Tag: Jobs

Can Universities Still Diversify Faculty Hiring Under Trump?

Before Donald Trump retook office, advocates of a more demographically diverse U.S. professoriate were already criticizing existing hiring efforts as inadequate. One late-2022 paper in Nature Human Behaviour noted that, at recent rates, “higher education will never achieve demographic parity among tenure-track faculty.”

One example of the disparity: As of November 2023, only 8 percent of U.S. assistant professors were Black, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. That’s significantly less than Black representation in the U.S. population, currently estimated by the Census to be 13.7 percent. And the CUPA-HR data showed that the Black share of tenure-track and tenured professors decreases as rank increases—only 5 percent of associate professors and 3.6 percent of full professors were Black.

Efforts that institutions have made to racially diversify their faculties drew political backlash well before Trump regained the White House, with activists, organizations and some faculty criticizing university hiring practices and state legislatures passing laws banning affirmative action and/or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The goal of a more representative faculty slipped further out of reach starting on Inauguration Day, when Trump issued executive orders targeting DEI, including what he dubbed “illegal DEI discrimination.”

His administration’s crusade has continued, including with a letter Friday demanding that Harvard University end all DEI initiatives, “implement merit-based hiring policies” and “cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices.” (Harvard has refused to comply with Trump’s orders, which go far beyond hiring, and the federal government has frozen part of the university’s funding and threatened its tax-exempt status.)

Given the current political situation—not just nationally, but also among the growing number of states with DEI and/or affirmative action restrictions—how can higher ed institutions continue to diversify their faculties?

“I think that’s the question of the day: What’s lawful, what’s legal, what might subject an institution to investigation by the investigatory arms of the federal government?” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, which is among the organizations suing over Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

“Is it purposeful that this administration has chosen ambiguity?” Granberry Russell asked. “Or left [us] to guess what they intend by ‘illegal DEI’? Is diversifying our campuses on its face illegal DEI?”

So far, the administration has not clarified where the line is. On Feb. 14, the U.S. Education Department published a Dear Colleague letter declaring that the department interprets the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning race-conscious admissions as applicable to other areas of higher ed, including hiring, promotion and compensation. That letter is facing legal challenges. The department later released a frequently-asked-questions document further explaining its position, but that guidance didn’t discuss hiring practices.

In response to a request for an interview and written questions, Harrison Fields, special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed, “President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund higher education institutions’ support for dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence. Any institution violating Title VI is, by law, ineligible for federal funding.” (Title VI bans discrimination based on, among other things, shared ancestry, including antisemitism.)

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the U.S. Education Department, told Inside Higher Ed, “It is illegal to make decisions on the basis of race.”

She said the department isn’t providing any additional guidance at this point beyond the text of the executive orders, the Dear Colleague letter, the FAQ, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

Also, in an FAQ titled “What You Should Know About DEI-Related Discrimination at Work,” the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission writes that, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, DEI “practices may be unlawful if they involve an employer or other covered entity taking an employment action motivated—in whole or in part—by an employee’s or applicant’s race, sex, or another protected characteristic.” In addition, it says that Title VII’s protections aren’t just for minority groups.

Adrianna Kezar, a professor of higher education and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, said in an email that there isn’t “universal understanding” across campuses of the current hiring rules.

“In states like California (and others), affirmative action in hiring is illegal. In other states, it remains legal until the Trump dear colleague letter becomes the legal interpretation,” Kezar wrote. But she said some states “are already complying even though that has not become the law of the land.”

“Right now, everything is still murky,” she added.

Tres Cleveland, a partner at the Thompson Coburn law firm who represents higher education clients, said most of them are trying to stay “in the good graces of the Department of Education or other regulators, and it’s a challenge at this point.” Cleveland said the “rules of the road” are “changing almost daily.”

Damani White-Lewis, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, said, “There’s genuinely no consensus” on what’s barred under the Trump administration with regard to hiring that wasn’t prohibited before.

“I wanted to do a project of: If you asked, like, 10 different legal counsels, what sorts of answers would they come to and how did they make sense of them?” White-Lewis said. “Because that’s just how different folks are, and some are more conservative, some are a little more progressive on this issue.”

For colleges and universities, faculty diversification isn’t just an end in itself; studies have found positive benefits for students. So, what can institutions do to continue diversifying faculties? Experts pointed to fundamentals such as active recruiting, structured hiring processes and more.

Casting a Wide Net

While Granberry Russell of NADOHE criticized the Trump administration’s “ambiguity,” she said that actively seeking a diverse applicant pool still seems acceptable. In recruitment, she said, “you’re not making a decision; you’re just saying, ‘Apply for this position.’”

“There’s nothing, at least on its face, that would appear to prohibit recruitment efforts,” she said. (The Education Department has, however, targeted dozens of universities for allegedly supporting the PhD Project, which was accused of barring white or Asian prospective doctoral students from a recruitment conference.)

Kezar, at the University of Southern California, wrote in an email that while recruitment strategies still seem to be a viable way to attract diverse candidates, “some of the approaches that people have been relying on, they don’t feel comfortable with because they are being targeted.”

Granberry Russell echoed this concern, saying that, out of fear of investigations, “people are being very, very conservative in how they approach faculty searches.”

Denise Sekaquaptewa, director of the University of Michigan’s ADVANCE Program, a faculty diversity initiative, wrote in an email that “approaches which may still be viable” include disseminating job announcements “to outlets where [they] may reach a wide range of excellent candidates.”

