Tag: News

3 Questions on Academic Innovation and Centers for Teaching and Learning for BU’s Wendy Colby

In the evolving landscape of higher education, centers and institutes dedicated to teaching and learning can no longer be viewed as optional support units; they have become critical engines driving academic innovation at scale. Success in this mission depends on rethinking legacy structures, fostering a culture of collaboration across schools and colleges, identifying opportunities that deliver broad impact, and remaining grounded in the core principles that make teaching truly effective: clarity, engagement, reflection, inclusivity, adaptability, support and rigor.

Wendy Colby, Vice President and Associate Provost at Boston University, leads BU Virtual and BU’s new Institute for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The Institute was established to chart a new vision and approach, thoughtfully reconstituting and expanding the role of several former units such as a Center for Teaching and Learning and Digital Learning Innovation. The goal—to create a university-wide nexus for advancing teaching and learning excellence and academic innovation.

In part one of our conversation, Wendy and I talk about the role of academic innovation centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) within the university ecosystem.

Courtesy Wendy Colby

Q1: What does it take to conceive and build a new Institute that truly advances academic innovation and delivers on the promise to create more impact across a faculty community—especially one as large and diverse as you have at Boston University?

A: It’s interesting. I approached the leadership of the Institute in the same way I approach any new leadership assignment. It started with a lot of listening—being out in the community, talking with faculty and students, and learning what was working well and where challenges persisted. I sat in on classes and was invited to guest lecture in a few. I saw some truly exceptional examples of teaching at its best, and I also examined how faculty and students were—or were not—using technology and tools to support the learning experience.

Needless to say, I learned a great deal. I saw where innovation was thriving, and where faculty were often tackling similar challenges independently, without a shared platform for collaboration or access to scalable resources. I also saw the importance of leadership and advocacy at the top—working closely with deans and academic leaders to align on shared goals and priorities. It became clear that we needed to create the conditions for faculty to feel that this was an Institute by them and for them.

From those early observations, we began to define what the Institute needed to be. We established a Strategic Advisory Council and an Institute Faculty Liaison group, comprised of faculty champions from across our schools and colleges. We also formed close alliances with key partners—most notably the Office of Undergraduate Affairs and the Dean of Students—to clarify the Institute’s role in student success and the broader student experience. These partnerships, built early in the Institute’s formation, have been essential to creating the conditions for success.

Ultimately, what emerged most clearly is that our success depends on shared ownership. Impact at this scale cannot be achieved by any single unit alone. In a university comprised of many distinct academic and operational units, each with its own priorities and ways of working, collective alignment is not automatic—but it is powerful. When we operate as a connected university, able to harness, contribute to, and amplify the extraordinary work already happening across our community, the potential for impact is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Q2: What are some of the initial initiatives you have created at the Institute, and how are these fostering meaningful faculty engagement and better student experiences?

A: I’ll start by saying that I’ve now spoken with many leaders at other institutions who are either leading similar centers or institutes or working to transform their own in more meaningful ways. A common theme I hear is that these units often have incredibly talented teams—frequently comprised of former faculty—who work hard to develop thoughtful programming, offer workshops and create resources grounded in evidence-based pedagogy. Yet, too often, their impact is limited. They struggle to establish a clear institutional identity; they compete for faculty attention; and they tend to reach only a small subset of the community. Historically, that was a challenge we faced at BU as well.

So, in addition to establishing a new vision and direction for the Institute—and situating it in a more central, visible location on campus—we organized our initial work around a small number of shared, strategic initiatives designed for scale, coherence and broad relevance.

One of the Institute’s core initiatives is a campus-wide focus on AI in teaching and learning, developed in close collaboration with the AI Development Accelerator (AIDA) —a new center created to position Boston University at the forefront of leadership in AI. By combining the AIDA’s strategic and technical expertise with the Institute’s focus on pedagogy, faculty engagement and evidence-based practice, this collaboration enables a coordinated, university-wide approach to education, experimentation and responsible integration of AI into teaching and learning. Early efforts include the launch of a new AI at BU online certificate available to all undergraduate students, as well as discipline-specific studio sessions, guidance and resources designed to help faculty integrate AI thoughtfully into curriculum, assessment and classroom practice.

Another flagship effort is the Classroom LX (Learning Experience) Transformation Initiative, which was created to address the overall student experience across courses and programs. Through early listening sessions with faculty and students, we identified a recurring challenge: While individual instructors were doing excellent work, students often encountered inconsistent experiences from course to course—particularly in the use of digital platforms, learning resources, communication norms and expectations. These inconsistencies created unnecessary friction for students and additional work for faculty.

The Classroom LX initiative focuses on establishing shared principles, practices and design patterns that enhance the learning experience without constraining academic freedom. By providing faculty with common frameworks, toolkits and support for course design—especially in high-enrollment and foundational courses—we aim to reduce friction, improve clarity and engagement, and create more inclusive and supportive learning environments. Importantly, this work is codeveloped with faculty, grounded in evidence-based pedagogy, and designed to scale across disciplines while remaining flexible enough to meet individual needs.

Together, these initiatives are just a few examples of the shift we are making from isolated programming to intentional, institution-wide efforts that support faculty, improve student experiences and create lasting impact at scale.

Q3: Looking ahead, what role do you see Institutes like this playing in the future of higher education, and what lessons might other universities take from this work?

A: I believe teaching and learning institutes must evolve from “centers of excellence” into strategic engines that help drive institutional priorities. Our role extends beyond faculty support and engagement alone—it is about connecting pedagogy, scholarly research, technology, the student experience and career readiness. We are also addressing themes like digital wellness and the growing connection between student wellness and academic success. Institutes like ours sit at the intersection of academic mission and institutional change.

