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Aaron Hillegass attended New College of Florida as an undergraduate, had a successful career as a software engineer, and returned to the school this January to teach in its new data science program. But there was one problem for him: Florida governor Ron DeSantis. On Saturday, he resigned, releasing a dramatic public statement that compared DeSantis with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
These stunts are designed to drive left-wing media narratives (“Professor Resigns in Protest of DeSantis’s Fascism”) and to boost the profiles of their attention-seeking authors. The playbook is well-worn, and yet Hillegass, a data scientist, made a simple mistake. In his rhetoric about “burn[ing] the college’s buildings to the ground,” he revealed the ugly truth about modern “anti-fascism”: it believes that violence against the right targets is perfectly legitimate.
Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: If colleges and universities want to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), they’ll have to certify that they don’t operate any diversity, equity, inclusion or accessibility programs that violate federal antidiscrimination laws, under a new NIH policy announced Monday.
The change appears to codify parts of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that banned funding for DEI programs and builds on the strategy to leverage colleges’ research funding to compel certain behaviors. But the new policy goes even further than the president’s directives, barring colleges from boycotting Israel or Israeli businesses if they want to receive NIH grants.
FIRE
Excerpt: FIRE today filed a "friend of the court" brief in support of the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers in their lawsuit against the Department of Justice and other federal agencies. FIRE argues that the Trump administration's actions against Columbia University are unlawful and unconstitutional attacks on freedom of expression, freedom of association, and academic freedom. The brief's summary of argument follows.
J. D. Tuccille
Reason
Excerpt: Given the censorious conduct of colleges and universities in recent years, it takes a lot to get free speech advocates to treat them as aggrieved parties. But the Trump administration has accomplished that by using the power of the state to coerce changes in campus political climates, disciplinary procedures, and hiring practices. Harvard University is digging in its heels and suing the federal government in response.
But if institutions of higher learning really want to assert their independence, they should emulate a school with a lower profile and fewer resources that won its freedom by cutting ties with the government decades ago: They should follow the example of Hillsdale College.