White-Lewis, of the Penn Graduate School of Education, said there’s a “pervasive myth” that there aren’t enough graduate students of color to diversify faculties. He called it a “no-brainer” for institutions to invest in postdoctoral fellows and postdoctoral researchers—a stepping-stone to permanent faculty jobs.

“That’s a very perceivably neutral avenue of thinking about how we can increase opportunities for postdoctoral funding—given their crucial nature within not just medicine but other STEM fields as well, where postdocs are more pervasive,” White-Lewis said. “And that gives everybody more opportunities to research, write and publish and become more competitive for faculty jobs.”

He said he thinks postdoctoral programs “specifically devoted to minoritized hiring” will be difficult to continue. Multiple experts Inside Higher Ed interviewed suggested institutions should avoid saying in any faculty job advertisements that they’re specifically seeking to hire faculty of color or of a specific race.

“The devil is all in the details with this,” said Scott Goldschmidt, another higher ed specialist partner at Thompson Coburn. He said institutions have to weigh the risks of litigation and administrative action, especially when it comes to public job ads.

Goldschmidt said there are other hiring considerations that job ads could include that might lead to diverse hires, such as socioeconomic status and experience working with diverse populations. But he believes the Trump administration would also argue that such factors can’t be used as proxies for race. The hiring criteria should be narrowly tailored to the job, and the search and hiring process must be conducted in a race-neutral manner, Goldschmidt said.

“It has to be a truly open process,” he said. “The conditions there can’t be there to kind of serve as a way to unlawfully discriminate.”

White-Lewis suggested that faculty searches consider evaluating applicants’ experience with mentoring marginalized populations first. But that doesn’t mean their teaching and research records should be discounted.

“It’s very difficult to be a mentor if you don’t have research funding, right?” he said. “And so these things go hand in hand. What I’m suggesting is to make the evaluation of mentoring capabilities noteworthy instead of it being subsidiary.”

He also said that, when considering what positions to hire, administrators and faculty should think about how to align the department’s needs—in research, teaching and service—with areas where minoritized scholars are more represented.

“It’s not always just going after Indigenous studies or ethnic studies or Africana studies, because that clumps diversity within a few departments, but psychology, English, sociology, arts, even biology in terms of health disparities,” White-Lewis said. “Health disparity searches have been the thing that have historically driven faculty diversity in the sciences, and it can still continue because health disparities still exist.”

Some said using diversity statements in hiring is likely a no-go under the Trump administration, whose demands to Harvard included abolishing in hiring practices “all criteria, preferences, and practices” that “function as ideological litmus tests”—a common critique of diversity statements. Republican-controlled legislatures in multiple states have banned them.

“They’re dead,” said Musa al-Gharbi, a research fellow at Heterodox Academy and an assistant professor in Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism. He noted that even the University of California system has stepped away from them.

Furthermore, al-Gharbi said, “A lot of this stuff which is now rendered illegal … doesn’t really work well anyway. Some of the efforts that we take to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in higher ed actually create a hostile environment for the same people that we’re trying to include.”

He said that people of color and people from lower-income backgrounds are more likely to be socially conservative and religious than people who are currently better represented in academe, adding that “some of these diversity challenges around viewpoint diversity and demographic diversity are actually intimately interrelated.”

“But we also should nonetheless advocate for the goals of diversity and inclusion” and try to think up better alternatives, al-Gharbi said. Still, that’s hard when the Trump administration has basically “villainized,” “censored” and “demeaned” anything associated with DEI.

“This isn’t a smart bomb,” he said. “It’s a chain saw.”

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April 17, 2025
Judge Temporarily Blocks Cuts at Sonoma State

Cuts at Sonoma State University are on pause after a judge found leaders had not followed necessary procedures in winding down academic programs amid an ongoing budget crunch.

Sonoma County Judge Kenneth English ruled that the university sidestepped its own written policies when it announced plans to ax multiple academic programs; he issued a temporary restraining order to halt the process. According to university policies, Sonoma State is required to include the Academic Senate in decisions about program eliminations. But that allegedly didn’t happen, according to a lawsuit to stop the cuts filed on behalf of seven students.

Sonoma State has denied circumventing its own policies.

At the heart of the lawsuit is a fight over athletics, which Sonoma State plans to cut entirely. All seven plaintiffs played various sports at the university, which competes at the NCAA Division II level. However, the judge’s ruling did not halt the administration’s plans to eliminate athletics; the restraining order applied only to the academic programs for now.

It will remain in effect until May 1, the date of the next hearing in the case.

A Fight Over Cuts

In January, Sonoma State—part of the California State University system—announced sweeping cuts, citing a nearly $24 million budget deficit.

“The University has had a budget deficit for several years. It is attributable to a variety of factors—cost of personnel, annual price increases for supplies and utilities, inflation—but the main reason is enrollment,” Interim President Emily Cutrer wrote in an announcement.

She noted that enrollment at SSU had dropped by 38 percent since it peaked in 2015 at 9,408 students, according to federal data.

Sonoma State had already taken moves over the last two years to close its persistent budget gap, including offering buyouts and freezing hiring, among other measures. But those actions “are not enough,” Cutrer wrote. After making piecemeal cuts in prior years, she announced a plan to eliminate more than 20 academic programs, let 46 faculty contracts lapse and ax athletics.

But at least part of that plan is now on hold.

Legal counsel for the plaintiffs requested a temporary restraining order to stop the shutdown of programs, arguing that their clients “will suffer irreparable harm and the Decision will be unable to be reversed even after it is ultimately found to be unlawful, or if new Sonoma State leadership or the California legislature seek to reverse the decision,” according to an April 10 court filing.

