AUSTIN, Texas, May 16, 2025 —The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Cosmos Institute today announced the Truth-Seeking AI Grants Program, a new $1 million initiative to fund open-source projects that build freedom into the foundations of AI, rather than censorship or control.
Truth-seeking AI: Why it matters
Truth-seeking AI is artificial intelligence built to expand the marketplace of ideas and sharpen human inquiry — not replace it.
AI already drafts our sentences, sorts our inbox, and cues our next song. But the technology is advancing rapidly. Soon, it could determine which ideas ever reach our minds — or form within them. Two futures lie ahead, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
In one, AI becomes a shadow censor. Hidden ranking rules throttle dissent, liability fears chill speech, and flattering prompts dull judgment until people stop asking “why.” That is algorithmic tyranny.
In the other, AI works as a partner in truth-seeking: it surfaces counter-arguments, flags open questions, and prompts us to check the evidence and our biases. Errors are chipped away, knowledge grows, and our freedom — and habit — to question not only survives but thrives.
To ensure we build AI tools and platforms for freedom, not control, Cosmos and FIRE are putting $1 million in grants on the table to ensure the future of AI is free.
“AI guides a fifth of our waking hours. The builders of these systems now hold the future of free thought and expression in their hands. We’re giving them the capital, computing resources, and community they need to seize that opportunity,” said Brendan McCord, founder and chair of Cosmos Institute.
“The First Amendment restrains governments, but the principles of free speech must also be translated into code. We’re challenging builders to do exactly that and prioritize freedom over control,” said Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of FIRE.
“AI can already steer our thoughts. The future is AI that expands them, not controls them,” added Philipp Koralus, founding director, Oxford HAI Lab and Senior Research Fellow at Cosmos Institute.
To read more about why we need to bake principles of free thought and expression into AI code, check out Brendan McCord, Greg Lukianoff, and Philipp Koralus’s piece at Reason.
How it works
Grant pool: $1 million (cash + compute); compute credits are from Prime Intellect, a platform for open, decentralized AI development
Typical award: $1k – $10k fast grants; larger amounts considered for standout ideas
Rolling review: decisions in ~3 weeks; applications open May 16 at CosmosGrants.org/truth
Sprint timeline: 90 days to ship a working prototype
Community: access to a vetted network of builders, mentors, and advisors at the AI and philosophy frontier
Showcase: Top projects funded by Nov 1, 2025 will be invited to demo at the Austin AI x Free Speech Symposium in December 2025; selection is competitive and at the program’s discretion
What we’re funding
Marketplace of Ideas — projects that preserve viewpoint diversity and open debate.
Promoting Inquiry — systems that actively provoke new questions, surfacing counter-arguments and open issues that require more study.
Bold New Concepts — any approach that pushes AI toward the role of truth-seeking partner.
Illustrative projects:
We’re focused on prototypes that translate philosophy to code — embedding truth-seeking principles like Mill’s Trident and Socratic inquiry directly into open-source software.
Possible projects could include:
AI challenger that pokes holes in your assumptions and coaches you forward
An open debate arena where swappable models argue under a live crowd score
A tamper-proof logbook that records every answer on a public ledger.
About the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for them, and provides the means to preserve them. Learn more at www.thefire.org.
About Cosmos Institute
Cosmos Institute is a 501(c)(3) academy for philosopher-builders — technologists who unite deep reflection with practical engineering. Through research, fellowships, grants, and education, Cosmos advances human flourishing by translating philosophy to code across three pillars: truth-seeking, decentralization, and human autonomy. The Institute supported the creation of the new Human-Centered AI Lab at the University of Oxford, the first lab dedicated to embedding flourishing principles in open-source AI. Learn more at www.cosmos-institute.org.
Media Contact Karl de Vries, Director of Media Relations, FIRE karl.de.vries@thefire.org | +1 215-717-3473
The South Lawn of the University of Melbourne. Picture: iStock
Analysis from The Australia Institute said 10 universities together spent more than $390m on travel in 2023 and 27 institutions spent $410m on consultants amid executive pay and wage underpayment scandals.
