Kalven Report Institutional Neutrality

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned abruptly Wednesday night after months of pressure from Congress and campus constituents over her handling of pro-Palestinian student protests.

Shafik spent a little more than a year in the role, a tenure fraught with tension over how she navigated campus demonstrations related to the war between Israel and Hamas that began last fall. The protests at Columbia—which set off a wave of similar demonstrations at colleges across the nation—culminated in the construction of an encampment in the center of campus and the occupation of an administrative building for nearly two weeks, resulting in the arrest of more than 100 protesters in April.

Hans Bader
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: If a university is ordered by the government to investigate each instance of speech that is bigoted to determine if it cumulatively contributed to a “hostile environment” for some minority group, it will have a powerful incentive to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy for offensive speech, to avoid the time and expense of constant investigations, and avoid potential liability for a “hostile environment.” That’s true even if the speech is political or religious, such as advocating the elimination of Israel or Palestinian self-rule or questioning Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern practices.

Yet, that burdensome duty to censor is more or less what the Biden administration told universities to do in recent Title VI and Title IX investigations, such as in a press release about an investigation of Drexel University for anti-Semitism, and an accompanying letter resolving the Title VI investigation.

Robert Barba
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Three Columbia University deans, who were placed on indefinite leave last month over insensitive text messages they sent during a panel about Jewish life on campus, are resigning, a university spokeswoman said Thursday.

Paul Larkin
Heritage Foundation

Excerpt: The text of the Constitution prohibits the adoption of a religious qualification as a prerequisite for holding federal office, and the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause bars the federal or state governments from denying anyone the ability to adopt whatever religious beliefs he or she chooses to treat as sacred.

But culture can be upstream or downstream of the law. In the case of antisemitism, American society did not extirpate it; it merely drove antisemitism underground, where it lay in wait for a chance to return. Sadly, it is back, as the events on America’s campuses have proved in the months since Hamas launched its brutal, murderous, and savage attack on Israel and its people on October 7, 2023.

Michael T. Nietzel
Forbes

Excerpt: Only 36% of Americans believe that higher education “is fine” as it is now, a five percentage-point decline from just a year ago. That’s one of the top-line findings of a new survey released this week by New America, the progressive think tank.

Americans’ growing unhappiness with the current state of higher education was also revealed by the fact that in 2024 73% of them believed that higher ed offers a good return on investment, down from 82% who felt that way in 2017. In addition, only 54% of Americans think that higher education is having a positive impact on the way things are going in the country today, a 16 percentage-point drop since 2019.

Dear ACTA friend,

Since its founding, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has advocated for strengthening civic education at America’s colleges and universities. Our democratic republic depends on an educated citizenry—the rising generation must have a robust understanding of our nation’s history and system of government.

Our country is facing a civic knowledge crisis, and with it, a crisis of civic order. ACTA’s recent survey, Losing America’s Memory 2.0, has brought to light some startling findings about the state of civic literacy among college students. Most students are unable to identify the speaker of the House of Representatives, term lengths for members of Congress, or the branch of government with the power to declare war.