Angelo State walked back some provisions of its new anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
Michael Barera/Wikimedia Commons
Directives related to a slate of convoluted and sometimes contradictory new policies prohibiting discussion of transgender topics and identity have left employees at Angelo State University frightened and confused.
As of Monday, conversations and content about transgender identities are still prohibited, but employees are allowed to use students’ preferred names, display rainbow flags in their offices and on their cars, and talk about lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer identities, according to emails from department heads to faculty obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
The changes were clarified to employees after a meeting between the deans, provost and ASU legal counsel. Employees are still seeking other clarifications. For example, students who are already working on papers related to transgender identity are allowed to continue doing so, but it’s unclear whether they could give a final class presentation on the topic.
Only some faculty members at some the university’s colleges have been told about these changes. Others are still responding to the initial policies handed down to employees Friday following a meeting with Angelo State leadership. The policies are stringent and exhaustive: no pride flags, no calling students by the singular “they” or using their preferred names (unless it aligns with their sex assigned at birth), no pronouns in email signatures and no mention of the fact that there are more genders than the two assigned at birth.
None of the policies are formalized in writing, and that is purposeful, said Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. The guidance only changed after faculty brought up questions about the policies, which deans took back to the provost and university counsel. Final details about what is and is not allowed and how the rules will be enforced are still under discussion.
This isn’t unique to my state, but it’s my first time encountering it.
Pennsylvania’s state government runs on a July-to-June fiscal year, which means that it was supposed to have passed a budget for this fiscal year by July 1.
It hasn’t passed one yet, and passage doesn’t look imminent.
This is becoming a problem.
It’s already a problem for our county, which has announced cuts. And it’s increasingly a problem for the college.
Based on previous years, we’ve expected the state allocation to cover a little over 40 percent of the operating budget. (The county’s figure is much lower.) So far this year, it has covered zero percent, for a difference of—let’s see, carry the three—millions.
We have reserves, and they’ve come in handy. But they’re meant to even out cash flow over the course of a year, to cover emergencies and to help with large expenses. They were never intended to supplant the state’s role in the budget. Our CFO recently had to calculate the number of months we could go without the state allocation, which is a number you never want to matter.
For those keeping score at home, reserves at a community college are very different from endowments at universities. Endowments are generated mostly from a combination of donations and investment returns, and they’re meant to “throw off” a certain amount per year to pay for other things. Those other things can be the operating budget, or scholarships, or facilities, as specified. (Endowment funds are a mix of restricted and unrestricted. Restricted funds can only be used for designated purposes; unrestricted funds are more flexible.)
Reserves, by contrast, are generated from operational savings and are meant to provide a bit of buffer. They’re almost always invested very conservatively because they’re meant to be liquid. Endowments can take greater risks because they’re intended to have much longer time horizons. If endowments are like retirement accounts, reserves are closer to savings accounts.
They’re crucial for cash flow because peak revenue times and peak spending times don’t always align. For a college on a traditional calendar, August shows high revenues and low spending, and October shows high spending and low revenues. That’s because students pay tuition in August to take classes in October.
Reserves can create perverse incentives for legislators. A legislator looking to pay for some other line item closer to his heart may see a public college with relatively healthy reserves as a painless target for cutting. But once reserves are spent, they’re spent, and one of the dangers of public-sector math is that even a single year’s cut can become a new baseline. At that point, climbing out of the hole can become a Sisyphean nightmare.
In practice, that means that public colleges have to perform a delicate balance with reserves. Save too much, and you become a tempting target. Save too little, and you may find yourself in a tight spot if something happens.
Right now, something is happening—or not happening, to be exact—with a major impact. The frustrating part is that the something in question is unnecessary. This isn’t the aftermath of a natural disaster; it’s collateral damage from a political standoff. The fact that it leaves us much more vulnerable to, say, a natural disaster doesn’t seem to bother legislators.
So, my request to the elected leaders of Pennsylvania, and to other states in similar spots: Pass a budget! Reserves weren’t meant for this.
