Tag: News

  • Trump reportedly set to order dismantling of Education Dept.

    Trump reportedly set to order dismantling of Education Dept.

    This story will be updated.

    President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the agency, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported.

    The president’s order—scheduled to be signed at 2 p.m. in the Oval Office—is the first step in carrying out his controversial campaign promise to abolish the 45-year-old department. A draft of the order provided to Inside Higher Ed criticizes the department for spending “more than $1 trillion without producing virtually any improvement in student reading and mathematics scores.” Trump’s press secretary called reports about the order “fake news.”

    Education advocates have already shown staunch opposition to the executive action. The American Federation of Teachers, a key higher ed union, was one of the first groups to pipe up when the news broke Wednesday evening, calling the order a government attempt to “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families.”

    “The Department of Education, and the laws it is supposed to execute, has one major purpose: to level the playing field and fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed,” union president Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “No one likes bureaucracy, and everyone’s in favor of more efficiency, so let’s find ways to accomplish that. But don’t use a ‘war on woke’ to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires.”

    The president and his allies have promoted the idea of dismantling the agency since the early days of his 2024 campaign, saying the department has grown too big and interferes in matters best left to local and state authorities. They also argue the agency’s existence violates the Constitution (because the document doesn’t mention education) and is a prime example of federal bloat and excess.

    Read More on Trump’s Plans to Break Up the Department

    Such an order has been rumored for weeks, and higher education officials have been nervously waiting for the shoe to drop since McMahon was confirmed by the Senate Monday afternoon. But the secretary backed plans to break up or diminish the department at her confirmation last month, and shortly after taking office, she wrote to agency staff about their “momentous final mission,” which includes overhauling the agency and eliminating “bureaucratic bloat.” She never did directly use the words “dismantle” or “abolish” but pledged to “send education back to the states.”

    “As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results,” she wrote. “We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great.”

    Eliminating the Education Department and sending key programs such as the Office for Civil Rights to other agencies was a key part of the conservative blueprint Project 2025’s plans to reshape education policy in America. But recent public opinion polls have found support for keeping the agency.

    One survey conducted by the progressive think tank Data for Progress, on behalf of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a left-wing advocacy group, showed that 61 percent of all respondents “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed the idea of eliminating the department. Another poll from Morning Consult, a data-driven insights company, showed that a large chunk of voters—41 percent—actually want to increase funding to the department.

    The order doesn’t mean the department will close tomorrow or even this month, as it calls for the secretary to create a plan to wind down operations. McMahon also told senators during her confirmation that only Congress can shut down the agency altogether.

    Higher Ed Officials Brace for Impact

    As talks about the department’s demise ramped up in recent weeks, lawmakers, student advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and left-leaning think tanks warned how destructive dismantling the department could be.

    Democrats in the House started pushing back on the idea as early as Feb. 10, when they walked directly up to the department’s front doors and demanded a meeting with then–acting education secretary Denise Carter. Denied entry, they argued the department’s existence is key to supporting students with disabilities and making higher education accessible to all.

    That same week, several key senators wrote a letter to the department outlining their “serious concerns” about its actions.

    “We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators, and communities,” the lawmakers wrote.

    Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, put out a statement expressing similar concerns for students of color just minutes after McMahon was confirmed. The NAACP played a key role in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, and has been a longtime advocate for equality and opportunity in education. He said that protecting the Department of Education is critical, since the agency not only funds public schools, but “enforces essential civil rights laws.”

    “This is an agency we cannot afford to dismantle,” he said.

    On Tuesday morning, EdTrust, a nonprofit policy and advocacy group, said America has reached “a dangerous turning point for public education.”

    “Simply put: If we are truly to reach America’s ‘Golden Age,’ we need to build a better, stronger Department of Education, not tear it down altogether,” the organization wrote in a statement.

    Kevin Carey, vice president of education at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said in a statement that eliminating the department is a “deeply unpopular idea,” citing the organization’s own new polling data.

    The survey found that over all only 26 percent of adults support the department’s closure. And though the Trump administration says it is carrying out the will of the people who elected him to office, barely half of Republicans want closure. Even fewer members of the GOP support the specific consequences of shuttering the department, like moving federal financial aid to an agency with no experience overseeing the program.

    “This is all part of the standard authoritarian playbook for would-be dictators engaged in tearing down democratic institutions,” Carey wrote. Dismantling the department would be “a nihilistic act of civic vandalism, carried out by ideological zealots.”

    Gathering Congressional Support

    But Carey and others also note that, ultimately, the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to actually close the Department of Education, making full abolishment more complicated than the president suggests.

    Shuttering the agency would require 60 votes in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, as the department’s existence is written into statute. And with a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Republicans don’t currently have the votes unless some Democrats back the plan.

    Still, Trump has continued to promote the concept, and red states across the country have backed it. Although the president has not disclosed specific details on how he would try to overcome the political and legal hurdles, higher education policy experts predict he’s likely to leave the skeleton of the department standing while gutting the agency of everything but its statutorily protected duties.

    Conservative groups, most notably the Heritage Foundation, have suggested redistributing responsibilities by moving programs to other agencies. For example, the federal student loan system could be moved to the Treasury, and the Office for Civil Rights could be moved to the Department of Justice.

    Critics of the idea say that such proposals need more specifics that spell out how exactly the plan would work, what programs would stay, which ones would go away and what agencies would take over the department’s responsibilities.

    However, higher ed policy experts from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, say getting rid of the department is “a good idea.” They describe the department as “unconstitutional,” given education is mentioned nowhere in the specific, enumerated powers given to the federal government, and call it “ineffective,” “incompetent,” “expensive” and “unnecessary.”

    The founding fathers chose to exclude dominion over education from the Constitution “because education was believed best left in the hands of parents and civil society—the families and communities closest to the children—and certainly not in a distant national government,” Neal McCluskey, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, wrote in a policy handbook. “Nearly 60 years of experience with major and, until very recently, constantly expanding federal meddling in K-12 education have proved them right.”

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  • New college presidents appointed in February

    New college presidents appointed in February

    Stacy Bartlett, currently the chief of staff at Point University in Georgia, will become the institution’s president, effective July 1.

    Michael Benson, president of Coastal Carolina University, has been named the 27th president of West Virginia University, starting in July.

    John Butler, the Haub Vice President for University Mission and Ministry at Boston College, has been appointed the institution’s president, beginning in the summer of 2026.

    Elizabeth Cantwell, president of the Utah State University system, has been appointed president of Washington State University, effective April 1.

    Sylvia Cox, executive vice president and chief academic officer at Southeastern Community College, has been named president of Rockingham Community College, effective May 1.

