school year,” said Sydney Testman, one of the students who sued, in a statement. “As a senior at University of Alabama at Birmingham, I’ve seen firsthand how SB 129 has transformed my college campus for the worst. Voices have been silenced, opportunities have been revoked, and meaningful community engagement has faded. This decision undermines the need for students to properly feel a sense of belonging and inclusion on campus.”

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August 15, 2025
Stand Against the Leaky STEM Pipeline (opinion)

A couple of years ago, I got into a heated argument with a white male lab mate about whether racial and gender inequities still existed in science. He argued that, having both made it to our Stanford cancer biology lab for graduate school, the two of us, a white man and a Black woman, were functionally equal, and that attempts to distinguish us in future grant and fellowship applications were unfair. When I explained, among many differences, the unequal labor I took on by running a pipeline program for underrepresented aspiring physician-scientists, he replied, “If you gave a fuck about your academic career, you would stop doing that stuff.”

His attitude is not unique; it represents a backlash against baby steps made toward any form of equity that was also reflected in the 2023 Supreme Court decision to overturn affirmative action. But in recent months, as attacks on diversity equity, and inclusion have unfolded with shocking fervor from the highest office in the country, I have been confronted with terrifying questions: Was my lab mate right? Has DEI work become antithetical to advancement in science?

Science, as a seemingly objective craft, has historically not cared about the self. Science does not care if you couldn’t spend free time in the lab because you had to work to support your family. Science does not care that the property taxes in the low-income area where you attended high school couldn’t fund a microscope to get you excited about biology. Science does not care that I’ve never once gotten to take a science class taught by a Black woman.

Such experiences, and many, many more, contribute to the leaky pipeline, a reference to how individuals with marginalized identities become underrepresented in STEM due to retention problems on the path from early science education to tenured professorships. The gaps are chasmic. A couple years ago, Science published the demographics of principal investigators receiving at least three National Institutes of Health grants, so-called super-PIs. Among the nearly 4,000 of these super-PIs, white men unsurprisingly dominated, accounting for 73.4 percent, while there was a grand total of 12 Black women in this category.

Pipeline programs—initiatives aimed at supporting individuals from underrepresented groups—are meant to patch the leaks. They are rooted in the understanding that minorities are important to science, not just for representation’s sake, but because diverse perspectives counteract a scientific enterprise that, because scientists are human, has historically perpetuated racial, gender and other social inequities. Such programs range from early-stage programs like BioBus, a mobile laboratory in New York City that exposes K–12 students to biology, to higher-level pipeline programs like the one I run at Stanford, which provide targeted early-career support to aspiring scientists from diverse and marginalized backgrounds.

These programs work. Participants in the McNair Scholars Program, a federally funded pipeline program aimed at increasing Ph.D. attainment among first-generation, low-income and otherwise underrepresented students, are almost six times more likely to enroll in graduate school than their nonparticipant counterparts. These programs are designed to see the student’s full self, and they recognize the extra labor minorities and women disproportionately take on, like mentoring trainees or running their own pipeline programs.

Sadly, in deference to state laws and the current presidential administration’s attacks, more than 300 public and private universities have dismantled at least some of their DEI efforts. In February, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, killed its Inclusive Excellence Program, an eight-year-old, $60 million initiative that supported programming at universities to draw more underrepresented groups into STEM. As Science reported at the time, all evidence of the program disappeared from the Howard Hughes webpage. Shortly thereafter, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization dedicated to supporting science, technology and (previously) equality, canceled the second year of its Science Diversity Leadership Awards, even though, as The Guardian reported, the process of selecting new awardees was already underway.

Researchers and academics have held rallies to stand up for science and have proposed bills for state-funded scientific research institutes, but many have remained silent on DEI. Meanwhile, after a pause to screen for DEI language, the NIH has resumed grant approvals (albeit not at its normal pace), and private organizations like Chan Zuckerberg continue to fund “uncontroversial” science. But science will never be whole without the inclusion of trainees from underrepresented backgrounds, who broaden and improve scientific questions and practice in service of a diverse human population. And without pipeline programs, the gaps will grow.

That is why I am calling on academics to stand up not just for science but also for DEI. Stand up against the leaky pipeline. Universities and private research institutes must reinstate language on diversity, equity and inclusion, particularly for pipeline programs. Faculty, students and community members should contact the heads of local universities and private organizations like Howard Hughes and Chan Zuckerberg, demanding reinstatement of diversity language and programs. Labs and research groups should adopt diversity statements reaffirming this commitment.

Given the financial jeopardy federal policy has imposed on pipeline programs, states should also step in. Sixteen state attorneys general recently sued the National Science Foundation for, among other things, reneging on its long-established, congressionally mandated commitment to building a STEM workforce that draws from underrepresented groups; states can take their advocacy further by filling funding gaps. Individuals and private organizations can donate either directly to nonprofits like BioBus or to universities with funds earmarked for pipeline programs.

