Tag: President

  • Mott’s former president commuted from Virginia to Michigan

    Mott’s former president commuted from Virginia to Michigan

    Travel receipts from Mott Community College show the institution paid tens of thousands of dollars for former president Beverly Walker-Griffea to travel back and forth between her home in Virginia and the campus in Michigan, MLive Media Group reported.

    The college spent more than $78,000 on Walker-Griffea’s travel between the two states in 2022 and 2023, including on her stays in Michigan hotels, car rentals and per diems for meals, the publication found. Her contract required her to live within 20 miles of the “nearest college district boundary.”

    Anne Figueroa, former chair of the Board of Trustees in 2021 and 2022, told MLive the president’s residence in Michigan was undergoing a renovation and Walker-Griffea was attending to health concerns with doctors on the East Coast. (Walker-Griffea owned a home in Virginia from her time working at Thomas Hampton Community College.) Figueroa said there was “no decline in her performance” during that period.

    Board members expressed mixed feelings about the unusual arrangement in her last years at the college.

    “One of the key roles the president does is to be the representative of the college in the community,” trustee John Daly told MLive, “and, from my perspective, that’s difficult to do if you’re gone a significant amount of the time.”

    Walker-Griffea, who left Mott in spring 2024, now directs the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential, launched by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in December 2023. A department official told MLive that Walker-Griffea was living in Michigan again by the time she left the college.

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  • Statement on President Trump’s Truth Social post threatening funding cuts for ‘illegal protests’

    Statement on President Trump’s Truth Social post threatening funding cuts for ‘illegal protests’

    President Trump posted a message on Truth Social this morning that put social media and college campuses on high alert. He wrote:

    Colleges can and should respond to unlawful conduct, but the president does not have unilateral authority to revoke federal funds, even for colleges that allow “illegal” protests. 

    If a college runs afoul of anti-discrimination laws like Title VI or Title IX, the government may ultimately deny the institution federal funding by taking it to federal court, or via notice to Congress and an administrative hearing. It is not simply a discretionary decision that the president can make.  

    President Trump also lacks the authority to expel individual students, who are entitled to due process on public college campuses and, almost universally, on private campuses as well.

    Today’s message will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Paired with President Trump’s 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism, and his January order threatening to deport international students for engaging in protected expression, students will rationally fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.

    As FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama and Biden administrations, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask questions later. 

    Even the most controversial political speech is protected by the First Amendment. As the  Supreme Court reminds us, in America, we don’t use the law to punish those with whom we disagree. Instead, “[a]s a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.” 

    Misconduct or criminality — like true threats, vandalism, or discriminatory harassment, properly defined — is not protected by the First Amendment. In fact, discouraging and punishing such behavior is often vital to ensuring that others are able to peacefully make their voices heard. 

    However, students who engage in misconduct must still receive due process — whether through a campus or criminal tribunal. This requires fair, consistent application of existing law or policy, in a manner that respects students’ rights.

    President Trump needs to stand by his past promise to be a champion for free expression. That means doing so for all views — including those his administration dislikes.

     

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  • Seton Hall sues its former president

    Seton Hall sues its former president

    A year after being sued by ex-president Joseph Nyre for alleged breach of contract and retaliation, among other claims, Seton Hall University has hit back with its own legal action against the former leader.

    In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of New Jersey, the university accused Nyre of “illicitly accessing, downloading, maintaining, and later disseminating confidential and proprietary documents, as well as documents protected by the attorney-client and work product privileges, and information after his departure as President of the University.” Those documents led to critical reports about the university’s current president, Monsignor Joseph Reilly.

    Alongside Nyre, the lawsuit also names John Does 1–10, referring to them as “persons who are in possession of documents unlawfully maintained, retrieved, accessed, and/or downloaded.”

