Tag: seek

When young people ask big questions and seek answers

Cliffrene Haffner attended the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her university applications were stalling and she felt stressed and anxious.

“Life felt unstable, as if I were hanging by a thin thread,” Haffner said. But it was at ALA that she discovered News Decoder.

“Joining News Decoder helped me rebuild my voice,” she wrote. “It created a place to write honestly and with purpose whilst supporting others in telling their stories. At a time when the world felt numb and disconnected, we used storytelling to bring back hope on campus by sharing our fears, thoughts and expectations.”

At News Decoder, students work with professional editors and news correspondents to explore complicated, global topics. They have the opportunity to report and write news stories, research and present findings in global webinars with students from other countries, produce podcasts and sit in on live video roundtables with experts and their peers across the globe.

Many get their articles published on News Decoder’s global news site.

A different way of seeing the world

Out of these experiential learning activities, they take away important skills valuable in their later careers, whatever those careers might be: How to communicate clearly, how to recognize multiple perspectives, how to cut through jargon and propaganda and separate facts from opinion and speculation.

One milestone for many of these is our Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise process, which we call PRDR. In it, students pitch a story topic to News Decoder with a plan on how to research and report it. We ask them to identify different perspectives on problems they want to explore and experts they can reach out to for information and context.

Then we guide them through a process of introspection, if the story is a personal reflection on their own experience, or a process of reporting and interviewing. News Decoder doesn’t promise students that their stories will get published at the end of the process. They have to work for that — revising their drafts until the finished story is clear and relevant to a global audience.

One student who went through the process was Joshua Glazer, now a student at Emory University in the United States. Glazer came to News Decoder in high school as an exchange student in Spain with School Year Abroad.

“I think the skills that I got out of that went on to really change the course of my education and how I view the world,” Glazer said. “Because when you step into the world of journalism you learn a different way of seeing the world.”

Recognizing our biases

Glazer learned that for journalism, he had to be less opinionated. “You have to really approach things kind of as they are in the world,” Glazer said. “And that is hard to do. That is not an easy skill that we can do as humans because we inherently have biases.”

He said it challenged him to look inwards and recognize his biases and counter them with evidence.

“So I think those skills have really changed the course of how I view having an argument with somebody because all of a sudden, you know, when you have an argument with someone, it’s all opinion,” he said.

For Haffner, who is now a business administration student at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, News Decoder reshaped how she and her peers understood storytelling.

“It taught us to let go of rigid biases and to make authenticity the centre of our work,” Haffner said. “Students from different backgrounds found a space where their voices were heard, respected and valued. Our stories formed a shared map, each one opening a new room to explore, each voice strengthening the collective journey we were on. In that chaotic period, we created something meaningful together. Something bigger than us.”

Working through the complexity of a topic

Marouane El Bahraoui, a research intern at The Carter Center in the U.S. state of Georgia, also discovered News Decoder at the African Leadership Academy. At the time, he was interested in writing about the effectiveness of the Arab Maghreb Union — an economic bloc of five North African countries. He grew up in Morocco but didn’t want to approach the topic from a purely Moroccan perspective.

“It was like a very raw idea,” he said.

He pitched the story and worked with both News Decoder Founder Nelson Graves and correspondent Tom Heneghan to refine the idea. They guided him in the reporting and writing process.

“One aspect that I liked a lot from my research was the people that I had the chance to talk to,” he said. “It was during Covid and I was just at home and I’m talking to, you know, professors in U.S. universities, I’m talking to UN officials, experts working in think tanks in D.C. and I was thinking oh those people are just so far, you can’t even reach them. And then you have a conversation with them and they’re just normal people.”

He also found writing the story daunting. “It was a little bit overwhelming for me at the time,” he said. “You know, you’re not writing like an academic essay.”

Graves encouraged him to write in a straightforward manner. In school, he had been taught to write in a beautiful way to impress.

“From News Decoder, something I learned is to always keep the audience in mind who you are speaking to, who are you writing to,” he said.

He took away the importance of letting readers make their own conclusions. “You’re not writing to tell the reader what to think,” he said. “You are writing to give them ideas and arguments, facts and leave the thinking for them.”

