In 2021, I piloted a city-wide mentoring programme for global majority ethnic staff working in London universities.
It was born from the bilateral North London Leadership Programme between London Metropolitan University and City St George’s, University of London. Four years later the Global Majority Mentoring Programme is flourishing – but world events show us that we need interventions like these as much as we ever did.
The Global Majority Mentoring Programme is London Higher’s flagship commitment to championing equality, diversity and inclusion across the capital. It is a cross-institutional scheme that aims to improve career progression for global majority ethnic staff; give mentees a senior mentor from a different institution, outside their institutional hierarchy; and build professional networks across the capital to foster pan-London collaboration. Over 300 participants from 20 institutions have engaged with the scheme, with representation from small specialist institutions, large multi-faculty universities, and everything in between.
London remains the most ethnically diverse region in the UK. Ten of London’s 32 boroughs (plus the City of London) have a majority non-white population. Newham is London’s most diverse borough, with a population that is 69.2 per cent non-white. In the boroughs of Brent, Redbridge, Harrow and Tower Hamlets, the figure is also above 60 per cent.
You could also call the capital a microcosm of the wider HE sector. London has the largest concentration of diverse higher education providers in the country. A citywide initiative here has a real opportunity to effect meaningful and visible change. Our universities are proudly outward-looking and global, from research links to equitable international partnerships, yet they are also firmly rooted in place and contributors to local growth, regeneration and prosperity. However, lasting change doesn’t happen overnight; London’s higher education sector was not, and still is not, truly representative of the city it serves.
Mentoring individuals from global majority ethnic backgrounds aligns with London-wide policy aims and ambitions: there’s a clear evidence base to support this. Along with the London Anchor Institutions’ Network, we’re striving to meet the clear priorities that have been set out for London’s post-pandemic recovery and regeneration, addressing systemic issues of social and economic unfairness. The London Growth Plan and upcoming Inclusive Talent Strategy encapsulate these priorities.
Growing the pipeline
We are all acutely aware of the wider narrative around EDI. The second Trump administration’s efforts in the US show us what can happen when a populist government takes up “anti-woke” as a cause. There may be disagreement about the form that EDI work should take and some people may fundamentally disagree with the legitimacy of EDI work as part of a public service agenda.
However, in a sector in which there is a visible lack of diversity – in all its forms – that worsens, the further upstream in the talent pipeline you go, we need to continue to work to understand the practical and cultural barriers to leadership and drive to overcome them, learning together as we go. A theme that has consistently emerged throughout the programme is gaining a better knowledge of HE, and its systemic complexities and barriers.
Mentoring programmes like ours create space and connections to make sense of personal experience and explore shared challenges. Participants report feeling a greater sense of empowerment and increased confidence. And tangible impacts on mentees include promotions, collaborations across universities, joint research bids, and even funded PhDs happening as a result of their participation in the scheme.
Future-proofing
Career progression and leadership opportunities were identified as key issues from the outset, so it seems appropriate that the programme is supported by Minerva, an executive search and recruitment firm specialising in education. As headhunters responsible for significant appointments, Minerva is in a position of influence to shape the composition of senior university leadership and their boards.
The programme ensures that a diverse talent pool is in the Minerva team’s line of sight, and can understand more about the challenges global majority colleagues face in moving up the ladder. Minerva also runs yearly masterclass for participants to demystify the executive search process – providing insights into a world that is largely unknown to many of them. This includes a breakdown of recruitment, explanations of things such as the “informal coffee” interview stage, tips on negotiating, conveying a personal brand and profile raising.
We also tailored a leadership development programme alongside the University of Westminster and Blue Whistle Learning that has been taken up internationally, in countries like the Philippines and South Africa.
It is my hope that the initiatives like this are viewed not as political footballs or shiny nice-to-haves, but for what they are – interventions based on robust evidence that meet local and sectoral needs and broaden opportunities for collaboration.
Higher education, especially in London, does not exist in a bubble. It is critical that universities continue to position themselves as integral to driving wider policy change in service of society. A more diverse sector does not mean a watered-down one – it means one that is informed by more voices and perspectives, and therefore better equipped to succeed in tackling the challenges laid out before it.
This article is one of four exploring London Higher’s Global Majority Mentoring Programme – you can find the others here.
The Global Majority Mentoring Programme, delivered by London Higher, aims to support career progression for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) staff by providing tailored mentoring relationships and learning opportunities for academics and professional services staff.
I joined the programme as a mentee in 2023–24 while seeking support during my time as head of two merged divisions in the School of Law and Social Sciences. For me, mentoring is an exchange of knowledge and experience, and I was looking for a woman of colour in a leadership role outside my own institution with whom I could turn to for advice on navigating the unique challenges I was facing in confidence.
The programme was recommended to me by a colleague who recognised that, as the only non-white member of the school leadership team, I faced specific challenges which, although acknowledged by the rest of the team, could only be supported to a limited extent given that the remainder of the team were white. They understood that someone with lived experience of both race and gender might be better placed to offer the kind of support I needed. I was matched with someone in an Associate Dean role who I met with regularly for three months. She validated my experiences especially when I was second guessing myself, she also offered me guidance and advice on navigating career progression and insights on HE headhunters.