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Dive Brief:
“Dramatic, unreasoned, and unlawful actions” taken by the Trump administration to significantly downsize the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences are making it impossible to carry out education research, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Educational Research Association and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.
The funding and staffing cuts made to IES will hamper the institute’s ability to conduct impartial, high-quality research and share those findings with educators, researchers and policymakers, according to the federal lawsuit, which was filed in Maryland district court.
With this legal challenge, the pushback against the Trump administration’s actions to reduce the size of the federal government continues to grow. Another lawsuit disputing IES shrinkage was filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy and the Institute for Higher Education Policy on April 4 in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Dive Insight:
Both lawsuits say the the Trump administration’s actions are preventing IES from carrying out its statutory duties. They ask that U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Education Department end their efforts to eliminate IES and restore its contracts, staff and other resources.
The Education Department did not respond to request for comment on Wednesday.
The challenge by AERA and SREE, which are represented in the lawsuit by Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, calls the February cancellation of $881 million in education research grants and the March 11 termination of 90% of IES staff “arbitrary” and “capricious” and a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Only about 20 staff remain at IES, and only three people are still employed at the National Center for Education Statistics, which is one of four centers within IES, according to the AERA-SREE lawsuit.
NCES and its predecessor organizations have focused on data collection and analysis for more than 150 years. NCES’ demise will make it “impossible to track progress, assess learning, identify gaps affecting students, and set priorities for attention over time and across the country,” including for student proficiency trends from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, the complaint said.
The AEFP-IHEP lawsuit adds that Congress has not repealed the Education Sciences Reform Act or eliminated statutory mandates that require IES to collect and analyze data, support research on specific topics, and provide access to research and data to the public. The organizations are represented in the lawsuit by Public Citizen Litigation Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization.
Michal Kurlaender, president of AEFP, said in an April 4 statement that many of its members have “faced serious challenges to their research and work” because of the IES funding and staffing cuts.
“We want to do all that we can to protect essential data and research infrastructure,” Kurlaender said. “This is fundamental to our mission of promoting research and partnerships that can inform education policy and improve education outcomes.”
Keith E. Sonderling has been appointed as the acting director during this transition. Staff were notified via email about their 90-day paid leave, which included instructions to return government property and had their email accounts disabled.
IMLS is a small federal agency, with about 70 employees,
that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United
States. Last year it granted $266 million to support essential cultural institutions.
President Donald Trump promises he’ll make American schools great again. He has fired nearly everyone who might objectively measure whether he succeeds.
This week’s mass layoffs by his secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, of more than 1,300 Department of Education employees delivered a crippling blow to the agency’s ability to tell the public how schools and federal programs are doing through its statistics and research branch. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is now left with fewer than 20 federal employees, down from more than 175 at the start of the second Trump administration, according to my reporting. It’s not clear how the institute can operate or even fulfill its statutory obligations set by Congress.
IES is modeled after the National Institutes of Health and was established in 2002 during the administration of former President George W. Bush to fund innovations and identify effective teaching practices. Its largest division is a statistical agency that dates back to 1867 and is called the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which collects basic statistics on the number of students and teachers. NCES is perhaps best known for administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tracks student achievement across the country. The layoffs “demolished” the statistics agency, as one former official characterized it, from roughly 100 employees to a skeletal staff of just three.
“The idea of having three individuals manage the work that was done by a hundred federal employees supported by thousands of contractors is ludicrous and not humanly possible,” said Stephen Provasnik, a former deputy commissioner of NCES who retired early in January. “There is no way without a significant staff that NCES could keep up even a fraction of its previous workload.”
Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.
