Tag: Higher

  • Duke Faces $108M Funding Freeze, Multiple Investigations

    Duke Faces $108M Funding Freeze, Multiple Investigations

    Federal officials are accusing Duke University’s law journal and medical school of racial discrimination.

    Duke University file photo

    The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are investigating Duke University and the Duke Law Journal for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin, the agencies announced Monday.

    The New York Times reported Tuesday night that the Trump administration froze $108 million in federal grants and contracts at Duke’s medical school and health system.

    On Monday, ED and HHS sent a letter detailing their concerns about potentially discriminatory practices at Duke Health and threatening the medical school’s federal funding.

    “These practices allegedly include illegal and wrongful racial preferences and discriminatory activity in recruitment, student admissions, scholarships and financial aid, mentoring and enrichment programs, hiring, promotion, and more,” the letter states, though officials didn’t offer specifics.

    The departments want Duke to “review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages, and provide clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke’s new policies will be implemented faithfully going forward—including by making all necessary organizational, leadership, and personnel changes to ensure the necessary reforms will be durable.”

    Additionally, the agencies want Duke to convene a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that can negotiate with the federal government on behalf of university leaders and “avoid invasive federal engagement,” according to the letter. This request appears to be a new ask for the Trump administration as officials work to expand their scrutiny of higher education, based on what’s publicly known about investigations at other colleges.

    “We hope this arrangement will enable the parties to move quickly toward a mutually agreeable resolution of outstanding concerns and complaints,” officials wrote in the letter. “If the alleged offending policies, practices, and programs are found to exist and remain unrectified after six months, or if at any time the Merit and Civil Rights Committee and federal government reach an impasse, the federal government will commence enforcement proceedings as appropriate.”

    Duke has 10 days to respond to the request to form the committee.

    Meanwhile, the Duke Law Journal investigation, led by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, centers on allegations that the journal uses factors such as race or national origin to select editors. The department opened a similar investigation into the Harvard Law Review. 

    The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, reported last month that the Duke Law Journal prepared a special application packet for affinity groups that noted applicants could get a three- to five-point bump if they have “meaningfully advanced the interests of communities with diverse perspectives and experiences either at school or in their community.” 

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  • UCLA Settles Lawsuit With Jewish Students for $6.45M

    UCLA Settles Lawsuit With Jewish Students for $6.45M

    The University of California, Los Angeles, agreed to pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Jewish students, the Los Angeles Times reported. The agreement, which would be in effect for 15 years, now awaits approval from the judge overseeing the case.

    The lawsuit, brought by three Jewish students and a medical school professor in June 2024, alleged UCLA enabled pro-Palestinian activists to cut off Jewish students’ access to parts of campus, violating their civil rights.

    Violence broke out in and around an encampment established at UCLA in spring 2024 when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked it with fireworks and other projectiles. Hours of chaos ensued between protesters and counterprotesters before campus police intervened. UCLA’s former chancellor Gene D. Block, named in the lawsuit alongside other UCLA officials, was among the higher ed leaders called before Congress for campus antisemitism hearings.

    As part of the settlement agreement, each plaintiff will receive $50,000. Another $320,000 will go toward a campus initiative to combat antisemitism. About $2.3 million will be donated to eight different Jewish community and advocacy groups, including Hillel at UCLA, the Academic Engagement Network, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation Los Angeles Campus Impact Network and the Film Collaborative Inc., to produce a film related to the Holocaust.

    UCLA also agreed that it is “prohibited from knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty, and/or staff from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and/or campus areas,” which includes “exclusion … based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.”

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  • Federal Actions Loom Large at NACUBO Conference

    Federal Actions Loom Large at NACUBO Conference

    NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Just outside of Washington, D.C., across the Potomac River, Capitol Hill cast a shadow over the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, where concerns over federal funding and policy changes were palpable among attendees.

    At panels and in side conversations during the three-day meeting, held at the sprawling Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, attendees swapped strategies, drilled into pressing issues and commiserated over pressures on the sector wrought by both the political environment and a business model that is strained in many places. Representatives of a diverse mix of institutions from across the nation attended, but common challenges emerged: They worry about the impact of looming federal policy changes, which they expect to add pressure to institutions already grappling with financial challenges related to enrollment declines, high tuition discount rates and other issues.

    Here’s a recap of themes and moments that emerged from the conference.

    ‘Fear, Anxiety and Contempt’

    At a packed panel covering recent activity out of Washington, NACUBO vice president for policy and research Liz Clark noted the strains business officers are feeling amid a “tumultuous year” marked by a flurry of federal actions, including the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, pushed by President Donald Trump, which included various provisions for higher education.

    The legislation, signed earlier this month, caps some student loans while eliminating the Grad PLUS program, limits repayment options and requires programs to pass an earnings test for attendees to access federal student loans, among other provisions, including changes to the endowment tax. Passed on a partisan line with Republicans under pressure to deliver Trump’s signature legislation, Clark noted it is just one action—albeit a significant one—that has reshaped higher education this year.

    Clark added that 2025 has “brought a lot of fear, anxiety and contempt” as colleges navigate restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; cancellation of federal grants and contracts; and various state laws that have “created a challenging environment” for the sector.

