Tag: Safe

  • Removing the rent guarantor barrier to safe and stable accommodation

    Removing the rent guarantor barrier to safe and stable accommodation

    Universities talk about widening participation – but how many ensure every student has a home to go to, so they really can participate?

    Rent guarantor requirements are a routine part of student housing, yet they exclude those without family support. It’s time for the sector to take responsibility for removing this barrier.

    Most students will need a rent guarantor to secure university halls or private housing.

    Imagine how much harder that is if you can’t turn to family members for that support – often the case for young people that have experience of the care system or are estranged from their parents.

    Young people in this position can face sofa surfing, dangerous housing situations and dropping out of university. According to NUS research in 2024, 14 per cent of low-income students are reconsidering university due to accommodation costs – with guarantor requirements cited as a major barrier.

    Lack of information is a compounding issue. Students without easy access to a guarantor might not even know they need one until the moment they go to sign a new contract with peers – often with whom they have not shared their status and only known for a matter of weeks.

    Getting things clear

    At the Unite Foundation, we encourage all universities to include clear information about rent guarantors on their housing webpages and on any other pages specifically for students like care leavers, estranged, or international students. It’s vital that any student without UK family to rely on knows what a rent guarantor is before having to suddenly find one or miss out on a home at university.

    In Summer 2025, we commissioned a student-led audit of over 180 university websites. 60% included clear information about rent guarantors. This is positive progress, up from 45% in 2024 and 36% in 2022 when we started this work. But that’s still 40% of university websites that don’t provide clear information about this key element of the university accommodation journey.

    Impact of Renters Rights Act

    When the Renters Rights Act comes into force in 2026, it will shift the challenge faced by students unable to secure a guarantor.

    Despite lobbying by NUS for the abolition of guarantor requirements entirely, the Act will not stop landlords from requiring a guarantor, but it will limit upfront rent payments to a maximum of one month’s rent.

    Whilst a positive step for the majority of students, the unintended consequence may be to prevent students who are unable to source a guarantor from making a large advance rent payment instead. Paying large advances causes its own set of issues for students, but is often seen as the lesser of two evils compared to homelessness.

    It’s anticipated that the legislation may stimulate an increased market for commercial guarantor providers. Commercial providers – companies which act as guarantor for a fee – can be a valuable service, but it is a varied market that sits outside Financial Conduct Authority regulation.

    Emerging fees can be between 4 and 15 per cent of annual rent if paying upfront, and up to 20 per cent if paying monthly. Disadvantaged students paying an unregulated premium to access a routine tenancy would be a perverse outcome of measures intended to strengthen tenant rights.

    What are the alternatives?

    The Unite Foundation has launched our Blueprint for a #HomeAtUniversity – a guide to support universities in ensuring a safe and stable home for care experienced and estranged students. We set out six areas through which universities and PBSA providers can use housing as a widening participation tool. And removing the rent guarantor barrier is one of these.

    We know that the context of each university is different, and there are different ways to approach removing the rent guarantor barrier.

    Universities like Imperial and Cardiff offer their own guarantor schemes. Some university halls don’t require a guarantor at all. Other universities cover the cost of a commercial guarantor provider, through a negotiated partnership between provider and university.

    And it’s great to see Unite Students, our founder and long-term champion, pilot an approach enabling their university partners to step into the role of guarantor for care-experienced and estranged students, at zero cost or risk.

    Availability of safe, affordable accommodation is at the heart of many current social policy debates and like wise is fundamental to the sustainability and accessibility of higher education.

    There are significant structural issues at a national level in ensuring a home at university for all students – including lack of coordination between universities and local authorities and the level of student maintenance loan. At the Unite Foundation, we do not believe that practice in universities and PBSA providers should replace systemic change. But we also believe that whilst we wait for that change, there is more impact that accommodation providers at university can make.

    At the Unite Foundation we are here to help with case studies and peer support webinars sharing what is happening on the ground in the sector. If you deliver an intervention evidenced to support a safe and stable home at university for care experienced and estranged students, or if you want to learn more about what your university could be doing, please get in touch.

    A safe and stable #HomeAtUniversity isn’t a luxury — it’s a prerequisite for participation, success, and equity in higher education.

