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by David Jesse, Chronicle of Higher Education
The tales are swapped in conference-hotel hallways or over quiet dinners: controversial speakers attracting rowdy protests, professors drawing fire for an offhand comment during a lecture and then posted online, legislators trying to codify what can and can’t be taught in classrooms.
College presidents know a free-speech controversy is going to burst forth on their campus if it hasn’t already. One week it’s a guest lecturer shouted down at Stanford. The next it’s a Florida bill that would restrict how campuses can teach about race in general-education courses. The next it’s a request for mandatory trigger warnings at Cornell. While in the past a president’s response to such a controversy may have been silence or a carefully worded message, now college leaders are beginning to speak up in more forceful terms.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Trump administration last week asked a Pennsylvania court to compel the University of Pennsylvania to turn over the names and contact information of some Jewish employees and students. In recent days, students, faculty members, on-campus Jewish groups and others have rallied around Penn officials’ decision not to disclose the information.
Michael Hurley
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: A federal court has once again vindicated FIRE’s longstanding concerns with the Trump administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional approach to enforcing Title VI — including combatting antisemitism — in higher education. This time, the smackdown came in a ruling for plaintiffs at the University of California.
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.