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November 24, 2025
10 Universities Seek Recognition by a New Accreditor
Just four months after the launch of the Commission for Public Higher Education, the aspiring accreditor has received letters of intent from a cohort of 10 institutions, making them the first potential members.

The initial group to submit a letter of intent seeking CPHE accreditation comes from four states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. All are currently accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. They are:
- Appalachian State University (N.C.)
- Chipola College (Fla.)
- Columbus State University (Ga.)
- Florida Atlantic University
- Florida Polytechnic University
- Georgia Southern University
- North Carolina Central University
- Texas A&M Kingsville
- Texas A&M Texarkana
- University of North Carolina at Charlotte
With its inaugural cohort and draft standards in place, the newly formed commission—introduced by Florida governor Ron DeSantis at a June press conference in which he railed against existing accreditors—is making progress toward its eventual goal of recognition by the U.S. Department of Education, which is a years-long process. Now the first 10 potential member institutions will offer CPHE a chance to show how it might offer a different approach to accreditation, even as it simultaneously battles accusations that it is aligned with DeSantis and his partisan attacks on higher ed.

The Initial Cohort

The aspiring members are all public colleges or universities—in keeping with CPHE’s stated mission—and represent a range of institution types. Several, including Florida Atlantic, are large research institutions, while NCCU is a historically Black university and Chipola College mostly offers two-year programs, though it does confer some bachelor’s degrees as well.

“I think it’s an extraordinary group. It’s beyond, both in terms of number and in terms of breadth, where I think anyone could have reasonably thought we would be when we started this project,” said Daniel Harrison, vice president for academic affairs at the UNC system, who has worked from the beginning of the project to launch the Commission for Public Higher Education.

Harrison noted that those institutions were the first to express interest before the fledgling accreditor capped the initial cohort at 10, though he anticipates bringing more in next year.

Those institutions will maintain SACSCOC accreditation while going through the recognition process for CPHE, which will include a self-study by the universities, meeting with teams of peer reviewers and site visits—all typical parts of the recognition process for any accreditor.

While Harrison said CPHE encouraged individual institutions to discuss the endeavor with Inside Higher Ed, only three of the 10 provided responses to requests for statements or interviews.

Appalachian State University provost and executive vice chancellor Neva Specht wrote in an email that “we welcome a peer review process that recognizes the characteristics that distinguish institutions of public higher education.” Specht added that they “anticipate that an accreditation process that emphasizes clear outcomes and helps focus our work in alignment with public higher education standards will help bolster confidence not only in our institution, but in our industry, as we continue working together on improving value and return on investment for our students, their families, and the taxpayers of North Carolina.”

Chipola president Sarah Clemmons also offered a response, writing in an emailed statement that the college “believes that a competitive environment fostered by multiple institutional accreditation options promotes innovation and continuous improvement in accreditation practices. Quality assurance is strengthened when accreditors must demonstrate their value and effectiveness to their member institutions. This healthy competition ensures quality which ultimately benefits students, institutions, and the broader higher education community.”

UNC Charlotte, which has faced criticism for allegedly pursuing CPHE accreditation without faculty input, shared with Inside Higher Ed a previously published statement and frequently asked questions page.

Others either did not respond or referred Inside Higher Ed to system officials or CPHE. When asked for comment, the University System of Georgia pointed back to CPHE.

The Specter of Politics

The public first learned about CPHE during the June press conference where DeSantis blasted the failings of higher education broadly and accreditors specifically. The Republican governor attacked the “accreditation cartel” and claimed SACSCOC sought to impose diversity, equity and inclusion standards on Florida universities, though the organization has never had standards on DEI practices. (Asked about that topic, DeSantis falsely claimed it does have DEI standards.)

While DeSantis emphasized conservative political grievances with accreditation in the initial announcement, CPHE leaders have sought to temper the governor’s remarks.

Harrison—who was traveling to Appalachian State University to meet with professors the same day he spoke to Inside Higher Ed—said the commission is working in a “personalized way” to address concerns about politicization by seeking faculty input at potential member institutions.