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  • 7 Tips to Keep You Safe From Online Doxing

    7 Tips to Keep You Safe From Online Doxing

    Over the past 10 days, dozens of faculty and staff members have had their personal contact information, photos and sometimes addresses broadcast online by anonymous right-wing social media accounts seeking to punish them for comments they allegedly made about the death of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. This public campaign of online harassment and intimidation, known as doxing, is “off the charts” right now, said Heather Steffen, an adjunct professor of humanities at Georgetown University.

    Steffen is also the director of Faculty First Responders, a group created by the American Association of University Professors in 2020 to track and help faculty members targeted by right-wing media. Doxing has been on the rise since protests over the Israel-Hamas war fractured campuses in 2023, but educators are increasingly coming under attack in “ideologically motivated efforts” to silence dissent, according to an August report from the National Association of Attorneys General. “This shift signals the evolution of doxxing from isolated conduct to a more coordinated form of digital persecution,” the report said.

    While the attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, higher ed employees can take steps to minimize the risk of doxing, as well as the damage incurred if it does happen.

    1. Keep your personal and work accounts separate.

    Remove employers’ names from all of your personal social media accounts—if it’s in your bio, take it out, Steffen advised. “You can state in your bio on social media that your views do not represent your employer, and you don’t need to name the employer in order to do that,” she said.

    In many cases, work may demand that you list some contact information publicly, but don’t use that information for personal business, said Rob Shavell, CEO and co-founder of DeleteMe, a service that will find and try to wipe members’ personal information from the web. “The data brokers are getting very good at correlating [work and personal] data and putting them into one dossier,” he said. These days, when DeleteMe’s privacy advisers scan the web for members’ information, they return an average of 750 pieces of personally identifying information per person, up from 225 pieces four years ago.

    Also, be aware of what devices, accounts and Wi-Fi networks you’re using, and be sure not to use work-provided equipment or resources for anything other than work, Steffen added.

    2. Scrub your information from data-broker websites.

    Data brokers collect and sell personal information. Companies like DeleteMe and Incogni will remove your personal information from data-broker websites for a fee; DeleteMe charges $129 per member annually. But for anyone who wants to take a do-it-yourself approach, DeleteMe has published free opt-out guides that walk readers through removing their information from the sites, including Experian, TransUnion and CoreLogic. Steffen also suggests following the steps outlined in the Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List, a Github project that explains how to scrub your information from data brokers.

    3. Use an email mask or alias when possible.

    “Masked emails or phone numbers or even credit cards allow you to sign up for things or make calls or buy things without revealing to every counterparty your real personal information,” Shavell said. DeleteMe offers masking, as do companies like Apple and NordPass. These services create a faux address that will then forward emails to your real account. Google also offers free alias phone numbers through Google Voice that will forward calls to your personal phone. In addition to better security, masking also decreases spam and phishing risks.

    4. Breathe before you post (and remember the risk of screenshots).

    Even if you’re posting to a private account—say, a “close friends” story on your personal Instagram—anything you put online can still be screenshotted and shared widely, Steffen warned. “Anytime you’re posting or reposting something, a good tool can be to pause and think: Would I be comfortable with my employer, my students and my community knowing that I hold this view, and would I be comfortable with them seeing it expressed in this way?” she said.

    5. Protect your accounts with complex passwords and two-factor authentication.

    It’s boring, but it’s important, said Viktorya Vilk, director for digital safety and free expression at the nonprofit PEN America, which offers digital safety training to colleges and universities and has created a “what to do” resource for people who have been doxed. “If someone hacks into your Facebook or your email, it’s so hard to get that account back. And it’s also incredibly intrusive and unsettling,” she said. “Having a long, secure password and two-factor authentication makes it almost impossible for someone to be able to hack into your account.”

    6. In the event you are doxed: Center yourself, and then secure your physical safety.

    “People often have a fight, flight or freeze response. It can be incredibly traumatizing and so very difficult to take steps or use your judgment about what to do when you’re being doxed,” Vilk said. “And so, counterintuitively, the very first thing to do is to take a minute and try to center yourself. For some people that’s taking some deep breaths. For other people, it’s just, like, moving around, wiggling around.”