In addition to the mentoring, I also took part in the two-day Learning Leaders Workshop, delivered in partnership with the mentoring programme and the University of Westminster. I approached the workshop ambivalently while hoping it would offer more than the surface-level training I had experienced in the past. Previous programmes had often been underwhelming, failing to meet expectations and lacking depth. One in particular was overcrowded, with more than twenty participants, which made it difficult to engage in the kind of deep thinking that individual and collective inquiry needs.
Surface pressure
Reflecting on these past experiences, I began to question the broader purpose and structure of leadership development in higher education. Despite good intentions, many leadership development initiatives in higher education appear to remain disconnected from the structural changes reshaping the sector. And it is not always clear why line managers support staff participation in these programmes when, in practice, there appears to be limited opportunities to apply or build on the learning.
This concern feels especially pressing now, as the sector undergoes significant transformation, with widespread voluntary redundancies affecting many institutions across the UK. I fear that higher education is losing emerging talent at an alarming rate. While the current focus is largely on financial viability, we may be overlooking a more profound long-term issue, the need to reimagine what leadership in higher education looks like. The urgency of building a future-focused leadership pipeline is growing, particularly as ongoing threats to equity, diversity and inclusion continue to challenge the sector’s values and resilience.
Amid this context of uncertainty, where many of us are increasingly time-poor and juggling demanding workloads, I hoped the Learning Leaders workshop would offer a more meaningful and impactful experience. Taking time out of our busy schedules for training must feel worthwhile, rather than merely another tick-box exercise to meet 360 performance management targets. To my surprise, several aspects of the workshop turned out to be both unusual and thought-provoking.
Leadership through lived experience
Notably, there were just six of us in the room, all women, all from the global majority. Throughout the two days, I found myself reflecting on this. Why is it that I so often see more women than men who feel the need to be “trained up” for leadership? This prompted broader questions about gender, expectations and who is seen as ‘ready’ for leadership roles in our institutions. Women lead in many areas of life, particularly those of us who are parents or and carers. We are skilled problem-solvers, strong networkers, and we manage complex responsibilities every day.
In my role as Head of Division, I noticed a recurring frustration among female academics who felt that the emotional labour involved in providing pastoral care to students often went unrecognised. There was a shared sense that this responsibility frequently fell to them, with both students and male colleagues appearing to expect them to take it on. Yet we rarely describe care and pastoral work as leadership.
The programme was not a traditional form of training in any sense. Instead, it offered a series of facilitated sessions that created space for us to reflect, share, and learn from one another’s experiences. Together, we explored how we each learn which was presented in four quadrants – body, heart, mind, and spirit – and how to make the most of this intel within a team setting. This deeper understanding uncovered the strengths within our own leadership styles and helped us consider how best to apply them in our professional contexts. We took time to reflect on how leadership is defined and, more importantly, where it is learned and practised.
Leadership, we came to understand, is not something taught in a conventional way but rather something that evolves through lived experience. It happens in both personal and professional settings, though we might not always recognise it as leadership in a formal or professionalised sense. The workshop took a holistic approach and illustrated how knowledge can emerge through embodied learning, incorporating philosophical inquiry to uncover deeper insights into our individual and collective strengths. This is when it occurred to me, for the first time, that developing leadership practice is best done in communities of practice.
By the end of the two days, we weren’t “trained” by the facilitator in any traditional sense. Instead, the leadership wisdom we uncovered emerged from within our own group, the Super Six, which is what we have come to be known as and was brought to light through Keith’s expert and highly unconventional facilitation, which gently led us to that shared discovery.
Many paths to leadership
In hindsight, the Learning Leaders workshop gave me the space to actively explore the “what next” and “how next” of leadership. A series of thoughtful one-to-one conversations with one of the Super Six proved particularly impactful. Their questions led me to reflect deeply on new possibilities for academic leadership, including working as a freelance scholar, moving to a different institution, or stepping outside the sector altogether. I have always held a personal principle not to remain in one institution for more than ten years, out of concern for becoming institutionalised and limiting my professional growth. After several thoughtful conversations with my Dean, I came to the difficult but right decision to leave at the end of 2024.
Since then, I have had the privilege of working with several universities and organisations from teaching, advising, researching and collaborating on projects – all of which have been intellectually energising and impactful. There is no one way to lead, and the Learning Leaders workshop reminded me that there are many paths to leadership, each shaped by context, values and personal experience.
If there is any advice that I could offer to emerging leaders from global majority backgrounds, it would be to identify a sponsor with decision making power within the institution, a mentor outside of the university for confidential developmental advice and identify role models across different sectors and who do leadership well so you can begin building your own community of practice.
This article is one of four exploring London Higher’s Global Majority Mentoring Programme – you can find the others here.
This HEPI Blog post was kindly authored by Huw Morris, Honorary Professor of Tertiary Education, IoE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society and Richard Watermeyer, Professor of Education, University of Bristol.
Introduction
It is a year since the Labour Government was elected with a commitment to produce a post-16 skills and higher education White Paper by Summer 2025. In this article, we look at how changes in the UK’s economy and politics since July 2024 have altered what is likely to be in this policy statement and what might happen despite it.
What has happened over the last twelve months?
Last September, the Minister of State for Skills, Jacqui Smith, drew attention to the enormous economic challenges and tough choices facing the Government, but stressed the administration’s commitment to a mission-led approach to create a new era of opportunity and economic growth within a fairer society for everyone. Two months later the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, wrote to vice chancellors outlining the Government’s expectation that universities will:
expand access and improve outcomes for disadvantaged students;
make a stronger contribution to economic growth;
play a greater civic role in local communities;
raise teaching standards; and
deliver sustained efficiency and reform.