At a time when higher education faces significant disruption, our institutes have an opportunity to accelerate long-needed conversations about curricular innovation, assessment in the age of AI, learning design, inclusion and wellbeing, and what it truly means to educate students in a rapidly changing world. Our teams are uniquely positioned to guide and partner on this work thoughtfully and responsibly.

At the same time, there is no single blueprint for success. Every university has its own culture, structures, and constraints, and meaningful change must be grounded in that reality. For me, the work always begins with learning and listening—being present in classrooms, engaging faculty and students, and observing teaching and learning in practice. You are rarely handed a clear roadmap. Instead, the work requires synthesizing what you hear, identifying recurring patterns and shared challenges, and distinguishing between isolated issues and opportunities for broader impact. That sense-making—turning complexity into clarity—is a critical leadership skill in and of itself.

Equally important is building coalitions early. Sustainable impact depends on strong partnerships with academic leaders, deans, faculty and students, and on creating shared ownership around priorities and outcomes. When institutes are able to convene communities, align stakeholders and design initiatives that respect academic autonomy while supporting scale, they can become powerful catalysts for change. Ultimately, the lesson is that teaching and learning innovation succeeds not through mandates or isolated programs, but through trust, collaboration and a sustained commitment to improving the educational experience for all learners.

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January 27, 2026
A Home for Homeless DEI Strategies and Research

The journal Dear Higher Ed aims to provide a space for discussions about DEI as some campuses disinvest.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Liz Leyden and urfinguss/iStock/Getty Images

Campus DEI officers and researchers who study inequities in higher education say they’re watching decades of their work disappear as colleges respond to federal and state bans on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs by scrubbing evidence of their programs, research and milestones from campus websites.

But two former diversity professionals and an anthropology professor have made it their mission to preserve what they can of their colleagues’ efforts. The group founded a journal, called Dear Higher Ed: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain, to collect insights, experiences, research and best practices from faculty and higher ed staff currently or formerly engaged in DEI work on their campuses.

The project started with two diversity professionals at Virginia Tech who wanted to document their coworkers’ experiences as potential fodder for a book as state DEI bans proliferated. Menah Pratt and Michele Deramo, who worked in Virginia Tech’s DEI office at the time, invited their colleagues to write letters to higher ed. But they quickly realized they wanted to include voices from other institutions as Pratt met coworkers invested in DEI nationally and internationally on a fellowship with the American Council on Education at the University of Minnesota.

“What was the impetus for me is, when I came to Tech, I read 2,000 pages of reports,” Pratt said. “There was a historical record of 20 years of work that had been happening at Virginia Tech around diversity,” full of relevant data and best practices. “And then I thought, ‘Wow, these [reports] are gone from public view.’ They’re gone from so many institutions across the country.”

Pratt wanted to “start capturing some of those voices, those experiences, the strategies, the perspectives” that might otherwise be lost.

Plans for a book grew into a full-fledged journal, hosted by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing and affiliated with a nonprofit called Scholarly Platforms for Advancing Research and Knowledge, or SPARK. Pratt and Deramo—who shifted to other roles at Virginia Tech after its DEI office closed last year—edited and released Dear Higher Ed’s first volume in 2024. They later brought on Rhode Island College anthropology professor M. Gabriela Torres, and the three of them put out two more issues last year and an open call for submissions for 2026.

The journal’s articles range widely. Some are deeply personal narratives, others detail higher ed’s historic inequities or highlight research and pedagogy tools. One piece, framed by an analysis of Beyonce lyrics, discusses the value of Black women’s voices in the academy. A professor emeritus wrote about how he used his Sicilian family background to open up conversations about race and whiteness with students in his classroom. Others expressed pain at how higher ed had retreated from DEI work and their fears for the aftermath.

“Dear Higher Education, I revere you,” one author wrote, “but I am so mad at you.”

A ‘Little Ray of Hope’

The hope is to offer a place where higher ed staff and scholars who care about diversity work can share critiques of higher ed, vent their frustrations, pour over its fraught history and delve into where it needs to improve, Deramo said. But it’s also about “why transformation is possible.”

“We wanted to get people to try to envision, ‘What’s an alternative? What can higher education be?’” Deramo said.

Torres hopes the journal reaches academics still interested in these areas of practice and research “that higher ed has divested from and want ideas as to how to continue the work.”

She argued campuses have poured resources into DEI and, in doing so, “improved the lives of so many students.” Those resources might have dried up, but the work can’t be “abandoned,” she said.

She also wants to create a home for homeless research as federal agencies and campuses cut funds for projects related to gender and race. Torres researches sexual violence and said she’s increasingly pursued partnerships in Europe and Canada to continue her work.

Scholars who study anything perceived as DEI-related now feel like “I can’t talk about my research, I can’t talk about my values,” she said. But Dear Higher Ed is meant to be a “space of creativity” and “possibility” where they can freely share their thoughts and findings, and their expertise is prized.

The editors can personally relate.

“I am someone whose position was dissolved,” Deramo said. “I was someone whose expertise, whose thought leadership, was set aside. But I’m not going to set it aside.”

The journal also includes some international voices, Pratt noted, because even if the U.S. has backed away from diversity research and practices, that work is continuing in other places, and scholars can learn from each other across borders.

The editors recognize that what they’re asking authors to do—write often deeply personal stories about a now lightning-rod issue on a public platform—isn’t easy. With rare exceptions, they prefer authors put their name on their work, if possible.

Writing for Dear Higher Ed requires “courage” because “if everything is anonymous, then you don’t have anything,” Pratt said. “At some point, you just have to believe that your words out in the world, with your background and all your identities, are more important than the silence.”

