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CBS News Miami
Excerpt: Florida is working with university leaders from five other Southern states to form a new higher-education accrediting body, Gov. Ron DeSantis and officials from the other states announced Thursday.
The Commission for Public Higher Education, which will need federal approval, would be an alternative to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a longtime accrediting agency that has clashed with Florida education leaders in recent years.
Tom Nichols
The Atlantic
Excerpt: Seven years ago, Pauline Shanks Kaurin left a good job as a tenured professor at a university, uprooted her family, and moved across the country to teach military ethics at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. She did so, she told me, not only to help educate American military officers, but with a promise from the institution that she would have “the academic freedom to do my job.”
But now she’s leaving her position and the institution because orders from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, have made staying both morally and practically untenable.
Akela Lacy
The Intercept
Excerpt: Harvard Divinity School broke precedent by refusing to publish a video of its commencement speech after a speaker went off-script to call attention to the perilous conditions in Gaza, The Intercept has learned.
Matan H. Josephy and Laurel M. Shugart
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: A federal judge extended her halt on Donald Trump’s entry ban on holders of Harvard-sponsored visas until next Monday at a hearing where lawyers for Harvard and the federal government sparred over whether the ban is constitutional.
The extension of the temporary restraining order will keep incoming international students’ authorization to enter the U.S. in place until U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs decides whether to cement the pause in a preliminary injunction. Burroughs said at Monday’s hearing that she will issue an opinion within a week.
Jacob Sullum
Reason Magazine
Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was the first target of President Donald Trump's crusade against foreign students he calls "terrorist sympathizers," could soon be released from custody thanks to a preliminary injunction that a federal judge in New Jersey granted this week. The reasoning behind that injunction underlines the chilling impact of Trump's attempt to treat speech he does not like as a deportable offense.
[U.S. District Judge Michael] Farbiarz stayed his injunction until 9:30 this morning to allow for a government appeal of his decision. That deadline came and went without an appeal. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official nevertheless told Khalil's lawyers "the government has no immediate plans to release him," The New York Times reports.
Robert Manzer
AEI
Excerpt: Whatever their political persuasion, most observers of American higher education now agree that the real or apparent politicization of universities has become a major problem. Accreditors, the member most responsible for academic quality in the higher education regulatory triad, should be at the forefront, helping universities confront this problem.
Accreditation can most effectively address universities’ politicization by strengthening faculty governance. Faculty play a central role in shaping academic life, and their authority over curricula and standards is well established by tradition and regulation.
