Tag: Jobs

  • AGB leader resigns abruptly after six months

    AGB leader resigns abruptly after six months

    Less than a year into the job, Framroze Virjee is out as president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

    Virjee retired, a decision that was effective Saturday, according to an email from Ross Mugler, chair of AGB’s Board of Directors, who has been tapped as acting president and CEO.

    “Fram shared that after working diligently to further the organization’s mission, he determined that the president/CEO role at AGB did not align operationally with his personal and professional goals, and he decided to step down from the organization. The AGB Board of Directors accepted his resignation and offered its appreciation for his accomplishments during his tenure,” Mugler wrote in a Monday email.

    In a message to AGB staff, Virjee wrote, “This was a difficult decision and not one that I made casually, but instead only after careful consideration and thought. As I leave AGB, I remain committed to its mission of supporting excellence in board governance and leadership and remain dedicated to the value of higher education in the lives of students, our communities, and our nation.”

    Virjee, president emeritus of California State University, Fullerton, formally started in mid-August after his predecessor, former AGB president and CEO Henry Stoever, resigned amid plagiarism allegations in late 2023.

    AGB did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed on Monday about Virjee’s sudden exit, but the organization’s website has been updated to reflect the leadership change.

    “As a result of this announcement, I have agreed to serve as acting president and CEO while the AGB Board of Directors finalizes details regarding new leadership,” Mugler wrote Monday.

    Mugler recently retired as commissioner of the revenue for Hampton, Va., a post he held for more than three decades. Mugler has been on AGB’s board since 2018 and was appointed five times to Old Dominion University’s Board of Visitors.

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  • Senate vote finalizes Linda McMahon as education secretary

    Senate vote finalizes Linda McMahon as education secretary

    Linda McMahon was narrowly confirmed along party lines as President Trump’s secretary of education in a 51-to-45 Senate vote late Monday afternoon and sworn in shortly after at the Department of Education building.

    All eyes are now on the White House as educators, policy experts and advocates anxiously wait to see if Trump will sign a controversial but highly anticipated executive order to abolish the very department McMahon has been confirmed to lead.

    The president and his allies have promoted the idea of dismantling the 45-year-old agency since the early days of his campaign for a second term, saying the department has grown too big and interferes in matters best left to local and state authorities.

    But the idea isn’t entirely new, nor would it be easy to implement. It would require legislative support, as the department’s existence is written into statute. Shuttering it would require a majority vote in both houses of Congress.

    “We can expect there to be a bit of a panic when the order comes out,” Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education, told Inside Higher Ed.

    It remains unclear to observers what mechanisms the Trump administration would use to close the department, however.

    “This will all depend on what dismantling the department truly means,” Guillory said. “I believe that the executive order would be somewhat broad, like we’ve seen [in the case of the diversity, equity and inclusion orders], and it will give the department the opportunity to refine the details.”

    Still, Trump has continued to promote the concept, and red states across the country have backed it. Chatter about the executive order began circling just days after he took office in January, and the plans were confirmed by multiple news sources in early February, though specifics were still unclear.

    Since the plans were leaked, Trump himself has publicly confirmed his intention to dismantle the department, although he did not disclose specific details on how he would do so.

    Guillory believes that much like when Republicans have tried to get rid of the department in the past, they will lack the congressional votes needed to officially do so. But Trump could keep the skeleton of the department and move its core functions elsewhere, he said.

    “Our thinking, because we’ve seen this before, is that likely a lot of the functionality of the department would get placed at other agencies, but we would be curious as to what functions would be terminated entirely,” he said. “That would cause the most concern for our members … Will those things simply be moved to another agency, or will some of those things not?”

    There are certain functions that are protected by the Higher Education Act of 1965, Guillory said. “The department legally would not necessarily be able to just terminate student aid programs, for example.” But he still worries the transition of oversight from one department to another may not be seamless.

    Shortly before the vote began on Monday, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, made the Democrats’ stance on McMahon’s nomination clear.

    “Before colleagues vote on Linda McMahon’s nomination for secretary of education, they should remember a vote for Mrs. McMahon is a vote for draconian cuts to education … That’s why I am so proud that every Democrat will vote no,” he said.

    Other democratic lawmakers warned during floor comments on Thursday that McMahon’s confirmation, and the major department-level changes she’s backed, could risk the future of the department.

    Senator Gary Peters of Michigan said the country needs a secretary of education “who values and respects public education.”

    “Instead of working to protect funding,” he said, “she’s blatantly supported efforts to dismantle our education system.”

    For more background on what senators have said about McMahon, check out Inside Higher Ed’s live blog from her confirmation hearing, or read the five key takeaways.

    Senator Alex Padilla of California noted the cuts that have already been made to more than 100 departmental research contracts and countless nonpartisan career staff members.

