Your Cart is Empty
PFS Editiorial
This is the title of a recently published empirical study in The Missing Data Depot on Substack. The fact that administrative bloat has far exceeded the growth of faculty and students in numbers and power on American campuses is widely acknowledged. And as bureaucrats reshape and control campus life, anecdotal evidence abounds of the corrupting effects of their power on a university’s primary mission, the production and dissemination of knowledge. This first-of-its kind empirical study focuses exclusively on DEI bureaucracies, and concludes that they “often hurt and almost never help the speech climate on college campuses.” The data shows that the bigger the DEI bureaucracy the more pervasive the climate of fear among students, particularly outside the classroom, on social media and in informal conversations in public settings like the quad or dining hall. This study gives evidence for what close observers have long suspected -- that the growth of DEI bureaucracies correlates closely with the demise of free speech and academic freedom on college campuses. Graphs in this study show that Stanford, currently plagued by free speech scandals, has more DEI staff per 1,000 students than any university in the study. And among the Ivy League, Princeton holds the dubious rank of second only to Harvard. Have a look here at this deep dive into the data.
Researchers Impacted by Federal Grant Terminations
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Billions of dollars in federal scientific research grants have been rescinded or suspended since the start of the Trump administration.
Below, 16 researchers across nine different research areas who have had their federal grants terminated since the start of the Trump administration share just a few of the thousands of stories behind these cuts.
by Ed Yingling '70
Washington insiders believe it is very likely that a significant increase in the tax rate on university endowment income will be enacted this year. They cite the need for additional tax revenue to offset the Trump tax cut agenda and the antipathy of many Republicans to what has been happening on campuses for the last two years. They also focus on the fact that then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill in the last Congress imposing a 35 percent tax on endowment income.
Michael I. Kotlikoff
New York Times
Excerpt: Cornell University recently hosted an event that any reputable P.R. firm would surely have advised against. On a calm campus, in a semester unroiled by protest, we chose to risk stirring the waters by organizing a panel discussion that brought together Israeli and Palestinian voices with an in-person audience open to all.
The week before, I extended a personal invitation to our student community, explaining that open inquiry “is the antidote to corrosive narratives” and is what enables us “to see and respect other views, work together across differences and conceive of solutions to intractable problems.”