“We are coming very earnestly to our faculty and asking them to engage with us and help us to make this what it should be,” Harrison said. “And I think that if faculty will continue to allow us the room to grow and to operate, they’re going to be very pleased by what they see here.”

He also highlighted the appointment of Mark Becker to CPHE’s board.

Becker, the former president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and former leader of Georgia State University, said in a news release announcing his role that “the time is ripe for innovation in higher education accreditation,” adding that CPHE “is poised to take advantage of that opportunity to become a powerful engine for improving student outcomes across the sector.”

Harrison argued that Becker’s “entire career has been built on serious nonpartisanship—not bipartisanship, nonpartisanship. And that is the model that we are following here as well.”

But critics persist.

Faculty voices have been the most critical of CPHE thus far, especially the American Association of University Professors, which held a webinar on “politicizing accreditation” earlier this fall highlighting concerns about the new accreditor.

Matthew Boedy, a University of North Georgia professor who led the AAUP webinar, expressed worry about how state governments might impose their political will on CPHE. In a follow-up email to Inside Higher Ed, he cited CPHE’s “lack of independence” from states as the most significant concern.

“Whatever power SACS or others had to limit political interference or leveraging campus expansions on bad economics or even cuts in programs—all that would be gone,” Boedy wrote. “Administrations at the campus and system level can’t be both the referee and player in this game. There is also a concern that this new ‘state run’ accreditation will not just limit itself to schools but also professional programs like law and medicine that have stuck to diversity goals.”

The AAUP has also encouraged members to contact lawmakers and trustees to express their apprehensions, sharing talking points in a tool kit circulated last month that took aim at the organization.

“CPHE is not an academically credible accrediting body,” reads part of a proposed script in the AAUP tool kit designed to help members organize against the new accreditor. “It is structured to advance political agendas by allowing state government control over institutional accreditation. It threatens academic freedom, faculty shared governance, and institutional autonomy.”

But CPHE officials continue to urge critics to focus not on DeSantis’s partisan rhetoric but rather on how the organization has proceeded since it was launched. Speaking to Inside Higher Ed at the APLU’s annual conference on Monday, Cameron Howell—a University of South Carolina official and CPHE adviser—argued that the organization has eschewed politics in its operations.

“I believe there is nothing political or ideological about what we are doing,” Howell said.

While he said he didn’t “want to end up in a rhetorical argument with the governor of Florida,” Howell emphasized that other speakers involved in the rollout who followed the governor in the June press conference focused on innovation and efficiency. He also emphasized transparency in CPHE operations.

“We have tried very, very diligently to be transparent in the way we’re making decisions and in the way we’re seeking feedback, in part to demonstrate in a way that’s completely aboveboard that nothing that we’re doing is political or ideological,” Howell said. “Now, of course, there are benefits to having stakeholder involvement in and of itself, but I think that we’ve done a pretty good job of convincing a lot of faculty with whom we’ve been working … a lot of other administrators, that we take this very seriously, that it’s about process and results. It’s not about politics.”

Ryan Quinn contributed to this report.
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November 13, 2025
How Educators Seek to Shape AI Use in Classrooms

For educators, using artificial intelligence in the classroom only makes sense if they have a real say in its development.

Building on expert experience

This summer, the American Federation of Teachers and its New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, announced a $23 million partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to establish a first-of-its-kind teacher institute for artificial intelligence: the National Academy for AI Instruction.

“Technology is routinely weaponized against us,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “We were not going to sit by and watch that happen again. This initiative allows us to take control of AI in the education sphere and develop it for and by educators.”

While the physical plant will take 12–18 months to build, the academy has already started hosting its first series of AI workshops, introducing attendees to tools to help teachers plan, manage their workload, and meet student needs more effectively. Teachers received guidance on writing AI prompts and discussed ethics and the responsible use of AI.

“The academy is saying to teachers: You bring expertise to the classroom. You bring high-value pedagogy to the classroom,” said Rob Weil, Chief Executive Officer of the Academy. “We want you to use that pedagogy and expand that pedagogy, and there are resources you can use to make your expertise better. This is not about replacing your expertise; it’s about expanding your expertise.”