There were also subsequent calls for more effective higher education leadership, strong governance and a new business model for the sector. To support these changes, ministers provided an increase in the undergraduate home tuition fee of £285/year and an uplift to the maximum maintenance loan support of £414. For those concerned with institutional finances, this uplift in income was more than matched by higher costs due to increases in employers’ national insurance contributions, reductions in foundation year fees, withdrawal of level 7 apprenticeship funding and reduced capital allocations, among other things. To deal with these changes, most universities have sought to increase their international student recruitment and classroom-based home undergraduate students, as well as higher margin postgraduate provision. For some of the institutions denied these opportunities because of their market position the alternative has been to expand their franchise operations and transnational education and/or to reduce costs. As figure 1 illustrates, these changes in funding and activity have produced some significant changes in forecasts for the money flowing to colleges, independent training providers and universities.
Figure 1: Funding and Orientation Matrix
Looking at the balance between areas of activity which enhance prestige and those that support widening participation, when combined with those that are funded publicly or privately, reveals some big changes. The increase in undergraduate home student tuition fees has not been enough to stem the decline of overall funding from foundation years, postgraduate courses and research grants. The balance in government funding has shifted from these areas of activity towards schools, further education and apprenticeship provision. Meanwhile, although funding from private sources for international students taught in the UK and for transnational education overseas has expanded, UKRI funding for individual institutions has declined due to increases in the number of grant applications from a wider range of institutions and a larger number of researchers leading to a halving of the success rate compounded by changes to the treatment of what was and is now again EU research funding.
Meanwhile, the impact of universities and colleges on local communities has been a tale in two parts. The annual Higher Education / Business Community Interaction survey reveals small increases in business start-ups and spinouts as well as partnerships with small firms, but measures of the impact on local economies is more difficult to demonstrate. These issues are less pronounced with apprenticeship providers and further education colleges where local community engagements are key to engaging adult part-time learners.
The Government has fared poorly in opinion polls over the last twelve months due to concern about the cost of living, immigration and the state of public services. This has prompted challenges from the political right and left. This is not confined to questions about tax, immigration and public spending, it has also extended to concerns about the role of universities and support for other forms of post-16 education. Across the voting population, recent private opinion polling has revealed that just over half of the electorate are questioning, sceptical or openly hostile to the role of universities in their communities. University research as an area of activity is poorly understood and where there is an appreciation of this activity, it is not automatically seen as meeting real-world needs. Meanwhile, among the leadership of many major civic and corporate organisations, universities are seen as profit-driven and not working in the public interest. In short, there is a lack of an emotional and relational connection between universities, local communities and national leaders.
It has been argued that university leaders need to respond to these adverse public perceptions by stating the virtues of higher education and research more clearly and advocating for universities more often. Pursuing this approach, it is argued, will open the door to greater trust, less regulation and improved funding. More recently, it has been argued that public opinion has changed to such an extent since the Covid pandemic that this approach will not work and there is now a need, quoting Robbie Burns, for university staff “to see ourselves as others see us”, before considering how best to respond. The priorities of these others are likely to become more visible over the summer months as they question the evidence of university contribution and those who champion the current arrangements in the wake of this year’s home and international student recruitment rounds.
The Autumn party conference season begins with the Liberal Democrats in Bournemouth (20 to 23 September), Labour in Liverpool (27 to 1 October), the Green Party in Bournemouth (3 to 5 October) and the Conservatives in Manchester (5 to 8 October). In today’s world of multi-party politics and jostling to define the public policy agenda, it is also important to note that the Reform Party conference will take place in Birmingham (5 to 6 September). Meanwhile, “Your Party”, the new left-wing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has not given a formal indication of its plans for an inaugural conference, but it seems likely that there will be events in early Autumn..
The conference season is normally a time when parties outline what is planned or hoped for in the future. Governments are not supposed to announce new initiatives outside of the House of Commons, and although they occasionally do, they are rebuked by the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the Secretary of State for Education and Chancellor of the Exchequer have found out in recent months. This year is likely to be more difficult than usual as pressures on the public purse raise questions about tax changes in the Autumn budget and raise the spectre of changes to expenditure plans to meet the Government’s spending rules and to provide for defence, health and welfare commitments.
Any post-16 education announcements are likely to be especially difficult because of the competition with other parties. The Reform party has promised to eliminate interest on student loans and to extend loan repayment periods (a graduate tax in all but name), as well as removing student loans for medical and STEM students and writing off the loans of long-serving NHS workers. There are also proposals to invest more in apprenticeships and technical education with an increase in publicly funded training courses.
Similar proposals were made by the Green Party in their 2024 General election manifesto with commitments echoing the 2019 Labour Party manifesto to scrap tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and increase investment in skills and lifelong learning. Meanwhile, for completeness, the Liberal Democrats pledged to improve financial support for disadvantaged students by reintroducing maintenance grants, in part modelled on the arrangements introduced by the Liberal Democrat minister, Kirsty Williams, while she oversaw higher education for the Welsh Government (2016-2021). These promises of increased spending on student maintenance are likely to be attractive to many young voters and particularly newly enfranchised 16–18-year-olds. These promises can also be made by parties that believe they are unlikely to find themselves in government in 2026. The problem for university leaders and staff with these proposals is that while they will help students, they won’t help institutions to pay their bills, except perhaps for students’ halls of residence.
