Tag: Higher

  • Exit Tickets in Higher Ed: Easy Ideas for Educators

    Exit Tickets in Higher Ed: Easy Ideas for Educators

    Some say that first impressions are most important. But every professor who finds their students aimlessly filing out of class two-thirds of the way through will say that students’ final impressions of class tend to last longest—what did they get from showing up, if they just breezed out again? Luckily, there’s an established way you can make sure students go out of the door with purpose and accomplishment: exit tickets. Aligning exit tickets with the key concept of the day’s lesson is essential for effective assessment and ensures that you are measuring student understanding of the most important learning objectives. Exit tickets are also used to assess understanding of a specific skill or concept from the day’s lesson, helping instructors identify areas that may need further attention.

    Exit tickets are one of the fastest, lowest-commitment types of active learning tools to implement. Essentially, you ask your students to provide a written answer to a question about their learning before they’re “allowed” to leave your class. Students can decide how to respond, such as through writing, drawing, or other formats, to best demonstrate their understanding. Exit tickets should take only a few minutes for students to complete, ensuring students spend their time meaningfully and efficiently at the end of the lesson. This helps students clarify, understand, and recall their learning better. And, if you feel the need, you can tie attendance or participation grades to completion. However, exit tickets are low stakes and are not meant to be graded, which encourages honest self-reflection. Designing effective exit ticket questions takes practice, and providing an example can help educators get started. Teachers design their own exit tickets linked to the objective of the lesson, ensuring alignment with the intended learning outcomes.

    Access customizable exit ticket templates for ideas to spark conversation and meaningful learning.

    Introduction to Exit Tickets

    Exit tickets are a simple yet powerful tool that educators can use to check student understanding and student learning at the end of a class period. These quick assessments—sometimes called exit slips—ask students to reflect on the day’s lesson and share their thoughts before leaving the classroom. Exit tickets promote student reflection and give quiet students a voice in expressing their understanding. Whether you teach a science class or any other subject, exit tickets can take many forms, from a sticky note handed in at the door to a digital form submitted online.

    Using varied formats for exit tickets, such as written notes or drawings, keeps students engaged and prevents boredom. Because they are low stakes, students feel comfortable sharing what they know and where they might need more help. For educators, exit tickets provide immediate feedback, making it easier to identify student needs and adjust instruction accordingly. Teachers must account for individual student perceptions and needs when reviewing exit ticket responses. By regularly using exit tickets, educators can ensure that every class ends with a clear sense of what students have learned and what concepts may need further attention in future lessons.

    Benefits of Using Exit Tickets

    Incorporating exit tickets into your teaching routine offers a range of benefits for both students and educators. In a college setting, exit tickets are widely used to foster effective teaching strategies and support educational goals. First and foremost, exit tickets provide a quick snapshot of student understanding, allowing you to identify areas where students may need additional support. By reviewing student responses, you can tailor your instruction to better meet the learning goals of your class and address any gaps in knowledge. Exit tickets also encourage students to reflect on their learning, helping them process and retain new information from the lesson. Because they are low stakes, students feel comfortable sharing what they know and where they might need more help. Maintaining low stakes with exit tickets encourages honest self-reflection and reduces student stress. This reflection not only boosts student engagement but also gives students a voice in their own learning by providing feedback to their teachers.

    As a resource, exit tickets make it easier to differentiate instruction and plan future lessons that are responsive to student needs. Exit tickets can be differentiated to meet the diverse needs of students in the classroom. Ultimately, using exit tickets can lead to improved student learning and achievement by ensuring that instruction is always focused on what students need most.

    There are a number of different kinds of exit tickets. Here are three examples, each with a different emphasis, to illustrate different approaches to exit tickets and how students respond to prompts.

    Minute Paper

    The minute paper is one of the favorite tools of James Lang, Professor of Practice at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Notre Dame. The minute paper exit ticket idea is particularly helpful in classes that are discussion- or lab-led.

    According to Lang, the end of the lecture is “when you want to say, ‘Okay class, we had a great discussion. Last five minutes here, I want everyone to write down in your notebook or index card, what are three key takeaways you had from this discussion, and what’s one question that you still have?’” This exercise helps students focus on the main points of the discussion, track their progress in mastering key skills, and reflect on their understanding. To further explain, this activity helps students consolidate their learning and allows teachers to assess specific skills or concepts covered in the lesson.

    If it takes place at the end of a lively class discussion, a minute paper won’t derail your students’ train of thought, but help to connect their ideas with the wider aim of the class. In addition to writing down key takeaways and questions, exit tickets can include specific prompts such as solving a math problem or defining a key term from the lesson. The best class discussions always spill out into the hallway, and a minute paper won’t dampen student enthusiasm.

    Muddiest Point

    If you are interested in customizing exit tickets to better support student learning, consider using the muddiest point exercise to focus on areas where students need the most clarification.

    In the ‘muddiest point’ exercise, students are given index cards and asked to write down what they least understood about that day’s lesson. You could consider making this anonymous in order to encourage honest responses. This method allows teachers to provide feedback and differentiate instruction based on what was taught and what students still find unclear.

    You can use this exit ticket to find out your class’s muddiest point by process of elimination. Ask your students to send you topics they feel most in need of clarification, consolidate them into a list, and see if there are any standout issues. Try to pre-dedicate time in the following class to address these issues.

    3-2-1 Reflection

    The 3-2-1 Reflection is a versatile and straightforward exit ticket idea that encourages students to consolidate their learning and think critically about the day’s lesson. In this exercise, students list three things they learned, two interesting facts or ideas that caught their attention, and one question they still have. This format not only helps students reflect on key concepts but also provides teachers with valuable insights into student understanding and areas that may need further clarification. The 3-2-1 Reflection can be easily adapted for any subject, making it a flexible tool to promote active learning and student engagement at the end of a class period.

    Formative Assessment and Student Accountability

    Formative assessment plays a crucial role in keeping students accountable for their own learning by encouraging continuous reflection and self-assessment throughout the course. Exit tickets serve as an effective formative assessment tool by prompting students to actively engage with the material and articulate their understanding or challenges. This process fosters a sense of responsibility and ownership over their learning journey, motivating students to identify areas where they need improvement and to connect classroom concepts to real-life contexts.

