Tag: Scholars

  • Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Fifteen researchers across a range disciplines from the biomedical sciences and STEM to education and political science share their experiences of losing research grants and what impact the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding will have on science, public health and education in Inside Higher Ed today.

    The Trump administration told researchers Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Nicholas Metheny and Sarah Peitzmeier that trainings connected to their National Institutes of Health grant focused on the prevention of intimate partner violence against pregnant and perinatal women were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

    “We could not disagree more,” Fielding-Miller, Metheny and Peitzmeier write. “Anyone who has cared for a child or for the person who gave birth to them knows that preventing maternal and infant death and abuse should be a nonpartisan issue. The current administration is intent on making even this issue into ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When it comes to public health, there is no such thing.”

    Meanwhile, Judith Scott-Clayton writes that the decision to cancel a Department of Education grant funding a first-of-its-kind randomized evaluation of the Federal Work-Study program—four and a half years into a six-year project—will leave policymakers “flying blind.”

    “Since 1964, the FWS program has disbursed more than $95 billion in awards,” Scott-Clayton wrote. “In comparison, our grant was less than three-thousandths of 1 percent of that amount, and the amount remaining to finish our work and share our findings with the public was just a fraction of that.”

    Read all of the scholars’ stories here.

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  • Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Scholars’ Stories of Losing Federal Funding

    Sixteen researchers across a range disciplines from the biomedical sciences and STEM to education and political science share their experiences of losing research grants and what impact the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding will have on science, public health and education in Inside Higher Ed today.

    The Trump administration told researchers Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Nicholas Metheny, Abigail Hatcher and Sarah Peitzmeier that trainings connected to their National Institutes of Health grant focused on the prevention of intimate partner violence against pregnant and perinatal women were “antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

    “We could not disagree more,” Fielding-Miller, Metheny, Hatcher and Peitzmeier write. “Anyone who has cared for a child or for the person who gave birth to them knows that preventing maternal and infant death and abuse should be a nonpartisan issue. The current administration is intent on making even this issue into ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When it comes to public health, there is no such thing.”

    Meanwhile, Judith Scott-Clayton writes that the decision to cancel a Department of Education grant funding a first-of-its-kind randomized evaluation of the Federal Work-Study program—four and a half years into a six-year project—will leave policymakers “flying blind.”

    “Since 1964, the FWS program has disbursed more than $95 billion in awards,” Scott-Clayton wrote. “In comparison, our grant was less than three-thousandths of 1 percent of that amount, and the amount remaining to finish our work and share our findings with the public was just a fraction of that.”

    Read all of the scholars’ stories here.

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  • Recruiting U.S. Scholars Can Protect “Threatened Research”

    Recruiting U.S. Scholars Can Protect “Threatened Research”

    Universities should look to recruit researchers fleeing the U.S. amid dramatic funding cuts by the Trump administration because it could help protect vital scientific expertise from being lost, according to the rector of a leading Belgian university.

    Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has announced a host of new postdoctoral positions for international academics, stating that the institution “particularly welcomes excellent researchers currently working in the U.S. which see their line of research threatened.”

    VUB and its sister university Université Libre de Bruxelles are offering a total of 36 grants to researchers with a maximum of eight years of postdoctoral experience, funded by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The positions are not exclusively designed for U.S.-based researchers, VUB rector Jan Danckaert stressed, but are “open to all incoming researchers, whatever their nationality or their working place at the moment outside of Belgium.”

    VUB chose to advertise the positions to scholars in the U.S., Danckaert explained, in the wake of drastic funding cuts by the Trump administration, with research fields under particular threat including climate, public health and any areas considered to be related to diversity.

    “We also hear from colleagues in the United States that they are applying a kind of self-censorship in order to stay under the radar,” he said. “We believe that freedom of investigation is now under threat in the U.S.”

