Tag: Trump

Panic hits Harvard international students after Trump crackdown

As per a statement released by Kristi Noem, US homeland security secretary, Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification has been revoked because of their “failure to adhere to the law.”

“As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies, you have lost this privilege,” read the letter by Noem to Harvard University, shared on X, formerly Twitter.

“The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year.”

Students set to join Harvard this year are now relying on the institution to take urgent action to keep their dreams of studying at the Ivy League institution alive.

“I already had to defer my intake from last year to this year due to lack of funds. Deferring again just isn’t an option for me,” stated Pravin Deshmukh, an incoming student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

“We’re hoping the university can find some form of solution and keep us updated on what’s happening. Harvard has been very proactive over the past few weeks. They’ve reassured incoming students like me of their commitment through emails, provided details on continuing classes online, and shared ways to stay in touch with the International Office.”

Currently, over 6,800 international students are enrolled at the university, making up 27% of this year’s student body, with a significant portion hailing from countries such as China, India, Canada, South Korea, and the UK.

WhatsApp groups are on fire – everyone’s panicking, wondering what’s going to happen next. Some parents were planning to attend graduation ceremonies, but now students are telling them, ‘Don’t say you’re coming to visit us.’

Harvard GSE student

The vast international student cohort at the campus will also have to transfer to another US university or risk losing their legal immigration status, according to Noem, which puts the current students in jeopardy.

“For graduating students, it feels like our degrees could be rendered useless and we might even be labeled as illegal immigrants,” a student at Harvard’s GSE, who requested anonymity, told The PIE.

“Some students are considering staying in the U.S. by transferring their SEVIS to community colleges if Harvard can’t find a solution.”

“WhatsApp groups are on fire – everyone’s panicking, wondering what’s going to happen next. Some parents were planning to attend graduation ceremonies, but now students are telling them, ‘Don’t say you’re coming to visit us,’” the student added.

While Noem has issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Harvard, demanding the university hand over all disciplinary records from the past five years related to international students involved in illegal activities and protests on and off campus, students across Harvard’s schools told The PIE that professors and deans have arranged meetings with them to address any questions or concerns.

“We received an email from the Harvard University president regarding available support, information about Zoom sessions hosted by Harvard’s international offices, and a text-message service for ICE-related threats. Today, a session is being held in person at our school with professors and the Dean,” the Harvard student stated.

“This is Harvard — they will take a stand, unlike Columbia University or MIT. They have our backs.”

Some students have voiced concerns about their parents traveling to the US for their graduation ceremonies, but feel reassured by Harvard’s stand that commencement will proceed as planned on May 29th.

“The Harvard website is being updated regularly, and we have been asked to keep an eye on it, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty. Since yesterday, many of us have been wondering whether we will graduate and the next steps. The morning email confirmed that commencement will continue as planned,” stated another Harvard student, who didn’t wish to be named.

“There’s a shift in the atmosphere, making it very difficult to plan the next steps. We couldn’t have imagined something like this happening six months ago, but you have to be prepared for anything.”

In the meantime Harvard has a released a statement, doubling down on its commitment towards international students.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” stated the University.

“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

Furthermore, the institution’s swift lawsuit against the Trump administration over the international student ban resulted in a major victory, as US District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order against the government’s plan to strip Harvard of its ability to recruit international students.

According to Sameer Kamat, founder, MBA Crystal Ball, a leading MBA admissions consultancy in India, the Trump administration could choose to extend the deadline for Harvard to comply with its requirements, similar to its approach on trade tariffs in recent weeks.

“For all we know, Trump may ease off the pressure and give Harvard more time to comply, like he did with the tariff deadlines on his trade partners. But for now, it puts all international students in a limbo. They’ve become collateral damage in a fight that they never wanted to be part of,” stated Kamat.

“He had played a similar move on Canada and Mexico by giving them a very tight deadline to bring down their tariffs for American goods. This was to push them into action. And then on the final day, he pushed the deadline by a month. Which is why I am thinking, we can’t rule out the possibility of that happening this time. Considering he put a 72-hour deadline, which runs into the weekend.”

According to Namita Mehta, president, The Red Pen, consultancies like hers are actively supporting affected students by providing guidance, clarifying policy updates, and connecting them with legal or immigration experts as needed.

“While the announcement has understandably caused concern, it’s essential to recognise that such decisions are often part of broader political narratives and may be temporary,” stated Mehta.

“While students and families should stay engaged, informed, and proactive, it is equally important to remain hopeful. The strength of institutions like Harvard lies in their academic excellence and capacity to navigate complex challenges with integrity and vision.”