    To enhance student accountability, exit tickets can include reflective questions that encourage deeper thinking and personal connection to the material. Some examples of effective formative assessment questions include:

    • Describe a connection you can see between today’s material and your life.
    • What gave you the most difficulty today and why?
    • In 50 words or less, summarize today’s material.

    These prompts not only help students consolidate their learning but also provide teachers with valuable insights into student perspectives and potential obstacles. By regularly incorporating such reflective questions into exit tickets, educators can support a growth mindset and promote active, self-directed learning that extends beyond the classroom.

    Using Technology to Enhance Exit Tickets

    Technology offers exciting new ways to make exit tickets more engaging, efficient, and insightful. With digital exit ticket templates, teachers can quickly create and distribute exit slips that students can complete on their laptops, tablets, or phones. Digital access to exit tickets through tools like Google Forms or Top Hat makes participation easy and allows for immediate data collection. Using a platform allows students to submit their responses from anywhere, and for educators to collect and review data in real time. Exit tickets can be completed digitally through online polls, surveys, quizzes, and forms. Digital tools also allow for a variety of question types, such as multiple choice, short answer, or even interactive elements like videos or images, making the process more fun and accessible for students.

    Incorporating multimedia and creative projects can make exit tickets more enjoyable for students. Educators can use learning management systems, online survey platforms, or educational apps such as Top Hat to create and manage exit tickets, often with features like automatic grading and instant feedback. Digital exit tickets can also supplement online courses and support remote learning, making them a valuable tool for virtual or hybrid classrooms. By leveraging technology, educators can gain deeper insights into student understanding and learning, streamline the assessment process, and create a more dynamic classroom experience. Using digital exit tickets is similar to accessing information in a library—students benefit from the efficiency and breadth of digital resources, enabling more self-directed and effective learning. Digital exit tickets not only save time but also provide valuable analytics that help instructors identify trends, adjust instruction and support student achievement more effectively. Integrating technology into exit tickets reflects the role of technology in modern life and helps prepare students for real-life situations where digital skills are essential.

    Using Data to Inform Instruction

    One of the most powerful aspects of exit tickets is the wealth of data they provide to inform instruction and enhance student learning. When students submit their exit tickets at the end of a class period, educators gain immediate insight into student understanding of the day’s lesson. By carefully reviewing student responses—whether from multiple choice questions, short written answers, or creative formats—educators can quickly identify which concepts have been mastered and which require further attention.

    This real-time feedback allows educators to make informed decisions about how to adjust their teaching strategies to better meet student needs. For example, if exit ticket data reveals that many students struggled with a key concept, teachers can decide to revisit that material in the next class, provide targeted practice, or offer additional resources. Conversely, if students demonstrate strong understanding, instructors might accelerate the pace or introduce more advanced topics, ensuring that learning remains challenging and engaging.

    Regularly analyzing exit ticket responses is essential for differentiating instruction. By identifying patterns and trends in student learning, educators can create targeted interventions for those who need extra support and enrichment opportunities for those ready to move ahead. This approach not only supports individual student achievement but also helps the entire class progress more effectively toward learning goals.

    In addition to shaping instruction, exit ticket data serves as a valuable tool for providing feedback to students. When instructors review and respond to student answers, they help students reflect on their own progress, recognize areas of strength, and set goals for improvement. This ongoing communication fosters a sense of ownership and agency in learning, encouraging students to take an active role in their educational journey.

    To maximize the benefits of exit tickets, educators can use a variety of exit ticket templates and formats—ranging from traditional paper slips to digital forms. Digital tools, in particular, make it easy to collect, organize, and analyze data, allowing teachers to track student progress over time and quickly identify areas for instructional focus. Whether using sticky notes, online surveys, or interactive apps, the key is to create a system that regularly gathers meaningful data and uses it to inform future instruction.

    Ultimately, using data from exit tickets is an essential strategy for any educator committed to improving student understanding and achievement. By making exit tickets a routine part of your assessment toolkit, you can ensure that every lesson is responsive to student needs, every student has the opportunity to succeed, and your teaching is always informed by real evidence of learning.

    Exit Tickets: Classroom-Ready Examples

    Top Hat’s exit ticket template, designed with the help of instructional design experts, contains many helpful printouts. This helpful instructor resource offers four versions with two templates per category. Two of the versions can be used as jumping-off points for minute papers (assessing understanding and asking students to reflect and summarize), and the other two can be used for muddiest point exercises (finding gaps in learning, and what students would want covered the following class). These exit tickets serve not only as formative assessments but also offer additional benefits by supporting a variety of assessment strategies, gathering student feedback and enhancing classroom engagement.

    Access free exit ticket ideas here.

    Frequently Asked Questions About Exit Tickets

    1. What is an exit ticket in the classroom?

    An exit ticket is a short formative assessment that students complete at the end of a class to demonstrate what they learned. Exit tickets typically consist of one to three questions and help instructors quickly assess understanding, identify misconceptions, and adjust future instruction.

    2. What are the benefits of using exit tickets?

    Exit tickets help instructors check for understanding in real time, encourage student reflection, and provide actionable feedback without adding significant grading time. When used consistently, exit tickets can improve student engagement, support data-informed teaching decisions, and increase retention of key concepts.

    3. What are some effective exit ticket ideas for the classroom?

    Effective exit ticket ideas include asking students to summarize the key concept in one sentence, identify the “muddiest point” from the lesson, answer a quick multiple-choice question, apply what they learned to a real-world example, or predict how the concept will be used in a future lesson or exam. These prompts encourage reflection and help instructors quickly assess student understanding.

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  • Plato and Morality Tales

    Plato and Morality Tales

    I’ve enjoyed the coverage of Texas A&M’s decision to ban certain of Plato’s dialogues for being too woke, but I wish the people covering it would place it in context.

    Socrates—the protagonist of the dialogues—was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. That’s essentially what A&M is accusing the dialogues of doing now. Now we refer to “wokeness” instead of “corruption,” but the underlying assumption is the same: Students were pure of heart and mind, untroubled by unpopular thoughts, until a teacher led them astray.