Many minority students who have done DEI advocacy worry they can no longer discuss their work when applying for fellowships or faculty positions. To counteract this, universities and research organizations should proactively ask applicants about their leadership and advocacy work, to signal that these are the kinds of employees they want. And scientists who are not from underrepresented groups should leverage their privilege—volunteer for mentorship programs, serve on graduate admissions committees to fight for diversity, advise young scientists from underrepresented backgrounds.

Show my lab mate that he was wrong. Caring and succeeding are not mutually exclusive.

Tania Fabo, M.Sc., is an M.D.-Ph.D. candidate in genetics at Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholar, a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. She is the program leader for Stanford’s MSTP BOOST pipeline program.

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August 15, 2025
For Learning, You Have to Ride Up the Hill

On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I started thinking about generative AI.

I was thinking about generative AI because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead.

She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.

If you haven’t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I was not entirely sure I could or should keep peddling.

But I made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I’d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.

I believe those French riders might’ve said something about “cheating” by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you’re valuing about the experience.

If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we’ve traveled to, and if—as happened to me a different day—you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.

Having the “best” vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I actively wished for the boost an e-bike could’ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.

I think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I don’t regret it.

Like I said, it’s a matter of balance and values.

The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn’t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.

But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us.

I was thinking of generative AI because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation.

You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn’t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.

You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.

You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.

Because I don’t bike all that often at home, my primary “training” for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I was well prepared. And I was, but well prepared doesn’t mean you aren’t going to face some very challenging moments.

There were several times—like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period—where I would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.

I’m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn’t have been necessary or even desirable, when I would’ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it’s available, why not use it?

This would have signaled a shift in the values I initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I was glad to not have the temptation.

I like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren’t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I often know that I’ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I take—the fewer the better, because it means I was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.

As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I’ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.

For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what’s important in a given experience, but if that’s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.

For writing especially, it’s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost.

Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.

Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn’t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them.

But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.

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August 15, 2025
It’s a Small World (After All)

These days, most faculty members are tired, sad and as anxious as our tired, sad students. We spend time doing things that aren’t what our advisers did, or what they trained us to do, or even really what we want to do.

We serve on too many committees, busy with work that’s unrewarded and mostly invisible, and we must explain to civilians that, no, we don’t have summers off—we just don’t get paid to do the research we have to produce to survive, even if no one ever reads it. Some of us juggle zillions of courses at multiple institutions and can barely afford dog food. Most people getting Ph.D.s these days can no longer expect to land a permanent job. And many of us who were lucky enough to get on that last gravy train to tenure are ready to hop off, if we could only think of something else we’re qualified to do.

As tired, sad and anxious as I am, I still find this gig a privilege: indoor work, no heavy lifting. And the academic world, with all its wacky quirks, is fascinating. Like other cultural niches, we have our own jargon, celebrities unknown to the wider public, rituals that make zero sense to outsiders (and to many of us) and a deeply entrenched caste system that keeps us humble. (Ha-ha.)

I’ve been in multiple rings in the academic circus. After I bailed out of scholarly publishing—first at Oxford University Press and then at Duke—I worked in undergraduate admissions at Duke. I wrote a snarky book about that experience, then published two more to atone for my sins. That experience fed into my next act: For a quarter century, I spouted off in columns for ~~The Chronicle of Higher Education~~ a rival publication, hoping to give academics permission to write for and like humans.

When I became a faculty member, I felt I’d won the lottery. Who else has this kind of job security and so many degrees of freedom? I try to remember how fortunate I am when I’m tempted to complain. (Doesn’t stop me.) It helps to remember that having tenure is luxurious compared to being staff, where I was sometimes treated as one notch above custodians and had to deal with almost as much shit.

Two years ago, I was asked by Inside Higher Ed’s co-founder, my old buddy Doug Lederman, to create a paywalled newsletter for industry leaders. I got a crash course in governance and learned how little I understood about how universities are run. In off-the-record chats with presidents, I’ve realized that rarely does anyone see the full picture, including faculty members like me who believe they know it all.

Those conversations opened my eyes to just how brutal the job has become—death threats, harassment by frat-boy trustees, vicious attacks from faculty senates, black mold in presidents’ houses and other crap that would make most of us run screaming. It’s enough to think presidents deserve those big honking salaries. Unless they suck. Which, undoubtedly, some of them do. Just not the ones willing to talk to me and write anonymously for no rewards other than the rare opportunity to be truthful and vulnerable on the page.

Of course, the problems in higher ed go far beyond presidential housing crises and governance theater. The sector’s challenges create genuine existential threats to a shocking number of the nearly 4,000 institutions that make up our ecosystem. And yet, we beat on, boats against the current, trying to figure out how to keep doing meaningful work in this strange, insular, endlessly complicated world we’ve chosen, one that’s always been isolated from what others call “the real world” (and not in a fun MTV way) and that is, in many ways, small.