    In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, a Seton Hall spokesperson wrote that Wednesday’s filing “makes clear that confidential documents were utilized with sections selectively released, causing damage to the University and its leadership and painting a false narrative about Monsignor Reilly.” Reilly has been accused of failing to report allegations of sexual misconduct and thus violating the university’s Title IX policies.

    An attorney for Nyre blasted the lawsuit as a “cover-up” by Seton Hall.

    A Legal Clash

    Nyre led Seton Hall from 2019 to 2023, when he stepped down unexpectedly.

    The former president later sued Seton Hall, alleging he was pushed out by the Board of Regents amid conflict with then-chair Kevin Marino, whom Nyre accused of micromanagement, improperly involving himself in an embezzlement investigation at the law school and sexually harassing the president’s wife, Kelli Nyre, among other claims. Marino, who is no longer a board member, was not named as a defendant in Nyre’s lawsuit, and an investigation found no evidence of sexual harassment.

    While Seton Hall is defending itself against Nyre’s lawsuit, it also threw a legal counterpunch in suing the ex-president. The university alleges that its information technology team confirmed that Nyre had improperly accessed materials after his departure, and in doing so, he violated confidentiality provisions in his employment and separation agreement.

    Specifically, Nyre is accused of improperly downloading confidential documents that were later provided to Politico. Those files—some of which were also obtained by Inside Higher Ed—seemed to indicate Reilly, the current president, overlooked instances of sexual harassment while rector and dean of the university’s graduate seminary from 2012 to 2022.

    However, one of the leaked documents in question—a letter from a Board of Regents member to Reilly in February 2020 that said he had violated university Title IX policies through his inaction—was an unsent draft, university officials previously told Inside Higher Ed.

    Seton Hall officials said in the lawsuit that though the Politico reporter never disclosed who provided him with the documents, “it was clear that [Nyre], directly or indirectly, was responsible” for the leak of confidential information to the news outlet between December and February. Seton Hall accused Nyre of trying to “create a false impression about” Reilly, arguing he acted in “bad faith and malicious intent” by not disclosing that the February 2020 letter was never sent.

    The allegations against Reilly have prompted calls for transparency from state lawmakers and Democratic governor Phil Murphy, who called on the university to release an investigative report that allegedly cleared Reilly. Seton Hall has thus far declined to do so, citing the need to protect the confidentiality of participants who voluntarily cooperated with the investigation.

    The allegations against Reilly come as the university is only a few years removed from the sprawling sexual abuse scandal involving former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who sat on both of Seton Hall’s governing boards. Investigators determined in a 2019 university report that McCarrick “created a culture of fear and intimidation” and “used his position of power as then–Archbishop of Newark”—which sponsors Seton Hall—“to sexually harass seminarians” for decades. (McCarrick was defrocked but avoided criminal charges due to a dementia diagnosis.)

    As part of the lawsuit, Seton Hall is seeking a temporary restraining order to stop Nyre from allegedly sharing more documents. University officials argued in court filings that Seton Hall stands to “suffer irreparable harm” from further leaks, which “cannot be adequately compensated” monetarily.

    “The nature of the harm is such that it affects the university’s ability to maintain the confidentiality of sensitive information, which is crucial for its operations and reputation,” filings read. “Moreover, to the extent that documents to which defendant has access are protected under [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] or Title IX, the disclosure of such documents would directly implicate the right of students and their parents to control the disclose [sic] of such confidential educational records as well as the confidentiality rights of university employees.”

    Pushback

    In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, Nyre attorney Matthew Luber called the lawsuit “a desperate, retaliatory ploy designed to silence a whistleblower and distract from the university’s own corruption and misconduct.”

    Luber did not specifically address the allegations that Nyre had inappropriately leaked confidential documents but accused Seton Hall of ignoring red flags in hiring Reilly and overlooking Title IX infractions.

