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Higher ed’s hopes and fears as Trump retakes the reins

As Donald Trump returns to the White House on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day—with a GOP Congress behind him, a vice president who’s called universities “the enemy” and a WWE powerhouse tapped as his education secretary—it’s fair to say that the only certainty for U.S. higher education is uncertainty.

Trump’s attention to the sector during his first term was fleeting. He didn’t make higher ed a central issue in his protracted campaign for re-election, either, although he did call for axing the Education Department, firing accreditors, deporting campus protesters, eliminating DEI programs and launching a national online university.

His conservative allies have plenty of plans at the ready. Project 2025 has called for radical reform to reduce the federal role in higher ed and hand power to the states. GOP members of Congress will be eager to pass pent-up bills they couldn’t get through in the past four years—some welcome by many in higher ed, others stirring broad alarm.

And while Republicans are raring to reform higher ed, the sector limps into Trump Part II in a weakened state, scarred from plummeting trust in the value of a college education as well as scalding political rhetoric, congressional probes into campus antisemitism, state laws banning DEI programs and dictating curriculum changes, and the politicization of boards and presidencies—not to mention the imminent arrival of the long-dreaded demographic cliff.

It might sound like a grim state of affairs. But the priorities of the new administration and Congress—and how they might affect colleges and universities for both good and ill—are anybody’s guess at this point. So is their ability, or political will, to pass and implement sweeping reforms.

Not everyone is guessing, though. This is academia, after all—experts know things, or at least have highly educated guesses. So we asked a range of prominent leaders and scholars to identify their highest hope and greatest fear for the sector in the second Trump administration. No consensus emerges—again, after all, this is academia. But their collective insights shed some unexpected light on both the challenges and opportunities Trump’s second four years may present.

Some of their fears might not surprise you. But some of their hopes probably will. The responses have been edited for clarity and concision.

Paulette Granberry Russell

^{President of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education}

My highest hope is that the administration respects and upholds the autonomy of higher education institutions and does not attempt to undermine them further.

We have witnessed continual attacks by the states on institutional autonomy, academic freedom and free speech. I hope that federal policy will not extend these attacks through the elimination of critical departments, drastic changes via executive orders or significant reductions in funding to the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services—agencies whose resources and policies underpin equity, inclusion and access. For institutional leaders, courage and consistency in prioritizing equity, access and opportunity will be crucial to preserving the transformative mission of higher education.

My greatest worry is that inclusive strategies and interventions, many catalyzed by landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX in 1972, will stall—or worse, regress. Federal policy modeled after restrictive state-level legislation would disproportionately harm individuals and communities that have historically faced discrimination. Efforts to dismantle programs aimed at achieving more equitable outcomes—programs that have yielded measurable benefits for generations—would erode the progress made in expanding access and success for underrepresented students. The implications of such rollbacks would extend beyond higher education institutions, threatening the broader economy and society. Diverse, equitable campuses don’t just benefit individual students; they create a pipeline of leaders and innovators essential for a competitive global workforce.

Miriam Feldblum

^{Executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration}

In the coming years, there will undoubtedly be harsh immigration and border policies, increased deportations and some restricted opportunities to stay and work in the U.S. for those with temporary or fragile immigration statuses. Yet my greatest hope is that we recognize, solidify and even expand real opportunities to find common ground, including ways for higher ed institutions and campuses to support these students and other campus members. President Trump recently said that he wants to work to find a way for Dreamers to stay and keep contributing. He has also suggested giving green cards to international student graduates and said he supports H-1B visas. Higher ed leaders and institutions should seize these opportunities for common ground.

My greatest fear, meanwhile, is that America squanders the potential of Dreamers, immigrant-origin and international students through restrictive policies. The U.S. is facing an immense talent imperative to sustain our global economic competitiveness, drive innovation, fill workforce shortages and produce a trained and dedicated workforce. Higher education institutions are essential to meeting these challenges. And immigrant-origin students—including Dreamers and refugees, and other first- and second-generation immigrant students—along with international students make up over a third of all students in higher education. The loss of this talent due to misguided immigration policies, fear and targeted enforcement actions would be self-defeating for our nation’s future.

Barbara Snyder

^{President of the Association of American Universities}

President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to make America great and keep us ahead of China and other competitor nations. I am optimistic that he will support policies and investments that ensure the United States continues to be the world’s leader in scientific research. The president and Congress can secure that position by both increasing our public investments in cutting-edge research and by promoting policies that make it easy for the world’s best and brightest technological and scientific minds to study, work and stay here and advance U.S. innovation and economic growth.

My single greatest fear would be that some might try to convince the president to pull back these investments in America’s greatness and close ourselves off from the global talent and knowledge that has helped make our country great. I hope that he and Congress will resist that shortsightedness and will choose to recommit our country to the government-university research partnership that has made us the world’s strongest and most prosperous country.

Jeremy Young

^{Director of state and higher education policy at PEN America}

Over the past four years, a group of lawmakers and conservative think tanks have waged merciless war on free expression in the higher education sector. Fifteen states have passed laws that censor ideas on college and university campuses, and the new federal administration seems poised to expand this ideological war on higher education into new arenas: weaponizing federal research funding, Title VI enforcement and accreditation to restrict ideas on campus while engaging in endless bullying and jawboning of university leaders to force “voluntary” closures of diversity offices and academic programs.

My fear is that the new administration will carry forward this destructive playbook, actively suppressing politically disfavored viewpoints on campus and destroying the ideological autonomy of higher education institutions. But my hope is that it will step back from the abyss. Scientific discovery, cultural creation, the fostering of critical thinking skills employers seek in new graduates and the promotion of democratic pluralism among the rising generation—these outcomes are only possible if colleges and universities remain places where all ideas are open for debate, not just those the government agrees with.

Ivory Toldson

_{Howard University professor, editor in chief of The Journal of Negro Education and former executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities}

Under a second Trump administration, my highest hope is for the continued growth and expansion of HBCUs. These institutions have historically enjoyed bipartisan support, and even Project 2025 acknowledges the importance of providing federal support to historically Black and tribal colleges. Compared to many of the highest-ranked predominantly white institutions (PWIs), HBCUs enroll a higher percentage of U.S. citizens, which may shield them from challenges associated with more restrictive immigration policies. Moreover, as race-conscious admissions policies are rolled back, HBCUs could play a critical role in supporting Black students who may be denied opportunities at PWIs, further solidifying their importance in U.S. higher education.

My greatest worry lies in the challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which could leave Black students at PWIs with fewer resources to address persistent issues of equity, access and institutional racism. Without these programs, Black students may face increased racial hostilities with fewer protections and support systems. Additionally, efforts to weaken or eliminate the Education Department could severely threaten funding for lower-income students, particularly through federal student aid programs. Combined with growing anti–higher education attitudes, these threats could place colleges and universities under heightened scrutiny, hurt enrollment and jeopardize the future of higher education as a whole.

Jeremi Suri

^{Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs and professor of public affairs and history, University of Texas at Austin}

Republican politicians love to attack the elitism of higher education, even as they leverage their own elite pedigrees for money and power. Republicans do not really want to destroy higher education; they want to own it for themselves. I expect that the next four years will make this clear and open a wider discussion about who should have access to higher education and how we can broaden it for those who feel left out. So far, Republicans have relied on attacking DEI and “woke” culture, but what do they want to replace it with on college campuses? They cannot go back to the white male–only institutions of the early 20th century. As Republicans are forced to articulate a coherent vision for access in higher education, I expect a more open and useful conversation that will bring us back to discussing diversity and affordability—not largely in terms of race and gender, but in terms of class and geography and family history. This will still be a difficult discussion, but one that might be more substantive, complex and even useful.

