Tag: Silence

  • Trump attacks DEI; faculty pick between silence, resistance

    Trump attacks DEI; faculty pick between silence, resistance

    Republicans in red states have been attacking diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education for years. But when Donald Trump retook the White House and turned the federal executive branch against DEI, blue-state academics had new cause to worry. A tenured law professor in the University of California system—who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation and harassment—said they read one of the executive orders that Trump quickly issued on DEI and anticipated trouble.

    “Seeing how ambiguous it is with respect to how they are defining diversity, equity and inclusion, and understanding that the ambiguity is purposeful, I decided to take off from my [university website] bio my own specialty in critical race theory, so that I would not be a target either of the [Trump] administration or of the people that they are empowering to harass,” the professor said.

    The professor said they also told their university they’re not interested in teaching a class called Critical Race Theory for the rest of the Trump administration. They said they faced harassment for teaching it even before Trump returned to the presidency. “A lot of law schools also have race in the law classes, we have centers that are focused on race,” the professor said. “And so all of these kinds of centers and people are really, really concerned—not just about their research, but really, again, about themselves—what kind of individualized scrutiny are they going to get and what’s going to happen to them and their jobs.”

    Given all that, self-protection seemed important. “Things are going to get much worse before they get better,” the professor said, adding that “people are very scared to draw attention to their work if they’re working on issues of race. People like me are pre-emptively censoring themselves.”

    Other faculty, though, say they’re freshly emboldened to resist the now-nationalized DEI crackdown. One with tenure declared it’s time to “take it out and use it.” Inside Higher Ed interviewed a dozen professors for this article, including some at institutions that have seen changes since Trump’s return to office, to see how the crackdown is, or isn’t, affecting them and their colleagues. Their responses range from defiance to self-censorship beyond what Trump’s DEI actions actually require, but all share concern about what’s yet to unfold.

    Diversity, Equity and Confusion

    Trump’s efforts to eradicate DEI began on Inauguration Day, with the returning president issuing an executive order that called for terminating “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI” across the federal government. The dictate went on to state that these activities must be stamped out “under whatever name they appear.”

    That order didn’t specifically mention higher education, but the one Trump signed the following day did. It directed all federal agencies “to combat illegal private-sector DEI” programs, demanding that each agency identify “potential civil compliance investigations”—including of up to nine universities with endowments exceeding $1 billion.

    That was Week One. Week Two began with news of a DEI-related funding freeze whose scope was simultaneously sweeping and confusing. A White House Office of Management and Budget memo told federal agencies to pause grants or loans. The office said it was trying to stop funding activities that “may be implicated by the executive orders,” including DEI and “woke gender ideology.”

    Federal judges swiftly blocked this freeze. The Trump administration rescinded the memo. Nevertheless, the White House press secretary wrote on X that “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.”

    The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. While college and university DEI administrators and offices may feel the brunt of the anti-DEI crusade as these positions and entities are eliminated, the campaign could also cast a pall over faculty speech and teaching.

    “This administration does not seem to care about the Constitution or about the existing law,” the anonymous law professor said, adding that “I think, unlike ever before in my own lifetime, I don’t feel safe or secure or I don’t feel the safety of the Constitution in the way that I have in the past.”

    Vice President JD Vance has called professors “the enemy.” The professor said this “has really empowered a lot of civil society to see us as the problem.”

    But Jonathan Feingold, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Law who’s on the cusp of earning tenure and says he’ll continue to teach critical race theory, is counseling against what he and others have called “anticipatory obedience” to Trump.

    “What I am seeing anecdotally reported across the country is universities either scrubbing websites or even potentially shuttering programs or offices,” Feingold said. But he said of the Jan. 21 anti-DEI executive order that “with respect to DEI, there is nothing in it that I see that requires universities to take any action. It certainly is rhetorically jarring and should be understood as a threat, but I don’t see anything that should compel institutions to do anything.”

    “The executive order does not define what Trump is saying is unlawful,” Feingold said. He noted it “almost always is attaching to DEI the term ‘illegal’ or ‘unlawful’ or ‘discriminatory’—which, I believe, is a recognition that DEI-type policies of themselves are not unlawful.” He said the order “rehearses the same racist-laden, homophobic-laden, anti-DEI talking points that the Trump administration loves to go to, but, if you read it closely, it reveals that even the Trump administration recognizes that under existing federal law, most of the DEI-type programs that universities have around the country are wholly lawful.”

    The bottom of that executive order also lists a few carve-outs that may limit the impact on classrooms. The exceptions say the order doesn’t prevent “institutions of higher education from engaging in First Amendment–protected speech,” nor does it stop educators at colleges and universities from, “as part of a larger course of academic instruction,” advocating for “the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order.”