David Seidel, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, who is also a graduate of Sonoma State, where he played soccer, told Inside Higher Ed that he was concerned about the abrupt nature of the planned program cuts, which he alleged were illegal and “extremely damaging” to students.

He added that multiple student athletes transferred to Sonoma State over the winter. If officials were aware that SSU planned to cut athletics, as they announced in January, he believes those students were lured by false promises to play for programs that may no longer exist.

“This is a failure of leadership,” Seidel said.

While he recognizes that the university may still move forward with the cuts, he wants to see the process restarted under new leadership and using the procedures SSU allegedly bypassed.

Seidel also plans to address concerns related to athletics at the May 1 hearing.

“The temporary restraining order does not affect athletics at this time. Of course, that’s still very much a live issue that we will be pursuing on May 1, and we’re seeking a preliminary junction on athletics as well. Sonoma State and [the California State University system] have passed very specific policies and regulations with respect to discontinuing academic programs,” Seidel said. “And it isn’t necessarily true that those also apply to athletics.”

In an email to Inside Higher Ed, SSU rejected the notion that it violated its own policies.

“SSU maintains that the university followed its established policies regarding academic discontinuation, including communicating with and considering feedback from all programs impacted by the proposed reductions,” SSU spokesperson Jeff Keating wrote. “Yesterday’s ruling set a later date when the court will more fully review the parties’ positions, including evidence from the university that SSU is complying with its academic discontinuation policy.”

Other Challenges

The court decision came amid an already challenging week for Sonoma State.

At a legislative forum on Monday, state lawmakers criticized Sonoma State’s plans to pull the university out of its fiscal crisis. Beyond the cuts, administrators have developed a blueprint known as Bridge to the Future, which aims to increase enrollment by 20 percent within the next five to seven years, launch new programs and carry out various other actions. But some lawmakers took issue with the plan, arguing it was too light on specifics.

Sonoma State’s recent financial woes have also been accompanied by leadership turnover.

Cutrer, the interim president, is Sonoma State’s third leader in as many years after both her predecessors were felled by scandal. In 2022, then-president Judy Sakaki resigned after she was accused of mishandling a sexual harassment scandal tied to her husband, Patrick McCallum, who was accused of acting inappropriately with several university employees. McCallum also defied a ban to stay off the Sonoma State campus while Sakaki was president.

Sonoma State’s next president, Mike Lee, retired abruptly last year after he was placed on administrative leave when he struck a deal with pro-Palestinian protesters to review contracts to consider divestment opportunities and agreed to an academic boycott of Israel. CSU officials accused Lee of insubordination in making the deal with protesters and ultimately walked back the agreement with students.

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April 17, 2025
IRS Plans to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status

The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly planning to rescind Harvard University’s tax-exempt status amid its showdown with the Trump administration over academic freedom, CNN reported.

Citing two anonymous sources, CNN reported that a decision is likely coming soon. If Harvard’s tax-exempt status is revoked, the move would appear to be at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has railed against the private university in posts on his own Truth Social platform.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump wrote Tuesday.

In a Wednesday post, the president said that Harvard should “no longer receive Federal Funds” because it “is a JOKE [that] teaches Hate and Stupidity.”

Harvard is currently in a standoff with the Trump administration, which has demanded a series of wide-reaching changes it says are needed to address alleged antisemitism on campus related to pro-Palestinian protests. Those demands include reforms in admissions, hiring practices, student disciplinary processes and a facultywide plagiarism review, among other changes.

Harvard, however, rejected Trump’s demands on Monday, calling them an affront to institutional autonomy.

The Trump administration promptly retaliated, freezing $2.2 billion in federal grant funding and $60 million in contracts.

Neither the IRS nor Harvard respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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April 16, 2025
At Least 10 Florida Universities Have Signed ICE Agreements

At least 10 Florida public universities have struck agreements with the federal government authorizing campus police to question and detain undocumented immigrants.

Inside Higher Ed requested public records from all 12 State University System of Florida institutions related to their agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Based on the results, it is clear that at least 10 have signed deals with ICE: Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, New College of Florida, the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, the University of North Florida, the University of South Florida and the University of West Florida.

Florida State University and Florida Polytechnic University are in the process of signing the paperwork, according to spokespersons at each institution.

It is unclear whether any of the 28 members of the Florida College System, which don’t all have sworn police forces, have made similar arrangements with ICE. An FCS system spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether its colleges have also entered such agreements.

Universities across the state signed memorandums of agreement at the direction of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who ordered law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE “to execute functions of immigration enforcement,” according to a Feb. 19 news release.

Legal experts and Florida faculty members note that such agreements are rare and mark a shift away from the typical duties of campus police, which don’t usually include immigration enforcement. They also raised concerns about how such arrangements could create a climate of fear on campuses.

Enforcers Seeking Partners

The DeSantis directive came shortly after the governor tapped Larry Keefe, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida, to serve as executive director of the nascent State Board of Immigration Enforcement, created by Florida’s Legislature. Keefe is known for helping DeSantis orchestrate flights of migrants from Texas to Massachusetts in 2022.

Keefe was named to the role on Feb. 17. Eight days later, Jennifer Pritt, executive director of the Florida Police Chiefs Association, sent an email to multiple universities that included a template for a memorandum of agreement with ICE. “Director Keefe is seeking participation from as many municipalities as possible, as soon as possible,” Pritt wrote.