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May 24, 2025
Trump administration revokes Harvard’s ability to enroll international students
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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday pulled Harvard University’s authorization to enroll international students, dramatically escalating the already-tense battle between the Trump administration and the Ivy League institution.
- The agency accused Harvard of creating a “toxic campus climate” by accommodating “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators.” Kristi Noem, head of the department, also accused the university of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.”
- The move, which the university on Thursday called unlawful, endangers the visas of Harvard’s international students, as they must transfer to another college or they will lose their legal status. Almost 6,800 international students attended Harvard in the 2024-25 academic year, making up 27.2% of the university’s student body, according to institutional data.
Dive Insight:

In April, DHS threatened to revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification if the university did not comply with an extensive records request about its “foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities” by the end of the month. International students studying in the U.S. can only attend colleges that are SEVP-approved.

But DHS’ threat against Harvard, while substantial, was largely sidelined from public attention amid the Trump administration’s vast interruptions and cuts to the university’s federal funding.

That includes the Trump administration’s decision to freeze $2.2 billion of Harvard’s funding the same day the university publicly rebuked the government’s demands for academic, hiring and enrollment changes.

Since then, Harvard has sued the federal government over the withheld funding, arguing it is being used “as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking” and has “nothing at all to do with antisemitism” and compliance with civil rights laws as the Trump administration claims.

The university now faces another attack on its financial well-being: the loss of tuition revenue from international students.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem said in a statement Thursday.

In an email Thursday, a Harvard spokesperson called DHS’ actions unlawful and said the university’s international students and scholars enrich it immeasurably.

“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” the spokesperson said.

Last month, Harvard’s undergraduate admissions office notified prospective international students that they may want to have a “backup plan” in place amid DHS’ threats, The Harvard Crimson reported. To that end, the university began allowing them to accept admission to both Harvard and another non-American institution.

However, Harvard still bans international students from accepting spots at other U.S. colleges. In addition to legal reasons, the university said “the situation at Harvard might be replicated at other American universities,” according to the Crimson.

Noam signaled her willingness to do just that.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” she said Thursday, arguing that Harvard had “had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing” and refused.

Free speech advocates immediately panned DHS’ decision.

“The administration seems hellbent on employing every means at its disposal — no matter how unlawful or unconstitutional — to retaliate against Harvard and other colleges and universities for speech it doesn’t like,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said in a statement Thursday.

FIRE also called DHS’ wide-ranging records request from Harvard “gravely alarming.”

“This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected,” the organization said.

SEVP, a bureaucratic program not typically in the national limelight, gained attention as DHS under President Donald Trump abruptly canceled scores of visas held by international students studying in the U.S.

These revocations, often enacted by the agency without warning or explanation, have prompted numerous lawsuits against DHS.

On April 25, the Trump administration doublebacked and reinstated the canceled visas, the exact number of which is unknown. The move came after judges in more than 50 lawsuits issued temporary injunctions against the visa cancellations, according to Politico.

However, just days later, the Trump administration shared a policy expanding the authority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to terminate educational visas through Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, the records management system run by SEVP.

Under the policy, evidence of an international student’s failure to comply with the terms of their legal status — not proof or “clear and convincing evidence” — would be enough for ICE to revoke it, according to guidance issued Thursday by the law firm Hunton.

The guidance also noted that the new policy did not address the federal government’s practice of terminating students’ visas without notifying them — meaning they may still have their legal status pulled without either them or their colleges being informed.
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May 22, 2025
Trump bars Harvard from enrolling international students in alarming crackdown on speech

Today, the Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered her department to end Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, citing the university’s failure to hand over the behavioral records of student visa holders.

The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to escalate its assault against Harvard University by revoking its ability to enroll international students is retaliatory and unlawful.

Secretary Noem’s letter warns that the Trump administration seeks to “root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.” But little is more un-American than a federal bureaucrat demanding that a private university demonstrate its ideological fealty to the government under pain of punishment.

The Department’s demand that Harvard produce audio and video footage of all protest activity involving international students over the last five years is gravely alarming. This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected.

The Department is already arresting and seeking to deport students for engaging in protected political activity it disfavors. Were Harvard to capitulate to Secretary Noem’s unlawful demands, more students could face such consequences. The administration’s demand for a surveillance state at Harvard is anathema to American freedom.

The administration seems hellbent on employing every means at its disposal — no matter how unlawful or unconstitutional — to retaliate against Harvard and other colleges and universities for speech it doesn’t like. This has to stop.

Since 1999, FIRE has fought for free speech and academic freedom at Harvard and campuses nationwide, and we will continue to do so. We know there is work to do. Whatever Harvard’s past failings, core campus rights cannot and will not be secured by surveillance, retaliation, and censorship.

No American should accept the federal government punishing its political opponents by demanding ideological conformity, surveilling and retaliating against protected speech, and violating the First Amendment.

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May 22, 2025
Trump Administration Strips Harvard’s SEVIS Certification

Amid an ongoing legal showdown with Harvard University, the Trump administration has carried through on a recent threat to halt the private institution’s ability to host international students.