Even the new acting commissioner of education statistics, a congressionally mandated position, was terminated with everyone else on March 11 after just 15 days on the job, according to five former employees. Chris Chapman replaced Biden-appointee Peggy Carr, who was suddenly removed on Feb. 24 without explanation before her congressionally designated six-year term was to end in 2027. It was unclear who, if anyone, will serve as the commissioner after Chapman’s last day on March 21. (Chapman did not respond to an email for comment.) Meanwhile, the chief statistician, Gail Mulligan, was put on administrative leave until her early retirement on April 1.* There is apparently no replacement to review the accuracy of figures reported to the public.
Two offices spared
Only two IES offices were untouched by this week’s layoffs: the National Center for Special Education Research, an eight-person office that awards grants to study effective ways to teach children with disabilities, and the Office of Science, a six-person office that reviews research for quality, accuracy and validity. It was unclear why they were spared. Other areas of the Education Department that fund and oversee education for children with disabilities also had relatively lighter layoffs.
A draft of an executive order to eliminate the Education Department was prepared in early March, but Trump hadn’t signed it as of this week. Instead, McMahon said on Fox News that she began firing employees as a “first step” toward that elimination. Former department employees believe that McMahon and her team decided which offices to cut. Weeks before her confirmation, about a half dozen people from McMahon’s former think tank, the right-wing America First Policy Institute, were inside the department and looking at the bureaucracy, according to a former official at the Education Department. The Education Department did not respond to my email queries.
The mass firings this month were preceded by a Feb. 10 onslaught, when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency terminated much of the work that is overseen by these education research and statistics units. Most of the department’s research and data collections are carried out by outside contractors, and nearly 90 of these contracts were canceled, including vital data collections on students and teachers. The distribution of roughly $16 billion in federal Title I aid to low-income schools cannot be calculated properly without this data. Now, the statisticians who know how to run the complicated formula are also gone.
‘Five-alarm fire’
The mass firings and contract cancellations stunned many. “This is a five-alarm fire, burning statistics that we need to understand and improve education,” said Andrew Ho, a psychometrician at Harvard University and president of the National Council on Measurement in Education, on social media.
Former NCES Commissioner Jack Buckley, who ran the education statistics unit from 2010 to 2015, described the destruction as “surreal.” “I’m just sad,” said Buckley. “Everyone’s entitled to their own policy ideas, but no one’s entitled to their own facts. You have to share the truth in order to make any kind of improvement, no matter what direction you want to go. It does not feel like that is the world we live in now.”
The deepest cuts
While other units inside the Education Department lost more employees in absolute numbers, IES lost the highest percentage of employees — roughly 90 percent of its workforce. Education researchers questioned why the Trump administration targeted research and statistics. “All of this feels like part of an attack on universities and science,” said an education professor at a major research university, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
That fear is well-founded. Earlier this month the Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants with Columbia University, blaming the university’s failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitism during campus protests last year over Israeli attacks on Gaza. Among them were four research grants that had been issued by IES, including an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Federal Work-Study program, which costs the government $1 billion a year. That five-year study was near completion and now the public will not learn the results. (The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization at Teachers College, Columbia University.)
Tom Brock, executive director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, said he had been cautiously optimistic that he could successfully appeal the cancellation of his $2.8 million in education research grants. (He planned to argue that Teachers College is a separate entity from the rest of Columbia with its own president and board of trustees and it was not affected by student protests to the same degree.) But now the IES office that issued the grants, the National Center for Education Research, has lost its staff. “I’m very discouraged,” said Brock. “Even if we win on appeal, all the staff have been laid off. Who would reinstate the grant? Who would we report to? Who would monitor it? They have completely eliminated the infrastructure. I could imagine a scenario where we would win on appeal and it can’t be put into effect.”
Active contracts
Many contracts with outside organizations for data collection and research grants with university professors remain active. That includes the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tracks student achievement, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which collects data on colleges and universities. But now there are almost no employees left to oversee these efforts, review them for accuracy or sign future contracts for new data collections and studies.