    “I feel like we have, this year, been dealing with everything, everywhere, all at once,” Clark said.

    Clark noted that despite the concerns she highlighted, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which she abbreviated “Bubba,” and other policies that were proposed could have hit higher education much harder. One example she offered was the endowment tax, which in the final bill fell far short of what House Republicans initially proposed.

    But in another panel on tax reform, Clark suggested that the endowment tax could still be revised in ways that resemble earlier proposals and would have affected more universities and at higher rates.

    “Don’t forget that ideas never die in Washington,” Clark warned.

    Legal Perspectives

    A panel of higher education lawyers also weighed in on current challenges for the sector.

    Kate Hudson, deputy vice president and counsel for government relations and public policy at the Association of American Universities, warned at the start that the session would not have “a whole lot of good news.” Given the rapid pace of changes from the federal government, she also offered a caveat: “Anything I say today could be out of date in 72 hours.”

    Hudson noted that campus attorneys are dealing with multiple actions from the federal government, such as federal funding freezes and far-reaching executive orders, as the Trump administration seeks to reshape everything from academic research to college admissions.

    “I don’t think it is too dramatic to say that this is a wholesale renegotiation by force of the government-academia partnership,” Hudson said. “I don’t think that’s an overstatement.”

    Jen Gartner, deputy general counsel at the University of Maryland, argued that the relationship between the federal government and research institutions shifted from “extremely collaborative and collegial” to a suddenly “adversarial approach” that has left universities flummoxed. That strain has particularly been felt around grants, which she said have often been terminated for unclear reasons. She also said the federal government has provided unclear information on such cancellations, sometimes providing contradictory statements in the same termination notice.

    And as higher education attorneys have sought answers, she said, they’ve reviewed few.

    “It’s not just that universities don’t know what to do—agencies don’t know what to do, either, and [staff are] not picking up the phone or responding to emails if they’re even still there,” Gartner said.

    Related to research, Hudson also warned that Trump administration’s scrutiny of international students, which includes now vetting their social media posts for evidence of hostility toward the U.S. government and culture, also has the potential to harm the sector.

    “It’s not an overestimation to say that threats … to legal immigration, to your campuses, do present an existential threat to the academic research enterprise itself at a time when [research and development] budgets and graduates from STEM degrees in our competitors, such as China, are off the charts and reaching new heights,” she said. “International students will go elsewhere.”

    Hudson added that the AAU has not historically focused on immigration law, but that has suddenly shifted amid the threats to international students and faculty.

    A Hard Year Ahead?

    Inside Higher Ed also hosted a panel at this year’s conference to discuss the results of the 15th annual Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers, released last week. That survey, conducted in partnership with Hanover Research, found college business officers confident in the long-term outlook but worried about their financial situation in the near future.

    Most respondents believe their institutions will be in worse financial shape next year. Only 43 percent expressed the belief that their institution would be in better shape next year. But Rick Mills, president and CEO of United Educators, was skeptical about the sentiment that financial situations will improve by next year given the various challenges discussed at the conference.

    “At one level, I take heart in the optimism,” Mills remarked. “I think it’s what keeps all of us going, and what gets you to work in the morning, and perhaps, in the end, helps us solve the problem. On the other hand, it strikes me as slightly fantastical thinking in the current environment.”

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  • More Campuses Earn “Green Light” Free Speech Ratings From FIRE

    More Campuses Earn “Green Light” Free Speech Ratings From FIRE

    The number of colleges and universities with written policies that do not seriously threaten student expression are on the rise this year, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 19th annual “Spotlight on Speech Codes” report, published Tuesday.

    Since 2006, FIRE has grouped hundreds of public and private higher education institutions into three overall categories based on their campus speech policies: green, yellow and red lights. This year, 73 of the 490 (14.9 percent) colleges and universities surveyed received a green light ranking—meaning their policies don’t threaten free expression—compared to 63 last year. It’s the highest share since 2012, when just 3.6 percent of institutions earned green-light ratings. 

    For the first time in 19 years, the number of green-light colleges outnumbered those in the red-light category (14.7 percent), reserved for institutions with policies that “clearly and substantially restrict free speech,” according to the report. Last year, 20 percent of institutions received a red-light rating.

    Although political and institutional responses to campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas war reignited debate over free expression last year, the report attributed the decrease in red-light ratings to colleges and universities revising their policies related to harassment, hate speech and bias-reporting systems. Specifically, the report said that while bias-reporting systems have become popular over the past decade, they “have invited students to report protected speech simply because it offends them,” turned academic institutions into “referees of political and academic speech,” and created a “chilling effect on campus expression.”

    Lawsuits, free speech advocacy—from students, alumni and groups like FIRE—and lawmaker scrutiny have all spurred changes in recent years.

    “Over a dozen institutions have either substantially revised or eliminated entirely their bias reporting systems,” the report said. “Others have significantly reduced the prominence of their bias reporting teams, either by reducing the number of places on their website the team is mentioned or by requiring students enter their credentials to access the policy information.”

    FIRE rated the majority of institutions—337, or 68.8 percent—as yellow, meaning they “maintain policies that impose vague regulations on expression.” And eight colleges—including Baylor University, Brigham Young University and Hillsdale College—received a warning rating for “clearly and consistently stat[ing] that they hold a certain set of values above a commitment to freedom of speech.”