    “Let’s be clear: Dr. Nyre was not at Seton Hall when Monsignor Reilly engaged in misconduct, nor when the board knowingly violated its own policies and Title IX to install him as President,” Luber wrote. “But he was the one who warned university officials about Reilly’s disqualifying history during his presidential search—warnings that were deliberately ignored by board leadership. Instead of addressing their own failures, Seton Hall is now attempting to smear and intimidate Dr. Nyre.”

    As of publication, a judge has not set to a hearing to consider the request for a restraining order.

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  • SFFA president on affirmative action ban’s growing impact

    SFFA president on affirmative action ban’s growing impact

    Edward Blum isn’t quite a household name. But at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., he’s a minor celebrity.

    The conservative think tank has played host to an array of high-profile politicos, pundits, journalists and businesspeople over the years: Bill Gates, Mike Pence, Jordan Peterson, the Dalai Lama. Blum, who took affirmative action to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 and won, spoke at the institute earlier this month about his decades of legal activism.

    It was something of a homecoming for the president of Students for Fair Admissions, who lives in Florida but has been a visiting fellow at AEI since 2005. It was also, in many ways, a victory lap.

    Since the court ruled in his favor in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Blum’s vision of what he calls a “colorblind covenant in public policy” has been ascendant, and in the new Trump administration, Blum’s zealous opposition to race-conscious programs has become a domineering force driving education policy.

    Over the weekend, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a letter outlining an expansive interpretation of the SFFA ruling and its plans to enforce a ban on all race-conscious programming in higher ed; colleges that don’t comply in 14 days could lose their federal funding. During her confirmation hearing Thursday, Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon said ending “race-based programming” would be a priority if she were confirmed.

    Blum, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed before the OCR letter was published, believes that affirmative action has long been unpopular—winning the public relations battle, he said, was “the easiest part of my job.” Still, he said the political, legal and cultural backlash against affirmative action and DEI over the past few years was affirming. In Trump’s Washington, Blum, who fought the courts unsuccessfully for decades, feels like an insider at last.

    “It’s gratifying for those of us who have labored in this movement to see that now, rather than these policies being whispered about as unfair and illegal, there’s a full-throated cry against them,” he said.

    The Trump administration’s adoption of Blum’s views on race in higher ed has also prompted another wave of backlash from Blum’s many critics, who say his work is undoing decades of progress toward racial equality and integration.

    During his AEI session, Blum was asked about his own views on racial diversity on college campuses, constitutional law notwithstanding. He rejected the premise outright.

    “The question implies that someone’s skin color is going to tell me something very fundamental about who they are as an individual. I don’t believe that’s the case,” Blum said. “Your skin color, the shape of your eyes, the texture of your hair tells me nothing about who you are. For some people, being on a campus with racial diversity is important … There are others that don’t seem to care about that.”

    From Outsider to Agenda Setter

    Blum has railed against race-conscious admissions for two decades. A former businessman in Houston, Blum, who has no law degree, founded the legal defense fund Project on Fair Representation in the mid-2000s. He challenged Texas’s reinstatement of race-based admissions in the second Fisher v. the University of Texas case; the case went to the Supreme Court but was ultimately defeated in 2016 when justices ruled that the university’s admission practices were constitutional.

    Now, he’s not alone. A corps of public interest law groups has sprung up to litigate the SFFA decision in higher ed at prestigious law firms, on Wall Street and beyond. This month, a brand-new public interest legal group filed a lawsuit against the University of California system accusing it of secretly using racial preferences in admissions, citing increases in Black and Hispanic enrollment at its most selective colleges.

    Blum said SFFA isn’t passing the buck and is committed to challenging universities on their compliance with the law, but a groundswell of efforts has lightened his load.

    “The SFFA decision has energized the public interest law apparatus,” Blum said. He predicted that under Trump, the Education Department will also play a bigger role in investigating institutions for their compliance with the affirmative action ban. That forecast appears to be coming true with Friday’s Dear Colleague letter, though the agency still has to enforce the directive, a complicated prospect considering its broad scope.

