Tag: News

  • Turbulent times require both immediate and long views

    Turbulent times require both immediate and long views

    I don’t remember where I heard this bit of wisdom, if I read it in a book or someone else told it to me, but it’s something I’ve carried around for a while now: There’s always going to be a next, until there isn’t.

    My interpretation is a kind of combination of “this too shall pass” with “time marches on,” along with a reminder of the certainty that at some point all things and all people cease to exist.

    (I find that last bit sort of comforting, but maybe I’m weird that way.)

    It comes in handy when thinking about both exciting and difficult times. What is happening in a moment is not eternal, and something else will be coming along. In order to make that next thing as positive and beneficial as possible, we have to deal with both the present and those possible futures.

    I think this mindset might be helpful to anyone who is considering the coming couple of years for higher education and bracing for the possible impact of a presidential administration that appears hostile to the work of colleges and universities and intends to bring this perceived hostile group to heel. I’m concerned that many institutions are not considering that there’s always going to be a next, and short-term accommodations are going to result in long-term problems.

    What comes next will be far worse than it needs to be.

    It’s strange to think that institutions that are so well established with such long histories should act with such fragility in the face of present uncertainty, but there are signs of what scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder calls “obeying in advance” everywhere.

    As reported by IHE’s Ryan Quinn, Texas A&M, along with other public higher ed institutions in the state, following threats ginned up by right-wing conservative billionaire-backed activist Christopher Rufo, has ended their participation in the PhD Project, a conference meant to help increase the number of doctoral students identifying as “Black, African American, Latino, Hispanic American, Native American or Canadian Indigenous.”

    The institutions had previously participated for a number of years but have now rescinded their sponsorship because of Texas law SB 17, banning DEI programs at public universities. Texas governor Greg Abbott threatened to fire A&M president Mark Welsh. Welsh folded, issuing a statement that said, “While the proper process for reviewing and approving attendance at such events was followed, I don’t believe we fully considered the spirit of our state law in making the initial decision to participate. We need to be sure that attendance at those events is aligned with the very clear guidance we’ve been given by our governing bodies.”

    The intention behind these attacks by Rufo and his backers is to, essentially, resegregate higher education under an entirely twisted definition of “fairness.” This point of view is ascendant, as multiple states have banned so-called DEI initiatives, and the rolling back of affirmative action in college admissions has already resulted in a decline in Black first-year students, something most pronounced at “elite” institutions.

    So, this is now, but in acting this way now, what’s likely to be next? Will Texas A&M regress to a de facto policy of segregation? Is this healthy for the institution, for the state of Texas?

    I grant that it is possible that a program of resegregation is consistent with the desires of a majority of the state’s citizens and the elected legislators are simply reflecting the desire of their constituency. If so, so be it … I guess. I wonder how long the institutions can last when it allows Chris Rufo or Elon Musk or Charlie Kirk or any other outside individual or group to dictate its policies. Is this a good precedent for whatever is next?

    There’s going to be a next. What happens now will give shape to what that next might be. I worry that the folks making decisions believe there is only the now, not the next.

    Thankfully, most of us do not have to make consequential decisions that impact many people working in large institutions, but we can use this framing in considering our individual fates as well.

    In a couple of weeks my next book, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, will be in the world. I’ve invested a lot in this book, not just time and effort, but some measure of my hopes for my career and the impact my ideas may have on the world of writing and teaching writing.

    It is a fraught thing to invest too much into something like a single book. Books fail to launch all the time, as I’ve experienced personally … more than once. Finding the balance between investing sufficient effort to take advantage of the now, while also recognizing that I will have to do something next, has been a bit tricky, but necessary.

    Maybe what’s next will be closely related to the now: more speaking, more workshops related to my vision for teaching writing, a truly tangible impact on how we collectively discuss these issues after being more of a gadfly and voice in the woods. But also, maybe this is closer to the end of a cycle that started with a previous book.

    To calm my worries, I spend time thinking about what would be next if 50 percent or even 90 percent of what I now do for my vocation and income dried up. This is what I did when it became clear that teaching off the tenure track was not going to continue to be a viable way forward—a process that has put me in this moment.

    Imagining a next, I think I would call my local School of Rock and see if they needed someone to teach kids the drums, and I also would get to work on a novel that’s been rolling around my head. I picture that possible next, and while there is a sadness that what I’m hoping to achieve now did not come to fruition, I can also envision real pleasure in that other path.

    To preserve their essential mission, institutions must be prepared for turbulence and change by knowing there will be a next. To survive in this time, individuals must both be present in the now and consider what might have to happen next.

    Not easy, but always necessary.

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  • Review of Adamson’s “A Century of Tomorrows” (opinion)

    Review of Adamson’s “A Century of Tomorrows” (opinion)

    The name of an ambition more than it is of a body of knowledge, the term “futurology” is attributed by one source on word origins to Aldous Huxley. The author of Brave New World is a plausible candidate, of course; he is credited with coining it in 1946. But a search of JSTOR turns up an article from three years earlier suggesting that Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West made him the pioneer of “what one may hope will sometime develop into a real science of ‘Futurology.’”