    “They’re making it clear that this is just the beginning,” he said. “We could talk about Linda McMahon’s qualifications, or frankly lack thereof, but I’m not shocked, because President Trump isn’t looking for someone with the background or commitment to public education in America. He’s looking for someone to destroy it.”

    Although no Republicans commented Thursday, they voted unanimously to confirm McMahon in Monday’s vote (Republican senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming were not present for the vote. Two Democrats were also absent). The majority leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, spoke in support of McMahon before the final confirmation.

    “Mrs. McMahon is an accomplished businesswoman and public servant,” he said. “I’m glad that Mrs. McMahon plans to work in a way that empowers those closest to the student, because they are in the best position to do what’s right for that student … I look forward to working with Mrs. McMahon to limit bureaucracy, empower state governments and let good teachers do what they’re best at.”

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    Guillory expects McMahon to pick up accreditation policies as one of the first issues up for discussion.

    He also is expecting the new secretary to prioritize rethinking and potentially amending the financial value transparency and gainful-employment rule, a policy initiated by the Biden administration to better hold higher ed institutions accountable for students’ outcomes. A lawsuit was filed against the regulation in 2023, but federal judgment has been put on pause to allow the new administration’s Education Department to determine its position on the policy.

    It still remains unclear whether Trump will try to protect the gainful-employment rule or repeal it and drop the case, but Guillory has been encouraged by the line of communication between the department and higher ed leaders on the topic.

    “They’ve been really good about listening to and hearing from our members directly on some of the issues that they’ve experienced while they were reporting [financial transparency data] and they are really trying to get feedback on how can we make this better,” he said.

    Other topics of focus for McMahon will likely include expanded details on Trump’s enforcement of Title IX; his diversity, equity and inclusion orders; and the freeze of applications to income-driven repayment plans for student loans, Guillory said.

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  • Academics should forcefully reject the claim they are “promoting ideology”

    Academics should forcefully reject the claim they are “promoting ideology”

    To the editor:

    Jonathan Eburne calls the National Endowment for the Humanities’ posting of the executive orders regarding the promotion of gender, equity and environmental justice ideology an act of “capitulation” equivalent to “the ideological extension of a political party” (“An Open Letter to the NEH,” Feb. 28, 2025). I share his critical stance toward the executive orders and the spirit driving them. But his accusation against the NEH is unfair and normalizes a dangerous misreading of the scope of the orders that higher education must avoid.

    The NEH chair and staffers are federal employees, bound to obey government directives. To refuse compliance would invite immediate termination of the agency’s talented, experienced staff and call the future of the agency into question. With them would go vital funding and stewardship for the humanities that sustains faculty, students, state humanities councils and members of the public.

    To be clear, these orders apply across the federal government, and nothing in them is specific to the NEH. They do not apply to research and teaching; one (EO 14173) includes a carve-out for institutions of higher education.

    By treating NEH projects as falling under the scope of the orders, Eburne implicitly assents to the notion that research and teaching are equivalent to promoting ideology. This is indeed the guiding belief in Florida, and it is shared by the current administration.

    In fact, “promoting ideology” is not an accurate definition of scholarly or scientific inquiry, including the important work of teaching and doing research on gender, equity and the environment.

    It is crucial that we stand up against attempts to define academics as promoters of ideology and thus as untrustworthy stewards of knowledge, or, as the vice president has put it, dedicated to “deceit and lies, not to the truth.” It’s malicious abuse of language designed to undermine people’s confidence in academia and in expertise in general. The right strategy is not to accept a bad definition—it’s to call out the definition as wrong and reject the labeling while these orders are litigated in the courts.

    Joy Connolly is the president of the American Council of Learned Societies.

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  • Five strategies for improving campus career centers (opinion)

    Five strategies for improving campus career centers (opinion)

    For decades, work-life balance has been seen as the gold standard of career success. The idea suggests that professionals should allocate time and energy evenly between work and personal life, ensuring equilibrium between competing responsibilities. But in reality, balance is often an illusion—an unattainable tightrope walk that leaves individuals feeling guilty, unfulfilled and stretched too thin.

    The workforce of today—and especially the workforce of tomorrow—no longer aspires to a segmented life. Instead, workers seek career and life integration, a holistic approach where career, personal growth and well-being are deeply interconnected. Unlike the concept of work-life balance, which implies a constant trade-off, career and life integration builds synergy between personal and professional aspirations.