    Um, no. It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now. Students (and the young generally) are not, and never have been, pure. For that matter, neither has “the Western tradition,” to the extent that it makes sense to use the definite article. The folks who try to use “tradition” to bash, say, homosexuality, might blush at the ancient Greeks’ sexual practices. Speaking of blushing, those who embrace Stephen Miller’s assertion that power has only ever been about force might face some awkward questions encountering Thrasymachus’s blush in book one of the Republic when Socrates points out that the claim that justice is simply the advantage of the stronger is incoherent.

    If it were up to me, every political journalist in America, and every elected official, would be forced to grapple with Aristotle’s definition of friendship. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle explained that the opposite of a friend is not an enemy but a flatterer. Both a friend and an enemy can bring out the best in someone, but a flatterer brings out the worst in them. Any application to our current politics is left as an exercise for the reader.

    Probably my favorite line in the Western tradition about purity has to be Saint Augustine’s howler “give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” That’s hardly the plea of a naïve innocent. If anything, it frames purity as aspirational and sin as a default setting. Rephrase “aspirational” as “constructed” and we’re off to the races.

    I offer these for a few reasons. First, it’s fun. Secondly, and much more importantly, to point out that “the classics” and “traditional values” (as asserted by some political actors) have little to do with each other. The only way to use the former to prop up the latter is to ignore the classics’ actual content. What makes the classics worth studying is not that they’re simple little morality tales; they wrestle with recognizable and real dilemmas that we wrestle with, too. They’re complicated. They make didactic morality tales look shallow and silly. And, as anyone who does the reading knows, they disagree with each other, sometimes drastically. Compare, say, Antigone’s attitude toward the family with Socrates’s; they’re sufficiently far apart as to seem to come from entirely different cultures. And that’s without even considering Oedipus or Medea.

    Part of what makes me twitchy about community colleges being treated entirely as job-training centers is that neglecting the classics can contribute to the project of historical erasure that allows people with agendas to write their desired futures into imaginary pasts as if they’re true.

    They aren’t. We need people to experience different answers to big questions, both for the sake of the exercise and for gaining the great gift of historical study: a sense of how things don’t happen. Seeing others across time and space as three-dimensional people, wrestling with the same uncertainties and mixed motives they are and, can vaccinate against coercive utopianisms that are, inevitably, founded on simplistic and false ideas of how people are. That healthy skepticism is what the arts of liberty—alternatively known as the liberal arts—can provide.

    Yes, Texas A&M embarrassed itself by trying to ban Plato. But it was just slightly right in noticing that elements of Plato don’t fit cleanly into contemporary politics. They don’t. All the more reason to read him. As another complicated figure put it, there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy. And a good thing, too.

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  • 2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    2025 Was a Bad Year for College Presidents. Will 2026 Be Better?

    Last year turned out to be a tumultuous one for higher education, with institutions buffeted by the Trump administration’s sweeping federal research cuts, unprecedented intrusion into classrooms and relentless crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and speech rights.

    In response, campus leaders engaged with lawmakers behind closed doors, spent heavily on lobbying and co-signed higher education associations’ efforts to fight government policies that threatened academic freedom and their institutional missions. But few objected publicly. For the most part, college presidents watched in silence.

    Experts say that’s not surprising; university leaders are caught in a unique moment—squeezed between faculty and students demanding action and boards and lawmakers intent on punishing those who speak up.

    “Unique challenges facing presidents included that difficult balance between what campus constituents wanted for presidents to say and the desires of trustees to hold very different positions, either based on pressures from legislatures or their own political beliefs,” said Teresa Valerio Parrot, principal of TVP Communications, a sector-focused public relations firm. “Often presidents found themselves in this very interesting position of trying to please internal audiences and also meet the expectations of their bosses when they weren’t congruent.”

    Here’s a look at how college presidents navigated 2025—and what observers expect this year to look like for them.

    Caught Unprepared

    Experts said most presidents were caught off guard by the onslaught of challenges unleashed by the federal government.

    Brian Rosenberg, president emeritus of Macalester College and a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Inside Higher Ed that last year was “traumatizing” for campus leaders who struggled “to not get snowed under by all of the challenges they faced.”

    Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, argued that presidents had a “failure of imagination” over realizing “how damaging” policy changes would be under Trump 2.0 as the federal government shifted from a trusted partner to attack mode.

    “Institutions were still trying to figure out how to navigate all the typical challenges that higher education had been facing before 2025. Those didn’t go away, but then you add on to it the federal landscape changing virtually overnight and continually changing,” Harris said. “When you’re trying to make decisions by which judge has frozen which policy or what might be coming out next, or a Dear Colleague letter that doesn’t match what the logical legal interpretation would be, that’s a challenging environment for anybody, much less a college president.”

    At the same time, many leaders were also navigating financial woes, an upended athletics landscape and protests against ICE raids and international student visa crackdowns.

    Lost Jobs, Stymied Searches

    Institutions and individual presidents alike were caught in the political crosshairs in 2025, leading to a litany of federal and state investigations, resignations and the occasional legal showdown.

    Multiple presidents targeted by federal or state lawmakers stepped down in 2025, including Michael Schill at Northwestern University and Jim Ryan at the University of Virginia. Both had drawn scrutiny from the federal government: Schill for his handling of pro-Palestinian protests and Ryan for allegedly failing to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs fast enough. Others, like Mark Welsh at Texas A&M University, were pushed out by pressure from state politicians.

    Welsh was caught in a flap between Melissa McCoul, an English instructor, and a student in her children’s literature class who objected to the professor’s statement that there are more than two genders, citing an executive order from President Trump that recognizes gender only as male and female. Welsh initially resisted firing McCoul until the student tagged a Republican lawmaker, who published a video of the incident, ratcheting up pressure on both Welsh and McCoul. Ultimately, Welsh fired McCoul as the controversy swirled and other Texas politicians piled on.

    Although Welsh gave state lawmakers what they wanted, it was too late to save his job.