Small World is, in fact, the title of the middle novel in David Lodge’s campus trilogy. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away (the ’80s, NYC), I read it after gulping down the first, Changing Places, which includes one of the best bits in academic fiction. In a game called Humiliation, each person in the English Department names a book he hasn’t read but assumes the others have. So caught up in wanting to succeed, a poor sap calls out Hamlet. He wins the game and is denied tenure.

Lodge’s fictional world captured something true about academic insularity, but even his juicy satire couldn’t anticipate the daily reality most of us don’t want to face today—the fact that we are no longer trusted and respected by the public, we’re going through leaders like Kleenex during flu season, the feds are taking a chain-saw approach to federal funding, previously dull topics like accreditation are now going to change all of our lives and ideas of inclusion and access we were naïve enough to think would change the world are being thrown into the trash heap

It’s a ~~shit show~~ big yikes. In some ways, though, academe is still a small world, even if the days of budgets for international conference hopping à la Lodge are not within the reach of most of us. But if you read The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, you might think higher ed consists of about 20 schools, plus another dozen or so when they’re trying not to be snobby.

Most of us do not live in that world.

Most of us don’t live in a world where a degree-seeking student is an 18- to 22-year-old whose only job is going to class.

Most of us don’t work at institutions where the six-year graduation rate is 90 percent. Or 80 percent. Or even 60 percent.

Most of us don’t work at places that will be hit hard by the rise in the endowment tax.

Most of our schools were in decline even before the recent upheavals, facing eroding public trust and not enough butts to put in our classroom seats. And each department plays a zero-sum game trying to attract majors, which are, if you speak with employers, as I’ve done for my most recent book, important to no one (save faculty and department chairs).

Yet many faculty, staff and students don’t pay enough attention to what goes on beyond their campus gates to notice that everything else in our society has changed while we remain ~~conservative~~ stolidly averse to adaptation. With so many colleges and universities circling the drain, “Don’t look up!” feels like a reasonable response.

In this space, each I’ll draw on my experience to explore corners of our small world that may be overlooked. What I can promise is ~~no bullshit~~ candor about both the disasters and the unexpected moments of grace. Because even as our world grows smaller and more precarious, it remains endlessly fascinating. And well worth fighting for.

Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and ~~complaints~~ compliments.

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August 15, 2025
Student Success Coaching Success Stories

For Chianti Grantham, her vocation in life crystallized the moment she started teaching.

“The first time I stepped foot in a classroom, I knew that that’s what I was supposed to do. I knew that was my happy place.”

Grantham works as an academic success coach at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, in the Kolbe School of Innovation and Professional Studies, an associate degree–granting arm of the university that supports nontraditional learners. In her role, Grantham assists students who are facing challenges that are impeding their academic progress, including those who have fallen below a 2.0 GPA.

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Grantham discusses how she does the work and effective strategies she’s used to support her students.

Q: What experiences or training have helped you establish your student success philosophy?

A: All of the experience that I’ve had over the years has taught me how to do what I do. I have a varied amount of experience from teaching, from being a tutor, and I think that it grew as I matured and grew as an educator. So did my skill level and paying attention to the needs of the students, and establishing those relationships with the students.

One of my very first classes that I taught, I had a student disclose in a paper that he had HIV. I learned quickly, like, “OK, this is about more than just teaching these students how to write. I have to be a mother. I have to be a support system. I have to be that person that they can go to.” Because if he felt comfortable enough in disclosing something like that with me, then I have a lot of power, and I can use that power for good, or I can use that power for bad. I decided that I wanted to use that power for good, and I specifically wanted to serve the nontraditional, underserved population.

I’ve been an academic success coach for going on four years at St. Thomas and then two years prior with Lone Star College. I have found that, once I reach out to a student and I’m like, “Hey, your instructor indicated that you have fallen behind. You haven’t turned in your assignments. Your assignments have been subpar. You’ve been unresponsive,” whatever the situation is—I always ask for very detailed information about what’s going on with the student—it’s like the floodgates open. Students are like, “Oh my gosh, somebody called me, somebody cares.” And that’s what I normally hear, like, “Yes, I’m sorry. I lost my job,” or “I’m overwhelmed with work,” or “I’m overwhelmed with life,” or “I’m depressed,” or “My husband and I have separated.” It’s generally an external factor that is impeding them from being successful in the classroom.

What I tell our instructors is: We have to get to the root of the issue, but we have to get to the root of the issue early. Early intervention is the best and most viable way to help a student to be successful. If I don’t know until a week before classes end, I can’t help that student, right? But if I know week one, they haven’t submitted any assignments within that first week, I tell the instructors to contact me, give me their information, tell me what’s going on and I’m reaching out. In that instance, I can help a student to turn it around.

Q: You recently started a program to support students on academic probation. Can you talk about where that idea came from and where you saw a need to improve processes for these students?

A: What we’re trying to do is find as many ways to support the students in their success. So, specifically, when they’re on academic probation—meaning that they’ve fallen below a 2.0 grade point average—at that time, they go under my wing.