The final version of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid was made available to all students Wednesday—eight days ahead of schedule. This marks the application’s earliest launch date since it first transitioned to an online platform nearly two decades ago, according to the Department of Education.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon used the announcement as an opportunity to criticize the Biden administration for its “infamously botched” rollout of an extensive FAFSA overhaul two years prior.
“I am extremely proud to announce the earliest launch of the FAFSA form in history, which ensures American students and families have access to critical resources as they begin or continue their postsecondary education journey,” she said in a news release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our talented team has redesigned and streamlined the process so all American students can now successfully complete the form in minutes.”
There were limited changes to this year’s form, but to test the changes that were made, a beta version was first made available to a select number of students and families in early August. Then, last week, all students could access the test form. Over the course of those two months, more than 40,000 applications have been started, about 27,000 have been submitted and roughly 24,000 have been processed without rejection.
Updates to this year’s form include a redesigned process for inviting parents to contribute to the form and a faster verification process for new accounts. And over all, the students who have tested the form so far have had a good experience, with 97 percent of respondents reporting satisfaction and 90 percent saying it took a reasonable amount of time to complete.
This HEPI guest blog was kindly authored by Pamela Baxter, Chief Product Officer (English) at Cambridge University Press & Assessment.Cambridge University Press & Assessment are a partner of HEPI.
UK higher education stands at a crossroads: one of our greatest exports is at risk. Financial pressures are growing. International competition for students is more intense than ever. As mentioned in Cambridge’s written evidence to the Education Select Committee’s Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students inquiry, one of the crucial levers for both quality and stability is how we assess the English language proficiency of incoming international students. This will not only shape university finances and outcomes but will have serious implications for the UK’s global reputation for educational excellence.
The regional and national stakes
The APPG for International Students’ recent report, The UK’s Global Edge, Regional Impact and the Future of International Students, makes clear that the flow of international students is not only a localised phenomenon. Their presence sustains local economies and drives job creation in regions across the UK. They help deliver on the Government’s wider ambitions for creating opportunities for all by bringing investment and global connectivity to towns and cities. Their impact also stretches to the UK’s position on the world stage, as recruitment and academic exchange reinforce our soft power and bolster innovation.
International students bring nearly £42 billion to the UK economy each year, the equivalent of every citizen being around £560 better off. International talent is embedded in key sectors of life across the nations, with almost one in five NHS staff coming from outside the UK and more than a third of the fastest-growing UK start-ups founded or co-founded by immigrants. As HEPI’s most recent soft power index showed, 58 serving world leaders received higher education in the UK.
The value of higher education is rising
According to the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report – recently launched in the UK in collaboration with HEPI and Cambridge University Press & Assessment – higher education is delivering greater benefits than ever. Nearly half of young adults in OECD countries now complete tertiary education. The returns for individuals and societies in terms of employment, earnings and civic participation are substantial. But when attainment in higher education is so valuable, deficiencies in the preparation of students – including inadequate English language skills – can have considerable costs.
Why robust testing matters
Robust English language testing is, therefore, fundamental. It ensures that international students can fully participate in academic life and succeed in their chosen courses. It also protects universities from the costs that arise when students are underprepared.
The evidence is clear that not all tests provide the same level of assurance. Regulated secure English language tests such as IELTS have demonstrated reliability and validity over decades. By contrast, newer and under-regulated at-home tests have been linked to weaker student outcomes. A recent peer-reviewed study in the ELT Journal found that students admitted on the basis of such tests often struggled with the academic and communicative demands of their courses.
The HOELT moment
The proposed introduction of a Home Office English Language Test (HOELT) raises the stakes still further. The Home Office has indicated an interest in at-home invigilation. While innovation of this kind may appear to offer greater convenience, it also risks undermining quality, fairness and security. The HOELT process must be grounded in evidence, setting high minimum standards and ensuring robust protections against misuse. High-stakes decisions such as the creation of HOELT should not be driven by cost or convenience alone. They should be driven, instead, by whether the system enables talented students to succeed in the UK’s competitive academic environment, while safeguarding the country’s immigration processes.
Conclusion: Sustaining and supporting international student success
International students enhance the UK’s educational landscape, bolster the UK’s global reputation and contribute to long-term growth and prosperity. But the benefits they bring are not guaranteed. Without trusted systems for English language assessment, we risk undermining the very conditions that allow them to thrive and contribute meaningfully.
