Tag: Jobs

How to Be Interim Dean and Make an Impact (opinion)

A little more than a year ago, I was appointed interim dean of my college. My predecessor had left us abruptly, and as a former school chair and senior associate dean, I was a predictable choice. Here are some recommendations based on this unexpected journey.

Before You Even Begin

Ask your provost to add the option of applying for the dean position to your appointment letter, just in case. I did but soon determined I would not be a candidate. I had become too much of an insider over the prior 13 years to be the improvement agent I thought my college needed. In my experience, external hires are better at bringing about critical change because they arrive without a set reputation and entrenched expectations. The fact that several colleagues encouraged me to apply for the position made clear to me that many people wanted things to stay the same. Many of them seemed to say, “We know you, and we know you won’t rock the boat.”

Seek the Fellowship of Staff

As an interim dean, more so than a full-term dean, you quickly need to earn the respect and goodwill of the college staff, associate deans, chairs and directors. I received buy-in by acknowledging that the continued success of the college didn’t depend on me as “decider in chief,” but on the hands-on collaboration from everyone. Send clear signals that “it’s the team, not the dean.”

‘Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost’

I participated in a formal orientation for new administrators by the University System of Georgia about legal, organizational and leadership matters. Other than that, I was mostly left to my own devices, especially when it came to prioritizing among the numerous events and meetings to which a dean gets invited. I ended up wandering into events at which I was the only dean, but ironically this earned me much fortuitous appreciation. When requesting a meeting with a newly elected Faculty Senate leader, they told me my kind of outreach was unheard-of. We had a great convo over a double espresso, and I learned loads about faculty concerns and hopes.

Seek the Fellowship of Other Deans

Deans operate at the intersection between senior leadership and department chair, and being wedged in the middle makes for good collegial collaboration. My fellow deans communicated swiftly and reliably and shared draft documents, and we often managed to speak with a common voice on issues. I reciprocated their support by creating a fancy name (“Veritable Decanalia”) for our monthly social gatherings at a hotel bar.

Don’t Be Interim

Don’t think of yourself as a placeholder who just keeps the trains running. You are, in fact, the dean, and it’s OK to improve upon your predecessor’s strategies. While you should think twice about too many radical changes (for example, to your college’s reporting structure), feel free to add your own signature. In my case, the signature moves had to do with a focus on student success. For example, two months after taking charge, I adjusted existing budget priorities based on recent data and moved 40 percent of new funding to support graduate education. I also convinced the college advisory board members to become a “giving board” and help fund additional need-based dean’s scholarships for undergraduate students.

Finally, I surprised everyone by organizing a Year of the Liberal Arts at my STEM-focused university. Such activities can amplify your college’s reputation, and more so when nobody expects this level of activity while an interim person is dean. And they signal to prospective dean candidates that your college is a vibrant place they might want to join.

And: Be Interim

Does that sound contradictory? Well, the temporary nature of your appointment can increase the success of your successor if you take care of essential housekeeping items before they arrive. Your successor should not, as one of their first actions, be obliged to impose a spending freeze on a department whose chair overspent by several hundred thousand dollars, and they should not have to press a unit into a memorandum of understanding to return to their contractually mandated (but clandestinely lowered) teaching load. It’s easier for you to repair such matters, and the new dean can begin their work without turning into Draco, the enforcer.

Over all, heed Gandalf’s advice from The Lord of the Rings for your interim appointment: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” If being constantly reminded of the limited nature of the position bothers you, don’t go for this kind of job. My appointment as interim dean was announced at the same time as the timeline and details for the search committee to replace me; the search process ran simultaneously with my daily work, and an eager staff member changed the nameplate outside my office door two weeks before I moved out. So it goes.

If you enjoy, for a window of six months to one year, improving the conditions within which students, staff and faculty may thrive, jump at the chance. Your rewards include a steep learning curve and a better understanding of your own institution and higher education in general.

Of course, while you are on this exhilarating journey of servant leadership, start planning early on for the time after your appointment ends. I admit to having a momentary feeling of relief about moving out of a position that included, especially since January 2025, more political and budgetary emergencies than I had bargained for. But I was just as swiftly persuaded to support my new dean by remaining part of the college leadership team, albeit in an appointment that honored what I had recently learned.

Richard Utz is senior associate dean for strategic initiatives in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech.

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August 20, 2025
Public Media Cuts Could Limit Students’ Career Exploration

Student journalists have their fingerprints on more than 282 public radio or television stations across the country, providing behind-the-scenes support, working as on-screen talent or reporting in their local communities for broadcast content. But over $1 billion in federal budget cuts could reduce their opportunities for work-based learning, mentorship and paid internships.