    After that, make sure you’re physically safe, she advised. If your address has been shared, consider staying at a hotel or with friends or family until the storm passes. Consider contacting law enforcement to report the threats, file a police report and let them know you’re at increased risk for swatting—a harassment tactic that involves making a false emergency call in order to dispatch law enforcement to a specific location.

    7. Once you are physically safe, document the harassment and lock down your accounts.

    Set your social accounts to private mode if they’re not already, and take any steps to limit visibility of your posts, Vilk said. “That’s very easy to switch back after the storm dies down,” she added. Be careful communicating with unfamiliar accounts, emails or phone numbers, and document any threats or harassment you receive. Don’t download attachments or click on links from unknown senders, and do a quick search online to find out more about them before responding.

    “Take screenshots when you receive them and then report them to the platform where they’re happening. That can be really stressful, so we really recommend that people recruit friends or family or trusted colleagues to help them do that so that they’re not doing it alone,” Vilk said.

    Your cellphone number can also be stolen. “If it starts to circulate online, people will call your cellphone company and pretend to be you and try to reroute traffic,” she said. Protect your number by calling the company and placing a PIN on your account.

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  • HE transformation will only succeed when its people feel safe, supported and connected

    HE transformation will only succeed when its people feel safe, supported and connected

    In UK higher education, compassion is often treated as an optional extra, something to be considered once the metrics are met, the audits are done, and the strategies are signed off. This framing misses the point.

    Compassion is not a soft skill or a luxury. It is not something we add in once the “real work” is done. It is a strategic ethic and a way of designing systems, relationships, and institutions that enable people to thrive. It is about recognising suffering and taking meaningful action to alleviate it. It is about creating conditions in which students, colleagues, and leaders can do their best work, sustainably.

    In higher education, compassion is often misunderstood, mistaken for sentimentality or seen as incompatible with the rigour and excellence that universities are expected to uphold. This is a false dichotomy. Compassion is not the opposite of academic excellence; it is what makes it possible.

    When compassion is embedded into the culture and infrastructure of a university, it doesn’t lower standards, it sustains them. It doesn’t avoid challenges; it enables people to meet challenges without burning out. And it doesn’t replace accountability, it reframes it, through a lens of relational responsibility and shared purpose.

    The recent Universities UK report, Transformation and efficiency: towards a new era of collaboration, arrives at a moment of reckoning. The pressures facing the sector, whether financial, regulatory, or reputational, are not new, yet they have intensified. The report offers a clear and necessary diagnosis and outlines seven opportunities for transformation, including developing collaborative structures, sharing services and infrastructure, shared procurement, digital transformation, benchmarking efficiency and strengthening leadership and governance.

    These are important and they are also technical – but technical change, while necessary, is not sufficient. What’s missing is the cultural infrastructure that helps these changes take hold and endure. Without it, transformation risks becoming transactional and something done to people, rather than with them. This is where compassion becomes essential and as the connective tissue that binds strategy to sustainability as opposed to being an add-on. Compassion enables us to ask different questions: “What can we change?” AND “How will this change be experienced?” or “How do we become more efficient?” AND “How do we remain human while doing so?”

    Addressing burnout

    At this time of year, the signs are everywhere: exhaustion, disillusionment, a creeping sense that the work is never done, and the values that brought us into the sector are being eroded by the systems we now work within.

    Burnout is not a personal failing; it is a systemic signal. As Maslach and Leiter remind us in The truth about burnout, burnout arises when people face too much work, too little control, and a misalignment of values. These are organisational design problems as opposed to individual resilience problems. If we want transformation, we must prioritise the conditions in which people are expected to transform. Compassion, understood as a framework for action, offers a way to do this. It invites us to design systems that are effective, humane and investing in people’s capacity to give, as opposed to just demanding more.

    Humility is also something required of us at this moment, acknowledging that we are all stepping into the unknown; planned change in a complex system is, at best, hopeful fiction. We cannot predict exactly what will emerge and we can choose how we show up in the process.

    Compassion gives us permission to not have all the answers and it allows us to hold space for uncertainty, and to move forward anyway, together. Transformation is a collective endeavour and one that will only succeed if we create conditions in which people feel safe enough, supported enough, and connected enough to participate.

    Transformation needs cultural infrastructure

    Transformation is a human and technical exercise. It emerges or recedes in the spaces between people: how they experience change, how they relate to one another, and how they make sense of their work. Without attention to culture, even the most well-designed reforms risk faltering.