    Wendy Elmore, currently executive vice president and provost of Lamar State College–Orange in Texas, has been named the institution’s next president, effective June 1.

    Andrea Goldsmith, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, will become the seventh president of Stony Brook University, effective Aug. 1.

    Adam Hasner, executive vice president of public policy for the Geo Group, has been named president of Florida Atlantic University.

    Elizabeth Kiss, who most recently served as CEO of the Rhodes Trust, will become president of Union College, effective July 1.

    Michelle Larson, president and CEO of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, has been named president of Clarkson University, effective April 1.

    Dean McCurdy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, has been named president of Colby-Sawyer College, effective June 1.

    Heather Norris, formerly the interim chancellor of Appalachian State University, has been appointed to the position permanently, effective March 1.

    Joseph Odenwald, president of Southwestern Michigan College, has been named president of Alma College, effective June 1.

    Andrew Rich, dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, has been appointed president of Franklin & Marshall College, beginning this summer.

    Daniel Shipp, the president of Pittsburg State University, has been named president of Maryville University in Missouri, starting in June.

    Shane Smeed, president of Park University in Missouri, has been appointed president of Utah Tech University.

    Gentry Sutton, currently executive vice president and vice president of advancement at Warner University in Florida, has been appointed president of the institution.

    Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College in North Carolina, has been named president of City University of Seattle, effective July 1.

    Jermaine Whirl, who most recently served as president of Augusta Technical College, has been appointed president of Savannah State University, effective April 1.

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  • Presidents point to drivers of declining public trust

    Presidents point to drivers of declining public trust

    According to 2024 general election exit polling, 42 percent of voters with college degrees voted for now-President Donald Trump, compared to 56 percent of those without college degrees. Asked how they feel about this growing education gap in the electorate—what researchers call the diploma divide—25 percent of college and university presidents say they’re very or extremely concerned about its implications for their institution.

    More say they’re highly concerned about the growing divide’s impact on higher education in general (58 percent) and on American democracy (64 percent). That’s according to a new analysis of findings from Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents, completed with Hanover Research.

    Presidents also offer a scathing review of how higher education has responded to this divide thus far: Just 3 percent think the sector has been very or extremely effective, versus not at all, somewhat or moderately effective. The leaders have a similarly dismal view of how higher education is responding to declining public confidence: A mere 1 percent, rounded up, think it has been highly effective. Much larger shares of presidents think higher education has not been at all effective in responding to the public confidence crisis, with presidents of private nonprofit institutions especially likely to say so, or to the growing education divide in the electorate.

    The Diploma Divide

    Experts say that the diploma divide can’t be decoupled from the public confidence crisis, and that both have implications for the intensifying debate over, and presidential communication about, higher education’s value—especially in this political moment.

    More on the Survey

    Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents was conducted with Hanover Research starting in December and running through Jan. 3. The survey included 298 presidents of two- and four-year institutions, public and private, for a margin of error of 5 percent. Download a copy of the free report here, and check out reporting on the survey’s other findings, including what presidents really think about faculty tenure and student mental health, and their expectations for the second Trump administration.

    On Wednesday, March 26, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will present a webcast with campus leaders who will share their takes on the findings. Register for that discussion here.

    “Presidents should be making very clear and very concrete what the practical benefits of their university are, not just for the students that attend that university but for the community, the state at large,” said Joshua Zingher, an associate professor of political science and geography at Old Dominion University who studies elections and political behavior, including the diploma divide. “Thinking about the long-term development of the U.S. as a science power or a technology power is very much a story of the university.” He noted that football games at the University of Iowa, in his home state, pause after the first quarter so that fans can wave to patients in the campus children’s hospital—an example of how society depends on thriving colleges and universities, and how cuts to university research and other funding have ripple effects.

    Matt Grossman, professor of American politics and public policy and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, who co-authored the 2024 book Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, agreed there is reason for presidents to be concerned about the diploma divide, in that the “analogies are not great.” Just think of the politically polarized trust in so-called mainstream media, an institution in which both Democrats and Republicans were once largely confident.

    But whereas Zingher said that presidents might have to “take a position” at some point, even if many loathe being seen as political figures, Grossman pointed to existing public polling linking declining confidence to concerns about ideological bias within institutions, at least among Republicans. So Grossman said he was surprised by how few presidents in IHE’s annual survey most attribute declining trust to concerns about ideological bias (11 percent). About double that share say concerns about ideological bias are very or extremely valid (22 percent).

    Grossman explained that higher education has always been culturally liberal, but as social and cultural issues become more central to how people vote, it’s harder for institutions to “be above the fray.” Indeed, higher education is now a wedge issue. As for how campus leaders should respond to the diploma divide, Grossman said, “The first step would be a realization that they know that they are facing these complaints.”

    Presidents of private nonprofit institutions are somewhat more likely than their public counterparts to express the highest level of concern about the divide’s impact, including on higher education in general. Region also appears to matter, with presidents in the South least likely to worry about the divide. Regarding its impact on American democracy, for example, some 45 percent of presidents in the South are very or extremely worried, versus 62 percent of those in the Midwest, 73 percent of those in the West and 75 percent in the Northeast.

    The widening diploma divide means that voters without a college degree are increasingly likely to vote Republican and those with a degree are increasingly like to vote Democratic. With the Republican Party growing more critical of higher education, this has real consequences for college and university missions and budgets.

    But Keith Curry, president of Compton College and chief executive of the Compton Community College District, emphasized that educating students, including about voting, transcends politics: “It’s important that as leaders we’re bipartisan, and to focus on helping students register to vote and participate in the [democratic] process. They have to understand the issues and how to gather the information. They make their own decisions.”

    For what it’s worth, faculty members in a fall poll by IHE and Hanover overwhelmingly said that they planned to encourage students to vote in the 2024 election. But just 2 percent planned to tell students to vote for a particular candidate or party.

    Jay Akridge, trustee chair in teaching and learning excellence, professor of agricultural economics and former provost at Purdue University, offered a slightly different take. Calling the diploma divide “concerning,” he said it might “make higher ed think more about students with parents who did not go to college and how to better serve this group of first-generation students.”

    The Value Debate

    If not concerns about ideological bias, to what do presidents most attribute declining public confidence in higher education?

    From a list of survey options, the plurality (49 percent) cite concerns about the value of a college education and/or whether college is worth it. A less common choice: concerns about lack of affordability, including high tuition (18 percent). And very few presidents point to concerns about whether colleges are adequately preparing students for the workforce (7 percent).

    Some differences emerge by institution type, with public presidents more likely to cite concerns about whether college is worth it than their private nonprofit peers (54 percent versus 43 percent, respectively). But presidents of private nonprofits are somewhat more likely to blame concerns about affordability (22 percent versus 15 percent of public institution presidents).