    While Feingold said the order doesn’t have teeth, he nevertheless thinks “it’s a very, very dangerous moment right now for faculty members to do their job because the administration is making very clear that it is not OK with any political opposition.” But, he said, “Voluntary compliance is a foolish strategy, given that Trump has telegraphed that he views an independent, autonomous higher education as an enemy. And so I think it’s foolish to think that scrubbing some words on a website are going to satiate what appears to be a desire to suppress any sort of dissenting speech.”

    Still, scrubbing is happening.

    Scrubbing Words

    A few days after Trump’s executive orders, Northeastern University, also in Boston, changed the page for its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to instead say “Belonging at Northeastern.” Northeastern spokespeople didn’t explain to Inside Higher Ed why the institution took this step; its vice president for communications said in a statement that “while internal structures and approaches may need to be adjusted, the university’s core values don’t change. We believe that embracing our differences—and building a community of belonging—makes Northeastern stronger.”

    In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Kris Manjapra, the university’s Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies, declined to speak specifically to what’s happening at Northeastern “because I just don’t have a clear sense of what’s happening.” But, nationally, Manjapra said, “We are witnessing a series of challenges to academic freedom” and witnessing the rise of “what seems to be a fascist coalition, and we are clearly seeing the beginning of reprisals against different institutions that are essential to the functioning of democracy.”

    “Although the current language of the attack is being framed as the crackdown on DEIA,” Manjapra said, using the longer initialism for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, he said he thinks that’s a “shroud” for what will likely “become a wider attack on the very foundations of what we do at universities—fundamentally, the practice of scientific inquiry and pursuit of ethical reflection.” He also said there’s a larger “attack on democracy and on civil society” in the offing.

    “Part of my research has been on the context of German-speaking Europe, and what was happening in the 1920s, in the 1930s, in Germany, and it’s chilling to see patterns from the past return—especially the attack on universities and on free speech and on books,” Manjapra said.

    But he said he’s not being chilled; quite the opposite. “The only change that may happen is that I will just be speaking more boldly,” Manjapra said. He said this is “an attack on the very essence of our purpose as academics. And in the face of that attack, the only thing that can be done is to face it head-on.”

    In the Midwest, a Republican-controlled state that already cracked down on DEI now appears to be going further, according to one faculty member. An untenured Iowa State University assistant professor—who said he wished to remain anonymous for fear of exposing colleagues to retaliation and for fear of colleagues limiting their future communication—said he attended a town hall meeting for his college last week after Trump’s executive orders. While state legislators had already banned DEI offices across Iowa’s public universities, the assistant professor said his dean now said more action was required.

    “Our directive is to eliminate officers and committees with DEIA missions in governance documents and remove language from strategic plan documents about DEIA objectives, and plans for both those are underway across the university,” the professor said. He said, “We know from state politics that state legislators and the governor’s office are going to be looking for workarounds, so they’re not just interested in the literal language, they’re going to be looking probably to see if there’s any way that people are trying to linguistically skirt the specific requirements.”

    The professor said his dean guessed “we have something like two weeks to make these changes.” In an emailed response to Inside Higher Ed’s questions, an Iowa State spokesperson said simply that the university “continues to work with the Iowa Board of Regents to provide guidance to the campus community on compliance with the state DEI law,” without mentioning any role Trump’s recent actions may be playing.

    As for his own teaching, the Iowa professor said, “I don’t intend to change my own curriculum.” He said, “There are classes that I regularly teach that the current content of which would almost certainly get me into trouble.” He said, “I’m asking myself now, ‘What would I be willing to lose my job for?’ and, ‘What would our administrators and university leadership be willing to lose their jobs for?’”

    On Thursday, a communications officer for the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing sent out an email saying that “Georgia Tech communicators, including myself, have been directed to delete all content that contains any of the following words that are in the context of DEI from any Georgia Tech affiliated website,” including “DEI,” all the words that make up DEI, “inclusive excellence” and “justice.”

    “Unfortunately, this will result in the deletion of dozens of stories that I and previous communications officers have written,” he wrote. He also said that the faculty hiring page had been taken down and would remain down until faculty and staff “submit new copy” for that page.

    Faculty shared this communication online, expressing concerns and debating what it meant. Dan Spieler, an associate psychology professor at Georgia Tech, said the threats of universities not getting research grant funding “has the potential to blow a massive hole in Georgia Tech’s budget—a massive hole in, like, everyone’s budget.” So, he said that, among administrators, “my guess is that there’s a lot of discussion about how do we stay off the radar, how do we keep the grants flowing?”