About 13 percent of the 319 NPR or PBS affiliates analyzed in a report from the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont operate similarly to teaching hospitals in that a core goal of the organization is to train college students. Nearly 60 percent of the stations “provide intensive, regular and ongoing opportunities for college students” to intern or engage with the station.

Scott Finn, news adviser and instructor at the Center for Community News and author of the report, worries that the cuts to public media and higher education more broadly could hinder experiential learning for college students, prompting a need for additional investment or new forms of partnerships between the two groups.

In July, Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds public media stations including NPR and PBS. The cuts threaten the financial stability of many stations, some of which are directly affiliated with colleges and universities.

Working at a public media station provides a variety of benefits for students, Finn said. In his courses, Finn partners with community outlets that will publish students’ stories, depending on the quality and content, which he says motivates students to submit better work.

“Being published, being broadcast is important. The whole focus of the exercise changes,” Finn said. “It’s not just trying to please me as the instructor or a tick box for a grade. They have real-world consequences. Their story will have an impact. It will move people, it will change policy, and that knowledge them inspires them to work harder.”

Most students want internship opportunities; a recent study by Strada found students rate paid internships as the most valuable experience for improving their standing as a candidate for future jobs. But nationally, there’s a shortage of available, high-quality internships compared to the number of students interested in participating, according to a 2024 report from the Business–Higher Education Forum.

A Handshake survey from earlier this year found 12 percent of students in the survey didn’t have an internship before finishing their degree, largely because they lacked the time or weren’t selected for one.

For interns or students working directly in the studio, partnering alongside career journalists also gives them access to a professional network and a career field they may not otherwise engage in.

But student journalists aren’t the only ones who lose out when internship programs are cut.

Emily Reddy serves as news director at WPSU, a PBS/NPR member station in central Pennsylvania associated with Penn State University. Reddy hosts a handful of student reporting interns throughout the calendar year, training them to write, record and broadcast stories relevant to the community.

“[Interns] bring an energy to the newsroom,” Reddy shared. “They’re enthusiastic. They are excited to go out to some board meeting that no one else wants to go to. They bring us stories that we wouldn’t know about otherwise.”

WPSU uses a variety of funding sources to pay student interns, including endowed scholarships at the university and donated funds. But like many other stations, WPSU is facing its own cuts. Earlier this year, Penn State reduced funding to the station by $800,000, or around 9 percent of the station’s total budget. That resulted in a cut of $400,000 from CPB.

In response, WPSU shrank its full-time head count, laying off five staff members and cutting hours for three. Roles vacated by retirements were left unfilled. In October, the station will lose around $1.3 million as a result of the federal cuts, though Reddy doesn’t know what the full impact will be on staffing.

WPSU had planned to increase its internship offerings, and Reddy is still hopeful that will happen. However, the laid-off personnel were among those responsible for managing learners.

“The big thing that I’m concerned about working with students is that you can’t just have the students; somebody has to train them, somebody has to edit them, somebody has to voice coach them and clean up their productions,” Reddy said.

About 12 percent of the stations in the Center for Community News’s report don’t sponsor interns, and they pointed to budget cuts as a key reason why. For stations experiencing financial pressures, Finn hopes newsrooms find creative ways to keep students involved in creating stories, including classroom partnerships or faculty editors who trim and refine stories. Universities are uniquely positioned to assist in this work, Finn said, because they have more resources than public stations and have a strong motivation to place students in successful internship programs.

“This is a really important time for universities to double down on their relationship with public media stations and not walk away from it,” Finn said. “A lot of [stations] are these underutilized resources, in terms of student engagement and student learning.”

Finn also says alumni and other supporters of student learning and public media can help to fill in gaps in funding, whether that’s supporting a paid full-time faculty role to serve as a liaison between students and stations or to endow internship dollars.

“If public media stations are important to student success, then university advancement has to embrace the public media station as a part of its mission and help raise money for it,” Finn said.

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August 20, 2025
Colleges Expect to Reduce Student Support Budgets

College and university staff often bemoan that they’re being asked to do more with less, and a recent survey underscores that sentiment. Thirty percent of institutions surveyed by Tyton Partners expect decreases of greater than 2 percent to their student support budgets over the next three academic years, while fewer than 25 percent expect an increase in budgets.

Financial pressures are tied in part to declining enrollments, as well as to changes in federal structures that reduce access to aid, according to the report.

Eighty percent of institutions expect budgets for support services in enrollment and admissions to shrink, and 50 percent anticipate cuts to student support services. Other student-facing offices expecting declines are academic program delivery and innovation (33 percent), career readiness (29 percent), and research development and funding (20 percent).

