American Association of University Professors Press Release
Excerpt: As a result of public pressure and significant media attention generated by AAUP members’ collective action, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted on June 4 to tenure the remaining thirty-three faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools, including the School of Law and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, who had been denied a tenure vote since the May 22 board meeting.
The board offered no explanation for this unprecedented large-scale delay, which was expected to violate faculty contracts.
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.
In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.
“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who's expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.
The Trump administration wants to streamline its existing higher education accountability measures with a new earnings test, holding all postsecondary programs to the same standard—regardless of the certification level or institution type involved. But doing so could water down an existing accountability measure for certificates and for-profit programs.
Under a new policy proposal, released by the Department of Education late last week, undergraduate programs would be required to show that on average their graduates earn more than a working adult with a high school degree. Programs that fail to meet those standards for multiple years could lose access to all federal loans.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon told a conservative news outlet she wants to focus less on higher ed this year. The comment comes after the Trump administration’s yearlong use of multiple federal departments to pressure universities and their employees and students to conform to the White House’s desires.
McMahon discussed her 2026 priorities in an interview with Breitbart before Christmas. As the outlet put it, “McMahon said the new year is a chance to shift a little bit away from higher education and focus on elementary and secondary.”
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