Republican politicians have also promoted a new “civics” agenda in higher education, based on an unproven claim that universities have abandoned the subject matter. The push for civics has meant more traditionalism and patriotism, less creativity and criticism. But that is a difficult agenda to take very far. If Republicans want universities to study more Madison, Jefferson and Lincoln, how can they avoid more (not less) study of pluralism, separation of church and state, and civil rights—the core issues for these most traditional historical figures? Republican advocacy for civics education must grapple with the complex questions that many Republicans wish to avoid. A serious discussion of civics in higher education will make this clear in coming years, and it will force these programs to widen their agenda or retreat into niche enclaves on campus. Most donors will prefer the former, which might build bridges with ecumenical faculty and students.

Nicole Smith

^{Chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce}

My single highest hope is for a renewed focus on workforce development and career readiness. Amid growing debates about the value of higher education, they have remained key priorities on the Trump platform. This focus presents opportunities for higher ed institutions to continue to innovate and expand programs that align closely with labor market demands. Vocational training, apprenticeship programs and technical education have been central to Trump’s agenda, providing a foundation for colleges and universities to build stronger partnerships with industries. This can drive innovation in areas such as competency-based learning, stackable credentials and enhanced internship opportunities. By equipping students with practical skills and clear career trajectories, higher education can continue to reinforce its role as a key driver of economic mobility—a topic sure to be on the minds of leaders in this new administration.

My greatest worry for the sector? Poorer outcomes for historically marginalized students, with no way to record it. Federal support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as well as academic research, is likely to be withdrawn entirely under the Trump administration. Efforts to defund or restrict DEI programs—particularly in public institutions—may intensify. These restrictions could also lead to the politicization of academic research, with areas like intergenerational mobility in education and income, gender equity and any evaluations by race or ethnicity potentially seeing funding reductions or shifts in priority. Such changes risk creating substantial obstacles for institutions committed to fostering inclusive environments and conducting research that addresses critical societal issues. For Black professionals in higher education, this presents a dual challenge: preserving DEI efforts in the face of external resistance while defending academic freedom in a climate increasingly marked by skepticism and distrust of research.

Sherene Seikaly

^{Associate professor at UC Santa Barbara and facilitator of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine network}

My highest hope is that the Trump administration does not engage in repression, securitization, censorship and attenuation of higher education. My greatest worry is that the Trump administration will escalate the repression of social movements on campus, and in particular the movement standing with Palestinian liberation and political rights.

Miriam Elman

^{Executive director of the Academic Engagement Network}

With alarming incidents of antisemitism occurring on campuses nationwide and beleaguered Jewish students increasingly reporting that they’re being harassed, bullied and marginalized, Donald Trump’s return to the White House is likely to result in better days ahead. Trump has already warned universities to expect a tougher stance from his administration, including the possible loss of accreditation and federal support, if they fail to address the rising level of antisemitism in their institutions. Under Trump, we may actually see several universities that are deemed in violation of civil rights law get their federal funds fully or partially cut off for not taking antisemitic bigotry and harassment seriously. This will be consequential not only for the affected schools, but will send a strong signal to other universities that antisemitism won’t be tolerated.

Tougher OCR [Office for Civil Rights] settlements are very likely coming down the pike, which is what many Jewish students, faculty and staff are hoping for. But we should be worried that at many schools there soon may no longer be adequate staffing to effectively address and combat antisemitism. With a second Trump administration, a Republican Congress and new Education Department leadership, we’ll see more diversity programs shuttered. For the Jewish community on campus, that’s going to mean a mixed bag. After all, it’s hard to see how antisemitism awareness training and educational programming will be rolled out if the staff needed to organize and facilitate these programs no longer have their jobs. To be sure, some poor DEI trainings exacerbate divisions and have done a terrible disservice to Jews on campus. Done well, though, these programs can benefit Jewish and all campus communities.

Kenneth Stern

^{Director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate}

I worry about a political attack on higher education and its effect on students and the ability of faculty to teach. Are students who are refugees from places like Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere going to face deportation? Are we going to see 18-year-olds deported because of how they view the war in Gaza? Will administrators, fearing overly aggressive Title VI cases, opt to suppress speech and academic freedom? No university should tolerate students being harassed or intimidated or bullied. But I fear that the new Congress and administration are going to draw lines not around actual safety but emotional safety, punishing universities that allow demonstrations with political expressions that some detest.

Vice President–elect JD Vance said that, as in Victor Orbán’s Hungary, the U.S. should give universities “a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.” Funding and endowments may be targeted after Jan. 20, and scholars teaching contentious subjects may be in the crosshairs. Sixty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire rejected a legal attack against a Marxist professor, upholding the importance of academic freedom. I don’t like some of what’s being taught today, either, but the remedy is certainly not government-imposed rules on what to think or teach.

Ted Mitchell

^{President of the American Council on Education and U.S. under secretary of education from 2014 to 2017}

We’re encouraged by the emphasis the incoming Trump administration and the new Congress have placed on issues such as transparency and accountability related to student outcomes. This isn’t new, and it isn’t partisan, but meaningful change is long overdue. Finding the right balance between ensuring students have access to postsecondary education while creating meaningful consequences for programs that aren’t serving their students well isn’t easy. But there are a number of thoughtful proposals being discussed that we hope will lead to a real solution in the next two years. As I said in an open letter to President-elect Trump earlier this month, our overriding goal is to provide more opportunity for all Americans.

Given the enormous list of competing priorities a new administration juggles, my biggest worry is that in attempting to pay for major spending cuts and pass tax legislation, the administration and Congress will do the shortsighted thing and enact policies like cuts to student financial aid and research funding—all of which would hurt students, keep them from reaching their full potential and hamper our nation’s economy and security.

Jim Blew

^{Co-founder of the Defense Freedom Institute and assistant secretary of planning, evaluation and policy development for the Education Department from 2017 to 2020}

I am optimistic that in the wake of the Biden-Harris administration’s management of FAFSA and the student loan portfolio, the incoming administration and Congress will agree on how to fix the broken Office of Federal Student Aid. That will require a new approach, perhaps located outside the department, that shields FSA’s operations from partisan agendas and changes the damaging incentives inherent to a performance-based organization that isn’t held accountable for financial performance. During those talks, I hope they can also align on policy reforms that will help all students access post–high school opportunities for a wide range of high-value career paths.

I’m worried that higher education institutions will misread the moment and try to stonewall efforts to hold them accountable when their students don’t get a good return on their investments or don’t repay their federal loans. If the higher ed lobby isn’t sincerely at the table, there’s a high risk that the resulting policy solutions will be less workable, or unworkable. There’s already a growing sentiment that the student loan portfolio has become a weapon of partisan politics. I wouldn’t test Congress’s patience, or there might be a severe reduction in the use of federal taxpayer funds to help our students afford postsecondary education.

Greg Lukianoff

^{President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression}

My highest hope during the second Trump administration is for Congress to pass a bill that defines student-on-student harassment consistently with the speech-protective definition set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. Campus speech codes, however well intentioned, are routinely used to punish just about any speech that someone on campus doesn’t like. Until a federal judge vacated the Biden administration Title IX rules, the Education Department was forcing schools to use an unconstitutional definition of student-on-student harassment in both the Title IX and Title VI contexts. Properly applied, the Davis standard ensures that institutions protect students against actual discriminatory behavior as opposed to punishing students who merely express controversial viewpoints.