Most universities, however, offered limited statements about their agreements with ICE. A Florida Board of Governors spokesperson also provided few details.

“Several police departments at universities within the State University System of Florida are partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Cassandra Edwards, director of public affairs for FLBOG, wrote by email. “We do not maintain these records and recommend contacting individual universities for specific information about the partnerships.”

Public records show that Florida Poly was hesitant to sign on, apparently due to guidance by Polk County sheriff Grady Judd, who is also on the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.

“He wants us to hold off and not sign because he’s going to be handling all from Polk and not wants [sic] us to be involved as of now,” Florida Poly police chief Rick Holland wrote in a March 25 email response to questions from administrators at other universities about the agreements.

Though Florida Poly noted it is still in the consideration process, emails obtained by Inside Higher Ed show another message from Holland indicating that Florida Poly appears willing to sign.

“Can you send me a signed copy of your MOU as a template to where I need to sign?” Holland wrote in an April 3 email sent to Jennifer Coley, the chief of police at New College of Florida.

(Florida Poly confirmed after publication that it planned to sign the paperwork Wednesday.)

The Agreements

Memorandums of agreement reviewed by Inside Higher Ed show that universities that entered arrangements with ICE will grant their police the authority to perform tasks typically reserved for government officials, such as questioning, arresting and preparing charges for individuals on campus suspected of immigration violations.

Campus police will be required to undergo mandatory training “on relevant administrative, legal, and operational issues tailored to the immigration enforcement functions to be performed,” according to copies of agreements between universities and ICE reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

Universities that signed agreements did not provide a timeline for when the training might begin.

Michael Kagan, a law professor and director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Immigration Clinic, said such agreements are uncommon at universities, noting that he is unaware of any others. He said they are essentially “force multipliers for ICE that deputize local police agencies to do the work that ICE would normally do itself.”

Jennifer Chacón, a professor at Stanford Law School, also said that she had not heard of prior agreements between campus police and ICE. Chacón noted that 287(g) agreements, introduced in 1996 to delegate immigration enforcement powers to other law enforcement agencies, have ebbed and flowed over the years, rising under Republican presidents and falling under their Democratic counterparts. Under President Donald Trump, who has made a crackdown on immigration a central part of his policy agenda, such agreements are proliferating.

“Over the last three months, we’ve seen an explosion in 287(g) agreements under Trump,” Chacón said.

‘Designed to Increase Fear’

Faculty and legal scholars are skeptical and concerned about campus agreements with ICE.

In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, the Florida International chapter of United Faculty of Florida called for the university to immediately withdraw from the program, which it condemned.

“We affirm that every member of our university community has a basic right to feel safe on campus—free from profiling, surveillance, and fear of deportation,” members wrote. “FIU’s latest act of anticipatory obedience undermines the rights of our community and jeopardizes the opportunity for all students and faculty to learn from and engage with their non-citizen peers. FIU’s haste to comply with ICE is in direct conflict with its stated vision. These actions distract from our educational mission and erode the inclusive environment FIU claims to foster.”

The statement added the student body is “majority Hispanic, heavily immigrant, and home to nearly 600 students protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” calling the agreement a betrayal of FIU’s legacy as a prominent Hispanic-serving institution.

Faculty at FIU also wrote that they were “equally alarmed to hear about the termination of the F-1 visa status of 18 FIU students.” (As of Tuesday evening, at least 1,234 students at 209 colleges have had their visas revoked, in some cases for participating in campus protests but often for unclear reasons.)

Legal scholars shared faculty members’ concerns about the fallout of such agreements.

“It seems like this is designed to increase fear. And whether that’s by design or not, it is likely to increase racial profiling on campus, and it is not at all an effective way to police immigration,” Chacón said.

Kagan said he would be unsurprised to see similar agreements at universities in other red states.

“I think that it will accentuate the extremes in terms of how different university systems react to the reality that immigrants are part of their campus life,” he said. “You have one extreme, where Florida is saying, ‘Let’s hunt them down with our own police,’ while you have other university systems that have started programs to be more welcoming to undocumented students.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that Florida Poly plans to sign an agreement with ICE on Wednesday.

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April 16, 2025
CCRC Loses $12M in Federal Grants
The Community College Research Center has lost access to funding from four federal grants collectively worth more than $12 million, the center’s director, Thomas Brock, said in a letter Tuesday. The cut was part of the Trump administration’s broader freeze on $400 million in federal funding at Columbia University over accusations that the institution didn’t do enough to response to antisemitism.

But Brock argued in the letter that “the terminations did nothing to address perceived problems at Columbia, nor did they challenge ‘woke’ ideology, as our projects were nonideological to begin with.”

CCRC is based at Teachers College, an education graduate school that became affiliated with the nearby Columbia University in 1898 but was founded independently in 1887 and remains “legally, administratively, and financially separate” from the Ivy League institution, Brock explained.

Still, when the federal antisemitism task force announced the funding cut, Teachers College, and therefore the CCRC, were affected. All four grants that were cut came from the Institute of Education Sciences. The now-terminated grants supported:
- A study on whether work-study programs improve retention, degree completion and employment postgraduation.
- An analysis of how effective Virginia’s Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead program has been in helping low-income students access short-term training programs.
- An apprenticeship program that helps develop the next generation of state-level higher ed policy researchers.
- A network of six research groups studying ways to reverse post-pandemic enrollment declines.
It added to the blow CCRC had already experienced in February when the Department of Education canceled 10 contracts with Regional Educational Laboratories, which are also overseen by the IES, saying they were examples of “woke” government spending. The REL Northwest had signed a contract with CCRC to pilot a professional development program for community college faculty members.