AI use influenced by teachers

Workshops this fall will engage educators in 200 New York City schools and then extend to educators in AFT union affiliates across the country. Organizers said the content will deepen as educators gain experience. And while supporting the exploration of AI, the AFT and the UFT were clear that neither organization endorsed specific AI tools or platforms.

Iolani Grullon, a teacher at P.S. 4 in Manhattan who attended two sets of AI workshops this summer, said AI could be “a game changer” for educators.

“This is where things are going,” Grullon said. “If we resist, we’re only going to make our lives harder. We need to be part of the conversation, learn how to use these tools, and influence their next iteration. We are the voice of the classroom. We know what educators and students need. And if these tools can streamline planning and paperwork, it allows for more time to build relationships with students.”

“It does not replace the human component,” Grullon said. “You need to see my face. You need to hear me say, ‘Great job!’ or ‘Let’s try this again’ or ‘Are you OK?’”

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November 7, 2025
Fewer College Staff Say They’ll Likely Seek New Jobs in 2025

Nearly 3,800 respondents took the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources Higher Education Employee Retention Survey.

About a quarter of nonfaculty higher ed employees told an April survey that they were likely or very likely to look for new jobs in the next year—a drop from the third of such workers who indicated in 2023 they would go job hunting.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources released this week the results of its latest Higher Education Employee Retention Survey, which had nearly 3,800 respondents, 96 percent of whom said they’re full-time employees and 75 percent of whom said they’re overtime-exempt workers. The respondents hailed from 505 different colleges and universities.

Greater rates of nonsupervisors, men and employees of color reported they were seeking to change jobs compared to their counterparts. And, out of the various types of offices—such as academic affairs and admissions, enrollment and financial aid—the CUPA-HR report says “external affairs appears to be the most stable area, with nearly two-thirds (62%) of employees indicating they are unlikely or very unlikely to look for a new job.”

Employees who are eyeing new jobs aren’t necessarily seeking to leave academe, or even their current employers. Around 72 percent of those who said they intend to job hunt said they plan to look at other colleges or universities. Nearly half want to explore new roles at their current institutions. The same share plan to look at non–higher ed nonprofits, while 60 percent are eyeing private, for-profit companies. (Respondents who say they are job hunting could pick multiple options.)

Why are they seeking new jobs? Around 70 percent ranked higher pay in their top three reasons for leaving, a far higher percentage than any other impetus. The next most common reason was seeking promotion, at 39 percent, followed by desiring a different workplace culture and reducing stress, each around 33 percent. Then came remote work opportunities, at 28 percent, and job security concerns, at 26 percent.

Job security concern “was particularly pronounced among employees in research and sponsored programs/institutional research,” the report says.

Despite employees’ wishes for more money, the report says feelings of belonging and of purpose in work, along with senses of being valued by others at work and engaged with work, “are stronger predictors of retention than is the perception of fair pay.”

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September 19, 2025
States, districts seek to end federal funding freeze lawsuits
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Dive Brief:
- Twenty four states and the District of Columbia are seeking to throw out a lawsuit challenging this summer’s delay of K-12 federal grant funding. A joint motion to dismiss was filed Monday by the coalition of states, led by California, and the Trump administration, with both parties agreeing that the balance of the remaining funds be released no later than Oct. 3.
- The expected July 1 release of more than $6 billion in funding was delayed for several weeks due to a “programmatic review” by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. OMB said an initial review found that “many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
- The funding delays impacted after-school programs, English learner services, academic supports, migrant student assistance, adult education and professional development. The inaction caused significant financial disruptions just as schools were finalizing staffing and programming for the upcoming school year, according to educators, families, lawmakers and education-related organizations.
Dive Insight:

The states’ lawsuit, State of California, et al. v. Linda McMahon, et al., was filed July 14 and said the “abrupt freeze is wreaking similar havoc on key teacher training programs as well as programs that make school more accessible to children with special learning needs, such as English language learners.”

President Donald Trump, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and OMB Director Russell Vought are named as defendants in the lawsuit, as are OMB and the U.S. Department of Education.