    Workday’s Global Workforce Report found that employees who perceive their work as meaningful feel 37 percent more accomplished than those who don’t, even when facing workloads they describe as “challenging.” An Inside Higher Ed Career Advice piece written by a University of Michigan administrator explored the importance of integrating values into the career exploration process. Additionally, research highlighted in the Journal of Personality indicates that young adults’ personal values significantly influence their career-related preferences, suggesting a strong desire for roles that reflect their core values. ​

    If higher ed institutions continue to treat career development as separate from personal well-being, they will fail to meet the evolving needs of students and professionals alike. Career centers must evolve into career and life design labs—hubs of lifelong guidance, personal development and future readiness. This piece outlines five strategic imperatives that institutions must embrace to lead this transformation.

    1. Moving from work-life balance to career and life integration.

    The traditional work-life balance model assumes a strict separation between career and personal life, often emphasizing boundaries rather than synergy. The statistics tell a compelling story:

    • A Deloitte study found that 66 percent of employees report feeling chronically overworked or burned out despite efforts to maintain work-life balance.
    • Research from Gallup indicates that 76 percent of millennials believe a successful career should seamlessly integrate with personal fulfillment rather than be kept separate.
    • A recent Moodle study indicates that job burnout has reached an all-time high of 66 percent in 2025. ​

    Campus career services leaders must reframe their approach. Students need tools to design careers that complement their life aspirations rather than forcing them to choose between professional success and personal fulfillment.

    Most students and alumni struggle with clarity—they pursue careers based on external pressures rather than intrinsic motivations. Career centers must facilitate career and life vision workshops to help individuals align their inner purpose with external opportunities. By integrating career and life design principles into career services, institutions empower students to prototype different pathways, develop adaptability and connect their academic and professional lives with personal meaning.

    By using a reflective, experiential approach, students learn that career development is not a rigid ladder but a fluid, evolving process.

    1. Integrating emotional agility into career coaching.

    One of the greatest barriers to success is not external—it’s internal. It is not a lack of skills. It is a lack of confidence, clarity and emotional agility. Many students enter the workforce grappling with impostor syndrome, career anxiety and fear of failure. A research study titled “The Impostor Phenomenon,” published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, shows that over 70 percent of people experience impostor syndrome at some point in their lives.

    Institutions must integrate emotional intelligence training into their strategic plans. Students need to learn how to navigate career uncertainty with resilience rather than fear. Instead of merely offering job search strategies, career coaches should incorporate cognitive reframing techniques to help students shift from self-doubt to empowerment. This involves helping students recognize negative thought patterns and replace them with action-oriented mindsets.

    For instance, instead of viewing rejection as a failure, students should be encouraged to see it as an iteration in the career and life design process. Career setbacks, industry changes and professional pivots are inevitable.

    Practical steps for career centers:

    • Train career coaches in cognitive-behavioral coaching techniques to help students recognize and reframe self-limiting narratives.
    • Integrate self-awareness exercises that help students identify core fears (of failure, rejection or inadequacy) and develop action plans to overcome them with emotional strength.
    • Provide group coaching sessions focused on overcoming impostor syndrome, building confidence and developing a growth mindset.
    • Use AI-driven career reflection tools to help students track their confidence growth over time.
    • Incorporate mindfulness practices and journaling into safe spaces and welcoming career and life design studios to help students reframe failure as part of their evolving unique narrative.

    Emotional agility is a core component of career development. Success today isn’t about having the perfect career path—it’s about navigating uncertainty with emotional agility. Career services must equip students with resilience and adaptability to thrive in ever-changing industries.

    1. Merging personal, career and professional development.

    Career and life design should be deeply personal, shaped by self-awareness, curiosity and personal reflection. We mention “personal” first, because we begin with the person.

    Career services has historically focused on résumé reviews, job placement and networking strategies—important elements, but not enough for long-term success. A 2023 report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that students who integrate personal development with career planning—through leadership training, mentorship and values-based exploration—are significantly more career-ready upon graduation. Rather than pushing students toward the highest-paying or most prestigious jobs, career centers should help them define success on their own terms.

    Practical steps for career centers:

    • Develop integrated mentorship networks that connect students with professionals who exemplify career and life integration.
    • Help students build personalized business plans that help them take ownership of the story they are both writing and telling.
    • Leverage design thinking principles, encouraging students to experiment with career pathways that embrace uncertainty, adaptability and iterative learning rather than rigid, predetermined plans.

    AI can assist in career trajectory mapping, skills assessment and predictive job market insights, while human coaches focus on deep coaching, the power of stories and career and life integration strategies.

    1. Considering AI-powered hyperpersonalized career coaching.

    While traditional career advising has relied heavily on in-person interactions, the next evolution of career services will be AI-empowered, data-informed and hyperpersonalized. AI-driven career exploration tools can analyze a student’s experiences to offer real-time, customized career insights. AI agents such as the 24-7 virtual Career and Life Design Lab provide personalized career simulations, self-actualization exercises and self-realization insights to help individuals align their career paths with their purpose.