What could possibly go wrong?
Increased strain on university finances and growing pressure on the public purse, combined with demands for improved student maintenance funding, create a difficult context if anything unexpected goes wrong with the income and expenditure of individual institutions. These challenges have been added to by the publication of nine major Government strategy and policy papers with implications for post-16 education and training.
The five missions that the Government was elected to pursue have been added to by a plan for the NHS, an Immigration White Paper, five critical technologies, six milestones, seven chapters in the Get Britain Working white paper, the eight priority sectors in the industrial strategy white paper, the nine regions identified in the national infrastructure plan and 10 priority skills sectors identified by Skills England. All of these plans have local dimensions that are being developed with the 12 established Mayoral Strategic Authorities and 12 new regional bodies outlined in plans for devolution to 44 English regions which will combine with 38 Local Skills and Improvement Plans (LSIPs). The complexity associated with these arrangements means that there will, in practice, have to be some simplification.
It is reassuring to see this energy and commitment to change, but it is also a cause of concern that it is not clear how the various plans and governance arrangements will join up within Whitehall and across the regions. This may not be a problem in the largest city regions of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, London, North East, West Midlands and West Yorkshire. However, it is likely to be more of an issue in the less developed Mayoral regions of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the East Midlands, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, Tees Valle and West of England, not to mention the other 22 yet to be reorganised regions of the UK covering 50% of the population.
The challenges of developing joined-up plans are likely to become problems if the reputational and financial risks being experienced by cash-strapped colleges, independent training providers and universities materialise. Among universities 43% are currently forecasting a deficit and the most recent published figures for further education colleges in 2022/3 revealed a figure of 37%. As recent experience with the University of Dundee has illustrated, the short-term direct costs can exceed £100m, and the longer-term indirect costs are even greater. These additional costs are likely to be substantial as national regulators, regional officials and local providers wrestle with the challenge of developing the capacity, capability and courage needed to align provision with employer demand as well as student interest.
With low economic growth, high inflation and challenges to reductions in government expenditure and without additional funding for student maintenance and living expenses, it is difficult to see how universities will widen participation for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Without more funding for courses in the areas of skill shortage that underpin the eight industrial sectors and the requirements of the NHS and National Infrastructure Plan, it is difficult to see how local skills needs will be met and the improvements in productivity and economic growth achieved. Teaching quality might be maintained by a lower-paid and increasingly casualised workforce, but will the efficiency and effectiveness of institutions improve without support for the local coordination and rationalisation of activity?
What might be in the Post-16 and Higher Education White Paper?
Now that the anticipated publication of the Post-16 and Higher Education White Paper has been delayed until the Autumn it seems likely that it will be timed to coincide with the Budget in November. This Indian Summer schedule is needed to gain some certainty about the future funding position and associated changes to tax and spending decisions. So, what might be in the White paper? At present the following five strands of activity seem most likely.
Widening participation and progression
Proposals for the development of regional education and skills pathways to support the introduction of the credit and modular funding arrangements that will be needed with the Lifelong Learning Entitlement in January 2027. Proposals for consultation on how institutions could be required to introduce bursary and scholarship arrangements if they fail to meet regionally agreed targets for widening participation and progression.
International students
Proposals for consultation on how the 6% international student levy will be used to pay for the upskilling of domestic learners, rebalancing of funding towards institutions that have not recruited international students and underwriting of the costs of structural adjustments.
Local Skills and Productivity
Outline of how Local Skills Improvement Plans will be developed by Skills England to ensure that Mayoral Strategic Authorities and other regional bodies have tools to influence education provision to respond to the 10 skills priorities and 5 critical technologies while meeting the needs of local employers and communities. This might include local independent careers, advice and guidance arrangements of the sort developed in Greater Manchester.
Quality and Standards
Announcement of the provisional findings from an internal review of the standards and regulations applied by the Office for Students including tightened controls over franchise and transnational education arrangements.
Efficiency, effectiveness and exit
Changes to Competition and Market Authority guidance on regional institutional cooperation. The introduction of an insolvency and regime for higher education institutions to parallel arrangements for further education colleges and independent apprenticeship providers. This to include formal mechanisms for restructuring loans or similar transitional finance arrangements.
What is currently missing from these arrangements is a multi-year agreement on fees and funding or a plan for supporting English regions that are not part of the current plans for devolution. All major post-16 White papers in the past have included an explicit or tacit exchange of support for the UK economy locally and nationally with an agreement on longer-term funding and finance. To achieve this realistically in the future will require guidance on how regional and institutional leadership and governance will be aligned with national plans. The UK’s devolved governments and a few established Mayoral Strategic Authorities have mechanisms to bring colleges and universities together to discuss their plans and the opportunities for alignment. In many instances these arrangements span more than one MSA or its equivalent. Most of the other regions lack these arrangements and will need support to develop local officials, senior managers and governing bodies. Most importantly what should these groupings do if one or more institutions in their patch fail?
There is little appetite among the UK’s political parties and government departments for an independent review of higher education because of concern about the time this would take and the loss of control it would entail. However, the risks associated with current economic constraints and political polarisation pose substantial risks for local communities and regional economies in general and for the students and staff in individual institutions in particular. The summer months provide a useful time to reflect on these challenges and to consider how genuinely transformational change can be led and managed within city regions and rural combined authorities. For universities, further education providers and independent training providers and their representatives, this should involve more than improving their public affairs and relations and should consider how local and regional forms of organisation can be developed.