Threats to international student enrollment and visa complications could also significantly harm institutional resources and student success efforts; nearly 50 percent of four-year institutions cited international enrollment as critical to sustaining support budgets.

Executive orders and state legislation limiting efforts to support specific racial, ethnic and gender minorities have also reduced institutional investment in identity-based programs. Forty-four percent of public four-year colleges have seen programming for affinity groups decrease over the past 12 months, compared to 28 percent of two-year colleges and 25 percent of private four-year colleges.

While financial threats may hamper institutions’ ability to increase or scale offerings, a majority of student respondents said they’re not using the resources available on campus at this time anyway.

Students say they don’t take advantage of the support offices because they don’t see the relevancy (42 percent), because they doubt the service would be helpful, have not needed the service or want to do things on their own. Thirty percent said the services were offered at inconvenient hours, lacked walk-in appointments or had no flexibility in modality.

Methodology

Tyton Partners’ “Driving Toward a Degree” report includes responses from 468 administrators, 1,100 front-line support staff members, 1,038 four-year students and 403 community college students. The study was fielded in the spring. Those at public four-year colleges made up the greatest share of respondents, followed by private four-year institutions and two-year colleges.

Affordability: When administrators were asked how they’d respond to federal financial aid cuts during a time of financial constraint, 41 percent of public four-year colleges said they plan to expand institutional aid to offset students’ lost funding, compared to 25 percent of two-year colleges and 30 percent of private four-year institutions. Four-year private colleges and universities also reported re-evaluating enrollment strategies based on aid dependency, raising concerns about access for low-income students who may not be able to pay the full price of tuition, according to the report.

Students say financial aid and support are critical to their retention; previous studies point to cost being one of the top reasons why a student leaves higher education. Over half of students (59 percent) in Tyton’s report said financial aid counseling is very important to their decision to re-enroll, compared to 52 percent who indicated academic registration was very important and 49 percent who cited mental health counseling.

Staffing constraints: Retaining support staff is another challenge that institutions reported; over 60 percent say they’re having a hard time filling vacancies or face hiring freezes in support departments.

For many students, academic advising is a cornerstone of success in higher education, but many departments are under stress due to high caseloads (42 percent) and frequent turnover in staff (31 percent), according to the report. Despite these headwinds, 74 percent of public four-year institutions and 72 percent of large institutions (those with more than 10,000 undergraduates) plan to increase the caseloads of staff members to recoup lost revenue.

“Gaps in staffing directly erode advising capacity and quality,” the report authors wrote. “Our survey shows that advisers managing caseloads of 300 or more students are not only less able to engage regularly with those they serve but also more likely to leave their roles. This dynamic fuels a cycle of turnover and declining support quality, undermining institutions’ ability to sustain consistent, high-impact advising.”

Other popular strategies institutions may employ to combat staffing challenges include reassigning duties across departments, reducing or delaying services, or shifting services to peer advisers or part-time staff members.

To combat large caseloads, some institutions are considering implementing structured group advising sessions and developing flexible capacity for peak times, the survey noted.

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August 20, 2025
Texas A&M Professor Arrested on Indecent Exposure Charge

Johns was supposed to begin teaching at Texas A&M University this fall.

Texas A&M University professor Russell Taylor Johns was arrested by university police last Wednesday following an allegation that he exposed himself at the University of Texas at Austin earlier this year, KBTX reported.

Johns, who hadn’t yet begun teaching but was hired to join Texas A&M’s Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering this fall, worked at UT Austin from 1995 to 2010 and was invited back to campus in April by its department of petroleum and geosciences. Court documents obtained by KBTX allege that Johns exposed his genitals and touched himself inappropriately at the UT Austin student center on April 29. A staff member told police that she saw Johns masturbate while looking at two female students sitting across from him.

Johns previously taught in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University.

Johns was booked at the Brazos County Detention Center and released on a $7,000 bond. His bond conditions require that he not contact the alleged victims or their families, refrain from committing additional offenses, and submit to random drug testing. In Texas, indecent exposure is a Class B misdemeanor and punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Texas A&M did not return Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Tuesday. A university spokesperson told KSAT that the university was not aware of the allegation when Johns was hired and that he is currently suspended.

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August 20, 2025
AI Can Facilitate Mastery Learning in Higher Education
Learning in contemporary higher education is rooted deeply in calendars and time rather than mastery of the topic of the learning. With an inflexible semester or quarter calendar and an often-inflexible schedule and length of meeting times, learners are marched through the system in the orderly method of an assembly line.

As long as I have taught at the university level, beginning in the early 1970s, I have questioned this approach that puts time scheduling ahead of depth of learning. It seems to put teaching schedules ahead of learning outcomes. I must confess that over the decades, I have been an easy touch for an incomplete for a student who encountered some unforeseen life disruption or simply took on more than she or he could handle during the semester. My philosophy has been and still is that what is learned is more important than whether it was accomplished in eight weeks, 16 weeks or even longer.