As the Government pursues the creation of its own HOELT, it has a unique opportunity to ensure policy is evidence-led and quality-driven. Doing so will not only safeguard students and UK universities but will also reinforce the UK’s standing as a world leader in higher education.
Your chance to engage: Join Cambridge University Press & Assessment and HEPI at Labour Party Conference 2025
These and other issues will be explored in greater detail at Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s forthcoming event in partnership with HEPI at the Labour Party Conference 2025, where policymakers and sector leaders will come together to consider how to secure and strengthen UK higher education on a global stage.
This September when classes started, it wasn’t the first time I had met with the students who walked through the door. That’s because during the week before they arrived on campus, I had conducted online group interviews with students who expressed an interest in taking my courses. All the students had to do was show up at one of the times I had set aside to meet with them.
The interviews are a tradition at Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach, and they are designed to let students get to know more about us as individual faculty in order for them to see if they want to take one of our courses. It’s a practice other colleges should try.
The interviews, which typically last about 30 minutes, are not a substitute for the descriptions of my courses or the syllabi I post. They are best described as the academic equivalent of a movie trailer.
The difference in this case is that the students, unlike moviegoers, are not asked to sit quietly in their seats. They are invited to ask questions after I have conducted a short presentation of what I hope will happen in my class. In these precourse interviews the students are the ones with the decision-making power. When an interview ends, they can simply decide my class is not for them and go off to another interview.
Some of the questions I get are of the nuts-and-bolts variety. How much reading do I assign a week? How many papers do I require over a term? But many of the questions are substantive. Why Book X rather than Book Y? What was the most interesting essay I got back last year?
If there is enough time, I will ask the students interviewing me to say why my course might interest them and how it fits in with the other courses they are contemplating. Students are welcome to stay after the group interview is formally over and have a one-on-one conversation.
During the interviews, I also try to explain my thinking about teaching. I don’t, for example, subscribe to the tonnage theory of assigned reading. A course in which a student races through 500 pages a week is not, I believe, better than a course in which a student closely reads 200 pages a week.
Equally important, I don’t think students should be strictly on their own when it comes to writing their papers. In the so-called real world, my editors don’t wait until I have published a book or an essay to offer up their advice. They do it before I publish, and I try to apply that practice in my classes. I see myself as my students’ editor before I ever become their judge and jury.
When it comes to AI and ChatGPT, I don’t have a lot to say these days. I think the subject has been talked to death. I tell my students to stay away from AI and ChatGPT as much as possible. Why, I ask, pay good money for an education, then turn to software that limits your critical thinking and research? The writing assignments I give are, I hope, sufficiently thoughtful that AI and ChatGPT can only be of minimal value. When it comes to long-form essays, I want my students to think about the material they are analyzing with a depth that is impossible on a timed test.
Looking back on a week of interviews, I often worry that I have imposed too much of myself on students. But in the end that is, I think, a risk worth taking. What precourse interviews offer is a chance for students to see that a course is more than a rote plan. It’s an undertaking that depends on mutual engagement that resists easy prediction.
Nicolaus Mills is chair of the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College and author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
University of Southern California professor Helen Choi had a pretty basic assignment for her students this fall: Read a book.
To be sure, Choi’s pedagogical choice isn’t novel for many faculty; 71 percent of professors use print materials in some capacity in their classroom, a Bay View Analytics survey found.
But Choi teaches Advanced Writing for Engineers, a course focused on teaching STEM students how to write across disciplines. Many of them “think nothing of shoveling a writer’s work into a chatbot for a summary,” Choi said. So this fall, Choi is encouraging students to close their laptops and spend time with Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI, about the evolution and tech behind AI.
Choi chronicled her decision in a Substack article titled, “I’m Making My Students Read a Book!” The post caught the attention of some faculty on Bluesky, including Vance Ricks, a Northeastern computer science and philosophy professor. Ricks had similarly selected Empire of AI for his master’s-level students to read this term.