“My job was to make sure that the limited public dollars for education research were spent as best as they could be,” said one former education official who issued grants for the development of new innovations. “We make sure there’s no fraud, waste and abuse. Now there’s no watchdog to oversee it.”
The former official asked to remain anonymous as did more than a dozen other former employees whom I talked to while reporting this story. Some explained that the conditions of their termination, called a “reduction in force” or “RIF,” could mean losing their severance if they talked to the press. The terminated employees are supposed to work from home until their last day on March 21, and they described having limited access to their work computer systems. That is stymying efforts to wind down their work with their colleagues and outside contractors in an orderly way. One described how she had to take a cellphone picture of her termination notice on her laptop because she could no longer save or send documents on it.
So far, there has been no sign of protest among congressional Republicans, even though some of the cuts affect data and researchthey have mandated. A spokesman for Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, directed me to Cassidy’s statement on X. “I spoke to @EDSecMcMahon and she made it clear this will not have an impact on @usedgov ability to carry out its statutory obligations. This action is aimed at fulfilling the admin’s goal of addressing redundancy and inefficiency in the federal government.”
Following the law
In theory, a skeletal staff might be able to fulfill the law, which is often “ambiguous,” said former NCES commissioner Buckley. For example, the annual report to Congress on the condition of education could be as short as one page. Laws mention several data collections, such as ones on financial aid to college students and on the experiences of teachers, but often don’t specify how often they must be produced. Technically, they could be paused for many years without running afoul of statutes.
The remaining skeleton crew could award contracts to outside organizations to do all the work and have them “supervise themselves,” said Buckley. “I’m not advocating that oversight be pushed out to contractors, but you could do it in theory. It depends on your tolerance for contracting out work.”
NAEP anxiety
Many are anxious about the future of NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card. Even before the firings, William Bennett, Education Secretary under President Ronald Reagan, penned an open letter along with conservative commentator Chester Finn in The 74, urging McMahon to preserve NAEP, calling it “the single most important activity of the department.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who chairs the National Governors Association, is especially concerned. In an email, Polis’ spokesman emphasized that Polis believes that “NAEP is critical.” He warned that “undercutting data collection and removing this objective measuring stick that helps states understand and improve performance will only make our efforts more difficult.”
Though much of the test development and administration is contracted out to private organizations and firms, it is unclear how these contracts could be signed and overseen by the Education Department with such a diminished staff. Some officials suggested that the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which sets NAEP policy, could take over the test’s administration. But the board’s current staff doesn’t have the testing or psychometrics expertise to do this.
In response to questions, board members declined to comment on the future of NAEP and whether anyone in the Trump administration had asked them to take it over. One former education official believes there is “apparently some confusion” in the Trump administration about the division of labor between NAGB and NCES and a “misunderstanding of how work gets done in implementing” the assessment.
Mark Schneider, a former IES director who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said he hoped that McMahon would rebuild NCES into a modern, more efficient statistical agency that could collect data more cheaply and quickly, and redirect IES’s research division to drive breakthrough innovations like the Defense Department has. But he conceded that McMahon also cut some of the offices that would be needed to modernize the bureaucracy, such as the centralized procurement office.
So far, there’s no sign of Trump’s or McMahon’s intent to rebuild.
* Clarification: An earlier version of this story said that Mulligan had been terminated, but she revised a social media post about her status after publication of this story to clarify that she was not subject to the “reduction in force” notice.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
David John Baer McNicholas’s first novella is inspired by a darkly comedic poem he once wrote about a town that outlawed canned food and built a massive trebuchet, or catapult, to hurl the cans into the distance — only to receive thank-you notes tied to bricks hurled back at them.
Lately, McNicholas has been entangled in a real-life plot eerily similar to his writing. At the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, food pantries were empty despite a $50,000 grant meant to support them. When student publication The Young Warrior printed criticisms of school officials for these failures and the Associated Student Government began investigating, administrators swiftly retaliated — kicking students out of housing, putting them on probation, and even threatening them with lawsuits.