    He resigned under pressure and was replaced by interim president Tommy Williams, a former Republican lawmaker. In his first few months on the job, Williams sparked controversy after Texas A&M censored a philosophy course; officials told the professor he could not teach Plato in a class on contemporary moral problems because it conflicted with university restrictions on topics of race, gender and sexuality. (Williams has since noted the university is not “banning Plato altogether.”)

    More recently, Texas A&M canceled a graduate ethics class after a professor said it would be impossible to specify the precise timing or manner in which topics of race, gender and sexuality would arise.

    Texas A&M did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

    Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University who studies presidential searches and contracts, wrote by email that 2025 had “unusually high” turnover both at the presidential level and among other high-ranking academic leaders. She noted that amid the current political volatility, “some institutions seem to be using an interim leader to buy time as they consider their political exposure as well as try to avoid committing to a long-term hire.”

    Similarly, Rosenberg pointed to the mid-2024 elevation of Harvard University president Alan Garber from interim to permanent status as an example of a college making a relatively safe choice and sidestepping the internal and external criticism that would inevitably accompany an executive hire. He also noted that Columbia University recently extended its presidential search.

    “Nobody wants to do a search right now, particularly at these elite privates, because of the kind of scrutiny it will draw and the difficulty of hiring the right kind of person,” Rosenberg said.

    Who Gets to Be a President?

    Last year also saw significant presidential hiring drama, such as when the Florida Board of Governors rejected Santa Ono as the next president of the University of Florida, even though the institution’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to select him as their next leader. The FLBOG largely shot down Ono’s selection over concerns about his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which he unsuccessfully sought to downplay.

    Wilde said that reflects a shift not only in who is being hired but also in the fact that “the search itself is no longer the deciding factor in choosing a president” as boards lean into performative public vetting. Now “whether the president can survive the ideological gauntlet” is what matters most in hiring, she said.

    She suspects such factors may prevent traditional academics from applying for presidencies.

    At UVA, the Board of Visitors tapped an internal candidate, business dean Scott Beardsley, who reportedly scrubbed multiple references to DEI initiatives from his résumé during the search process. (Critics have also accused Beardsley of inflating his academic profile and research output.)

    Experts say such instances reflect both sector hiring challenges and the changing nature of the presidency.

    “When you have a rash of poor hires, failed searches, failed presidencies, at some point we have to acknowledge that’s not individual failures, it’s systemic failure,” Harris said. “I think we need to acknowledge we have systemic failures in how we hire, recruit, retain, reward and support presidents. Also, the job is changing, insofar as presidents have to be more politically savvy. It’s always been a part of the job, but I feel like now that is even more so the case.”

    Rosenberg agreed that a president’s political affiliation matters more than ever, especially in red states like Florida and Texas, which have hired numerous former lawmakers to lead higher ed institutions.

    “It’s never been irrelevant, certainly at public institutions, but in places like Florida and in Texas, we’re basically seeing college presidents being chosen from current or former politicians. So political affiliation is important in public institutions in ways that it has never been before,” Rosenberg said.

    The Year Ahead

    Experts project another challenging year for college presidents owing to a difficult policy environment. But they also note a few points of optimism that presidents can build on in 2026.

    Valerio Parrot said that one win from 2025 was that “presidents were able to find coalitions” and to network with other leaders in similar positions, using one another as sounding boards. Such relationships, she said, helped guide them through moments of political uncertainty. Valerio Parrot also pointed to the role higher ed associations played in pushing back on federal overreach.

    Rosenberg noted Harvard’s legal victory against the Trump administration after it tried to strip the university of federal research funding, among other actions.

    He wants to see more college presidents take a stand and exhibit moral courage.

    “I think what they could learn is that not resisting authoritarian growth doesn’t stop it. It enables it,” he said. “You would have thought that people would have learned that from history, but apparently we have not. If you allow authoritarians to continue to expand their power without pushback, they will expand that even more. You do that long enough, and sooner or later you reach a point where you can’t push back. I think the lesson is that duck and cover isn’t working.”

    Valerio Parrot urged presidents to ask themselves three questions when considering whether to issue statements: “Why them? Why now? And what is the takeaway from what they’re sharing?” If presidents choose to speak up, she argued, they need to do so in a way that does more than add noise.

    While speaking up is perilous, Harris argued it’s the kind of decision presidents must weigh and strike the right balance in execution.

    “This is where I think presidents are in a no-win situation. If they spoke out as forcefully as their faculty wanted, they would be in an untenable position,” he said. “At the same time, if you’re not willing to advocate for the core values of your institution, then what are you doing at the top?”

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  • Capstone Course Helps Students Launch Ventures

    Capstone Course Helps Students Launch Ventures

    Students often learn about entrepreneurship without a clear path to turn their ideas into a viable business. The University of Dayton’s capstone course gives them that path.

    Launched in fall 2024, Flyer Nest guides students to develop scalable business ideas they can continue after graduation.

    Housed in UD’s School of Business Administration, Flyer Nest is part of the university’s entrepreneurship program and teaches students not just how to launch companies but also how to design ventures that solve real problems and benefit their communities.

    To date, Flyer Nest has served 12 teams totaling about 70 students, with each team developing a single business venture. Two teams have continued their ventures beyond the course, and six new teams began this semester.

    Vince Lewis, associate vice president for entrepreneurial initiatives at UD, said all students in the capstone course end the semester not just with a classroom project but with a proposal they can submit for funding.

    “There is a bigger learning outcome than just the start-up,” Lewis said. “Students gain better confidence in actually being able to execute an entrepreneurial venture.”

    He added that two students from a continuing team raised about $400,000 to fund their venture aimed at improving helmet safety for football players.

    “That’s a valuable, real-world opportunity,” Lewis said. “Students build a business case and then present it to business owners, investors and entrepreneurs at the end of the semester to get feedback.”

    “It really does provide a win for students actively pursuing start-ups,” he added.

    The approach: The capstone course partners with the Ohio Entrepreneurial Services Provider program and the Ohio Third Frontier Technology Validation and Start-Up Fund (TVSF) to provide critical resources to Flyer Nest teams, including mentorship and connections to potential investors.

    Lewis said students build their projects around technologies they find in a database of innovations available for licensing from research labs.