In a statement Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the assurance by the federal government that it will release the remaining funds resolved the states’ lawsuit.

“The Trump Administration upended school programs across the country when it recklessly withheld vital education funding just weeks before the school year was set to begin,” Bonta said. “Our kids deserve so much better than what this anti-education Administration has to offer, and we will continue to fight to protect them from this President’s relentless attacks.”

The Trump administration has said it wants to close the Education Department and give states more decision-making authority over federal K-12 spending.

The states’ lawsuit said that the funding freeze had violated federal funding statutes and regulations. In addition to the states’ lawsuit, a coalition of 14 school districts, parents, teachers unions and nonprofit organizations also sued the Education Department and OMB for withholding the K-12 federal funds. Both parties in that lawsuit — Anchorage School District, et al. v. U.S. Department of Education, et al. — also filed a joint motion to dismiss that lawsuit on Monday.

That motion said the second tranche of federal funding due to states should be available on or about Oct. 1.
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August 27, 2025
Legal defense fund will seek to fill gap left by OCR reduction

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Education attorneys are set to launch a new organization by fall 2025 that would defend students’ civil rights in court and also track and report civil rights data. The effort, according to its founding nonprofit, aims to fill the gap left by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and its civil rights enforcement arm.

The Public Education Defense Fund will be launched by the National Center for Youth Law, which advocates for educational equity among other youth-related issues. It will contract with former Office for Civil Rights attorneys.

“At a time when civil rights protections for students are under unprecedented attack, preserving those rights is not negotiable — it’s vital,” said Johnathan Smith, chief of staff and general counsel at NCYL. “We can’t stand by while the federal government abandons its responsibility to uphold the basic rights of children and young people in this country.”

As part of the administration’s efforts to “end bureaucratic bloat” and send educational control to the states, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon laid off half of the Education Department’s staff as part of what she called the agency’s “final mission.” The move was followed by an executive order from President Donald Trump calling for the department to be shut down to “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights took a major blow, with the department shuttering seven of the 12 regional offices that were in charge of more than half of the nation’s open civil rights cases. Over 200 OCR employees were laid off as part of the reduction in force.

Under the Biden administration, those employees carried a load of more than 40 cases per person. Attorneys fired as part of the reduction in force were in charge of investigating civil rights complaints related to discrimination and harassment in schools, as well as overseeing resolution agreements with school districts. These agreements guide the school systems involved in making policy changes to improve educational access, especially for historically marginalized students.

Prior to the announcement of the Public Education Defense Fund, NCYL filed a lawsuit against the Education Department in March to challenge the changes at the OCR. The lawsuit said the civil rights enforcement arm “stopped investigating complaints from the public based on race or sex discrimination, it cherry-picked and, on its own initiative, began targeted investigations into purported discrimination against white and cisgender students.”

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May 27, 2025
Florida Dreamers Seek Tuition Relief as Legislative Session Extends

AGaby Pachecos Florida lawmakers extend their legislative session through June 6, TheDream.US is intensifying calls for a provision that would allow approximately 6,000 undocumented students currently enrolled in Florida colleges and universities to complete their education at in-state tuition rates.

The advocacy comes in response to the legislature’s earlier repeal of the in-state tuition waiver for undocumented students, which is set to take effect July 1, 2025. Without intervention, these students would face tuition increases of up to four times their current rates.

“Florida’s state lawmakers now have another month to do the right thing for Dreamers and Florida’s future: ‘grandfather in’ the 6,000 Dreamers who will be forced out of college in July and instead allow them to finish their college degrees,” said Gaby Pacheco, Miami-based President and CEO of TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college and career success program for Dreamers.

Pacheco highlighted the unfairness of changing tuition rates midstream for students who began their education under different financial expectations.

“Among TheDream.US Scholars alone, there are more than 70 students in Florida who are less than one year from completing their degrees,” she noted.

The organization has been actively mobilizing around this issue. In April, following the repeal announcement, TheDream.US organized a three-day “Freedom Ride for Tuition Fairness” journey from Miami to Tallahassee, with stops highlighting the importance of affordable higher education.