    “It’s not so much about trying to attract the best US researchers to Brussels but trying to prevent fruitful lines of research from being abruptly cut off,” Danckaert said. While recruiting talent “would benefit our society,” he said, “it’s important that these lines of research can be continued without interruption, for the benefit of the scientific community as a whole and, in the end, for humanity.”

    VUB has already lost U.S. funding for two research projects, one concerning youth and disinformation and the other addressing the “transatlantic dialogue,” Danckaert said. The grants, amounting to 50,000 euros ($53,800) each, were withdrawn because “they were no longer in line with policy priorities,” the rector said. “Now, we have some costs that will have to be covered, but that’s nothing in comparison to the millions that are being cut in the United States.”

    European efforts to recruit U.S.-based researchers have faced some criticism, with the KU Leuven rector Luc Sels arguing that “almost half of the world population lives in countries where academic freedom is much more restricted,” while “the first and most important victims of Trump’s decisions”—such as the cancellation of USAID funding—“live and work in the Global South.”

    “Should we not prioritise supporting the scientists most at risk?” Sels writes in a recent Times Higher Education comment piece, adding that “drawing [the U.S.’s] talented scientists away will not help them.”

    Asked about these concerns, Danckaert said, “It’s true, of course, that the U.S. by no means has a monopoly on putting scientists under threat,” noting that VUB, alongside other Belgian universities, participates in academic sanctuary programs such as Scholars at Risk. “We try to provide a safe haven for scholars who are being persecuted in their countries, and this work doesn’t stop.”

    As for fears of a potential brain drain from the U.S., the VUB rector said he was “by nature optimistic.” Recruiting U.S.-based researchers “is hopefully only a temporary measure to avoid some lines of research being abruptly cut,” Danckaert said.

    “I believe this is a temporary difficult period for a number of scientists,” he continued. “We’ve always looked with high esteem to the quality of science done in the United States, and I’m confident that the climate in which science was prospering will come back.”

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  • Fascism Scholars, Trump Critics Leave Yale for Canada

    Fascism Scholars, Trump Critics Leave Yale for Canada

    As the Trump administration escalates its attack on universities, three fascism scholars and vocal Trump critics are leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto. But their given reasons for crossing the border vary.

    Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale and author of multiple books—including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them—said he finally accepted Toronto’s long-standing offer for a position on Friday after seeing Columbia University “completely collapse and give in to an authoritarian regime.”

    In a move that has unnerved faculty across the country, Columbia’s administration largely conceded to demands from the Trump administration, which had cut $400 million of the university’s federal grants and contracts for what it said was Columbia’s failure to address campus antisemitism. Among other moves, the Ivy League institution gave campus officers arrest authority and appointed a new senior vice provost to oversee academic programs focused on the Middle East.

    “I was genuinely undecided before that,” Stanley said. Now he’s leaving Yale to be the named chair in American studies at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. According to the university, the intent is for Stanley also to be cross-appointed to the philosophy department. Two popular philosophy blogs previously reported the move.

    “What I worry about is that Yale and other Ivy League institutions do not understand what they face,” Stanley said. He loves Yale and expected to spend the rest of his career there, he said; while he still hopes for the opportunity to return some day, he’s nervous Yale “will do what Columbia did.”

    Stanley said Toronto’s Munk School “raided Yale” for some of its prominent professors of democracy and authoritarianism to establish a project on defending democracy internationally—an effort that began long before the election.

    Also leaving Yale for the Munk School is Timothy Snyder, author of books including The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, and Marci Shore, author of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution and other works. Snyder and Shore are married.

    Stanley said Toronto reached out to him back in April 2023, during the Biden administration, and he restarted conversations after the election. He finally took the job Friday. The university told Inside Higher Ed it had been trying to recruit Snyder and Shore for years, saying, “We’re always looking for the best and brightest.”

    Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, will become the Munk School’s inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies. A spokesperson for Snyder said he made his decision for personal reasons, and he made it before the election.