    As for whether presidents think that such concerns are actually founded, half say that concerns about affordability are very to extremely valid, with presidents at public institutions (57 percent) significantly more likely to say so than those at private nonprofits (39 percent).

    And while very few presidents over all (1 percent) most attribute declining public confidence in higher education to concerns about equity, including access and outcomes for historically underrepresented groups, a quarter (26 percent) think that such concerns are highly valid. The same goes for higher education being disconnected from society (24 percent say this is highly valid)—something that’s arguably linked to the diploma divide, as well.

    Just 15 percent of presidents say the value question is highly valid. Some 40 percent say it’s not at all valid, while an additional 46 percent rate it as somewhat or moderately valid.

    In IHE’s 2024 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers with Hanover, 94 percent of CBOs somewhat or strongly agreed that their institution offers good value for what it charges for an undergraduate degree. Just 9 percent of CBOs said their institution charges too much for an undergraduate degree.

    As for the student perspective, in IHE’s 2024 Student Voice survey series, most current two- and four-year students agreed that they’re getting a valuable education. But they were much less likely to agree that their college was affordable.

    Martha Snyder, partner at HCM Strategists, says the education firm’s own U.S. polling and other research has found a general, even bipartisan belief “that education beyond high school in some form or fashion is necessary and important for longer-term economic viability, prosperity and longer-term job security.” But—similar to the Student Voice findings—the “disconnect tends to be in accessibility and affordability.” That is, even as Americans may understand the long-term value of higher education, it is undercut by the immediate challenges of paying for it—especially when weighed against the opportunity cost of not working, or perhaps not working as much, while pursuing a degree.

    Snyder says this also points to a need for institutional transparency on cost of attendance and for better presidential communication as to why higher education works the way it does.

    “Think about the notion of a credit hour, right? The complex way that pricing happens is not easily understood by students and families. And even though net price has fallen, well, what is net pricing?” she said. “So there’s another disconnect in how we are communicating the information we’re providing to individuals about the opportunities, about the pathways and about what the end result is, in terms of career opportunities and career advancement.”

    Akridge, of Purdue, also noted the gap between the relatively large share of presidents who think concerns about the value of a degree are driving declining public confidence and the relatively small share who point to concerns about whether or not colleges are adequately preparing students for the workforce, as these two points are connected. Moreover, he said, there “are plenty of valid questions raised by employers about whether or not college graduates are ready for the work world.”

    In just one example, a recent survey of U.S. employees and human resources leaders by Hult International Business School found that 85 percent of recent graduates wish their college had better prepared them for the workplace, and 75 percent of HR leaders say most college educations aren’t preparing people at all for their jobs. There’s a lot to mine here‚ some of it probably generational (Gen Z employees aren’t necessarily mangers’ favorites, and they have their own expectations about work).

    Employer-led skills training has long been on the decline, as well. In any case, Akridge said that given employer perceptions about lack of preparation, “presidents are missing an opportunity—the so-called skills gap is an issue they can take action to close. And this is an issue where such actions will be well received by the public and will make a great story to tell.”

    Akridge and David Hummels, professor of economics and dean emeritus at Purdue, last fall launched “Finding Equilibrium: Two Economists on Higher Ed’s Future,” a Substack newsletter seeking to inform the value conversation. It has offered a number of ideas for improving the career readiness of college graduates, including elevating teaching and learning as a priority through curricular and co-curricular design, innovation and delivery; rethinking organizational structures and student support with a focus on career readiness; and strengthening connections and feedback loops with employers. Akridge and Hummels have also written about how the economic case for college remains strong and how the price students actually pay to attend college has fallen.

    Hummels told Inside Higher Ed that presidents are especially well positioned to share this kind of information with the public, to address the value debate head-on: “They are not passive actors. They need to get out in their communities and around their states, talking to high schools and chambers of commerce and the like, making the case that college is affordable with grant aid. That the return on college is large and positive when you take challenging courses of study and make the most of co-curricular opportunities.”

    The big asterisk here is that completion rates hover in the mid–60 percent range for four-year institutions. Students pursuing more expensive college options but moving into lower-wage jobs is another problem. So it’s also “clear higher ed does not work for everyone,” Akridge said. “We don’t create value for all students.” And how to get better remains “an essential question.”

    More on Affordability—and the Diploma Divide

    Curry, president of Compton College, said he has no doubts about higher education’s value, but that affordability is a highly valid concern at his institution.

    “We have students who are thinking about, ‘Do I buy a book for math class, or do I get food?’ They have to make some real decisions based off of their current finances about to going to college. It is not just the tuition cost. It is the total cost of education—what does that look like?”

    Similarly, students are weighing the cost of working versus going to college. This means that they have to be able to see higher education’s value in real time, Curry said. One way the college is helping students understand this is with program maps that list careers, salaries and other opportunities connected to various areas of study.

    For Hummels, affordability also points right back to the diploma divide in terms of future funding for higher education. If a majority of voters without a college education vote for one party and express a growing conviction that college is not worth it, he said, “then it becomes easier to cut back on Pell Grants, on subsidized student loans, on state support for universities.”

    The impacts of these cuts would be felt most strongly by lower-income and lower-education households, he continued, and “the lack of support becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. College will become out of reach for these households.”

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  • Peter Elbow was right about teaching writing

    Peter Elbow was right about teaching writing

    In the New York Times obituary of Peter Elbow, the giant of composition studies, he is said to have “transformed freshman comp,” which he definitely did, but also, maybe not?

    Even as someone who has done his fair share of thinking and writing about teaching writing, I did not realize that his landmark book, Writing Without Teachers, was first published all the way back in 1973. For sure, the approach to writing he advocated for in Writing Without Teachers and subsequent books challenged the prevailing dogma of academic writing by emphasizing freedom, student agency and audience above correctness and authority, but to consider the full import of Elbow’s message and compare it to what happens in writing classrooms, it’s tough to see a full “transformation” at work.

    At the time I started teaching freshman composition as a graduate TA (1994), I had never heard of Peter Elbow, and none of the people tasked with preparing me for the job introduced me to his work. In fact, I would not encounter Elbow until 2001, when I expressed frustration with teaching through the lens of rhetorical “modes” and how I wished that I could get students writing more freely and authentically because I was tired of reading performative B.S. written for a grade.

    “You should try Peter Elbow,” I was told. I did, and it was like the clouds suddenly parted and I could see the sun for the first time. Anyone who teaches writing as a process, who uses peer review and reflection, is working from Elbow-ian DNA. This surely fits any definition of transformation, doesn’t it?

    But also, why was I not introduced to Peter Elbow as a beginning writing teacher? Why, at the time I did discover him, were departments still teaching rhetorical modes, or composition as (essentially) essays responding to literature?