Both Choi and Ricks hope to encourage their students to relearn how to read critically and engage in robust conversations with their peers. And after finishing the books, Choi and Ricks’s students will get the chance to reflect together on the book during a virtual meeting, where they will discuss the role of AI in their lives.
What’s the need: In the past, Choi would assign short online articles for students to inform their writing responses. “The questions I was getting from students indicated to me that the engagement with the underlying materials wasn’t as deep as I wanted,” Choi said. “Sometimes it was just straight up reading comprehension.”
In 2024, only 34 percent of students were considered proficient, which NAEP classifies as connecting key details within and across texts and drawing complex inferences about the author’s purpose, tone or word choice. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders ranked below “basic,” unable to locate and identify relevant details in the text to support literal comprehension.
In addition to helping students apply deeper learning and thinking skills, Choi hopes having print material will allow them to step away from their laptops and connect with peers in a more meaningful way.
In the classroom: Choi and Ricks have assigned the 482-page book to be read over four to five weeks, with students responsible for annotating and reflecting on the assigned sections on a weekly basis. Neither assigns content-based quizzes or reviews, relying on student discussions to reveal participation with the text.
At the start of the term, both Choi and Ricks said they spent time in class discussing why they were requiring a physical book, and specifically Hao’s book.
“You have to justify why you’re doing this abnormal thing,” Choi said.
Students seemed to get it and were excited about the opportunity, both professors said.
“They’re genuinely eager to have those conversations and engage in that sort of reflection,” Ricks said.
The assignment has, however, required some additional attention and time on their part to help students grasp reading.
“I’ve spent more time than I had anticipated literally walking around the book and saying, like, ‘This is an epigraph; why are the quotes here? What’s a prologue? What’s the index?’ Things like that,” Choi said.
Both professors said they’ve had to adjust their expectations for how quickly students would be able to complete the text. The book itself also proved more difficult than anticipated for students who speak English as a second language, so Choi and Ricks are considering ways to better support these students in the future.
The impact: “So far, students have shared that they are enjoying Hao’s book because it is relevant to their fields and lives outside of school,” Choi said. Their written responses to the reflection prompts also show improvement in clarity and organized reasoning.
In Ricks’s class, the print format has proven a fruitful learning experience in and of itself. “Just hearing from students about how they are engaging physically with the book, tactilely, in terms of the smell of the pages or the sound of turning the pages—all of those things, let alone the material that the book is about,” Ricks said.
The two classes will meet over Zoom on Sept. 26 for a student-led discussion on the book’s materials and themes.
While the overall goal is to promote better reading and writing for her students, Choi said the exercise has also been a bright spot in her courses.
“It’s really fun for me to teaching reading as part of writing,” she said. “It’s about the students, but I think having a joyful teaching experience is important for the classroom experience. Every day I’m pretty excited about having this book, and seeing the students with books makes me super happy.”
A federal court order issued late Monday evening provides significant financial relief to the University of California, Los Angeles, restoring about $500 million in federal research grants amid an ongoing lawsuit with the Trump administration over alleged instances of antisemitism on campus.
The preliminary injunction, first reported by CalMatters and Politico, is temporary. But for now it reinstates more than 500 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor, allowing hundreds, if not thousands, of university researchers to resume their work. That’s on top of a previous order in August from the same court that unfroze about 300 grants from the National Science Foundation.
Between the two rulings, almost all of UCLA’s federal research grants have been restored.
The funds were first withheld in late July, less than a week after the Justice Department accused the university of tolerating discrimination against Jewish students, faculty members and staff, in violation of federal civil rights law. The Trump administration later said UCLA could resolve the situation by paying $1.2 billion and agreeing to lengthy list of policy changes.
But university researchers pushed back, using an existing broader lawsuit and injunction to challenge the grant freeze.
In the end, District Judge Rita F. Lin, a Biden appointee, ruled in favor of the faculty members, saying the indefinite suspensions of grants was “likely arbitrary,” “capricious” and a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
In June, in an escalation of the Trump administration’s pressure on Harvard University to bow to its demands, a federal Office for Civil Rights announced that the institution was violating federal law.