I am not alone in that view. Back in the 1960s, one of learning’s highly recognized scholars, Benjamin Bloom, probed this very issue: “Bloom’s Learning for Mastery (LFM) strategy evolved and was later on implemented in primary and secondary school settings.” Meanwhile, psychologist Fred Keller developed his Personalized System of Instruction focused on five key principles:
Students should be allowed to work at their own pace.

Students should achieve at least 90 percent accuracy on the assessment before moving to the next lesson.

Lessons should be considered as “vehicles of motivation.”

Teachers and students should consider using written communication in textbooks and study guides.

Teachers and students should get closer through repeated testing, immediate scoring, continuous tutoring and progress tracking.
These five principles cannot be easily integrated into classes that march forward with a rigid class calendar based on three 50-minute class meetings for 15 weeks! However, recent technological developments have opened the door to reinventing higher education from the assembly-line model to an online, asynchronous, tutor-enhanced, mastery-based learning model.

To understand the differences between traditional teaching and mastery learning, one can best describe that our current practices place an emphasis on time-based teaching, while in mastery learning, the emphasis is, as the name suggests, on learning. Note that in Keller’s PSI approach, the goal is 90 percent or better learning as evidenced through frequent assessments required to move forward to the next module in the class.

The PSI stresses personalized scaffolding of learning and evidence of mastery throughout the course, whereas our current common mode of delivery views the class as a whole rather than recognizing differences in background and learning by individuals. Inevitably, the current approach penalizes students for unintended, unrecognized shortcomings in understanding caused by any of a number of circumstances, such as prior knowledge deficits in some aspect of that which they are studying, poorly taught prerequisite or assumed previously taken classes, unanticipated life interventions, or some other inability to learn essential class concepts that had not been anticipated in the development and design of the class.

If, instead, we were to create personalized learning intervention opportunities at every step of the way that are designed to be responsive to the needs of individual learners on a minimum of learning 90 percent of every module, we could ensure a minimum of mastery of 90 percent of the materials in every class.

Artificial intelligence employed in an asynchronous or blended online class opens the pathway to mastery learning. An instructor can experiment with this process by folding this prompt into one or two modules of a class. Released by There’s an AI for That (TAAFT) it is a free and openly available prompt that can be inserted into any of the major frontier models, such as Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude. Titled Precision Learning Companion, the prompt is introduced:

“This prompt turns AI into an ultra-detailed, dynamic personal tutor that doesn’t just quiz, it teaches deeply, layer by layer, until the user genuinely masters the material. It’s built to adapt in real time, constantly diagnosing knowledge gaps, and never moving forward without full comprehension. Every answer, right or wrong, triggers a structured, narrative-style breakdown explaining the what, why, how, and broader context, ensuring true understanding. The AI is designed to feel like having a supportive but meticulous mentor who scaffolds learning: progressively challenging the user if they perform well, slowing down and simplifying if they struggle, and always reinforcing psychological safety through encouragement. It uses textually described visual aids, memory tricks, real-world examples, and step-by-step remediation when needed. Mastery, not speed, is the goal.”

I encourage readers to test this out, to examine more closely the impact of using AI to deliver learning opportunities. It took me less than two minutes to get my module up and running:
1. I copied and pasted the page-long prompt from the TAAFT.Notion site into Claude 4 for test purposes and pressed enter.
2. I entered the topic as “human eye anatomy” (of course you can enter any topic that you might cover in a week or so in your current class schedule).
3. I was then launched into a congenial conversation with the AI module that probed deeply into my knowledge of the topic in a pleasant and reinforcing way.
4. I must admit that I was so engaged that I didn’t stop for more than an hour.
You can begin by testing it on yourself and perhaps a colleague, teaching assistant or another willing participant. Choose a relevant topic. I chose “physiology of the human eye,” which was a basic module in all of the many Communication Technology classes I offered. I found the AI module to be accurate, comprehensive, reinforcing and clear. If you find that it shows promise, you might choose to use it in one of your classes. Invite your instructional designer to join in a discussion of how this might best be used in your classes. Note how it personalizes instruction for learners by sharing additional information, readings and related learning opportunities to backfill areas that learners who may be deficient in background and need context to relate to the course. You can ask learners to share a copy of the exchanges. They may also share brief reactions on the quality and usefulness of the interaction with AI.

Over time, with the help of your instructional designer, you may want to go fully into mastery learning, ensuring that every student in your classes masters the material at a 90 percent level. In some cases, you may need to be flexible with offering incompletes to provide time for those who need to complete the additional material triggered by submission of wrong answers.