    The author of that article was a political scientist and émigré from Nazi Germany named Ossip K. Flechtheim, then teaching at the historically Black Atlanta University; the article itself was published in a historically Black scholarly journal, Phylon. He soon decided that his idea’s time had come.

    By 1945, writing in The Journal of Higher Education, Flechtheim advocated for futurology both as an emerging line of interdisciplinary scholarship and as a matter of urgent concern to “the present-day student, whose life-span may well stretch into the twenty-first century.” He was optimistic about futurology’s potential to advance knowledge: Maintaining that “a large number of scholars” concurred on “the major problems which humanity would face” in the coming decades, he announced that “predict[ing] the most probable trends is a task which we have the means to accomplish successfully today.”

    But as Niels Bohr and/or Yogi Berra famously put it, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” Flechtheim went on to publish landmark contributions to the incipient field of study, surely expecting that a proper social science of the future would be established by the turn of the millennium. But on this point, as in most cases, subsequent history only confirms the Bohr-Berra conundrum.

    One rough metric of futurology’s public-intellectual salience over time is how often the word appears per year in publications stored in the Google Books database. The resulting graph shows barely any use of the term before about 1960. But with the new decade there is a sudden burst of activity: a period of steep acceleration lasting about two decades, then collapsing dramatically over the final years of the 20th century. The JSTOR search results show much the same pattern.

    And so it is that Glenn Adamson’s A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present (Bloomsbury Publishing) approaches the subject with not so much skepticism about futurology’s prospects as a certain irony about its very status as a distinct kind of knowledge. The author, a curator and a historian, attaches Flechtheim’s neologism as a label to a kaleidoscopic array of efforts to anticipate the shape of things to come, whether by analyzing statistical trends, through artistic creativity or in experimentation with new ways of life. The book concentrates on the United States and the 20th century, but inevitably the larger world and earlier history shape the book, which also reflects some 21st-century pressures as well.

    Plenty of science fiction novels have done better at imagining life in subsequent decades than think tank projections made in the same era. But comparing prognostications for relative accuracy is not Adamson’s real concern. Whatever means it may employ, the futurological imperative is always to respond to current reality—to its perceived failings or potentials, to the opportunities and terrors looming over the world or lurking just out of sight. Adamson writes that “every story about the future is also a demand to intervene in the present.” The forms of intervention considered include political movements, religious revivals, market research, scenarios for thermonuclear war, hippie communes, the insurance industry and time capsules assembled for future generations to ponder (to give an abbreviated list).

    The future’s uncertainty provides a blank screen for projecting contemporary issues in reimagined form and the opportunity to imagine alternatives. (Or to imagine inevitabilities, whether of the encouraging or despairing kind.)

    The author takes futurology to have emerged in the 19th century as a response to concerns previously the domain of religious traditions. Utopia and dystopia provide fairly obvious secular analogues to heaven and hell. But there is more to it than that. “For those who no longer saw the future as a matter of revealed truth,” Adamson writes, “new forms of authority stepped in to fill the gap. This is where the futurologists would come in. They would not only make claims about what lies ahead but also somehow persuade others of their ability to see it.”

    The grounds for claiming such authority proliferated, as did the visions themselves, in ways resistant to linear narrative. Instead, the author pulls seemingly unconnected developments together into thematic clusters, rather like museum exhibits displayed in partly chronological and partly thematic order.

    For example, the futurological cluster he calls the Machine includes the organization Technocracy, Inc., which in the early 1930s won a hearing for its plan to put the entire economy under the control of engineers who would end the waste, bottlenecks and underperformance that had, they purported, caused the Depression.

    Enthusiasm for the Technocracy’s social blueprints was short-lived, but it expressed a wider trend. Futurologists of this ilk “set about creating self-correcting, self-regulating systems; conceptually speaking, they became machine builders.” Under this heading Adamson includes enthusiasts for “the Soviet experiment” (as non-Communist admirers liked to call it), but also the market-minded professionals involved in industrial design, especially for automobiles: “The advance planning of annual model changes was a way to humanize technology, while also setting the horizon of consumer expectation.”

    Whereas the Machine-oriented visionaries of the early 20th century had specific goals for the future (and confidence about being able to meet them), a different attitude prevailed after World War II among those Adamson calls the Lab futurologists. The future was for them “something to be studied under laboratory conditions, with multiple scenarios measured and compared against one another.” Some of them had access to the enormous computers of the day, and the attention of people making decisions of the highest consequence.

    “Prediction was becoming a much subtler art,” the author continues, “with one defining exception: the prediction of nuclear annihilation, a zero multiplier for all human hopes.”

    Those who thought life in a Machine world sounded oppressive offered visions of the future as Garden, where a healthier balance between urban and rural life could prevail. A corresponding horror at Lab scenarios spawned what Adamson calls Party futurology. This started in Haight-Ashbury, fought back at the Stonewall and generated the radical feminist movement that still haunts some people’s nightmares.

    Missing from my thumbnail sketch here is all the historical texture of the book (including a diverse group of figures, leading and otherwise) as well as its working out of connections among seemingly unrelated developments.

    As mentioned, the book is centered on 20th-century America. Even so, “Flood,” the final chapter (not counting the conclusion), takes up forces that have continued to accumulate in the early millennium. Flood-era futurology is not defined either by climate change or digital hypersaturation of attention. The main element I’ll point out here is Adamson’s sense that futurology’s own future has been compromised by an excess of noise and meretricious pseudo-insight.