This recent campaign builds on a similar effort in 2023 that successfully delayed the passage of the in-state tuition repeal until this year. One participant in that earlier campaign was Britney, a TheDream.US Scholar who recently graduated with a business marketing degree from University of Central Florida despite the uncertainty surrounding tuition policies.

“We hope to celebrate more graduations like Britney’s after lawmakers add in new, grandfathering language in the coming weeks,” Pacheco said.

Education advocates argue that allowing current students to complete their education at promised rates represents both a moral and practical consideration. A fact sheet released by TheDream.US notes that Florida has already invested in these students’ K-12 education and partial college education, making it economically sensible to ensure they can graduate and contribute to the state’s workforce and tax base.

TheDream.US has provided more than 11,000 college scholarships to undocumented students attending nearly 80 partner colleges across 20 states and Washington, D.C. The organization recently released its 10-year impact report, “From Dreams to Destinations: A Decade of Immigrant Achievements and the Future Ahead,” documenting how increased access to higher education catalyzes social mobility and positive outcomes for Dreamers and their communities.

The Florida legislature has until June 6 to consider amendments to the in-state tuition repeal that would protect currently enrolled students.

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May 10, 2025
Alumni seek to rewaken the forgotten fight for free speech at UC San Diego

History is rarely lost all at once. More often, it slips away — one forgotten battle at a time.

For Daniel Watts, that revelation arrived with the quiet ping of an alumni email. The Guardian, the campus newspaper at the University of California, San Diego, was seeking alumni donations to stave off financial collapse. Watts, who used to write for the paper, took interest — and noticed something unusual.

Buried in their appeal, the editors blamed The Guardian’s decline, in part, on a now-defunct satirical campus paper. The Koala, informally known as “The Motherfucking Koala,” had a reputation for irreverence — in 2003, it published an issue titled Jizzlam, a parody of Playboy Magazine for Muslim men.

But for Watts, The Guardian’s jab at The Koala represented a fading understanding of the hard-won battles for a free press at UCSD.

Censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.

The Koala wasn’t just a juvenile snark sheet, but an unruly bulwark of the First Amendment. In 2015, after lampooning “safe spaces,” The Koala faced defunding efforts by a student government, prodded by administrators. But with the help of FIRE and the ACLU, they fought back and won. In The Koala v. Khosla, a federal appeals court affirmed that public universities can’t defund a student publication just because they dislike what it prints, marking a victory for all campus newspapers — including The Guardian.

But that history, along with nearly $800,000 in public funds that UCSD spent on litigation in an effort to silence its own students, now seems to have vanished.

“Reading that email,” says Watts, “and realizing that even the official student newspaper had no idea about UCSD’s history — or the sacrifices made to protect their right to publish — was a galvanizing moment.”

He adds, “If the university won’t teach students the history and value of free speech, then who will?”

Love, loyalty, and liberty: ASU alumni unite to defend free speech

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The mission of ASU Alumni for Free Speech is to promote and strengthen free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity, both on campus and throughout the global ASU community.

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So Watts stepped into the breach, founding Tritons United for Free Speech, an independent group of UCSD alumni committed to defending free expression at their alma mater.

Watts knows the terrain well.

As an undergraduate, he battled administrative efforts to censor TV broadcasts and student publications. Late nights were spent scrolling the internet and cold-calling local lawyers in search of anyone to defend them.

“No one ever answered,” he recalls. “FIRE would write letters, but they didn’t litigate back then and the ACLU was spread thin. We were on our own.”

It was a lonely education but a clarifying one. Watts decided to go to law school. “I wanted to be the kind of lawyer who would pick up the phone,” he says.

Over the past 15 years, Watts has built a robust legal career defending the First Amendment rights of students and journalists across California, arguing an anti-SLAPP case before the California Supreme Court and even running for governor in 2021 on a platform of “Free Speech. Free College.”

Now, through Tritons United for Free Speech, Watts is channeling those lessons into a new kind of advocacy. The group’s mission is threefold: educate students about the history of free speech, especially at UCSD; reform campus policies that stifle free expression; and connect students under fire with alumni who can offer legal aid, journalistic expertise, or public advocacy.