    Over all, private colleges have more restrictive policies than public colleges. Just 10.6 percent of public colleges earned red lights compared to 28 percent of private colleges—and only 7.1 percent of private colleges earned a green-light rating, compared to 17 percent of public ones.

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  • Higher education leadership requires multiple versions of yourself

    Higher education leadership requires multiple versions of yourself

    To lead in higher education feels much like inhabiting a shifting identify.

    One moment you are a strategist expected to speak in spreadsheets and scenario plans. The next, you are a listener, empathetic, calm, human, supporting a student in distress. You leave that conversation only to enter a room full of staff in which morale is flatlining and you are now a motivational figure, expected to energise and inspire. Finish all these, and it’s not even 10am! Before the day is over, you are potentially answering questions from university leaders who want metrics, mitigations and certainty.

    If it feels like you’re performing multiple, sometimes conflicting roles across a single day, it is really because you are. And the deeper truth is that it is not a flaw – it is simply the job.

    Increasingly, leadership in universities demands what feels like a professionally sanctioned form of adaptive multiplicity. I use the phrase carefully to name a reality that many senior leaders know intimately but rarely articulate. The constant emotional and intellectual switching, the need to adjust tone, style, even the way you put your values in practice depending on the room you are in, creates a kind of managed fragmentation. Over time, this potentially leaves many leaders with a nagging internal question: who am I really in this job, and how many versions of me are left?

    Flex and strain

    This phenomenon has intensified as the sector has grown more complex, even in the short period of time of the last 15 years since I joined academia.

    Universities are now sites of competing expectations. Students see themselves as clients, citizens and many times co-creators of their learning – most of the time, all at once – and they rightfully expect to be treated accordingly. Staff expect authentic leadership that values their autonomy, but also want decisive action when systems stumble. Senior teams expect accountability, agility and strategic execution, while external bodies, in their usual “supportive approach”, demand ever increasing levels of compliance, assurance and visible grip.

    Each of these communities needs something different from their leaders. They do not all speak the same language, and thus leaders become translators, switchboards and even shape-shifters. It is not performance in the sense of fakery but it is code-switching as a leadership survival strategy.

    But even though this capacity to flex and adapt is a strength and should be firmly encouraged, it is also a source of strain. You learn to adapt so well, so naturally, that you risk forgetting what it feels to be still. You begin to filter your words so frequently that spontaneous speech starts to feel dangerous. You work hard to be authentic in different spaces but wonder whether your authenticity looks different depending on who is watching. And while you may pride yourself on being emotionally intelligent, you notice that your own emotional reserves deplete faster than they can replenish.

    This kind of labour (emotional, relational, cognitive) is almost entirely invisible in institutional language. It doesn’t appear on strategic plans or in KPIs and metrics. It is not listed in job descriptions or annual reviews. How could it even be? It is not something that can be easily defined.

    But, somehow, it is the glue that holds teams, cultures and people together. When a leader gets the tone wrong in a difficult moment, it can take weeks to rebuild trust. When they get it right, there is often no visible outcome because good leadership so often manifests as the evident absence of crisis. This is a key leadership paradox: when you do this work well, very few notice. When you falter, everyone does.

    Shifting registers

    The multiple selves of leadership are, in many ways, shaped by the multiple identities of the university itself. Higher education is a place of intellectual freedom, but also of bureaucratic machinery. It is a workplace, a community, a brand and a battleground for values. In this context, leaders are asked to be both deeply human and relentlessly strategic. You must lead with your heart while justifying decisions with data. You must be decisive without being authoritarian, empathetic without appearing weak and consistent without being rigid. All leaders will tell you it is a delicate calibration and no two days are the same.

    The benefits of this kind of psychological pluralism are real though. Leaders who are able to shift between registers can build bridges between otherwise disconnected parts of the institution. They are more likely to hear what’s not being said and they are better equipped to hold space for complexity, to manage contradictions without defaulting to simplistic solutions. In short, they are able to lead courses, curriculum areas, departments, schools, faculties, campuses or universities that are themselves fractured, plural and dynamic. But none of this is possible without deep self-awareness. Without a strong internal compass, an anchoring sense of purpose and principle, adaptive leadership risks becoming reactive or hollow.

    In my own leadership journey, across multiple roles, I have come to both respect and rely on this kind of multiplicity. It has certainly challenged me; it can be uncomfortable and exhausting to change shape so often. But it has also been one of the most professionally rewarding experiences of my life. I have learned more about people, influence, systems and purpose than I could have ever imagined. The act of switching roles deepened my empathy, sharpened my judgement and forced me to become a more deliberate values-led leader. The very difficulty of the work is in many ways what makes it so meaningful.

    What leadership in higher education increasingly requires is not just charisma, but presence. The ability to think carefully before acting, to sit with ambiguity rather than force resolution, and to adapt without losing coherence are not signs of weakness but more a mark of maturity. These are not qualities that always show up in leadership frameworks but they are often what hold institutions together when pressure mounts. In a sector where trust is easily lost and change rarely pauses, the capacity to lead with both flexibility and integrity has become more essential than ever.

    Don’t panic

    For anyone stepping into, or considering, a formal leadership role in higher education (at whatever level!) I would suggest this: know that the title does not prepare you for the internal work.