They’re required to be in contact with me, either through phone call or meeting face-to-face or virtually, just to help them get back on track. We’re sitting down, we are creating a routine and a study schedule that also includes their personal lives.

What I tell a student is “Let’s look at your personal as well as your professional life. Let’s put all of those responsibilities in a calendar.” So whether it be a paper calendar or on a cellphone—I’m an old-school person, so I actually do paper and I do my cellphone—I help them in that way.

I also refer them to other resources. If they’re telling me they’re having some type of housing issue, I will contact our residence life department. I’ve also sought out shelters, other community resources. I have advocated for students to get scholarships so that they can pay their rent. It’s a gamut of things.

I’m in the process now with one of my colleagues to write an academic probation course that the students must take for an entire semester, and it focuses on time management, organizational skills and some mental wellness tips. All of these things that I have either seen myself in interacting with students or in my conversations with faculty and adjuncts, things that they’ve seen. We’ll be launching that this semester.

Q: How do you balance the complexity of student support work? Each student is going to need a different thing, so how do you keep yourself educated as to what those resources are and who’s going to help you and be a partner in this work?

A: What I found early on in this role is that it’s super important, actually, that I build relationships with other departments around the campus.

I have also learned that it’s super important that I build relationships within the community. So there have to be people within the community that I can have a conversation with about, like, “Hey, I have a student that is unhoused. Can you help me? They need food; they need somewhere to live. They need clothing.” Those relationships are key. If I didn’t have those relationships, I wouldn’t be able to support my students.

Q: How have you built up relationships with instructors as well, letting them know that you’re here to help with students’ success?

A: At the beginning of every semester and then midway through the semester, I always send an email to all of the instructors reminding them, “I’m here. These are the services that I offer. These are the hours that I’m available if the students are performing at a lower level, if they’ve inquired about additional resources, if they’re unresponsive, if they said, ‘Hey, I just need help.’” If faculty feel they can’t offer that, those are the kind of things that I tell the instructors that I am able to help the students with.

Also, I advocate for the students. Because I know these students very well, I’m copied on all emails that are sent to students when there is an external factor that’s going on that’s impeding them from being successful. I’m able to just keep a pulse on what’s going on. But yeah, my relationships with the faculty are great. It has to be, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to support my students.

Q: Do you have any advice for other academic success coaches you’d like to share?

A: The one thing that I would say is the relationships that you build are so key. If you have relationships, if you reach across the aisle, so to speak, and you keep an open mind, just because someone doesn’t look like you, just because someone doesn’t share the same interests and beliefs as you, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a relationship with them.

Some of the most beneficial relationships that I’ve had with students have been with people that are not like me and don’t share similar interests as me, but we’ve been able to come together.

A perfect example is I had a student come to campus. He is local, but he didn’t ever come on campus because our programs are fully online. He’s really shy, so when he came to campus, I made a point to introduce him to one of my colleagues over at the peer-mentor program so that he could become a peer mentor. I took him over to career services because he was interested in an internship program, so I put him in touch directly with the person that handles that. Then he was like, “Oh, well, I also want to get involved in this particular club.” Well, it just so happened that the person in career services is also over [at] that particular club.

I didn’t just pass him off like he was a baton or a number. I took him to these specific people. We had a conversation. We determined what the need was. I already knew what the need was, but I also have to help students advocate for themselves, right? That is the biggest thing—those relationships have been key, because I’ve been able to go into spaces that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, or maybe not effectively go into.

If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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August 15, 2025
UChicago Freezing Ph.D. Admissions for Multiple Programs
The University of Chicago’s Arts and Humanities Division is reducing how many new Ph.D. students it admits for the 2026–27 academic year across about half of its departments and completely halting Ph.D. admissions elsewhere. Multiple language programs are among those affected.

In a Tuesday email that Inside Higher Ed obtained, Arts and Humanities dean Deborah Nelson told faculty, staff and Ph.D. students, “We will accept a smaller overall Ph.D. cohort across seven departments: Art History, Cinema and Media Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English Language and Literature, Linguistics, Music (composition), and Philosophy.” The university didn’t tell Inside Higher Ed how many fewer Ph.D. students would be accepted across those departments.

“Other departments will pause admissions,” Nelson wrote.

Andrew Ollett, an associate professor of South Asian languages and civilizations, said that means no new Ph.D. students for these departments: classics, comparative literature, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern studies, Romance languages and literatures, Slavic languages and literatures, and South Asian languages and civilizations, plus the ethnomusicology and history and theory of music programs in the music department.

While the university didn’t provide an interview or respond to multiple written questions, a spokesperson did point out that the UChicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice is also pausing Ph.D. admissions, while the Harris School of Public Policy is pausing admissions for the Harris Ph.D., the political economy Ph.D. and the master of arts in public policy with certificate in research methods.

“A small number of PhD and master’s programs at the University of Chicago will pause admissions for the 2026–2027 academic year while divisions and schools undertake comprehensive reviews of the programs’ missions and structures,” UChicago said in a statement. It said the aim is “ensuring the highest-quality training for the next generation of scholars” and the pauses “will not affect currently enrolled students.”