The move was first reported Thursday afternoon by The New York Times, then subsequently announced on social media by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus. It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem wrote in the announcement. “Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.”

(Though much of the federal government’s recent focus on Harvard has concerned the university’s alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus, the Trump administration has also raised questions about collaboration with foreign researchers, particularly those with ties to the Chinese and Iranian governments.)

In her statement, Noem wrote that Harvard’s Student Exchange and Visitor Information System certification was being stripped “as a result of their failure to adhere to the law,” which she said should “serve as a warning to all universities” across the U.S.

Current international students would be required to transfer to maintain their visa status.

Noem added that Harvard would need to turn over demanded records within 72 hours if it would “like the opportunity of regaining” SEVIS certification “before the upcoming school year.”

A Harvard spokesperson called the action “unlawful” in an emailed statement.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University—and this nation—immeasurably,” the spokesperson wrote. “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

Impact on Harvard

Harvard enrolled 6,793 international students last fall, according to university data. International students have made up about a quarter of Harvard’s head count over the last decade—a population that could disappear, along with their substantial tuition dollars, if the Trump administration’s directive holds.

Noem threatened to revoke Harvard’s SEVIS certification last month after the university pushed back on federal government demands to turn over “detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities by April 30.” That threat followed Harvard’s refusal to acquiesce to sweeping demands to overhaul its governance, admissions and hiring processes and more in response to allegations of antisemitic conduct. The university then sued the Trump administration over a federal funding freeze and other recent actions.

Revoking Harvard’s SEVIS certification is the second punch the government threw at the university this week, coming after the Department of Health and Human Services announced the termination of $60 million in multiyear federal grants, which officials attributed to concerns about campus antisemitism.

Other sources of federal funding are on hold. Altogether, the Trump administration has frozen at least $2.7 billion flowing to the private university, or about a third of Harvard’s federal funds.

A New Political Cudgel

The Student Exchange and Visitor Program’s process for revoking universities’ SEVIS status is usually a prolonged and complicated bureaucratic affair, typically preceded by a thorough investigation of the institution and the possibility of appeal.

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, told Inside Higher Ed that the manner in which the federal government stripped Harvard’s SEVIS certification was unprecedented.

“In a normal world, Harvard is supposed to actually get a notice that their SEVIS certification is being revoked, and then there is an appeals process,” Spreitzer said. “It doesn’t seem that DHS is following any of the regular requirements that are included in statute for taking this action.”

In late March, Trump officials first proposed revoking SEVIS status from institutions that they believed fostered antisemitism on campus, aiming their threats specifically at Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, which were home to major pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. In mid-April they threatened Harvard with decertification.

Clay Harmon, director of AIRC: The Association of International Enrollment Management, told Inside Higher Ed in March that historically, SEVP investigations are conducted when universities are suspected of delivering less-than-bona-fide degree programs, using shady coursework as a way to essentially sell student visas to would-be immigrants who want a fast way to enter the country.

“It is the government’s primary way of ensuring that international student visas are not granted for diploma mills, fake institutions or institutions that are not adequately financially supported,” Harmon said. “I’ve never heard of a fully accredited, reputable institution—whether it’s Columbia or Bunker Hill Community College—being subjected to some kind of extraordinary SEVP investigation outside of the standard recertification process.”

The initial process of certification, Harmon added, is intensive and can take institutions months or even longer to complete, which is one reason why decertification is so rare. Wielding the organization’s oversight powers as a tool for leverage in a larger political battle, he said, would be “a significant departure from past practices and established precedents.”

“It is clear that the administration is putting forward new interpretations of laws and powers that have not been established through case law or regular practice,” Harmon said.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed on Thursday, Harmon said the administration’s decision to use decertification against Harvard “imposes real, immediate, and significant harm on thousands of students for reasons outside their control and unrelated to their own actions.”

“This action may have broad and long-term negative impacts—well beyond Harvard and well beyond 2025—to the educational experience and financial health of U.S. institutions,” he wrote.

Revocation of Harvard’s SEVIS certification prompted sharp reactions online.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on social media that Noem’s actions are “likely illegal” and her letter showed no evidence of Harvard’s violations.

“Nothing in here alleges ANY specific violation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Nothing. She cites no law violated, no regulation broken, no policy ignored,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “I don’t care what you think of Harvard; this is clear weaponization of government.”

Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called the government’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to host international students “retaliatory and unlawful.”

In a statement posted on X, he assailed the Education Department’s demands that Harvard hand over footage of international students protesting on campus.

“This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected,” Creeley wrote. “The administration’s demand for a surveillance state at Harvard is anathema to American freedom … This has to stop.”

But some officials in the MAGA camp celebrated the move.

“This is a remarkable first step,” Republican senator Ashley Moody of Florida wrote on X. “I applaud the administration for taking a stand to rid our universities of malign foreign influence.”