    Edward Blum (left) at the American Enterprise Institute on Feb. 5, with moderator Frederick Hess.

    Blum supports the intensifying attacks on DEI and said that with more state laws forbidding spending on diversity and equity programs, there’s room for legal work to ensure colleges aren’t spending on “DEI by another name.”

    But despite the high-profile political implications of his work, he doesn’t see himself as a political actor. In the late 1990s, he ran a failed congressional campaign in Houston, but the thought of running for office now evokes “overwhelming negative emotions.” And he’s careful to draw a line between his legal advocacy work and the anti-DEI crusades of conservative lawmakers.

    “There is a 20-foot wall between the political people in the movement and the public interest groups,” he said.

    ‘A Forever Endeavor’

    Blum is not finished suing colleges over affirmative action, or at least those he believes could be flouting the law. He’s particularly interested in selective colleges that reported similar or higher rates of Black and Hispanic enrollment this year, such as Yale, Duke and Princeton—a sure sign, he believes, that they’ve been “cheating.” SFFA has a “vibrant role to play,” he added, in holding them to account.

    “So many of us are befuddled and concerned that in the first admissions cycle post-SFFA, schools that said getting rid of affirmative action would cause their minority admissions to plummet didn’t see that happen,” he said.

    When asked if recent expansions to financial aid offerings at these universities could account for the change, Blum was circumspect. He’s not opposed to economically progressive admissions initiatives; he calls Rick Kahlenberg, a liberal proponent of “class-based affirmative action,” a like-minded friend. But he said the onus was on colleges to prove that’s the source of their continued racial diversity. He also said that geographic diversity initiatives would be unconstitutional if they only applied to “Harlem and the South Side of Chicago, and not also rural Missouri and northern Maine.”

    Since the Supreme Court ruling, experts, college administrators and lawyers have debated whether the SFFA decision applies to race-conscious scholarships, internships and precollege programs as well as admissions. In the months after the ruling, attorneys general in Ohio and Missouri issued orders saying it did, and some colleges have begun to revise racial eligibility requirements on scholarships. At the same time, scholars and lawyers said implementing changes to nonadmissions programs amounted to overreach from state lawmakers and institutions alike.

    Blum doesn’t actually believe the decision itself extends to those programs. He does think they’re illegal—there just hasn’t been a successful case challenging them yet.

    “I haven’t really made myself clear on this, which is my fault, but the SFFA opinion didn’t change the law for those policies” in internships and scholarships, he said. “But those policies have always been, in my opinion, outside of the scope of our civil rights law and actionable in court.”

    He’s still looking for a case that could enshrine his view in the law—two weeks ago McDonald’s settled a lawsuit he filed against their Latino scholarship program, putting that one out of contention. But he said that for the most part, in the wake of the SFFA decision, colleges have proactively altered or ended those programs themselves.

    “Even if the ruling didn’t apply directly, it’s had this cascading effect,” he said.

    That effect, Blum said, has spread to cultural and corporate institutions as well as higher ed, contributing to a general chilling effect on what he views as unconstitutional racial preferences in American society. It’s a major turnaround, he acknowledged, from the ubiquity of DEI initiatives and racial reckoning just five years ago after the murder of George Floyd.

    While he’s relishing in the legal, political and cultural victory of his crusade, he’s not resting on his laurels.

    “There are no permanent victories in politics,” Blum said, loosely quoting Winston Churchill. “The same applies to legal advocacy. This is a forever endeavor.”

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  • 60 Minutes and Vice President Vance put Europe’s worrying speech restrictions into the spotlight

    60 Minutes and Vice President Vance put Europe’s worrying speech restrictions into the spotlight

    Free speech in Europe is under debate at the moment, and for good reason. For anyone who is concerned about the preservation of free expression on a global scale, the restrictions on speech — including online speech — in countries like the United Kingdom and Germany in recent years have been alarming. 