    This mindset shift in career services will blend AI and human coaching. AI can assist in career trajectory mapping, skills assessment and predictive job market insights, while human coaches focus on deep coaching, the power of stories and career and life integration strategies. This synergy allows for scalable yet deeply personalized career services.

    Practical steps for career centers:

    • Integrate AI-driven solutions and experiential learning methodologies.
    • Introduce future-self mapping, where students interview their future selves and map out short- and long-term goals.
    • Use reverse-engineering techniques, working backward from the desired impact to identify the necessary skills, experiences and trajectories.
    • Implement AI-powered career simulations, allowing students to test and refine career decisions in a risk-free environment that tackles limiting beliefs and impostor syndrome.
    1. Scaling lifelong learning beyond graduation.

    The future of work demands continuous upskilling, reskilling and career agility. Institutions must create a culture of lifelong learning, where students and alumni receive ongoing support throughout their careers. Career services must expand their scope to lifelong learning and helping students and alumni develop not résumés, but portfolios of experiences.

    Practical steps for career centers:

    • Create career and life integration circles, where alumni engage in peer coaching, mentorship and accountability partnerships.
    • Offer subscription-based career services, ensuring alumni have access to coaching, upskilling and career reinvention programs throughout their professional lives.
    • Establish annual career and life re-evaluation workshops, helping alumni recalibrate their career and life vision.

    Conclusion: The New Paradigm

    The future of work is not about balance. It is about integration. By embedding the career and life design theoretical framework into institutional frameworks, universities can better equip students for a rapidly changing world. Colleges and universities that fail to adapt will be left behind, while those that embrace career and life design—leveraging both AI and a holistic approach to personal, career and professional development—will supercharge their teams with scale and empower students to craft lives of purpose, adaptability and lasting impact.

    The question is no longer whether career centers should evolve—it is whether they can afford not to.

    Does your career center offer group coaching sessions focused on confidence building, growth mindset or related topics? Tell us about it.

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  • VMI board rejects extension for superintendent

    VMI board rejects extension for superintendent

    Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors voted 10 to 6 on Friday against a contract extension for Major General Cedric Wins, a VMI graduate and the first Black leader in the college’s history.

    All 10 votes against the extension came from members appointed by Republican governor Glenn Youngkin, though four Youngkin appointees voted to renew the contract, joining two holdovers named to the board by Democratic governors, The Richmond-Times Dispatch reported.

    Wins’s contract expires June 30.

    The vote will end a contentious tenure for Wins, who joined VMI in 2021. He replaced General J. H. Binford Peay III, who led the college from 2003 to 2020, when he stepped down after an investigation determined systemic racism and sexism went unchecked under his watch.

    (Peay was awarded VMI’s highest honor in 2022 despite those findings.)

    Wins’s tenure at VMI, where he was tasked with righting the ship amid the fallout from the investigation, has been marked by controversy. He has faced off with alumni, whom he accused of spreading mistruths about VMI’s curricular offerings; clashed with student journalists over alumni involvement in the campus newspaper; and faced accusations that he went too far with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at VMI, which didn’t accept Black students until 1968 and women until 1997.

    Alumni have called for his firing and complained about his bonuses in recent years.

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  • Income-driven repayment applications on hold for three months

    Income-driven repayment applications on hold for three months

    Student loan borrowers won’t be able to apply for income-driven repayment plans for at least three months, The Washington Post reported.

    The Post obtained a memo sent last week from the Department of Education to student loan servicers directing them to stop processing all income-driven repayment and consolidation applications until at least May. The memo offers more clarity on how the department plans to proceed after a federal appeals court blocked the department from implementing a new income-driven repayment option for borrowers put in place by the Biden administration. That injunction also implicated parts of other income-driven repayment plans.

    Up until this point, all that student aid experts knew was that the department had disabled new online applications. Now, they know that all existing applications have also been included in the freeze.

    The application freeze is a problem for some borrowers who rely on income-driven repayment plans for more affordable payments and to avoid default. Under the plans, borrowers’ monthly payments are based on their disposable income and other factors, and after 20 to 25 years of payment, the remaining balance would be forgiven. But now, millions of borrowers no longer have access to IDR and are left with only the most expensive loan repayment options.   

    Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group for loan servicers, told the Post that “there is a lot to clean up.”

    “We will be working for [the Office of Federal Student Aid] to implement that transition once courts clear things up and bring some finality so borrowers can have certainty and confidence in their options now and in the future,” Buchanan said.

    The Education Department has said the pause is necessary under the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruling, but paper applications for loan consolidation will be allowed. 