For Pratt, the journal has been “a little ray of hope,” she said.

“We’re just sitting here silently suffering,” Pratt said. “And I think to have a small little platform that says, ‘this work is not going away,’ or ‘your work is still important,’ or ‘what you did was important,’ … ‘these values still matter’” offers “that little glimmer of hope.”

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January 27, 2026
ICE Needs Higher Education and Training Standards (opinion)

Nearly half of the police academies in America are offered at colleges or technical schools, like ours at Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts.

At its best, police education and training prepare law enforcement officers with the knowledge and skills—including principles of constitutional law, active listening and verbal de-escalation techniques, implicit bias awareness, how to recognize signs of mental illness or substance abuse, use of force standards, and ethical decision-making and professional conduct—that they will need to protect and serve the public as safely and effectively as possible.

While no amount of training will prepare officers for every challenging situation they will face in their careers, or guarantee that every action they take will have the best outcome, the content, quality, culture and time spent on task of their training can make the difference between lives saved and lives lost.

Neglecting that high-quality training is one of the reasons we have seen so many use-of-force incidents, including shootings and fatalities, involving federal immigration agents over the past year—and why, unless we change course quickly, we are likely going to see more in the months ahead.

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) more than doubled the size of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workforce, from 10,000 to 22,000 agents, in less than a year, through aggressive recruitment techniques, reduced standards and significantly less training. The results are now appearing, tragically, on the streets of cities across the country.

Between 2015 and 2021, ICE agents were involved in 59 shootings, an average of 10 each year, resulting in 23 deaths.

Since the start of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in cities across the U.S. last summer, federal immigration agents have fired shots in at least 19 separate incidents, resulting in at least five deaths, according to the nonprofit news organization The Trace. This includes the fatal shootings in Minneapolis this month of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and poet, who had recently completed a degree in English at Old Dominion University, and of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital and a University of Minnesota alumnus.

None of this should be surprising.

The sheer number of ICE agents dispatched, military-style, into cities that have specifically asked for them to limit their presence, has increased the likelihood of conflict with local residents.

Potentially more impactful, though, is the insufficient preparation of those agents for their assignments: In order to meet its ambitious recruitment goal, the Department of Homeland Security offered signing bonuses up to $50,000, eliminated age limits, reduced physical fitness standards, and cut training time in about half, to only eight weeks.

In addition, the White House has eviscerated transparency and accountability for ICE and other agencies by eliminating the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, along with a variety of inspectors general and ombudsman positions, while using a steady stream of rhetoric that glamorizes the agency, dehumanizes immigrants, and encourages a gung-ho, no-holds-barred approach to encounters, arrests and deportations.

All of this flies in the face of what educators know works best for community policing, and it is the opposite of the approach we have been taking in Massachusetts and at other college-hosted police academies across the country.

In 2017, I led a statewide task force of police chiefs, elected officials, municipal and higher education leaders that examined police education and training in Massachusetts and made recommendations for improvement.

Our research was clear: The more education, training and practice officers receive, the more likely they are to think critically, solve problems effectively, understand civil rights issues from multiple perspectives, and experience fewer complaints and disciplinary actions; and the less likely they are to use excessive or deadly force.

Since then, the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee, which oversees curriculum and instructional practices for all of the state’s 21-week police academies, has expanded collaborations with educational institutions and shifted from military-style boot camp training to an academy culture that prepares officers for public-facing professional community policing roles.

In 2020, the state created the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission, designed to bring even greater transparency and accountability to policing in the Commonwealth by requiring certification, discipline and training standards statewide.

In 2021, Northern Essex Community College became the first Massachusetts police academy to become ABLE (Active Bystander for Law Enforcement) certified and now, along with other academies in the state, prepares every officer with an eight-hour course teaching them how to respond if a fellow officer is involved in misconduct.

As a result of rigorous training over time, high standards, a culture of community policing, public transparency and accountability, and increasing access to higher education, Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of fatal shootings by police in the country, while remaining one of the safest states to live.

However you may feel about the politics of American immigration laws and their enforcement, from the perspective of effective police education and training, the nation’s Department of Homeland Security, through its revised recruitment and training practices, is degrading the preparedness and effectiveness of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Unless DHS changes its practices quickly, or is forced to by pressure from states and members of Congress, and adopts higher standards of education and training and a culture of community policing, the agency is all but guaranteeing there will be more unnecessary deaths at the hands of underprepared ICE officers around the country.

Lane A. Glenn is president of Northern Essex Community College.

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January 27, 2026
Lectures on Race Canceled at Arkansas-Little Rock

University administrators were reportedly wary of violating a state law that restricts certain discussions of race.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | CSUDH/iStock/Getty Images | WSCUC NEW

Professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have nixed plans to participate in history lectures on racism and racial equity, due to censorship concerns, the Arkansas Times reported.

The newspaper reported that professors first raised concerns last month when the university scrubbed mentions of an upcoming “Evenings with History” lecture series from the university website. Administrators were reportedly concerned that two of the lectures could prompt scrutiny from state officials, specifically a February lecture titled “Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Death Penalty in Arkansas and the United States,” and a discussion with David Roediger about his memoir, which is titled “An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education” scheduled for April.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock history Professor Barclay Key initially raised concerns in December in a memo to the Faculty Senate, obtained by the Arkansas Times, that recapped a conversation between himself and three high-ranking administrators.

Key noted concerns about the two lectures and that the administrators proposed changing the title of the first event and adding language to the description of the memoir discussion in order to avoid running afoul of state law that restricts certain discussions of race, according to the professor’s Dec. 19 memo.

Key wrote that he declined to make the requested changes.