“Students are like a country without an army,” says Watts. “They have moral suasion, but they lack resources — funding for litigation, experience navigating bureaucracy, or simply the wisdom of age. Alumni bring all that, as well as staying power and historical memory.”

But the fight won’t be easy.

FIRE’s most recent College Free Speech Rankings place UCSD at a middling 133 out of 251 schools overall. More troublingly, UCSD ranks 205th on the question of whether students feel comfortable expressing ideas. Among UCSD students surveyed, 78% say shouting down a speaker is sometimes acceptable; 28% say using violence to stop speech is sometimes acceptable; and 48% say they self-censor on campus at least once or twice a month.

These numbers reflect a striking cultural shift.

“When I was at UCSD in 2001,” Watts recalls, “the student government would occasionally vote on whether to defund The Koala. Every time, it was unanimous — 20 to 0 against censorship.”

By 2015, the vote was again unanimous — 22 to 0, with 3 abstentions — but this time to defund The Koala. Even The Guardian greeted the news with a gloating article, quoting the immortal words of American diplomat Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam Hussein: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”

Watts was appalled. “You’re a newspaper! And you’re celebrating censorship?!”

Today, he fears, many students seem to believe that free speech is conditional. Good for me, but not for thee. They’ve forgotten, or more likely have never learned, as former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser warns, censorship is like poison gas: effective when your enemy is in sight — but the wind has a way of shifting.

As students cycle through every four years, faculty grow fearful of speaking out, and administrators grow ever entrenched with power, institutional memory slowly fades.

Alumni are the living link to that past — and the stewards of its future.

“That’s why Tritons United for Free Speech exists,” Watts says. “And that’s why I’m not giving up.”

If you’re ready to join Tritons United for Free Speech, or if you’re interested in forming a free speech alumni alliance at your alma mater, contact Bobby Ramkissoon at [email protected]. He will connect you with like-minded alumni and offer guidance on how to effectively protect free speech and academic freedom for all.

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May 6, 2025
Florida Atlantic Police Seek Immigration Enforcement Powers

Florida Atlantic University reportedly has a pending agreement with the federal government to allow its campus police department to question and detain individuals who are suspected of being in the U.S. without legal authorization, The Florida Phoenix reported.

The public university located in Boca Raton is a Hispanic-serving institution.

If FAU police acquire immigration enforcement authority, the university would seemingly be the first in the nation to deputize campus cops as federal enforcement agents, the Phoenix noted.

However, it appears that all other Florida institutions with sworn police departments will follow FAU’s lead to comply with a February directive from Gov. Ron DeSantis requiring state law enforcement agencies to enter into an agreement “to execute functions of immigration enforcement within the state” so “deportations can be carried out more efficiently.”

“All state law enforcement agencies are expected to follow the governor’s Feb. 19 directive on working U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” FAU spokesperson Joshua Glanzer wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “This includes FAUPD and other state university police departments.”

The move comes after Florida Atlantic hired former GOP lawmaker Adam Hasner to be president in February. Hasner, who once boasted of being “the most partisan Republican in Tallahassee,” served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010. Prior to taking the top job at FAU, Hasner was an executive at the GEO Group, a for-profit prison company.

The GEO Group currently runs more than a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in California, Florida, Texas and various other states, according to its website.

Hasner’s history with the GEO Group was a matter of contention for students and others during the hiring process; some raised objections during public forums about his for-profit prison past. Other critics expressed concerns about his lack of administrative experience in higher education.

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April 4, 2025
University of Washington alumni seek to revive the spirit of free inquiry
Amid the urban hum of downtown Seattle and the friendly clatter of a FIRE supporters’ meetup, a consequential alliance was born.

Two alumni of the University of Washington, separated by generations but united by a shared purpose, converged in conversation. Cole Daigneault, a freshly minted graduate from the class of 2024, and Bill Severson, a two-time UW graduate who earned his bachelor’s and law degree in the early 1970s, lamented over the encroaching illiberalism at their alma mater.

That evening’s conversation, later sustained through an alumni email listserv, soon crystallized into Husky Alumni for Academic Excellence.