    Compassion offers a way to build the cultural infrastructure that transformation requires, inviting different, deeper questions, such as how change will affect relationships, how institutions can recognise and respond to emotional experience, what inclusive design looks like in different contexts, and where the spaces are that enable people to reflect, connect, and recover. These questions are central to whether transformation efforts succeed or stall; culture is the medium through which change happens.

    The Covid-19 pandemic gave us a glimpse of what compassionate institutions can look like. Faced with crisis, many universities responded with agility and care; extending deadlines, adapting policies, and prioritising inclusion. These were acts of strategy, not charity. They enabled continuity, protected equity, and demonstrated the sector’s capacity for humane innovation.

    They also revealed that compassion, when practised in systems not designed to support it, can come at a cost that is less often acknowledged. The compassion extended to others was not always matched by compassion for self. Many colleagues gave more than they had to give, and when the crisis faded, the systems around them reverted to old norms including rigid timelines, performance metrics and competitive cultures. The emotional weight of compassion is not inevitable; it becomes heavy when systems are misaligned, when care is expected and not enabled. In the right conditions, compassion is a way of working that restores us as opposed to a burden.

    This reveals a deeper truth: our systems were never designed to sustain compassion. If we want to embed it beyond moments of crisis, we must treat it as a core institutional value and to recognise that compassion includes ourselves.

    Compassion in practice

    Here are five shifts that can embed compassion into the fabric of transformation.

    1. Reframe wellbeing as strategic infrastructure

    Wellbeing is not a side project. It is foundational to performance, retention, and innovation. Institutions could move from monitoring wellbeing to designing it through embedding it in curricula, policies, workload models, and leadership practices.Boundaries can be enacted, encouraged, and celebrated.

    2. Recognise and resource emotional experience

    The work of care, whether in teaching, research, service, or leadership, is often invisible and undervalued. It can become labour and lead to empathic distress, when systems make it unsustainable. When time, space, and support are present, compassion is a source of meaning and connection. We can name it, measure it, and reward it, factoring it into workload models, promotion criteria, and professional development.

    3. Design for relational accountability

    Compassionate systems are relational systems. Transformation must ask: how will this affect relationships? What power dynamics are at play? Whether it’s a new assessment policy or a shared service model, the relational impact matters.

    4. Create space for reflection and connection

    Efficiency is not about doing more with less, it’s about doing the right things well. Institutions must create time and space for colleagues and students to reflect, connect, and recover. This is infrastructure, not an indulgence.

    5. Build on what already works

    Compassion is not new. Across the sector, there are already informal networks, communities of practice, and relational leadership approaches enacted that embody compassionate principles. The task is to amplify, connect, and learn from them.

    The Universities UK report rightly identifies collaboration as a route to transformation. Collaboration is a relational practice as well as a structural arrangement that requires trust, shared purpose, and the ability to navigate differences. These capabilities grow through connection and trust and cannot be mandated; they are human ones, developed through compassion and sustained by culture.

    Compassion can also help us rethink our perception of resistance. Too often, “resistance to change” is dismissed as inertia or protectionism when it is often a signal of fear, of loss, of values under threat. Compassionate leadership invites active listening to this signal and responsiveness with transparency, inclusion, and care.

    Compassion is a whole-university approach as opposed to be the responsibility of student services or human resources and notably visible in:

    • Teaching: through learning environments that prioritise dialogue, inclusion, and mutual respect.
    • Support services: by moving from transactional help to meaningful connection.
    • Leadership: by sharing power, modelling visibility, and practising relational accountability.
    • Policy: by asking, always, how decisions will affect relationships and wellbeing.

    The UUK report offers a timely and necessary roadmap for sector-wide transformation. To realise these ambitions, we will need to prioritise our focus on culture and connection alongside systems and structures; compassion is a strategic imperative.

    This is an invitation to those leading transformation, to see compassion as a driver of efficiency; to policymakers, to recognise that sustainable change requires care as well as compliance; and to all of us in the sector, to choose compassion for ourselves and others as a way of being and not just as a crisis response.