UChicago, which faces debt issues, has become yet another example of well-known universities freezing or scaling back Ph.D. admissions and programs amid financial pressures and other factors. In November, before Trump retook the presidency, Boston University said it was pausing accepting new Ph.D. students in a dozen humanities and social sciences programs, including philosophy, English and history. In February, the Universities of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh announced pauses, following other institutions.

But UChicago’s reductions for language programs also reflect a broader trend of universities scaling back foreign language education offerings. In 2023, West Virginia University became infamous in academe for its leaders’ decision to eliminate all foreign language degrees.

“It’s sad and pathetic,” Ollett said of the pause at UChicago, “because it represents the domination of one set of values, which is money, over the values that we say that we are pursuing in our lives as faculty members, as educators and as researchers.”

He argued that the university can’t say it’s committed to the humanities as a field for producing knowledge while turning away from Ph.D. programs.

Nelson’s email said, “This one-time decision applies only to the 2026–2027 academic year.” But Clifford Ando, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, History and the College, questioned whether this is just a pause.

“I see no reason to think that we would resume doctoral education if we are simultaneously dismantling the curricula that sustain undergraduate training in these fields,” Ando wrote in an email sent to a classical studies Listserv. “Why would one have a doctoral program in a discipline that undergraduates can’t even study?”

Ollett also said this comes as Nelson has pushed to consolidate smaller departments. He said a big question for the coming academic year was “Do we do Ph.D. admissions if we’re not sure that our department is going to exist?”

Not Rule by Committee

Ando provided Inside Higher Ed the “charge” UChicago gave to the Arts and Humanities Languages Working Group on June 17.

“UChicago is known as a global leader in the instruction of ancient and modern languages,” the charge begins. “Language instruction and expertise is not simply a valuable object in its own right; it is an important foundation for the larger UChicago College education, for graduate education, and for the research and scholarship of our faculty.”

But it then says, “language instruction at this extraordinary scope is also expensive.” It listed several questions for the committee to explore, including:
- “Should there be a universal or suggested minimum number of students?
- “Do we need to teach every class every year?
- “Are there languages we no longer need to teach?
- “Are there opportunities for partnerships with peer institutions (with similar standards and schedules) to share language instruction?
- “How can we use technology more effectively to support and enhance language instruction?”
Ollett said, “We teach more than 50 languages in the division, which seems to be too much because the committee was asked to find ways of getting that number down.”

Tyler Williams, another associate professor in the South Asian languages and civilizations department and a member of the committee, said the committee members “unanimously declined to endorse any of the suggestions about cutting languages or outsourcing language teaching.” He said Nelson “did not wait for the committee to submit its report,” nor did she “consult with that committee before she made this decision.”

Ando also provided the charge for a separate Ph.D. Working Group, which outlined a number of “existential challenges” for Ph.D. programs. Those include significantly reduced demand for entry-level faculty, increasing costs for the university and long times to degree, which can deter students.

Additionally, the document notes that the programs are facing “heightened public skepticism about the value of what is taught in Arts & Humanities PhD programs, and how it is taught. Yet Ph.D. programs remain a critical part of the research university model, necessary to teaching, research, scholarship, and creativity.”

Among other questions, that committee was asked to explore whether there should be a minimum size for Ph.D. cohorts in order to offer a program.

Williams said that this committee indicated it wasn’t going to endorse an admissions pause, but said it should be divisionwide if it occurred.

Nelson’s email announcing the changes stressed that “this decision is not the recommendation of any committee.”

Williams said the Ph.D. admissions cuts are part of “a crisis manufactured by the university administration itself.” Ollett said he worries for the future of their field.

“We are quite unique in that there’s not a lot of South Asia area studies departments in the United States, and especially ones that train the next generation of scholars,” he said. He said he’s “already turned away prospective Ph.D. students because of this, and that’s just going to keep happening.”

He said he worries that “if we’re not doing it, no one will do it, and the field will wither and die.”
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August 14, 2025
Rethinking Pathways for Students in Rural Communities

In rural parts of the U.S., 36 percent of jobs that pay enough for an individual to be self-sufficient require at least a bachelor’s degree, yet only 25 percent of rural workers hold such degrees. Many rural communities do not have a university or four-year college nearby. As a result, students in these communities are likely to start their educational journey to a bachelor’s at a community college. Of the nearly 1,000 community colleges nationwide, more than a quarter are in rural areas and many others are designated as rural-serving.

The paths to a bachelor’s degree for rural students are not as straightforward as they are for students in urban or suburban areas with higher concentrations of four-year institutions. For rural community college students, there are four primary routes to earning a bachelor’s degree. As described below, the first three, more conventional, paths do not always work well. But there is also a fourth path—the community college bachelor’s degree program. While still relatively rare, this path is growing in popularity because, when well designed, it is effective in enabling place-bound students to earn bachelor’s degrees and secure good jobs in their communities.