    In hindsight, I can tell that Elbow’s views on writing must have had a significant impact on the kind of writing I was asked to do in school and how I did it. I’ve written extensively how my grade school teachers of the 1970s privileged creativity and writing problem solving over correctness, engendering a lifelong curiosity about how writing works.

    But by the time I was a teacher, it seems as though whatever transformation Elbow had caused had been beaten back, at least to some degree. Focus on process and revision remained, but this process was deployed in the making of very standard, significantly prescriptive artifacts that were easy to explain, straightforward to grade—as they fit established rubrics—and (at least in my experience) largely uninteresting to read and (in the experience of many students) uninteresting to write.

    It isn’t surprising that attempts at giving students room to maneuver, which make it difficult to compare them to each other or standards of sufficiency, are resisted by those who prefer order to exploration. The most popular composition textbook of recent years is They Say/I Say (well over a million copies sold) a book that literally coaches students to write using Mad Libs–style templates to imitate forms of academic writing, under the theory students will learn academic expression through osmosis.

    Having tried this book for half a semester, I understand its appeal. It’s really just a more refined version of the prescriptive process I used in the 1990s teaching rhetorical modes. If your primary goal is to have students turn in an artifact that resembles the kind of writing that would be produced through a scholarly process, it is very handy.

    If the goal is to get students to think like scholars or go through a process that requires them to wrestle with the genuine challenges of academic inquiry and expression, it is a lousy choice. These are simulations of academic artifacts, predating the simulations now easily created by large language models like ChatGPT.

    The orderly logic of “schooling” seems to repeatedly win over the mess and chaos of learning. Elbow argued that discovery and differentiation was the highest calling of the learning process, and that writing was an excellent vehicle for fulfilling this calling. This requires one to get comfortable with discomfort. For some reason this is serially viewed as a kind of threat to school, rather than what it should be, the focus of the whole enterprise.

    The New York Times obituary calls Elbow’s approach a “more reflective and touchy-feely process,” which I read a signal as to the lack of rigor of the approach, but in truth, it’s the opposite. There’s nothing particularly rigorous about compliance, particularly when enforced by an authority above with all the power, like a teacher wielding their grade book.

    As I’ve found over and over in my career, including weekly in this space for the last 13 years, there is nothing more demanding than being asked to deliver a thought that could only come from your unique intelligence. There is also nothing more interesting for both the writer and the reader.

    Ultimately, I evolved in ways that make me not quite a full Elbow-ian. The experiences in The Writer’s Practice are structured in ways that do not quite square entirely with Writing With Teachers, though even as I write this sentence, I cannot help but note that calling the assignments in the book experiences, and the fact that I wrote the book in such a way that it could be engaged in the absence of a teacher, suggests that maybe the gap isn’t as wide as I perceive.

    While I was working on the manuscript of what would come to be called More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, I would play around with possible titles, as the title on the proposal—“Writing With Robots”—was used for the purpose of getting attention for a book proposal, not something that genuinely reflected the sentiments of the book I planned to write.

    One of the titles I considered was “Everyone Should Write,” a reference to one of Elbow’s later collected volumes, Everyone Can Write.

    One of the gifts of the existence of large language models has been to demonstrate the gap between machine prose and that which can be produced by a unique human intelligence. In a way, this only revalidates Elbow’s original insights of Writing Without Teachers, that we, as humans, have a higher purpose than producing school artifacts for a grade.

    I’m not giving up hope that we can accept this gift.

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  • Education association sues Trump admin over DEI guidance

    Education association sues Trump admin over DEI guidance

    Legal challenges to the Education Department’s guidance ordering colleges to rescind all race-based programming are piling up. 

    A week after the American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration over the guidance, the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit that seeks to restrain the department from enforcing the Feb. 14 letter.

    Similar to the AFT lawsuit, the NEA argues that the letter and its threat to cut federal funding would hamper public schools’ function as “the nation’s ‘nurseries of democracy.’” The NEA lawsuit was filed in the New Hampshire federal district court, while the AFT’s challenge is in Maryland district court.

    “The Trump administration is threatening to punish students, parents and educators in public schools for … fostering inclusive classrooms where diversity is valued, history is taught honestly, and every child can grow into their full brilliance,” Becky Pringle, president of the NEA, said in a news release. “We’re urging the court to block the Department of Education from enforcing this harmful and vague directive and protect students from politically motivated attacks that stifle speech and erase critical lessons.”

    NEA alleges that the Dear Colleague letter “imposes vague and viewpoint discriminatory prohibitions,” “invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” and causes “substantial, irreparable harm.” 
    The NEA wants the court to declare the letter contrary to constitutional rights and place a permanent restraint on the department, preventing it from enforcing the letter’s orders.

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  • A Pa. community college campus closes in-person programs

    A Pa. community college campus closes in-person programs

    Butler County Community College is discontinuing credit-bearing, in-person programs at its LindePointe campus in response to enrollment troubles and the looming demographic cliff in Pennsylvania. The programs are scheduled to continue through the spring semester and shut down in August.

    Enrollment at the LindePointe campus has fallen sharply, from 300 students in fall 2014 to 45 in fall 2024, with a particularly steep drop during the pandemic, according to a news release from the college Tuesday.

    “Our numbers simply have not rebounded to a sustainable level,” Joshua Novak, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, said in the release.

    College leaders estimate ending in-person programs will save approximately $450,000 annually.

    Students in Mercer County, where the LindePointe campus is located, will still be able to take online classes and participate in dual-enrollment and workforce training programs, including training in emergency medical and fire services at a local fire department. The college has promised to create degree-completion plans for each student, which may include online courses or classes taught at its five other locations. All the other campuses continue to offer in-person courses for credit. It’s unclear what will happen to LindePointe faculty and staff, though the college plans to “explore opportunities” for them, including potential reassignments, according to the release.

    The move comes after the college previously considered but didn’t ultimately move forward with plans to teach its LindePointe courses and programs at Pennsylvania State University at Shenango as part of a potential partnership between the two institutions.

    “While we looked at potential partnerships and alternative models, we could not identify a solution that was feasible long term,” Megan Coval, the college’s interim president, said in the release.

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  • New presidents and provosts appointed in February

    New presidents and provosts appointed in February

    Stacy Bartlett, currently the chief of staff at Point University in Georgia, will become the institution’s president, effective July 1.

    Michael Benson, president of Coastal Carolina University, has been named the 27th president of West Virginia University, starting in July.

    John Butler, the Haub Vice President for University Mission and Ministry at Boston College, has been appointed the institution’s president, beginning in the summer of 2026.

