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Eva Cherniavsky and Amit R. Baishya
Technology Review
Excerpt: We write as former members of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). Both of us resigned from CAFPRR after the refusal of the MLA Executive Council to advance Resolution 2025-1 to the organization’s delegate assembly.
Responding to the genocide in Gaza and citing the revised position of the AAUP on the legitimacy of academic boycotts, the resolution called on MLA members to embrace boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) actions against Israel. We recount some of the events that led to our decision and present three major concerns that arise from disallowing the debate.
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.