“I also asked for clarification about how we are violating the law because the Department of History takes the law very seriously,” Key wrote, adding the administrators present confirmed they weren’t violating the law. “In search of further clarification, I pointed out that the law explicitly allows the discussion of ideas, history, and public policy that may be controversial or ‘that individuals may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.’ As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that this entire effort revolves around guessing what might offend some state legislators.”

Faculty members decided not to participate in the two lectures, which are operated in tandem with the nonprofit University History Institute. However, other lectures in the series remain on the schedule, such as a March event titled “The Making of a Propaganda Society in Rural China.”

Officials told Inside Higher Ed by email that the university “is reviewing its participation in the lecture series for compliance with applicable legislation.”

The move adds to academic freedom concerns in the University of Arkansas System after officials rescinded a job offer to Emily Suski, who was set to become dean of the law school, over political backlash. Officials pulled the offer after lawmakers raised concerns about the fact that Suski had signed an amicus brief supporting transgender athletes.

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January 27, 2026
ETS Seeks to Sell GRE, TOEFL

The testing nonprofit ETS is looking to sell or find strategic investors for two of its key exams, the GRE and TOEFL, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The GRE, once required for admission to most graduate programs, has seen a steep decline in takers, as many institutions have made the test optional—a trend accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020–2021, more than 350,000 people took the GRE; in 2024–25, that number fell to 200,000, according to the Journal.

The TOEFL, which assesses the English-language proficiency of international students, has faced mounting competition from companies including Duolingo, the Journal reported. The Trump administration’s crackdown on visas and efforts to cap international student enrollments in the U.S. have further shrunk the pool of test takers.

Sources told the Journal that ETS is hoping to sell the tests for about $500 million and has fielded interest from the Singapore-based investment firm Hillhouse, private-equity firms Nexus Capital and Veritas Capital, and education entrepeneur Martin Basiri, among others.

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January 27, 2026
Strategies for Supporting International Scholars (opinion)

International scholars represent a vital economic force in the United States, contributing an estimated $42.9 billion to the economy and supporting more than 355,000 jobs during the 2024–25 academic year. But navigating the U.S. immigration system as an international student or postdoctoral researcher can be a long and complex journey.

While everyone is subject to their individual situations, for many, the process begins with an F-1 student visa, which they hold as they complete a Ph.D. over five to six years. After graduation, they may choose to transition to Optional Practical Training (OPT), which provides a year of work authorization, with a two-year extension for STEM graduates. Some may then transition to a H-1B temporary work visa, which provides for three years of work authorization and is renewable for another three years.

Depending on their visa journey, after this period of potentially 10 to 15 years on a temporary visa, a scholar who decides they would like to seek permanent residency would have several pathways available to them. The EB-1A (extraordinary ability) category allows for self-petitioning without an employer. It’s often the fastest route if one meets the strict qualifications.

EB-1B is for outstanding professors or researchers and requires employer sponsorship. EB-2, another common path, is for individuals with advanced degrees such as Ph.D. holders; it often requires employment sponsorship and a labor certification (a process that certifies that the job offer will not adversely impact U.S. workers), unless one qualifies for a National Interest Waiver, which waives the job offer and labor certification requirement and allows for self-petitioning. Unfortunately, the green card timeline is also heavily influenced by one’s country of birth due to annual per-country limits.

As universities recognize the critical importance of international students and scholars to their academic communities and the broader economy, innovative programs have emerged to address the unique challenges faced by this population. Below, we highlight some commendable strategies implemented by leading universities to support international students beyond traditional academic services.

Career Development and Professional Preparedness

Universities can collaborate with private organizations like Beyond the Professoriate, which offers a PhD Career Conference addressing critical career-related topics. These career-focused initiatives are particularly valuable because they address the reality that many international students and scholars will pursue careers outside academia, yet traditional graduate programs often provide limited exposure to industry pathways.

Complementing these efforts, universities can implement career-readiness workshops tailored specifically for international scholars to address their unique professional development needs. The effectiveness of such programs lies in their practical approach to addressing real-world concerns such as navigating visa restrictions or OPT applications and securing employment that supports immigration status.

We recommend that institutions thoughtfully include entities that hire international students in their programming and create events that specifically connect employers and international scholars. Institutions should also help scholars explore job opportunities beyond the United States.

Mentorship Networks and Alumni Connections

Mentorship programs represent another cornerstone of effective international student support. Programs like the Graduate Alum Mentoring Program, Terrapins Connect, Alumni Mentoring Program and Conference Mentor Program serve as exemplary models. Successful programs take a systematic approach to matching mentors and mentees based on shared interests, career goals and often similar international backgrounds, creating authentic relationships that provide comprehensive support for scholars’ academic journeys and beyond. For international students and scholars unfamiliar with cultural norms around American professional networking, having a guide with a shared background transforms potentially overwhelming experiences into valuable opportunities for professional development.

Community Building and Recognition

Universities that successfully support international populations prioritize creating multiple touch points for community engagement and mutual support, from informal networking events to structured support groups that address specific challenges. Community engagement is critical to minimizing isolation and allows scholars to draw on support from a variety of sources. These touch points can include accessible initiatives such as Friendship Fridays, International Coffee Hour, the Global Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Program, International Student Support Circle, VISAS Cafe and International Friends Club.

Another strategy is systematically highlighting the accomplishments of international students, scholars and faculty, and staff members at the university level. Recognition programs can include features in university publications, special awards ceremonies, spotlight presentations, fellowships and social media campaigns showcasing international student achievements. These initiatives celebrate contributions, demonstrate the value of international diversity and provide positive role models while combating negative stereotypes.