    I’ve long written about international threats to free expression at FIRE — including in our newsletter, the Free Speech Dispatch — to help Americans better understand the broader state of speech, and how our First Amendment fits into the global stage. The current spotlight on speech restrictions abroad should once again remind us of the value of protecting our rights here at home. 

    Policing the ‘limits’ of Germany’s speech

    A CBS 60 Minutes segment that aired over the weekend is particularly disturbing, both because of the extent to which Germany polices speech and the casual disregard the prosecutors interviewed showed toward freedom of expression. 

    One of the prosecutors, when asked how targets respond to raids — sometimes conducted pre-dawn — of their homes and electronics, said that they are surprised to discover that they have committed a crime. “You have free speech as well, ” Dr. Matthäus Fink said, “but it also has its limits.” 

    Indeed it does, online and off. Just look at how German police and prosecutors have responded to speech that has the potential to offend in recent years. 

    A 64-year-old man is facing charges not just for alleged antisemitic posts, but also for calling a German politician a “professional idiot.” An American writer living in Germany may be sentenced to years in prison for satirically using a swastika to criticize the country’s COVID policies. Berlin police literally cut off the power to a pro-Palestinian conference because of “the potential for hate speech.” Then they shut down a pro-Palestinian protest because they couldn’t be sure if Irish protesters were saying something hateful in a foreign language — better censored than sorry. And what of the arrests of people who share, even unknowingly, a fake quote, because “the accused bears the risk of spreading a false quote without checking it”? Or of the man whose home was raided at dawn for tweeting at a local politician, “You are such a penis”?

    And it’s not only Germany that targets insults of politicians. Just yesterday, news broke that a musician from the band Placebo has been charged with defamation for “contempt of the institutions” after calling Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni a “piece of shit, fascist, racist” during a 2023 music festival.

    Free speech is under threat in Europe, whether it’s online speech, blasphemy, or public protests.

    In case you thought arrests over insults were a fluke, the prosecutors featured by 60 Minutes are here to assure you: That’s the intention, not a byproduct. When interviewer Sharyn Alfonsi asked, “Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?,” all three confirmed it was, with Fink suggesting punishment for online insult could be even more severe “because in internet, it stays there.” Reposts, too, can be criminal. 

    Fink went on to defend prosecutorial action against the man who called a politician a “penis,” suggesting this and similar crass language has “nothing to do with … political discussions or a contribution to a discussion.” The notion that prosecutors should use the power of the state to shape the civility of political discourse should alarm anyone concerned about the state of expression in Germany and online.

    Vance criticizes European leaders’ speech policing

    Last week, Vice President JD Vance gave a much-discussed speech about “shared values” at the Munich Security Conference. In it, Vance took European leadership to task over censorship of conservative and religious speech, particularly in the UK. “Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” Vance said. 

    The speech prompted pushback from European officials who objected to Vance’s diagnosis. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, for example, said in response to Vance’s discussion of religious speech, “let’s be clear, we don’t have blasphemy laws in the UK.”

    That isn’t so clear at all. 

    In just the past few months alone, the UK managed to have multiple blasphemy controversies. (Not to mention the UK’s many other recent free speech woes covered in FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch, which are too numerous to discuss in full here.) 

    In November, the Advertising Standards Authority banned comedian Fern Brady from using an advertisement for her stand-up tour that depicted Brady as the Virgin Mary because it could cause “serious offence” to Christians. Then Member of Parliament Tahir Ali called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to create “measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions” — also known as a blasphemy law.

    And early this month, Greater Manchester Police arrested a man “on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence” for publicly burning a Quran. An assistant chief constable said police “made a swift arrest at the time and recognise the right people have for freedom of expression, but when this crosses into intimidation to cause harm or distress we will always look to take action when it is reported to us.” 

    Harm? Distress? These concepts are vast enough to fit the entirety of Big Ben. It is, as writer Kenan Malik puts it, “a form of blasphemy restriction but in secular garb.”