    The floods of dubious information (from too many sources to evaluate) make it harder to establish reality in the present, much less to extrapolate from it. Filling the void is a churn of simulated thought the author calls Big Ideas. “By this,” he writes, “I mean a general prediction about culture at large that initially feels like an important insight, but is actually either so general as to be beyond dispute, or so vague as to be immune to disproof.” Much better, on the whole, is to study the record of futurology itself, with its history as a warning against secular fortune-telling.

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

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  • Montana State president to lead APLU

    Montana State president to lead APLU

    The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities named Montana State University president Waded Cruzado as its next president, according to a Thursday news release.

    Cruzado, who has served as chair of APLU’s Board of Directors since 2021, will formally step into the top job at APLU on July 1. Cruzado has led Montana State University since 2010, and last August that she would retire in June 2025.

    She replaces outgoing president Mark Becker, who has led APLU since 2022.

    “Throughout my life, the history and the impact of land-grant universities and public higher education have provided me, and countless students and families, with inspiration and a call to action. I’ve seen firsthand the life-changing opportunity our public universities provide to their students, their communities, the country, and the world,” Cruzado said in the news release.

    Cruzado, who was a first-generation college student, is a native of Puerto Rico.

    Gary May, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, who led the search committee that hired Cruzado, described her as “an exceptional leader who brings deep experience in successfully leading a public and land-grant university to impressive new heights.” May also noted her familiarity with the organization given her time as chair of APLU’s Board of Directors.

    (The headline was corrected to reflect that Cruzado is retiring before going to APLU.)

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  • Rise in college applications driven by minority students

    Rise in college applications driven by minority students

    The number of first-year applicants this cycle is up 5 percent over January of last year, according to a new report from Common App, and overall applications rose 7 percent.

    The growth was buoyed by a sharp uptick in underrepresented students: Latino applicants increased 13 percent, Black applicants by 12 percent and first-generation applicants by 14 percent. Asian applicants rose by 7 percent, while the number of white applicants didn’t change.

    A Common App analysis also found that the number of applicants from low-income neighborhoods increased more than those from neighborhoods above the median income level—by 9 percent, compared to 4 percent. And the number of applicants who qualify for a fee waiver is up 10 percent so far.

    Geographically, applicant trends seemed to follow broader demographic trends; they surged by 33 percent in the Southwest, with a 36 percent boost in Texas alone, while every other region remained relatively stable. The Western region saw applicants decline by 1 percent.

    In general, students are applying to about the same number of schools as last year, with only a 2 percent increase in applications per student. Public institutions have received 11 percent more applications, while private ones have received 3 percent more.

    For the first time since 2019, domestic applicant growth outpaced that of international applicants, with the former increasing by 5 percent and the latter slowing to 1 percent. Certain high-volume countries experienced steep declines: The number of applicants from Africa fell by 14 percent, and Ghana in particular saw a 36 percent decrease. Applicants from other increasingly popular source countries for international students surged; Bangladesh, for instance, saw 45 percent growth.

    The number of applicants who submitted test scores was about even with the number who didn’t. For the past four years, since test-optional policies were implemented in 2020, no-score applicants have significantly outnumbered those who submitted scores, but institutions returning to test requirements may be swinging the pendulum back.

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  • Students feel “spammed” by “overload” of university emails

    Students feel “spammed” by “overload” of university emails

    Students feel that they receive “too many emails” from their universities, and they find their institution’s communications “inconsistent, inauthentic and rather annoying,” according to researchers.

    A new paper says that an “overload” of emails sent from universities to students means important emails are getting “buried” and that students simply disengage from their inboxes.

    The article, based on interviews with students, senior academics and professional staff who typically distribute emails, found that students were more likely to read emails sent by course tutors, whereas they were likely to ignore mass emails sent from unknown senders.

    “Students spoke positively about the messages that related to modules they were studying but were critical of the ‘dear student’ mass communications, which most described as ‘irrelevant’ and some described as ‘spam’,” says the paper published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education.

    It found students were “remarkably consistent” when filtering their emails, explaining, “They read all the emails relating to their modules, then prioritized the rest using the name of the generator and the subject line. Messages from teaching staff were welcomed, but students rarely read messages from unknown generators, messages sent to all students or newsletters.”

    Student services staff said they felt “uncomfortable [and] even guilty” about some of the messages they were asked to distribute, and one student told the researchers, “In my first year, like, there were so many emails being sent out that I basically just gave up.”

    However, report co-author Judith Simpson, lecturer in material culture at the University of Leeds, told Times Higher Education that while institutions were “a long way away from optimal communication,” it was “important to note that we measured student perception of email.”

    “Some students definitely feel as if they are being spammed, but we don’t actually know how many emails it takes to create that effect. A small number of emails asking you to do life admin might feel like a horrible burden if you haven’t done life admin before,” she said.

    The article concedes that “universities are in a difficult situation” and that “students expect to be provided with necessary information but seem unprepared to read it.”