    The future of higher education depends on what we do and critically how we do it and, on the cultures, we choose to develop. If we create the conditions for compassion to thrive in higher education, it will no longer feel like a burden, it will become a source of meaning, connection, and renewal. This is how transformation becomes possible and sustainable.

    All views expressed in this blog are entirely those of the authors and do not represent the views or positions of any affiliated organisations or institutions.

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  • U.S. campuses are no longer safe spaces

    U.S. campuses are no longer safe spaces

    Leslie Ortega is pursuing her second bachelor’s degree in botany at a university in California. She earned her first degree in business administration back in December 2016. That was before U.S. President Donald Trump took office. The experience was much different then. 

    “Obama was president when I was in college from 2012-2016 and I remember how happy everyone was around me,” Ortega said. “There was an oblivious feel to it where we felt safe. Now being in school I notice that there is definitely more fear in classrooms.”

    With Trump in office for a second term, Ortega said she sees a major shift. It is no longer easy to be blind to the realities of how so many lives are changing. 

    “Existing in a world where your neighbor or your favorite food vendor can be snatched off the street on the basis of their skin color and occupation is impossible to hide from,” she said. “This has always been happening even during Obama but we had rose colored glasses when he was in office.”

    As someone who recently graduated two months ago with a bachelor of arts focused in ethnic studies, I have to agree with Ortega. I cannot ignore the current political state of the country, especially as students and universities remain potential targets of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. 

    An attack on diverse perspectives

    On top of that, conservatives are actively taking actions that threaten diversity, equity and Inclusion measures and certain subjects like critical race theory. My major, rooted in critical race theory, is deemed controversial by some because it teaches students to critically analyze information and question authority in a sense. Ethnic Studies courses are typically taught to engage people to uncover history from non-white perspectives, unveiling a legacy of imperialism and racism. 

    Actions that make it difficult to teach or learn these concepts are being enacted by people in power who seem to lack consideration for how marginalized communities will be affected. 

    At the California university I attended, two emails from the administration addressed the topic of immigration this past semester. The first was a letter from the interim president back in February 2025 which outlined guidance for university employees and students on how to interact with ICE officers if they ever showed up on campus. 

    It stated that since a large portion of the campus is open to the general public, it is therefore open to federal officers.

    However, ICE agents could not enter areas not open to the public such as residence halls, confidential meeting rooms, employee offices or classrooms while the university was in session. This email also outlined resources students and staff could turn to such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and a new center for “Dreamers” – undocumented people who had been brought into the United States as children. It also explained how to create an immigration preparedness plan. 

    A second email was sent out two months later, with quick guide cards and a link to an immigration resources page on the university website.

    Will campus be an unsafe haven?

    It is currently summer. How the university will actually respond if ICE were to show up on campus is really up in the air. It is one thing to voice concern and another to actually intervene in the face of injustice to protect targeted individuals. 

    While I will not return to campus this fall, I have no doubt that it will be students and staff of color who will ultimately serve as the first line of defense. Given how the university has responded in the past to student activist efforts, I would not be surprised if the campus administration did little should ICE arrive. 

    Across the country, university students have watched the detainment of student activists by ICE agents. Merely advocating against Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, has been deemed a crime worthy of detention and deportation.

    These detainees included Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk from Tufts University. Khalil spent more than three months in detention before his release on 20 June. 

    The arrests of students simply for speaking out angers students like Ortega. 

    “It is infuriating to hear about student’s visas being revoked for their stance on supporting Palestine during a presidency that criminalizes opposition to the status quo,” Ortega said. “[This is] referring to anyone that critiques American ideology, the military complex or simply the American flag.”

    Arrests in the City of Angels

    Los Angeles has seen a surge of undocumented immigrants being arrested. According to the Los Angeles Times, nearly 2,800 people have been picked up by masked ICE agents on the streets, at job sites, Home Depot parking lots and even outside immigration court hearings since 6 June 2025.

    Across the country these numbers could rise. In July, the U.S. Congress passed a national budget called the “Big Beautiful Bill” which will greatly increase the number of ICE agents and detention centers. 

    I view this bill as a way to cement discrimination against immigrants into the U.S. legal framework. We are already seeing the rapid construction and opening of detention centers such as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida – a tent city that can hold up to 3,000 people 

    According to public and internal data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, as collected by NBC News, more than 56,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers as of 1 Aug. 2025.