Peer Support

Since they first emerged in the early 1900s, international student associations have been central to their members’ identity formation and have long enriched U.S. campuses and social life. In these challenging times, such organizations can help their members find the support they need. National organizations such the Graduate Students Association of Ghanaian Students in the USA (GRASAG-USA) or the North American Association of Indian Students (NAAIS), as well as local chapters of groups like the Indian Students Association, continue to be effective social and emotional support resources for international students.

Providing Support in Navigating Immigration Policy Changes

Given the lengthy and often uncertain nature of immigration processes, U.S. institutions play a vital role in offering both practical support and emotional reassurance to their international members. Some institutions offer free legal consultations with external immigration attorneys. Institutions may choose to provide internal immigration advice in addition to external consultations.

Institutions may also support foreign nationals by providing information through a weekly newsletter as well as offering up-to-date guidance on policies and policy changes in an easily understandable format. Institutions without these forms of support may choose to refer scholars to national organizations that collate policy analysis and resources.

Furthermore, universities can offer programs spotlighting lesser-known immigration options, such as the O-1 visa for individuals with extraordinary ability.

By providing clear information, legal support and proactive communication, institutions and organizations can alleviate much of the stress international scholars face.

The most effective approaches involve integrated systems that combine multiple strategies rather than relying on single interventions. Successful universities create comprehensive ecosystems addressing career development, mentorship, community building and recognition as interconnected elements of student success. When institutions act not just as employers or educators, but as advocates, they empower the international talent they have invested in and ensure that global knowledge continues to thrive.

The authors acknowledge Sonali Majumdar and Bénédicte Gnangnon for their valuable contributions toward this article.

Zarna Pala serves as assistant director of the Biological Sciences Graduate Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular parasitology from BITS Pilani, India, and brings multifaceted experience spanning infectious diseases research, academic administration and innovative program design; her work encompasses strategic admissions planning, cross-institutional partnerships, developing professional development resources and advocacy for early-career researchers.

Rashmi Raj is the assistant dean for student and postdoctoral affairs at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. She completed her doctorate in biochemistry at the National University of Singapore prior to completing a postdoc in metabolic engineering at Northwestern University; in her current role, Rashmi oversees postdoctoral program development, faculty development and career development programming and alumni engagement for both predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers.

Henry Boachi is a program manager at University of Virginia’s Environmental Institute. He leads the institute’s recruitment, professional development and community engagement work with postdoctoral scholars through the Climate Fellows Program. He also supports practitioner fellows who are recruited to enrich UVA’s climate research efforts with their professional field (nonfaculty) experiences.

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January 26, 2026
New Bill Would Consolidate Mississippi Community Colleges

Legislation introduced by Mississippi representative Trey Lamar, chairman of the state’s House Ways and Means Committee, proposes consolidating six Mississippi community colleges, Magnolia Tribune reported. The bill has been referred to the House Universities and Colleges Committee for review.

If signed into law, the bill would merge the Mississippi Delta and Coahoma community college districts, the East Mississippi and Meridian community college districts, and the Copiah-Lincoln and Southwest Mississippi community college districts by July 2027. The move would reduce the number of community colleges in the state from 15 to 12.

College facilities wouldn’t have to close, “unless the facility is an unneeded administrative office located within a community college district which has been abolished,” according to the legislation.

Lamar argued consolidating the community colleges will mean more money to go around.

“At a time where the community college system is asking the taxpayers of Mississippi to fund tens of millions in new investment into the system, the savings realized from administrative consolidation at our smaller schools could be immediately rolled into the 12 remaining community colleges for significant staff and faculty pay raises,” he told the Magnolia Tribune.

Kell Smith, executive director of the Mississippi Community College Board, told Inside Higher Ed, “The proposal to consolidate several Mississippi community college districts raises important questions worth careful consideration. Any potential administrative efficiencies should be weighed alongside the impact on students, faculty, staff, and the communities these colleges serve. Clear communication, transparency, and input from stakeholders will be essential as discussions move forward.”

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January 26, 2026
DHS Targeted Students for Protected Speech

The administration’s push to deport international students and scholars prompted protests and lawsuits.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images News

Federal government officials targeted and arrested international students for First Amendment–protected activity last year, despite internal concerns about the legality of such efforts, newly unsealed court documents show.

Dossiers and summaries compiled by government officials used to justify legal action against international students targeted by the Department of Homeland Security do not include allegations of criminality but instead focus on their participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

Documents show such arrests were in connection with students exercising their First Amendment rights, with DHS officials casting pro-Palestinian protests as antisemitic and arguing that targeted individuals presented a threat to U.S foreign policy based on their activism.

While a judge ruled against the federal government last fall, documents unsealed on Thursday offer new insights into the case. That same day, U.S. District Judge William Young also ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of targeting international students and faculty members for their activism was unlawful and in violation of the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, and he imposed limits on how the federal government may pursue related immigration actions.

Targets named in the documents include Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung—all current students or recent graduates—and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. All were targeted for speech protected by the First Amendment.

In a memo intended for U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, subordinates flagged various transgressions that they argued justified action against international students and scholars, such as leading campus protests. In the case of Öztürk, the justification was that she had written an op-ed in a student newspaper in which she called for Tufts University, which she attends, to divest from companies with direct ties to Israel due to concerns about Palestinian casualties.

Federal officials tried to tie Suri to Hamas through his wife, a Palestinian American whose father once advised a Hamas leader. A government memo included claims from outside sources that Suri “actively spreads the terror group’s propaganda and promotes virulent antisemitism.” DHS officials have repeated such claims publicly but have not provided any evidence.

Officials painted protest activities broadly as antisemitic, arguing in one document that targets such as Khalil were “creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization.” However, documents did not include evidence of any ties to or support for Hamas. Instead, officials broadly framed participation in protests or social media posts critical of the Israeli government and military as inherently supportive of Hamas.