The office released a nearly 60-page report accusing Harvard of “deliberate indifference” to ongoing discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students, which is illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “OCR’s findings document that a hostile environment existed, and continues to exist, at Harvard,” the office said in an accompanying news release.
But this wasn’t the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. It was an office of the same name within the Health and Human Services Department that’s been playing a more public role as part of Trump’s crackdown on higher ed. Officials who served in previous administrations said agencies used to generally defer to the Education Department when it came to civil rights issues in higher ed. But since Trump retook office, colleges and universities are facing increased pressure from probes by HHS and other agencies enforcing the new administration’s right-wing interpretation of civil rights.
HHS OCR said it began its Harvard investigation in February by looking into the university’s medical school, after alleged antisemitism during the May 2024 graduation ceremony. But, in April, it widened its probe to “include Harvard University as a whole and to extend the timeframe of review to include events and information from October 7, 2023, through the present.” (The HHS OCR has jurisdiction over institutions that accept HHS funding, including National Institutes of Health research grants and Medicaid dollars.)
And this wasn’t the HHS OCR’s only investigation into parts of Harvard that didn’t appear related to health or medicine. The news release noted the “findings released today do not address OCR’s ongoing investigation under Title VI into suspected race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the Harvard Law Review journal.” And Harvard is just one of several universities that this non–Education Department OCR has targeted since Trump retook the White House in January.
Civil rights advocates say the HHS OCR has become just one more pawn in Trump’s strategy to target universities and end protections and programs that aid minority groups. For universities, Trump’s HHS OCR represents a new threat to their funding if they’re accused of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion; fostering antisemitism; or letting transgender women play on women’s sports teams.
It’s unnecessary to do what the administration is doing now, unless one is operating like a mob boss.”
—Catherine Lhamon, former head of OCR at the Education Department
The office’s investigations and public denunciations add to the work of the ED OCR, which the Trump administration has also shifted to focus on the same issues. The two OCRs announced a joint finding of violations against Columbia University, but they’ve also trumpeted independent probes into other institutions.
“As we feared, the Trump administration is abusing civil rights tools to advance a radical and divisive agenda that aggressively hoards access to education, living wage jobs, and so much more,” the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said in a statement. “Unfortunately, HHS and many other federal agencies are being used as one of the vehicles to carry out that agenda.”
The Legal Defense Fund said, “Colleges and universities are being targeted precisely because of the critical role they play in opening the doors of opportunity and preparing the next generation to lead our multi-racial democracy. By attacking institutions that help level the playing field for Black students and other students of color, the Trump administration is ultimately weakening our democracy and our economy as a whole.”
Former officials at the Justice Department, to which HHS OCR can forward cases if the targets of investigations don’t comply, told Inside Higher Ed that HHS OCR historically deferred probes into universities to the Education Department.
Catherine Lhamon, former director of the Education Department’s OCR under Presidents Biden and Obama, said, “There are 13 federal agencies with external civil rights enforcement, of which HHS is one, and it’s relatively large.” She said they’re pieces of Trump’s broader strategy.
“The administration has used every agency in a contemporaneous, simultaneous assault on universities,” Lhamon said, multiplying the amount of federal funding it can threaten.
The HHS OCR’s announced investigations under Trump show it’s investigating similar issues to the Education Department OCR—or what’s left of that office after the administration’s cuts. Lhamon said the practice for decades has been for the agency with principal expertise over an area to investigate that area—hence why universities were mostly investigated by the Education Department OCR.
“It’s unnecessary to do what the administration is doing now, unless one is operating like a mob boss,” Lhamon said.
An HHS spokesperson said, “We’re leading implementation of the president’s bold civil rights agenda,” which includes four focuses: upholding religious conscience rights, fighting antisemitism, ending race-based discrimination embedded in DEI programs and “defending biological truth” in sex-discrimination enforcement. She also said that fighting antisemitism, for instance, is a priority across the whole administration, “so our office is going to be a part of that and going to participate to the fullest extent that we can.”
It remains unclear how much of the HHS OCR’s daily workload is now devoted to Trump’s targeting of higher ed. HHS OCR did investigate higher ed institutions even before Trump took office, the HHS spokesperson said.
