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Michael A. Yassa
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: DEI is under fire—not just from politicians, but from within the academy itself. What began as a push for equity now faces an existential crisis. Faculty, students and even longtime advocates are questioning whether DEI has lost its way—whether it’s become too symbolic, too scripted or too powerless to make real change.
I spent five years as a DEI officer in higher education. I pushed for change in an academic system that claimed to want it. I still believe in DEI. Yet, I’ve seen how often it fails—not because the ideas are wrong, but because the execution is. Diversity, equity and inclusion, when thoughtfully and strategically embedded, can be transformative. But when they become symbolic gestures, checkbox exercises or top-down mandates imposed without trust or buy-in, they often backfire. I’ve seen both.
Harvey C. Mansfield
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Two weeks after the lawsuit, the battle is on between Harvard, which did not want battle, and the Trump Administration that sought it. A major concern among the Trump Administration is Harvard’s lack of viewpoint diversity.
Harvard’s one-sided fondness for the left, comprehensive and prolonged, provoked — or even invited — the clash. It also revealed a deeper division between science and the humanities — quiet now but with a Harvard history.
Schuyler Mitchell
The Intercept
Excerpt: New York University School of Law barred 31 pro-Palestine law school students from campus facilities and demanded that they sign away their right to protest in exchange for being allowed to return. If the students — deemed “personae non grata,” or PNG — don’t renounce their right to protest on campus, they will be unable to sit for final exams.
Lee C. Bollinger
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The nation’s leading universities are locked in an unprecedented battle with a president and an administration that have chosen to withhold billions of dollars in vital federal research funding in order to take control of institutions for which freedom of thought and expression are among their most essential values.
So, here is my thesis: American universities are rooted in the bedrock of human nature and the foundations of our constitutional democracy. They are every bit as vital to our society as the political branches of government or quasi-official institutions such as the press (often even referred to as the “fourth branch” of government). Universities, as institutions, are the embodiment of the basic rationale of the First Amendment, which affirms our nation’s commitment to a never-ending search for truth.