Path 1: Transfer to a Four-Year University

The first path is to transfer to a four-year college and either become a residential student there or commute a long distance to get back and forth to campus from home. Laramie County Community College, where one of us is president, has worked with the University of Wyoming, the state’s only university, located in Laramie, to develop guaranteed transfer pathways to UW bachelor’s programs in major fields of economic importance to the region and state.

But only a minority of LCCC students—mostly younger students who have financial support from their families—can realistically afford to become full-time residential students at UW. Most community college students have jobs and families they can’t leave for several months a year, even if they could afford room and board in addition to tuition (which few can). Commuting to UW is difficult even for LCCC students who live in relatively nearby Cheyenne, almost an hour’s drive from Laramie on a road that crosses the highest point on the Continental Divide and is often closed in the winter. For LCCC students who live in outlying areas and for students at other Wyoming community colleges, commuting to UW is not realistic.

Path 2: Pursue a Bachelor’s Degree Online

Theoretically, this should be an effective option for rural, place-bound community college students. In reality, this avenue is not feasible for the many rural students who live in “digital deserts” or face “last-mile” barriers to broadband access.

Even when internet access is not a problem, many students struggle to complete online programs. Only a quarter of community college students who transfer to online universities complete a bachelor’s degree within four years of transferring. This compares to 57 percent of community college starters who transfer to a public four-year institution. In general, undergraduates who take all their courses online are less likely to succeed than those who take just some courses online. And online success rates are especially low for low-income students, those from other underserved groups or those who face other challenges typical in rural areas, such as limited access to transportation and childcare.

Path 3: Complete a Bachelor’s Degree Through a Community College–Based University Center

The third path is for students to take upper-division coursework through a university center arrangement, where the four-year university has a physical presence on the community college campus. These arrangements vary in design but typically involve university faculty teaching courses on the community college campus. While reasonable in concept, university centers are often challenging to operate. Beyond common issues of ownership, oversight and authority associated with programs run by two separate institutions, in rural colleges, such programs also often do not enroll enough students to make it worth the investment by the university and thus are difficult to sustain, financially and politically.

A Fourth Path: The Community College Bachelor’s Degree

That leaves community college bachelor’s degree programs, which are often the best option for rural students. Research indicates that these programs not only provide effective access to bachelor’s programs for older working students with families and others who are place-bound but also enable these students to secure good jobs.

Some question whether community colleges should offer bachelor’s degrees, arguing that they duplicate university offerings and represent a form of mission creep. But community college bachelor’s degrees tend to be unlike conventional bachelor’s degrees from universities. First, they are explicitly designed as applied credentials to meet specific regional workforce needs. In the best cases, community college bachelor’s degrees are reverse-engineered collaboratively with employers to meet these needs.

Second, they are also often designed to help the many applied associate degree graduates of community colleges find a more effective path to completing a bachelor’s degree, in which their applied coursework is built upon, not disregarded. Finally, they are delivered at home so that graduates of community colleges who are tied to their local area can advance into family-supporting jobs. They are offered through institutions that most students are already familiar with and by people with whom students already have relationships.

For example, LCCC offers a bachelor’s of applied science in health-care administration, with accelerated eight-week courses, offered at convenient times and through a combination of online and in-person modalities. The program is designed to provide the many working health-care clinicians with applied associate degrees (e.g., nurses, sonographers, radiology techs, etc.) a path to management jobs. This program was developed collaboratively with numerous health-care employers to address the strong demand for talent in health-care administration and provide their employees with a viable path to a bachelor’s degree, without requiring them to start over or relocate to another community.

The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by community colleges nationally is still small: fewer than 17,000 annually, compared to more than 1.3 million awarded by public universities. Still, policymakers in a growing number of states are recognizing that rural community colleges are well positioned to meet the needs of students and employers for workforce bachelor’s programs not available from other providers. Currently, community colleges in 24 states are authorized to offer bachelor’s degrees in particular fields, yet the majority (nearly 80 percent) of these colleges are located in just seven states. Thus, there is plenty of room to grow. Bachelor’s programs offered by rural community colleges provide a model for what we hope is becoming a national movement to rethink bachelor’s education for the large number of place-bound students who must work and care for their families but need a bachelor’s degree to advance in their careers.

Joe Schaffer is president of Laramie County Community College. Davis Jenkins is a senior research scholar and Hana Lahr is assistant director of research and director of applied learning at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Ascendium Education Group provided funding for this work.

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August 14, 2025
How to Read a Memo

By now, the memo from the attorney general’s office outlining the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws as they apply to higher education has made the rounds.

It took me back to my grad school days. I took a seminar in literary theory—the ’90s were a different time—and remember being struck particularly by reader-response theory. As I understood it, it argued that the meaning of a text is determined by the reader rather than the writer. Meanings aren’t as random as that might make it sound; “interpretive communities” take shape around a host of sociological, as well as personal, variables. In other words, we learn how to interpret texts partially by modeling on how people around us do. The same text can be read differently depending on your social location.