    In an emailed statement Wednesday, Snyder said, “The opportunity came at a time when my spouse and I had to address some difficult family matters.” He said he had “no grievance with Yale, no desire to leave the U.S. I am very happy with the idea of a move personally but, aside from a strong appreciation of what U of T has to offer, the motivations are largely that—personal.”

    But when asked for her reasoning, Shore told Inside Higher Ed in an email that “the personal and political were, as often is the case, intertwined. We might well have made the move in any case, but we didn’t make our final decision until after the November elections,” she wrote.

    Shore, a Yale history professor, will become the Munk School Chair in European Intellectual History, supported by the same endowment as her husband.

    “I sensed that this time, this second Trump election, would be still much worse than the first—the checks and balances have been dismantled,” she wrote. “I can feel that the country is going into free fall. I fear there’s going to be a civil war. And I don’t want to bring my kids back into that. I also don’t feel confident that Yale or other American universities will manage to protect either their students or their faculty.”

    She also said it didn’t escape her that Yale failed to publicly defend Snyder when Vice President JD Vance criticized him on X in January. After Trump nominated Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Snyder—who has repeatedly excoriated the Trump administration in the media—posted that “a Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States.”

    Vance reposted that with the caption “That this person is a professor at Yale is actually an embarrassment.” Elon Musk, X’s owner, responded in agreement.

    ‘They Need to Band Together’

    Leaving for Canada might sound like a futile move, given that Trump has threatened to annex it.

    “That’s why I’m definitely not thinking of it as fleeing fascism; I’m thinking of it as defending Canada,” Stanley said. “Freedom of inquiry does not seem to be under threat in Canada,” he said, and moving there will allow him to be engaged in “an international fight against fascism.”

    Nonetheless, he said it’s heartbreaking to leave the Yale philosophy department. He would consider returning to Yale “if there’s evidence that universities are standing up more boldly to the threats,” he said. “They need to band together.”

    Yale spokesperson Karen Peart told Inside Higher Ed in an email that Yale “continues to be home to world-class faculty members who are dedicated to excellence in scholarship and teaching.” She added, “Yale is proud of its global faculty community which includes faculty who may no longer work at the institution, or whose contributions to academia may continue at a different home institution. Faculty members make decisions about their careers for a variety of reasons and the university respects all such decisions.”

    To be sure, the Yale professors are not the first or only U.S. faculty to accept academic appointments outside the country. European universities, at least, have been trying to recruit American researchers. But before Trump’s re-election, there was a dearth of data on the previously rumored academic exodus from red states to blue, supposedly spurred by conservative policy changes.

    Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, said he’s now had conversations with multiple faculty members who are naturalized citizens “and still think that the administration might be coming after them.”

    And while star professors at Ivy League institutions are more likely than other faculty to have the opportunity to leave, Yale law professor Keith Whittington, founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance, said he thinks such professors are more likely to take those opportunities now.

    “I’ve seen efforts by high-quality academic institutions in other countries to start making the pitch to American academics,” Whittington said. He noted that even faculty at prestigious and well-endowed universities have concerns that their institution and higher ed as a whole are “not as stable as one might once have thought.”

    He said the Trump administration has targeted specific universities with “quite serious efforts to threaten those institutions with crippling financial consequences if they don’t adopt policies that the administration would prefer that they adopt.” And such a playbook could easily be repeated “at practically any institution in the country,” he said.

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  • Trump Administration Attempts to Deport, Bar Entry to Scholars

    Trump Administration Attempts to Deport, Bar Entry to Scholars

    Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate, and threatened him with deportation. The Trump administration said Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, was a national security threat and accused him of terrorist activity for leading student protests at Columbia last year.

    In a public statement to The Guardian, Khalil described himself as a “political prisoner.”

    “The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent,” he said. “Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs.”

    That prediction has begun to come true. In the past three weeks, immigration officers have targeted international students they suspected of participating in pro-Palestinian protests, raiding their dorm rooms and revoking their visas. In recent days, the administration’s dragnet has widened to include faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars and researchers.