My greatest fear also involves possible legislation. Last Congress, the House of Representatives passed the unconstitutional Antisemitism Awareness Act. While antisemitic harassment is a serious problem on campuses, the AAA’s examples of antisemitism include statements critical of the state of Israel, which is core political speech protected by the First Amendment. Rather than resurrect the AAA, members of Congress can craft constitutional legislation that would address antisemitism on campuses by prohibiting harassment based on religion, confirming that federal law forbids discrimination based on ethnic stereotypes and codifying the Supreme Court’s definition of discriminatory harassment.

David Hoag

^{President of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities}

We aspire to a higher education system that is more affordable, more accessible and more focused on the lifelong value of higher education, particularly within Christian institutions. In 2025, the CCCU hopes that the incoming administration recognizes the invaluable role of faith-based colleges in the United States. These institutions provide educational opportunities and enhance community engagement to the benefit of the entire nation. I am concerned that the current approach seeks to measure higher education through purely transactional, financial metrics, overlooking the holistic value of a liberal arts degree.

Walter Kimbrough

^{Interim president, Talladega College}

My single highest hope is narrow. I hope that the Trump administration will continue to support the bipartisan HBCU fly-in each year in Washington, D.C., started in 2017 by Republicans. HBCUs are one of the few issues that receive overwhelming bipartisan support, and we hope that support continues not just with the meetings, but increased Title III and infrastructure funding, along with Pell Grant growth.

My greatest worry is broad. The attacks on the Department of Education overwhelmingly focus on K-12. But there would be significant harm done to college students and families if some of the proposed changes to the department actually take place. Instead of viewing higher education as the enemy, there is an opportunity to push higher education with resources to be more active in solving the nation’s problems.

Robert Eitel

^{Co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, senior counselor to the secretary of education from 2017 to 2020 and deputy general counsel from 2005 to 2009}

It’s time to bring reason and sanity back to Title IX. In defiance of the law’s text, structure and history, the Biden administration sought to leverage the law to institutionalize gender ideology in schools, colleges and universities. With the 2024 Title IX regulations vacated by a judge in December, I am hopeful that a [Linda] McMahon Education Department will not only vigorously investigate violations of the 2020 Title IX regulations but also take steps to safeguard women’s and girls’ athletics and facilities in educational institutions that receive federal funds.

While expectations are high for the second Trump Education Department, my greatest fear is that the pace of Senate confirmations of crucial subcabinet positions will be too slow. Although the secretary sets the goals, expectations, pace and tone, it is in the principal offices run by assistant secretaries where the nitty-gritty work of policy development, rule making and grants management occurs. Long-term vacancies in these offices would severely disrupt the president’s education agenda.

Heather Perfetti

^{President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education}

We face an opportunity to bridge perspectives around critical federal policy in ways that advance important dialogue for the benefit of our students, our communities and our global status while ensuring that any regulatory shifts contain a return on investment.

Federal policy, however, must not inhibit higher education activities in ways that are misaligned with the needs of students or the realities of the shifts in the sector. The increasingly diverse student population faces challenges requiring institutions to honor the many individualized approaches that we know help students achieve success along their academic journey. Policies that lack flexibility and diminish innovative approaches will stray from the recognition that institutions hold unique spaces within their communities and are driven by distinct missions. Misaligned policies, however, will make the sector’s challenges more pronounced. Ensuring a deep understanding of today’s accreditation and working with us accreditors will be critical to inform federal policy, as accreditation remains one of the most powerful levers available for influencing change and assuring value in higher education.

Todd Wolfson

^{President of the American Association of University Professors}

We are deeply concerned that the bombastic rhetoric coming from politicians and propagandists will be used as justification to ramp up political interference and censorship in higher education and deepen the ongoing crisis of declining academic freedom, ballooning student debt and access to education for working-class Americans. Without a thriving, inclusive higher education system that serves the public good, the majority of Americans will be excluded from meaningful participation in our democracy and this country will move backward.

Margaret Spellings

^{President and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, secretary of education from 2005 to 2009}

We are falling short. Many are questioning the value of a college degree. Too many families find higher education out of reach. And our workforce faces a skills mismatch, with more than one million unfilled job openings. No one is questioning that there is room for improvement in higher education. BPC has launched a Commission on the American Workforce, which will convene during 2025 and draft a bipartisan strategy for Congress to nurture talent, expand opportunity and invest in our workforce.

My highest hope is that we can make the future recommendations from our commission a reality as Congress looks at the Higher Education Act, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and Perkins CTE Act.

Brigid Harrington

^{Higher ed attorney}

My highest hope for higher ed over the next four years is that colleges and universities will focus on the tangible benefits of education and tailor their approach to the current American workforce. What does that mean in 2025? Definitely more affordable options. Probably more remote and flexible options. More than likely addressing the needs of students who are not on a traditional post–high school path to a bachelor’s degree.

My greatest worry is that colleges will forget their educational mission in the midst of unprecedented pressure from Congress and the executive branch to bow to politics. Higher education has always been a bastion of the free exchange of ideas, and that should not change. Our students and affiliates are not wallflowers and should be encouraged to engage in robust debate of the issues and to not devolve those discussions into speech that is harassing or, frankly, uneducated.

Johanna Alonso, Jessica Blake, Sara Custer, Susan H. Greenberg, Liam Knox, Josh Moody, Kathryn Palmer, Ryan Quinn and Sara Weissman contributed to this article.

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January 20, 2025
LA Wildfires Reduce Classrooms to Ashes, Uproot Students’ Lives – The 74

