Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Nearly six months after the Israel-Hamas war unleashed a steady tide of student-led protests on college campuses across the United States, Indiana’s public flagship university is emerging as a free speech battleground.
The latest dispute is over the abrupt cancellation of a long-planned art exhibition at Indiana University at Bloomington’s Eskenazi Museum of Art, Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy. Halaby is an internationally recognized Palestinian American abstract artist. Critics of the decision think there’s more to the story. And while they don’t know the specific factors driving the decision, they can’t ignore the pressure IU administrators have been under since Indiana congressman Jim Banks threatened to withhold federal funding from the university if they don’t adequately address perceived antisemitism on campus.
Click here for link to full article
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.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency and “streamline its bureaucracy.”
Instead of moving whole offices, the department detailed a plan Tuesday to transfer certain programs and responsibilities to other agencies. All in all, the department signed six agreements with four agencies, relocating a wide swath of programs.
Associated Press/NPR
Excerpt: The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system's federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late Friday in a sharply worded decision.
Paul Rochmis
February 28, 2024
Apparently, you cannot differentiate between non-physically-threatening free speech and the combination of words and physical actions meant to intimidate a person on either side of a debated issue. I suggest you stop parsing words such as genocide and racism, and focus on the specifics of hostile interactions which endanger free and respectful debate.