    (In an emailed statement to Inside Higher Ed, a Georgia Tech spokesperson said, “As a critical research partner for the federal government, Georgia Tech will ensure compliance with all federal and state rules as well as policies set by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia to continue accelerating American innovation and competitiveness. Efforts to examine and update our web presence are part of this ongoing work.”)

    At institutions with weak faculty governance such as Georgia Tech, Spieler said, “administrators will largely have free rein, at least in the first pass” for deciding how to respond. But, when it comes to his own teaching, he said, “I’m not going to change a goddamn thing, because I have tenure and if you don’t take it out and use it once in a while, then, you know, what’s the point?”

    “I think we’re going to find out who truly was actually interested and committed to ideals like diversity, equity and inclusion, and who was just paying lip service to it,” he said.

    Dànielle DeVoss, a tenured professor and department chair of writing, rhetoric and cultures at Michigan State University—which made headlines over canceling and then rescheduling a Lunar New Year event after Trump retook the presidency—said, “I think we’re in the midst of a deliberate, strategic campaign of generating fear and anxiety.” She suggested faculty and administrators may have to respond to Trump’s DEI crackdown differently.

    “I suspect university-level messaging has to be much more nuanced,” DeVoss said. “I mean, we’re a public institution. Individual faculty and academic middle managers like myself have, I think, more wiggle room to be activists and advocates. But our top-level administration, their responsibility is to protect our institution, our funding, our budgets.” However, she said, “faculty have academic freedom, and of course freedom of speech, protecting our individual actions.”

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  • As DEI is scapegoated, silence is complicity (opinion)

    As DEI is scapegoated, silence is complicity (opinion)

    President Trump has used diversity, equity and inclusion to explain failures in education, the economy and national security, so you might think we’d be inured to his strategies by now. When he blamed the tragic plane crash in Washington, D.C., on DEI, he reached a new nadir of callousness. The victims of the crash had not even been recovered and he was blaming DEI policies for “lower” standards. When pressed by reporters, he couldn’t even articulate the object of his complaint or any specifics related to last week’s crash. His instinct, though, reveals a deeper, more troubling current.

    By tacking immediately to DEI in the wake of a tragedy, he seeks to create an association in the minds of Americans: People of color are underqualified and incompetent. As a woman of color who earned a Ph.D. and is also the president of a university, I know these narratives are baseless. I know how many talented, innovative people of color there are in our country. I know that their leadership, research and intelligence have produced countless benefits to our society. I also know that we have spent the last century undoing the psychological and practical damage of systemic racism in our nation. We have spent precious capital in our country recreating equality of opportunity, and programs of diversity, equity and inclusion have been essential to this transformation.

    When a president of the United States has the audacity to pose DEI as a corruption tool he is combating, I cannot be silent. It is an affront to those who sacrificed in the multiple civil rights struggles of the 20th century and helped position our nation as a place with more equality of opportunity than ever in our history. Education has been a central part of that architecture.

    As a student of language and culture, I also know that when a president and his narrow-minded minions repeat a paradigm ad nauseam, people start to believe it. The forerunner of exclusion and violence across history has been gradual dehumanization. Let us not be complicit with our silence.

    DeRionne P. Pollard is president of Nevada State University. The views expressed here are her own and do not represent the views of Nevada State University or the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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  • Deafening Silence on PIAAC | HESA

    Deafening Silence on PIAAC | HESA

    Last month, right around the time the blog was shutting down, the OECD released its report on the second iteration of the Programme for International Assessment for Adult Competencies (PIAAC), titled “Do Adults Have the Skills They Need to Thrive in a Changing World?”. Think of it perhaps as PISA for grown-ups, providing a broadly useful cross-national comparison of basic cognitive skills which are key to labour market success and overall productivity. You are forgiven if you didn’t hear about it: its news impact was equivalent to the proverbial tree falling in a forest. Today, I will skim briefly over the results, but more importantly, ponder why this kind of data does not generate much news.

    First administered in 2011, PIAAC consists of three parts: a test for literacy, numeracy, and what they call “adaptive problem solving” (this last one has changed a bit—in the previous iteration it was something called “problem-solving in technology-rich environments). The test scale for is from 0 to 500, and individuals are categorized as being in one of six “bands” (1 through 5, with 5 being the highest, and a “below 1,” which is the lowest). National scores across all three of these areas are highly correlated, which is to say that if country is at the top or bottom, or even in the middle on literacy, it’s almost certainly pretty close to the same rank order for numeracy and problem solving as well. National scores all cluster in the 200 to 300 range.