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</p> <h2>The haunting images show what’s left of Los Angeles schools and what’s lost forever</h2> <p class="sans">By <a rel="author" href="https://www.the74million.org/contributor/545194/">Meghan Gallagher</a></p> <p>This story first appeared at <a href="https://www.the74million.org">The 74</a>, a nonprofit news site covering education. <a href="https://www.the74million.org/about/newsletters/?utm_source=republish-button&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=republish">Sign up for free newsletters from The 74</a> to get more like this in your inbox.</p> <p>The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles last week wreaked devastation on the lives of students, educators, and families. As the community struggles to recover, thousands of students face the harsh reality that their schools may never reopen, while educators and families navigate significant losses.</p> <p>With <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/la-schools-struggle-to-reopen-as-fires-still-rage/">at least seven</a> school buildings reduced to rubble, Los Angeles Unified School District is scrambling to relocate displaced students.</p> <p>The work of photojournalists who braved the fires and their aftermath captures haunting images of what was left behind — the charred frame of a school bus, precious preschoolers’ artwork — and what has been lost forever. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="682" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373319_50_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738573" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Firefighters prepare to fight flames from inside Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School auditorium as the school burns during the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California, on Jan. 8 (Josh Edelson/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="661" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373319_200_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738569" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A firefighter opens the door to a burning auditorium inside Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School during the Eaton Fire in Altadena on Jan. 8. (Josh Edelson/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="672" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_941_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738572" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Sparks fly from the wheel of a burned school bus as the Eaton Fire moves through the area on Jan. 8 in Altadena. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="678" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_104_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738578" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Firefighters scramble while preparing to fight flames at Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School auditorium as the school burns during the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California on Jan. 8. (Josh Edelson/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="731" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_134_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738580" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A view of Franklin Elementary school, which was destroyed by the Eaton Fire on Jan. 10 in Altadena, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_407_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738582" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A partially melted tricycle is pictured at the Aveson School of Leaders charter elementary school in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, on Jan. 14. (Agustin Paullier/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_477_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738584" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Students’ belongings remain at Marquez Charter Elementary School after fire torched the campus in Pacific Palisades. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_345_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738586" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A burned mural is pictured outside a classroom at the Aveson School of Leaders charter elementary school in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, on Jan. 14. (Agustin Paullier/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_577_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738587" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Aveson School of Leaders was burned by the Eaton Fire on Wednesday, Jan. 15. (Jason Armond/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_763_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738589" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Students’ artwork from the Community United Methodist Church’s preschool. (Drew A. Kelley/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="658" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_28_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738592" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A burnt school bus at Aveson Charter School on Jan. 13. (Frederic J. Brown/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="688" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_401_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738595" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Students’ belongings remain at Marquez Charter Elementary School on Jan. 15, after the Paradise Fire torched the campus in Pacific Palisades. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="707" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_298_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738596" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Noyes Elementary School at the top of Allen Avenue is a complete loss due to the Eaton Fire in Altadena as seen on Sunday, Jan. 12. (Will Lester/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="682" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_393_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738598" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Eliot Art Magnet School auditorium along Lake Avenue in Altadena after it was destroyed by the Eaton Fire on Jan. 10. (David Crane/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_318_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738600" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Students, parents and teachers of Odyssey Charter School South, which burned down in the Eaton Fire, gather at Vincent Lugo Park in San Gabriel on Jan. 14. (Jason Armond/<a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/san-gabriel-ca-students-parents-and-teachers-of-odyssey-news-photo/2193607339?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a>)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_833_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738602" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho tours Nora Sterry Elementary as Fernie Najera, an LAUSD Carpenter, works on getting the school prepared for displaced students on Jan. 12. (Jason Armond/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_469_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738603" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond helps distribute Grab & Go meals to students and families impacted by the Eaton Fire at Madison Elementary School in Pasadena on Monday, Jan. 13. (Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_604_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738606" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Brian Woolf, a parent of a student from Odyssey Charter School South, gets emotional at a park meeting with other parents, students and educators. (Jason Armond/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_978_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738608" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Anne Thornberg picks up her daughters Frances, 6, left, and Harriett, 9, who attend Project Camp, free child care to families impacted by the fires, at Eagle Rock Recreation Center on Jan. 15. (Gina Ferazzi/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_528_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738611" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Children who had attended Palisades Charter Elementary School are welcomed back to classes, now being held at the Brentwood Elementary Science Magnet in Brentwood on Jan. 15. Brentwood school will serve as a temporary location for students. (David Crane/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_555_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738613" width="840" height="560" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Joseph Koshki hugs his son, third-grader Jaden Koshki, as they are welcomed back to school by Kathy Flores at Brentwood Elementary Science Magnet in Brentwood on Jan. 15. (David Crane/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="683" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_771_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738614" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A mother kisses her child goodbye on the first day back to school at Palisades Charter Elementary School which has been re-located to the Brentwood Elementary Science Magnet in Brentwood on Jan. 15. (David Crane/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" loading="lazy" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="653" src="https://blog.college-counseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1737373320_103_LA-Wildfires-Reduce-Classrooms-to-Ashes-Uproot-Students-Lives-–.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-738615" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A displaced student from Marquez Elementary School hugs a bear as she resumes class at Nora Sterry Elementary School in Los Angeles on Jan. 15. (Chris Delmas/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>

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January 19, 2025
LA Schools Reopen, But Recovery Will Be Long and Painful – The 74

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It was just after 1 am when Los Angeles charter school superintendent Ian Mcfeat started getting text messages and phone calls at a relative’s house where he was sheltering from the fires.

His neighbors said his house was burning down in the wildfires – along with his entire Altadena neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Aveson School of Leaders, which McFeat runs and where his kids attended school just three blocks from his house, was also burning.

Unable to sleep, Mcfeat drove away from his in-law’s house that he’d been evacuated to and made the drive back to Altadena.

He drove through the fire lines and into his neighborhood to see if he could salvage anything, save anyone, or put out the fires that had raged on the east side for more than 48 hours straight, and decimated the Palisades in the west.

He was greeted with a scene out of a horror movie. Fueled by a violent windstorm and piles of brush left from a particularly wet winter last year, the firestorm was like a tornado shooting flames, blasting through his neighborhood.

“It was like driving through a bomb scene,” said Mcfeat. “There were homes exploding. I probably shouldn’t have been there.”

Despite the devastating losses, Mcfeat can’t imagine not rebuilding his home and school right where they were in Altadena. But the road to recovery will be a long and painful one.

“No doubt about it. We are going to rebuild,” said Mcfeat. Aveson has started a GoFundMe. At this point, a new site for the school has not been identified. The district hasn’t been able to help them yet.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Mcfeat.

The wildfires that burned Los Angeles this month are the costliest and most destructive in the city’s history, displacing more than 150,000 residents and killing at least 25 people. Two massive blazes fed by windstorms, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, simultaneously scorched the city from the sea to the mountains, filling the air with vast plumes of ash and smoke.

As the wind and flames began to retreat last week, and firefighters gained control of the fires, schools began to reopen. And the kids began to return to class.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which is by far the largest district of about 80 in Los Angeles County, resumed instruction Monday after being totally closed since last Thursday. Seven schools remain shut because they’re located in evacuation zones. Another three won’t reopen because their buildings were badly burned or destroyed in the fires.

Related

LA Schools Struggle To Reopen As Fires Still Rage

Dozens of much smaller districts in Los Angeles County also reopened this week, with the exceptions of two districts, Pasadena Unified, which encompasses Altadena, and La Cañada Unified, which neighbors Altadena to the west.

The Eaton fire has destroyed at least five schools but was mostly contained by Friday.

Kids from two of the LAUSD schools that burned in the Palisades, Marquez Charter Elementary School and Palisades Charter Elementary School, were placed, with intact school rosters, in close-ish LAUSD school buildings that already had other schools in them.

The students who attended the burned schools were given their own entrances, classrooms and courtyards for kids to play. When parents dropped them off at class this week, there were a lot of tearful reunions.

Families from Palisades Charter were somber, but excited to return to normalcy with their new space located inside of Brentwood Science Magnet School.

Joseph Koshki, a parent from the Palisades whose son attends third grade at Palisades Charter, walked holding hands with his son to their new classroom at Brentwood Science, which had been stacked with balloons.

“When he saw his school burned on the news he was crying for days,” Koshki said of his child. “But when he heard that he was going to his new school with his old friends, he was so happy”.

Nina Belden, a parent of a Palisades Charter student who had made an emergency evacuation from her house in the Palisades with her family, said it was important for the students at her daughter’s school to stay together and receive in-person instruction.

“We were worried they were going to do something like remote learning,” said Beldon.

Marquez Charter, which also burned in the Palisades fire, has a long history in the community, having opened in 1955 when the Palisades still had a frontier feel, before the neighborhood became a favorite of Hollywood stars and media execs.

For Victoria Flores, who works as a paraeducator at Marquez, the school is part of her family. Flores went to Marquez when she was in elementary school, and her mother works in the cafeteria.

“It was my home away from home. We are devastated by what happened,” Flores said.

But Flores said she and the rest of the staff were glad to be relocated together at a LAUSD school called Nora Sterry, about ten miles from the burned Marquez campus.

“We are a really close family,” said Flores. “That’s helped us a lot.”

Upstairs at Nora Sterry, Clare Gardner’s class had about eight of twenty students show up on the first day of relocation.

Her third-grade class was playing with clay and Mrs. Gardner, who is a twenty-seven-year veteran of Marquez, held back her tears as she helped students arrive into class.