But even as they targeted students, federal officials knew they were on shaky legal ground.

“Given the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will scrutinize the basis for this determination,” federal government officials wrote in a memo that justified the arrest of international scholars.

Before issuing the order Thursday, Young blasted federal officials from the bench last week, proclaiming that Rubio and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem failed to uphold the Constitution and engaged in a “conspiracy to pick off certain people” for their beliefs, despite clear First Amendment concerns.

Free speech advocates have sharply criticized the federal government for arresting and attempting to deport international students solely based on their pro-Palestinian activism.

“Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, which supported plaintiffs in the case, wrote online. “The policy had nothing to do with fighting antisemitism and everything to do with suppressing legitimate and constitutionally protected criticism of Israel.”

The lawsuit against the Trump administration was filed last year by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. In a social media post following the order, AAUP president Todd Wolfson wrote, “This ruling is not everything we needed or expected but it is still a significant step forward.”

DHS officials did not respond to a request for comment.

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January 26, 2026
Tenure Under Threat

Tom Alter (center) speaks at free speech rally on his behalf in Austin.

Texas State Employees Union

“I responded, ‘No, it’s OK, I’m aware. Let’s just ignore it. Let’s not give it any air,’” Alter said about the infiltrator’s doxing campaign. Then the texter followed up with a link to a statement from Texas State president Kelly Damphousse, posted to the university website and on Facebook, “announcing my termination for ‘inciting violence,’ effective immediately,” Alter said.

A few years ago, this story—a tenured professor fired publicly without notice or due process for asking a rhetorical question during an unaffiliated talk—would have dominated the higher education news cycle for weeks. In fact, it was such a rare occurrence that the names of those removed for similar speech incidents gained legendary status in academic circles. In 2014, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, under pressure from major donors, revoked a tenure offer to American Indian studies professor Steven Salaita because of his tweets criticizing Israel and its actions in Gaza. The scandal generated news coverage and commentary for years. Similarly, following a coordinated campaign led by law professor Alan Dershowitz, political scientist and Holocaust researcher Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University despite votes in favor from the department and the college. Finkelstein resigned soon after.

But Alter’s story was quickly overshadowed by a bigger one: He was fired the same day that conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University, sparking a more dramatic wave of faculty removals. Like many Americans, faculty took to social media to voice their opinions on Kirk. Under pressure from right-wing politicians and online activists, universities in conservative states responded with academic Jedburgh justice: punish first, ask questions later.

Michael Rex, an English and creative writing professor at Cumberland University in Tennessee, was dismissed for a post about Kirk that said, “kharma [sic] is a beautiful bitch.” Anna Kenney, an associate professor of pediatrics at Emory University in Georgia, was also terminated after calling Kirk a “disgusting individual” online. Karen Leader, an associate professor of art history at Florida Atlantic University, was put on administrative leave and investigated for months after sharing several X posts about Kirk’s public comments alongside the tag line, “This was Charlie Kirk.”

Tenure was of little help. One of the most unusual and coveted perks of an academic career, tenure historically has come with two key benefits: job security and protection from dismissal or discipline over unpopular ideas, said Deepa Das Acevedo, a legal anthropologist and tenure researcher at Emory University. But the speed and ease with which universities dismissed their faculty for personal speech exposed the tenure system’s corroded foundation, worn away by years of encroaching state policies, administrative leadership changes and a cultural shift in how the American public thinks about academia. Now faculty are left to wonder: Has the drastic politicization of the country, combined with the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on higher ed, rendered tenure moot?

To understand how September’s swift firings became possible, we must start in Wisconsin.

Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker introduced some of the first modern legislation against tenure.

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

States Challenge the Academy

In 2014, then–Wisconsin governor Scott Walker challenged the “Wisconsin Idea,” the state’s century-old philosophy that all citizens should benefit from knowledge produced by the university system and that “basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” He wanted the university to orient its mission toward meeting the state’s workforce needs—a philosophy of higher ed that remains popular with conservatives, demonstrated at the federal level by President Donald Trump’s ambition to promote vocational and trade schools.

Walker ultimately failed to alter the university system’s mission, but succeeded in another effort: weakening tenure. In 2015, via a $73 billion budget, Walker, a Republican, made good on his proposal to eliminate language in the state code that protected tenure and shared governance. His new policy handed the power to set tenure policies to the University of Wisconsin system Board of Regents, of which 16 of 18 members are appointed by the governor. The new rules also gave the regents the ability to fire tenured professors when programs were cut or modified—an option that was previously available only in cases of financial exigency.

Walker’s attack on tenure wasn’t the first, but it “made it big on my radar,” Das Acevedo said. Other tenure experts agreed—Walker’s straightforward attack set in motion a landslide of other conservative efforts to curb tenure.

“A number of the efforts [to erode tenure] have come from Republicans, and they’re often tied to larger complaints about the politics of the academy—that faculty members are too progressive; that they are promoting diversity, equity and inclusion; and that they’re trying to indoctrinate students,” said Tim Cain, associate director and professor of higher education at the University of Georgia’s Louisa McBee Institute of Higher Education.

Between 2012 and 2022, state legislatures considered 13 tenure bans and 3,000 bills that addressed faculty or tenure in some way, according to a 2025 study by University of North Texas professor of higher education Barrett Taylor and Ph.D. student Kimberly Watts. The outright tenure bans proved largely unpopular—to date, no state has fully eliminated tenure for faculty—but many evolved into laws that sought to weaken tenure’s protections without getting rid of the status entirely.