    “A federal Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction preventing the U.S. Department of Education from implementing the SAVE Plan and parts of other income-driven repayment (IDR) plans,” a department spokesperson said. So “The department is reviewing repayment applications to conform with the Eighth Circuit’s ruling.” 

    But legal experts on federal loans have told Inside Higher Ed taking down the applications entirely is not necessary. As the department noted in its statement, the injunction only declares “parts” of the IDR plans—such as the end-of-program loan forgiveness—illegal. It does not ban the use of lessened monthly payments.

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  • One-day event creates institutional goals for student success

    One-day event creates institutional goals for student success

    Across higher education, identifying stakeholders who are engaging in similar initiatives or working toward mutual student success goals can be a challenge, and this is true at the institutional level as well.

    In a 2024 survey of student success professionals conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover, over half (59 percent) of respondents said they believe their institution is very or extremely effective at making student success an institutional priority.

    Two administrators at DePaul University in Chicago created a one-day event on campus to unite practitioners and leaders who care about student success to identify common goals and challenges.

    “It’s so necessary … to think about the gathering of individuals, because it really elevates what was most important for us, which is student success being everyone’s job,” says Ashley Williams, director of student success initiatives.

    Gathering together: The inaugural summit took place Dec. 3, 2024, with 350 staff, faculty members and administrators participating. The event featured outside experts, such as Monica Hall-Porter from the University of Texas at Austin as the keynote speaker, and the university president and provost addressed institutional goals for student success and closing achievement gaps.

    The goals for the summit, as outlined by organizers, included defining student success, determining how success is measured, fostering a coordinated culture for student success, charting a road map for enhancing student success and creating awareness of technology, systems and data relevant to student success, as well as sharing of best practices in place at the institution.

    The summit was titled Charting Student Success From Orientation Through Graduation, to reflect the student life cycle and how each practitioner contributes to student success. DePaul, as a Catholic institution, also frames student success through St. Vincent DePaul’s mission.

    Organizers were intentional about selecting individuals from various areas and disciplines across the university to drive creative and diverse conversations, says Michael Roberts, senior assistant dean for student success.

    DePaul’s summit united diverse professionals from a variety of areas and disciplines on campus.

    “I think folks can get … tunnel vision in trying to solve their problems and [trying] to cultivate expertise within their immediate or closest community,” Williams says. “We know there’s a lot of knowledge and strengths that exist across in the institution and in places you may not necessarily [be] thinking about in your day-to-day.”

    Unsiloing the institution and breaking organizational barriers allows for sharing resources, strengths, ideas and innovation through collaboration, Williams says.

    Putting it together: When creating the summit, Roberts and Williams prioritized institutional buy-in and ensuring their work was collaborative and not in competition with the work of others who engaged in student success spaces.

    The organizers engaged with others who were leaders in student success to contribute to planning and guide decision-making to ensure the event could execute goals in the ways they intended, Williams says.

    Partnerships also included identifying internal and external groups that could contribute resources and serve as sponsors to finance and run the event.

    One facet that was important to Roberts was not having the summit be a pep rally to gather enthusiasm, but something that could apply to faculty or staff members’ work directly. “Like, ‘this event is going to matter to me, and I’m going to be able to take something away from this and actually make use of it,’” he says.

    Looking ahead: The inaugural summit had a goal of 50 attendees, so reaching over 300 was a happy surprise, Roberts says. Attendees were a mix of faculty and staff, and feedback was overwhelmingly positive, Williams shares.

    Anecdotally, organizers heard that having a space to discuss topics and be exposed to other work happening across campus was valuable to attendees, as was building community with peers.

    “People felt informed; they walked away enlightened and kind of motivated, inspired to think about how they could lead, how they could pivot some of their work to better fit within a standard model of student success,” Williams says.

    In the future, organizers are looking to implement more programming that allows practitioners to participate in hands-on activities that allow them to engage in work directly.

    What’s being done at your institution to ensure administrators and practitioners in various areas are aware of and using data relevant to student success? Tell us about it.

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  • Penn State blocks embattled trustee from re-election

    Penn State blocks embattled trustee from re-election

    Embattled Pennsylvania State University trustee Barry Fenchak’s time on the board may be nearing an end: A subcommittee voted Wednesday that he was “unqualified and ineligible” to run again.

    Fenchak is one of nine trustees on the 36-member board who are elected by alumni. His term is set to expire at the end of June. But Fenchak—who is already locked in litigation with Penn State over what he considers its lack of fiscal transparency—plans to fight the decision.

    “This is completely in line with Penn State’s long-standing pattern with regard to trying to maintain their secrecy, and myself and our legal team will be evaluating these recent actions by Penn State and taking the appropriate actions in the court,” Fenchak told Inside Higher Ed.