I always had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when I submitted a C, D or F as a final grade. I felt that I had failed my student. However, I had a full classroom and there was not enough time or opportunity to provide individualized attention to each student. Perhaps the new generation of university instructors who partner with AI assistants will enjoy the confidence that all their learners will master the topic of the class with the help of AI. No learner will be left behind, and none will be victims of the assembly-line model of teaching in higher education.
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August 20, 2025
More Barriers on the Horizon for International Students

The potential policy changes could give international students another hoop to jump through, further burdening consulates and embassies.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | tarras79/iStock/Getty Images

The Trump administration is planning to limit how long international students can remain in the U.S., likely mirroring a plan proposed at the end of Trump’s first term with the same name, advocacy groups and immigration attorneys say.

The regulations are expected to replace “duration of status,” a 1991 rule that allows international students to remain in the country as long as they are enrolled at a college or university. In 2020, the administration proposed limiting that time to just four years—a period shorter than most Ph.D. programs and shorter than the average student takes to complete a bachelor’s degree—though it would have allowed students to apply for extensions. Students from certain countries, including those the administration said were state sponsors of terrorism and those with high overstay rates, would have been afforded just two years.

That rule was withdrawn after President Joe Biden entered office. But the Trump administration is poised to propose it once again, based on a submission to the Office of Management and Budget. The Department of Homeland Security has yet to release details about the potential change, but a pending rule change with the same name as the 2020 proposal was sent to OMB in late June and approved Aug. 7. However, according to OMB’s website, the rule is now under review once again for unknown reasons. Neither OMB nor DHS responded to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment. Until OMB signs off, DHS can’t publicly release the plan and take public comments.

The anticipated proposal comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on international students, which included the sudden and unexplained terminations of students’ records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System, the database that tracks international students, in March and April. The administration has also taken steps to make it more difficult for prospective students to receive F-1 visas, including reviewing all applicants’ social media profiles.

Incoming international students, meanwhile, are struggling with long delays for visa interviews as a result of federal layoffs and a pause in student visa appointments this spring, leading to concerns that international enrollment could drop this fall semester. Changing duration of status, advocates say, would only gum up the works even more, giving international students another hoop to jump through and further burdening consulates and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“This is not just one particular proposed rule or change in policy; it fits within a number of policy changes that we’ve experienced throughout the past eight months that the administration has been in control,” said Jill Allen Murray, deputy executive director for public policy at NAFSA, the association for international education professionals. “Many of those interact with each other and make it much more difficult for international students to take the steps that are necessary to come to the United States and study, and this would be yet another challenge for students.”

A ‘Regulated Population’

Why is the administration looking to eliminate duration of stay? If its reasoning is the same as in 2020, it is aiming to reduce fraud and visa overstays.

International students are indeed one of very few nonimmigrant categories allowed to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, giving them special flexibility so they can finish their studies. But Samira Pardanani, associate vice president of international education and global engagement at Shoreline College, argued that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to believe duration of status leads students to be more likely to overstay.

“This is a very, very regulated population … there’s a lot of follow-up schools do with regards to helping students maintain their status, and there are a lot of record-keeping and reporting requirements for schools,” Pardanani said. “Duration of status is something that has been, in my opinion, working well.”

Murray also noted that the F-1 visa overstay rate reported by the government is not necessarily reliable, by DHS’s own admission.

Another policy aimed at streamlining the visa process for nonimmigrant visitors, including international students, is also on the chopping block. On Sept. 2, the Trump administration will end interview waivers for many nonimmigrant groups, including international students. Those waivers, which started during the COVID-19 pandemic, allow certain individuals whose visas have expired but who have maintained their lawful nonimmigrant status to renew their visas without an in-person consular interview.

The duration of a visa depends on the country and can range from a few months to several years. Thanks to interview waivers, an international Ph.D. student whose visa had expired could visit home in the summer, easily renew their visa without an in-person appointment and return the next semester without issue. But now, they would have to return to the consulate in their country even for a routine visa renewal.

Pardanani said she did not think the elimination of interview waivers was inherently problematic, but “right now, when there’s already a lot of visa backlogs and students are not getting visa appointments … it’s going to have a deeper impact in students and on universities and colleges.”

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August 20, 2025
No One Is Gaslighting You

In response to my column last week about “the myth of antisemitism at Harvard,” I received an email claiming, “Your argument is deeply antisemitic and morally bankrupt,” and adding, “Accusing victims of fabricating their own abuse to serve hidden agenda [sic] is gaslighting.”