“We may be being more public about it now,” the spokesperson said, “particularly because that’s where the issue areas with respect to this administration are.”
She said the office also continues to investigate non–higher ed–related medical providers and non–civil rights issues that it has responsibility for despite the office’s name—such as information privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
The spokesperson said the HHS OCR news releases don’t tell the full story of what the office is currently investigating because—out of the roughly more than 40,000 complaints it receives annually—it doesn’t normally disclose which complaints lead to probes “to protect the integrity of the investigation.” The office also launches some investigations without receiving complaints, she said.
“In the past we’ve not announced through press releases that we’ve opened major investigations,” she said.
She didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed a list of the office’s current investigations. She also didn’t say how many employees HHS OCR has. HHS’s fiscal year 2026 budget request said that “in FY 2010, there were 111 investigators onboard, and in FY 2022, this number fell to 60, while simultaneously HHS received the highest number of complaints in its history (51,788).” (For comparison, the ED OCR, in a FY 2024 report, said it had received its highest-ever volume of complaints, but the number was only 22,687.)
Since taking power, the Trump administration has been slashing the federal workforce—the administration laid off nearly half of the Education Department’s OCR staff in March. It’s unclear how much HHS OCR has been cut. The FY 2026 budget request said the HHS OCR “has faced a continually growing number of cases in their backlog, rising to 6,532 cases by the end of FY 2024.” And that was before the office launched these new probes based on Trump’s priorities.
The HHS OCR receives roughly more than 40,000 complaints annually, a spokesperson said.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
A String of Investigations
Since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, HHS OCR has announced a spate of higher ed investigations, mostly without naming the institutions. The spokesperson said most are ongoing.
In early February, it announced investigations of four unnamed medical schools, also citing reports of antisemitism during their 2024 commencements. (That was the same month the Harvard investigation began, HHS OCR later said, so Harvard was likely among the four.)
On Feb. 21, Trump told Maine governor Janet Mills during a televised White House event that her state must bar transgender women from women’s sports or lose federal funding, to which Mills replied, “See you in court.” In response to this, the HHS OCR issued a news release that same day announcing an investigation into “the Maine Department of Education, including the University of Maine System,” due to reports that the “state will continue to allow biological males to compete in women’s sports.” (The HHS spokesperson said the investigation eventually found that the most relevant issues were unrelated to higher ed.)
In March, the office announced investigations into four unnamed “medical schools and hospitals” over “allegations and information” concerning medical education or scholarships “that discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, or sex.” The news release didn’t have much further detail but referenced a Trump executive order targeting “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Later that month—again citing the anti-DEI order—it announced it was investigating “a major medical school in California” over whether it “gives unlawful preference to applicants based on their race, color, or national origin.”
In April, it announced it was investigating an “HHS-funded organization” over whether it excludes “certain races” from a “health services research scholarship program.” Later in April, it launched an “online portal where whistleblowers can submit a tip or complaint regarding the chemical and surgical mutilation of children”—the Trump administration’s phrase for gender-affirming care. Simultaneously, it announced it’s investigating “a major pediatric teaching hospital” for allegedly firing a whistleblower nurse who “requested a religious accommodation to avoid administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children.” (The HHS spokesperson said the first Trump administration brought a focus on religious conscience rights to the office that disappeared under Biden but has now returned.)
Also in April, it announced a second Harvard probe: a joint investigation with the Education Department’s OCR into both Harvard and the Harvard Law Review “based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal.” The HHS OCR news release said an editor of the law journal “reportedly wrote that it was ‘concerning’ that ‘[f]our of the five people’ who wanted to reply to an article about police reform ‘are white men.’” The office also raised concern about another editor allegedly suggesting expedited review for an article because the author was a minority.
In May, the HHS OCR announced it’s investigating a “prestigious Midwest university” over alleged discrimination against Jewish students. Later that month came its announcement of its joint finding with the Education Department OCR that Columbia University violated Title VI through “deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students.” (This was part of the administration’s pressure campaign on Columbia that culminated with a controversial July settlement.)