    Elizabeth Cantwell, president of the Utah State University system, has been appointed president of Washington State University, effective April 1.

    Sylvia Cox, executive vice president and chief academic officer at Southeastern Community College, has been named president of Rockingham Community College, effective May 1.

    Wendy Elmore, currently executive vice president and provost of Lamar State College–Orange in Texas, has been named the institution’s next president, effective June 1.

    Andrea Goldsmith, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, will become the seventh president of Stony Brook University, effective Aug. 1.

    Adam Hasner, executive vice president of public policy for the Geo Group, has been named president of Florida Atlantic University.

    Elizabeth Kiss, who most recently served as CEO of the Rhodes Trust, will become president of Union College, effective July 1.

    Michelle Larson, president and CEO of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, has been named president of Clarkson University, effective April 1.

    Dean McCurdy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, has been named president of Colby-Sawyer College, effective June 1.

    Heather Norris, formerly the interim chancellor of Appalachian State University, has been appointed to the position permanently, effective March 1.

    Joseph Odenwald, president of Southwestern Michigan College, has been named president of Alma College, effective June 1.

    Andrew Rich, dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, has been appointed president of Franklin & Marshall College, beginning this summer.

    Daniel Shipp, the president of Pittsburg State University, has been named president of Maryville University in Missouri, starting in June.

    Shane Smeed, president of Park University in Missouri, has been appointed president of Utah Tech University.

    Gentry Sutton, currently executive vice president and vice president of advancement at Warner University in Florida, has been appointed president of the institution.

    Suzanne Walsh, president of Bennett College in North Carolina, has been named president of City University of Seattle, effective July 1.

    Jermaine Whirl, who most recently served as president of Augusta Technical College, has been appointed president of Savannah State University, effective April 1.

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  • Ed data goes dark: Why it matters (opinion)

    Ed data goes dark: Why it matters (opinion)

    When President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency set out to slash billions from the federal budget, it puzzled me as to why one of their first targets was an obscure data collection and research agency, the Institute of Education Sciences, a relatively modest operation buried deeply in the corridors of the Department of Education, and indeed one few had ever heard of. Since then, the newly installed secretary of education has ordered a review of all the department’s functions as part of what she ominously called the department’s “momentous final mission.”

    A conversation with a trusted colleague helped me understand the cuts to IES, noting that the action should be seen as part of a new breed of autocrats around the world who seek to control information to hide the impacts of their actions from the public. In contemporary authoritarian governments, control of information—or what has come to be known today as informational autocracy—often substitutes for brute force.

    Similar to how the Trump administration is seizing control of the White House press pool, canceling contracts for independent, high-quality education research is another way of controlling information. As Democratic lawmakers wrote in a Feb. 21 letter decrying the cuts, “The consequences of these actions will prevent the public from accessing accurate information about student demographics and academic achievement, abruptly end evaluations of federal programs that ensure taxpayer funds are spent wisely, and set back efforts to implement evidence-based reforms to improve student outcomes.”

    IES houses a vast warehouse of the nation’s education statistics. Data collected by the agency is used by policymakers, researchers, teachers and colleges to understand student achievement, enrollment and much more about the state of American education. With IES being among the largest funders of education research, cutting it limits public access to what’s happening in the nation’s schools and colleges.

    Claiming to eliminate waste and corruption, Musk’s first round of cuts involved canceling what DOGE initially said were nearly $900 million in IES contracts (though, as subsequent reporting has since revealed, DOGE’s math doesn’t add up and the canceled contracts seem to amount to much less). A second round purportedly sliced another $350 million in contracts and grants. It’s unclear how much more is destined to be chopped, since these may only be the first in a series of cuts designed to completely dismantle the Education Department. Though a department spokesperson initially said that the cuts would not affect the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test known as the nation’s report card, and the College Scorecard, which allows citizens to search for and compare information about colleges, we’ve since seen the cancellation of a national NAEP test for 17-year-olds.

    In the Obama years, public data helped reveal bad actors among for-profit colleges, which were receiving millions in federal aid while delivering inferior education to poor and working-class students who yearned for college degrees. Since so few actually completed, what many got instead was crushing college debt. Luckily, good data helped drive nearly half of all for-profit programs to shut down. Publicly disseminated data exposes where things go wrong. But you can’t track down con men without evidence.

    Ideally, in a well-functioning democracy, with a richly informed public, data helps us reach informed decisions, leading to greater accountability and enabling us to hold officials responsible for their actions. With access to reliable information about what’s happening behind closed doors, data helps us understand what may be going on, even to protest actions we may oppose.

    Lately, however, things aren’t looking good. Since Trump and his top officials have slashed race-conscious programs and moved to prohibit funding for certain areas of research, higher ed leadership has remained mostly silent, with only a handful of college presidents protesting. Most have shrunk into the wings, cowed by Trump’s power to defund institutions. It already has the eerie feeling of watching your step.

    Shutting down potentially revealing data collection is perhaps the least worrisome page in an autocrat’s playbook. As Trump continues to follow the authoritarian path set by leaders in Hungary, Turkey and elsewhere, we should expect other, more damaging and more frightening higher ed moves that have been imposed by other autocrats—selecting college presidents, controlling faculty hiring and advancement, punishing academic dissent, imposing travel restrictions.

    Just a few months ago, there was comfort in knowing everything was there—data on enrollments, graduation rates, participation rates of women and other groups. All very neatly organized and accessible whenever you wanted. Even though some found IES technology old and clunky, it felt like higher ed was running according to a reliable scheme, that you could go online and open data files as in a railroad timetable. Without it, there might be a train wreck ahead and you wouldn’t know it until it was too late. Now these luxurious numbers may soon be lost, with decades of America’s academic history pitched into digital darkness.

    It’s frightening to realize that we’ll no longer be operating on solid intelligence. That we’ll no longer have guideposts, supported by racks of sensibly collected numbers to tell us if we’re on the right path or if we’re far afield. Trump’s wrecking ball has smashed our confidence, a confidence built on years of reliable data. We’ll soon be in the dark.

    Robert Ubell is vice dean emeritus of online learning at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and senior editor of CHLOE 9, the ninth national survey of higher ed chief online learning officers. A collection of his essays on virtual education, Staying Online: How to Navigate Digital Higher Education, was published by Routledge.

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  • Closing a college with dignity (part 3) (opinion)

    Closing a college with dignity (part 3) (opinion)

    After a year of many last events, Cabrini University celebrated its final commencement ceremonies last May and a “legacy” event to ceremonially close the institution and pass the legacy to Villanova University, which purchased the campus. As the emotions have tempered, and Cabrini’s president and academic leadership team have moved on to new career opportunities, we offer these lessons learned for financially struggling colleges that may be facing the possibility of closure, as well as insights for colleges in positions of financial strength on how they can help.