When I call antisemitism a “myth” at Harvard, I’m not denying the real, terrible experiences some people have. The myth of antisemitism—like the “Myth of Political Correctness” I wrote about decades ago—means that the bigger stories told are often based on real incidents but still promote a false, simplistic narrative. There are too many real cases of antisemitism, just as there are too many real cases of anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic bias. But universities are not guilty of antisemitic discrimination if they allow free expression of hateful ideas.

However, I don’t want to repeat my arguments about what institutional discrimination means and why Harvard isn’t guilty of it. Instead, I want to focus on the common abuse of the term “gaslighting” to denounce our enemies.

The truth is, no one is gaslighting anybody. No one is trying to drive you crazy with lies. No one cares enough about you to do that. And the more we see “gaslighting” everywhere around us, the weaker our intellectual arguments will become.

“Gaslighting” is a term that comes from the world of fiction. It’s a fantasy—first a play in 1938 by British playwright Patrick Hamilton, then two movies in the early 1940s. The Victorian-era plot of Gaslight involves an evil husband trying to steal from his wife (Ingrid Bergman) by driving her crazy—dimming the gas lights and denying that anything is wrong.

The term “gaslight” was fairly obscure until the 2010s, but it exploded in popularity, becoming Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022 and a popular word for a culture swimming in conspiracy theories. When you gaslight, you’re not just getting debatable facts wrong. You’re not even intentionally lying to win an argument. No, gaslighting refers to someone who is trolling us, telling an outlandish lie so outrageous that it’s designed to drive us crazy.

“Gaslighting” is a term that turns us all into villains or victims and discourages intellectual discourse. The concept of gaslighting also encourages people to hide in their ideological silos. After all, if a gaslighter is just trying to drive you crazy with lies, the solution is to refuse to listen to them. Any engagement with a gaslighter is giving them what they want.

Gaslighting is also an outgrowth of our therapeutic culture, using this term for interpersonal psychological manipulation to describe intellectual debates. But it has a destructive impact when translated to universities and intellectual life.

So is gaslighting ever real? Perhaps the most famous example of gaslighting theory is what Steve Bannon once admitted: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” But even Bannon’s technique falls short of gaslighting. Bannon ultimately doesn’t care if he drives liberals crazy (even if he enjoys it)—he’s adapting an old tactic of competitive debate where you make so many claims that you win because your opponent can’t respond to every one of them. Overloading a media system of fact-checking with an endless parade of lies has become a key technique of Donald Trump’s presidency. But the goal is distraction, not gaslighting. The true target is the gullible mark in the middle who can be manipulated, not the progressive who is driven crazy by watching reality denied on a daily basis as democracy dims.

Our intellectual discussions will suffer when we assume that everyone we encounter is a political hack like Bannon, intent on lying to win. When we insult our critics rather than engaging with their arguments, everybody suffers.

When we imagine gaslighting behind every argument, we begin to develop the same sense of paranoia as Ingrid Bergman’s character. Debates are no longer sincere exchanges of ideas, but battles with gaslighting enemies who want to destroy you. When someone is out to get you, paranoia is an understandable response. In intellectual debates, the paranoia of seeing gaslighting everywhere has a deeply corrosive effect.

Using the term “gaslighting” is an extreme type of ad hominem argument. Instead of refuting claims, you dismiss your opponent as intentionally lying for purely evil motives. It’s time for us to stop dismissing our opponents for “gaslighting” and to start engaging with and analyzing the merits of their arguments.

John K. Wilson was a 2019–20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at [email protected], or letters to the editor can be sent to [email protected].

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August 20, 2025
Strike Failed to Pressure Rochester Into Non-NLRB Election

For a month this spring, the University of Rochester Graduate Labor Union, a group of Ph.D. student workers, staged a strike. Workers walked off the job, demanding that the university host a private unionization election so they could vote and win recognition of the union—all without having to go through the Trump-era National Labor Relations Board.

But after workers protested during the May 16 commencement ceremony, GLU representatives told them that organizing committee members had voted unanimously to “pause” the strike. And, with fall semester classes starting Monday, the organizers say they have no plans to rekindle it.

“We didn’t achieve what we wanted, which was them giving us a fair process for an election,” said Katie Gregory, a seventh-year environmental sciences Ph.D. worker. But, she said, “none of us consider the fight here to be over in terms of support for a union.”

George Elkind, a fourth-year visual and cultural studies Ph.D. worker, said, “We intend to continue fighting for a fair election process.”

The strike was both a carryover from an intense period of grad student union activity during the Biden administration—roughly 38 percent of grad student workers are unionized, according to a report from last August—and an indication of how President Trump’s return to the White House has raised concerns that the NLRB has become less favorable to unions.