    The outspoken trustee has been at the center of controversy for nearly a year as he has sought to obtain more details on the university’s rising endowment management fees, even filing a lawsuit for that information. Penn State initially refused to provide the financial details that Fenchak, an investment adviser, said he needed to perform his fiduciary duties; he argued that endowment management fees inexplicably climbed from 0.62 percent in 2013–14 to 2.49 percent by 2018–19. Eventually, as a result of his litigation, he was able to obtain the requested documents, he told Inside Higher Ed.

    His lawsuit is one of two brought against the university last year by trustees alleging a lack of transparency by the board. A local media outlet has also sued for alleged violations of open meetings laws.

    Efforts to Remove Fenchak

    Fellow trustees previously tried to boot Fenchak from the board last fall after he made a crude joke to a female staff member. Paraphrasing the PG-rated Tom Hanks movie A League of Their Own, Fenchak—who is bald and had just received a Penn State baseball cap as a gift at a university event—joked that it made him look like “a penis with a hat on,” according to court records.

    Fenchak’s remark prompted the board to call a meeting in October in an effort to remove him. However, a judge intervened, halting the board’s attempt to oust Fenchak.

    In his opinion granting the preliminary injunction, Centre County Court Judge Brian J. Marshall wrote that while he “is not suggesting that plaintiff should not be sanctioned,” the court had been “presented with credible and, in many instances uncontroverted, evidence that Plaintiff has been subject to ongoing retaliation by Defendants.”

    The judge also noted that Fenchak had sued Penn State just three days before the remark that the board used as justification for his removal.

    Now, months later, the board landed on a new tactic to remove Fenchak: The nine-member nominating subcommittee voted 8 to 1 last week to bar him from running for re-election.

    Daniel Delligatti, vice chair of the subcommittee, argued that Fenchak had been warned multiple times about “inappropriate behavior” and that he failed to live up to the board’s code of conduct.

    Fenchak’s attempt at humor made staff members feel uncomfortable, Delligatti said, and his candidacy for a second term was not in “alignment with Penn State’s mission and values.”

    Trustee Jay Paterno was the sole dissenting vote. He argued that “the process” as he understood it was “outside the scope of our review.”

    Fenchak attended the virtual meeting but was denied an opportunity to speak on his own behalf.

    Deliberations on blocking Fenchak from running for re-election were largely confined to a closed executive session meeting of the nominating subcommittee, which preceded the deciding vote.

    A Legal Fight

    Though a judge halted Penn State’s initial efforts to remove Fenchak, the board and the university’s legal team are again trying to oust him. The same day that the nominating subcommittee shot down Fenchak’s re-election bid, the university filed a motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction that allowed Fenchak to remain on the board as his lawsuit proceeded.

    Fenchak alleges the motion was filed mere minutes after the subcommittee’s decision, which would prevent him from finishing his current term as well as serving another one.

    Penn State officials did not provide a comment on the situation.

    In response to a request for an interview with trustees, Shannon Harvey, assistant vice president and secretary for the board, referred Inside Higher Ed to a video of the subcommittee’s virtual meeting.

    As of publication, Fenchak had not filed a legal response. But he noted one is coming. Beyond the impact on him personally, he also has broader concerns about the board’s process to bar trustees from re-election, which was adopted over the last year as he pressured the university to release financial documents.

    “Forget about my specific situation. This process disenfranchises and essentially steals the vote from our alumni,” Fenchak said. “That’s a right our alumni have had for 150 years, and now we are telling those alumni who they can and who they cannot vote for to represent them on the board. Frankly, that’s unconscionable. As a Penn Stater, it’s heartbreaking.”

    Changes to the way alumni trustees are elected have also caught the attention of state lawmakers.

    At a Feb. 20 Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing, Republican representative Marla Brown questioned Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi about the change. Brown said she had fielded complaints from constituents and seemed skeptical about the new processes.

    “I can tell you that people are not happy about it, and the optics on it are not good. As I’m sure you’re aware, it looks like a conflict of interest that the board is mainly concerned with picking and choosing the muscle in which the candidates will be serving on the board,” Brown said.

    Asked why Penn State made the change, Bendapudi noted it was a board decision.

    “Did you support the change?” Brown asked.

    “I report to them and I have no say in it one way or the other,” Bendapudi answered.

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  • A letter to NEH on compliance with Trump orders (opinion)

    A letter to NEH on compliance with Trump orders (opinion)

    On Feb. 11, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on its website that it had modified its funding criteria for eligible humanities projects in compliance with three recent executive orders. According to the announcement, “NEH awards may not be used for the following purposes:

    • promotion of gender ideology;
    • promotion of discriminatory equity ideology;
    • support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives or activities; or
    • environmental justice initiatives or activities.”