    All this has created a state of fear. I spoke to someone who lives in California and currently holds a student visa holder. I’m not identifying the person because of fear that doing so will make them a target. The student recently earned a master’s degree in education and is currently in the admission process to a teaching credential program. 

    “There’s a culture here [in the U.S.] that when they hear that you don’t have a social security number, they stop helping you as if you were a pariah,” the person said. “I couldn’t work on campus, I lost a lot of opportunities because I didn’t have a social security number. Sometimes I could get stipends or fellowships but it was because of people who understand immigrants.”

    Silencing of student activism

    They now have a work visa and hope to get permanent residency, but given all the threats the current presidential administration has made to student visa holders, they wonder about their prospects. 

    “The silencing of the student activists is sending a message to everyone that if you dissent, if you protest, if you do not agree with what’s going on right now, then there will be consequences,” they said. 

    They said they used to be politically active, but no longer feel safe to do so here, or at least to the same degree. 

    “There’s an executive order that says that the first thing they’re going to look at about you is your social media, so you cannot even post about what you think, what you defend,” they said. “You cannot talk about the ongoing genocide anymore, because then, all the money that you have invested in changing your migratory status will be thrown to the trash. You give all your money, that’s dispossession without violence, you make this enormous sacrifice and then you don’t want to lose it, right, so you are forced, you are silenced.”

    I am choosing to censor the person’s name for the sake of their own safety and wellbeing, I can’t help but wonder if doing so represents yet another way immigrants are silenced. 

    Fighting desensitization

    All of this is to say that being a person of color and a student during this presidential administration has been exceptionally difficult. That’s particularly true for someone like Ortega, who attends school in a predominantly White area.

    “It is emotionally and mentally draining to be focusing on your safety existing on a campus that doesn’t support you if you choose to wear a keffiyeh or a patch in opposition of a felon as a president,” Ortega said. 

    I recognize that as a person of color, I might not have the same advantages as someone who is White. As an American citizen though, I have some sense of protection in speaking up. But it is my Mexican and Guatemalan heritage that fuels my fight. 

    My existence is a result of immigration; I would not be where I am today if it were not for my family members who chose to come to the United States.

    While it can be easy to become desensitized, especially with a new devastating headline every day, I urge others to hold onto some sense of hope by leaning into community resistance. Only by letting go of the belief that “this doesn’t personally affect me, so I don’t care” can we truly begin to dismantle systems of power.

    Only seven months have passed since Trump returned to the presidential office. As he continues to carry out his seemingly racist agenda that targets anyone who is low-income, disabled, queer or non-White, university campuses that are supposed to be havens for learning and connecting with new ideas, are now filled with fear and suspense.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why are increasing numbers of university students in the United States afraid to speak out?

    2. Why do you think the author feels she doesn’t have the same protections as a U.S. citizen as someone who is White?

    3. Do you think that people who want to study in another country should be able to do so? 

     

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  • Waymo Offers Teen Accounts. Is it Safe?

    Waymo Offers Teen Accounts. Is it Safe?

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  • Are universities too safe in their vice-chancellor recruitment?

    Are universities too safe in their vice-chancellor recruitment?

    Following publication of our joint GS/HEPI reporting into vice-chancellor recruitment and a vibrant LinkedIn debate,  the complex dynamics shaping leadership in the sector have been brought to light. The conversation reveals a sector at a crossroads, wrestling with tradition and transformation.

    Insider vs. Outsider: Who Should Lead?

    Should vice-chancellors come from within academia or be recruited from other sectors? Out-of-sector candidates can bring a fresh perspective on leading change and challenging the status quo. Inside sector candidates offer deep cultural understanding, academic credibility, and governance experience. Many argue for a hybrid model and leaders who can bridge both worlds.

    The CEO-ification of the VC Role

    Today’s vice-chancellors are expected to be more than academic figureheads. They must be visionary strategists, financially astute operators, and empathetic people leaders. But, much more is needed to nurture leadership development pipelines with, perhaps, a reappraisal required of the very many leadership development programmes that exist already.

    Diversity and Inclusion: Still a Distant Goal

    Leadership in higher education remains homogenous. There remains a pressing need to broaden the pool, not just in terms of gender and ethnicity, but also professional and disciplinary backgrounds. Scepticism, especially in research-intensive institutions, about whether university leaders without academic credibility should lead universities persists. Valuing potential over pedigree could unlock untapped leadership talent.