    “Scientists and engineers develop [the technologies], but they aren’t focused on commercializing them,” said Lewis. He added that Flyer Nest teams work together to turn these technologies into solutions for real-world problems, from disease detection to health literacy for Black Americans.

    Lewis said the team from Flyer Nest’s inaugural cohort focused on helmet safety secured $200,000 in state funding through TVSF, then secured the rest from new-venture competitions and grants.

    The project leveraged the students’ football backgrounds and technology originally designed for hazmat suits to create a sensor embedded in helmet chin straps, he said.

    “If you integrate Bluetooth and communications already being added into helmets, it can alert coaches or someone on the sideline that a chin strap isn’t tight, potentially preventing head injuries,” said Lewis.

    He added that another team from the capstone course is using technology originally designed to detect fatigued pilots to assist truck drivers. The students are currently partnering with three local trucking companies interested in pursuing the venture with them.

    What’s next: Lewis said next steps involve expanding Flyer Nest beyond business and entrepreneurship majors, particularly pulling students from engineering, design, communications and other disciplines.

    He also said he wants to create a year-round venture studio where students can continue developing their ideas after the semester ends.

    For other institutions interested in creating an experiential course like Flyer Nest, Lewis said it’s essential that they have strong institutional commitment and an engaged community partner embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

    “The community partners are what makes it work,” Lewis said. “Because they have this vast network of people they can bring in and integrate into the course to help us execute.”

    Ultimately, Lewis said, running a capstone course like Flyer Nest requires dedication and a willingness to navigate the uncertainty that comes with real-world learning.

    “It’s a significant lift in terms of effort, because there’s a little ambiguity when you’re going into it,” he said. “This experiential, real-world opportunity for students is a really big commitment.”

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  • Appeals Court Reverses Order to Release Khalil

    Appeals Court Reverses Order to Release Khalil

    Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    An appeals court has reversed the decision to release from custody Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist who was detained by immigration officials for several months last year, The Guardian and other outlets reported Thursday.

    The court dismissed the lawsuit challenging his arrest in a 2-to-1 ruling, on the grounds that the lower court that ordered his release did not have the jurisdiction to do so. Circuit judges Thomas Hardiman, a George W. Bush appointee, and Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, argued that the petition for his release should have been handled in his eventual immigration hearing.

    “The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on—in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” they wrote.

    In a dissenting opinion, however, Judge Arianna J. Freeman, a Biden appointee, argued that it was appropriate for Khalil to seek faster relief in federal court, as his detainment was causing “irreparable injury.”

    “Today’s ruling is deeply disappointing, but it does not break our resolve. The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability,” Khalil said in a statement. ”I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”

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  • Former Emporia State Pres. to “Find Waste” at Kansas Colleges

    Former Emporia State Pres. to “Find Waste” at Kansas Colleges

    Last week, Kansas legislative leaders met in a Statehouse committee room with a broad agenda item—to approve a higher ed budget consultant.

    Neither the name nor proposed pay for this consultant was listed. The person Republican leaders were planning to hire didn’t become clear until House Speaker Dan Hawkins began talking at the meeting.

    “We have an opportunity,” Hawkins told fellow members of the Legislative Coordinating Council, according to a video the Legislature posted. “One of the presidents of a university has retired. He has intimate insight into the higher ed budget arena. And, certainly, as everybody knows, we have to be very careful and prudent with the dollars in our budget.”

    “We really need to cut $200 million from our budget,” Hawkins said, adding that the consultant would help “find efficiencies—find any waste that we can find.”

    Within eight minutes—including brief objections from Democratic leaders in the room, one of whom said he was relying on “context clues” to guess whom the hiree would be—the lawmakers voted 5 to 2 to give Hawkins the power to hire this consultant. And, as The Kansas Reflector confirmed after the meeting, Hawkins is indeed planning to hire Ken Hush, who retired as president of Emporia State University last month, at a rate of $10,000 per month. Hush’s leadership of his own institution was controversial, including budget problems, tenured faculty layoffs and enrollment declines.

    Tom Day, Kansas’s director of legislative administrative services, told Inside Higher Ed in an email, “We are currently in communication with Mr. Hush putting a contract together,” and there are no documents showing what his “scope of work” will be. But Day said the payment will be “$50,000, over a 5-month period.” Hawkins gets to sign off on the final contract.

    Republicans’ hiring of Hush, who the Reflector noted is Hawkins’s former fraternity brother, to give advice on cutting other universities’ budgets has elicited criticism from those who say he wasn’t good at running one institution and suggest he’s benefiting from his political connection.

    “Ken Hush’s hiring was a sole-source backroom deal to give an old frat brother—who has a proven track record of being unable to run a university—a job,” Dinah Sykes, leader of the Senate Democrats, said in a statement.

    Under Hush’s leadership, Emporia State garnered national controversy after it laid off tenured faculty, saw a 12.5 percent enrollment plunge the next academic year and then defended its general counsel for writing a bill to eliminate tenure protections across public institutions statewide. The top administrator of the Kansas Board of Regents accused the university of breaking the board’s policy requiring preapproval of legislative proposals.

    (Emporia State spokesperson Gwen Larson said last year that its top lawyer’s “submission of this bill” was “a surprise to the university,” but defended his right to submit it to lawmakers. Hush had appeared to ask legislators to support such legislation a week before it appeared. The bill failed.)

    A lawsuit filed against Emporia State officials during Hush’s presidency also continues, despite his departure.

    In 2022, Emporia State abruptly told 33 employees—30 of whom were faculty members, 23 of them tenured professors—they were losing their jobs. The Board of Regents approved these layoffs under a policy that cited “extreme financial pressures” and declared, “Any state university employee, including a tenured faculty member, may be suspended, dismissed, or terminated.” Eleven tenured professors sued, saying they weren’t given due process.

    In addition, the American Association of University Professors placed Emporia State’s administration on its censure list and condemned it for “unilaterally terminating the appointments of 30 tenured and tenure-track faculty members.” Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the AAUP, was one of the three investigative committee members who wrote that report.

    “If the Kansas Republican lawmakers want to cut spending and gut higher education, they found their man in Ken Hush,” Boedy said. “He did exactly that at Emporia State by firing many a professor and upending the school in many ways.”