    At least two of those international scholars were employed by U.S. institutions and in the country on valid work or academic visas. An Indian postdoctoral research fellow at Georgetown University was detained outside his home for alleged pro-Palestinian activity that the administration has yet to specify; and a Lebanese professor at Brown University’s medical school was denied reentry after attending the funeral of assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nusrallah.

    Another case involves an unidentified French scientist, who, according to a statement from the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, was denied entry into the U.S. because of his “personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy.”

    Isaac Kamola, director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom and an associate political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, said the administration’s “completely arbitrary” crackdown on foreign scholars threatens academic freedom and undermines the role of U.S. institutions in global research exchange and scholarship networks.

    “I think it’s pretty clear that the administration has decided it’s going to use the force of the state to intimidate faculty and students,” he said. “They’re basically doing a kind of stochastic terrorism.”

    The administration is also targeting international doctoral candidates who participated in pro-Palestinian protests last year, revoking their visas and sending ICE agents to apprehend them.

    Momodou Taal, a British Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University who made national headlines when he overturned an academic suspension for protest activity that would have forced him to leave the country, received a visit from ICE agents on Wednesday. Just days earlier, Taal filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to block immigration officials from deporting international students for protesting.

    Taal told Inside Higher Ed he’d been expecting a knock on his door since Trump’s inauguration, and that immigration officials were targeting students and scholars for protected pro-Palestinian speech.

    “It goes against the ideals that this country espouses, or at least claims to espouse,” Taal said. “I’ve not been convicted of a crime, I’m not being charged with any crime or accused of any crime. So why should I be living in fear over what I decide to say and the causes I support?”

    Teresa R. Manning, director of policy at the conservative National Association of Scholars, said, “We see it as more an issue of security and safety than an issue of academics or free speech.”

    “The real threat to free speech is the complete leftwing domination of American education,” Manning said. “No conservatives are allowed. That’s the real threat, not our attempt to guard the nation’s security and safety and protect against potential terrorist threats.”

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, nor did a spokesperson for ICE. A spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees and promotes global academic and research exchange, did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

    Georgetown Fellow Detained

    On Monday night, immigration officials arrested and detained Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia. Suri was in the country on a J-1 visa, a nonimmigrant document meant to promote academic and cultural exchange that is usually reserved for students and scholars; according to his lawyers, Department of Homeland Security agents told him his visa had been revoked.

    A peace and conflict studies scholar, he was at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service conducting research for his dissertation on the U.S. peace process in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “If an accomplished scholar who focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides is bad for foreign policy, then perhaps the problem is with the government, not the scholar,” Suri’s lawyer Hassan Ahmad wrote in a statement Thursday.

    After his arrest, Suri was first brought to a migrant holding cell in Virginia before being transported to Louisiana, where he’s currently awaiting trial in the same detention center as Khalil, according to Suri’s lawyers.

    Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on X that Suri had been detained for “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” though she failed to provide any evidence.

    Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent and a graduate student at Georgetown, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, former adviser to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, The New York Times confirmed. Yousef, who has called the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks a “terrible error,” told The Times that he left his position a decade ago and that his daughter and son-in-law have no involvement in political activism on behalf of the organization.

    On Thursday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered that Suri be kept in the country until a lawsuit brought by his lawyers is resolved, according to The Washington Post.

    In a post on BlueSky Thursday, Virginia representative Don Beyer wrote that “the arrests of academics like Suri and Mahmoud Khalil are intended to have a chilling effect and discourage the free expression of political views which Trump dislikes.”

    A Georgetown spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the university was “not aware of [Suri] engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention.”

    “Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

    Brown Professor Denied Entry

    Media outlets have reported that Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine and clinician educator at Brown, was flown out of the U.S. last week despite a court order requiring the government to inform a judge ahead of any deportation. The federal government said Alawieh was returning from Lebanon, where she had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nusrallah. Officials also said she had deleted “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders from her phone.