In 2022, Florida enacted a law that green-lighted post-tenure review at public institutions. In 2023, while conservatives fumed over critical race theory, Texas enacted Senate Bill 18, which broadened the grounds for terminating a tenured professor to include “exhibit[ing] professional incompetence” and engaging in ill-defined “conduct involving moral turpitude,” among other reasons.

“What we’re seeing is an increase in these efforts, certainly,” Cain said. “The legislation that was proposed in Texas initially was to ban tenure. What was actually passed and signed into law was weakening tenure. A lot of times legislation changes through the process, and you might see more extreme versions that get watered down in one way or another. But they can still be quite problematic for advocates of faculty and advocates of tenure.”

Tenure advocates aren’t against regular evaluations for tenured professors, but the American Association of University Professors argues that post-tenure review “shouldn’t be undertaken for the purpose of dismissal.” State legislatures have weaponized post-tenure review policies in recent years, giving administrators regular opportunities to review and subsequently sanction or fire tenured faculty without real cause. Ohio’s Senate Bill 1 and Kentucky’s House Bill 4, which both took effect in 2025, implemented post-tenure review for public university faculty. In December, the South Dakota Board of Regents also adopted a post-tenure review policy. The University of Tennessee requires tenured professors to be reviewed every six years. Dan Collier, assistant professor of higher and adult education at the University of Memphis, said the lack of protection for tenured professors in the state is discouraging his pursuit of tenure. On LinkedIn, he announced that he told his dean he didn’t care about tenure—only the related pay bump.

“My protections in Tennessee are nowhere near the same as somebody who would also be protected by a union and other laws that exist in somewhere like Michigan or California,” Collier told Inside Higher Ed.

He hesitated to put all the blame on conservatives, however.

“While certain Republican-led states may be reducing tenure protections more than they have in the past, that’s not to say that Democrats or blue states are actually ramping them up to protect anybody, either,” said Collier.

Exploiting Financial Turmoil

Most tenure policies at both the state and institutional level have always allowed for institutions to lay off tenured faculty in cases of financial exigency—periods of extreme financial distress, similar to personal bankruptcy. Financial exigency serves as a kind of escape hatch that allows institutions to bypass their own policies and make large cuts, including laying off tenured faculty, closing programs or undertaking significant administrative overhaul.

In its 1940 statement on academic freedom, the AAUP said that financial exigency was the only case beyond adequate cause in which tenured faculty can be terminated. The AAUP defines financial exigency as “a severe financial crisis that fundamentally compromises the academic integrity of the institution as a whole and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and the financial stress it put on college campuses brought about a flurry of financial exigency announcements—at least, on their face, Das Acevedo said. “I realized that a lot of those schools were not actually declaring financial exigency,” she said. “They were saying ‘financial exigency,’ and citing difficulties and the pandemic and whatnot, but they weren’t declaring themselves to be in a state of financial exigency.”

Still, the pandemic normalized tenured faculty layoffs in periods of financial strain.

“Many small liberal arts colleges had used the pandemic, in many cases, as an excuse to reorganize the layout of faculty,” said Anita Levy, senior program officer at the AAUP. “So yes, there probably was an acceleration at that moment” of tenured faculty layoffs.

It’s not exactly that anything about tenure has changed. It’s more that universities, like many other employers, have become more willing to skirt the boundaries of what is legally permissible.”

—Deepa Das Acevedo, legal anthropologist and tenure researcher at Emory University

William Paterson University in New Jersey laid off 13 tenured or tenure-track professors mid-pandemic in 2021 and proposed cutting an additional 150 professors over the course of three years, even though the institution never formally declared financial exigency. Also in 2021, the Kansas Board of Regents voted to allow its universities to terminate employees, including tenured professors, without declaring financial exigency. In 2024, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted to lay off 35 tenured faculty members in University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s now-shuttered College of General Studies—a decision that Walker’s 2015 efforts allowed for.

Despite the hair-trigger firings after Kirk’s death, reductions in force remain the biggest threat to tenured professors at present, said Das Acevedo. “The overwhelming majority of tenured faculty lose their jobs not because they were fired for a cause, but because they were the victim of a [reduction in force],” she said.

She underscored the point with a statistic: More tenured faculty members have lost their jobs as the result of a RIF at 13 universities over the past five years than the total number of faculty members who were fired for cause at all universities in the last 20 years.

When tenured professors lose their jobs, colleges and universities are increasingly replacing those roles with adjunct appointments, which give institutions more flexibility in their staffing—and, therefore, spending—year to year. The trend threatens tenure and academic freedom in a different way: by limiting the number of professors who are granted tenure’s traditional protections, said Levy.

“There has been an increase in contingent faculty appointments, which influences how the rights of others are treated on campus,” Levy said. “In other words, right now, 21 percent of the academic labor force is tenured. While the AAUP holds that all full-time faculty members, regardless of rank, should be considered eligible for the protections of tenure, that’s not the case, unfortunately, in much of higher ed.” A 2023 study from the AAUP showed that, in the fall of that year, 23 percent of faculty held full-time tenured positions, down from 39 percent in fall 1987. Between fall 2002 and fall 2023, the number of contingent appointments increased by 65 percent, while tenured appointments increased by only 6 percent and tenure-track appointments fell by 7 percent.

The shift in favor of hiring adjunct faculty reflects a change in leadership strategy, said Collier. “You have HR policies that continuously change to favor administrators, and intentions to corporatize higher education and treat faculty more as employees instead of shared governance,” he said.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | blankvoid, chiravan39, Lee Lawson and PeskyMonkey/iStock/Getty Images

Protest as Fireable Offense

Tenure isn’t dead quite yet—several faculty members fired or put on leave after Kirk’s death have been reinstated in recent months. The University of South Dakota tried to fire art professor Michael Hook over his post about Kirk before abandoning the effort in October amid a legal battle. Darren Michael, a tenured professor of theater at Austin Peay State University, was reinstated in December and paid $500,000 to reimburse him for counseling services, though part of the settlement dictates that Michael will resign in May. At Florida Atlantic University, Karen Leader and finance professor Rebel Cole, both tenured, returned to the classroom in November following two months of paid administrative leave.

