Thomas Chatterton Williams
The Atlantic 
Excerpt: President Donald Trump’s assault on what he broadly calls DEI has been slapdash and sadistic. That doesn’t mean the system under attack should be maintained. Racial preferencing in university admissions as well as in employment and government contracting—more commonly understood as affirmative action—might once have been necessary, but long ago became glaringly unfair in practice.
Affirmative action in college admissions continues—despite being banned by the Supreme Court in 2023—through the use of personal essays, interviews, and other proxy mechanisms. It continues in businesses’ hirings and promotions. It’s possible to believe two truths simultaneously: Judging individuals by race instead of merit has to end, in no small part because it hurts the very people it is supposed to uplift; and Trump’s approach to ending it is harmful.
Matthew Harwood
FIRE 
Excerpt: Since Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration has launched a blitzkrieg against Americans’ free speech rights. The scale and speed are dizzying — and they jeopardize the United States’ credibility as the world’s leading defender of free expression as other democracies continue to falter.
Being critical of America, capitalism, and Christianity shouldn’t put you on the feds’ radar because all those viewpoints are protected speech. A federal investigation should only occur when there’s reasonable evidence that some person or group — regardless of their constitutionally protected beliefs and opinions — has crossed the line into criminality.
Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Banished, Substack
Excerpt: Amna & Jeff talk to Jon Zimmerman about why some profs are afraid to speak their minds.
Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard Salient editor-in-chief Richard Y. Rodgers ’28 announced on Tuesday that the conservative student magazine would remain active despite a Sunday statement from its board of directors suspending its operations pending a conduct investigation.
Rodgers wrote in an email to the Salient’s mailing list that the board’s decision to temporarily halt its operations was “an unauthorized usurpation of power by a small number of individuals acting outside the bounds of their authority.”