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May 22, 2025
Trump Adviser Blames “Scientific Slowdown” on DEI, Red Tape

President Donald Trump’s science adviser and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy believes the recent, seismic cuts to federal research funding offer “a moment of clarity” for the scientific community to rethink its priorities, including the government’s role in supporting research.

Michael Kratsios, who is pushing for increased private sector support of research, said that federal investment in scientific research—much of which happens at universities—has yielded “diminishing returns” over the past 45 years.

“As in scientific inquiry, when we uncover evidence that conflicts with our existing theories, we revise our theories and conduct further experiments to better understand the truth,” Kratsios, a former tech executive with ties to tech titan and conservative activist Peter Thiel, said at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. “This evidence of a scientific slowdown should spur us to experiment with new systems, new models, new ways of funding, conducting and using science.”

But some experts believe Kratsios’s comments mischaracterized trends in the nation’s academic research enterprise, which has been faced with decades of declining federal funding.

“Kratsios may have things exactly backward. Our growth has slowed down over decades—the same decades where we have been funding science less and less as a share of GDP,” Benjamin Jones, an economics professor at Northwestern University and former senior economist for macroeconomics for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Federally supported research is near its lowest level in the last 70 years. If the U.S. really wants to be ‘first’ in the world, the key will be how fast we advance. Cutting science is just a huge brake on our engine.”

A wide body of literature confirms that federally funded research and development continues to produce enormous social returns. A 2024 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed that rates of return on nondefense R&D spending range from 140 to 210 percent. Another report from United for Medical Research determined that for every dollar the National Institutes of Health spent on research funding in 2024, it generated $2.56 of economic activity. And yet another science policy expert has estimated that an additional dollar of government-sponsored R&D generates between $2 and $5 in public benefits via economic growth.

But those facts were absent from Kratsios’s remarks, which accused scientists of focusing on “trying to score political points” and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives instead of so-called gold-standard science. “Spending more money on the wrong things is far worse than spending less money on the right things,” he said. “Political biases have displaced the vital search for truth.”

Kratsios also cited “stalled” scientific progress despite “soaring” biomedical research budgets and “stagnated” workforce training as proof that “more money has not meant more scientific discovery, and total dollars spent has not been a proxy for scientific impact.” Since 1980, he specified, “papers and patents across the sciences have become less disruptive,” and since the 1990s, “new drug approvals have flatlined or even declined.”

The White House OSTP did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for Kratsios’s sources of information, but some outside experts said those specific claims have merit, even if they lack additional context.

A 2023 paper in Nature shows that patents and papers are indeed becoming less “disruptive” over time. But the authors themselves said the slowdown is “unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors,” but rather “may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology,” which is presenting increasingly difficult and complex problems for researchers. The authors also called on federal agencies to “invest in the riskier and longer-term individual awards that support careers and not simply specific projects.”

(Many of the federal research grants the Trump administration has terminated in recent months supported those aims, including funding for graduate and postdoctoral students and multiyear projects that weren’t yet complete.)

And even though new inventions may be decreasingly likely to push science and technology in new directions, as the Nature paper indicated, federally funded research has nonetheless expanded its reach to consumers since 1980—the same time frame Kratsios claims has been marked by diminishing returns that warrant an overhaul of federal research policy.

Prior to the 1980s, the government owned the intellectual property of any discoveries made using federal research dollars. The policy gave universities little incentive to find practical uses for inventions, and fewer than 5 percent of the 28,000 patents held by federal agencies had been licensed for use, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

That changed when Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, allowing universities, not-for-profit corporations and small businesses to patent and commercialize federally funded inventions. Universities began transferring inventions to industry partners for commercialization. Between 1996 and 2020, academic technology transfers in the U.S. contributed $1.9 trillion in gross industrial output, supported 6.5 million jobs and resulted in more than 126,000 patents awarded to research institutions, according to data from the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).

As for Kratsios’s claim that drug approvals have “flatlined,” Matt Clancy, a senior research fellow at Open Philanthropy, said that’s a matter of interpretation. “If you think it means discovery is dead and not happening, that’s clearly false,” he said, noting that while drugs had been getting steadily more expensive to develop in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, costs have started falling over the past decade. “If you think it means the rate of discovery has not increased in proportion to the increase in spending, I think that is correct.”

‘The Enemy of Good Science’

Kratsios also tied those alleged declines in innovation to the assertion that researchers have fallen victim to a misguided “professional culture” and to “social pressures.” As an example, he pointed to the scientific community’s insistence on keeping schools closed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus as an example of scientists’ unwillingness to question dominant viewpoints. “Convention, dogma and intellectual fads are the enemy of good science,” he said.

Administrative burdens have also hamstrung the scientific enterprise, he added.