“It is hard to overstate the importance of IES grants and contracts to a research center like CCRC,” said Brock, who was commissioner of the National Center for Education Research at IES from 2013 to 2018.

CCRC has appealed the decision to terminate the grants.

“We do not know how long the process will take,” Brock wrote, “but are hopeful that fair minds will rule in our favor.”
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April 16, 2025
Student Success Podcast: Navigating Students’ Digital Addictions

This season of Voices of Student Success, “Preparing Gen Z for Unknown Futures,” addresses challenges in readying young people for the next chapter of their lives in the face of large-scale global changes. The latest episode addresses how digitization has made it easier for young people to engage in unhealthy habits, including substance abuse, pathological gambling or social media addiction, compared to past generations.

Host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Amaura Kemmerer, director of clinical affairs for Uwill, to discuss the role of preventive health measures and how existing research can provide a road map for addressing new challenges.

Listen to the episode here and learn more about The Key here.

Read a transcript of the podcast here.

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April 16, 2025
Proposed Budget Cuts Could End Fulbright Program

The Trump administration is looking to cut the State Department’s budget by almost half, and educational and cultural exchange programs, like the Fulbright scholarship, could be fully eliminated as a result, The Washington Post reported Monday.

An internal memo, obtained by the Post, suggested that the department may only have $28.4 billion to spend next fiscal year to cover all of its staffing and operations and to share with the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that Trump has already tried to eliminate. That’s $27 billion, or 48 percent, less funding than the two groups received in fiscal year 2025.

The proposed budget cuts would terminate the Fulbright scholarship, a highly selective cultural exchange program established by Congress in 1946, along with the State Department’s other educational and cultural programs. The president has yet to propose his budget for fiscal year 2026 to Congress, though he’s expected to do so later this month, the Post reported. Congress, by law, has the final say about which programs get funding.

Fulbright funding and operations have already been in flux during the early days of the Trump administration as some participants have struggled to obtain their visas for next academic year and others are waiting on stipend funds that had been promised to get them through the current term, Inside Higher Ed has reported.

The State Department did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

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April 16, 2025
How to Better Support Deans (opinion)

Being a president is hard. Seriously hard. We are watching the rapidly increasing presidential turnover rate collide with the lack of formal succession planning at a time when higher education is under significant political pressure. This is a serious problem for higher education.

But contrary to the popular perception, the president is not the sole difference-maker to an institution’s success. Once we look outside the spotlight of the presidency, we remember the institution’s core mission: academics. Skilled, effective academic leadership is vital to the ongoing success of an institution.

Standing at the forefront of the academic mission is the provost. In case you are wondering what a provost does, they are, on paper, the chief academic officer, responsible for the vision and oversight of all academic affairs. As important as that sounds, Larry A. Nielsen, in his book Provost: Experiences, Reflections and Advice From a Former “Number Two” on Campus, describes the provost as the university’s “stay-at-home parent.” Not so glamorous.

It is those leaders at the next level below the provost, the deans, who have responsibility for the vision and oversight of their respective colleges or schools. It is in these units where the bulk of the work happens for the academy to accomplish its mission, in research, teaching and service.

In the current climate for higher education, where its value is being challenged and the fight for student enrollment is running high, the provost and deans hold the key to academic transformation, as they strive to make their institution a strong destination that changes students’ lives and opens doors to new careers. Additionally, the deans and their faculty are closer to the ground in terms of understanding what students and their communities need and want. They primarily shape which courses, programs, majors and minors are offered. They do this work. Not the president.

This raises a question: What can be done to better support the deans?

Deans operate at a critical transition point. They serve at the discretion of the provost and president, and, as such, take direction (or sometimes lack of direction) that comes down to them. At the same time, deans are serving and representing their faculty and staff, working to support their success in doing the actual work of educating, advancing knowledge and serving the institution as good citizens and stewards. This crunch between above and below brings a lot of pressure for deans, even in the best of circumstances.

Thus, having coached and/or consulted with close to 100 deans over the years, I offer the following strategies.

Give Them Resources and Get Out of the Way

Being a dean is more closely aligned in its responsibilities to a presidential role than that of a provost. The dean oversees their school, with responsibility to set vision, create strategy, raise money, build and oversee administrative teams, manage politics, and drive results.

What a dean is not is a “stay-at-home parent.”

For deans to be most successful, the provost needs (to the best of their abilities) to provide deans with resources, professional development, time and clear direction. The provost (and at times the president) then needs to clear roadblocks, make introductions to key donors and stakeholders, and be available to the deans, as needed. You might say that the provost could consider the deans their most important constituents. If the deans are successful, it will greatly enhance the provost’s success.

Allow Deans to Meet Alone Regularly

Being a dean can be lonely. There is no one in their school to whom they can express insecurities or speak candidly, especially about sensitive issues. Providing space for the deans to meet and talk openly, candidly and even vulnerably with one another builds a group of trusted peers and advisers and creates a safe space to discuss challenges and give and get feedback from colleagues who may be experiencing the same.

This process yields tremendous benefits for a campus, where challenges and opportunities across the schools can become aligned, resulting in better institutional decision-making, accountability and communication. The provost may think they should be in the room for these conversations (to hear what’s happening for the deans, to be helpful, etc.), but their presence limits the quality and openness of the conversations. If provosts want to be helpful, sponsor a monthly breakfast or dinner for the deans to meet alone. At a large R-1 where I have co-facilitated a new department chairs program for many years, the program has become affectionately known as “chairapy.” The same support could be provided for deans (deanhabilitation? I’m still working on a name for this one).

