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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.
From congressional hearings to donor revolts to headlines about campus protests, American universities are being told—loudly—that they’ve lost the public’s trust. But beneath the noise, there’s a quieter question that rarely gets asked: when Americans criticize universities, what do they actually want them to do instead?
A new study published in Science Advances by economists at Cornell University and the University of Regensburg examines what societal roles Americans believe universities should engage in beyond their core mission of education and research.
The University of Arkansas’ shameful capitulation to political pressure betrays its commitment to Professor Suski and threatens the rights of all who teach, study, and work there. The message to every dean, professor, and researcher is unmistakable: Your job hinges on whether politicians approve of your views.
Political interference in academic decision making must be rejected. When universities make hiring decisions based on politics, left or right, academic freedom gets weaker and campuses grow quieter.
A federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a lower court decision that released former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from an immigration jail, bringing the government one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the Palestinian activist.
The three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t decide the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional. But in its 2-1 decision, the panel ruled a federal judge in New Jersey didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter at this time. Federal law requires the case to fully move through the immigration courts first, before Khalil can challenge the decision, they wrote.
