Your Cart is Empty
Jeannie Suk Gersen
New Yorker
Excerpt: Last time U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs sided with Harvard in a case about the university’s alleged discrimination, it ended with the Supreme Court declaring race-conscious admissions unlawful at schools across the country. Harvard won its battle in the lower court on the way to losing the broader war.
On Wednesday, Judge Burroughs gave Harvard a win that vindicated broad principles at stake for universities and the rule of law. But the victory will not end Harvard’s pain, and it remains to be seen whether higher education can triumph in the end.
Yascha Mounk
Persuasion
Excerpt: As recently as a decade ago, a big bipartisan majority of Americans said that they have a lot of trust in higher education. Now, the number is down to about one in three.
To change the massive shift in public perception of academia, it would, it seems to me, be necessary to take radical steps to change its current nature. And so I want to make a modest proposal for how universities can refocus on their core mission of teaching and research—and become both much more affordable, and much more deeply embedded in the fabric of American society, in the process.
Dhruv T. Patel, Avani B. Rai, and Saketh Sundar, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it froze more than $2.6 billion in research funding to Harvard, striking down the freeze in its entirety and delivering the University a major legal victory.
The decision from United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs hands Harvard a summary judgment win on core constitutional grounds, finding that the administration’s freeze orders were retaliation for protected speech. She also found that the government failed to comply with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires agencies to give notice, investigation, and an opportunity to respond before terminating federal financial assistance over civil rights violations.
Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True
Excerpt: As time goes by, The Atlantic seems to be getting less and less woke and more and more sensible. Who would have guessed that it published an article not only highlighting the problems of higher education, but saying that perhaps Trump’s intervention has called these to our attention? At any rate, if you click on the title below, you’ll go to the archived version of the article written by E. Thomas Finan, author and professor of humanities at Boston University.
E. Thomas Finan
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The Trump administration and its allies are upending American higher education: freezing funding, launching investigations, ratcheting up taxes, and threatening to do much more. Not so long ago this would have been political poison. But in the last decade, Americans’ faith in colleges and universities has plummeted. In 2015, 57 percent had either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to Gallup. As of last year, that group had shrunk to 36 percent, only a few points larger than the share who have “very little” confidence or none at all.
Cam N. Srivastava
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard College Dean David J. Deming told students that the College can no longer host programming targeted at specific races or identity groups during a presentation to Peer Advising Fellows last week — telling attendees he assumed they already understood why the change was necessary.