Build a Team of Deans

The deanship is an isolating role. The default setting for deans is to engage in turf wars with other deans, each jockeying for the attention and resources from the president, provost and CFO. As a result, many institutions fail to recognize how to leverage the deans as a true governing body on campus. Instead, both the provost and the president would benefit from investing their time and energy in supporting a deans’ council that has (as the Center for Creative Leadership proposes) shared direction, alignment and commitment. A unified team of deans allows for better decision-making, mutual support and resource sharing, as well as more consistent communication throughout the institution. Instead of fueling the common narrative of individual fiefdoms, invest in the deans as a team and reap the rewards of a better-functioning organization.

Provide Deans With Information

Deans like independence, running their shops with minimal interference. However, deans also need information and from all directions: above, below, across and outside. When information is lacking, rumors fill the void. Faculty will speculate, staff will complain or withdraw, stakeholders will wonder, “What is that dean doing, anyway?”

To mitigate these issues, stakeholders need to share information and in particular, give the why, the context and rationale behind an issue. So if anyone wants to be helpful to their deans, overinform them and always include reasons why the information is important. If too much information is being provided, let the dean set the limits. And when a dean asks about an issue, please answer them (barring legal reasons not to). Don’t withhold. A dean left in the dark is only as good as the flashlight they have.

Be a Thought Partner

Deans attend a relentless number of meetings. As a client of mine once shared with me, “I have more requests for standing monthly meetings than there are hours in a month.” To avoid crushing deans with ineffective usage of their time, any meeting with them should be generative, one in which problems are being solved, decisions are being made, strategies are being forged and deals are being closed. Come to deans with solutions, with innovations and with energy. As the famous line from the film Jerry Maguire goes, “Help me help you!” Offer to be the dean’s thought partner, to stand (metaphorically) shoulder to shoulder and think through an issue together.

Get Them a Coach

As an executive coach, I recognize this one comes with my own inherent biases. And yet, I have seen firsthand the payoffs of providing executive coaching to deans. The return on investment easily justifies the financial cost. I do not wish to oversell this service. Just know it is super helpful—some might even say vitally.

Ask Deans What They Need

Finally, if you are not sure how to be helpful to a dean(s), ask them. They will know. A savvy dean, given the right mix of resources, support and collaboration, can accomplish great things, ultimately guiding their school to make the lasting impacts higher education so desperately needs these days: good news stories, student successes and positive contributions to their communities and country. A dean’s success can be a great counterbalance to the political side show that distracts from what truly makes the academy invaluable.

Rob Kramer is a special adviser to the provost at Southern Oregon University, the former senior leadership adviser at the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and an executive coach and consultant in higher education and academic medicine.

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April 15, 2025
Cash-Strapped Colleges Opt for Wellness Vending Machines

A wellness vending machine helps increase access to reproductive health products at College of the Redwoods.

ADragan/iStock/Getty Images Plus

According to a May 2024 Student Voice survey, roughly one in five community college students (19 percent) believe their institution should invest in wellness facilities or services to promote well-being. A recent pilot program across the state of California seeks to remove barriers to accessing health supplies for community college students.

The Wellness Vending Machine Pilot Program, a state-funded program established by Assembly Bill 2482, which passed in 2022, aims to make preventative care products more accessible to college students. The program provides funding for 18 colleges to address students’ physical health and overall academic success in a unique, lower-cost way: through vending machines that dispense everything from Band-Aids to birth control.

For some institutions, like College of the Redwoods, the vending machine is the primary source of personal care products on campus.

Community colleges in particular are often underresourced and limited in their ability to provide students with wraparound support services. A 2024 survey by the Richmond Federal Reserve of 80 community colleges in the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and most of West Virginia found that only 3.8 percent of responding institutions offered on-site health services during the 2022–23 academic year. The greatest obstacle to offering such resources is funding.

Katrina Hanson, manager of retention, basic needs and well-being for the College of the Redwoods community college district in Central California, applied for the vending machine grant in July 2023 to address a service gap on the main campus in Eureka.

The College of the Redwoods closed its Eureka student health center in spring 2023, shifting from having a part-time nurse to instead offering tele–mental health services through TimelyCare. It also purchased three wellness vending machines: two for Eureka and one for one of its other two campuses, on the Hoopa Indian reservation.

“It’s not a complete substitute for in-person care,” Hanson said. “But it is more equitable for our students on our Hoopa [Klamath-Trinity Instructional City] and Crescent City [Del Norte Education Center] campuses, as well as all of our online students.”

How it works: The college set up the three wellness vending machines in August 2023, placing one in Eureka’s library and the other in a residence hall, as well as one on the Hoopa campus. The grant requires participating colleges to place vending machines in a central location that students can access at any time.

The requirements also outline the products that should be sold, including condoms, dental dams, menstrual cups, lubricants, tampons, menstrual pads, pregnancy tests and emergency contraception pills. College staff identify and supply the machines with other popular or needed supplies.

Eureka’s wellness vending machine is located in the library, which has the most hours of availability for students, allowing them to access it when they need various health supplies.

Katrina Hanson/College of the Redwoods

For example, when Eureka’s health center closed, Hanson asked which services were most popular. She learned that pregnancy tests and urinary tract infection tests were most commonly used, so she now ensures that the campus vending machines has those supplies available.

Other popular items are Band-Aids, which are free in the machine, and Benadryl, which is discounted.