In June came the HHS OCR’s Title VI finding against Harvard in the investigation of alleged antisemitism. Then, in July, HHS OCR said it was investigating “allegations of systemic racial discrimination permeating the operations of Duke University School of Medicine and other components of Duke Health,” which includes “other Duke health professions schools” and “health research programs across Duke University.” In a statement alongside that announcement, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “Federal funding must support excellence—not race—in medical education, research, and training.”
And last week, after months of silence on new higher ed–related investigations, the HHS OCR announced an investigation into the legal scholarship of an HHS-funded “national organization,” over allegations that it “preferences applicants of certain races and national origin groups.”
Lhamon, the former Education Department OCR head, said what the administration has called civil rights investigations into Harvard, Columbia and other universities aren’t really investigations. She noted the administration has used a “mob theory” by going ahead and pulling HHS and other funding from multiple institutions before the investigations are over.
Instead, she said, this is “an assault on universities, which is a very different thing from ensuring compliance with the civil rights laws as Congress has enacted them.”
A former provost at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill accused the Board of Trustees of systematically violating open records and meetings laws on multiple occasions, including to retaliate against him, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this week.
At the heart of the lawsuit from Chris Clemens, who resigned in April, is a delayed tenure vote.
In March, the UNC Board of Trustees postponed a vote to grant tenure to 33 faculty members. At that meeting, held March 20, the board moved into closed session, with Clemens present, apparently to discuss individual tenure cases. Instead, trustees launched into a debate over the value of tenure, with some voicing their philosophical opposition to the practice and others arguing that they should delay such approvals for financial reasons, according to the lawsuit.
The board eventually approved tenure for all 33 candidates in June via an email vote.
According to the lawsuit, Clemens shared details from the meeting with other academic leaders, noting that no tenure decisions were made or individual candidates considered and that the board instead “engaged in a sweeping policy discussion about tenure’s institutional value and global costs.” Following that briefing, the Board of Trustees allegedly communicated through Signal, a private messaging application that includes a feature to automatically delete messages after they are read, to call for a vote of no confidence in Clemens. UNC leadership asked Clemens to step down shortly thereafter, according to the lawsuit.
But even if Clemens’s suit is successful and the violations are proven to be true, the board will likely face few repercussions given past precedent.
A Systemic Pattern
Clemens’s lawsuit also accused Jed Atkins, director and dean of the School for Civic Life and Leadership, of relaying the former provost’s briefing to then–board chair John Preyer via Signal. (Clemens had taken issue with the hiring practices at the civic life school before stepping down.)
The lawsuit alleges that Atkins “requires that his leadership team subscribe to a Signal group and conducts a substantial portion of official communications via Signal with auto-delete enabled not only in exchanges with trustees but as a routine practice,” in violation of state law. Atkins did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
Beyond the tenure flap, Clemens has accused the board of defying state open meetings laws on multiple occasions in an effort to “hide policy debates from public view,” according to his lawsuit.
“Over the past four years, the Board has engaged in a pattern and practice of systematically violating the Open Meetings Law by improperly invoking closed session exemptions to shield policy and budget deliberations from public scrutiny,” the former provost alleged.
Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, Clemens declined to comment.
In his legal filing, Clemens cited three specific examples beyond the March tenure discussion in which he alleged the board violated open meetings laws. He specifically pointed to a closed session discussion in November 2023, when UNC discussed athletic conference realignment; further secret deliberations over athletics in May 2024 involving both conference realignment and finances; and an “emergency meeting” in December 2024 to hire a head football coach. At the December meeting, UNC Chapel Hill hired NFL legend Bill Belichick on a $10 million annual contract.
(Responding to a separate legal complaint over the May 2024 meeting, trustees previously agreed to reaffirm their commitment to open meetings laws and pay $25,000 in attorneys’ fees.)
“Each episode follows the same pattern: the Board invokes a statutory exemption, enters closed session, then discusses broad policy or budget matters that must be debated publicly,” the lawsuit states.
Despite being allegedly pressured to step down, Clemens isn’t seeking a payout or his job back. Instead, he’s asking the court to prevent the board from continuing its alleged defiance of open meetings laws, to produce minutes or a transcript of the March 20 closed session and to mandate that trustees participate in training on state open meetings and public records laws.