Arthur Laffer, the Reagan-era economist best known for the “Laffer Curve,” appeared recently at a Young America’s Foundation (YAF) event, still making the same tired claims that have shaped decades of economic inequality, deregulation, and magical thinking. The event, broadcast on C-SPAN, was marketed as a fresh take on conservative economics. What it delivered instead was a rerun of discredited supply-side talking points—punctuated by jokes that fell embarrassingly flat.
Laffer claimed that Donald Trump’s tariffs were a strategy to bring about more free trade in the future—a baffling contradiction to anyone who understands trade policy or the basics of coercive economic diplomacy. The idea that protectionism is a roundabout route to free markets would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive. But Laffer, like many libertarians, thrives on contradiction. The audience—young, mostly white, mostly male—nodded along as if it all made sense.
He also defended increased U.S. military spending, invoking Ronald Reagan’s 1980s arms buildup. What he didn’t mention: Reagan was in the early stages of dementia during his presidency, and his military strategy deepened the national debt, even as Laffer’s beloved tax cuts starved the government of revenue. That context never surfaced, of course.
Laffer’s appearance was followed by Linda McMahon, former WWE executive and Small Business Administration head under Trump. The tag team pairing reinforced the spectacle of right-wing economic theater disguised as intellectual discourse.
YAF, a competitor to Turning Point USA, presents itself as the more polished brand of conservative youth organizing. It’s backed by deep pockets and institutional support, but its message remains the same: glorify the market, demonize government, and elevate charisma over critical thinking. Its speakers are well-coached in rhetorical sparring, skilled in sophistry, and eager to exploit the inexperience of their college-aged audience.
Laffer fits that mold perfectly. He’s less a thought leader than a relic of failed policy, propped up by a movement that rewards ideological loyalty over intellectual honesty. His ideas can’t really be called “theories” anymore—empirical evidence has repeatedly debunked them. But among libertarians and the far right, evidence is optional, and repetition is persuasive.
Young America’s Foundation is adept at drawing youth into a worldview of individualism that rarely benefits individuals. It relies on the passion and ignorance of its followers, asking them to embrace contradictions: that tariffs bring freedom, that debt from war is freedom, that cutting taxes magically increases revenue. It’s a faith-based economics, and Laffer remains its high priest.
In the end, the only thing more stale than the Laffer Curve is the attempt to keep it alive.
Sources:
C-SPAN: Art Laffer speech at YAF
Reagan’s Alzheimer’s revelations: The New York Times
Critiques of supply-side economics: Brookings, Economic Policy Institute
The federal government has frozen $584 million in grants and contracts at UCLA.
The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on the University of California, Los Angeles, and seeking a $1 billion settlement, following concessions from other institutions, CNN reported.
University of California president James B. Milliken said in a statement Friday that “a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.”
Demands for a settlement come as the federal government has accused UCLA of violating civil rights law by allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitism as pro-Palestinian protests surged on campus last spring. The National Science Foundation and other agencies have since suspended $584 million in federal research funding, according to UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk. TheNew York Timesreported that the administration also wants UCLA to put $172 million in a fund for victims of civil rights violations.
UC system officials announced Wednesday they would negotiate with the federal government in the hope of reaching a “voluntary resolution agreement” over the charges.
“Our immediate goal is to see the $584 million in suspended and at-risk federal funding restored to the university as soon as possible,” Milliken wrote in a Wednesday statement, adding that cuts to federal research funding “do nothing to address antisemitism.”
UCLA was one of several institutions whose executives were hauled before Congress over the last two years to address pro-Palestinian encampments and alleged antisemitism and harassment tied to such protests.
Should UCLA reach a settlement with the Trump administration, it would be the first public university to do so but the third institution to strike a deal with the federal government over the course of several weeks. Last month, Columbia University reached an unprecedented settlement with the Trump administration, agreeing to changes to admissions and academic programs and paying $221 million to close investigations into alleged antisemitism and restore some frozen research funding. The deal will be overseen by a third-party resolution monitor.
Brown University also struck a deal with the federal government in July that did not include a payout to the Trump administration, but officials did agree to provide admissions data to the federal government and bar transgender athletes from competing, among other concessions.
Federal officials didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.
Higher education serves different purposes for different people. For some, it represents transformation and expanded horizons. For others, it remains a site of oppression—a place where white supremacy and anti-Blackness flourish while administrations proclaim commitments to diversity even as their actions contradict these stated values. The commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have long been performative at most predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Now, institutions no longer need to maintain even this pretense.
Dr. Frederick Engram JrThe current presidential administration has made anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-women policies central to its agenda. We are not approaching fascism—we are immersed in it. The fundamental problem with higher education and liberal politics more broadly is that while we all recognized the warning signs, no substantive preventative measures were taken to counter the impending assault.
When the previous Trump administration targeted K-12 education—falsely claiming that critical race theory was being taught in elementary schools and suspending administrators in states like Texas—higher education watched passively, believing itself safe from similar attacks. Instead of mounting resistance and uniting against authoritarian overreach, higher education capitulated. Institutions cancelled classes and programs designed to educate students about historical injustices, prioritizing the comfort of white students and families while disregarding everyone else.