This may sound like the plot of a neo-noir film bleak enough to rival “Chinatown,” but for McNicholas, a creative writing student at IAIA and the founder and editor of The Young Warrior, it’s reality.
Young Warrior editor David McNicholas recalls, “Oh shit, they’re going to throw everything at me” for exposing the administration. (Ponic Photography)
McNicholas connects IAIA’s pattern of silencing dissent to broader institutional failures. He recounts how during a faculty meeting with the Board of Trustees, a sculpture professor once dared to mention an academic paper written by a former IAIA department head. The paper showed that even conservative estimates put IAIA’s staff turnover rate at about 30%. McNicholas says when the professor brought it up, “everyone in the meeting clammed up, and later they came down on him hard. They told him he embarrassed the dean of students and demanded he write a public apology and retraction. He wrote a coerced apology and quit the next day.”
The Young Warrior published the academic paper before quickly being told to retract it.
“We want better,” says McNicholas. “Student retention is 50%. Graduation is 25% . . . The faculty, staff, and students here are top-notch people, but the administration just supports the rising stars and lets everyone else evaporate.”
McNicholas’s own showdown with the administration began when he published an anonymous student letter and flyer accusing the dean of students of bullying and suggesting food-pantry funds had been misappropriated. The letter and flyer resonated with the student body, according to McNicholas, and many came forward to thank him and to offer support.
I love this school. I love the community. I love the students and the faculty. I struggle with the administration after this, but I think that that struggle was there long before I came along. I just kind of exposed it.
When McNicholas published the anonymous letter and flyer, he says students were being forced to buy meal plans they couldn’t always use while the dean of students, McNicholas says, dismissed the need for food pantries altogether, claiming, “Students have meal plans; they don’t need food pantries.”
This explanation rang hollow for McNicholas who, like many of his peers, falls below the poverty line and relies on food pantries to survive.
After the letter and flyer came out, the administration promptly accused McNicholas of “bullying” staff with his publication, and IAIA Provost Felipe Colón put him under investigation.
“They came down on me primarily, but also on a peer who had made an Instagram post, of all things,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Oh shit, they’re going to throw everything at me.’”
Anticipating housing sanctions, McNicholas preemptively left campus and lived out of his van.
“It sucked, because I wasn’t prepared for it. I had to go sleep in a friend’s driveway,” he remembers. The forcefulness of the school’s response only made McNicholas more suspicious, bringing to mind Shakespeare’s famous line, “The lady doth protest too much.”
Institute of American Indian Arts Can’t Ignore the First Amendment
Page (Two-Column)
Tell the Institute of American Indian Arts to lift sanctions against David McNicholas and revise its anti-bullying policy.
The situation escalated when the administration denied that the grant even existed during a meeting with McNicholas and other members of the Associated Student Government who had taken an interest in the matter. Despite the administration’s denials, an anonymous source provided McNicholas with a photocopy of a grant award letter for the rumored $50,000. Armed with this evidence, McNicholas and the ASG president confronted the administration, only to face threats of legal action.
The administration’s behavior took an emotional toll on students, according to McNicholas. One day, the ASG called a meeting to discuss the situation — just ASG members, since advisors employed by the college couldn’t be trusted — and the ASG president showed up in tears. She had just come from a meeting with IAIA President Robert Martin, who delivered a shocking ultimatum.
“She said that he told her the school was seriously considering suing ASG — and her — because of the bad publicity,” McNicholas says. “She came to us and said, ‘They told me to fix it.’ She was in tears, you know, and that made me mad.”
When they confronted the provost with the grant award letter, he changed his tune.
“He showed up at the next meeting and said, ‘Oh, you know what? I did some looking, I researched it, and I think I found the grant that you guys were talking about, and I’d like to come and explain how it was spent,’” McNicholas recalls. “I was like, yeah, I bet you do.”
