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Administering an exam used to be straightforward: All a college professor needed was an open room and a stack of blue books. At many American universities, this is no longer true. Professors now struggle to accommodate the many students with an official disability designation, which may entitle them to extra time, a distraction-free environment, or the use of otherwise-prohibited technology.
No one should be kept from taking a class, for example, because they are physically unable to enter the building where it’s taught. Over the past decade and a half, however, the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations—often, extra time on tests—has grown at a breathtaking pace.
University of Oklahoma officials placed a graduate teaching assistant on leave Sunday after a student who was given a failing grade on a written assignment claimed she was discriminated against due to her religious beliefs.
Samantha Fulnecky, a junior psychology major at the university, submitted an essay response to an assigned article in a psychology class about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. Her response focused on her interpretations of the Bible and the ways in which she disagreed with the article.
The recent controversies surrounding Charlie Kirk — and the extraordinary reaction that followed his campus appearances and commentary — offer a revealing window into the fragile state of free expression in contemporary America.
Two recent New York Times opinion pieces examining the backlash were right to highlight how quickly public discourse has hardened into a zero-sum contest in which speech itself becomes grounds for professional punishment, social ostracism, and institutional retaliation. But the deeper lesson is even more unsettling: Free speech is increasingly treated not as a constitutional principle, but as a conditional privilege — one that applies only when speech is politically comfortable.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Trump administration last week asked a Pennsylvania court to compel the University of Pennsylvania to turn over the names and contact information of some Jewish employees and students. In recent days, students, faculty members, on-campus Jewish groups and others have rallied around Penn officials’ decision not to disclose the information.
Michael Hurley
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: A federal court has once again vindicated FIRE’s longstanding concerns with the Trump administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional approach to enforcing Title VI — including combatting antisemitism — in higher education. This time, the smackdown came in a ruling for plaintiffs at the University of California.
Ariel Kaminer, Sian Beilock, Jennifer L. Mnookin and Michael S. Roth
New York Times
Excerpt: It’s an eventful moment in American higher education: The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors.
To tell us what’s happening now and what might be coming around the corner, three university leaders — Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth; Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan; and Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — spoke with Ariel Kaminer, an editor at Times Opinion.