    Alawieh never made it past Boston’s Logan International Airport. On Monday, a DHS spokesperson posted on X that Nusrallah was “a brutal terrorist” and that Alawieh had “openly admitted” attending his funeral and supporting him.

    “A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” the spokesperson wrote. “This is commonsense security.”

    The White House then reposted DHS’s statement with a photo of President Trump waving goodbye out of a drive-thru window at McDonald’s during a campaign stop.

    Kamola, of the AAUP, said claims of Alawieh’s supposed connections to Hezbollah were “spurious.” One of Alawieh’s lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.

    Asked whether Brown is defending Alawieh’s academic freedom or disciplining her, Amanda McGregor, a spokesperson for Brown, replied only that “Alawieh is an employee of Brown Medicine with a clinical appointment to Brown University.”

    “Such appointments carry a faculty title, though the employment resides with Brown Medicine,” McGregor wrote in an email.

    Interrogated for Anti-Trump Texts

    Meanwhile, foreign academics traveling to the U.S. are being hassled and turned away by border agents.

    Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Agence France-Presse that a French scientist from the country’s National Center for Scientific Research was heading to a conference near Houston, Texas, when the scientist was denied entry and expelled. The minister did not reveal the scientist’s name.

    “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” Baptiste said. “Freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedom are values we will continue to proudly uphold.”

    On Wednesday, Baptiste met with counterparts from other European Union nations to discuss “threats to free research in the United States,” according to a post on X.

    As the Trump administration escalates its attacks on foreigners in American academe, international students are increasingly apprehensive about studying at U.S. institutions and scholars worry about attending conferences or accepting fellowships in the country. Kamola said the end result may be the destruction of America’s reputation as a bastion of academic freedom.

    “I think the message is: Everybody who wants to speak about Palestine, everybody who wants to argue that higher education should be more inclusive or diverse, anybody who wants to defend free speech in ways that the current regime finds unacceptable could potentially face retaliation,” Kamola said. “The intention is to not only sow chaos but to sow fear.”

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  • Writing notes instead of typing pits scholars against each other

    Writing notes instead of typing pits scholars against each other

    Imagine you’re a student in high school or college. Class is about to start. You are faced with a notable dilemma: Should you whip out a notebook or a laptop to take notes?

    The answer is not so simple. A year ago, paper and pen seemed to be the winner when the journal Frontiers in Psychology published a Norwegian study that documented how different areas of the brain were communicating more frequently when students were writing by hand. When students were typing, the brain was not nearly so active. This extra brain activity, the neuroscientists wrote, is “beneficial for learning.” 

    The study ricocheted around the world. Almost 200 news stories promoted the idea that we remember things better when we write them down by hand instead of typing. It confirmed what many of us instinctively feel. That’s why I still take notes in a notebook even though I can hardly read my chicken scratch.

    Yet earlier this month, the same academic journal published a scathing rebuttal to the handwriting study. A pair of scientists in Spain and France pointed out that none of the Norwegian college students was asked to learn anything in the laboratory experiment. “Drawing conclusions on learning processes in children in a classroom from a lab study carried out on a group of university students that did not include any type of learning seems slippery at best,” the critics wrote.

    The Norwegian study asked 36 college students in their early 20s to write words from the game Pictionary using either a digital pen on a touchscreen or typing on a keyboard. The participants wore stretchy hair nets studded with electrodes to capture their brain activity. The scientists documented the differences between the two modes of writing. 

    Neither mode approximated real life conditions. The students were instructed to write in cursive without lifting the stylus from the screen. And they were only allowed to type with their right index finger.

    The critics also questioned whether elevated brain activity is proof of better learning. Increased brain activity could equally be interpreted as a sign that handwriting is slower and more taxing than typing. We don’t know.

    I contacted Audrey van der Meer, one of the co-authors of the Norwegian study who runs a neuroscience lab at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She pointed out that her critics promote the use of keyboards in education, and so they may not be unbiased. But she admitted that her study didn’t test whether students learned anything. 