Last year, during Biden’s presidency, University of Rochester officials and GLU organizers discussed plans for a private election, which both parties were amenable to. If they had reached an agreement, the NLRB—which usually handles unionization votes at private nonprofit institutions such as Rochester—wouldn’t have been involved.

But after Trump retook the White House in January—and fired a Democratic NLRB member and the agency’s general counsel—the university changed its tune. In February, a university lawyer told student organizers the institution no longer wanted a private election, citing multiple reasons, according to a document that Ph.D. student workers provided to Inside Higher Ed. Instead, the lawyer wrote, they could pursue an election with the Trump-era NLRB.

Taking that route would be risky—not just for their own prospective union’s chances of winning recognition, but also for the continued rights of grad workers across the country to unionize. Some union supporters worry an NLRB dominated by Trump appointees might use a grad student unionization case such as Rochester’s to overturn the 2016 Columbia University precedent establishing that private nonprofit university grad workers can unionize through the NLRB.

If that precedent were overturned, student workers could continue to unionize at public universities in the states that allow such action, but those at private institutions would have no other path than to seek voluntary recognition from their universities.

So far, GLU hasn’t succeeded in pressuring the University of Rochester once again to back a private union vote that would circumvent the NLRB. Gregory and Elkind both said the outcome of the strike might have been different if more Ph.D. workers had withheld their labor.

The union would have represented more than 1,400 students, Elkind said. About 300 withheld at least a day of work, Gregory said, but having 1,000 strike on day one would’ve sent a very different message.

Elkind said a “more sweeping strike with bigger numbers … would have had [university leaders] at the table within days.”

Both said the Trump administration’s attempts to remove international students from the U.S. had a “chilling effect” on strike participation. Elkind, who said about half of grad students at the university are international, called it “a horror show of a national environment.”

They also pointed to the university’s announcement of “attestation” forms that asked workers to indicate how much they were working—allowing the university to cut off pay for strikers if it wished.

“Clearly, a tactic to impact the strike participation,” Gregory said. The university didn’t move forward with requiring the forms; in an email, Sara Miller, a university spokesperson, said it “never implemented an attestation form and denies any allegation of ‘scare tactics.’”

University representatives also “refused to acknowledge the union as an entity,” Gregory said. For instance, they responded to organizing committee members’ communications as if they were merely students, offering them help with issues such as registration.

“It was a real slap in the face,” she said.

In their May 18 email calling off the strike, GLU members noted the semester was ending, writing that “many grads only have 9-month stipends and do not have labor to withhold during the summer.”

But Elkind and Gregory both said organizing is continuing. And the provost, in a Friday memo, announced new, universitywide minimum stipends for “full-time, full tuition remission PhD students”: $25,000 for nine-month stipends and $34,000 for yearlong stipends.

“I think they’re trying to curb labor organizing and unrest,” Elkind said.

Miller, the university spokesperson, wrote in an email that “the recent stipend update marks another step in implementing the University’s long-standing plans to enhance our graduate programs and was not related, in any way, to students’ prior organizing and/or protest activity.”

In recent years, Miller said, Rochester has expanded support for full-time Ph.D. students to include “subsidized health, dental and vision insurance; childcare benefits; raising stipends, and enhanced access to mental wellbeing and counseling services.”

And again, she said, “the students continue to have and have always had access to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).”

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August 20, 2025
6,000 Student Visas Revoked

The administration has been revoking visas for months as part of a broader crackdown on international students.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | gradisca and Uladzimir Zuyeu/iStock/Getty Images

The State Department has revoked 6,000 student visas so far this year, Fox News reported along with The Washington Post.

Of that group, 4,000 were revoked due to crimes, including assault, driving under the influence and burglary. However, a department spokesperson told the Post that the students whose visas had been revoked “either faced arrest or charges,” but the spokesperson didn’t specify whether they were convicted.

The spokesperson also said that between 200 and 300 visas were revoked due to “support for terrorism.” President Donald Trump has previously labeled pro-Palestinian student protesters as terrorist sympathizers and has targeted international students over their pro-Palestinian activism.

The Post article does not address whether these students will have to stop their studies and leave the U.S. A visa—the stamp that permits an individual to enter the U.S.—is different from one’s nonimmigrant status, which refers to whether they are lawfully in the country, something immigration experts stressed amid a slew of student visa revocations in March and April.

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August 20, 2025
Complaints About Federal Student Aid Office Rise Sharply

The latest NASFAA survey shows financial aid services moving in the wrong direction.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images | MauMyHaT/iStock/Getty Images | subtik/E+/Getty Images

Complaints about the Office of Federal Student Aid’s operations have increased significantly over the past few months, according to the latest edition of a survey from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Challenges that were once just kinks behind the scenes are evolving to become student-facing issues on the front line, the association says.