I’ve had personal experience of that in rewatching beloved movies or rereading beloved books from my teen years. In high school, Revenge of the Nerds struck me as funny and refreshing. As an adult, I can’t get past its sexism. The movie hasn’t changed, but I have.

The assumptions that different interpretive communities make aren’t always conscious. They don’t work like geometric proofs. In my experience, the most frustrating conflicts happen when different unconscious assumptions (or givens) crash into each other. Having to defend something you take as obviously true feels like either a complete dismissal or a slap in the face; it quickly moves discussion from reasoned disagreement to exasperated incomprehension. (“How can you possibly say that?”)

If you don’t recognize when those assumptions clash, it’s easy to get stuck in cycles of verbal shadowboxing. Is someone arguing against single-payer health insurance because they believe that a regulated market system would be more efficient? If so, a reasoned discussion may be worthwhile. Or are they arguing against it because they believe that poor people deserve to die? In that case, arguments around relative efficiency are pointless. Some folks are skilled at disingenuously using reasonable-sounding arguments to defend horrific assumptions; the tip-off is when they switch from one argument to a contradictory one as soon as they start to lose. The sooner you detect that move, the more time and emotional energy you can save.

The AG’s memo offers a glimpse into the unconscious (or at least unspoken) assumptions animating the administration.

Take, for instance, the assertion that “geographic or institutional targeting” is a proxy for discrimination. The only way that can make sense is if you assume the colleges and universities they had in mind are private ones that draw students from around the country. In the case of community colleges, most have a geographic boundary in their name and/or a defined service district. Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., is defined by its location in Monroe County. It gives a discount—economists call that price discrimination—to residents of its county. Students from out of county pay more.

And that’s not unique to MCC; it’s the way most community colleges work. Even those that don’t have out-of-county or out-of-district price premiums usually have out-of-state premiums. The same is true of most public universities. I’ve personally had the experience of paying out-of-state tuition for two kids at public universities; it’s not fun. Is that illegal now? If so, I’ll apply for a refund from the Universities of Virginia and Maryland, posthaste.

Of course, the vast majority of colleges and universities draw overwhelmingly from their own state. That’s a direct version of geographic targeting. A national higher ed policy based on the presumption that geographic targeting is the problem simply ignores the vast majority of the sector.

The issues are also more granular than that. The memo ignores scholarships offered by donors for graduates of particular high schools. Are those illegal now? Private donors frequently favor graduates of their own high schools, or people from the towns in which they grew up. Do we have to turn those donors away now? Or only if the towns in which they grew up are too diverse? Are sports scholarships only OK if they don’t draw too diverse a group of students? If so, then sailing is fine and basketball is suspect. Hmm. I think there’s a word for that.

I imagine the answer the attorney general would offer would be something like “as long as geographic preferences aren’t about increasing diversity, they’re OK.” But that presumes a lot. For example, New York City is more diverse than, well, just about anywhere; if a struggling small college on Long Island starts recruiting aggressively in New York City, is that about diversity or about enrollment? And how do you know?

Discerning institutional intent isn’t straightforward. Mixed motives are entirely normal. For example, is the movement to improve graduation rates meant to help students, budgets or institutions’ public images? The answer is all of the above. Is making colleges more inclusive of people of different backgrounds for the benefit of the newly included, the folks already there or institutional budgets? Again, yes.

A serious discussion would look less at intentions and more at incentives. If decades of public disinvestment force public institutions to behave more like private ones, basing more of their budgets on tuition, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see them compete for students. They’ll do what they have to do. If we want colleges to stop competing for students, we should insulate them from the economic need to do so. It has been done before.

The universe assumed in the memo tells us a lot about the people behind it. It presumes a world in which economic issues don’t matter, intentions are obvious, people have only one motive at a time and elite institutions constitute the entire industry. It reflects the kid who thought Revenge of the Nerds was a breath of fresh air. But that kid eventually grew up and learned that there was more to the world than was dreamt of in his philosophy. The word for that process is education.

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August 14, 2025
The Family Business: An Open Letter (satire/opinion)

Dear Presidents, Chancellors and OTHER Temporary Custodians of My Properties:

Greetings from the Family—I mean, the Administration. You’ve been running a nice little operation there: world-class labs, libraries, free-thinking faculty, students from all over the globe who still believe in the marketplace of ideas, all asking dangerous questions like “Why?” and “What is your evidence?”

It’s over.

As the founder of a MAJOR university, I’m here to say this: We’re gonna do things my way now.

First Order of Business: You Need My Protection

As you know, I’m a SUCESSFUL international businessman. I offer certain countries—let’s call them “friends”—deals: They pay me a modest consideration, or maybe a big, beautiful luxury jet, and I won’t slap them with tariffs to make their economy bleed out. I offer the same generous arrangement to higher ed.

Take Crooked Columbia and Brownnosing Brown—smart enough to come to the table, hand over the dough and watch my charges vanish like magic. Funding? Flowing again … for now.