    Boedy added, “The ways in which Mr. Hush went about decimating Emporia State—if that’s to be replicated across the entire state, I would not want to be a student or professor in Kansas anymore.”

    But Larson, the university spokesperson, said this week that Emporia State “began to show material results of its turnaround” last fall. Among other things, she said, it eliminated a $19 million deficit, reduced deferred maintenance by 20 percent, saw enrollment rise 6 percent and went from a negative to a stable Moody’s rating.

    The Reflector reported that the Legislature gave the university $18 million in total “bailouts” in 2023 and 2024 as enrollment declined. Upon his retirement, Hush announced he was donating about $1.4 million, equivalent to the last four years of his salary, to the university.

    It’s unclear what kind of advice Emporia State’s former president will give lawmakers and what Republican lawmakers are looking to cut from universities. But their comments may give a clue.

    ‘Questionable Spending’

    During last week’s meeting, Senate president Ty Masterson expressed a general need to cut costs, partly because of the Legislature’s tax cuts.

    “All the stimulus money that happened through COVID … it’s now all dried up, it’s all gone,” Masterson said. “So we have to manage our budget back down to something that is normal. We’re also in a climate where some of the tax cuts that we were able to get through are being implemented, so I think it would be wise to bring on a consultant in that area.”

    But Blake Carpenter, the House speaker pro tem, said he’s targeting what he referred to as “questionable spending.” The Republican said he and his staff found around $100 million worth of this spending over the legislative interim period.

    Carpenter’s definition of questionable spending includes subjects conservatives have railed against. He listed just three examples: “$75,000 in travel reimbursements to a vanilla bean manufacturing tour guide in Africa,” “$96,000 to a nutritionist guru specializing in vegan cookbooks” and “$111,000 to a social justice headhunting firm specializing in placing executives into leadership positions in nonprofits.”

    “If we’re able to find about $100 million just on our own over the interim, with my staff and I looking through these line items, then I think it makes a lot of sense for us to hire an executive who has run one of these universities,” he said. “They know how they operate … I think the $100 million at this point is scratching the surface and we need to continue to dig.”

    (Carpenter, Masterson and Hawkins didn’t respond to requests for comment this week. Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach Hush.)

    Sykes, the Senate Democratic leader, objected during the meeting to hiring a consultant. “All the talk we have about finding efficiency in government … I think we keep growing government … and to pay $10,000 a month,” she said.

    “The first that I saw of this was when it was on the agenda item last night,” Sykes said.

    She continued her denunciation in a statement following the meeting. “Republicans’ hiring of Ken Hush is a part of a larger problem with the Legislative Coordinating Council of issuing no-bid contracts,” she said, adding that Republicans on that council “have been dealing out sole-source contracts left and right, acting like kids in a candy store.” She said Hush’s Emporia State presidency “was fraught with failures.”

    “If Hush can’t even create a proper plan for the ‘realignment’ of a single university, how could he ever properly identify areas of all of the state’s universities’ budgets to be cut?” Sykes asked.

    Mallory Bishop, past president of the Emporia State Faculty Senate, said Hush’s actions at the university shouldn’t be replicated across the state now because it’s too early to tell whether they turned the institution around.

    “He just ended his tenure a month ago,” said Bishop, a clinical instructor and program director at Emporia State.

    “Was it triage or was it just severing limbs?” she said. “I don’t know.”

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  • Following Texas, Florida Drops ABA Oversight of Lawyers

    Following Texas, Florida Drops ABA Oversight of Lawyers

    Florida is now the second state to drop its requirement that lawyers in the state hold a degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, The Tallahassee Democrat reported Thursday. 

    The Florida Supreme Court, which sets law-licensure requirements, said the decision is designed to open the door for more law school accreditors. 

    “The rule changes create the opportunity for additional entities to carry out an accrediting and gatekeeping function on behalf of the Court,” the Jan. 15 opinion read. “The Court’s goal is to promote access to high-quality, affordable legal education in law schools that are committed to the free exchange of ideas and to the principle of nondiscrimination.”

    The Texas Supreme Court made a similar decision last week, and Ohio and Tennessee’s high courts are also considering minimizing the ABA’s oversight of lawyers in their states. 

    Republicans, including Florida attorney general James Uthmeier, who called the ABA “a captured, far-left organization,” have targeted the ABA, which accredits the vast majority of law schools in the country, as part of a broader crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Last year, the ABA suspended its DEI standards in response to conservative criticism. 

    On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis praised the state Supreme Court’s decision as a “Good move” in a post on X. “The (highly partisan) ABA should not be a gatekeeper for legal education or the legal profession.”

    For now, though, a new law school accreditor has yet to emerge. And experts say it’s unlikely most law schools will abandon their ABA accreditation any time soon, because it’s created reliable professional standards that make it easier for lawyers to practice in multiple states. 

    Justice Jorge Labarga, the only dissenting vote in the Florida opinion and the only justice who wasn’t appointed by DeSantis, cautioned that a new law school accreditor would have a tough time rivaling the ABA. 

    “[The ABA] has cultivated unmatched proficiency in dealing with Florida law-school-specific issues that would require decades for any successor to develop,” he wrote in his dissent. “Refinements can always be made. However, replacing an established entity with an unknown alternative is detrimental in the context of disputes.”  

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  • ED Details Higher Ed Staff to Labor Department

    ED Details Higher Ed Staff to Labor Department

    J. David Ake/Getty Images

    Some staff at the Education Department will next week start working at the Labor Department, which is set to take over running a number of higher ed grant programs.

    Under an interagency agreement signed last year, ED agreed to outsource most of its higher education programs, which include grants that support student success and historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions. ED officials have said outsourcing the grant programs will help to “streamline bureaucracy.” The agreements with Labor and other federal agencies are also part of a broader effort to shut down ED. Critics have questioned the legality of the agreements and the effectiveness of moving the programs to other agencies.

