Erin Shaw
Free The Inquiry, Heterodox Academy, Substack
Excerpt: Although requests for DEI statements in faculty hiring may be well-intentioned, they can actually undermine open inquiry by setting up ideological filters that exclude those who don’t share – or are unwilling to pretend they share – specific political opinions and worldviews.
But how common is the practice of asking for DEI statements in faculty hiring, and what patterns exist among such requests? At the top level, we found that 22.3%, or over one out of every five, of the 10,000 faculty job advertisements analyzed requested some kind of DEI-related material as a part of the application process. In other words, about one out of every five faculty members hired within the last year probably had to espouse a particular set of political views to have a chance of landing the jobs they sought.
Ariel Kaminer, Sian Beilock, Jennifer L. Mnookin and Michael S. Roth
New York Times
Excerpt: It’s an eventful moment in American higher education: The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors.
To tell us what’s happening now and what might be coming around the corner, three university leaders — Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth; Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan; and Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — spoke with Ariel Kaminer, an editor at Times Opinion.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Education Department is planning to move TRIO and numerous other higher education programs to the Labor Department as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency and “streamline its bureaucracy.”
Instead of moving whole offices, the department detailed a plan Tuesday to transfer certain programs and responsibilities to other agencies. All in all, the department signed six agreements with four agencies, relocating a wide swath of programs.
Associated Press/NPR
Excerpt: The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system's federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late Friday in a sharply worded decision.