    You will be stretched in ways no leadership framework fully captures. You will need to hold contradiction, manage ambiguity and shift gears constantly. And this will be not just between meetings and conversations, but sometimes within the same sentence. It is demanding, to put it lightly, often invisible work and it can be lonely.

    But it is also deeply rewarding, transformative and full of purpose. Especially if you approach your leadership role with humility, clarity of values and a willingness to learn, unlearn, and then adapt some more. And while I believe everyone in HE is already a leader, whether they hold a title or not, those who accept formal leadership positions, regardless of the level, carry a particular responsibility – not to have all answers but to cultivate the space in which people can thrive. It is not about becoming someone else but about learning how to show up differently without ever losing who you are, what values define you.

    There is also a deeper cultural discomfort at play. History, and most frameworks, tend to favour the idea of singular leadership identity. But in a sector where the demands are multiple and shifting, I feel consistency is rarely a strength. True leadership authenticity in our sector lies not in being the same person in every room, but in being consistent in your values even as you adapt your delivery. It means having a clear sense of what matters, educationally, ethically, institutionally, and allowing that to shape the different selves you need to inhabit.

    And this is not about abandoning coherence – it is about redefining it. Leadership in HE is not a single performance, repeated daily; it is a catalogue of performances. Those who do well – again, regardless of the level which they are at – understand that they will be read differently by different audiences, and that this is not only inevitable but highly necessary. The most successful leaders are those who can integrate their different selves into a single, strategic identify, not fixed, but rooted in the same core values that act as a driving force.

    So if you, as a leader in higher education, sometimes feel like you are playing a cast of characters like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, do not panic. You are not alone, and you are not doing it wrong. You are doing what the job requires. You are developing a professionally disciplined multiplicity.

    Not a flaw, but a capacity. Not a weakness but a way through huge complexity. It is this ability to hold multiple selves in tension, without losing sight of the core values uniting them, that defines successful leadership in HE today. And that, just maybe, is the most authentic thing of all.

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  • Higher Education and the US Line of Inequality

    Higher Education and the US Line of Inequality

    Over the past century, the United States has undergone enormous changes in how wealth and income are distributed. From the opulence of the Roaring Twenties to the postwar rise of the middle class, from the tech booms of the 1990s to the pandemic economy of the 2020s, the line of inequality has rarely been flat—and never fair.

    To track these shifts, economists use the Gini Index, a number between 0 and 1 (or 0 and 100 in percentage terms), where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 represents perfect inequality. The U.S. Gini Index has changed dramatically over time, reflecting wars, economic crises, policy decisions, and structural changes in education, taxes, and immigration.

    In the 1920s, the United States experienced a high level of income inequality. The economy was booming for the wealthy, but the benefits of that growth were concentrated at the top. This period, often referred to as the first Gilded Age, was marked by weak labor protections, minimal taxation on the rich, and limited social safety nets. At the same time, immigration was heavily restricted, which limited labor competition but also reinforced the racial and ethnic hierarchies that shaped income and opportunity.

    The Great Depression and World War II marked a dramatic shift. As the economy collapsed in the 1930s, public pressure mounted for systemic reform. New Deal policies expanded labor rights, created Social Security, and introduced public works programs. These efforts, along with wartime wage controls and steep taxes on the wealthy, helped reduce inequality. The federal income tax reached top rates over 90 percent. Education expanded as the GI Bill sent millions of returning veterans—mostly white men—to college and into homeownership. However, the benefits of this postwar expansion were unequally distributed, with Black Americans and other minorities largely excluded through redlining, school segregation, and discriminatory lending.

    From the 1950s to the 1970s, the U.S. experienced what some call the Great Compression. Income gaps between rich and poor narrowed. Manufacturing jobs were abundant, union membership was high, and wages grew alongside productivity. Federal and state investments in education opened doors for many, although property taxes, which fund most local public schools, reinforced disparities between wealthier suburbs and poorer cities or rural communities. Immigration remained limited during these decades, and federal tax policy remained progressive. The Gini Index stayed relatively stable, reflecting broad-based growth and a more equal distribution of income.

    The 1980s brought a reversal. The Reagan administration cut top income tax rates dramatically, weakened labor unions, and deregulated many industries. The economy became more financialized, and capital gains were increasingly favored over wages. Globalization and the offshoring of manufacturing jobs weakened the bargaining power of American workers. At the same time, immigration increased, often filling low-wage and precarious jobs in agriculture, construction, and service industries. While immigration boosted overall economic output, it also contributed to greater income stratification within certain sectors.

    The Gini Index rose steadily through the 1980s and 1990s. The tech boom created vast wealth for a small segment of the population, while wages for most workers stagnated. Public universities saw declining state support, leading to tuition hikes and the explosion of student loan debt. Property taxes continued to shape educational inequality, with affluent districts able to fund advanced programs and facilities while lower-income schools struggled. Tax policy changes in the 2000s, including further reductions in capital gains and estate taxes, widened the gap between those who earn their income from investments and those who rely on wages.