    Labor will now essentially administer the grant programs, while ED will continue to set the budget, criteria and priorities for the grant programs and manage hiring and other HR processes, among other activities. ED said in the news release Thursday that grant recipients in the higher ed programs will transition to Labor’s grant and payment management system, “following the detail.” Both agencies will provide grantees with additional guidance.

    “We are proud to begin implementing this historic partnership that will not only create a better coordinated federal approach to postsecondary education and workforce development, but will also ensure that students pursuing higher education pursue programs aligned with their career goals and workforce needs,” Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education David Barker said in a statement. 

    The staff detail announced Thursday affects those who work in the Higher Education Programs Division of ED’s Office of Postsecondary Education. 

    Rachel Gittleman, president of the union that represents ED employees, said in a statement that moving the federal workers and grant programs was “an unnecessary, unlawful move that will create confusion for grantees and chaos for staff.”

    “After gutting the Education Department, the administration is now asking an overworked skeleton crew to manage a risky transfer to an agency with no educational expertise, weakening oversight and increasing the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse,” she added. “This is not efficiency—it’s an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the Education Department to protect their access to a quality education and to the taxpayers who rely on federal workers to ensure their money is not wasted.”

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  • Reflections of a Former Presidential Spouse (opinion)

    Reflections of a Former Presidential Spouse (opinion)

    In August, Denise A. Battles stepped down after 10-plus years as president of the State University of New York at Geneseo to take a position with the SUNY system, which meant that my term as her presidential spouse came to an expected but abrupt end. I have since spent a great deal of time musing about my decade in that role, the joys and heartbreaks, the triumphs and the tragedies, and even the title … First Man? First Dude? It’s an odd occupation, since nationwide the job description is either nonexistent or as varied as the institutions where spouses and partners serve. My purpose here is to offer a few observations, derived from my experiences and those of my peers, and also humbly offer some advice to present and future executive spouses and partners.

    Denise and I met at our new faculty orientation, which seems like a lifetime ago, and grew up together as academics. She chose administration early on, and I taught for decades before giving up faculty status to become a full-time fellowship director. As she advanced from dean to provost to president, my role as the administrative “trailing” spouse altered in both subtle and overt ways at each new institution, but the core was always rooted in our dedication to the universities we served and to each other. We were fortunate to always be employed at the same university and offered ourselves to search committees as a package deal. Many of my peers gave up careers to serve as dedicated presidential spouses and partners or have positions in business or with outside organizations. For some, their ties to the institution come down to an occasional student play or alumni meet-and-greet, a few calendar events to plan and dress for. Others appear on campus virtually every day, though doing so can be fraught with peril. What’s the old saw? Why do presidents get fired? Houses and spouses (cue laughter).

    There’s a kind of isolation that comes with being a presidential spouse or partner, as virtually everyone at the institution or the surrounding community seems to either work in some way for the president or chancellor or is related to or knows someone who does. That reality leaves a distance, an unspoken space many feel from campus and community acquaintances and even those considered friends. I often discussed this condition with other board members of the spouses-and-partners group that is affiliated with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and for which I served for over a decade. Many feel a sense of remoteness even with the myriad social outlets that come with the role—entertaining, dinners, social and athletic events, fine arts performances, donor visits, local clubs and organizations. The pandemic left many of us questioning the roles we played as presidential spouses and partners and what the future would bring for our ghostly campuses, overworked partners and largely absent student body. In many ways, that anxiety has not much changed.

    My wife and I were lucky enough to live in a stately historic presidential residence on Main Street in a quaint western New York village, mere steps from the campus. We would often sit on the front porch and greet the students and villagers, even the mayor, walking by … Pleasant as it was, we never forgot we were living in someone else’s house. I still work remotely with fellowships on a phased retirement plan for the college and recently have found myself missing the bustle of the campus and community, attending campus events, and even wearing the golden name badge signifying I was part of the campus team.

    During Denise’s presidency, I would see her mostly only at the end of the day, after she had been dealing with perhaps a sticky personnel matter or one of the myriad other pressing issues on campus, and when she was still digesting the implications and finding solutions. We followed a strict code of confidentiality and professionalism about discussing these matters, which meant I was often not privy to what may have been happening. I made it a point in casual conversation with the campus and village community to refer to Denise as “the president,” to subtly suggest that I was not some kind of informational conduit and also that I knew little. After a while, folks stopped asking.

    Most presidential spouses and partners ache to do more to help their loved ones but know that unconditional support is the best strategy. They are not vice presidents or back-door conduits, as there are plenty of people on campus to serve those functions. Of course, it is true that university chancellors and presidents are well compensated for their work, but the grind offers little respite and few moments for a personal life or chances to escape the endless crises. The average life of a college presidency has shrunk to a mere 5.9 years due to the strain. Faculty, staff and, yes, administrators are being asked to do more, even as they feel anxiety about what the future will bring for their families and positions. As perhaps never before, our campuses must find a unity of purpose to face the fallout from domestic politics and world events.

    Presidential partners often face unexpected challenges when crises arise, as they may become targets for disgruntled and mentally unstable individuals from the campus and community, an unsettling and frightening reality that I unfortunately experienced too many times. Early on, I made the decision to eschew social media entirely, as the viciousness and ignorance were both unrelenting and entirely predictable. These potential grim truths are features of the job, but in the absence of some kind of orientation or guidebook, many partners are left to deal with these situations alone without anyone to confide in but their harried presidents, who can commiserate but may be legally and ethically barred from reciprocating.

    Like many presidential couples, my wife and I have been together day in and day out, pretty much continuously, since we began in academia. But “together” is a bit of a misstatement, as even though we were under the same roof, the work never ended, the email only increased and, if possible, our time together talking as a couple about the everyday things and our future was ever more brief. That reality is echoed in stories I hear from my spousal and partner colleagues across the nation—presidential relationships are being tested as never before.

    So, here’s my advice to present and future presidential partners, humbly offered and born from 10 years on the job. I could list 20 more points, but these seem like the most important ones.