The machines themselves are rented from a company that also handles snack machines around campus, so the college does not have to deal with maintenance or money collection. Grant funding will cover the machines for the five years of the pilot, but supplies are budgeted by the institution.

“We are trying to get it to be at least somewhat self-sustaining by trying out different items,” Hanson said. “The sexual health and menstrual health supplies are free or discounted, per our grant agreement. The other items we can offer at regular price to try to make some money to keep the project going.”

Survey Says

Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey of college students found that about two-thirds of respondents (n=5,025) rated the variety and quality of campus health and wellness offerings as good or average; about 5 percent indicated they had poor resources. Numbers were similar for respondents at two- and four-year institutions.

Two birds, one machine: In addition to offering tailored health products for students, the vending machines also work as a resource hub, displaying informational posters in English and Spanish to equip learners with important information.

Poster content includes what to know about emergency contraception, how to use the opioid overdose–reversing drug Narcan/naloxone, sexual wellness education and how to provide feedback to the college about using the machine.

Rightsizing: Since setting up the machines, college staff have noticed that two machines (the one on the reservation campus and the one in the Eureka dorm) weren’t being used often, or students were only buying certain supplies. In the residence hall, for example, students only really wanted condoms. So campus leaders elected to downsize and just keep the one machine in the library, offering free supplies in other places instead.

This academic year, the most purchased items have been condoms, menstrual cups, fentanyl tests, Narcan, tampons and acetaminophen. Students also frequently purchase deodorant, energy gels, LiquidIV, lip balm, ibuprofen, pregnancy tests and cough drops.

So far, the machines haven’t been profitable, but staff pull supplies from the Basic Needs Center or local partners to keep costs low and continue to vary their offerings.

The college is planning to reopen its student health center following construction, so the vending machines will support students in the meantime, Hanson said.

Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.

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April 15, 2025
Some Rules for Campus Resistance (opinion)
Given what’s happened at Columbia University (and what is happening now at other Ivies, and beyond), every university leader in the United States ought to be planning in advance what they will do when similar pressures are brought to bear on them. Academics ought to as well; all the citizens of our republics of learning should care about their institutions and be willing to defend them.

Over a decade ago, here at the University of Virginia, we had a nasty little fight with our Board of Visitors when they tried to fire President Teresa Sullivan with little more logic or rationale than we’re currently seeing come out of Washington. (The American Association of University Professors produced a pretty good report about it, if you want to read something unsettling.)

Our opponents in that little pas de deux had a degree of ignorance that amply matched their arrogance, but we were lucky in discovering allies far beyond Charlottesville in our alumni base and other institutions.

At the time, I recognized that we had learned some smaller, tactical lessons in the whole shindig that might be relatively portable across different universities. I almost published them, but decided that it was better to let my university go forward without adding my two cents.

