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Lauren A. Wright
The Atlantic
Right-wing commentators relish painting elite college students as ignorant, weak, and unprepared to meet the real world. Students have bolstered this perception by struggling to articulate positions on issues for which they profess deep concern.
But this grim picture leaves out an important distinction: Conservative students, rather than being coddled, face significant intellectual and social challenges in college. These challenges impart educational advantages by forcing conservatives to defend their points of view. Liberal students, surrounded by like-minded peers and mentors, have less opportunity to grow in this way.
Sebastian B. Connolly and Julia A. Karabolli
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Tucked away at the end of a corridor on the second floor of Harvard’s Divinity Hall, the offices of the Religion and Public Life program are usually quiet — a quietness that belies its position at the center of highly public controversy that, in just a few short years, has threatened to consume it entirely.
The program has been targeted in a lawsuit accusing Harvard of permitting antisemitism on campus and an early list of demands that the Trump administration considered imposing on Harvard. But RPL’s own faculty say that it is the critics of the program that are practicing intolerance as they seek to police pro-Palestine speech.
William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has told faculty that a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent and denied that the University is considering a $500 million settlement, according to three faculty members familiar with the matter.
The University is seriously considering resolving its dispute with the White House through the courts rather than a negotiated settlement, Garber said, according to the three faculty members.
By Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, Katy Glenn Bass, Nadine Farid Johnson & Larry Siems
Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University
Excerpt: After months of negotiation, Columbia University announced on July 23 that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resolve investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
We recognize that Columbia might have made some of these commitments on its own accord, without unconstitutional coercion from the Trump administration. But even if we assume, against the evidence, that Columbia would have adopted all of these commitments on its own, the settlement is a significant surrender of autonomy because the university has ceded the right to revise these commitments during the agreement’s three-year term.
