Jonathan Zimmerman
Washington Monthly
Excerpt: We’ve got this, say some colleges and universities. Yes, we’re cutting deals with Donald Trump’s administration. But we are also preserving our core value: academic freedom. We’ll be OK.
That’s what Columbia University declared last month, when it agreed to pay the administration $200 million for allegedly failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment. And it’s what Harvard said last week, when it canceled a journal’s special issue devoted to education in Palestine. Don’t believe them. The Harvard episode is a textbook case of censorship, brought to you by those who proclaim fealty to academic freedom. And once we have turned our back on that principle, we won’t have any reason to exist.
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.