Meanwhile, Provost Colón’s investigation of McNicholas for publishing the student critiques found him responsible for violating the school’s unconstitutional anti-bullying policy. Exhausted and beaten down, he was unable to attend the meeting where the provost attempted to explain the grant’s expenditures. McNicholas says, “I got the sheet he handed out, which showed budget-to-actual figures, but when pressed to release the ledger, he claimed bank statements might not go back that far. We’re talking a year, maybe two at most. I think he thought you could say that because he was with a room full of like 19, 20 year olds. But if I had been in that room, I would have pushed back.”
Though McNicholas later successfully appealed the housing sanctions and recovered about $2,000 in lost fees, he remains outraged at how other students were treated.
McNicholas never did accept IAIA’s “as little as possible” philosophy, in which truth had no place, power thrived on silence, and the ones who dared to ask questions were the first to pay the price.
“What I really can’t stand is that they did the same thing to a 19-year-old freshman for making an Instagram post. That person didn’t move out on their own accord. They lost all their housing and meal plan money. They lost $2,000,” McNicholas says. “They kicked that person out, kept their money, and made a 19-year-old student homeless. As far as I’m concerned, that’s unconscionable.”
Not only did the sanctions against McNicholas affect his ability to participate in campus life, they also threatened his employment opportunities, including a federal work-study opportunity that should have been protected from administrative interference.
“I was hired to be an orientation mentor at the end of last summer,” he says “And the day before I was going to start, I got a call from the director of that program who said, ‘Yeah, you can’t participate because you’re on institutional probation.’”
Finding himself ruthlessly targeted by the administration, McNicholas turned to the press. Teaming up with a few peers, they went to the Santa Fe Reporter, and the article that followed — which detailed the administration’s retaliatory actions against him — made an immediate impact.
“When that article came out, both the interim director and dean of students were gone within days,” he says. “Like, they were gone.”
Anticipating housing sanctions, Young Warrior editor David McNicholas preemptively left campus and lived out of his van. “It sucked, because I wasn’t prepared for it. I had to go sleep in a friend’s driveway.” (Ponic Photography)
After the Santa Fe Reporter exposé and leadership shakeup, the food pantry miraculously transformed. A 20-foot-long conference table in the Student Success Center, once filled with nothing but cans of tomatoes that no one was using, suddenly became a bounty of groceries.
Last semester, McNicholas delved into the intersection of journalism and free speech through an independent study. His research included works like Dean Spade’s “Mutual Aid” and FIRE’s “Guide to Free Speech on Campus,” laying the groundwork for his evolving understanding of rights and responsibilities.
This semester, McNicholas has already published a new issue of The Young Warrior, which reflects his growing interest in matters of free expression. The issue includes a letter from FIRE written on his behalf and a personal acknowledgment of his own rights and responsibilities as a journalist.
“Yes, the school violated my rights and they need to be held accountable, but also, I could have been a better journalist. And there’s room to talk about that,” he says with characteristic humility. The issue also strikes a lighter tone with a comic poking fun at the provost — because, as McNicholas says with a grin, “why not?”
The intersection of art, politics, and personal freedom is a driving force for McNicholas. “My work is very personal,” he explains. “I live in a political morass metaphorically surrounded by people on both sides of a binary who think censorship is fine as long as it’s censoring the other guy. I’m a non-binary thinker. I’m an anarchist. For an artist like me to make art, I can’t be worried about who I will offend. I can’t tailor my work to thread between all these idiots who can’t think for themselves, who can’t be critical without taking sides. If I worried about that, I couldn’t get up in the morning. I couldn’t be an artist.”
McNicholas never did accept IAIA’s “as little as possible” philosophy, in which truth had no place, power thrived on silence, and the ones who dared to ask questions were the first to pay the price. Nevertheless, he speaks with deep affection about IAIA.
“I love this school. I love the community. I love the students and the faculty. I struggle with the administration after this, but I think that that struggle was there long before I came along. I just kind of exposed it.”