    If Your College Is Struggling Financially

    The quickest route to a chaotic close is running out of cash. Depending on how liquid an institution is—a combination of how much actual cash it holds with how many assets it has that can quickly be converted to cash—running out of cash can happen suddenly. A constant awareness of liquidity is imperative to avoid such a terrible outcome, and any potential partner will ask how long the cash will last as a preliminary decision criterion.

    This is the third part of a three-part series. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

    For many institutions, the most accessible cash resource is the unrestricted portion of the endowment. This can be both a blessing and a curse. Some institutions today are actively drawing more on their endowment than the historic 4 to 5 percent in support of annual operations in order to solve potentially existential challenges (the blessing)—but if the revitalization effort fails, then institutional resources may not be available to preclude closure (the curse). Without the Villanova partnership, Cabrini would have faced a significant cash crunch, which would have forced very difficult choices, especially related to supporting employees in the final stages of closing.

    Rating agencies have also called out the growing amount of deferred maintenance colleges are facing. This is an in-the-weeds problem that many institutions are not addressing, at their great peril. In Cabrini’s case, we had to close a residence hall due to a heating system failure, and a heavily used campus road was so frequently repaired that it was difficult to traverse. We also could not provide competitive equipment for students in one of our most popular majors.

    For institutions on the brink, deferred maintenance can be a real deterrent when considering deal terms with potential partners. Villanova has announced that it will spend $75 million to upgrade the Cabrini campus.

    Here are some additional factors financially struggling institutions should consider:

    • Your accreditor will not tell you to close until it is too late. Cabrini did not receive any warnings from its accreditor in the decade prior to closure. The institution remained accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through graduating its final class and even moved through the required accreditation self-study process in the final year of operation. Do not rely on your accrediting body to make decisions for you.
    • Be honest and transparent with your campus community about enrollment and the college’s financial reality.
    • Consider the cash reserves necessary to close with dignity. Your expenditures will be higher than normal during the wind-down period. You will need to secure an excellent legal team with expertise in closing colleges. There will also be costs associated with exiting long-term contracts and licenses as well as severance and retention costs. Anticipating these increased costs and decreased revenues in the final year is critical to the success of the closure.
    • Anticipate that alumni may want to “save the college.” If you do not have a history of alumni making large gifts, these efforts will be unlikely solutions. When entertaining such possibilities, consider the amount necessary to raise not just to keep the institution open for another year, but to sustain operations over time.
    • Plan for a closing timeline, even if you are not certain you will close. Choosing the right time in the academic calendar to announce a closing is an especially challenging task. Primary consideration must be given to future educational opportunities for students, followed by maximizing employment opportunities for faculty and staff. If it is possible to announce a closing after the end of an academic year for two years into the future, that affords the opportunity to graduate juniors and seniors while preparing sophomores and first-year students for teach-out, and gives faculty up to two academic recruiting cycles, which is especially helpful for tenure-stream faculty. Having sufficient funding on hand is key to offering a two-year closing time frame, given that fiscal and human resources start to deplete as soon as a closing announcement is made.
    • As you plan for a closing timeline, consider the ethical responsibility to deliver a robust student experience. In its final year, Cabrini prioritized using funds for student events and experiences and reduced or eliminated budgets for employee travel, professional memberships and other non-student-facing services.

    If Your College Is Preparing for a Closure Announcement

    If your institution has decided to close, consider the following steps before you announce:

    • Build a website with critical information so that all of your constituents—students, employees, alumni and donors—can receive information. Continue to add to FAQs as more information becomes available.
    • Keep the circle of people who know about the impending closure small to avoid leaks prior to having as much planned as possible. Using nondisclosure agreements is critical. While holding this news may be questioned as unethical, the decision to wait to announce until plans are in place provides the community with more clarity on partner/teach-out institutions, career counseling, mental health counseling, health care, plans for severance and retention agreements, etc.
    • Consider hiring a crisis management team to prepare you for the announcement.
    • Plan to host open forums (virtually and in person) for parents, students and faculty to support their transitions immediately after the closure announcement. Understand that the messaging may not be absorbed when people are upset. Post recordings or PowerPoint slides on your closing website.
    • Plan for mental health support for employees and students, with both in-person and virtual options.
    • Plan for the many human resources issues you will need to consider. Compliance with the federal WARN Act is crucial in order to not incur additional costs. If you provide a notice of a year or more, you will want to retain key faculty and staff. Simultaneously, you will want some melt of employees to align with the melt of students (and tuition income) that will occur. This means you will need to consider both retention and severance agreements, while complying with terms laid out in employee handbooks.
    • Remain in close communication with your accreditor(s) and continue to report on compliance with standards as well as the closure plan. They have processes and expectations that colleges need to honor in order to retain accreditation for the final graduating class. As noted earlier, Cabrini had to complete a regularly scheduled Middle States self-study process, including the site team visit, in the final year of operation, while also completing processes related to closure and the asset purchase agreement.
    • Anticipate that there will be additional administrative tasks to finish after students and faculty leave. In this regard, there will seem to be multiple dates that feel like an ending—the date when academics cease and degrees are no longer awarded, the date when accreditation ends, the date when a transaction occurs for the property, the date the endowment transfer process happens through the Orphan’s Court—a process specific to Pennsylvania—and more. Audits, financial aid close-out and reporting requirements, tasks related to tax compliance, discontinuation of vendor relationships, transition of student records, withdrawal from the federal international student program and other administrative tasks will need to occur after most campus employees have been terminated. Understanding these requirements and creating a checklist for closure will keep your leadership team on track.

    If Your College Has Announced Plans to Close

    • Request department chairs work collaboratively to identify students who can realistically graduate prior to closing, determine what courses these students need and schedule classes to meet these needs. Closing institutions need to be flexible but not sacrifice the quality of the education. Modifying degree requirements to the point where students do not have the skills and knowledge that is expected of the degree is unethical.
    • Adapt catalog policies to ensure due process for managing grievances, academic standing determinations, grade disputes/changes, hearing requests, etc., within the timeline for closure. Once closed, transcripts cannot be modified.
    • Establish a working group on record retention to determine what needs to shift to another institution or agency and what needs to be shredded.
    • Prepare faculty and staff on campus to assume many roles as their faculty and staff colleagues depart throughout the year.
    • Anticipate that alumni will suddenly be more engaged than they have been in recent years. Your focus must remain on taking care of your current employees and students, who deserve a robust experience.
    • Give yourself grace and extend that to everyone around you. Everyone is experiencing some level of grief, stress and trauma. Be flexible even while knowing that at times you will need to have firm deadlines to respect people’s bandwidth and complete processes. Understand that students and employees will react differently and move on different schedules.
    • Have hope. There are moments of your closure period that will be horrific. There is no other way to describe it. There will also be moments of solidarity and togetherness. Ultimately, a closure can be a period of forced growth for many people. Many Cabrini employees found a new job opportunity that advanced their careers.