    Labour Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is also establishing a council to create an official government definition of Islamophobia. Depending on the council’s ultimate definition, and whether and how it is used by government agencies to respond to Islamophobia, it could implicate UK citizens’ ability to speak freely about important religious issues. (As FIRE has written repeatedly in the context of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism in the U.S., codification of these definitions into official policy can risk punishment or chilling of protected speech about political and religious matters.) 

    Outside of the UK, Europe’s restrictions on blasphemy are growing — and show no signs of stopping. Indeed, the Manchester man arrested for burning a Quran did so in response to the Jan. 29 assassination in Sweden of Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, known for his well-publicized and controversial public Quran burnings. Just after Momika’s killing, a Swedish court found Salwan Najem, another Iraqi refugee who burned Qurans with Momika, guilty of incitement against an ethnic group. Momika faced similar charges, which were only dropped upon his death.

    The United Nations Human Rights Council encourages these kinds of prosecutions, passing a 2023 resolution advising countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred.” Denmark did so, enacting a law criminalizing desecration of holy texts later that year. 

    Vance’s support of speech abroad is undermined by Trump admin’s early censorship efforts

    Free speech is under threat in Europe, whether it’s online speech, blasphemy, or public protests. But it simply isn’t possible to square Vance’s criticism of European censorship with the recent actions of the administration in which he serves.

    In his speech, Vance said “there is a new sheriff in town” and “under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square.” Vance also objected to “shutting down media.” 

    Has Vance checked in on what the sheriff is doing? 

    The president is directly targeting people for their speech, which frustrates the United States’ ability to credibly — and rightfully — advocate for free speech on the world stage. Take, for example, the White House’s decision last week to indefinitely bar the Associated Press from spaces including the Oval Office and Air Force One over its failure to adopt the government-preferred term “Gulf of America.” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the White House was punishing what it deems misinformation, saying that “if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” In his speech, Vance criticized the Biden administration for “threaten[ing] and bull[ying]” private companies into censoring “so-called misinformation.”

    Vance, however, is aware of the AP decision — and supports it. In response to journalist Mehdi Hasan’s post asking Vance if he’d seen the ban, he wrote yesterday afternoon: “Yes dummy. I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech, the former is not. Hope that helps!”

    That’s rationalizing censorship. 

    He’s right that banning a journalist from press events isn’t the same as imprisoning them. Obviously some punishments are worse than others, but any punishment based on a journalist’s viewpoint is a free speech violation. As my colleague Aaron Terr explained last week, explicitly barring a news outlet on the basis of viewpoint — and its failure to adopt the state’s preferred terminology — is a serious threat to free speech, one Americans should oppose regardless of who is in the Oval Office.

    Vance also said in Munich, “Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference.” He’s right. There is perhaps no one who needs to hear that message more than President Donald Trump, who praised Vance’s speech but is nevertheless suing Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer for her polling in the 2024 election — calling it “election interference.” (FIRE represents Selzer.) 

    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

    Another member of the Trump administration, Elon Musk, separately called this weekend for journalists at 60 Minutes to receive “a long prison sentence” for “deliberate deception to interfere with the last election,” referring to the journalists’ editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, not the segment on Germany’s online speech policing. Instead, hours later, he shared a clip of that segment with the caption, “Thank the Lord that America has freedom of speech!”

    Elected officials should press their colleagues around the world to stand by the values of free expression. Vance’s articulation of those rights is necessary. But being effective requires credibility. That’s why FIRE believes our commitment to nonpartisanship, and our dedication to defending the right to speak regardless of preference or popularity, is our most important value. 

    If we undermine these freedoms at home, it’s harder to advocate them abroad to an already skeptical body politic. 