As Professor Emeritus Dr. John R. Thelin documents in his seminal work A History of American Higher Education, the system was designed from its inception to serve wealthy, white, cisgender, able-bodied men. Higher education was never intended to include marginalized people of color or women. The argument that white men are now being excluded from spaces where they have always been centered would be absurd if it weren’t so dangerous.
Anti-discrimination DEI initiatives became necessary precisely because white men were not voluntarily making space for others—supported by white women who were themselves fighting for inclusion. The notion that white men feel excluded from higher education reflects a false sense of entitlement and the sting of having their mediocrity exposed. This wounded sense of supremacy drives them to destroy institutions rather than share them.
Fascism is not approaching—it has arrived.
The targeted attacks on Harvard, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are rooted in anti-Black rhetoric that was explicitly outlined in Project 2025. This blueprint seeks to create a dystopian America where marginalized voices are silenced and governance is built around white anxieties and grievances.
The worst possible response from higher education institutions is capitulation. Instead of forming coalitions, deploying legal resources, and mobilizing their extensive alumni networks, institutions are either confronting this administration in isolation or retreating into silence. Someone should inform higher education that fascism doesn’t reward compliance. It seeks total destruction and will not protect those who failed to oppose it simply because they remained quiet.
Our institutions and academic disciplines face existential threats. Regardless of how compliant we choose to be, when the destruction is complete, nothing will remain standing. We cannot measure progressive politics by white comfort levels, nor should white feelings determine whether we defend the most vulnerable among us.
Understanding liberation and resistance in this moment requires recognizing that active opposition is our only viable option. Millions have died, millions are dying, and millions more await death—all to satisfy the bloodlust of mediocre leaders drunk on power. Our resistance must be meaningful and sustained.
What purpose will silence serve when we lose everything anyway?
The time for half-measures and performative gestures has passed. Higher education must choose between principled resistance and institutional suicide. The stakes could not be higher, and history will judge our response.
_________
Dr. Frederick Engram Jr. is an assistant professor of higher education at at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dr. Brendan L. JohnsonBrendan L. Johnson has been appointed as the new Director of Bands at Benedict College, where he will lead all ensembles, including the nationally recognized Benedict College Band of Distinction (BCBOD). Johnson brings a decade of transformative leadership from Darlington High School, where he served as Director of Bands. During his tenure, he grew the program from 75 to 225 members, making it one of the largest high school bands in South Carolina. He was selected for the Benedict role following an extensive nationwide search for elite musicians and conductors.
A dual graduate of Bethune-Cookman University, Johnson holds bachelor’s degrees in music education and liberal studies. While at Bethune-Cookman, he made history a the third Mr. Bethune-Cookman University. He later earned a master’s in education from Anderson University, and a Doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi.
The end of the “hegemony” of X as the most used social media platform by researchers has been strongly shaped by political and geographic factors, as well as Elon Musk’s intervention into U.S. politics, according to a new study.
Since Musk rebranded Twitter to X, many within higher education—including some universities themselves—have decided to leave the platform, particularly since the billionaire threw his support behind Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. election.
Researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Granada examined almost 15,000 publications from multidisciplinary and Library and Information Science journals between January 2024 and March 2025.
Across the whole period, Bluesky had a much smaller presence compared with X in terms of engaged users—those who comment on papers.
However, the paper found a “notable increase” in Bluesky accounts mentioning papers published in multidisciplinary journals in November 2024, which the paper said was likely influenced by political and platform change.
“We observe a clear surge in mentions beginning in September 2024 and continuing into early 2025, particularly around the United States presidential election and subsequent political events.”
The shift in users and increasing diversification between the two platforms, particularly from late 2024 onward, coincided with “major U.S. political events in which Elon Musk has actively intervened.”
The study says the results reveal a scholarly landscape where conversations are no longer concentrated on a single platform, but are now “genuinely distributed between X and Bluesky.”
“This reflects that the response to platform changes is not only field-dependent, but also strongly shaped by political-geographical factors.”
The study comes after a recent analysis by Andy Tattersall, an information specialist at the Sheffield Centre of Health and Related Research, found a third of U.K. universities have now quit X. While the number of active accounts on Bluesky has risen, however, many institutions are still not posting regularly.
A previous study revealed that Bluesky hosted more posts linked to work published in 2025 for the first time in March—declaring, “The days of X’s dominance are over.”
The new paper reached a similar conclusion, adding, “What is clear is that the Altmetric hegemony of X may have come to an end, as for the first time there is a clear alternative in Bluesky, which even matches user engagement in ways that would have seemed unthinkable until recently.
“Only time will tell how effective and lasting this platform shift truly is.”
It says further research was needed to learn why Bluesky has succeeded where other alternatives—such as Threads or Mastodon—did not.
Jonathan Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University, was suspended from his job and is being investigated for posting on X after the US bombing of Iran, “I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops.” Brown’s expressed desire for peace was twisted by conservatives into some kind of anti-American call for violence.
Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, noted that the interim president of Georgetown would soon be testifying before Congress and wrote about Brown, “This demon had better be gone by then. We have a Muslim problem in America.” Fine was Gov. Ron DeSantis’s choice to be president of Florida Atlantic University before the board rejected him. But his literal demonization of speech has a powerful impact.