“The money that goes to basic and blue-sky science must be used for that purpose, not to feed the red tape that so often goes along with funded research,” Kratsios said. “We cannot resign our research community and the laboratory and university staff who support them to die the death of a thousand 10-minute tasks. To assist the nation’s scientists in their vocation, we will reduce administrative burdens on federally funded researchers, not bog them down in bureaucratic box checking.”

Expanding the role of private funders is part of Kratsios’s solution.

“In particular, in a period of fiscal constraints and geopolitical challenges, an increase in private funding can make it easier for federal grant-making agencies to refocus public funds on basic research and the national interest,” he said at the NAS meeting, which was attended by university lobbyists and senior administrators.

“Prizes, challenges, public-private partnerships and other novel funding mechanisms can multiply the impact of targeted federal dollars. We must tie grants to clear strategic targets while still allowing for the openness of scientific exploration and so shape a general funding environment that makes clear what our national priorities are.”

According to Kratsios, private industry is well positioned to step in. He claims the sector spends “more than three times on R&D than does the federal government,” though it’s not clear from where he drew that statistic. Data from AUTM shows that in 2023, industry expenditures made up just 6.8 percent of all research spending in the United States, compared to 56.6 percent from the federal government. (Inside Higher Ed has previously reported on the challenges of looking to private funders to meaningfully make up for the Trump administration’s current and proposed cuts to academic research.)

Shalin Jyotishi, senior adviser for education, labor and the future of work at the left-leaning think tank New America, said that while some of the issues that Kratsios raised regarding federal science policy have merit, the administration hasn’t put forth a clear vision for reform.

“Instead, what we are seeing is ‘creative destruction’ playing out across the federal research enterprise—without the ‘creative’ part,” he said. “It’s not too late. The administration can and should still salvage the federal research enterprise and enact reform to make it even better.”

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May 22, 2025
Free Speech Expert Discusses Open Expression and Trump

The University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement launched in 2017, at a time when students were shouting down conservative speakers on campus, raising questions about what role the First Amendment did—and should—play in higher education.

Just eight years later, things have only gotten more complicated—first in the aftermath of an explosive protest movement against Israel’s war in Gaza and then in the wake of the Trump administration’s censorship across all areas of academe.

Amid the chaos, the center and its fellows—researchers from a breadth of disciplines who work on projects related to open expression and civic engagement—continue to educate universities about the First Amendment and investigate the day’s most pressing free speech issues.

Its executive director, Michelle Deutchman, who worked as an attorney for the Anti-Defamation League for 14 years before joining the center, stopped by the Inside Higher Ed office in Washington, D.C., last week to discuss the federal government’s attacks on free expression in higher education. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. What are your biggest concerns with regard to the Trump administration and free speech and open expression in higher ed right now?

Well, sadly, there’s kind of a long list. I think, from my vantage point, one of the greatest concerns is seeing students, and particularly international students, being, basically, taken away on what appears to be the basis of viewpoints and opinions that they might have shared, either in the form of protest or, in one case, an op-ed. That really flies in the face of exactly what the First Amendment is supposed to protect against, especially in a public institution, which is that it’s supposed to be a restraint on government. In fact, what we’re seeing right now is the government stepping over the line of what is permitted, and that is definitely creating, I think, a chilling effect, not just for international students, but for students across the board, whether they’re protesting or not.

I also think that the specter of investigations on campuses—this list of 60 campuses [being investigated for alleged antisemitism], this idea that if you’re on a campus that’s potentially going to be under investigation—might impact what you say in class, outside of class, how you teach, everything that’s fundamental to the academy.

2. What are some of the most common questions you’re getting about what is going on?

Deutchman has led UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement for eight years.

Laurel Hungerford

I don’t get as many questions as you would think, because I don’t give legal advice, and right now, what a lot of people want is legal advice. But I think one of the things that I’m struggling with is, how do you talk about open expression and dialogue in a moment when it’s largely being suppressed on campuses? One of the questions that people have been asking is what to say to students about the risk factors in terms of being very vocal with your opinions, and how should administrators address that—both wanting to, of course, encourage them to use their voices, but also wanting to be transparent about what the risks might be.

There’s just a lot of other, bigger questions that are just about, what does this mean in general for higher education? Is this like an existential moment? What about the coercive use of money? A lot of questions of: Can the government do that? And I think it’s a really challenging situation where the answer is: Not sure that they should be doing it, but they are. So, how do we handle that sort of in-between space while we wait for the law to catch up to what’s going on on the ground?

3. There’s been a lot of emphasis on civic dialogue education as one antidote to tensions around political speech on campus. Do you feel like this moment is sort of setting those efforts back at all?

