Jonathan Allen, Nate Raymond
Reuters
Excerpt: Harvard University is dedicating $250 million of its own funds to support researchers after U.S. President Donald Trump's administration froze nearly $3 billion in federal grants and contracts in recent weeks, the university announced on Wednesday.
The elite Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of Trump's most prominent targets. The Republican president has been making an extraordinary effort to revamp private colleges and schools across the U.S. that he says foster anti-American, Marxist and "radical left" ideologies. He has criticized Harvard in particular for hiring prominent Democrats to teaching or leadership positions.
Adam Goldstein
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: A recent essay in these pages by Charles F. Walker posits that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s rankings don’t actually measure the speech climate of college campuses because they penalize colleges for disruptive speech that is constitutionally protected. Walker’s argument is rooted in a number of misconceptions, not the least of which is that he seems not to understand what the rankings are for. Moreover, he misrepresents the law around disruptive protests. But because the first problem swallows the second, let’s start there.
Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics
Excerpt: As with many things Trump, the administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” provoked accusations of authoritarian takeover of vital American institutions. And, as with many things Trump, the administration’s compact overreached in pursuit of a worthy goal, giving critics ammunition to oppose urgently needed reform.
Aziz Huq
The Atlantic
Excerpt: On first appraisal, the nine universities that the Trump administration singled out appeared to have no real choice but to concede to the administration’s demands. As set forth in the so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, these include an oath to abide by the White House’s biological theories of gender and to show respect for “conservative” (but not liberal or centrist) values. Framed as a question of who is first in line for federal funding, the compact warns that nonconforming universities will have to go their own way fiscally.