    Van der Meer is conducting a fresh experiment that involves actual learning with 140 teenagers. She had the high school students watch a recorded lecture. Half of them were randomly assigned to take notes by hand, using a digital pen and touchscreen, and the other half typed their notes. Afterward, they all took the same exam graded by teachers at the school. 

    So far, she’s noticed clear differences in note-taking styles. Those who typed their notes wrote significantly more words, often transcribing parts of the lecture verbatim. They didn’t make any drawings. Those who used a digital pen mainly wrote key words and short sentences and produced two drawings, on average. 

    According to van der Meer, students who use the keyboard are writing down everything the teacher says “because they can.” But, she said in an email, “the information appears to be coming in through the ears and, without any form of processing, going out through the fingertips.” She added that when taking notes by hand, “it is impossible to write down everything, so students have to process the incoming information, summarize it, and link it to knowledge they already have.” That helps the “new information to stick better, resulting in better retention.”

    Van der Meer said she could not yet share the exam results with me as she is still analyzing them. She explained that there are “many confounding variables” that make it difficult to tell if those who used handwritten notes performed better on the exam.

    Even the pro-typing scientists admit that handwriting is important. Previous research has shown that writing letters by hand, compared to typing them, helps young children learn their letters much better. A 2015 study found that adults were better able to recall words in a memory game when they wrote them down by hand first instead of typing them. And a 2010 book chapter documented positive associations between writing words and being able to read them. 

    While there’s fairly compelling evidence that handwriting can help children learn their letters and new words, there’s less proof that handwriting helps us absorb new information and ideas. That’s not to say the Norwegian neuroscientists are wrong. But we still need the proof.

    I’d also add that not all learning is the same. Learning to write is different from learning Spanish vocabulary. There may be times when typing is the ideal way to learn something and other times when handwriting is. Also, learning something involves far more than either typing or handwriting, and the method we use to take notes might ultimately be of small importance compared to how we study our notes afterwards. 

    In the meantime, where did I put my notebook?

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about handwriting versus typing was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up forProof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • A Solicitation for Black Scholars to Shine Amidst the Storms and Sickness

    A Solicitation for Black Scholars to Shine Amidst the Storms and Sickness

    In this season of ongoing celebrations, as we remember and reflect on the life and legacy of the late civil rights icon and leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,Dr. Ronald W. Whitaker, II we position this op-ed as a prophetic call to Black scholars. This call draws inspiration from Dr. King’s last public address on April 3, 1968, affectionately known as his Mountaintop Speech. 

    Upon arriving in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, King was physically exhausted, weighed down by the burdens of leadership, and grappling with his lifelong struggle with depression. What is less widely known; however, is that King arrived in Memphis the day before his assassination, in the midst of a fierce storm and tornado warnings.

    Indeed, King began his address to the crowd that evening with the words, “I’m delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world” (King, 1968). The storm King referred to that night symbolizes the socio-political storms that many Black scholars are currently navigating, as turbulence and change rage both inside and outside of campus environments.

    Twelve years ago, in his book Strategic Diversity Leadership: Activating Change and Transformation in Higher Education, DEI scholar and thought leader Dr. Damon A. Williams issued a warning to academics and campus leaders about what he termed a “perfect storm.”Dr. Adriel A. HiltonDr. Adriel A. Hilton

    Williams writes: “The degree shortfall, along with changing demographics and an increasingly turbulent political landscape, has created a ‘perfect storm’ for leaders contemplating the role of diversity in higher education. To understand and overcome the challenges of this perfect storm, academic leaders must fundamentally reframe how they approach issues of diversity in our colleges and universities” (Williams, 2013, p. 31).

    According to Williams, several “critical pressures” are fueling the perfect storm on college campuses. However, one of the most concerning threats, particularly for those advocating for authentic justice within higher education, is the ongoing legal and political assault on diversity and affirmative action. Following the second presidential election of Donald J. Trump, we have already begun to see the promised reverse of DEI initiatives within some of the country’s largest corporations. Similarly, as argued in this article, there is a continued effort to dismantle DEI programs in higher education.     