I don’t want to say they’re setting them back. I worry a little that they might be getting set aside. And that’s a concern that I’ve had, really, since after Oct. 7, where we saw so much time and energy go into the basics about the First Amendment and about time, place and manner, and about whether or not to use law enforcement, that there became a big focus on the enforcement regulations as opposed to sort of education. I think now, so much energy is being put into how to defend higher education against this assault that I worry that efforts that focus on how we teach not just students but all members of higher education communities to engage with one another and listen to one another and build the muscle of civic dialogue—I worry that there isn’t enough bandwidth to pay attention to that, and setting it aside, I think, is to the detriment of everyone at this moment.

4. How is Trump’s cutting of grants his administration deems related to diversity, equity and/or inclusion connected to the government’s other attacks on speech?

I think that the cutting of those kinds of grants is just another attempt at government censorship of speech. Expression and speech are the cornerstones of the creation and transmission of knowledge. So, I think that it you’re stopping grants about certain topics, topics that are either being researched or topics that are being taught, that is something that falls sort of in the viewpoint discrimination area and really runs afoul of the Constitution. We’ve certainly seen some successes in court cases and injunctions, but I think part of the problem is the gap between when an executive order is signed and when an injunction happens, the chilling effect that happens across the university, and this idea that I don’t know that you can unring certain bells.

5. Though many are calling the Trump administration’s attacks unprecedented in many ways, there have been other moments in history when free speech on college campuses has been under assault. What do those moments teach us about what is happening today?

I wish I could tell you that I am a historian, but I’m a lawyer, so I don’t necessarily have that historical perspective. Certainly, I think people say that this is the greatest threat to academic freedom and to the autonomy of the university since McCarthyism. It’s hard to know how, then, to take that information and do something with it, right? I mean, the hopeful take is: Well, we made it through that, even though it was a dark time.

I mean, look, I’m a [University of California, Berkeley] Cal Bear. UC had people do loyalty oaths; it was not a good moment, and look where we are now. I think that is sort of the optimistic hope.

I think the less optimistic [perspective] is that, in some ways, what we’re experiencing is much more far-reaching, and we will just have to wait and see what happens.

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May 21, 2025
Trump vs academia as of May 14 2025 (Bryan Alexander)

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May 16, 2025
U.S. Universities Eye Branch Campuses as Way to “Survive Trump”

Establishing branch campuses abroad—often used as a crisis mitigation strategy—could become more important for U.S. universities facing increasing threats at home, but scholars are divided on their likelihood of success.

Illinois Institute of Technology has announced that it is to build a campus in Mumbai, while Georgetown University, one of six U.S. universities with satellite campuses in Doha, recently renewed its contract in Qatar’s Education City for another 10 years.

Research-intensive colleges and universities in the U.S. are faced with “new and profound uncertainties” over future funding and the strength of their endowments under the Trump administration, said Geoff Harkness, formerly postdoctoral teaching fellow at Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon Universities’ Education City campuses.

“This means that R-1 institutions will have to seek alternative sources of revenue, including partnering with nations in the Middle East. For Georgetown, which has a long-established branch campus at Education City, the renewal was a no-brainer in 2025.”

It comes just a year after Texas A&M closed its campus in Education City, citing “instability” in the region. However, academics said the decision was more likely a reflection of growing pro-Israel politics in the U.S. and unease with Qatar’s role mediating for Hamas in the Gaza conflict.

Harkness, now associate professor of sociology at Rhode Island College, said the Israel-Palestine conflict put Qatar in a difficult position but warned that Texas A&M could regret its decision to leave from a fiscal perspective.

“The nation’s vast resources and relative political moderation make it an appealing partner for U.S. colleges and universities, particularly in light of current economic uncertainties.”

Although not all partnerships are as lucrative as those with the Qatar Foundation, research by Jana Kleibert, professor for economic geography at the University of Hamburg, found that uncertainty around Brexit triggered U.K. universities to explore opening campuses in continental Europe—as Lancaster University did in Leipzig, Germany.

“Branch campuses are often used as a crisis mitigation strategy by universities,” she said.

“In this sense, it is no surprise to me that in situations of financial and geopolitical turbulence, branch campuses become more attractive to decision-makers at universities.”

University leaders hope that overseas campuses can contribute financially to the well-being of the overall institution, either through direct transfers from these sites to the main institutions or through accessing a broader pool of students, said Kleibert.

Recent figures show that U.S.-Chinese collaborative campuses have experienced record-breaking application numbers from both domestic and international students over the past few years.

Illinois Tech began planning its Indian outpost long before President Trump’s unprecedented assault on the U.S. higher education system. But Nigel Healey, professor of international higher education at the University of Limerick, said Trump’s culture wars could increase the “push factors” toward overseas expansion in the future.

“In the medium to long term, branch campuses may offer elite U.S. institutions an alternative way of maintaining their internationalization, accessing international talent and maintaining a global profile at a time when Trump is fostering a new national culture of xenophobia and isolationism,” he said.