Their untenured colleague Kate Polak wasn’t so lucky. Polak, an English instructor, was put on leave in September after the university received complaints that she “celebrated” Kirk’s murder online, including writing that seeing him killed was a “win.” The university announced last week that she would not return to her position.

Institutions haven’t been consistent in how they apply social media speech standards. For example, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville suspended anthropology professor Tamar Shirinian for posting on social media that Kirk was a “disgusting psychopath” and that his wife was a “sick fuck for marrying him.” Nine years earlier, when protesters stopped traffic in Charlotte, N.C., after police shot and killed a Black man in an apartment parking lot, UT Knoxville law professor Glenn Reynolds suggested on Twitter that motorists “run them [the protesters] down.” University officials criticized Reynolds’s tweet, but did not sanction him and ultimately said it was an “exercise of his First Amendment rights.”

You get celebrated for all things social justice, but once you try to advocate for justice in Palestine, you’re basically killing your career and no one will stand by you.”

—Sang Hea Kil, former tenured justice studies professor at San José State University

Speech-related sanctions became more common a few years ago, as the American political landscape slid to the right and online cancel culture made it easy to wield a pressure campaign against universities. Student and faculty protests and counterprotests over Israel’s actions in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack attracted a variety of university responses, but faculty sanctions or firings were more sporadic than they are now, Das Acevedo said. Among those punished was Maura Finkelstein, who is Jewish and a tenured associate professor at Muhlenberg College. She reposted a statement from a Palestinian American artist that criticized Zionists and told readers not to “welcome them in your spaces” or “make them feel comfortable.”

Most recently, San José State University fired Sang Hea Kil, a tenured professor in the justice studies department who had worked at the university since 2007. University officials took issue with her advocacy for Palestine—but it was her activist work that got her hired in the first place, she said.

“My department hired me as a scholar activist,” she said. “I won a lot of awards as a student activist … and so I did not miss a beat when I arrived at my tenure-track position, and I kept on doing scholar-activist things.”

Kil’s work has always gotten under administrators’ skin; even before she was tenured, she helped lead a successful campaign against internal corruption that led to the resignations of several upper-level administrators. But things changed in 2024.

“The two things that I think that are different 1769462754 are one, new McCarthyism heralded by the Trump administration, and then two, Palestinian exceptionalism,” she said. “You get celebrated for all things social justice, but once you try to advocate for justice in Palestine, you’re basically killing your career and no one will stand by you.”

Kil and Collier agree that the shifting political landscape is partially to blame for the changing rules. If faculty members tick off conservative politicians, it can lead to serious financial and political consequences for the entire institution, Collier said.

“Upper administrators are going to be very, very risk-averse right now, because who wants to get the attention of the Trump administration at the moment?” said Collier. “If they’re focused on Harvard and they’re focused on Columbia, and you are at a regional institution [that] hasn’t gotten selected attention, are you going to push that envelope and get that attention? Because what they’re doing to those larger institutions would be extremely harsh penalties for a less-resourced institution.”

Kil and others believe that she is the first full professor fired from an American college or university for pro-Palestine speech.

“My case becomes really important because they’re going after the tenure system,” she said. The progression from Salaita’s revoked tenure offer in 2014, to Finkelstein in 2024 and Kil in 2025, “shows the escalation that higher ed administrators are willing to go in this political context.”

The weakening of tenure isn’t due to a flaw in the tenure system, Das Acevedo stressed, but to institutions’ increasing refusal to stand up for the traditional protections.

“It’s not exactly that anything about tenure changed,” Das Acevedo said. “It’s more that universities, like many other employers, have become more willing to skirt the boundaries of what is legally permissible, or outright go beyond what is legally permissible, and either pay the consequences in the form of a financial settlement or, in some cases, just not suffer any consequences.”

(This story has been updated to correct Dan Collier’s title. He’s an assistant professor of higher and adult education at the University of Memphis.)

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January 26, 2026
$Cassidy Probes Math Course Placements at Selective Colleges$

Cassidy Probes Math Course Placements at Selective Colleges

Cassidy sent information requests to 35 universities.

Bill Clark/CQ–Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

A Senate committee chair has launched an investigation into what he says is a decline in how prepared freshmen accepted into selective institutions are for math courses there.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, announced Friday that he’s sent letters to 35 institutions, including Ivy League universities, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Rice University and more.

“The United States faces a crisis in student achievement at the K–12 level that has begun to spill over into higher education, especially in math,” Cassidy wrote in the letters.

He cited the widely discussed November report from the University of California, San Diego, in which a university working group said that one in 12 first-year students in the fall placed into math below a middle school level, despite having a solid math grade point average from high school.

“This state of affairs is unacceptable and demands immediate corrective action,” Cassidy said.

He’s asking each of these institutions to provide data on freshman placement into math courses, explanations of how placements are decided, information on math classes that include precollege content, descriptions of universitywide math graduation requirements and info on whether they require the SAT, ACT or other math tests for admission. The due date is Feb. 5.

A Cassidy spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday on why he’s only investigating selective institutions.

The UC San Diego report provided some reasons for its first-year students’ math deficits.

“This deterioration coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on education, the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation, and the expansion of admissions from under-resourced high schools,” the report said. “The combination of these factors has produced an incoming class increasingly unprepared.”

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January 26, 2026