High and mighty Harvard’s still holding out, though, thinking they can win a staring contest. Let’s just say their next accreditation visit is gonna be … comprehensive.

UCLA? Aka Useless College for Leftist Agendas. Rumor is my friends in D.C. have started looking real close at their books. Would be a shame if we had to start collecting on that billion the hard way.

The rest of you RADICAL LUNATIC LEFT, listen up:

Investigations into your crimes against America, like “allowing students to protest” or “letting faculty disagree with the government,” can disappear overnight … for a price.

Call it a FAVOR from a friendly accreditor.

But remember, what I giveth I can take awayeth.

I don’t do promises; I do BUSINESS. And it’s business time.

Apple, Intel, NVIDIA jump when I say jump. Universities? Child’s play.

Some say I’m an ANTISEMITISM SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR on campus and sure, I like the Jews. I’ll take the compliment, right alongside credit for sprucing up big, beautiful Confederate statues.

My war on hate? Let’s just say it has … range. And if a few very fine people happen to be nearby, standing back and standing by, waiting for the signal to help CLARIFY my position, well, that’s just business.

We Don’t Need Stuck-Up Elites Who Think They’re So Smart

That NASTY WOMAN at the Bureau of Labor Statistics? The one who brought me cooked-up job numbers I didn’t like? FIRED.

That Georgia political hack who couldn’t find enough votes? ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

Judges who cross me? Death threats from my cyber goons have them looking over their shoulders.

Your degree, your Nobel Prize, your teaching awards—SAD! I’ve built towers with my name in gold, hosted the No. 1 reality show on television, and put my face on steaks, sneakers and Bitcoin.

So you publish in that fake Ranger Rick Nature magazine. I don’t care if your lab just cured cancer; if your research questions don’t support my worldview, your grant is pulled and your lab reassigned to our friend of the family on the board, Mikey, who’s very confident about his opinion on quantum biology.

IRB? More like, “I’m Rich, Buddy.”

Loyalty—to ME—is the only credential that matters.

WOKE Faculty Hiring and Student Admissions: GONE-ZO

MARXIST MANIACS who lack American values and good Christian sensibilities have no business shaping our young peoples’ minds. Cover letters with Bible verses or Lee Greenwood lyrics will receive special consideration.

After I cut more big, beautiful deals with my AI buddies, the bots will weed out candidate files with the words “inclusive excellence” or “diversifying the pipeline.”

No more “global citizen” snowflake CRAP. In fact, pretty soon, it’s gonna be all AI at the podium—no critical thinking, no unions, no problem.

International students are allowed, but only RICH ones, with no subversive ideas, like democracy, on their social media feeds. No students from the shithole countries—you know the list. (Come to think of it, I don’t like any country, so being from one of our so-called allies won’t help either.)

NO “underrepresented” anything. ONLY OVERREPRESENTED. Racial disadvantage, adversity, “lived experience” or some “community-based” qualifications? FORGET ABOUT IT.

We’re running a university, not a sob story contest!

You want to admit a Latina who speaks three languages and started her own nonprofit? Great—as long as all three languages are English and she’s truly FEMALE.

And while we’re at it, ban “optional” diversity statements. The only statement that matters is your pledge of allegiance. To me.

Academic Freedom, Suckers!

You thought academic freedom meant hiring the best scholars, encouraging debate and letting a thousand ideas bloom.

HILARIOUS!

From now on, FREEDOM means freedom to offer academic programs that look just like the ones we had in 1952, when America was great (minus the jazz) and McCarthy knew what higher education should look like.

It took Viktor 10 YEARS to bring his universities to heel. I’m doing it in six MONTHS, results like nobody’s ever seen before.

“woMEN’s” studies? GONE.

African American literature course? Replaced with Great Books by Even Greater White Men.

Faculty scholarship on critical race theory, gender equity or, God forbid, climate science, will get an automatic tenure-denial stamp. Come to think of it, tenure? What’s that? More like Permanent Welfare for America-Hating Communists.

Just watch what you publish, pal. I can make tenure go away real fast, the same way I disappeared USAID.

My good friend VICE CHANCELLOR Rufo will replace it with rolling one-year contracts, renewable upon click-through loyalty oath training modules.

Also, just a heads-up. Any course material still using the outdated term “Gulf of Mexico” will be flagged in our next surveillance round. My top patriot and loyal adviser, Stephen, suggests: “The Gulf of AMERICA FIRST.” And you so-called political scientists, get your facts right on who won the 2020 election. You’d best update those course materials, nice and clean, and nobody’s sabbatical turns into an extended stay at Alligator Alcatraz.

Capishe? I don’t want to have to slam any more heads together.

It’s time you got the picture, EGGHEADS: Knowledge isn’t power. Power is power.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Your Don

P.S. I’ll let you keep your football program. You’re welcome.

Jennifer Lundquist is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her satirical observations in this essay are hers alone and not intended to represent the views of her employer.

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August 14, 2025