However, he warned that the risks of being pushed into a strategy by suddenly changing political winds is that poor, reactive decisions might be made.

“The winds may change in the opposite direction, leaving the institution with a branch campus that is suddenly a white elephant.”

Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College, agreed that there are significant risks in establishing branches overseas and that they are not a high priority for elite universities right now.

“In the current situation of total instability in U.S. higher education due to the Trump administration, U.S. universities will not be thinking much about branch campuses but about their own survival.”

Although partnering with many countries may be politically safe, he said universities are unlikely to want to risk making “controversial political moves in the current environment.”

“Top U.S. universities are more interested in establishing research centers and joint programs overseas that can help their research and be a kind of embassy for recruiting students and researchers for the home campuses.”

And Kevin Kinser, professor of education and head of the department of education policy studies at Pennsylvania State University, said overseas partners are not free from scrutiny from the White House.

“The turmoil in the U.S. also includes scrutinizing foreign donations, contributions, collaborations and investments. Looking overseas does not create a safe haven for current federal attention.”

As a result, he said, Texas A&M may have gotten ahead of the narrative on foreign activities by universities by quitting Education City when it did.

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May 16, 2025
Trump Sends Mixed Signals on Apprenticeship and Job Training

President Trump issued an executive order last month instructing federal officials to “reach and surpass” a million new active apprenticeships. It was an ambitious target that apprenticeship advocates celebrated, anticipating new federal investments in more paid on-the-job training programs, in new industries and via a more efficient system.

“After years of shuffling Americans through an economically unproductive postsecondary system, President Trump will refocus young Americans on career preparation,” federal officials wrote in a fact sheet on the order. They also emphasized that the federal government spends billions on the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, and Career and Technical Education, but “neither of these programs are structured to promote apprenticeships or have incentives to meet workforce training needs.”

Ryan Craig, author of the book Apprenticeship Nation, managing director of Achieve Partners, co-founder of Apprenticeships for America and an occasional contributor to Inside Higher Ed, said it was the first time a president set a goal for the number of apprentices in the U.S., as far as he’s aware.

Apprenticeships are “one of the few, perhaps the only area of education, of workforce development, where this administration has said, ‘We want more of this,’” he said shortly after the executive order dropped.

But the excitement for an expanded apprenticeship model in the U.S. might be short-lived. Craig and other apprenticeship advocates worry that Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 doesn’t reflect the executive order’s vision. The proposal doesn’t promise any significant new investments in apprenticeship and slashes workforce development spending over all.

“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing here,” Craig said. “It’s not the sea change that the executive order promised.”

Mixed Signals

Among many highlights for advocates, the order also calls for a workforce development strategy with a focus on scrutinizing workforce programs’ outcomes, which currently aren’t carefully tracked.

Federal officials were given 90 days to review all federal workforce development programs and come out with a report on strategies to improve participants’ experiences, measure performance outcomes, identify valuable alternative credentials and reform or nix ineffective programs. The executive order also generally called for more transparent performance outcomes data, including earning and employment data, for such programs.

Trump’s skinny budget makes good on his promise to consolidate workforce development spending and cut programs the administration deems ineffective, but it also offers apprenticeships a small slice of that shrinking pie.

The proposal includes a $1.64 billion cut to workforce development funding under the Department of Labor and eliminates Job Corps, a free career training program for youth, and the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which offers job training and subsidized employment for low-income seniors. The administration also proposed a new program called Make America Skilled Again, or MASA. States would be required to spend 10 percent of their MASA grants on apprenticeships. Almost $3 billion, including WIOA funding, remains to fund the program, down from $4.6 billion, Work Shift reported.

The budget promises to “give states and localities the flexibility to spend workforce dollars to best support their workers and economies, instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to progressive non-profits finding work for illegal immigrants or focusing on DEI.”

Craig supports offering states more flexibility and cutting “train-and-pray programs that have little to no connection to employers or employment outcomes”—but he hoped money saved from those cuts would go toward apprenticeships, which are “by definition good jobs with career trajectories and built-in training.”

He said a mere 10 percent of block grant funding directed to apprenticeships feels “inconsistent” with the bold goals laid out in the executive order. He had high hopes Trump would consider radically changing how apprenticeships are funded, moving away from time-limited, individual grants to a more robust federal funding structure. At the very least, he believes apprenticeships should get the “lion’s share” of workforce development funding.

“My hope is it’s just the budget proposal and that things get worked out [to be] more consistent with the executive order,” he said, “but it was disappointing to see that.”

Vinz Koller, vice president of the Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning at Jobs for the Future, said he similarly felt hopeful about the executive order’s messaging, in particular its commitment to “further protect and strengthen” registered apprenticeships.

The wording represented a shift in approach.