    It argues that while this is an “eternal problem” and students failed to read paper handbooks in the pre-email era, “‘overload’ does seem to have been accentuated by the pandemic,” when universities “compensated” for the lack of in-person communication by “reaching out” to students via email. This often included important news, as well as information about “all the good things the university was doing” during this period to support students.

    “Staff and students are less likely to meet on campus now that hybrid working is the norm, and the ‘email habits’ developed in the pandemic are still in operation,” the article says.

    It suggests that to improve student engagement, universities should consider re-routing well-being messages through personal tutors, and that administrative staff should be introduced to students—virtually or in-person—to increase trust in communications.

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  • California colleges confront loss as Los Angeles burns

    California colleges confront loss as Los Angeles burns

    The past week has been a blur for Fred Farina, the California Institute of Technology’s chief innovation officer, who lost his home in the fires still tearing through Los Angeles.

    “Things turned on a dime. One evening we were sitting in our living room and within 10 minutes we had to evacuate,” said Farina, who lived in Altadena, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the Eaton fire. “The loss of everything you have is hard to deal with.”

    Farina is one of hundreds of faculty, staff and students from colleges and universities across Los Angeles who have been displaced by the wildfires.

    While most institutions were spared burn damage to their physical plants, many spent the last week entrenched in immediate recovery efforts. Numerous colleges are raising money to help students and staff secure housing and other basic needs.

    Others are opening shelters and food pantries. Pepperdine University’s law school is hosting free remote legal clinics to educate homeowners and lawyers about federal emergency assistance and related issues such as insurance, leases and mortgages. And the University of California, Los Angeles, opened space at its research park for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use as a disaster recovery center for fire victims living on the city’s Westside.

    Flexibility and Compassion

    But beyond efforts to meet their communities’ most pressing needs, colleges in Los Angeles are also figuring out how to move forward and get through a semester already scarred by more than one of the most destructive fires in California history. The priority emerging for most college leaders is moving forward with flexibility and compassion.

    “Words seem inadequate to capture the scale of the devastation,” said Thomas F. Rosenbaum, president of Caltech in Pasadena, near where the Eaton fire destroyed 1,400 homes. “The Caltech community has responded with compassion and generosity, seeking to help each other and working heroically to permit Caltech and [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory] to resume their fundamental missions of learning and discovery. We are in this for the long term, and the closeness of our community gives us hope for the future.”

    The blaze didn’t reach the Caltech campus itself, but the institute estimates that more than 1,000 students and employees live in an evacuation zone. Of those, more than 90 employees have lost their homes, along with at least 200 employees—many of whom live in the decimated nearby enclave of Altadena—of the Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Lab.

    Caltech was one of the many colleges in Southern California that closed down last week—in addition to Santa Monica College, Pasadena City College and Glendale Community College—as strong winds accelerated the Palisades and Eaton fires and displaced scores of people affiliated with those campuses.

    Caltech resumed in-person classes Monday, and most other local colleges have done the same or are planning to in the coming days as the air quality continues to improve. But hundreds of students, staff and faculty are far from resuming life as it was before the fire.

    “It’s pretty overwhelming, the things that have to be done to get back to a good situation,” said Farina, who is in the throes of dealing with insurance and disaster relief logistics after losing his home. “There’s so many decisions that have to be made so quickly.”

    Although Farina is uncertain about when he’ll find permanent new housing for his family—apartments are scarce and rents have skyrocketed in the past week—Caltech helped him and many other employees secure a temporary place to live. So far, the Caltech and JPL Disaster Relief Fund has raised about $2 million, and the fund is giving that money to help displaced people meet their basic needs in the aftermath of the fires.

    Numerous other L.A.-area colleges are also helping their students and employees get access to cash and safe housing, which have emerged as two of the most needed resources more than a week after the fires started.

     At California State University at Los Angeles, at least 60 faculty, staff and students lost their homes, and college officials expects that number to grow. The university is raising money and offering basic needs support for those most affected, which includes grants for housing and food as well as adjustments to teaching and learning, as needed. Cal State LA President Berenecea Johnson Eanes said in a memo Wednesday that the institution “will continue to harness the healing power of our university for the long road to recovery.” (This paragraph was updated with information provided after publication.)

    The L.A. Foundation for Los Angeles Community Colleges launched the L.A. Strong: Disaster Response Fund, which is raising money to give people financial assistance for housing, transportation, clothing, food and other basic needs.

    “What’s most important right now is financial support,” said Alberto J. Román, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, who expected the first round of assistance to be distributed by the end of the week. “We consider these really unprecedented times with an impact, and that’s why we are compassionate and empathetic of individual situations.”

    None of LACCD’s nine campuses sustained fire damage, and Román said he doesn’t believe any of the district’s more than 200,000 students and 9,000 employees were injured as a result of the disaster, either.

    “The impact that we’ve had has been on folks who’ve been evacuated or lost their homes, road closures preventing people from coming to work or power outages and being without internet,” he said, noting that the colleges transitioned to remote work last week.

    Although LACCD resumed in-person operations this week, Román said the district wants to be flexible with students and staff whose lives have been upended by the fires.

    “It is important for us to continue instruction,” he said. “It’s a balance between health and safety and ensuring that students can finish their courses.”