Criticism of government and public officials is at the core of First Amendment protections. But the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico is ironically using its anti-bullying policy to browbeat student critics into silence.
Last spring, David McNicholas, senior editor of the Young Warriorstudent magazine, published two student submissions reacting to recent news of the abrupt resignation of Karen Redeye, a beloved student success advisor at IAIA.
The first submission was an anonymous editorial urging students to speak up against IAIA’s “oppression” and accusing Redeye’s supervisors of bullying her to the point that “good people have no choice but to leave or sacrifice their own mental, emotional well-being.” The second submission, also from an anonymous student, was an image of a flyer referencing rumors that Nena Martinez Anaya, the dean of students, misappropriated grant money meant for food aid. The flyer read, “Karen Redeye keeps pantries full[.] Nena Martinez robs them[.] Redeye Redemption[.]”
Immediately after the magazine’s publication, IAIA Provost Felipe Colon told McNicholas he was being investigated over complaints that the publication constituted bullying. Specifically, he was told that the “damaging and defamatory content” and “derogatory and unfounded misinformation” violated IAIA’s expansive anti-bullying policy — which bars everything from “teasing, name-calling” and “taunting,” to “telling others not to be friends . . . with someone” and “offensive text messages or emails.”
A third complaint, filed by Lorissa Garcia, interim director of the Student Success Center, echoed the others but added a new accusation. Namely, that in his role as public relations officer for the student government, McNicholas used its Instagram account to “promote and distribute derogatory and unfounded misinformation and rumors” concerning Garcia’s role in Redeye’s resignation.
Garcia based this allegation on the claim that the student government’s account “liked” a student’s post sharing an image of the “Redeye Redemption” flyer.
Colon found McNicholas responsible for bullying, placed him on probation through the end of the 2024–25 school year, suspended him from student housing, and ordered him to issue written public apologies to Garcia and Martinez Anaya — and publish retractions in the Young Warrior and on the student government Instagram account.
Redeye then emailed IAIA President Robert Martin to explain that she had indeed resigned from IAIA due to “maltreatment” and “bullying from direct supervisors.” Despite Redeye corroborating the editorial’s factual assertions, an appeals panel lifted the other sanctions but upheld the probation.
FIRE wrote IAIA last month, urging it to rescind the remaining sanctions and revise its overbroad and vague anti-bullying policy:
The First Amendment protects the freedom of the press to publish vehement criticism of government officials (including college administrators) like that contained in the anonymous editorial submissions printed in the Young Warrior. In fact, such criticism is at the core of the Constitution’s guarantee of expressive rights. . . . As the Supreme Court has explained, “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and . . . may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
IAIA cannot ban “teasing” and “offensive text messages” simply by labeling them bullying. In order for so-called “bullying” speech to be punishable, it must rise to the level of actionable harassment — that is, it must discriminate based on protected status and be severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, among other criteria. An anti-bullying policy expansive enough to cover “taunting” and “telling others not to be friends . . . with someone” is unconstitutional.
But IAIA refused to rescind the sanctions or amend its policy. According to the school, its actions did not violate the First Amendment:
Mr. McNicholas was not disciplined because he published critical commentary about IAIA officials, as you state; he was disciplined for publishing harmful, hurtful, unsubstantiated and damaging statements about the persons and reputations of members of the IAIA community. There is a big difference between critical commentary and the spreading of unsubstantiated and injurious statements claiming illegal activity.
Contrary to IAIA’s assertion, constitutional protection for speech and the press extends to criticism that is “harmful” or “hurtful.” The Supreme Court has been clear: “Criticism of [public officials’] official conduct does not lose its constitutional protection merely because it is effective criticism and hence diminishes their official reputations.”
Nor does the published material lose First Amendment protection simply because it contains unproven claims. Even false or misleading statements are protected unless the expression meets the high standard for unprotected defamation. Here, that means IAIA would need to show that the published claims about Garcia and Martinez were not only false, but that McNicholas published them despite knowing — or with a “high degree of awareness” — they were false.