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  • Walden University President Michael Betz Cashing In

    Walden University President Michael Betz Cashing In

    Walden University President Michael Betz has sold $380,000 worth of Adtalem shares. Walden is one of America’s largest robocolleges, proving online education to tens of thousands of folks in psychology, social work, nursing, education, business, and criminal justice each year.  

    Adtalem, formerly known as DeVry Education, is Walden’s parent company.  Adtalem also owns the Chamberlain College of Nursing and medical schools in the Carribean.  Walden and Adtalem have been profitable despite mediocre results for worker/consumers, a disproportionate number are women and people of color.  

    In 2024, Walden settled a case for $28M that claimed the school systematically deceived black and female students.   

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  • FIU expected to hire Florida lt. governor as president

    FIU expected to hire Florida lt. governor as president

    Another Florida Republican is reportedly destined for a college presidency. 

    Florida International University is expected to name Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez as interim president at a meeting Friday, The Miami Herald reported. Nuñez, who earned undergraduate and master’s degrees at FIU, is expected to resign from her position Friday to take the job.

    Nuñez, who has served as lieutenant governor since 2018, was previously an adjunct professor at FIU but does not appear to have prior administrative experience in higher education. As a member of Florida’s House of Representatives, Nuñez pushed for legislation to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition but has backed off on her support for that idea in recent years.

    If hired, it seems Nuñez will step into the job right away.

    One anonymous source told the newspaper that the board is seeking to act quickly on the appointment so Nuñez is in place before the Florida legislative session begins on March 4. The thinking behind the move, that source said, was that she can extract more state dollars for FIU.

    FIU is currently led by Kenneth Jessell, who was named interim in January 2022 after then-president Mark Rosenberg resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment. The interim tag was later lifted, and Jessell is on a three-year contract that is set to expire in November.

    If hired, Nuñez will be one of several Republican former lawmakers tapped to lead a Florida university in recent years. Others include Ben Sasse, a U.S. senator from Nebraska—who briefly served as president of the University of Florida but resigned abruptly last fall and has been dogged by questions about his spending—and former state lawmakers Richard Corcoran at New College of Florida, Fred Hawkins at South Florida State College and Mel Ponder at Northwest Florida State College. Ray Rodrigues, another former lawmaker, was hired as chancellor of the State University System of Florida in 2022 following a search that yielded eight applicants.

    Another Republican former lawmaker, Adam Hasner, was recently named as a finalist for the Florida Atlantic University presidency. That search was scuttled by state officials who raised concerns about “anomalies” after FAU did not hire Republican lawmaker Randy Fine last year.

    Florida International University did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

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  • Franklin & Marshall College Names Dr. Andrew Rich as 17th President

    Franklin & Marshall College Names Dr. Andrew Rich as 17th President

    FDr. Andy Richranklin & Marshall College has appointed Dr. Andrew “Andy” Rich, current dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at City College of New York (CCNY), as its 17th president following a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees. Rich will take office in July, succeeding outgoing president Dr. Barbara K. Altmann, who has led the institution since 2018.

    During his six-year tenure at the Colin Powell School, Rich demonstrated exceptional ability in institutional growth and fundraising, according to officials at the private school located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He spearheaded a 40 percent enrollment increase, bringing the student body to 4,000, while simultaneously launching innovative student success initiatives. Under his leadership, the school established eight new fellowship programs and created an Office of Student Success offering comprehensive mentoring, professional development, and career services.

    One of Rich’s notable achievements at CCNY was the formation of a Public Service Career Hub, which more than doubled student placement in public service internships and jobs. The initiative’s success earned the 2023 Exemplary Model Award from the American Association of University Administrators. Rich also led a transformative fundraising campaign that generated over $85 million in new investments for scholarships, student services, faculty positions, and academic initiatives.

    “I am excited to become an F&M Diplomat,” said Rich. “For more than 235 years, Franklin & Marshall has been a beacon for excellence in liberal arts education. We prepare students for fulfilling lives, inspiring them to achievements that enrich every sector of society.”

