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Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Stakes are high as the Trump administration looks to rewrite the rules governing accreditation in the first of two week-long rule-making sessions starting today. The overhaul could dramatically change who is in charge of academic oversight and what they evaluate when determining whether an institution should have access to federal aid.
Right-leaning think tanks applaud the changes, released last week in a 151-page draft, calling them an overdue means to ensure campus civil rights compliance, address college costs and ensure institutions are held accountable for their students’ outcomes. But accreditation experts, left-leaning policy analysts and student advocacy groups say the lengthy regulations, while vague and abstruse, pose a major threat to the future of institutional autonomy and America’s status as the crown jewel of global higher education.
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The University of Chicago has undergone a “curriculum degradation” in the past 13 years, according to a new analysis by an accounting professor.
Professor Ivan Marinovic, who teaches accounting at Stanford University, analyzed language used in University of Chicago course titles and descriptions between 2012 and 2025 for his analysis, published at the Heterodox STEM Substack.
He found the use of “progressive” language, such as “equity” and “intersectional” has doubled, compared to the use of “Western canon” words, such as “Bible” and “Western civilization.”
From the outset, DEI at MIT was controversial even before it became a target of outside political scrutiny. Initial objections came not only from skeptics who opposed DEI as ideology or bureaucracy, but also from DEI supporters who believed it wasn’t enough. Some student activists and steering-committee members argued that the draft plan had been weakened by senior administrators. They criticized what they saw as closed-door changes, fear of upsetting faculty and donors, lack of transparency, and a plan that risked becoming “mostly performative” unless leadership accepted stronger, centralized standards.
The criticism from both directions showed that DEI at MIT was controversial before it became a target of outside political scrutiny. MIT’s DEI project was caught between competing criticisms: too ideological and bureaucratic for some, too weak and decentralized for others.
New York University’s Jonathan Haidt checks a number of boxes for an in-house commencement speaker: best-selling author, public intellectual, and high-profile campus figure. A social psychologist teaching “ethical leadership” at NYU’s school of business, his books like The Coddling of the American Mind and The Anxious Generation show up on airport bookshelves and the Obama end-of-year-list. He has been a fixture on the liberal-nerd podcast circuit and in the TED Talk world, best known for advocating for free speech and limited screen time. Despite that résumé — or because of it — some NYU students donning violet gowns today at Yankee Stadium would prefer it wasn’t Haidt delivering their final undergrad address.
