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Franklin Foer
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The email landed at 10 minutes to midnight on a Friday in early April—a more menacing email than Alan Garber had imagined. The Harvard president had been warned that something was coming. His university had drawn the unwanted and sustained attention of the White House, and he’d spent weeks scrambling to stave off whatever blow was coming, calling his institution’s influential alumni and highly paid fixers to arrange a meeting with someone—anyone—in the administration.
Garber wanted an audience because he believed that Harvard had a case to make. The administration had been publicly flogging elite universities for failing to confront campus anti-Semitism. But Garber—a practicing Jew with a brother living in Israel—believed Harvard had done exactly that.
Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Columbia University’s acting president says the institution is incorporating the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into the Office of Institutional Equity’s work. That office investigates discrimination complaints against students and employees.
“Formally adding the consideration of the IHRA definition into our existing anti-discrimination policies strengthens our approach to combating antisemitism,” Claire Shipman said in a statement Tuesday announcing “additional commitments to combatting antisemitism.”
Christopher F. Rufo
City Journal
Excerpt: America’s colleges and universities have long been the bright lights of our civilization. For nearly four centuries, they have pioneered new fields of knowledge, brought the arts and sciences to new heights, and educated the men who built our republic. But over the past half-century, these institutions gradually discarded their founding principles and burned down their accumulated prestige, all in pursuit of ideologies that corrupt knowledge and point the nation toward nihilism.
Now, the truth is undeniable. Beginning with the George Floyd riots and culminating in the celebration of the Hamas terror campaign, the institutions of higher education finally ripped off the mask and revealed their animating spirit: racialism, ideology, chaos.
Jennifer Lundquist and the Stand Together for Higher Leadership Team
Academe Blog
Excerpt: I, along with the undersigned leaders of Stand Together for Higher Ed, a national faculty-led movement to defend US higher education, are deeply concerned by reports that Harvard University is engaged in negotiations with the Trump administration to settle ongoing legal disputes. While negotiation is not inherently wrong, in this case it risks setting a dangerous precedent for faculty governance, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy across higher education. All eyes have been on Harvard’s lawsuit because its outcome will shape these values for the rest of us.
Susan H. Greenberg
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Columbia University is preparing to strike a deal with the Trump administration, taking steps to address alleged civil rights violations on campus in exchange for the release of $400 million of withheld federal funds, The Wall Street Journal and CNN reported.
According to the Journal, the university is in discussions with the administration to pay out roughly $200 million, some of which would go to the government and some to students and professors who allegedly have had their rights violated.
William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: One in two faculty members who responded to a survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said the Trump administration’s actions have discouraged them from expressing their political views.
More than 70 percent reported feeling negatively about the state of academic freedom at United States colleges and universities. Pressure from the government was the most cited threat to academic freedom, with 85 percent of respondents identifying it as a major fear.