    The 2008 financial crisis deepened existing divides. While wealthy households recovered quickly due to stock market gains and low interest rates, working-class families faced job losses, home foreclosures, and long-term economic insecurity. Federal stimulus programs helped avert total collapse, but they did little to reverse decades of rising inequality. By the 2010s, the U.S. Gini Index was among the highest in the developed world.

    In the early 2020s, the COVID-19 pandemic once again exposed the structural weaknesses in the American economy. Emergency relief programs and expanded unemployment benefits briefly reduced poverty in 2020, but these were temporary fixes. Billionaires saw massive increases in wealth, while millions of essential workers faced health risks, layoffs, and housing instability. Public schools and universities adapted to online learning, but the digital divide left many students behind. Property taxes remained the primary source of school funding, preserving long-standing inequalities in education. Immigrants continued to perform essential but undervalued labor, often without access to healthcare or legal protections.

    Federal tax policy remains tilted toward the wealthy. Income from stocks and real estate is taxed at lower rates than income from work. Loopholes and deductions allow corporations and the ultra-rich to minimize their tax bills. At the same time, working families face regressive payroll taxes and growing out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, education, and housing.

    Higher education, once seen as a pathway to mobility, increasingly reflects the same patterns of inequality seen in the broader economy. Elite universities with billion-dollar endowments serve a small, privileged student population. Public colleges and community colleges—where most students from working-class and minority backgrounds enroll—operate on tight budgets and often rely on underpaid adjunct faculty. Rising tuition, administrative bloat, and student debt have turned education into both a product and a burden.

    The Gini Index provides a simple way to measure inequality, but it does not capture all of the structural forces behind it. To understand why inequality remains so persistent, we must look at the systems that shape opportunity from birth: local property taxes, unequal schools, debt-financed higher education, regressive tax codes, and immigration policies that create a stratified labor market.

    The line of inequality in the United States is not just a chart—it’s a reflection of who holds power, who gets access, and who pays the price. Changing that line will require more than numbers. It will take bold public action, political courage, and a serious rethinking of how we fund education, how we tax wealth, and how we value labor in an age of digital capitalism.

    The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to trace the contours of inequality—across classrooms, campuses, and communities—because understanding the line is the first step to redrawing it. 

    Sources

    Piketty, Thomas, Saez, Emmanuel, and Zucman, Gabriel. Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2018.

    Congressional Budget Office. The Distribution of Household Income, 2019. Published November 2022.

    https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58528

    U.S. Census Bureau. Income and Poverty in the United States: 2022.

    https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.html

    Economic Policy Institute. State of Working America: Wages.

    https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=wages

    Goldin, Claudia and Katz, Lawrence F. The Race Between Education and Technology. Harvard University Press, 2008.

    Chetty, Raj et al. The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940. Science, 2017.

    Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown Publishing, 2016.

    Kuznets, Simon. Economic Growth and Income Inequality. American Economic Review, 1955.

    Saez, Emmanuel and Zucman, Gabriel. The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.

    OECD. Income Inequality (Gini Coefficient).

    https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm

    National Center for Education Statistics. Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education.

    https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma

    Urban Institute. The Unequal Distribution of State and Local Revenues.

    https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/98725/the-unequal-distribution-of-state-and-local-revenues_1.pdf

    Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.

    https://itep.org/whopays/

    Migration Policy Institute. Immigrant Workers: Vital to the U.S. COVID-19 Response, Disproportionately Vulnerable.

    https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/immigrant-workers-us-covid-19-response

    National Bureau of Economic Research. Education and Inequality Across the American States.

    https://www.nber.org/papers/w31455

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  • What DOJ Letters to UVA Say About Trump Attack on Higher Ed

    What DOJ Letters to UVA Say About Trump Attack on Higher Ed

    Before James Ryan stepped down as president of the University of Virginia last month, the Department of Justice accused him and other leaders of actively attempting to “defy and evade federal antidiscrimination laws.” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s civil rights division, said that needed to change.

    “Dramatic, wholesale changes are required, now, to repair what appears to be a history of clear abuses and breaches of our nation’s laws and our Constitution by the University of Virginia under its current administration,” she wrote.

    In a series of seven letters obtained by Inside Higher Ed via an open records request, Dhillon and other Department of Justice officials laid out their increasingly aggressive case that the university was at risk of losing federal funding, just as Ivy League institutions like Harvard and Columbia Universities had in the months prior for allegations of antisemitism. The Cavalier Daily first published the letters in full.

    Taken together, the letters sent between April 11 and June 17 were used to launch what the DOJ called an investigation but that legal experts say is among the latest instances in an all-out pressure campaign against higher education.

    Dhillon and the DOJ have defended their actions, stating multiple times that they did not explicitly call for Ryan’s resignation.

    But now, with similar investigations launched against George Mason University (also located in Virginia), many onlookers view these letters as a template for how President Trump will continue to leverage federal funding to impose his priorities on colleges and universities across the country—altering who is admitted and what is taught and by whom. Higher education experts say it’s an aggressive tactic that will create a climate of uncertainty for years to come.

    “There is not much pushback that that administrators—President Ryan or others—can make, if they want to continue receiving these funds and performing the research that they do,” said Brandt Hill, a partner and litigator with the higher education practice group of Thompson Coburn LLP. “This is all about collecting scalps that [the Trump administration] can then publicize. Each time Trump gets a win, that gives it a snowball effect and gives the impression that he can do it elsewhere.”