    Prior to his role at CCNY, Rich served as CEO and executive secretary of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation from 2011 to 2019, where he oversaw the prestigious federal program supporting future public service leaders. His connection to F&M includes oversight of two recent Truman Scholars from the college: Makaila Ranges, a 2022 graduate and Akbar Hossain, who graduated in 2013. Rich also served as president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a national think tank and leadership development organization, from 2009 to 2011.

    Eric Noll, chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, praised Rich’s appointment:

    “He will build on Barbara Altmann’s successful presidency with his sharp strategic sensibilities and deep appreciation for our excellent liberal arts college and its importance in our society’s future,” he said.

    Rich’s academic credentials include a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Richmond, where he was awarded a Truman Scholarship, and a doctorate in political science from Yale University. He has taught at both CCNY and Wake Forest University and is known for his scholarship on think tanks and foundations in American politics, having authored Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise.

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : President Elect Lowman, PhD

    Higher Education Inquirer : President Elect Lowman, PhD







    Higher Education Inquirer : President Elect Lowman, PhD – talks about the Association of Black Psychologists (Sincere Media Network)




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  • U of Idaho President Seems To Temper His Cheerleading for U of Phoenix Purchase (David Halperin)

    U of Idaho President Seems To Temper His Cheerleading for U of Phoenix Purchase (David Halperin)

    In testimony Monday before a joint committee of the Idaho
    legislature, University of Idaho president C. Scott Green seemed a
    little less committed to the deal he has relentlessly touted for more
    than a year and a half — for his school to buy, for $685 million, the
    huge for-profit University of Phoenix from private equity giant Apollo
    Global Management.

    According to Idaho Education News, Green said the next move was Apollo’s. “We’re waiting to hear what they would like to do,” Green said.

    Green’s plan has been thwarted again and again, with negative votes in the Idaho legislature, a successful court challenge by the state’s attorney general, criticism from the state treasurer, and sharp scrutiny from news outlets in the state.

    The Green school deal has assumed that operation of Phoenix would
    bring millions in new revenue to fund his university. But it ignores
    that running a for-profit college, one that has repeatedly gotten in trouble with law enforcement,
    would be a tremendous challenge: If Green pushed to end Phoenix’s
    predatory practices and improve student outcomes, it probably would
    start losing money, because predatory practices, coupled with high
    prices and low spending on education, have made up the school’s secret
    sauce. But if Green allowed the deceptive conduct to persist, the school
    could face more legal peril. And, whatever route he took, Green’s
    school might end up assuming massive liability for student loan debt the
    government has cancelled based on past abuses at Phoenix.

    At its peak, Phoenix was the largest for-profit college in the
    country and got upwards of $2 billion a year in federal student aid,
    while boasting dismal graduation rates and high levels of loan defaults.

    Last summer, the University of Idaho and Apollo agreed to a one-year extension of their purchase deal. That arrangement expires June 10. Meanwhile Apollo has the right to talk with other potential buyers.

    Apollo already has sent Idaho $5 million to cover the school’s
    high-priced legal and consulting fees in connection with the deal, and
    it has agreed to pay up to $20 million to Idaho if the deal falls
    through.

    Green told the legislature that $20 million would cover his school’s
    costs with perhaps $2 to $3 to spare. “I think we’re well-protected,” he
    boasted.

    Kind of. Green, whose background is in corporate management and
    finance, could potentially walk away without losing money for the
    school. But he has tied up state university, executive, legislative, and
    judicial resources for many hundreds of hours jousting over an effort
    that would keep alive a predatory school that has buried thousands of
    graduates in debt they can’t afford to repay, while wasting billions in
    federal taxpayer dollars, when that time could have been focused on the
    real challenges of state higher education.

    If Idaho can’t work out a deal, Apollo may run out of options to dump
    the school, and this taxpayer-funded multi-billion dollar disgrace may
    at last be put down.

    [Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.] 

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