Now, however, in our moment, these seem relevant again. So, in the wake of Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s assault, I dusted them off and polished them up. They didn’t need much polishing, to be honest. Consider this a small pamphlet for thinking about hosting “a little rebellion now and then” on your campus, when such is needful.
1. Don’t start the fight. Have a prompting event—even if you invite it merely by doing your job. We were lucky to have a “day of infamy” jump-start our events in 2012. It was dropped, gift wrapped, into our lap. We were, from the beginning, in the position of the victim—the one who was wronged. Being the aggrieved party from the start helps. A lot.
1. Be a big tent, but have one common aim. Because the misdeed was so expansive in its implications, the scope of our “we” was enormously wide. The “we” who was violated included not just the president, but the administration, faculty and staff—and not just them, but the students, and the alumni, and indeed the community of Charlottesville, and possibly all those interested in the future of academia in America and beyond. And anyway, you’re not seeking consensus: You’re seeking alliance. This is hard for us academics, because we are so excellent at invidious distinctions. But remember: World War II was won by an alliance of the British empire, the anticolonialist liberal United States and the definitionally revolutionary U.S.S.R. If those three states could work together, you can say something nice about professors in the business school, or vice versa. The same goes for deans and administrators: They are not the enemy. By coordinating the most expansive community as the community to whom voice could be given, we ensured not just that numbers were on our side, but that the widest set of complaints and grievances were brought to bear on the most precise targets.
2. Lean into shared governance. No one ever expected the UVA Faculty Senate to be consequential, least of all the Faculty Senate. It was the place where we sent junior faculty “to learn about the university”; given how much import anyone normally gives to learning about the university, that shows you what we thought of it. But, to borrow from Don Rumsfeld, you go to war with the institutions you have, not the institutions you wish you had, and now everyone knows that the Faculty Senate can matter, and matter decisively. I hope we never forget it. I hope you can learn from our example and not your own.
3. Tenure counts. You know that thing we say about tenure mattering for free expression and for ensuring that you can speak your mind on academic matters without getting fired by administrators who don’t like what you have to say? I used to find it annoying and silly— “of course that’s not going to happen, not today,” I thought; “no one will be so dictatorial.” Well, lookie here—I was wrong. The first and consistently most vocal group in the whole UVA fracas was the faculty. The staff members were behind us (especially the women on the university’s staff, who had felt represented by Sullivan in a powerful way), but obviously they were in the most vulnerable position. And the deans and administrators were by and large ready to accept the coup as a fait accompli. (While the deans of the various schools eventually came around, it took them some time; only after they realized that almost every last one of the faculty were extraordinarily pissed, and shopping their CVs around, did they realize that they were hurting themselves more by not saying anything than they would by saying something.)
1. “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower said that, and it’s true here. The prompting event of our crisis was of course the firing of our President Sullivan by our board rector, Helen Dragas, and a few others (let’s be honest about what it was and who did it). But it was clear from the beginning that there were larger issues here—about the disconnect between oversight, management and teachers and researchers, about the creeping “corporatization” of the board (though that does a terrible disservice to wise governance of corporations around the world, which would never be run the way most university boards try to run their institutions), about the failure of faculty to take seriously how the higher levels of the university were operating—matters far larger than simply this act. As the crisis developed, we realized we were reaping the consequences of structural contempt toward the faculty (and the rest of the university, really) by the Board of Visitors and a crisis of apathy about university governance on the part of the faculty. The problem may be larger than you first realize: Get it in focus, first and foremost.
2. “Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” The idea that disputes of these sorts are amenable most basically to conversation is mistaken. Statements were continually communicated to our Board of Visitors, but we knew almost at once that argument was not our real weapon. Once you decide to dissent, the time for talk is over, at least with opponents such as these; they will not be amenable to conversation—not without a great deal of pressure from other forces and sources. Your aim is not to convince your opponents; your aim is to beat them. To do that, you must persuade potential allies, not actual enemies. That said, it never hurts to be reasonable and produce strong arguments directed at your opponents, so long as you know those arguments are largely valuable because they are overheard by others.
3. At no point should you demonize or vilify your opponents. It weirdly invests them with power you need not bestow. You’re in a fight with someone who’s like a toddler—do not descend to their level. Speak calmly, as to a toddler having a temper tantrum. You won’t convince them, but you will demonstrate you are not afraid. That will upset them more. If they lose, of course they will say you did demonize and belittle them; they’ll call you “so mean,” “ungracious” and “nasty in tone.” Don’t worry; everyone else knows otherwise. Saying that may be their only consolation prize. Let them have it. You’re walking out with the Benjamins. Or, in our case, the Sullivan.
1. Time is not your friend, but nonetheless, boil the frog slowly. In a delicious irony, the coup at UVA was reversed “incrementally”—a bad word for Rector Dragas, a good word for President Sullivan. Resistance to the coup began with some immediate disquiet from the faculty and a few students on campus when it was first announced. But the faculty knew from the beginning they wouldn’t be the material cause of any change; they needed more powerful allies. The momentum built slowly, then snowballed at the end. And the momentum built both inside the institution and outside it: inside, mostly by growing outrage at the trickle of information released and the little bit we could discover (or, more properly, the media could discover) over time, and outside, by the gradual but eventually approaching exponential expansion of numbers and kinds of UVA stakeholders who expressed outrage.
The end of the first week saw the Faculty Senate meeting where 800 faculty and others listened as our provost, John Simon, expressed real and powerful concern, and subtle outrage, over what had happened and how it had happened. By the end of the second week, we had politicians, alumni, other university faculties—and a number of major donors—speaking out in outrage. And then, too, we began to see newspaper editorial boards—and Katie Couric—condemn the firing. Had the Board of Visitors waited a bit longer to reverse its action, no doubt the United Nations, the E.U., the Nature Conservancy, the NBA, al Qaeda and Justin Bieber would have issued statements.

The lesson here? Don’t try to get everyone on board all at once. Trust the swarm method, but go through your list of stakeholders methodically—moving from the most swayable to the least so. Rank them in their “get-ability,” and then get them, encouraging the ones you already have on your side to increase pressure on the next-most-gettable ones. On day two of a crisis, you probably won’t get The Washington Post and your institution’s major donors to sign on to calling this an outrage; but by day 10, or 14, with a little help, and momentum from other people, you may. And better still, while this is happening, your opponents probably won’t notice the pressure gradually ratcheting up, as they are simply trying to keep responding to different constituencies. By the time they realize that there are a lot of people angry at them, there’s little they can do to quell the anger, except give in.
1. Have a lousy enemy, and let everyone see that. Maleficence is usually associated with incompetence, and in the case of this episode, that was true. We were extraordinarily fortunate in our foe. The Kremlin-like silence of the Board of Visitors as the shock and anger mounted; the Politburo-like prose when the board decided to speak; the slow uncovering of the incredibly flimsy reasoning behind the decision, revealed in emails over the previous months; the remarkable stubbornness, coupled with utterly no sense of the appearance of absurdity regarding the irrationality of the stubbornness—it’s as if we couldn’t have had a better opponent for this fight.
But it is important that what gets publicized is your opponents’ badness, not your contempt for them. Academics are really, really skilled at expressing contempt. Few of us realize it doesn’t make us look good, either in faculty meetings or on social media. You never win an argument by judging your opponents. Instead, let your opponents be seen for who they are.

This is mostly out of your control, but it might be possible to imagine different ways of framing your opponent, so that different profiles of them emerge. In our case it was clear early on that it would be very important not to make this about the entire Board of Visitors but to focus on a small clique inside it so that pressure could be put upon the whole in such a way that some fractures would result; we hoped that such fractures, once they appeared, would quickly cause the whole to shatter. And they did: In the end Sullivan’s reinstatement was a unanimous board decision, the unanimity induced by the fact that the Dragas faction knew they had lost and quickly crumbled.

Anyway, these are some things I think we learned. Best of luck if you get in a position to need them. You’ll need all the luck you can get. We certainly did. But, you know, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. That was on a motivational poster I saw once. Occasionally such things are useful. If you don’t know what I mean, I fear you will soon.

Charles Mathewes is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.
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April 15, 2025