    These prohibitions impose the terminology of Executive Orders 14151, 14168 and 14190 onto future applicants for NEH funding, whether individual scholars, museums, nonprofit organizations or colleges (including historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges). Published well within the stipulated 60-day window for government agency compliance with the order to terminate all “equity-related” initiatives, grants or contracts, these prohibitions represent a swift implementation of the Trump administration’s point-by-point mandate for “Ending Radical Indoctrination.”

    I can only begin to conjecture here about what the consequences of the NEH’s new criteria might be for the humanities, the domain of cultural and intellectual inquiry the NEH was created to foster. To cite the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, “While no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent.”

    To uphold conditions defined by prohibition rather than freedom—and with prohibitions explicitly targeting the right to existence of queer and transgender people (“gender ideology”), the ability in any way to offset egregious structural inequalities in educational and cultural access (“DEI”), and even the very right to advocate on behalf of anyone’s rights (“discriminatory equity ideology”)—is to betray the very terms under which the NEH was created. In revising its Notice of Funding Opportunities, the NEH is in violation of its public mission.

    Presumably, as a government agency perpetually under threat of budget cuts, the NEH hastened to implement Trump’s executive orders in order to fend off wholesale elimination. The NEH is a federal agency and is thus directly implicated in the executive orders, provided those orders are constitutional. By complying with Trump’s ideology, the National Endowment may perhaps live to see another day, thereby preserving the careers of at least some of its approximately 185 employees and its ability—to do what?

    The NEH has not yet fully overhauled its website to reflect its compliance. Of its current listings of Great Projects Past and Present, perhaps “The Papers of George Washington,” “Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” and “The Real Buffalo Bill” might manage to squeeze through under the new stipulations, but would the Created Equal documentary film project be so lucky? Would a biography of union organizer César Chavez manage to qualify as a fundable project, or a documentary about “A Black Surgeon in the Age of Jim Crow”? How about the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database? The NEH has leveraged its own institutional survival on the forfeit of future such projects.

    The problem is a far deeper one, however. In what universe should it be too much to ask that a state-sponsored institution created to uphold the “material conditions” for freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry put up even the slightest resistance to the inhumane, reactionary and repressive edicts issued by the Trump regime? Even today, the NEH website champions its past support for projects that uphold justice in the face of oppression, that resist totalitarian erasure. Yet the NEH itself has mustered no such resistance. Instead, it has announced that any such projects are now ineligible for consideration.

    Of one thing I am certain: The National Endowment for the Humanities has forfeited its claim to the word “humanities.” The humanities do not designate a prohibitive sphere of capitulation to ruling forces. The humanities are not furthered by a governmental agency that serves, willingly or unwillingly, as an ideological extension of a political party. The humanities are a domain of inquiry, of questioning and investigation, not of unquestioning acquiescence.

    As a literature professor and an educator in the humanities for more than a quarter century, I have assured my students that the study of cultural, artistic and intellectual production is continuous with its practice. This not only means that humanistic inquiry involves creativity, creation and a commitment to thinking freely, but it also means that humanistic inquiry necessarily upholds the same responsibility to questions of ethics, value and meaning with which any other historical action must reckon. Humanists cannot, and do not, stand meekly aside while the “real” agents of historical change make big decisions.

    In posting a recent message to the frequently asked questions web form on the NEH website, I wrote that in light of the NEH’s silent capitulation to Trump’s executive orders, I was ashamed to call myself a humanist. I hereby recant that statement. I am not ashamed to call myself a humanist. It is the National Endowment for the Humanities that should be ashamed. Or, better yet, I call on the NEH and all its 185 employees, including and especially NEH chair Shelly C. Lowe, to recant their compliance with Executive Orders 14151, 14168 and 14190 and join other national and international agencies, organizations and individuals in resisting the inhumane and unconstitutional decrees of the Trump administration.

    Jonathan P. Eburne is a professor of comparative literature, English and French and Francophone studies at Pennsylvania State University and director of undergraduate studies in comparative literature.

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  • Final “Intellectual Affairs” column by Scott McLemee (opinion)

    Final “Intellectual Affairs” column by Scott McLemee (opinion)

    The historian and political analyst Garry Wills once described writing for magazines and newspapers as a way to continue his education while getting paid to do it. The thought made a lasting impression on me and has been a driving force since well before I started writing “Intellectual Affairs” in 2005.

    Twenty years is a sizable portion of anyone’s life; a kind of record of it exists in the form of something short of a thousand columns. I am a slow writer (my wonderful and long-suffering editors at IHE can confirm this), and quantifying the amount of time invested in each piece would probably make me feel older, even, than I look.

