Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
Florida’s war against woke indoctrination has hit a speedbump. On July 7, a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s injunction against the Stop WOKE Act, the state’s attempt to ban public university employees from inculcating trendy beliefs about racial superiority and privilege.
The recent report on the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has renewed the debate over the internal politicization of academe. As one of its authors (speaking only for myself), I find the report relatively tepid.
Can faculty lead the reform of higher education from the inside — and if so, who checks whom?
My research team at Heterodox Academy has been tracking faculty job ad content for the last two years with an eye towards understanding how required Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) criteria have changed. Our recently published research report showed that the share of jobs requesting DEI statements — whether standalone, within cover letters, or within research or teaching statements — declined sharply, falling from approximately 25% in 2024 to 11% in 2025.