    Glendale Community College reopened for in-person classes Wednesday, though at least a dozen employees and 20 students lost their homes and dozens more had to evacuate. While officials continue to try and make contact with the 600 students who live in evacuation ZIP codes, the college is also offering extra paid leave for some employees, raising money, supplying students with laptops and helping people connect with other resources.

    Smoke and fire could be seen from the Glendale Community College’s Verdugo campus last week.

    Glendale Community College

    Tzoler Oukayan, dean of student affairs at Glendale CC, said the college is allowing students to withdraw from their classes without facing a penalty.

    “The challenge is that a lot of our students in these areas didn’t—and some still don’t—have power. Access to the internet and their classes has been very challenging,” she said. “It was important for us to open up campus and give people a place to just be.”

    Empathy and compassion will also be a priority for Mount St. Mary’s University president Ann McElaney-Johnson when her campus reopens. As of Thursday, the university’s Chalon campus—which is about three miles from the burn path of the Palisades fire—was still under evacuation orders and four faculty members so far have lost their homes.

    “The impact of the fire—once we’ve ascertained what it is—is going to be tremendous. So, we really want to make sure we’re caring for our community as we move forward,” McElaney-Johnson said, adding that the university is using money from its operations budget to provide staff and students with financial assistance. “We’ll pick up where we need to, but there will be special attention. Some of the plans for different projects can get put on hold. Right now, the only thing that really matters is the safety and well-being of this community.”

    ‘Healing More Than Academics’

    That’s the approach California State University, Chico, took in 2018, when it reopened two weeks after the Camp fire destroyed the homes of more than 300 faculty, staff and students.

    “We made sure that we had all of the exceptions and support systems in place to prioritize the people who were part of our community, to make sure our eye was on their long-term success,” said Ashley Gebb, executive director of communications at Chico State. “We were focused on healing more than academics. It was about how we could get students to the end of semester with their well-being as a priority.”

    While Gebb said Chico State was “one of the first to have a community leveled by a fire like this,” the fires in Southern California this month have proven that catastrophes of this scale are becoming more common.

    Meredith Leigh, climate programs manager for Second Nature, a nonprofit focused on higher education’s role in climate action, said it’s a signal that higher education institutions across the country should be prepared to navigate increasingly drastic events.

    “While campuses across our network have taken steps to increase climate resilience and adaptation, the scale and impact of the current fires (as well as recent floods in the East) is novel in its intensity,” she said. “In this way, the biggest lesson for campuses across the nation is to shift the mental model for resiliency and emergency management—away from planning and implementation based on what has happened in the past, toward what are certain to be more frequent and intense events that previously seemed ‘unimaginable.’”

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  • Indiana governor issues executive order eliminating DEI

    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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  • ‘The lawsuit is the punishment’: Reflections on Trump v. Selzer — First Amendment News 453

    ‘The lawsuit is the punishment’: Reflections on Trump v. Selzer — First Amendment News 453

    “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.” — Donald J. Trump

    That is the kind of mindset that lies in wait to ambush First Amendment values. Its aim: punitive. Its logic: force those who disagree with you to pay — literally! Its motivation: intimidation. Its endgame: muzzling critics.

    That kind of mindset is a form of cancel culture, insofar as once such practices are allowed to stand, the net effect is to chill critics into numbing silence.

    “Donald Trump is abusing the legal system to punish speech he dislikes. If you have to pay lawyers and spend time in court to defend your free speech, then you don’t have free speech.” — FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh

    As presented, that assertion helps to explain Trump v. Selzer — and a similar suit filed by The Center for American Rights, who are suing The Des Moines Register, its parent company Gannett, and Selzer. The case arises out of a flawed election poll conducted by the noted pollster J. Ann Selzer. As published in The Des Moines Register, she had Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three percentage points in Iowa. She was off — way off! Trump won the state by 13 points and then went on to a sizable victory nationwide. Hence, the Center for American Rights’ allegation that Selzer’s poll and the Register’s publication of it were “intentionally deceptive” or done with reckless disregard of the truth — a high bar to meet.

    Though Trump prevailed in the presidential election, and roundly so, he thereafter sought damages for the poll prediction that had him behind. Even after his victory, the very idea of that poll offended him.

    Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer

    The injury to Selzer’s reputation over the mistaken prediction was not enough. Selzer and the Register found themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit first filed by Alan R. Ostergren on behalf of the former president and now president-elect. Here are two key parts of what was alleged as a cause of action:

    This action, which arises under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, Iowa Code Chapter 714H, including § 714H.3(1) and related provisions, seeks accountability for brazen election interference committed by the Defendants in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris (“Harris”) through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C, and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on November 2, 2024 (the “Harris Poll”) (boldness added)

    However, “[i]f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson (1989).

    FIRE’s defense of pollster J. Ann Selzer against Donald Trump’s lawsuit is First Amendment 101

    News

    A polling miss isn’t ‘consumer fraud’ or ‘election interference’ — it’s just a prediction and is protected by the First Amendment.


    Read More

    As FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh and Conor Fitzpatrick have observed:

    The lawsuit is the very definition of a “SLAPP” suit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Such tactical claims are filed purely for the purpose of imposing punishing litigation costs on perceived opponents, not because they have any merit or stand any chance of success. In other words, the lawsuit is the punishment. And it’s part of a worrying trend of activists and officials using consumer fraud lawsuits to target political speech they don’t like.