    One of the interesting—and frankly somewhat terrifying—discoveries of PIAAC 2 is that literacy and numeracy scores are down in most of the OECD outside of northern Europe. Across all participating countries, literacy is down fifteen points, and numeracy by seven. Canada is about even in literacy and up slightly in numeracy—this is one trend it’s good to buck. The reason for this is somewhat mysterious—an aging population probably has something to do with it, because literacy and numeracy do start to fall off with age (scores peak in the 25-34 age bracket)—but I would be interested to see more work on the role of smart phones. Maybe it isn’t just teenagers whose brains are getting wrecked?

    The overall findings actually aren’t that interesting. The OECD hasn’t repeated some of the analyses that made the first report so fascinating (results were a little too interesting, I guess), so what we get are some fairly broad banalities—scores rise with education levels, but also with parents’ education levels; employment rates and income rise with skills levels; there is broadly a lot of skill mis-match across all economies, and this is a Bad Thing (I am not sure it is anywhere near as bad as OECD assumes, but whatever). What remains interesting, once you read over all the report, are the subtle differences one picks up in the results from one country to another.

    So, how does Canada do, you ask? Well, as Figure 1 shows, we are considered to be ahead of the OECD average, which is good so far as it goes. However, we’re not at the top. The head of the class across all measures are Finland, Japan, and Sweden, followed reasonably closely by the Netherlands and Norway. Canada is in a peloton behind that with a group including Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Estonia, the Flemish region of Belgium, and maybe England. This is basically Canada’s sweet spot in everything when it comes to education, skills, and research: good but not great, and it looks worse if you adjust for the amount of money we spend on this stuff.

    Figure 1: Key PIAAC scores, Canada vs OECD, 2022-23

    Canadian results can also be broken down by province, as in Figure 2, below. Results do not vary much across most of the country. Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec all cluster pretty tightly around the national average. British Columbia and Alberta are significantly above that average, while New Brunswick and Newfoundland are significantly below it. Partly, of course, this has to do with things you’d expect like provincial income, school policies, etc. But remember that this is across entire populations, not school leavers, and so internal immigration plays a role here too. Broadly speaking, New Brunswick and Newfoundland lose a lot of skills to places further west, while British Columbia and Alberta are big recipients of immigration from places further east (international migration tends to reduce average scores: language skills matter and taking the test in a non-native tongue tends to result in lower overall results).

    Figure 2: Average PIAAC scores by province, 2022-23

    Anyways, none of this is particularly surprising or perhaps even all that interesting. What I think is interesting is how differently this data release was handled from the one ten years ago. When the first PIAAC was released a decade ago, Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) published a 110-page analysis of the results (which I analyzed in two posts, one on Indigenous and immigrant populations, and another on Canadian results more broadly) and an additional 300(!)-page report lining up the PIAAC data with data on formal and informal adult learning. It was, all in all, pretty impressive. This time, CMEC published a one-pager which linked to a Statscan page which contains all of three charts and two infographics (fortunately, the OECD itself put out a 10-pager that is significantly better than anything domestic analysis). But I think all of this points to something pretty important, which is this:

    Canadian governments no longer care about skills. At least not in the sense that PIAAC (or PISA for that matter) measures them.

    What they care about instead are shortages of very particular types of skilled workers, specifically health professions and the construction trades (which together make up about 20% of the workforce). Provincial governments will throw any amount of money at training in these two sets of occupations because they are seen as bottlenecks in a couple of key sectors of the economy. They won’t think about the quality of the training being given or the organization of work in the sector (maybe we wouldn’t need to train as many people if the labour produced by such training was more productive?). God forbid. I mean that would be difficult. Complex. Requiring sustained expert dialogue between multiple stakeholders/partners. No, far easier just to crank out more graduates, by lowering standards if necessary (a truly North Korean strategy).

    But actual transversal skills? The kind that make the whole economy (not just a politically sensitive 20%) more productive? I can’t name a single government in Canada that gives a rat’s hairy behind. They used to, twenty or thirty years ago. But then we started eating the future. Now, policy capacity around this kind of thing has atrophied to the point where literally no one cares when a big study like PIAAC comes out.

    I don’t know why we bother, to be honest. If provincial governments and their ministries of education in particular (personified in this case by CMEC) can’t be arsed to care about something as basic as the skill level of the population, why spend millions collecting the data? Maybe just admit our profound mediocrity and move on.

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  • Embracing the Silence – Faculty Focus

    Embracing the Silence – Faculty Focus

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