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Why Evolution is True
Jerry Coyne
Excerpt: The time has come that many have feared but many will celebrate: DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) is effectively gone from campuses by federal order.
Since virtually every institution of higher learning depends on some federal funding, this gives colleges the choices of abandoning DEI or abandoning federal money. You know which they’ll prefer. The former, of course, but they’ll try to have both, sometimes by duplicitous practices.
Tanya J. Vidhun
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Bharat N. Anand said the University is encouraging teachers to broach controversial subjects in classrooms at a Harvard Graduate School of Education virtual event on Thursday.
The University has been widely criticized in recent years for both speech policies and a perceived lack of ideological diversity. After a year of exceptional protest activity, Harvard officials have launched a series of initiatives aimed at improving dialogue and understanding the campus speech climate and academic freedom.
AAUP Statement
Excerpt: Aside from this resolution on divestment, the AAUP has never determined that the neutrality of institutions is either necessary for, or incompatible with, the principles of academic freedom. For more than a half century, we have instead chosen to emphasize the complexity of the issues involved, the dangers that can attend either approach, and the necessity of making institutional decisions with an eye to their effects on academic freedom and shared governance. This statement reaffirms that long-standing approach.
Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True
Excerpt: As you know the University of Chicago was the first higher-ed school in America to adopt a position of institutional neutrality. This was done in 1967, with the principle embodied in our Kalven Report. Kalven prohibits the University or its units, including departments and centers, from taking official stands on political, moral, and ideological issues—save in those cases where the issue is one that could affect the mission of our University. According to FIRE, which approves of this position of institutional neutrality, some 29 other colleges or boards of education have joined Chicago in adopting one.
Deviations from the position of neutrality are rare, but this morning we learned that our President, Paul Alivisatos, has declared official University opposition to the Trump’s administration of slashing “indirect costs” on NIH grants.
Samuel A. Church and Cam N. Srivastava
The Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Only one-third of Harvard’s last graduating class felt comfortable expressing their opinions about controversial topics during their time at the College, the University’s 2024 senior survey found, reporting a 13 percent decrease from the Class of 2023.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced today it agrees with a federal court ruling that appropriately found the Biden-era Title IX rules to unconstitutionally restrict student First Amendment rights.
Those rules, effective in August 2024, infringed on constitutionally protected speech related to sex and gender. They also rolled back crucial due process rights for those accused of sexual misconduct on campus, increasing the likelihood that colleges would arrive at unreliable conclusions during those proceedings.