    Steinbaugh and Fitzpatrick offer a compelling critique of this lawsuit, why it is statutorily and constitutionally flawed, and why it is more punitive in nature than persuasive in law. Their critique points to the need for a national Anti-SLAPP law similar to the ones that currently exist in some 34 states (Iowa is not one of them).

    FIRE, with Robert Corn-Revere as the lead counsel, is representing Selzer. Revere tagged the Trump lawsuit as “absurd” and “a direct assault on the First Amendment.”

    Screenshot of the front page of the Trump v. Selzer lawsuit

    One need not be called to the witness stand in defense of George Stephanopoulos’ journalism to concede that the former president could well have a basis to seek legal relief against those who actually defame or otherwise cause him cognizable injury (see FAN 451) — or, consistent with Time, Inc. v. Hill (1967), that he might be able to demonstrate a reckless disregard for the truth.

    But Trump v. Selzer is a difficult case to fit into that legal peg. 

    Five Suspect Arguments

    1. The Tale of Two Predictions Argument: In both 2016 and 2020, Ann Selzer predicted Trump’s Iowa victories. In 2024, the Register commissioned her to do another poll and she predicted a Harris victory by a small margin — using the same methodology. Despite this, she and her publisher were slapped with two lawsuits. Can this really be the basis (albeit unstated) for a call to legal action?

    2. The Fraudulent Consumer Fraud Argument: The Iowa consumer fraud law pertains to deceit in the context of the advertisement or sale of “commercial merchandise.” Does polling information check that conceptual box? Is it a commercial “service” in the same way that fraudulently providing home insurance would be? Is the product that a newspaper produces “merchandise” as that word is commonly used? As a matter of statutory construction (duly mindful of overbreadth concerns), should courts conflate laws made to regulate commerce with political speech? Is the legal supervision of the marketplace of goods to be the same as in the marketplace of ideas? To quote Eugene Volokh:

    “I’m far from sure that, as a statutory matter, the Iowa consumer fraud law should be interpreted as applying to allegedly deceptive informational content of a newspaper, untethered to attempts to sell some other product.” 

    3. The No-Guidelines False Political Speech Argument: Once the government has elected to punish political speech by civil or criminal laws, what are the exact guidelines for determining falsity? And how great does such falsity have to be? Are such calls to be made by lawmakers or judges? Of all political figures, Donald Trump should be quite apprehensive of such arguments — given all the false speech he has been accused of disseminating.

    4. The Demand to Punish Newspapers for False Political Speech Argument: If the Press Clause of the First Amendment is to have any functional meaning, and if the era of sedition laws has taught us anything, it is that when it comes publishing political speech a news story is not, generally speaking, to be judged as being the same as the speech of a shyster used-car salesperson. Absent strong safeguards, allowing punitive or treble damages for political speech takes on a dangerous meaning when it comes to the Press. To again draw on Volokh:

    “[T]he First Amendment generally bars states from imposing liability for misleading or even outright false political speech, including in commercially distributed newspapers — and especially for predictive and evaluative judgments of the sort inherent in estimating public sentiment about a candidate.”

    And then there is this argument proffered by Laura Belin:

    “[T]he suit alleges that a story within the newspaper was misleading, therefore making the sale or advertisement of the newspaper misleading. In other words, they are attacking the content of the newspaper, not the sale or advertisement of the newspaper itself. The content of a media source, other than an advertisement for merchandise it might contain, is subject to strong First Amendment protection.”

    Moreover, such lawsuits create “an environment,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, “where journalists can’t help but look over their shoulders knowing the incoming administration is on the lookout for any pretext or excuse to come after them.”

    5. The Need to Deter “Radical” Pollsters Argument: The complaint seeks the relief it does (injunctive and otherwise) in order “to deter Defendants and their fellow radicals” from continuing to skew “election results.” And if alleged consumer falsity is the norm in the political speech realm (with the requisite intent, of course), will that not have an enormous chilling effect on all election pollsters? And what newspapers or other media outlets would be willing to publish election poll predictions if the liability Sword of Damocles hovered over their heads? And what of those campaigning for political office?

    Related

    Full Disclosure

    Robert Corn-Revere, FIRE’s chief counsel, represented me pro bono in a 2003 petition to the governor of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce. While FIRE hosts FAN, the content of this newsletter is determined free of any and all influence by FIRE.

    The TikTok case

    The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.

    Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company’s connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.

    Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok’s ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company’s requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government’s intelligence operations.

    If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to “go dark” on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.

    Forthcoming book on ‘campaign to protect the powerful’

    Book cover of "Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful" by David Enrich

    The #1 bestselling author of Dark Towers, Enrich produces his most consequential and far-reaching investigation yet: an in-depth exposé of the broad campaign — orchestrated by elite Americans — to overturn 60 years of Supreme Court precedent, weaponize our speech laws, and silence dissent.

    It was a quiet way to announce a revolution. In an obscure 2019 case that the Supreme Court refused to even hear, Justice Clarence Thomas raised the prospect of overturning the legendary New York Times v. Sullivan decision. Though hardly a household name, Sullivan is one of the most consequential free speech decisions, ever. Fundamental to the creation of the modern media as we know it, it has enabled journalists and writers all over the country — from top national publications and revered local newspapers to independent bloggers — to pursue the truth aggressively and hold the wealthy, powerful, and corrupt to account.