    If Your College Isn’t Closing, but a College in Your Area Is

    • If a college or university in your area is closing or is rumored to be closing, talk with them to ask how you can best support them. Before posting information on your website or speaking with the media about welcoming the students from the closing college or university, ask the closing institution directly about how you can best support their students and employees for a smooth transition.
    • Working with institutions to establish memorandums of understanding for supportive transitioning of students is important, as is acting with transparency and honesty. Unfortunately, there were institutions that exhibited predatory behaviors toward Cabrini students with flashy, false promises that led vulnerable students to spend more time and money to complete their degrees. Don’t be that institution.
    • If a college provides a notice period, understand that actively recruiting their students or employees prior to closure might negatively impact the closing institution. If you would like to offer employment to someone at a closing institution who is in a key position such as director of financial aid or registrar, consider communicating with the closing institution to seek a solution that can provide a transition period, possibly splitting the employee’s time between the two institutions.

    Final Reflection

    In an ideal world of higher education, no institution would have to endure a sudden or planned closure. However, the current financial and enrollment pictures at many colleges and universities point to a harsher reality.

    For others working at institutions that are exploring mergers, acquisitions or closures, do not work in isolation. There are now many higher education professionals who have lived through this experience who can offer advice confidentially and understand the need for nondisclosure. Higher education will be stronger if we work together, not in competition, and recognize our shared mission to serve students and our communities.

    The final two years were a very difficult time for Cabrini University’s community. The institution’s leadership is forever grateful to the faculty and staff, all of whom rose to the occasion to embrace the many lasts. Their selfless work and sacrifice will serve as a legacy for Cabrini, as will the colleges where Cabrini students chose to continue their educations and the institutions where former Cabrini faculty and staff will continue their careers.

    Helen Drinan served as interim president of Cabrini University. Previously, she served as president of Simmons University.

    Michelle Filling-Brown is associate vice provost for integrated student experience and a teaching professor in the Department of English at Villanova University. She formerly served as chief academic officer/dean for academic affairs at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 16 years.

    Richie Gebauer is dean of student success at Bryn Mawr College. He formerly served as assistant dean of retention and student success at Cabrini University.

    Erin McLaughlin is the interim dean of the College of Arts, Education and Humanities at DeSales University. She formerly served as associate dean for the School of Business, Education and Professional Studies at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 16 years.

    Kimberly Boyd is assistant professor of biology and anatomy and physiology at Delaware County Community College. She formerly served as dean of retention and student success at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 25 years.

    Missy Terlecki is dean of the School of Professional and Applied Psychology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She formerly served as associate dean for the School of Arts and Sciences at Cabrini University, where she also served as a faculty member for 19 years.

    Lynda Buzzard is associate vice president and controller at Villanova University. Previously, she served as the vice president of finance and administration at Cabrini University in its final year.

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  • James Goodale on Trump: ‘He’d sue everybody . . . in the media business’ and their ‘response has been pathetic’ — First Amendment News 460

    James Goodale on Trump: ‘He’d sue everybody . . . in the media business’ and their ‘response has been pathetic’ — First Amendment News 460

    Recently, on a WBUR public radio program with Willis Ryder Arnold and Deborah Becker, author and leading First Amendment attorney James Goodale had some things to say about Donald Trump’s attempts to intimidate the press.

    First a bit about the man. From the Wikipedia entry on Goodale:

    James Goodale

    James Goodale is the former vice president and general counsel for The New York Times and, later, the Times’ vice chairman. He is the author of “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles.”

    Goodale represented The New York Times in four of its United States Supreme Court cases, including Branzburg v. Hayes, in which the Times intervened on behalf of its reporter Earl Caldwell. The other cases were New York Times v. Sullivan, New York Times Co. v. United States (the Pentagon Papers case), and New York Times Co. v. Tasini. 

    He has been called “the father of the reporter’s privilege” in the Hastings Law Journal because of his interpretation of the Branzburg case.

    And now on to Goodale’s comments on WBUR regarding Trump: 

    So, if you’re not going to fight for your creativity, you’re not going to have a company left. And that applies not only to newspapers, but obviously movies, too. And let me say also, finally, that if you don’t fight, what Trump is going to do, he’s going to go from media company to media company with quasi true cases and pick up money. He’s just on a . . . bribery trail. And I say that from some experience here in New York City, which is exactly what he did before he ran for president. He’d sue everybody who was in the media business and drive them nuts, and the cases would finally go away.

    But guess what? It cost the media company some bucks to defend it.

    [. . .]

    I believe that once the press starts making settlements where it has no real basis, in my humble opinion, for making them, it undercuts that whole role, and more importantly, I think it encourages someone like Trump to keep on doing it.

    Similarly, in an exchange with Trevor Timm for The Freedom of the Press Foundation on Feb. 12, Goodale had this to say:

    If CBS decides to settle [the “60 Minutes” lawsuit], it will be an absolute disaster for the press. It would be one more domino falling down, handing Trump an undeserved victory against the press. . . . [ABC’s] cowardly settling its case in which George Stephanopoulos said “rape” instead of “sexual abuse,” but since then, Facebook has settled Trump’s even more outlandish suit, and for what? CBS should be standing up and fighting Trump. If I’m them, I’m not letting Trump make me look foolish. Because if it happens, there will be no end. Trump will bring lawsuits against every part of the media, and it will put pressure on everyone else to settle.

    Let me make clear that the lawsuit is a bunch of nonsense. Trump’s legal theory doesn’t exist anywhere in the law, and so not only is the settlement bad in terms of putting the onus on everyone else to settle, but the entire premise of the lawsuit is ridiculous. News outlets are allowed to edit interviews! Hard to believe it even has to be said.

    [ . . . ]

    The suit is from Mars. To my knowledge, I’ve never seen a suit brought like this one where editing is being criticized as constituting consumer fraud. It has no basis in law as far as I’m concerned, and what’s going to happen — if, in fact, the case is settled — is there will be more consumer fraud cases every time the media edits an interview, not only with Trump, but other politicians. And the First Amendment will suffer.

    [ . . . ] 

    [And] the response by the press as we speak has been pathetic. There’s no spokesperson for the press who is out there leading the charge and coordinating a united front with all the news outlets on the same page.