    Yet, on the evening of April 3, 1968, King was not only confronting a storm; he was also addressing a deeper, more pervasive, and pernicious problem, which he framed as a “sickness.” After introducing the historical context and poetic reflections on the movement, King did not mince words, asserting, “the nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around.” 

    At the core of King’s assertion that “the nation is sick” was his identification of three major evils: (1) “the evil of racism,” (2) “the evil of poverty,” and (3) “the evil of war.” As a leading figure within the Black Prophetic Tradition, King understood that a nation rooted in systemic injustice, economic inequity, and racial oppression is inherently “sick.”

    Unfortunately, as we write this article today, we are still confronting a serious “sickness” on campuses. Systemic equity gaps and disparities continue to persist across demographic groups, particularly impacting our most vulnerable students. Additionally, the rising cost of college tuition disproportionately affects students from lower-income families, further exacerbating the barriers to higher education. Economic inequities within higher education also highlight broader systemic inequalities, such as the underfunded programs designed to support vulnerable student populations (Mitchell, Leachman, & Masterson, 2018).

    Despite the rhetoric suggesting that we have entered a “post-racial” society, studies present counternarratives expose widening gap on racial inequality in higher education. In the face of the storms and sickness described in this op-ed, it is easy to feel discouraged and downtrodden.

    This is why we draw from the wisdom and courage of King, who, even in the midst of adversity, possessed the uncanny ability to speak the painful truth while simultaneously offering hope for a better tomorrow. For example, after asserting that the nation is sick, King reminded us that “only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” 

    We believe this is the focal point of King’s message. Specifically, despite the dark storms and sicknesses in society and within the academy, this may be the moment for us as Black scholars and leaders to shine. Our call to shine is not rooted in the pursuit of promotions, tenure, senior administrator positions, or the building of our professional brands. No, we argue that we must authentically shine in order to critically reflect on the issues plaguing campuses and, more importantly, to find the courage to stand for truth and justice.

    We shine when we, as King urged America to do on April 3, 1968, remind campus leaders and colleagues to be “true to what you said on paper.” Each college has a mission statement, vision statement, code of ethics, values, and strategic plan that underscores the importance of moral behavior. Therefore, when we receive reports and data suggesting that vulnerable populations are being targeted within social catalytic spaces on college campuses, it is an urgent call to remind leadership to adhere to the values stated in official documents, such as websites, marketing materials, and other institutional communications.

    Lastly, we shine when we confront the existential realities of our existence. As those closest to King have shared, on the night of April 3, 1968, he knew his time on earth was short. Similarly, despite our accolades and titles, our time in academia is relatively brief, and we must decide what legacy we wish to leave. In honoring our ancestors, elders, students, and communities we serve, we must stay focused on the promised land—a promised land rooted in justice, democracy, freedom, safety, security, opportunity, and solidarity. As such, we must not lose hope in the belief that things will get better for “we as a people!” 

    In closing, do not give in to pessimism and fear. Instead, choose to shine. By doing so, we might not only be saving the soul of our institutions of higher education, but collectively, we might be saving the soul of this nation.

    Dr. Ronald W. Whitaker, II, is a Visiting Associate Professor of Education at Arcadia University, Director of the MEd in Educational Leadership Program, and Co-Director of the Social Action and Justice Education Fellowship Program at Arcadia University.  Additionally, Dr. Whitaker is an inaugural faculty fellow at Vanderbilt University for the Initiative for Race, Research, and Justice. 

    Dr. Adriel A. Hilton serves as Director of Programs, Transition and Youth Success Planning (staffing the Assistant Secretary of Juvenile Rehabilitation) in the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families. Most recently, he served as vice-chancellor for student affairs & enrollment management and associate professor of education at Southern University at New Orleans.

     

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