    Here is a copy of each letter and three key takeaways about what the letters say.

    Expanding Reach of Affirmative Action Ban

    At the crux of the department’s demands outlined in the letters is the claim that UVA has failed to provide equal opportunity and has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin.

    To justify the allegations, the letters repeatedly cite the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred colleges from considering race in admissions, as well as President Trump’s executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion, which aim to expand the high court’s ruling to all campus scholarships and programs.

    Compliance with the Civil Rights Act as well as the administration’s interpretation of Supreme Court’s ruling and the president’s orders, Dhillon states, “is not optional.”

    “Moreover,” the June 16 letter states, “you will certainly recall Attorney General of Virginia Jason Miyares’ admonition that the UVA Board of Visitors and the president of the university are public officials of the Commonwealth of Virginia who owe fiduciary duties and duties of loyalty first and foremost to the Commonwealth, not the interests or ideologies of university administrators or faculty members.”

    And while the department does have the grounds to investigate a possible consideration of race in admissions, extrapolating that to scholarships and other aspects of campus life does not have the same legal backing and precedent, higher ed legal experts said. In February, the Education Department attempted to extend the ban to cover all race-based programming and activities, but a federal judge blocked that guidance in April.

    Jodie Ferise, a partner at Church Church Hittle + Antrim, a higher education–focused law firm in Indiana, noted that the second sentence of the April 11 letter describes the alleged racial discrimination as “immoral.” That’s not by accident, she said.

    “It’s a barely disguised method of pandering to a constituency that no longer has a particular political issue to cling to” when they vote, as the Supreme Court did bar colleges from using affirmative action, Ferise said. “We’re holding up actions that heretofore have been looked at as very moral things, like trying to have more doctors or lawyers of color or women in engineering … Now, to frame them as being very immoral is really an interesting thing to do.”

    Sweeping Demands Created Pressure

    In addition to new and untested legal interpretations, the DOJ’s letters are also unprecedented in the breadth and urgency of their demands.

    Typically, a letter from the department would follow a specific complaint and be more narrow, legal experts explained. But in this case, DOJ officials begin with vague allegations and make sweeping requests that would be difficult—if not impossible—for a university to comply with in a limited amount of time.

    For example, in the first two letters in which the Trump administration asks UVA to certify its compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA v. Harvard, DOJ officials gave university administrators just two weeks to collect and submit “any and all relevant documents guiding your admissions policies and procedures.” Additionally the assistant attorney general asks for “all admissions data for the past five academic years, including applicant test scores (SAT/ACT), GPA, extracurricular activities, essays, and admission outcomes, disaggregated by race and ethnicity,” as well as “any and all relevant documents about your policies and procedures relating to scholarships, financial assistance, or other benefits programs.”

    In the third letter, sent April 28, DOJ officials expanded the list of demands to include all DEI programming.

    “The department says it hasn’t reached any conclusions regarding the University of Virginia’s liability, but I don’t think the department ever really planned to make any final conclusions or planned to receive all the documents and carry out an exhaustive investigation,” said Hill from Thompson Coburn.

    The deadline was later extended by one week, but multiple sources said that still wouldn’t be enough time. And it wasn’t until the fourth letter, sent May 2, that DOJ officials first cited a direct complaint. (The complaint officials referred to was focused on antisemitism, not racial discrimination.)

    John Pistole, former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and president emeritus of Anderson University, said he was shocked by how “aggressive” the DOJ was “right out of the gate.” The Trump administration, he added, is likely trying to “bury” colleges in “discovery, basically—motions, if you will.”

    Although the letters do give UVA officials a chance to comply voluntarily by making changes to the university’s campus policies and programs with no penalty, the threat of losing access to federal aid places an abnormal pressure on the institution, Pistole and others said.

    “At what point does all the negativity associated with that become a bargaining chip for the DOJ?” he asked. “At what point does it make sense to say, ‘OK, you win and we’ll comply?’”

    Up until the sixth letter, sent June 16, DOJ officials addressed both the university’s president and its board, but after that, only the board is listed as a recipient. The letter states that “Ryan and his proxies are making little attempt to disguise their contempt and intent to defy these fundamental civil rights and governing laws.” DOJ officials never explicitly requested Ryan’s resignation.

    “I don’t think the Department of Justice wants to put that threat on the table in a formal letter, because I’m not even aware that there is any such kind of authority to force a president to resign,” said Hill. “But the undertone here is that President Ryan needs to be ousted or else this is going to continue.”

    No Clear DEI Definition

    Moving forward, legal experts say, the key question will be whether the DOJ has the authority to probe DEI programs on campus.

    Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the president’s executive order at the heart of the investigations. A district judge blocked the order, but an appeals court overturned that national injunction in March.

    “The whole problem here is no one really has a clear understanding of what DEI extends to,” Hill said. “Until there is some more definitive interpretation, perhaps by the Supreme Court, then federal agencies are going to continue to carry out the president’s ideological view.”

    But in the meantime, what colleges will deal with, Pistole said, is tension over federal funding and a precarious relationship with the government, regardless of who is in charge.