“We always call it the Marquez family,” Gardner said as the children greeted each other.

One boy in Mrs. Gardner’s class said he was happy to be around his friends and teacher but sad about his classroom fish and books, which were lost in the fire.

Later in the morning, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho went to visit parents at Nora Sterry.

After nearly a week off school, Carvalho says attendance is still below normal.

“I think where that attendance is lacking is in schools that were directly affected” by the fires, Carvalho said.

Also hurting attendance, Carvalho said, is the fact that many families are enduring temporary relocations, while others lack stable housing entirely.

LAUSD staff attendance is back to normal, he said, while student attendance is about 88% — down from an average of about 90%, representing about 10,000 fewer students than normal.

“As conditions of the families begin to normalize and stabilize, those [attendance] numbers will rise,” said Carvalho.

For other schools in other areas of Los Angeles, recovery may be longer in the making.

Bonnie Brinecomb, principal of Odyssey Charter School – South in Altadena, which burned to the ground in the Eaton Fire, estimates that the homes of 40% of the students enrolled in the school also burned.

Families and school staffers are scrambling to ensure displaced families have food, shelter and clothing, Brinecomb said. Some students are turning up for daycare at a nearby Boys and Girls Club that offered to take them in.

Brinecomb said Odyssey has partnered with McFeat’s school Aveson to search for new facilities. But the double loss of students’ homes and the schools’ campuses is a gutpunch.

“It’s just heartbreak. Pure shock,” she said. “You don’t even process how bad of a situation just happened.”

Like Aveson, Odyssey has launched an online fundraiser and Brinecomb says the school will rebuild. How long that will take, though, remains an open question.

From the perspective of displaced children and families, the faster things return to normal, the better, said Dr. Frank Manis, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Southern California.

The experience of trauma can intensify if routines are disrupted for longer periods, and the intensity of the disruption matters as well, said Manis. Kids who lost their homes to fires may have a harder time bouncing back than those who only lost their schools, he said.

“It’s sort of on that spectrum of wartime PTSD, but not as bad,” said Manis. “So what it could lead to is nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and emotional or behavior problems that can last for quite a while.”

Children fighting post-traumatic stress from the fires may become withdrawn, or act out in class, said Manis. But mostly, he said, the research from past natural disasters shows that even children badly impacted by the fires may begin to feel normal within a few months.

“Kids are pretty resilient,” said Manis. “But trauma can disappear for a while, and then it can resurface later. When everyone’s forgotten how bad it was, it can resurface.”

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January 19, 2025
PowerSchool Got Hacked. Now What? – The 74
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Were you a current or former student in the last few decades? Or a parent? Or an educator?

If so, your sensitive data — like Social Security numbers and medical records — may have fallen into the hands of cybercriminals. Their target was education technology behemoth PowerSchool, which provides a centralized system for reams of student data to damn near every school in America.

Given the cyberattack’s high stakes and its potential to harm millions of current and former students, I teamed up Wednesday with Doug Levin of the K12 Security Information eXchange to moderate a timely webinar about what happened, who was affected — and the steps school districts must take to keep their communities safe.

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Concern about the PowerSchool breach is clearly high: Some 600 people tuned into the live event at one point and pummeled Levin and panelists Wesley Lombardo, technology director at Tennessee’s Maryville City Schools; Mark Racine, co-founder of RootED Solutions; and Amelia Vance, president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, with questions.

PowerSchool declined our invitation to participate but sent a statement, saying it is “working to complete our investigation of the incident and [is] coordinating with districts and schools to provide more information and resources (including credit monitoring or identity protection services if applicable) as it becomes available.”

The individual or group who hacked the ed tech giant has yet to be publicly identified.

Asked and answered: Why has the company’s security safeguards faced widespread scrutiny? What steps should parents take to keep their kids’ data secure? Will anyone be held accountable?

Watch the webinar here.

In the news

Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, who says undocumented immigrants have placed “severe financial and operational strain” on schools in his state, proposed rules requiring parents to show proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when enrolling their kids — a proposal that not only violates federal law, but is likely to keep some parents from sending their children to school. | The 74

Not playing along: Leaders of the state’s two largest school districts — Oklahoma City and Tulsa — rebuked the proposal and said they would not collect students’ immigration information. Educators nationwide fear the incoming Trump administration could carry out arrests on campuses. | Oklahoma Watch

Walters filed a $474 million federal lawsuit this week alleging immigration enforcement officials mismanaged the U.S.-Mexico border, leading to “skyrocketing costs” for Oklahoma schools required “to accommodate an influx of non-citizen students.” | The Oklahoman

Timely resource guide: With ramped-up immigration enforcement on the horizon — and with many schools already sharing student information with ICE — here are the steps school administrators must take to comply with longstanding privacy and civil rights laws. | Center for Democracy & Technology

A federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden administration’s Title IX rules that enshrined civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students in schools, siding with several conservative state attorneys general who argued that harassment of transgender students based on their gender identity doesn’t constitute sex discrimination. Mother Jones

Fires throw L.A. schools into chaos: As fatal wildfires rage in California, the students and families of America’s second-largest school district have had their lives thrown into disarray. Schools serving thousands of students were badly damaged or destroyed. Many children have lost their homes. Hundreds of kids whose schools burned down returned to makeshift classrooms Wednesday after losing “their whole lifestyle in a matter of hours.” | The Washington Post

At least seven public schools in Los Angeles that were destroyed, damaged or threatened by flames will remain closed, along with campuses in other districts. | The 74

Has TikTok’s time run out? With a national ban looming for the popular social media app, many teens say they’re ready to move on (and have already flocked to a replacement). | Business Insider

Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta restricted LGBTQ+-related content from teens’ accounts for months under its so-called sensitive content policy until the effort was exposed by journalist Taylor Lorenz. | Fast Company

Students’ lunch boxes sit in a locker at California’s Marquez Charter Elementary School, which was destroyed by the Palisades fire on Jan. 7. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced the participants in a $200 million pilot program to help schools and libraries bolster their cybersecurity defenses. They include 645 schools and districts and 50 libraries. | FCC

Scholastic falls to “furry” hackers: The education and publishing giant that brought us Harry Potter has fallen victim to a cyberattacker, who reportedly stole the records of some 8 million people. In an added twist, the culprit gave a shout-out to “the puppygirl hacker polycule,” an apparent reference to a hacker dating group interested in human-like animal characters. | Daily Dot

Not just in New Jersey: In a new survey, nearly a quarter of teachers said their schools are patrolled by drones and a third said their schools have surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities. | Center for Democracy & Technology

The number of teens abstaining from drugs, alcohol and tobacco use has hit record highs, with experts calling the latest data unprecedented and unexpected. | Ars Technica

ICYMI @The74

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Emotional Support

New pup just dropped.

Meet Woodford, who, at just 9 weeks, has already aged like a fine bourbon. I’m told that Woody — and the duck, obviously — have come under the good care of 74 reporter Linda Jacobson’s daughter.

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January 18, 2025
Johns Hopkins, Caltech settle in antitrust lawsuit

Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology agreed to settle in a federal antitrust lawsuit that alleges 17 wealthy institutions, known as the 568 Presidents Group, illegally colluded on financial aid formulas and overcharged students for years.

Late Friday, JHU settled for $18.5 million and Caltech for $16.7 million, according to court filings. Both were more recent additions to the group, which was established in 1998. Johns Hopkins joined in November 2021, and Caltech in 2019.

The class action lawsuit was filed in January 2022 and initially implicated Caltech along with Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale Universities; Dartmouth College; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the Universities of Chicago, Notre Dame and Pennsylvania.