    Thomas’s words were a warning — the public awakening of an idea that had been fomenting on the conservative fringe for years. Now it was going mainstream. From the Florida statehouse to small town New Hampshire to Trump himself, this movement today consists of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people and companies, who believe they should be above scrutiny and want to silence or delegitimize voices that challenge their supremacy. Indeed, many of the same businessmen, politicians, lawyers, and activists are already weaponizing the legal system to intimidate and punish journalists and others who dare criticize them.

    In this masterwork of investigative reporting, David Enrich, New York Times Business Investigations Editor, traces the roots and reach of this new threat to our modern democracy. Laying bare the stakes of losing our most sacrosanct rights, Murder the Truth is a story about power — the way it’s used by those who have it, and the lengths they will go to avoid it being questioned. 

    Douek and Lakier vs Volokh on private power and free speech

    New scholarly article on revenge porn and more

    Since our nation’s founding, the private sex lives of politicians have been a consistent topic of public concern. Sex scandals, such as those involving Alexander Hamilton, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, have consumed the focus of the public. With the advent of the internet and social media, a new dimension has been added to that conversation: now, details of a politician’s sex life often come accompanied by photo or video evidence. Outside of the election context, when someone shares an individual’s private explicit material without their consent, they have committed the crime of “revenge porn.” 

    Recent high-profile incidents have raised the question of whether the crime of revenge porn can still be prosecuted when the disclosure of private explicit materials involves a political candidate. In the election context, unique First Amendment concerns about chilling political speech result in heightened speech protections. Before prosecuting a case, prosecutors must grapple with the question: Does the First Amendment protect revenge porn when it is used to influence an election? This essay argues that the special First Amendment concerns about elections are diminished in the revenge porn context: the statutes are already tailored to address those concerns, and the state’s independent interest in enforcing revenge porn laws is still compelling. As such, it concludes that the First Amendment should not have extra force in a revenge porn case just because the disclosure occurred in the context of an election.

    New Book on ‘rethinking free speech’

    Book cover of "Rethinking Free Speech" by Peter Ives

    Clashes over free speech rights and wrongs haunt public debates about the state of democracy, freedom and the future. While freedom of speech is recognized as foundational to democratic society, its meaning is persistently misunderstood and distorted. Prominent commentators have built massive platforms around claims that their right to free speech is being undermined. Critics of free speech correctly see these claims as a veil for misogyny, white-supremacy, colonialism and transphobia, concluding it is a political weapon to conserve entrenched power arrangements. But is this all there is to say?

    Rethinking Free Speech will change the way you think about the politics of speech and its relationship to the future of freedom and democracy in the age of social media. Political theorist Peter Ives offers a new way of thinking about the essential and increasingly contentious debates around the politics of speech. Drawing on political philosophy, including the classic arguments of JS Mill, and everyday examples, Ives takes the reader on a journey through the hotspots of today’s raging speech wars.

    In its bold and careful insights on the combative politics of language, Rethinking Free Speech provides a map for critically grasping these battles as they erupt in university classrooms, debates around the meaning of antisemitism, the “cancelling” of racist comedians and the proliferation of hate speech on social media. This is an original and essential guide to the perils and possibilities of communication for democracy and justice.

    ‘So to Speak’ podcast interview with author of ‘Rethinking Free Speech’


    Is the free speech conversation too simplistic?

    Peter Ives thinks so. He is the author of “Rethinking Free Speech,” a new book that seeks to provide a more nuanced analysis of the free speech debate within various domains, from government to campus to social media.

    Ives is a professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg. He researches and writes on the politics of “global English,” bridging the disciplines of language policy, political theory, and the influential ideas of Antonio Gramsci.

    More in the news

    2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases

    Cases decided 

    • Villarreal v. Alaniz (Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
    • Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)

    Review granted

    Pending petitions

    Petitions denied

    Last scheduled FAN

    FAN 452: “Stephen Rohde: Federal court rejects lawsuit by Jewish parents and teachers that labelled an ethnic studies curriculum ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Zionist’”

    This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald KL Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.

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  • What could WNMU’s ex-president’s exit package pay for?

    What could WNMU’s ex-president’s exit package pay for?

    Former Western New Mexico University president Joseph Shepard received an exit package that included severance pay of $1.9 million, and a tenured faculty job, with perks adding up to an estimated $3.5 million.

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

    The controversial exit package for former Western New Mexico University president Joseph Shepard could have funded multiple scholarships, according to one analysis, while the state’s governor says that the money could have helped feed hungry students at the university for a year.

    Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University who studies presidential compensation and contracts, previously told Inside Higher Ed that Shepard’s exit package could have funded 90 scholarships for undergraduate students at Western New Mexico.

    To Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, the decision to green-light a $1.9 million severance payment to the departing president “demonstrated an appalling disconnect from the needs of our state, where the median income of a family of four is just $61,000.”

    “The amount of money contained in Dr. Shepard’s separation agreement could have addressed food insecurity across the entire WNMU student body for a full year,” Lujan Grisham said in a news release last week.