The share of institutions reporting disruptions to communication, responsiveness or processing timelines rose from 59 percent in May to 72 percent in July. Meanwhile, the share of aid offices reporting student confusion about the process increased from 32 percent to 51 percent.

The report, which is based on responses from financial aid officers at more than 500 NASFAA member institutions across the country, builds upon a similar survey conducted in May. It shows rising frustration with the FSA, despite the agency’s attempt to rehire about 50 of the more than 300 employees laid off earlier this year.

“I wasn’t overly surprised” by the data, said NASFAA president Melanie Storey. “But it was largely a disappointment that the trajectory is moving in the wrong direction.”

She added that the new loan caps and repayment plan changes detailed in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act could compound the damage, creating long-term consequences for college attainment rates.

Given the “fissures and cracks around trust in higher education, we need to eliminate barriers and support students clearly and consistently—and that includes helping them figure out how they’re going to finance their higher education,” Storey said. “If this trajectory continues, I’m really concerned about the decisions that students and families are going to be able to make to enroll in postsecondary education.”

An Education Department official called the NASFAA report inaccurate and accused the organization of “peddling a false narrative to preserve the status quo.”

“It is an embarrassment for NASFAA to release a ‘survey’ that blatantly parrots falsehoods and is not representative of the higher education community nor the American people’s overwhelming charge for change,” deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “While NASFAA stands idly by ready to see us fail, the Trump Administration has just launched the earliest FAFSA form ever, which they are well aware of and decided to ignore.”

Storey responded that NASFAA has tried repeatedly to partner with the administration in their “shared goal of serving students,” applauding efforts such as FAFSA beta testing.

But to dismiss the survey results as “fabricated or political undermines the expertise of those working directly with students every day, eager to deliver on the promise of postsecondary education, and shows that the administration is not interested in working with experts in the field to achieve the best results for students; instead, it is focused on advancing its own agenda,” she said.

Worsening Outcomes

It’s been an eventful few months for the FSA. Mass layoffs throughout the department, first announced in March, quickly faced legal challenges; in May, a district court temporarily blocked the executive action. But any hopes that the staffing shortage would be resolved were squashed when the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling in July. And while the justices have yet to hear the full case or issue a final ruling, the order allows Education Secretary Linda McMahon to proceed with the pink slips.

Storey said that some of the increased frustration and concern higher ed officials expressed in the survey may be related to timing; the district court ruling spurred cautious optimism in May, which had largely tanked by July. Similarly, the repercussions of staffing shortages were not necessarily evident in May but are now becoming clear. She also noted that the mounting discontent could simply be a reflection of the cyclical nature of student aid and the imminent start of the new academic year.

Either way, the survey suggests that FSA operations are flagging, and many NASFAA members say it’s preventing them from properly processing aid. For example, 63 percent of institutions that have submitted their E-App—a form that must be completed and approved in order to receive federal aid—said their submission had yet to be processed in July.

Department officials argue that this data is biased due to NASFAA’s survey method. They point specifically to the sample size, saying that the 500 institutions represented are predominantly nonprofit or public institutions, reflecting only a sliver of the more than 5,000 that FSA works with—and are the ones most likely to harbor anti-Trump sentiments.

The department also described the survey’s questions as biased toward the negative and said it was conducted just as the department finished updating its Partner Connect Portal to address various complaints, meaning the results don’t accurately reflect the new changes.

But Storey stood by her view that most of the challenges financial aid offices face today are the same as those they reported in May, only worse, and with longer delays in response time.

For example, previous Inside Higher Ed reporting shows that when students hit a wall and cannot log in to the FAFSA application portal, college advisers struggle to reach the central processing system that manages user IDs. While a department spokesperson said all help lines remain fully open, multiple college and NASFAA representatives say they have been unable to get through at certain times.

The latest survey shows this is still a major problem. More than half of institutions reported issues with federal call centers, and more than 40 percent cited problems with the National Student Loan Data System. In addition, over a third flagged disruptions with student loan servicing. Collectively, the NASFAA report said, these failures affect colleges’ ability to resolve aid issues for students in real time.

Once the delays start to hit students—which is happening more and more often, according to NASFAA’s report—it could leave them without access to loans and therefore unable to pay their bills and stay enrolled. Although colleges can grant students extensions for tuition payments or on-campus housing fees, they can’t change when off-campus rent or childcare payments are due. Situations like these often force students to take a job and attempt to pay off their debt with some college but no degree.

So unless FSA addresses its shortcomings, Storey said, the impact could be far-reaching.

“It’s a compounding of issues and uncertainties that I think could have a long-lasting and significant impact on postsecondary enrollment and financing,” she said.

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August 20, 2025