Georgetown quickly obeyed the commands of anti-Muslim bigots such as Fine. Georgetown interim president Robert M. Groves testified to Congress on July 15, “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown, the tweet was removed, we issued a statement condemning the tweet, Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department and he’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”
Groves responded “yes” when asked by Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, “You are now investigating and disciplining him?”
Georgetown’s statement declared, “We are appalled that a faculty member would call for a ‘symbolic strike’ on a military base in a social media post.” But why would this appall anyone? Faculty members routinely support actions that actually kill innocent people—tens of thousands of people, in the case of professors who support Israel’s attack on Gaza, millions of people in the case of professors who supported the fight against the Nazis in World War II. And that’s all perfectly legitimate. So a professor calling for an action against a military target that doesn’t kill anybody should be the most trivial statement in the world.
There is a good reason why universities shouldn’t take positions on foreign policy—because institutional opinions are often dumb, especially when formulated “within minutes” rather than after serious thought. Georgetown is making the worst kind of violation of institutional neutrality—not merely expressing a dumb opinion, not just denouncing a professor for disagreeing with that dumb opinion, but actually suspending a professor for diverging from Georgetown’s very dumb official opinion on foreign policy.
Often, defenders of academic freedom have to stand for this principle even when addressing terrible people who say terrible things. But the assault on academic freedom in America has become so awful that even perfectly reasonable comments are now grounds for automatic suspension. Brown’s position on the Iran attacks is very similar to that of Donald Trump, who posted praise for Iran after it did precisely what Brown had urged: “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.” Unlike Trump, Brown never thanked Iran for attacking a U.S. base. So how could any university even consider punishing a professor for taking a foreign policy stand more moderate than Trump?
Georgetown’s shocking attacks on academic freedom have garnered little attention or criticism. The Georgetown Hoyareported in a headline, “Groves Appears to Assuage Republicans, Defend Free Speech in Congressional Hearing.”
The newspaper’s fawning treatment of Groves as a defender of free speech apparently was based on Groves testifying, “We police carefully the behavior of our faculty in the classroom and their research activities,” and adding, “They are free, as all residents of the United States, to have speech in the public domain.” It’s horrifying to have any university president openly confess that they “police carefully” professors’ teaching and research. But for Groves to claim that faculty have free speech “in the public domain” when he proudly suspended Brown for his comments must be some kind of sick joke.
Another Hoya headline about the controversy declared, “University Review of GU Professor for Controversial Posts Prompts Criticism, Praise.” While the campus Students for Justice in Palestine and the Council on American-Islamic Relations correctly defended Brown, the Anti-Defamation League declared, “We commend Georgetown University for taking swift action following Jonathan Brown’s dangerous remarks about a ‘symbolic strike’ on a U.S. military base.”
There is nothing “dangerous” about Brown’s remarks calling for an end to war, or any other foreign policy opinions. The only danger here is the threat to academic freedom.
When Georgetown suspended lecturer Ilya Shapiro in 2022 for his offensive comments on Twitter, I argued that “Shapiro should not be punished before he receives a hearing and fair evaluation” and added, “A suspension, even with pay, is a form of punishment. In fact, it’s a very harsh penalty when most forms of campus misconduct receive a reprimand or a requirement for education or changes in behavior.”
I called upon all colleges to ban the use of suspensions without due process. Since then, suspensions have become an epidemic of repression on college campuses. An army of advocates once argued in defense of Shapiro’s free speech. Unfortunately, none of Shapiro’s outspoken supporters have spoken out with similar outrage about the even worse treatment of Brown by Georgetown’s censors.
Georgetown’s administrators must immediately rescind Brown’s ridiculous suspension, restore his position as department chair, end this unjustified investigation of his opinions, apologize for their incompetence at failing to meet their basic responsibilities to protect academic freedom and enact new policies to end the practice of using arbitrary suspensions without due process as a political weapon.
John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].
The Education Department’s yearlong effort to roll out the sweeping higher ed changes signed into law last month kicked off Thursday with a four-hour hearing that highlighted the many tweaks college administrators and others want to see.
On nearly all fronts, college administrators, policy experts and students argued that lawmakers left significant gaps in the legislation, and they want a say in how Trump administration officials fill them in. For instance, the legislation doesn’t explain what data will be collected for either workforce Pell or the accountability measure or who will have to take on that task. Some speakers raised concerns about how new reporting requirements could increase administrative burdens for colleges.
But Nicholas Kent, the department’s newly confirmed under secretary, said at the start of the meeting that he looks forward to clarifying all the details during the lengthy process known as negotiated rule making.
“Simply put, the current approach to paying for college is unsustainable for both borrowers and for taxpayers,” Kent said. “President Trump has laid out a bold vision, one that aims to disrupt a broken system and return accountability, affordability and quality to postsecondary education that includes reducing the cost of higher education, aligning program offerings with employer needs [and] embracing innovative education models … Today’s public hearing marks a key milestone in our accelerated timeline to implement this sweeping legislative reform.”
Neither Kent nor other department officials said what specific changes and clarifications are on the table.
What Is Negotiated Rule Making?
Negotiated rule making, or “neg-reg,” started in the early 1990s. It entails using an advisory committee to consider and discuss issues with the goal of reaching consensus in developing a proposed rule. Consensus means unanimous agreement among the committee members, unless the group agrees on a different definition. The department must undertake negotiated rule making for any rule related to federal student aid.