Johns Hopkins was added to the lawsuit in March 2022.

After Friday’s court filing, 12 of the 17 institutions have settled. Altogether the settlement amounts add up to nearly $320 million. Vanderbilt had the largest settlement: $55 million.

The five remaining defendants in the lawsuit—Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame and Penn—have denied wrongdoing and continue to fight the antitrust case in court. The 568 Presidents Group name is a reference to a carve-out in federal law that allowed member institutions to discuss financial aid formulas with immunity from federal antitrust laws due to their need-blind status. Congress created that exemption following a 1991 price-fixing scandal that involved all eight Ivy League universities and MIT.

The legislative carve-out expired in 2022, and the group subsequently dissolved.

However, plaintiffs have argued that defendants did consider financial circumstances and made decisions based on family wealth and donation history or capacity, often admitting students on “special interest lists” with substandard transcripts compared to the rest of accepted classes.

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January 17, 2025
Historians’ council vetoes Gaza scholasticide condemnation

The American Historical Association’s top elected body has shot down a resolution opposing scholasticide in Gaza, after members who attended its annual convention approved the statement early this month by a 428-to-88 margin.

The association’s elected council, which has 16 voting members, could have accepted the resolution or sent it to the organization’s roughly 10,450 members for a vote. Instead, the council rejected it as the official position of the association.

Jim Grossman, the association’s executive director and a nonvoting member of the council, said the Thursday afternoon vote was 11 to 4, with one abstention. He said the meeting was over Zoom.

The rejected resolution had condemned the U.S. government’s funding of Israel, saying it “has supplied Israel with the weapons being used to commit this scholasticide” and that Israel “has effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system.” Scholasticide is defined as the intentional eradication of an education system.

The resolution also called for a permanent ceasefire and for the association to form a committee to help rebuild Gaza’s “educational infrastructure.”

In a written explanation of the veto, the council said it “deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities and archives in Gaza.”

However, it considers the resolution to be a contravention of AHA’s “constitution and bylaws because it lies outside the scope of the association’s mission and purpose.” The constitution, the council noted, defines that mission and purpose as “the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.”

Grossman said the vote to approve that explanation was 10 to zero with three abstentions, after some members left the meeting following the veto vote. He said he couldn’t reveal who voted which way in either tally because the discussion was confidential.

“We consider it imperative that council members be able to speak freely and candidly during the meeting, and that’s why they’re not recorded and that’s why we do not quote any individual council members,” Grossman said. “And they did speak freely and candidly.”

Van Gosse, a co-chair and founder of Historians for Peace and Democracy, which wrote the resolution, said “we are extremely shocked by this decision, and disappointed.” He said, “It overturns the democratic decision at that huge [conference] business meeting and the landslide vote.”

Anne Hyde, a council member and a University of Oklahoma history professor, said she voted to veto “to protect the AHA’s reputation as an unbiased historical actor,” noting that the organization does congressional briefings. She also said the current war in Gaza “is not settled history, so we’re not clear what happened or who to blame or when it began even, so it isn’t something that a professional organization should be commenting on yet.”

Asked why she didn’t support sending the resolution to the full membership for a vote, Hyde said, “As a council member, you really are thinking about the full 10,000 people, and it includes high school teachers, people who teach in really difficult circumstances and who don’t agree about this issue.” She said, “You could imagine all kinds of scenarios” where a full membership vote “still wasn’t representative.”

This marks the second time this academic year that the top body of a major scholarly organization has shot down a pro-Palestinian resolution before the group’s full membership could vote on it. In the fall, the Modern Language Association’s executive council rejected a resolution that would’ve also accused Israel of scholasticide—and would’ve gone further by endorsing the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli policy.

Unlike the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association Executive Council, which has different bylaws, axed that resolution before its convention this month even began.

In February 2022, the AHA council did approve a statement on another current war. It condemned “in the strongest possible terms Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine” and said, “This act of overt military aggression violates the sovereignty of an independent Ukraine, threatening stability in the broader region and across the world.”

The statement rebutted Russian president Vladimir Putin’s historical justifications for the invasion, saying, “Putin grossly simplifies and distorts Ukraine’s history, essentially erasing its distinct past and rendering it indistinguishable from Russia.” The statement ended with this: “We vigorously support the Ukrainian nation and its people in their resistance to Russian military aggression and the twisted mythology that President Putin has invented to justify his violation of international norms.”

Grossman told Inside Higher Ed Friday that “the Ukraine statement was purely historical. It was well within our scope.” He said, “No serious professional historian in the United States considers Putin’s historical explanation to be anything close to accurate history, so the war itself was based on an abuse of history, and that’s what our statement addressed.” There’s “no such consensus” among U.S. historians on the situation in Gaza, he said.

Two pro-Israel organizations, the American Jewish Committee and the Academic Engagement Network, said they sent a joint letter to the council Thursday urging the veto. The letter calls the scholasticide accusation “preposterous.”

“There is no evidence to suggest that Israel is deliberately and systematically targeting the Palestinian educational system for destruction,” the letter said. “The resolution blatantly ignores the fact that Hamas routinely launches rockets from, and houses its weapons and fighters in, civilian structures and facilities.”

The organizations wrote that “as an institution, the AHA should steer clear of weighing in on contentious political conflicts, particularly when so many members vehemently disagree.” They said such resolutions can “create a hostile and unwelcoming environment for scholars and students who identify as Zionists and those with strong personal, academic and professional ties to Israel.” They further argued that “the association would be better served by adopting a stance of political neutrality on geopolitical issues.”

This story has been updated.

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January 17, 2025
Test yourself on this week’s K-12 news

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How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.

</p> <section> <h3>A federal judge recently struck down the Biden administration’s updated Title IX rule, making the U.S. Department of Education’s regulation unenforceable _____.</h3> <ul> <li>In Tennessee</li> <li>Nationwide</li> <li>In 27 states</li> <li>In 10 states</li> </ul> </section> <section> <h3>Which ed tech company recently announced that it experienced a data breach, potentially exposing an unknown number of school districts’ student and staff data?</h3> <ul> <li>PowerSchool</li> <li>IXL Learning</li> <li>Illuminate Education</li> <li>Raptor Technologies</li> </ul> </section> <section> <h3>Which school district is being sued by a former high school principal who claims the athletic director used artificial intelligence to generate a deepfake audio recording of the principal making racist and antisemitic remarks?</h3> <ul> <li>New York’s Syracuse City School District</li> <li>Kansas City Public Schools</li> <li>Maryland’s Baltimore County Public Schools</li> <li>Florida’s Miami-Dade County Public Schools</li> </ul> </section> <section> <h3>This state’s governor recently proposed a universal school meal program.</h3> <ul> <li>North Dakota</li> <li>Texas</li> <li>Maryland</li> <li>New York</li> </ul> </section> <section> <h3>According to the State Educational Technology Directors Association, what percentage of states plan to continue funding technology initiatives financed by federal COVID-19 relief aid?</h3> </section> <p>

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January 17, 2025
Indiana governor issues executive order eliminating DEI

Indiana governor Mike Braun signed an executive order Wednesday eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion in all state agencies and replacing it with what he’s calling “MEI”—merit, excellence and innovation.

The order requires all executive branch state agencies to uphold the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which prohibited the consideration of race in college admissions, noting that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it” and that equal protection applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality.”

Under the order, government offices cannot use state funds, property or resources to support DEI initiatives, require job candidates to issue DEI statements or “mandate any person to disclose their pronouns.” State agencies must review their individual programs and policies for compliance by April 30 and provide a written report to the governor by July 1.