This new, independent UW alumni group has articulated a mission that is ambitious yet essential: “To reinvigorate free and open academic inquiry and to foster a campus ethos where civil discourse and intellectual courage flourish.”

“My hope with this alumni group,” Daigneault says, “is to rally former UW students, who like me, are concerned about the culture of discourse on campus. The group will also be a place for graduated students to continue the fight long after they leave.”

Daigneault’s early activism was catalyzed by the controversy surrounding UW professor Stuart Reges, whose parody land acknowledgment and subsequent legal battles with the university became a major flashpoint in the free speech landscape. Inspired by Reges’ story — and FIRE’s robust defense of him — Daigneault founded Huskies for Liberty in 2022, a UW student organization devoted to “the preservation of free expression and individual liberty on campus and beyond.”

The fight for free speech on campus, as history has long demonstrated, is never truly won. It must be waged anew by each generation.

Furthermore, through FIRE’s Campus Scholar Program, Daigneault organized “Free Speech Matters,” UW’s first student-led conference devoted to the enduring relevance of free speech, civil discourse, and academic freedom.

Alongside Daigneault, Bill Severson brings over a half-century of legal experience and an unabiding love for his alma mater. His concerns over the state of higher education were sparked by the 2017 debacle at Evergreen State College, where an angry mob of students confronted Professor Bret Weinstein for publicly objecting to a proposal that white students and professors leave campus for Evergreen’s annual “Day of Absence.”

“I was appalled by how that situation was handled,” Severson recounts. “It led me to explore thinkers like Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker and organizations like FIRE.”

Severson’s recollections of his time in school are colored with a mixture of nostalgia and grave concern. “When I attended UW in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the atmosphere on campus was markedly different than today. Then, as now, students and faculty leaned left, but it was not a monoculture and there was not such a marked intolerance of other viewpoints.”

The emergent partnership between Daigneault and Severson is not only remarkable, it highlights an enduring truth: The defense of free speech on campus is not a transient endeavor but a generational relay, requiring both the vigor of youth and wisdom of age. One without the other is as useful as a compass without a needle.

Daigneault and Severson’s decision to form Husky Alumni for Academic Excellence is timely, to say the least.

“Last year, free speech became a major campus issue due to widespread protests over the Israel-Hamas War,” Daigneault recalls. “Unfortunately, alongside many instances of protected expression, we also saw a rise in illiberal behaviors, such as shouting down speakers, preventing students from accessing public areas, and even vandalizing historic buildings on campus.”

Daigneault’s reflections are not mere anecdotes. They are substantiated by FIRE’s reports. UW has consistently languished near the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings (in 2022, UW was the lowest ranked public university). And 2024 was not much better: UW ranked 226 out of 257 schools.

The data is grim:
- 71% of students believe it is sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker.
- 30% think using violence to silence a speaker is sometimes acceptable.
- 50% admit to self-censoring on campus at least once or twice a month.
Among the faculty and administration, the picture is scarcely brighter. According to FIRE’s 2024 Faculty Survey Report, over one-third of UW faculty respondents confessed to moderating their writing to avoid controversy, while 40% expressed uncertainty about the administration’s commitment to protecting free speech.

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For Severson, the conclusion is clear.

“Educational institutions have lost their way,” he says, though he insists there is still hope. “Alumni can be a force to push schools back toward their mission — promoting honest inquiry, academic excellence, the pursuit of truth, and the dissemination of knowledge.”

In the burgeoning movement of alumni stewardship, Daigneault and Severson offer a clarion call to UW alumni who not only revere the university’s storied past (UW is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast), but also seek to reclaim it against the present maladies of orthodoxy and intellectual timidity.

The fight for free speech on campus, as history has long demonstrated, is never truly won. It must be waged anew by each generation. Daigneault and Severson have valiantly taken up the mantle. The question remains, who will join them?

If you’re ready to join Husky Alumni for Academic Excellence, or if you’re interested in forming a free speech alumni alliance at your alma mater, contact us at [email protected]. We’ll connect you with like-minded alumni and offer guidance on how to effectively protect free speech and academic freedom for all.
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January 10, 2025