    Related

    Revenge Storm: ‘Chill all the Lawyers’

    “Under my watch, the partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice will end. America must have one tier of justice for all.” — Pamela Bondi (Confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General, Jan. 15)

    “There are a lot of people in the FBI and also in the DOJ who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don’t want to be there. We will find them. Because you have to believe in transparency, you have to believe in honesty, you have to do the right thing. We’re gonna root them out and they will no longer be employed.” — Pamela Bondi (March 3)


    WATCH VIDEO: Trump Signs Anti-Weaponization Executive Order: ‘The Deranged Jack Smith Signing!’

    The administration is acting in ways that will necessarily chill a growing number of lawyers from participating in any litigation against the federal government, regardless of who the client is. That, in turn, will make it harder for many clients adverse to the Trump administration to find lawyers to represent them — such that at least some cases either won’t be brought at all or won’t be brought by the lawyers best situated to bring them.

    [ . . . ]

    [W]hat the Trump administration is doing is far more than just bad behavior; it’s a direct threat to the rule of law—almost as much as defying court orders would be.

    Related

    Executive Watch

    President Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk portray themselves as near-absolutists when it comes to free speech, engaged in an epic fight to let Americans speak openly again after years of enduring liberal efforts to shut down conservative voices. 

    But since taking office, the president has mounted what critics call his own sweeping attack on freedom of expression. Some of it aims to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion and what he terms “radical gender ideology.” Some of it is aimed at media organizations whose language he dislikes. In other cases, the attacks target opponents who have spoken sharply about the administration.

    Together, critics — and in some cases, judges — have said Trump’s efforts have gone beyond shaping the message of the federal government to threaten the First Amendment rights of private groups and individuals.

    New report on state threats to free speech advocacy and donor privacy

    Hurt feelings from the campaign trail fuel retaliatory disclosure demands across the U.S.

    Legislative and regulatory proposals in as many as 34 states pose a potential threat to the privacy and free speech rights of donors to the nonprofit community, a new report finds. People United for Privacy Foundation (PUFPF), a national privacy rights advocacy group, warns that state officials are increasingly targeting the ability of nonprofit supporters to maintain their privacy as political polarization rises.

    “After a bruising campaign season, many politicians are out for revenge against the groups and donors that dared to criticize them. These efforts reach far beyond traditional political committees to target nonprofits that discuss elected officials’ voting records or advocate on policy issues. Forcing nonprofits to publish their supporters’ names and home addresses is an intimidation tactic that chills free speech and violates personal privacy,” said PUFPF Vice President Matt Nese, a co-author of the report.

    The report, “2025 State Threats to Donor Privacy and Nonprofit Advocacy,” analyzes current and past legislation, regulatory proposals, and statements by public officials to catalog potential threats to donor privacy in state legislative sessions occurring across the country.

    Forthcoming book on how foreign authoritarian influence undermines freedom and integrity within American higher education

    Sarah McLaughlin

    Sarah McLaughlin

    A revealing exposé on how foreign authoritarian influence is undermining freedom and integrity within American higher education institutions.

    In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships. 

    This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. Universities leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment. 

    Meticulously researched and unapologetically candid, Authoritarians in the Academy is an essential read for anyone who believes in the transformative power of education and the necessity of safeguarding it from the creeping tide of authoritarianism.

    Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

    Nadine Strossen on ‘The Weimar Fallacy’

    FIRE Senior Fellow and former ACLU President Nadine Strossen discusses what is commonly known as The Weimar Fallacy: The idea that, if only the Weimar Republic in Germany had tamped down on Nazis and anti-Semitic speech, Hitler’s rise and the horrors of the Holocaust could have been averted.

    As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Nadine knows just how ugly anti-Semitism can be — but censorship only makes it worse.

    The truth is, there were many hate speech laws in Weimar Germany, and they were strongly enforced against the Nazis — including Hitler himself.

    Not only did those hate speech laws help the Nazis gain power, they also helped the Nazis censor anyone who challenged it.


    WATCH VIDEO: Would “hate speech” laws have stopped the Nazis?

    NAACP-LDF’s Janai Nelson on racism and book banning

    LDF Associate Director-Counsel Janai Nelson speaks on the legal challenges to banned books, LDF’s legacy of using the law in order to transform society, and why progress toward racial justice requires we tell the truth about our nation’s history.


    WATCH VIDEO: Banned Books Week: Janai Nelson on Ideas & Action

    New Book by Gene Policinski traces history of First Amendment

    First amendment, threats and defenses have, for much of the past 100 years, largely focused on protecting individual speech, the right of any one of us to express ourselves without interference or punishment by the government. But there is an increasing danger to our core freedoms from systemic challenges, which often involve other issues or circumstances, but which carry a First Amendment impact, if not wallop. – Gene Policinski

    Photo of Gene Policinski and Kevin Goldberg on Feb. 26, 2025

    Gene Policinski (left) and Kevin Goldberg at Freedom Forum on Feb. 26, 2025. (Credit: Ron Collins)

    This fast-paced history of the First Amendment will engage students, educators, scholars and other fans of our nation’s most fundamental freedoms.

    In “The First Amendment in the 21st Century,” Gene Policinski, Freedom Forum senior fellow for the First Amendment and past First Amendment Center president, traces the history of the First Amendment through its winding social and legal paths as it has intertwined with world events and cultural change.

    He explores how this history shows today’s potential for a First Amendment renaissance even amid new technological challenges.

    Deeply researched and clearly written, “The First Amendment in the 21st Century” reconciles the past and the present and opines on the future of our First Amendment freedoms — from the courtroom to the chat room.

    New scholarly article: First Amendment Right to Affirmative Action

    In the wake of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, affirmative action proponents should pursue a First Amendment approach. Private universities, which are speaking associations that express themselves through the collective speech of faculty and students, may be able to assert an expressive association right, based on Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, to choose their faculty and students. This theory has been recently strengthened by 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.

    I discuss various complexities and counterarguments: (1) Race is not different from sex or sexual orientation for purposes of the doctrine. (2) The market context may not matter, especially after 303 Creative. (3) The conditional-federal-funding context does give the government more power than a simple regulatory context; the government will still be able to induce race-neutrality by the threat of withdrawing federal funds, but the unconstitutional conditions doctrine precludes draconian penalties such as withdrawing all funds from the entire institution based only on affirmative action in some units. (4) This theory doesn’t apply to public institutions.

     

    I also explore the potential flexibilities of this theory, based on recent litigation. The scope of the Boy Scouts exception might vary based on (1) what counts as substantial interference with expressive organizations, (2) what counts as a compelling governmental interest, and, most importantly, (3) what it takes for activity to be expressive.

    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).”)
    • TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)

    Review granted

    Pending petitions

    Petitions denied

    Last scheduled FAN

    FAN 459: “Alex Kozinski on JD Vance’s censorship speech”

    This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. 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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