    Culture, Metrics, and Mission

    Effective leadership in universities demands cultural intelligence and emotional literacy. Metrics like rankings and KPIs, while useful, often fail to capture the true impact of leadership. A more holistic, context-specific approach is needed; one that honours the civic and educational purpose of universities.

    Collective Leadership and Cross-Sector Learning

    Leadership should not and cannot rest on one individual. Distributed models featuring diverse senior teams and strategic co-leads are gaining traction. Embracing mobility between academia and industry can enrich leadership with fresh insights and mutual respect.

    Join the Conversation: Upcoming Webinar

    These themes and more will be explored in our upcoming webinar. Whether you’re an academic, policymaker, or sector professional, this is your chance to engage with thought leaders and shape the future of higher education leadership.

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  • No Safe State: Former DEI Employee Says to Look for the Red Flags

    No Safe State: Former DEI Employee Says to Look for the Red Flags

    Dr. Nicole DelMastro-Jeffery, former executive director for the DEI and Belonging office and Title IX coordinator at Richland Community College.On January 21, one day after his inauguration, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order he called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” instructing federal agencies to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices and programs.

    The very next day, Dr. Nicole DelMastro-Jeffery, executive director for the DEI and Belonging office and Title IX coordinator at Richland Community College in Decatur, Illinois, was let go from her non-federal position.

    In a sense, DelMastro-Jeffery’s story is familiar. State legislatures across the country have introduced and passed laws curbing DEI at educational institutions, even before Trump issued his order. Since then, a growing number of DEI offices have either shuttered or reorganized, and DEI-focused employees have been dismissed or had their roles changed.

    But Illinois has no anti-DEI laws established, despite some competing bills introduced on the House and Senate floor. On February 7, State Sen. Andrew S. Chesney introduced SB2288, calling for the abolishment of DEI programs in departments of the state government. Conversely, on January 29, State Rep. Sonya M. Harper filed HR0077, a bill to affirm DEI programs in local, state, federal, educational and other institutions.

    According to DelMastro-Jeffery, in early 2024 when the Biden-Harris administration issued a new Dear Colleague letter which expanded Title IX for the further protection of women and transgender individuals, Richland moved toward implementing those changes. However, by December 2024, she said that Richland “quickly rolled back to the 2020 legislation.”

    “Ultimately,” she said, “Going back to 2020 legislative measures decreased protections, not only for transgender community members but women as well.”

    For DelMastro-Jeffery, the institutional waffling between Title IX regulations was a red flag, one that should be heeded by other DEI professionals and institutions working to preserve their DEI programs.

    “We have rarely considered the legal ramifications of separate laws and how their implementation and adjustments may in fact serve as awareness flags of next moves, like that of chess match players,” she said. “It is my belief that this federal injunction or swift rollback of expanded 2024 Title IX protections should have served as an immediate wakeup call to our DEI community.”

    DelMastro-Jeffery arrived at Richland fresh off an internship with the Biden-Harris administration. She said she was thrilled at the chance to apply all she had learned to a rural college environment. Her dismissal, she said, “felt like a triple backlash to both my former public service work, status as a woman of color in higher education, and DEI executive leader.”

    Paulette Granberry Russell, CEO and president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), said the attacks on DEI, including Trump’s order, have continued to demonize it, stripping all meaning from the acronym. She intentionally uses the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” instead of DEI.

    Paulette Granberry Russell, CEO and president of NADOHE.Paulette Granberry Russell, CEO and president of NADOHE.Granberry Russell said she is “disappointed by the failure of institutions that over-complied to the threats to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, rather than taking a stand to say these efforts are not divisive.”

    The misinformation disseminated through anti-DEI laws and orders have produced significant misunderstanding in the public sphere, “that somehow efforts associated with advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is unlawful. That is not the case,” said Granberry Russell.

    “We’re seeing what I often refer to as a ‘chilling effect,’ where institutions are preemptively scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts due to political pressure or fear of litigation,” said Granberry Russell.

