Tag: lays

  • Haskell Indian Nations U lays off probationary workers

    Haskell Indian Nations U lays off probationary workers

    Haskell Indian Nations University, a small tribal college in Lawrence, Kan., laid off nearly 30 percent of its faculty and staff to comply with the Trump administration’s directive to shrink the size of the federal workforce. 

    An order came through the Office of Personnel Management Feb. 13 to fire all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection.

    Haskell is one of two tribal colleges funded by the Department of the Interior. As of fall 2022, the institution had 727 full-time students and employed 146 faculty and staff. Local news reports that about 40 probationary employees have been laid off.  

    The Haskell Board of Regents said in a statement that it was “closely monitoring the recent directive from the Office of Personnel Management, which has resulted in the termination of certain probationary federal employees across multiple agencies. At this time, the Board has not received confirmation that Haskell Indian Nations University is exempt from these layoffs.”

    A member of Haskell’s Board of Regents said the layoffs are in “basically every department on campus”—faculty, student services, athletics, IT and more, according to The Lawrence Times.

    The institution has faced recent turmoil, running through eight presidents in six years and being subject to a congressional investigation over failing to address student concerns about sexual assault.

    In December, Kansas Republican senator Jerry Moran and Republican representative Tracey Mann put forward legislation to take the college out of the hands of federal oversight and transfer it to a Haskell Board of Trustees appointed by the tribal community.

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  • Education Department lays off civil servants

    Education Department lays off civil servants

    The U.S. Department of Education laid off some civil servants on Wednesday, Politico reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. 

    It’s not yet clear how many employees were affected, but they worked for a range of offices within the department, from civil rights to federal student aid. Earlier that day, a federal judge approved the Trump administration’s plan to offer buyouts to vast swaths of the federal workforce. 

    The move is the latest personnel disruption at the agency. Earlier this month, dozens of employees were put on administrative leave after attending a diversity, equity and inclusion training during the first Trump administration.

    Many of the terminated department employees were still in their probationary period, according to Politico, meaning they’d been on the job for less than a year and lacked full civil service protections, though nonprobationary employees were also affected. On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration had ordered all federal agencies to terminate their probationary employees, part of a broader effort to reduce the federal workforce.

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  • Harvard lays off staff at its Slavery Remembrance Program

    Harvard lays off staff at its Slavery Remembrance Program

    Harvard University last week laid off the staff of the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program, who were tasked with identifying the direct descendants of those enslaved by Harvard-affiliated administrators, faculty and staff, The Boston Globe reported.

    The work, which was part of the university’s $100 million Legacy of Slavery initiative, will now fall entirely to American Ancestors, a national genealogical nonprofit that Harvard was already partnering with, according to a news release.

    A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the layoffs to the Globe.

    The Harvard Crimson first reported the news, noting that the HSRP staff were terminated without warning Jan. 23.

    Protesting the move, Harvard history professor Vincent Brown resigned from the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project Committee, which was assigned the task of designing a memorial to those enslaved by members of the Harvard community.

    Brown wrote in his resignation letter, which he shared with Inside Higher Ed, that he had recently returned from a productive research trip to Antigua and Barbuda when he “learned that the entire [HSRP] team had been laid off in sudden telephone calls with an officer in Harvard’s human resources department.” He called the terminations “vindictive as well as wasteful.”

    “I hope and expect that the H&LS initiative will weather this latest controversy,” Brown wrote. “I only regret that I cannot formally be a part of that effort.”

    Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative has repeatedly come under fire since it was announced in 2022. Critics assailed its lack of progress last year. The two professors who co-chaired the memorial committee resigned last May, citing frustration with administrators; the executive director of the initiative, Roeshana Moore-Evans, followed them out the door. Then HSRP founding director Richard Cellini told the Crimson last fall that vice provost Sara Bleich had instructed him “‘not to find too many descendants.’”

    A university spokesperson denied that charge, telling the Crimson, “There is no directive to limit the number of direct descendants to be identified through this work.”

    Cellini was among those fired from the HSRP last week.

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