    “Most boards are focused on, how do we best resolve this and get out of the bull’s-eye, because nobody wants to be the focus of intense, persistent scrutiny by a government agency that has the ability to impact your livelihood,” he said. “And the concern is for not just this administration, but what happens in the next administration—whoever it is, fill in the blank. If the policies are changed dramatically by the new administration, that reliability, predictability and the autonomy of higher education would be disrupted.”

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  • Conservative Org. Requests Materials for 70 Chapel Hill Courses

    Conservative Org. Requests Materials for 70 Chapel Hill Courses

    The Oversight Project, a spinoff of the conservative Heritage Foundation known for deluging government agencies with public records requests, has set its sights on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    According to Chapel Hill’s open records request database, Mike Howell, the Oversight Project’s president, submitted a sweeping request to the university on July 2, asking for syllabi and class materials presented to students in roughly 70 courses that contain “any of the following search terms, whether in titles, body text, footnotes, metadata, or hyperlinks.” He then listed 30 search terms he wanted Chapel Hill to use, including “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging”; “gender identity”; “intersectionality”; “white privilege”; “cultural humility”; “racial equity”; “implicit bias”; “microaggressions”; “queer”; and “sexuality.”

    The courses whose materials he asked the university to search included Gender and Sexuality in Islam, Increasing Diversity in STEM Research and Black Families in Social and Contemporary Contexts, as well as Right-Wing Populism in Global Perspective; First-Year Seminar: Mobility, Roads, NASCAR, and Southern Culture; and Introduction to the American Stage Musical.

    Howell also asked the university to waive any fees for searching for or providing these possibly voluminous records. His explanation for why the Oversight Project deserved to pay nothing suggested what he was seeking to do with the information.

    “Disclosure of these records will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of university operations and student-facing programming, particularly considering ongoing public concern regarding institutional compliance with current Executive Orders issued by the President of the United States,” Howell wrote, specifically mentioning President Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders from January. The records “will shed light on potential inconsistencies between internal practices and public representations made by officials in a matter of substantial national importance,” he wrote.

    Government agencies that are subject to open records requests such as the one the Oversight Project has submitted often charge for such work; the State Department’s fees range from $21 to $76 per hour, depending on the personnel fulfilling the request, and $0.15 per page, for example.

    It’s another example of conservatives using open records laws to target what’s being researched or taught—or what they think is being taught—at public universities. And using keyword searches for terms such as “DEI” echoes the approach federal agencies under Trump have adopted to search grants to determine which might be canceled. Some universities have also conducted their own similar hunts to find content on internal websites and within courses that may run afoul of federal or state prohibitions related to DEI.

    In February, the UNC system ordered its 16 public universities to immediately stop requiring “course credits related to diversity, equity and inclusion,” without defining what that meant. Some university administrations used keyword searches of course descriptions, looking for terms such as “cultural” to choose which courses to review. The system allowed institutional chancellors to grant waivers for dozens of courses with diversity themes that remain necessary for certain degrees. A system administrator said about 95 percent of programs identified for exemptions “had accreditation and licensure requirements attached.”

    The request for syllabi is also another example of conservative groups targeting UNC system campuses for allegedly continuing to practice DEI, despite multiple efforts by the UNC system Board of Governors to stamp it out. Since April, another group, Accuracy in Media, has released undercover videos allegedly showing staffers at other UNC institutions still promoting DEI.

    Chris Petsko’s business course, Leading and Managing, was among those the Oversight Project requested records for. Petsko, an assistant professor of organizational behavior, said a small part of the course includes segments on stereotyping and prejudice as they relate to workplace outcomes, such as hiring.

    Petsko said the university notified him of the request, and he looked up what the Oversight Project was. Based on what he found, he won’t give up his course materials, he said. He didn’t like the request’s implication that he was violating executive orders and said those sympathetic to the Trump administration seem “perfectly willing to make outlandish legal arguments that they know will lose in lower courts simply to give their ideology some kind of legitimacy.” The Oversight Project has been accused of releasing misleading information before.

    Petsko said he didn’t want to give the Oversight Project something to “twist” in its mission to keep “targeting public universities for doing the work they need to do.”

    ‘Meant to Intimidate’

    Chapel Hill says it’s a faculty member’s right not to share their course information. Though the media relations office didn’t provide an interview Monday, a university spokesperson wrote in an email, “The University has not responded to this public records request and is still in the process of identifying what—if any—records will be produced. Course materials, including but not limited to exams, lectures, assignments and syllabi, are the intellectual property of the preparer and are owned by the preparer as non-traditional work.”

    The Oversight Project also didn’t provide an interview to Inside Higher Ed. In an email, Howell wrote, “UNC is a public school which has a long track record of discrimination. Syllabi are public records and belong to the public. We intend to let the public know what is being taught at a public school. That’s not intimidation, it’s good governance and transparency. If a professor is too much of a wimp to let me read his syllabus then he’s in the wrong business.”

    When asked to provide a list of donors to the Oversight Project, Howell responded, “And no of course I’m not sending you a list of donors but please do send donors to our website.”

    Petsko shared his research into the rules regarding responding to Howell’s group with other faculty on LinkedIn.

    “At many public universities, syllabi are considered intellectual property,” he wrote in a post. “As such, at many schools (mine included) professors are not required to share their syllabi in response to public records requests. My advice is to check what your university policy is prior to complying with requests in advance.”