Determining the details of the regulations and policy changes will be left up to two committees of higher education leaders, policy experts and industry representatives that will review and negotiate over the department’s proposals during a series of meetings throughout the fall and into the new year. The first committee is scheduled to begin discussions in September.
In the meantime, here are three key issues Thursday’s speakers said they hope to see addressed by both the advising panels and department officials before the legislation starts taking effect in July 2026.
Who’s Making the Decisions?
Before the public hearing, some higher ed lobbyists and advocates raised concerns about who would be included on the advisory committees. Multiple constituent groups argued they weren’t properly represented on the committees.
For instance, neither committee includes a representative from the financial aid community, despite the fact that college financial aid administrators will play a key role in implementing the legislation on campuses.
Multiple groups, including the American Council on Education, drew attention to the absence, but Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, voiced the most concern.
Financial aid professionals will “interpret, communicate and operationalize the intricate details of this wide-ranging bill for millions of students and families. To exclude their practical, technical experience from the negotiation table risks developing rules that are difficult to administer, creating unintended negative consequences,” she said. “We have heard the perspective that representatives from each college sector can speak to the needs of their institutions. However, their role is to advocate for the broad interests of that sector. That is fundamentally different from representing the profession responsible for the … mechanics of aid delivery.
A department official who moderated the hearing, responded, “We expect we will have financial aid administrators at the table,” as the department has in the past, but he did not clarify how that would be done. (This paragraph has been corrected.)
Other speakers called for better representation ofcivil rights advocates, apprenticeship program leaders and minority-serving institutions, but none of those requests were directly addressed by government officials.
What Qualifies as a Professional Program?
Speakers also raised questions about how the new caps to student loans would work and whom they would affect.
How to Make a Policy, Neg-Reg Edition
As part of negotiated rule making, the Education Department must:
Put out a public notice about intent to form a committee and hold a public hearing
Publish notice inviting nominations for negotiators
Hold a public hearing
Pick the negotiators
Hold negotiated rule-making sessions
Write the proposed regulations
Publish those regulations for public comment, which lasts at least 30 days
Read and respond to the comments; revise the regulations as needed
Publish the final rule. Rules need to be published by Nov. 1 in order to take effect July 1 of the following year, but the department can implement rules early.
Congress’s Big Beautiful Bill caps loans for professional degrees at $200,000 and limits loans for graduate programs to half of that. But lawmakers didn’t specify which degree programs fall in which category. Determining how to sort programs will likely be a key point of debate for the rule-making committee, the comments showed.
Certain programs, like law and medical school, will almost certainly be considered professional programs, but other programs, like master’s degrees in nursing, education or social work, are not guaranteed. Knowing this, a variety of academic association representatives, workforce advocates and college administrators made their case throughout the hearing for why their own discipline should be a professional program.
Matt Hooper, vice president of communications for the Council on Social Work Education, said to not include certain programs in the professional bucket would mean ignoring their critical nature as a public service.
Social work graduates “pursue careers in health care, children and family services, criminal justice, public policy, government, and more,” he said. “An M.S.W. provides full professional preparation, similar to a J.D. in law or an M.D. in medicine, and we think it should be categorized in the same respect.”
A handful of speakers went so far as to argue that certain bachelor’s programs, like aviation or aeronautical science, that are often paired with certification from the Federal Aviation Administration should be grouped into the professional category, as they come at a cost and time commitment similar to graduate school.
If those programs don’t get the benefit of a higher loan cap, multiple airline advocates said, America could see a steep shortage of pilots within the next two decades.
“Over the next 15 years, nearly half of our nation’s airline pilots will retire due to mandatory age limits,” said Sharon DeVivo, president of Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology. “The current training pipeline is not equipped to meet that demand, putting at risk the transportation infrastructure, especially the economic health of small and rural communities that depend on reliable air service.”
Training to become a pilot can cost $80,000 to $100,000 more than a traditional bachelor’s degree, added Carlos Zendejas, vice president of flight operations at the regional airline Horizon Air. So to hold these students to the same loan limit as other undergraduates would deter prospective pilots from pursuing a high-return-on-investment career.
“The need to stabilize the pilot pipeline is real,” he said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill gives the department the ability to fix this.”
Should Gainful Go?
Since the inauguration, Trump officials in all sectors of the federal government have been vocal about combating fraud, waste and abuse. But higher education experts are concerned that one measure in the reconciliation bill could do the opposite.
The new accountability tool it introduced uses a new earnings test to evaluate colleges’ eligibility for federal student loans. But it does not apply to certificate programs, which some policy and data analysts say are more likely to provide a poor return on investment.
According to a recent report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center at American University, only 1 percent of college programs at the associate level and higher will fail the new earnings test, but about 19 percent of certificate programs would do so.
Representatives from American as well as New America, Third Way and the Century Foundation, all progressive think tanks, sounded the alarm on the matter at Thursday’s hearing. As a solution, they encouraged the administration to keep an existing accountability policy in place that applies to certificate programs and for-profit institutions. That metric, known as the gainful-employment rule, is not codified in law.
“A recent publication from the Senate health committee’s chairman, Bill Cassidy, confirms it was not lawmakers’ intent to exempt such programs from any accountability,” said Clare McCann, the PEER Center’s managing director of policy and operations. “So to carry out that intent, the department should maintain a strong gainful-employment program regulation for those programs that should include maintaining the debt-to-earnings tests under the gainful-employment rules, which are an important check on institutions offering unaffordable degrees.”