    NADOHE is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed by Democracy Forward, a national legal organization of litigators, policy makers, regulators and public educators working to advance democracy. The suit was filed against the Trump Administration in early February calling Trump’s attack on DEI unconstitutional.

    Granberry Russell acknowledged that, since the legislation and executive order, many DEI officers and employees have lost their roles. But she does not know how many, as there is no national database tracking these changes.

    DelMastro-Jeffery said “this experience has illuminated, for me, the intersection between gender, leadership values, and the importance of pressing on.”

    She continued, “Amid the growing dismissal of DEI programming, now diluted to words on a website, we would be negligent to forget the value of diversity and how the world, including systems of education, thrives on it.”

    Richland leadership did not respond to requests for comment. Their website still hosts a page for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Accessibility, which affirms these as a “core institutional value.”

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  • “Safe rooms” set up for Jewish students at Sydney unis

    “Safe rooms” set up for Jewish students at Sydney unis

    Josh Burns MP led the parliamentary inquiry into campus anti-Semitism. Picture: Martin Ollman



    By: Erin Morley and NCA Newswire

    in On Campus, Top Stories


    February 17, 2025

    A high-security “safe room” has been set up for Jewish ­students at a top Sydney university after some reported feeling at risk due to anti-Semitism on campus, prompting Jewish leaders to say it should “shock us all” when young people “feel they need a sanctuary to escape” from hate.

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  • The Key Aspects to Keeping Children Safe Online

    The Key Aspects to Keeping Children Safe Online

    In today’s digital age, ensuring student safety online is a top priority for both parents and schools. Technology has opened new doors for enhancing student learning and engagement, but it also requires thoughtful strategies to ensure students remain safe.

    As schools embrace these technological advancements, both parents and administrators must work together to implement safety measures and address the evolving responsibilities that come with digital education. Experts from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) share their insights on how to navigate these opportunities effectively while keeping students safe.

    Evolving safety protocols

    Cathy Leavitt, an instructional technologist and AECT member, explains that schools have increasingly adopted tools to safeguard students on digital platforms. “There are great apps and software that record what children are doing on devices,” Leavitt notes, emphasizing the importance of tools that monitor and restrict access to harmful content. However, technology alone isn’t enough. Leavitt stresses that digital literacy is vital to fostering a safe online environment, teaching students how to navigate the digital world responsibly.

    The importance of digital literacy

    Bruce DuBoff, Ph.D., past president of the NJ Association of School Librarians and nominated Ethics Officer for AECT, identifies a gap between today’s digital skills and the safety practices needed in schools. “We live in a world rocked by Future Shock,” DuBoff says, which describes the rapid technological advancements that have outpaced current educational approaches. He advocates for early education in ethical online behavior, with librarians playing a pivotal role in integrating technologies like podcasting, game design, and web development, which not only enhance learning but also ensure safe online engagement.

    Dr. DuBoff argues that the biggest threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence (AI) but the social media algorithms that create information silos, limiting students’ exposure to diverse viewpoints. By educating students on the risks of these algorithms and promoting digital literacy programs like Common Sense Education’s Digital Citizenship curriculum, schools can better equip students to navigate the online world safely.

    The role of parents

    Parental involvement is essential in maintaining online safety. Leavitt advocates for parents to monitor their children’s digital activities, even if it might feel like an invasion of privacy. She calls for a “unified approach” between schools and parents, with regular communication to ensure parents understand the risks their children face online. Schools play a crucial role by educating parents as much as students and providing ongoing resources to reinforce safe practices at home.

    Cybersecurity and administrative challenges

    As schools adopt more digital learning platforms, cybersecurity threats such as data breaches and cyberattacks have escalated. Leavitt points out that strong security measures such as two-factor authentication and regular updates are critical to safeguarding student data. However, these measures introduce additional challenges for school administrators, who must balance tight budgets and manage the growing costs of technology maintenance and staff training. Schools need to allocate resources strategically, ensuring that cybersecurity is prioritized without unnecessary overspending.

    Moving forward

    Keeping students safe in the digital world increasingly requires collaboration and a unified approach between parents, teachers, and administrators at schools. Open communication between all three groups from a common framework of understanding provided in comprehensive digital literacy programs combined with strong cybersecurity measures are essential to creating safer online environments for our loved ones while managing the administrative challenges that come with these advancements.

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