    The launch of the column came after a decade of covering scholarly books and debates, first as a contributing editor at Lingua Franca and then as a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education. The founders of Inside Higher Ed approached me with an offer of far less money but complete freedom in what and how I wrote. The decision was easy to make. The offer seemed as close to tenure as a perpetual student could hope to get.

    The shift from writing for dead-tree publications to an online-only venue was not an obvious choice to make, but IHE’s audience and reputation grew rapidly. Getting review copies of new books was not always straightforward or quick. Confusion with other publications having similar names was also a problem. But “Intellectual Affairs” began to draw a certain amount of attention—whether enthusiastic, contemptuous or trollish—in the academic blogosphere of the day.

    The work itself, while grueling at times, was for the most part gratifying. Scholars would write to express astonishment that I’d actually read their books, and even understood them. It seemed best to regard that as a compliment.

    I tend to forget about a column as soon as it’s finished and rarely look at it again. To explain this it is impossible to improve upon Samuel Johnson, who was a columnist of sorts even though the term had not yet been coined. In 1752 he wrote,

    “He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.”

    It’s not always that bad, but the experience he describes is familiar and typically yields the resolution to start earlier next time. But there is no next time with this column.

    I’ve revisited the digital archive in recent days to assemble the selection below. If “Intellectual Affairs” has served as the notebook of an intellectual vagabond, here are a few pages from a long, strange trip.

    Among the earlier columns was one considering the practice of annotating texts while you are reading—specifically, ones printed on paper with ink. A few people found my account of an improvised method useful. These days I mark up PDFs along much the same lines.

    Much Sturm und Drang over e-publishing was underway during the column’s first decade—not least in scholarly circles. A column from 2014 surveys some of the trends predicted, emergent and/or collapsing at the time. Another piece described efforts to rethink literary history with an eye to the prevailing energy sources at the time a text was written.

    More offbeat (and a personal favorite) was this exposé of the unspeakable secret behind Miskatonic University’s financial stability. Another piece brought together the purported psychic powers of Edgar Cayce, a.k.a. “the sleeping prophet,” with news of a technological advance permitting someone to “read” a closed book, or its first few pages, at any rate.

    Early in the last decade, the New York Public Library prepared to offload a sizable portion of its holdings to locations outside the city—freeing up space for more computer terminals. Scholars and citizens spoke up in protest. A second column was necessary to correct the record after an official spun his way through a response to the first one.

    Compulsive and compulsory technological change was at issue in this column suggesting that the Pixar film WALL-E owed a lot to the dystopian satire presented in the cultural theorist Kenneth Burke’s “Helhaven” essays. It was a bit of a stretch, sure, but the point was to honor their “margin of overlap,” as KB would say.

    Many interviews ran in “Intellectual Affairs” over the years. Two in particular stand out. The earliest was with Barbara Ehrenreich on the occasion of her 2005 book about white-collar labor. I also reviewed two of her later books, here and here.

    The other interview was with George Scialabba—a public intellectual working at a certain distance from the tenure track—on the occasion of his first book. His collected essays appeared not too long ago.

    I stand by this assessment of Cornel West’s self-portrait. It caused a ruckus for a few days, but nothing changed in its wake, which is disappointing.

    While by no means prescient, a column on the scholarly study of ignorance from 2008 still feels topical. The subject remained far too relevant 15 years later. Someone will eventually start an Institute for Applied Agnotology; it won’t have trouble finding financial backing.

    Also distressingly perennial is a column considering social-scientific analysis of American demagogues of the 1930s and ’40s. A sequel of sorts, at least in hindsight, was this look into the stagnant depths of a spree killer’s worldview. And I was at work on a column about Ku Klux Klan historiography when Charlottesville broke into the news.

    Less connected to the news cycle but likewise bloody was an item filed after attending a seldom-performed Shakespeare play in 2009. A year earlier, I looked into the far-fetched legend that The Tempest was inspired by a small island near New Bedford, Mass. (Copies of this column were available for a while in pamphlet form at the local historical society.)

    Finally—and a matter of bragging rights— there’s this piece on the first volume of a biography of the long-forgotten Hubert Harrison, a Caribbean-born African American polymath and pan-African activist from the early 20th century. On more than one occasion the author told me that nothing generated more interest in the book than the column.

    George Orwell characterized the professional book reviewer as someone “pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.” I once considered this amusing; now it makes me wince. (It’s not even a whole pint, mind you.) The rewards of non-celebrity-oriented cultural journalism tend to be meager and infrequent, but writing this column for Inside Higher Ed has provided more than my share. Thanks in particular to Scott Jaschik, Sarah Bray and Elizabeth Redden for their patience and keen eyes.

    Scott McLemee is Inside Higher Ed’s “Intellectual Affairs” columnist. He was a contributing editor at Lingua Franca magazine and a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education before joining Inside Higher Ed in 2005.

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