    The estimated $3.5 million package—including benefits—for a president accused of improperly spending taxpayer dollars has infuriated state lawmakers and led to the resignations of several regents. More fallout is expected as the state attorney general seeks to claw back the severance payment.

    Shepard’s last day as president was Wednesday.

    Shepard, who led the university for 13 years, made a base salary of $365,000 a year. He’s not the only college president to get a generous severance on his way out the door, but compared to deals at other institutions, the agreement is unusually lucrative and will cost the university more than multiple line items in its budget. For example, when Ben Sasse stepped down as president of the University of Florida, he struck a deal to keep his $1 million annual salary through 2028 despite exiting the top job. But UF’s annual budget is just over $5 billion, meaning Sasse’s exit package comprises a tiny fraction of university expenses.

    Comparatively, Shepard’s exit package far exceeds those of other former presidents in his state. Former New Mexico State University system chancellor Dan Arvizu received an exit package valued at between $500,000 and $650,000 when he announced his early departure in 2023, a move both parties referred to as a “mutual separation” amid tensions. In 2016, Bob Frank left the University of New Mexico presidency early amid allegations of bullying, striking a deal for a $190,000-a-year tenured faculty job—down from the $350,000 annual salary initially considered.

    At WNMU, a university that enrolled 3,570 students in fall 2023, Shepard’s total exit package adds up to almost 5 percent of its $74.2 million fiscal year 2024 budget, an Inside Higher Ed analysis found.

    In one of the poorest states in the union, more than half of WNMU’s students receive Pell Grants. A 2023 survey also found nearly 60 percent of college students in New Mexico were food insecure, prompting efforts at Western New Mexico and other colleges to address the issue.

    Shepard’s exit package has roiled lawmakers, particularly in light of the economic challenges in the state and a state investigation that found the outgoing president improperly spent $360,000 in taxpayer money on international travel, splashy resorts and expensive furniture. Had the board elected to fire Shepard without cause, it could have spent roughly $600,000 to cut ties with him. Or the board could have waited for the conclusion of another state investigation, which might have given them cause to fire him without spending any additional money, depending on the findings.

    Instead, regents cut him a $1.9 million check and gave him a tenured faculty job teaching two courses a year with a remote option. Altogether those perks add up to a $3.5 million, Wilde estimated. (WNMU officials said the money was paid for out of reserves.)

    Four out of five WNMU regents have since resigned under scrutiny from lawmakers, including the governor. Attorney General Raúl Torrez also demanded an investigation into Shepard’s “golden parachute” and sought a restraining order to prevent him from accessing the $1.9 million severance payment as the state challenges the contract. However, a judge shot down the request to place a hold on those funds Monday. A legal challenge to the contract is pending.

    ButJohn C. Anderson, an attorney for Shepard, defended the payment as “appropriate” and said that the former president had “worked tirelessly on behalf of Western New Mexico University for nearly 14 years to increase graduation rates, modernize the campus through major renovations and the construction of new facilities, and expand the school’s programs,” among other accomplishments. (Shepard’s legal team also disputed the estimate of $3.5 million but did not provide their own figure.)

    As the legal wrangling continues, Inside Higher Ed took a look at WNMU’s budget to determine how Shepard’s controversial exit package stacks up to spending on athletics, academic support, faculty salaries and other line items in the fiscal year 2024 budget, which was last updated in December. While Shepard has already received a nearly $2 million severance payment, the remainder of his deal will be paid out to him as a tenured faculty member where he’ll initially make $200,000 a year. His salary will be paid for by the business school.

    • WNMU athletics teams—known as the Mustangs—compete on the NCAA Division II level. Western New Mexico University sponsors 13 sports with an athletics budget of $5.4 million.
    • The student services budget at WNMU is $4.5 million. That money is spread across a range of offerings from disability services to funding for special events and student health and well-being.
    • WNMU budgeted $4.4 million for the operation and maintenance of campus.
    • WNMU budgeted $3.9 million in academic support.
    • The student financial aid budget at WNMU was $1.2 million.
    • Shepard’s exit package also surpasses the total faculty salaries for any department at WNMU. The nursing department has 19 full-time faculty members, earning a combined salary of $1.4 million, according to budget documents. Nursing appears to be the largest program at WNMU based on the number of full-time employees listed. Social work is also among the university’s largest programs, with 17.2 full-time faculty members listed earning just over $1 million.

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  • Illinois guarantees transfer for all state high school grads

    Illinois guarantees transfer for all state high school grads

    Students who graduated from an Illinois high school, no matter where they’re currently enrolled, will soon be guaranteed transfer admission to any University of Illinois system institution—including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which has a regular acceptance rate below 50 percent. 

    Illinois’s new policy, set to take effect this fall, builds on its previous transfer guarantee, which applied only to current Illinois community college students. Typical state transfer guarantee programs apply only to those currently enrolled in another state institution; Illinois’s more expansive approach may help bring back former residents who left the state for college.

    To be eligible, students must have graduated from an Illinois high school, earned at least 36 transferable credit hours toward their transfer institution and maintained a minimum 3.0 GPA in all transferable courses. Students will still have to apply, but if they meet the requirements, they’ll be automatically accepted. Admission to specific programs and majors, however, is not guaranteed. 

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