The order also closes the government’s Office of the Chief Equity, Opportunity and Inclusion Officer, which was created in 2020 under Braun’s predecessor, Governor Eric Holcomb.

This makes Indiana the second state this year to eliminate DEI by executive order, following West Virginia.

Among the other executive orders Braun signed during his first week as governor was one requiring the state personnel office to review all job postings and eliminate degree requirements for positions where they’re not necessary.

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January 17, 2025
Prof. says he was fired for email calling U.S. racist, fascist

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, some faculty canceled classes to allow themselves and students time to process a result that shocked the media and academe.

Campus responses to Trump’s re-election in November seemed more muted. But at Millsaps College, a private Mississippi institution of roughly 600 students, James Bowley said he canceled his Abortion and Religions class meeting the day after the election.

Bowley, a tenured religious studies professor, told Inside Higher Ed the class had only three students, and he knew they were upset about Trump’s re-election. He said he sent them an email with the subject line “no class today” and one line of text: “need time to mourn and process this racist fascist country.”

For what he wrote in that email, Bowley said, the college swiftly barred him from campus and, on Tuesday, fired him—ending his more than 22 years of employment. He’s now fighting to get his job back and said he remains on the payroll while he appeals to the institution’s Board of Trustees.

“This seems to me like the very definition of censorship, and of course it will make every single faculty member fearful of the administration, fearful of sharing their own opinions,” Bowley said. “There are hundreds of historians who would say that the election was a victory for fascism and racism,” he added.

The college didn’t provide interviews Thursday and didn’t answer written questions. The situation appears to be another example of faculty members being punished for commenting on current events—but this time involving communication to a small group of students, according to Bowley. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech and academic freedom advocacy group, is pushing for Bowley’s reinstatement.

“This is absolutely absurd,” said Haley Gluhanich, a senior program officer in FIRE’s campus rights department. She said that when Bowley was initially suspended, “he was charged with an offense that does not exist in any of the handbooks, so they completely just made up a violation of policy.”

The Email Gets Out

Bowley said one of the students who received the email shared it on Instagram, approvingly, but another student whom he doesn’t know reported it to administrators. Bowley said he got a call from interim provost Stephanie Rolph on Nov. 7, the day after he sent the email, saying he was being placed on leave for it and banned from campus.

“I was shocked, I was dumbfounded, I just could not believe it,” Bowley said.

A copy of a letter from Rolph to Bowley, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, says this leave was “pending a review of the use of your Millsaps email account to share personal opinions with your students.” In the letter, Rolph told Bowley his email account access was cut off and further told him not to “engage with students.”

The suspension dragged on, Bowley said, and three weeks in he filed a grievance against Rolph—which led to a hearing. Then, on Dec. 27, a grievance panel composed of three faculty members ruled that Bowley should be reinstated, according to a copy of the ruling that FIRE provided.

“We recognize that Dr. Bowley has, on multiple occasions, shown poor judgment in his use of campus email,” the committee wrote. But during the hearing, Rolph couldn’t “identify a specific policy that Dr. Bowley violated,” they said. “No policy prohibiting the use of campus email to share personal opinions with students exists in either the Faculty Handbook or the Staff Handbook.”

The panel further recommended that “Rolph issue a formal apology to Dr. Bowley” and that Bowley “be compensated for the loss of income resulting from his removal from the winter study abroad course he had been scheduled to teach.” Bowley told Inside Higher Ed that was a course in Mexico for which he would’ve been paid more than $6,000 and would have had his travel expenses covered.

The panel also concluded that Bowley wasn’t “afforded due process.” It said Rolph had argued that the both the staff handbook and the faculty handbook applied to faculty. It also mentioned unresolved tension between the interim provost’s confidentiality claims and Bowley’s right to the hearing, saying the “interim provost can refuse to answer substantive questions pertaining to the grievance.” (Michael Pickard, chair of the grievance panel and vice president of the college’s Faculty Council, said he couldn’t comment Thursday. Rolph didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Millsaps president Frank Neville rejected the grievance panel’s report and then fired Bowley on Tuesday, according to Bowley.

Bowley and FIRE said there was an extra twist at the end: FIRE wrote on its website that Bowley was told in a meeting Tuesday that he was also fired for “not clarifying that his views were not that of the college’s. To be clear: The college fired Bowley for an offense … of which he wasn’t accused.”

“The FIRE article is riddled with inaccuracies,” wrote college spokesperson Joey Lee in an email to Inside Higher Ed. He did not specify what those inaccuracies were.

“Because Millsaps does not disclose information about individual employment matters for privacy and confidentiality reasons, the article is based on incomplete information,” he wrote.

‘A Bit Reckless’

Was Bowley fired for more than the email? The college won’t specify, and Bowley didn’t provide a copy of his termination letter.

David Wood, the Faculty Council president, told Inside Higher Ed he doesn’t exactly know why Bowley was fired, but he doesn’t think he should have been. Wood said he’s disappointed in the college administration and “the extreme nature of the punishment.” But he also said he’s disappointed in Bowley.

“This is partly on him as well,” Wood said.

Wood doesn’t believe academic freedom is under threat at Millsaps and thinks “everything was done legally and by our own rules at the college,” he said.

(After this article was initially published Friday, Wood added in an email that he believes the “initial suspension was unfair and unsubstantiated” and that Rolph “exercised very poor judgment in banning James without a hearing.” Wood wrote that he believes “the review continued and shifted because” Rolph “realized she was wrong and had to go fishing for other reasons to fire James. The rest of her investigation I believe was done according to the rules of the Faculty Handbook.”)

Asked whether college leaders were upset with Bowley for previous alleged transgressions, Wood said, “There’s a history there, I’ll just put it that way.”

“James has been a bit reckless in the past, but I do not believe that being terminated was the appropriate punishment,” Wood said. “James likes to push the envelope, let me just put it that way … he’s not going to steer away from controversial issues.”

Bowley, for his part, said that Rolph had verbally reprimanded him before for sharing with students and employees—through email—a brochure for a prayer vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza that used the term “genocide.”

But Bowley said the postelection email was the primary reason for his firing. Regarding any other accusations, he said, “The administration spent two months trying to find other things, and they allege that there were problems in my other class.”

One accusation leveled at him was “lack of awareness of the status of assignments and grades for a course,” he said. But he wasn’t allowed to appear before a committee to answer such charges, he said, or access his emails and other documents to defend himself.

He also said he’s protested the death penalty and celebrated the legalization of gay marriage and has ended up on the news for such demonstrations.

“The idea of me pushing the envelope is me being an activist,” Bowley said. “I am an activist and people know that.”

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January 17, 2025
HBCU leaders prepare for “delicate dance” under Trump

Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black institution, proudly announced last month that its marching band was invited to perform at Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration. The university’s president, Jerryl Briggs, described the invitation as a chance to “showcase our legacy” and “celebrate our culture.” A GoFundMe campaign was started in hopes of raising enough money for the Mean Green Marching Machine Band to make its debut on the national stage.

Then the fighting started. Social media exploded with reactions to the move from within and outside of HBCU campus communities, with alumni coming down on both sides of the issue. Some condemned the university for participating in the celebration while others argued the band should embrace its moment in the spotlight. (The band is doing that, heading to the inauguration on Monday.)