During Trump’s previous term, the president sought to create industry-recognized apprenticeships, an entirely separate apprenticeship system to sidestep what he viewed as inefficiencies in the current system and excessive federal regulation. Koller was glad to see Trump interested in reforming and investing in the current system this time rather than making plans to “throw out the rule book.”

But the proposed budget isn’t “backing it up,” he said.

His organization recently put out a policy blueprint for expanding and improving apprenticeship—including calling for stronger incentives for employers and more investment in intermediary organizations that offer programs’ support—but those strategies aren’t possible without more federal funding, Koller said. The policy blueprint points out that in fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent at least $184.35 billion on higher education, while the Department of Labor’s apprenticeship budget was just $285 million.

But Koller also doesn’t believe slashing higher ed spending is the answer, and he’s worried about the proposed cuts to workforce training and to higher ed in the administration’s proposal. He said the goal is to give learners “choice-filled pathways,” including apprenticeships and other forms of work-based learning, not to “rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Grant consolidation and streamlining can be “positive,” he said, but “we just want to make sure that the support is there to actually do what is needed on the ground,” across program types. “We don’t want to dismantle the other aspects of a healthy educational workforce infrastructure as we build the new parts.”

Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University, said the budget poses a double threat to workforce development funding. Not only would the proposal cut more than a billion dollars, but the budget would also dole out the remaining funds in block grants to states, a funding structure that has been shown to lack oversight and generally decrease funding over time.

The project’s research found “governors do want more flexibility,” she said. “At the same time, we continue to hear from them that the lack of resources is really the biggest problem with the workforce system and meeting workforce needs … There’s no way we’ll see an expansion in apprenticeship with such a massive cut.”

Lingering Hopes

Some apprenticeship proponents remain optimistic.

John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, agreed the skinny budget doesn’t seem like “a recipe for substantial growth of apprenticeship,” but he isn’t giving up on the possibility of bold changes just yet.

He noted that the budget makes no mention of other possible funding sources for apprenticeship mentioned in the executive order fact sheet, such as career and technical education funds, so there may be plans for other funding streams in the works.

The proposed budget also alludes to a “reallocation” of adult education funding struck from the Education Department to “better support the innovative, workforce-aligned, apprenticeship-focused activities the Department seeks to promote,” though it doesn’t go into further detail.

He said, based on the executive order, federal officials still have time to draft a plan, and he’s going to wait until they do before arriving at any final conclusions about how apprenticeships will fare under a second Trump term.

“It’s probably a mistake to look at the skinny budget as a blueprint for the funding of an apprenticeship growth initiative,” he said. He plans “to take it seriously, because it’s a statement of intent from the president, but to not look to it as a constraining document for how we might be thinking about growing apprenticeships going forward.”

Shalin Jyotishi, managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at the left-wing think tank New America, emphasized that “any administration’s policy direction on apprenticeships should be judged on actions, not only words.”

He pointed out that multiple executive orders, including a recent one on artificial intelligence education, have called for expanding apprenticeships, but some such programs have also undergone cuts under Trump. He wants to instead see renewed investments, like those Trump made in degree-connected apprenticeships during his first term, and argued the field is “ripe” for such efforts.

“It’s heartening to see the administration emphasize the importance of registered apprenticeships,” Jyotishi wrote to Inside Higher Ed, “and education and workforce leaders will be looking for follow-through through actions, implementation, and resources.”

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May 13, 2025
Sen. Marshall Proposes Legislation to Fulfill Trump Campaign Pledge on “No Tax on Overtime” – CUPA-HR

by CUPA-HR | May 12, 2025

On May 6, Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), along with Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Jim Justice (R-WV), and Pete Ricketts (R-NE), introduced the Overtime Wages Tax Relief Act, which is intended to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on overtime pay. The proposal provides an income tax deduction for overtime pay up to a certain threshold. Marshall explained that his goal with the legislation was to target the benefit to lower- and middle-income workers in industries and occupations that traditionally pay overtime.

Under the proposal, individuals would be able to deduct up to $10,000 of overtime pay from their income taxes. For married couples, the cap would be set at $20,000. This is an “above-the-line” income tax deduction, so workers would have the ability to claim the deduction whether they itemize their deductions or take the standard deduction.

Additionally, the proposal phases out the benefit for top earners, identified as individuals earning $100,000 or more and married couples earning $200,000 or more. The deduction is reduced by $50 for every $1,000 in income the individual or married couple earns above their respective threshold.

The legislation also includes reporting obligations for employers “to ensure transparency and accuracy in claiming the deduction.” Employers will be required to report overtime earnings to employees in their annual wage and tax statements.

Marshall is hoping to have the legislation included in the Republican’s fiscal year 2025 budget reconciliation bill, which is expected to cover everything from border security to extensions for the expiring 2017 tax cuts President Trump signed into law during his first term.

CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of additional updates on this bill and others related to overtime laws and regulations.

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May 12, 2025