IAIA cannot do so. Despite throwing around a lot of terms like “misinformation,” “libelous,” “defamation,” and “slander,” IAIA has not offered any evidence to show the allegations are false, let alone that McNicholas knew they were false. Indeed, the available evidence shows he had good reason for believing the truth of the published allegations.
FIRE defends the rights of students and faculty members — no matter their views — at public and private universities and colleges in the United States. If you are a student or a faculty member facing investigation or punishment for your speech, submit your case to FIRE today. If you’re faculty member at a public college or university, call the Faculty Legal Defense Fund 24-hour hotline at 254-500-FLDF (3533). If you’re a college journalist facing censorship or a media law question, call the Student Press Freedom Initiative 24-hour hotline at 717-734-SPFI (7734).
Howard University has appointed renowned historian and bestselling author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi to lead its newly established Institute for Advanced Study, marking aDr. Ibram X. Kendi significant expansion of the historically Black university’s research capabilities. The institute will focus on interdisciplinary research addressing global African diaspora issues, including studies on race, technology, climate change, and systemic disparities.
Kendi, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, brings considerable scholarly credentials to the position. His appointment continues Howard’s legacy of housing influential Black intellectuals and fostering groundbreaking research on racial justice.
“This is the most fulfilling career choice I have ever made,” said Kendi, who is currently a professor at Boston University but has held teaching positions at American University, University of Florida and SUNY Albany. “I have had my eye on the Mecca my entire career, studying its history and witnessing what Howard means to the culture.”
The new institute will implement a competitive residential fellowship program, bringing together international scholars to pursue research projects across various disciplines. A unique aspect of the program pairs each fellow with a Howard student, creating mentorship opportunities while advancing research goals. The fellowship program will also be available to Howard’s faculty members.
Howard’s Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Anthony K. Wutoh said there is a strong alignment between Kendi’s work and the university’s mission.
“Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s exceptional scholarship and unwavering commitment to social justice align perfectly with Howard University’s mission and values as we deepen our scholarship on the African Diaspora,” he said.
The institute’s research agenda is ambitious, targeting persistent inequities across multiple sectors including technology, healthcare, education, environmental issues, economics, governance, and the criminal legal system. This comprehensive approach reflects Howard’s historical commitment to addressing systemic racism through scholarly inquiry.
Kendi joins Howard at the height of his academic career. His work has significantly shaped contemporary discussions about racism, with his book How to Be an Antiracist achieving international bestseller status. His earlier work, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was recently adapted into an Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary.
A trained historian, Kendi has also worked as a journalist and served for many years as a contributor to Diverse.
His appointment connects to Howard’s rich tradition of housing influential scholars who have shaped American civil rights discourse. The university’s historical roster includes figures like Charles Hamilton Houston and William Hastie, who developed legal strategies against segregation, and Francis Cecil Sumner, whose research contributed to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Kendi’s publication record includes sixteen books, with ten reaching The New York Times bestseller list. His recent adaptation of Howard alumna Zora Neale Hurston’s “Barracoon” and his co-edited volume Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019″ demonstrate his commitment to preserving and analyzing Black historical narratives.
The establishment of the Institute for Advanced Study under Kendi’s leadership represents Howard’s continued evolution as a center for critical research on race and society. It also positions the university as a major powerbroker who can attract well-known Black scholars. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is on Howard’s faculty as well as award-winning writer Ta-Nehesi Coates, who is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair at the university. As higher education grapples with questions of equity and inclusion, Howard’s new institute positions the university to lead scholarly discourse on these crucial issues while training the next generation of researchers and thought leaders.
The institute’s focus on mentorship through its fellowship program suggests a commitment to developing future scholars while producing cutting-edge research. University leaders said that this approach aligns with Howard’s dual mission of academic excellence and community impact, creating opportunities for both established researchers and emerging scholars to contribute to the field.
