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Emily Chamlee-Wright
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: American higher education is on its back foot. As part of the Trump administration’s broader project of regime consolidation, universities are facing new and shockingly direct threats to their independence and academic freedom. And in the past few months, we’ve seen that reality start to sink in.
Sometimes there is no more compromise to be had and the only way to stand on principle is to forthrightly say no. In the process, the academic community can reclaim fundamental values that had been eroding well before the present crisis.
Robert Shibley
The Eternally Radical Idea
Excerpt: Last month, during the ongoing fight between the Trump Administration and Harvard University over student visas, research funding, anti-Semitism, and seemingly everything else under the sun, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on X, suggesting that universities should see Trump’s actions as a “necessary corrective.”
Ignoring legally required due process, as too many of the administration’s attacks on Harvard have done so far, has certainly not been “necessary.” But the underlying problems to which Vance points are real. They have done serious damage to knowledge production in America. And they’re poised to do even more, as they contain within them the seeds of destruction for Harvard — or any other university targeted by the federal government.
FIRE Intern
FIRE
Excerpt: After a news story last week that the University of Michigan was paying private investigators to spy on pro-Palestinian student protesters, the school quickly ended its contracts with the surveillance firm.
Now the university says this Orwellian practice has ended, but the chill on student speech will likely remain for some time.
American Association of University Professors Press Release
Excerpt: As a result of public pressure and significant media attention generated by AAUP members’ collective action, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted on June 4 to tenure the remaining thirty-three faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences and professional schools, including the School of Law and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, who had been denied a tenure vote since the May 22 board meeting.
The board offered no explanation for this unprecedented large-scale delay, which was expected to violate faculty contracts.
John Warner
Academic Freedom On The Line, Substack
Excerpt: If you were to page through the decade-plus years of archives of my Inside Higher Ed blog you will find many criticisms of our nation's elite private universities.
My complaints and grievances as catalogued in these pieces are almost too numerous to mention. I do not approve of their distorting effects on college admissions; I find their claims of being meritocracies hollow; I decry their lousy leadership; I lament the amount of attention and money they suck up relative to their paltry share of the overall higher education sector. I'll end whatever suspense I've generated and say that no, Trump's proposal to significantly increase the tax on university endowments is not something I support.
Michael S. Schmidt and Michael C. Bender
New York Times
Excerpt: The Justice Department quietly approached Harvard University last month with startling claims, even by the extraordinary standards of the Trump administration’s monthslong assault on the elite college.
The department signaled that it was reviewing claims of discrimination against white men at The Harvard Law Review, and accused the renowned publication of destroying evidence in an open investigation. The administration demanded that Harvard “cease and desist” from interfering.