    He also wrote that “at public universities, you have a legal right to decide how to teach your course and to decide what topics to include” if it’s relevant to the course.

    “Keep doing the work you were trained to do,” he wrote. “Keep educating others. Keep sharing your expertise. And don’t let vague references to executive orders make you question whether you have a right to be sharing your knowledge with the world.”

    Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said his organization advocates for narrow exemptions to open records laws to keep private faculty records, correspondence and other written materials for the purpose of scholarship, research and teaching.

    “These very broad and vague requests for faculty academic records such as syllabi and faculty communications about their academic pursuits chill free speech by putting a large burden on the faculty members and revealing private academic information they use to teach their classes,” Greenberg said. Forcing disclosure, he said, can result in altering these courses.

    Joan Scott, a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure and one of the founders of Chapel Hill’s women’s studies program, said this use of open records requests is “not a new tactic.” She said these requests are “meant to intimidate” and suggested the targeting of Chapel Hill is part of a pressure campaign on state legislators to overturn the Democratic governor’s veto of anti-DEI legislation.

    “Whatever they’re claiming the legal right is, it’s a violation of academic freedom, it’s a violation of individual free speech rights and it’s an intrusion into the teaching of university faculty in the name of, it seems to me, a right-wing ideological agenda,” Scott said.

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  • DOJ Investigating George Mason Faculty Senate

    DOJ Investigating George Mason Faculty Senate

    Gregory Washington became George Mason University’s eighth president in 2020.

    Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    The Justice Department is now investigating the Faculty Senate at George Mason University after the panel backed the university president and affirmed that “diversity is our strength,” The New York Times reported.

    DOJ officials requested drafts of a faculty resolution passed in support of the president, Gregory Washington, who is facing multiple investigations from various federal agencies related to the diversity, equity and inclusion practices at the university. The DOJ also wants communications among Faculty Senate members who drafted the document as well as communications among those faculty and the president’s office. 

    The George Mason board is set to review the president’s performance at a meeting Friday, and faculty are worried Washington could be pushed out. 

    Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the civil rights division at DOJ, wrote in a letter to GMU that the Senate’s resolution was concerning in that it praised Washington’s efforts to diversify faculty and staff to reflect the student population

    Dhillon wrote, according to the Times, that “it indicates the GMU Faculty Senate is praising President Washington for engaging in race- or sex-motivated hiring decisions to achieve specific demographic outcomes among faculty and staff.”

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  • In Defense of Gladwell and “Revenge of the Tipping Point”

    In Defense of Gladwell and “Revenge of the Tipping Point”

    Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell

    Published in October 2024

    Praising a Malcolm Gladwell book may not be the No. 1 way to seem helplessly uncool with your academic colleagues, but it is close. Share with any random social scientist—my people—that you are reading Gladwell, and you are likely to hear a long lecture detailing the flaws and shortcomings of Gladwell’s writing.

    Ignore the skeptics. Reading a Gladwell book is like listening to a well-crafted song: You can enjoy the experience without agreeing with the lyrics.

    Gladwell’s most recent book is Revenge of the Tipping Point. As with all Gladwell books, the audiobook experience will be your best reading bet. Gladwell is a fantastic writer. His narration style is conversational, intimate and energizing. Revenge of the Tipping Point is an all-new book, taking as its starting place the 2000 Tipping Point publication that launched Gladwell into the nonfiction stratosphere. Like the original, Revenge of the Tipping Point seeks to uncover the hidden forces that drive social trends. The book uses stories and a mix of academic research and data to explain phenomena as diverse as the COVID epidemic, the spread of opiate addiction and the rapid cultural and legal embrace of gay marriage.

    For critics of Gladwell (likely a large proportion of Inside Higher Ed readers), Revenge of the Tipping Point will generate a familiar set of objections. We academics will complain that Gladwell cherry-picks data to support a narrative and fails to include information that may complicate the story. Gladwell’s approach is to structure his stories about social phenomena like a murder mystery, with Gladwell playing the role of Sherlock Holmes. Piecing together the clues, Gladwell reveals the guilty culprit (the policy or cultural phenomenon) responsible for the crime (the trend or social outcome in question). As academics, we know that various variables, forces, structures and random causes drive most social trends. Gladwell’s books are satisfying precisely because he is a master of filtering out complexity. You feel smarter after reading Gladwell, even if you aren’t.

    Knowing all this going into reading Gladwell, including Revenge of the Tipping Point, can help ensure that reading his books is enjoyable and productive. For those of us in higher education, Gladwell has a good deal to say about how universities (well, elite universities) work. I found his explanation as to why highly selective schools field a multitude of sports teams across every conceivable athletic endeavor—from squash to Nordic skiing to equestrian to rugby—reason enough to invest time in Gladwell’s latest book.

    We should not confuse Gladwell’s critiques of elite higher education with the ongoing attacks many universities are navigating from the executive branch. One hopes, however, that Gladwell might be rethinking his history of drawing stark moral absolutes when condemning elite institutions while largely ignoring societal positives and complexity. I suspect that the Ivy League is easier to attack when it is cast as Goliath, as opposed to the defender of academic freedom and bulwark against government overreach that recent events have so clearly revealed our universities to be.

    What are you reading?

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