The moment felt like déjà vu. During the first Trump administration, in 2017, a group of HBCU leaders spoke with Trump during an impromptu visit to the Oval Office after they met with other government officials. A photo of their interaction with the president went viral, prompting swift backlash and skepticism. “Is it a photo op, is it an opportunity for Trump to put himself next to Black people and smile?” Llewellyn Robinson, a Howard University sophomore at the time, asked The New York Times. “Is that the situation we’re dealing with? Or is it truly a seat at the table?”

The controversy speaks to a tension HBCU leaders face ahead of a second Trump administration, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress. On the one hand, they want to foster positive relationships with the powers that be and take advantage of whatever opportunities the new administration can offer their students and institutions. On the other hand, they’re serving communities with deep misgivings about the incoming president.

Most Black voters, 83 percent, voted for Kamala Harris, reported AP VoteCast. And while that’s fewer than the 91 percent who voted for President Biden in 2020, it’s still the vast majority at a time when many Black Americans, including HBCU students, are leery of anti-DEI rhetoric and state laws advanced by Trump supporters. Some have a more tangible worry: that Trump’s talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education may threaten the federal financial aid that gets many HBCU students to and through college and helps often cash-starved, tuition-dependent institutions meet their bottom lines.

HBCU leaders and scholars find themselves, once again, thinking through how to navigate a fraught political moment.

“It is sometimes a delicate dance,” said Walter Kimbrough, interim president of Talladega College and the former president of Philander Smith College and Dillard University. He expects some HBCU presidents will avoid “high-profile photo opportunities” with members of the new administration this time around. Even so, “we have to let our constituents know, we have to work with whoever is in the White House. That’s part of the job.”

He also, however, believes part of the job is pushing back on policies that could hurt the sector regardless of who’s in office.

“We need to be consistent on the things that are good for us, to be advocating,” he said, “and the things that we think are problematic, we need to be brave enough to speak up against those, too.”

But doing so can be precarious for HBCU presidents and their institutions, said Melanye Price, a political science professor and director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University. “The question is always: Is it better to speak out with the potential of losing whatever ability you have to tend to and care for students, or figure out ways to maneuver within the context that you’re in now and still be able to help students?” Price said.

Efforts to partner with the new Trump administration have already begun. The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an organization representing public HBCUs, congratulated Trump in a statement after he was elected. They also praised some of the wins HBCUs achieved under his first administration, including the FUTURE Act, which made permanent additional annual funding for minority-serving institutions, and the HBCU PARTNERS Act, which required some federal agencies to submit annual plans describing how they’d make grant programs more accessible to HBCUs.

Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, met with Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, in December. He said in a press release that he found her to be a “good listener” and said they had a “productive discussion” about “issues of importance to HBCUs, HBCU students, the nation’s underserved students and how to improve the avenues of learning for all students.”

“We will continue to work with those elected, because the needs of our institutions and students are urgent,” Lomax added. “Our motto is ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste,’ but so is an opportunity to advance our HBCU-related goals and objectives.”

Strategies and Priorities

Trump has often touted his support for HBCUs during his first term, arguing in a presidential debate last summer that he “got them all funded,” though HBCU leaders have pointed out that many of these successes were initially pushed forward by Congress and signed by the president. It’s also unclear whether support for HBCUs, a meaningful issue to Black voters, will be as much of an emphasis for Trump in his final term now that he’s no longer striving for re-election.

But HBCU leaders express optimism that they can secure some legislative wins in the next four years, given that support for the institutions has historically come from both sides of the aisle. And they plan to keep it that way.

“While I can’t say what the future may hold, I can say that our most recent interactions with the secretary-designate seemed as if we have reason to be positive about the next steps,” said Lodriguez Murray, UNCF’s vice president of public policy and government affairs.

HBCUs achieved some of their goals in partnership with the first Trump administration, Murray noted, including some loan forgiveness for institutions that received federal disaster relief loans as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, noted another reason for optimism heading into the new Trump term: Most HBCUs are located in red states, so they’ve always developed and relied on positive relationships with Republican lawmakers.

State-level challenges to DEI programming from Republican lawmakers have ramped up anxieties on HBCU campuses about the state and federal political climate for their institutions in the years ahead, Williams said. But “what we have seen, and we’re hoping to continue” is that those same states are still investing in HBCUs. For example, Tennessee recently coughed up funds to keep Tennessee State University afloat, and Florida has made some sizable investments in HBCUs in recent years, he added.

Williams hopes the incoming administration and Congress will echo those state lawmakers in their treatment of HBCUs. “Our strategy is to continue to partner with both sides and continue to forge relationships and create opportunities for our member schools to come and visit” government officials, he said.

Kimbrough said those visits from HBCU representatives are going to be particularly important in the years ahead. Trump had an HBCU graduate and advocate among the ranks of his first administration, he noted—his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman. But “right now, he doesn’t have anybody who really knows HBCUs at a close [level],” he said, “so we’ve got to do a lot of teaching and educating them about what we do, what our value is to the country.”

With those ties reinforced, HBCU leaders plan to advocate for a long-held policy wish list: higher annual funding, improvements to campuses’ infrastructure, relief for institutions in debt and increases to the Pell Grant, federal financial aid for low-income students that helps the majority of HBCU students pay for college. HBCU leaders also want federal money for campus safety and security measures after a slew of bomb threats against HBCUs in 2022, which some campus leaders contend was inadequately handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“We don’t believe that a single student needs to have in their mind that something is happening to their institution simply because of what the institution is and who they are,” Murray said.

Murray noted one more priority: increased funding for the Education Department’s Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities program, from about $400 million per year to at least $500 million, to keep pace with inflation.

Student Fears, Faculty Concerns

The day after the election, students in Price’s class on voting rights at Prairie View A&M discussed the results. The same worry came up over and over again: How will they pay for college if Trump abolishes the Department of Education?

According to data from TMCF, more than 75 percent of HBCU students rely on Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students. Price said it’s natural that students are worried about any policy plans that could destabilize financial aid. “There is a palpable fear about what this new administration will bring and that there’s no one to stop them,” she said.

The students’ often tuition-dependent institutions are also vulnerable if changes in financial aid make it difficult for students to pay; most HBCUs don’t have large endowments or megadonors as a safety net.

University of the District of Columbia professors, worried themselves, described a particular kind of pall hanging over their students ahead of Inauguration Day as they prepare for the Trump administration and new members of Congress to settle into the deep-blue district. To acknowledge and address some of students’ fears and worries, two faculty members organized a pre-inauguration teach-in today. It will begin with mindfulness practices, followed by panel discussions and speakers on Washington, D.C., history and politics and how the transition of power could affect the district.

“Students are concerned about what the city will feel like in terms of its receptivity [and] tolerance around diversity,” said Michelle Chatman, associate professor of crime, justice and security studies and the founding director of the Mindful and Courageous Action Lab at UDC. Since Congress has more sway over D.C. than elsewhere, students also worry about programming and curriculum at the HBCU given restrictions on African American studies pushed by Republican lawmakers in other parts of the country. “We want them to feel empowered, and we want to normalize their feelings of concern.”

Amanda Huron, a professor of interdisciplinary social sciences and political science and the director of the D.C. History Lab at UDC, said a teach-in felt like the obvious move in this tense political moment.

“When we think, ‘well, what can we do in this moment, what can we as a university community do’—what we do is teach,” Huron said.

She acknowledged that HBCUs have a difficult balance to strike right now. “HBCUs in the country, we want to thrive, regardless of what’s going on politically, and we need to, because we need to serve our students,” Huron said. At the same time, “we need to make sure that we are always providing spaces for critical and honest and fact-based conversation, so I think it’s important that we’re able to do both things.”

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January 17, 2025