    1. Make the role your own. Since there is no template, you can choose what to be or not to be, regardless of what a predecessor may have been or done. Garden club membership is not required, and you can miss that regular season game. Take your time before committing and remember that you can always say no.
    2. Find supporters and confidants among your spouse and partner peers. Family and friends are often well meaning, but, as with many occupations, cannot really understand what you are going through. AASCU’s Spouse and Partner Program offers a safe and confidential circle of fellow travelers who are more than willing to lend an ear and offer their own experiences to help you through your struggles as you help them through theirs. I recommend membership highly.
    3. Be there for your president or chancellor. Listen, but don’t try to fix anything. Doing so can be the hardest part of the job. Sometimes they just need to vent, especially during the worst of times—and if they seem upset or a bit hostile, usually it’s not about you. You are not an administrator; no one hired you to advise, and doing so may make things worse. They are privy to information that may frankly be none of your business, until it is, and if so, they will tell you what you need to know.

    In writing this piece, I don’t seek pity or sympathy for spouses and partners. I fully acknowledge the privileges that my position as a presidential spouse entailed and feel a deep sense of gratitude for having been given the opportunity to serve the university and the community. I have spent my entire working career in academia as an educator and, with this essay, seek only to inform the larger academic community as to the nature of the job and counsel those who may assume the role at some point. Presidential spouses and partners will continue to live in a strange kind of uncertainty as they struggle to support their presidents and chancellors, often while surrounded by acquaintances but still largely alone, and a bit uncertain as to what their roles truly require.

    Michael Mills is director of national fellowships and scholarships at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

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  • Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    Harvard’s President Undercuts Academic Freedom and Learning

    In a recent podcast, Harvard president Alan Garber said some things about teaching that I found at best odd, and at worse pretty much nonsense, because if we’re talking about teaching and learning—supposedly the core of the undergraduate experience at Harvard and elsewhere—it doesn’t make any sense.

    As reported by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper, reflecting on the present challenges to institutions around accusations of intolerance and hostility to free debate, Garber came down firmly on the side of not debating (bold is mine): “I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you need to be objective in the classroom.”

    It came as news to me that it is a goal to be “objective” in the classroom, because objectivity is not a value that I associate with writing instruction, my primary field of expertise. As I’ve written here previously, my first-year writing students often struggled with this notion, believing that it was their job to not only be objective but in also to be “authoritative,” which had them adopting strange approaches to expression as they tried to BS themselves and the audience in a weird performance of fake erudition.

    Instead, I introduced students to the values that I believe properly attach to personal expression through writing—which is what all scholarship is, after all—values like transparency, openness, fairness, accuracy and curiosity (among others).

    They need to practice these things in order to build trust with their audience in the effort to be convincing, not as some kind of objective authority, but as someone who has proven themselves trustworthy through the deployment of sound writing practices and respect for the audience.

    As I told students, this is no guarantee of people agreeing with you or adopting your position, but in my view, the job of the writer is to be as clear as possible with their own positioning in order to foster an ongoing, in fact never-ending, academic conversation in which people with different perspectives come together to communicate across topics in ways that fundamentally illuminate those topics for the benefit of an interested and engaged audience.

    I don’t think any of this is controversial and has, in fact, been the underlying engine of academic inquiry for, I don’t know … ever? That faculty having opinions rooted in their expertise and then expressing those opinions somehow became controversial is not a problem with the academic conversation.

    I admit that this framing of discourse is a little quaint in an era where attention is the primary (perhaps only) coin of the realm and attempting to be accurate, transparent and fair seems to matter very little, but one of the great things about the essentially conservative nature of higher education institutions is that we get to cling to out-of-fashion notions because we believe they are consistent with our underlying values.

    I wonder where Garber got this notion that objectivity in the classroom is something that used to be the norm. I don’t remember my Econ 101 professor in fall 1988 regaling the class with a balanced discussion of socialist and Marxist (or even New Deal) economic theory. Instead, I was subjected to what would become bog-standard neoliberal notions about markets, competition and deregulation—notions that are highly contested within the field of economics.

    Which is as it should be! This is the work of academia.

    It’s possible that Garber is paying a little bit of lip service to audiences he knows have been critical of what they perceive as the ideological biases in higher ed, but it is enervating to see a college president validate critiques that have been overwhelmingly applied in bad faith to undermine institutions. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you should consider the testimony of former Republican governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb, who spent a semester teaching at an elite university, expecting to find an ideological monoculture, but experienced the opposite—a place of open debate, differing viewpoints and productive intellectual exchange.

    Holcomb was “surprised,” but he shouldn’t have been, because those of us who work within higher education know that the critique Garber is validating is overwhelmingly untrue.

    Oh, that elite institution where Holcomb found not objective presentation of information but open debate? Harvard.

    What is a bigger threat to free expression on campuses, faculty expressing opinions in classrooms, or institutional leaders publicly declaring it’s important for faculty to keep things “objective”?

    One of Garber’s rationales for championing objectivity was that this approach would be in the interest of students, saying, “How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”

    Harvard students, or at least one Harvard student, Adam Chiocco, also writing at The Harvard Crimson, reject this rationale, pointing out that one of the things that draws students to Harvard is the faculty, who have deep expertise and “the most refined and developed perspectives in academia.” Garber is essentially asking faculty to shelve that expertise in the service of what, exactly?

    Chiocco isn’t having it. As he says, “When a professor offers their perspective, students can see how an expert in a field thinks through an issue, how their arguments are structured, and often gain new ways to analyze sources. Good professors will then invite disagreement with their views, challenging students to contemplate and present thoughtful questions and objections.”

    This is happening in thousands of classrooms across the country every single hour of the day. While there are outlier exceptions who may abuse the privilege of their position, we know, and Garber knows, as former governor Holcomb knows, that they are by far the exception.

    Chiocco again: “For all involved, binding expertise to the ideal of neutrality constricts the possibilities for meaningful learning.”

    I don’t think the freedom of students to learn and faculty to teach is helped by a university president giving credence to a fiction or offering a vision that is inconsistent with what we know to be good educational practices.

    There are obviously bigger threats to academic freedom right now, like Texas A&M censoring Plato and canceling graduate courses on ethics because a professor can’t promise to guide discussion according to the dictates of a politically partisan legislature.

    But part of fighting those larger forces is making the affirmative case for the work faculty and students do. President Garber failed that part of his duty with his podcast remarks.

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