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Dylynn Lasky Bobby Ramkissoon
FIRE
Excerpt: After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, universities faced a dilemma that has become grimly familiar in the age of social media: what to do when a member of the campus community says something online that others find intolerable.
Within days, institutions moved with visible urgency. Some suspended employees. Others terminated them outright. A few launched “investigations” whose conclusions seemed preordained. The message these colleges sent was unmistakable: offensive speech is not merely offensive, it is an assault on human dignity itself. And that, in the eyes of administrators, makes it punishable.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: As conservative Texas politicians identify and target faculty who teach about gender identity, officials at six Texas public university systems have ordered reviews of curriculum, syllabi and course descriptions.
The impetus is clear: Texas A&M University fired a professor, demoted two administrators and pushed out its president after conservative politicians lambasted the institution for a lesson on gender identity in a children’s literature class. Their criticism hinged on the fact that the topic was not reflected in the brief course catalog description for the class. Before he resigned, Texas A&M president Mark Welsh ordered an audit of all courses at the flagship campus, which the system Board of Regents quickly extended to all Texas A&M institutions.
Claire Murphy and Brock Read
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: Nine universities are currently weighing whether to adopt the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would require them to make a wide-ranging series of commitments to uphold admissions and hiring practices, foster “viewpoint diversity,” and cap international enrollment, among other items.
The letter set an October 20 deadline for “limited, targeted feedback” on the compact, leaving university leaders scrambling to evaluate its terms. The Chronicle is documenting official university responses to the document, along with faculty statements, as they are made public.
Anna Krylov
Heterodox at USC, Substack
Excerpt: On October 1st, nine schools—including USC—received a letter from the US Secretary of Education inviting them to proactively join the effort to improve “higher education for the betterment of the country.” The letter announces plans to offer a Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, an agreement that universities will be invited to sign.
Letitia James, William Tong, Kathy Jennings, Kwame Raoul, Keith Ellison, Matthew Platkin, Charity Clark and Nick Brown
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Supreme Court, even in striking down diversity initiatives, still made clear that universities could explore race-neutral alternatives to achieve equity. The use of socioeconomic and geographic factors is exactly such an alternative. Despite U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi’s recent nonbinding guidance warning against the use of geographic indicators as “proxies” for race, make no mistake: Abandoning consideration of these elements of an applicant’s background is not a legal requirement but a political choice, reflecting fear rather than courage.
Neetu Arnold
City Journal
Excerpt: Universities have let progressive dogma degrade their academic missions, eviscerating public faith in higher education. College leaders willing to admit this truth are rare. Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier is one. He has long been a champion of political neutrality and has called out the politicization of scholarly associations—approaches other university leaders are only now catching up on.
Adopting these policies and principles can be challenging for university leaders, partly because they fear how their own faculty or academic departments might respond. Yet Diermeier’s love of universities emboldens him. In a recent interview, transcribed below, he told me that education and research are “noble work,” but only if they are grounded in core principles. And he emphasized how politicization in some departments overshadows the good work conducted in others.
