Institutional Governance & Accountability

Editorial Board
Case Western Reserve Observer

Excerpt: When it comes to the First Amendment, many people tend to forget that it was not meant to protect you from public scrutiny—it is meant to protect you from tyrannical governments. And currently, the United States’ government is acting less and less concerned about adhering to this amendment’s core tenets.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: In an echo of last year, state lawmakers in different parts of the country are pushing bills that would diminish tenure protections and target diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Indiana’s Republican-dominated state Senate wants to do both at once. Earlier this month it passed a bill that takes aim at both tenure and DEI in public colleges and universities, tying them together with language that shifts focus from racial or other notions of diversity toward what it calls “intellectual diversity.” Senate Bill 202, now being debated in the majority-Republican state House of Representatives, defines that term as “multiple, divergent, and varied scholarly perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”

Annabelle Tilsit
Washington Post

Excerpt: Harvard University is again embroiled in a controversy over antisemitism on campus, after student groups and a faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon.

In a statement late Tuesday, Harvard interim president Alan M. Garber condemned the cartoon, calling it “flagrantly antisemitic,” after it was shared on social media by two student groups — the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African American Resistance Organization — and reposted by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

Jeff Amy
Washington Post

Excerpt: A proposal that would require school libraries to notify parents of every book their child checks out was advanced by Georgia senators Tuesday, while a proposal to subject school librarians to criminal charges for distributing material containing obscenity waits in the wings.

The measures are part of a broad and continuing push by Republicans in many states to root out what they see as inappropriate material from schools and libraries, saying books and electronic materials are corrupting children.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As college and university presidents face growing backlash from state and federal lawmakers for their responses to student protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, higher education leaders are cracking down on student demonstrations—particularly those that support Palestinian people.

In the last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became one of several institutions that have suspended student groups for violations of campus protest rules, and Stanford University threatened to take disciplinary action against students who occupied a campus plaza for nearly four months.

Ben Raab and Benjamin Hernandez
Yale Daily News

Excerpt: Over 100 faculty members now have their signatures displayed on a website for a new faculty group, Faculty for Yale, which “insist[s] on the primacy of teaching, learning and research as distinct from advocacy and activism.”

Among other measures, the group calls for “a thorough reassessment of administrative encroachment” and the promotion of diverse viewpoints. The group also calls for a more thorough description of free expression guidelines in the Faculty Handbook; Yale’s current guidelines are based on its 1974 Woodward Report. The group also wants Yale to implement a set of guidelines regarding donor influence, which were first put forth by the Gift Policy Review Committee in 2022.