Responses
Contacted by Inside Higher Ed, UNC Chapel Hill spokesperson Kevin Best wrote by email, “We’re aware of the litigation and are reviewing it closely,” but he declined to comment further given the pending nature of the case.
The Board of Trustees released a more forceful statement Wednesday.
“The former Provost’s baseless assault on this volunteer Board and how it conducts its business stands in stark contrast to the widely recognized excellence the University has achieved under this Board’s leadership,” chair Malcom Turner said. “His allegations are disappointing and inaccurate, not to mention a waste of taxpayer dollars, for which this former officer of the University shows no regard. His claims will not withstand scrutiny.”
Most of the individuals named in the lawsuit either declined to comment or did not respond to media inquiries. Multiple faculty and staff members at the School of Civic Life and Leadership (none of whom are defendants in the lawsuit) also did not respond to requests for comment.
However, one source alleged that the former provost instructed employees to use Signal and that he also used it for university business, which Inside Higher Ed confirmed via screenshots.
Allegations that Clemens used Signal come amid an opaque investigation by outside counsel into the School of Civic Life and Leadership that was announced earlier this month. While Chapel Hill leadership has said little about the investigation, it comes after multiple resignations from faculty members in the school, some of whom have alleged it has “lost sight of its mission.”
Dustin Sebell, a School of Civic Life and Leadership professor, told Inside Higher Ed via text message that Clemens “habitually used Signal for university business” and encouraged others to do so. To Sebell, the lawsuit seems like an effort by Clemens to sidestep the investigation.
“By hastily filing a hypocritical lawsuit, Chris is trying to avoid investigators’ questions about his misconduct as Provost by claiming privilege pending ongoing litigation,” Sebell wrote.
But some faculty members, such as Michael Palm—president of the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of the American Association of University Professors—expressed concern about political influence on the board.
“Open meetings laws are important for public universities. Unfortunately, right now we don’t need them to know that the UNC [Board of Trustees] considers UNC faculty to be their enemy,” Palm wrote to Inside Higher Ed via email. “The crisis we’re in is political, not procedural.”
Although North Carolina has historically been considered a swing state, the UNC Chapel Hill board appears to be overwhelmingly comprised of Republicans. Some have previously worked for Republican officials, while others have donated heavily to GOP candidates and causes.
Of 14 voting members on the UNC Chapel Hill board, at least 10 have donated to conservative politicians and organizations, some contributing tens of thousands of dollars, according to a review by Inside Higher Ed. Several others have direct GOP connections, including Preyer, who previously worked for former senator Lauch Faircloth. Three other trustees previously held state office: Robert Bryan III, James Blaine II and Patrick Ballantine. All were elected as Republicans.
Potential Consequences
Should the allegations in the lawsuit be proven true, consequences will likely be fairly light—at least, that has been the outcome in other cases where boards allegedly violated sunshine laws.
The Pennsylvania State Board of Trustees, for example, was required to complete training on the state’s Sunshine Act recently as part of a settlement with the news organization Spotlight PA over alleged violations of opening meetings laws related to secretive practices by the board.
But in other cases, universities have largely escaped consequences for clandestine actions.
Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman has found that multiple state institutions have violated open records laws, adding up to 10 times this year alone. Coleman found that the University of Kentucky violated open records law four times and had four partial violations, while Northern Kentucky University had one violation and the University of Louisville had a partial violation. However, none of those violations resulted in punitive actions from the state.
Last year Indiana’s public access counselor found that Indiana University’s Board of Trustees violated open meetings laws when members claimed that they were holding a private meeting to discuss litigation. But trustees also discussed IU president Pamela Whitten’s performance and a campus climate review, expanding the private meeting beyond its stated aims. A complaint from a news organization prompted scrutiny from state officials, but no punitive or corrective actions.
UNC Chapel Hill was also previously accused of violating state open meetings laws, including in 2021 when it hired Clemens as provost, choosing to approve “Action 1” on its agenda with a vague reference to personnel matters, raising concerns that trustees violated state law via a secretive vote. Board leadership defended the vote and Clemens remained in place until April.
This story has been updated with a statement from the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.
