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Jonah Valdez
The Intercept
Excerpt: In March, a group of scholars filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the government from detaining and deporting students and professors for speaking out about Palestine.
Now, as the case heads to trial in Massachusetts federal court in July, those professors and students worry they may be targeted by immigration officials for speaking out in the courtroom on the witness stand.
Thomas Chatterton Williams
The Atlantic
Excerpt: President Donald Trump’s assault on what he broadly calls DEI has been slapdash and sadistic. That doesn’t mean the system under attack should be maintained. Racial preferencing in university admissions as well as in employment and government contracting—more commonly understood as affirmative action—might once have been necessary, but long ago became glaringly unfair in practice.
Affirmative action in college admissions continues—despite being banned by the Supreme Court in 2023—through the use of personal essays, interviews, and other proxy mechanisms. It continues in businesses’ hirings and promotions. It’s possible to believe two truths simultaneously: Judging individuals by race instead of merit has to end, in no small part because it hurts the very people it is supposed to uplift; and Trump’s approach to ending it is harmful.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education has publicly called on Columbia University’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, to take action against the university’s alleged noncompliance with federal nondiscrimination laws.
In a Wednesday news release, officials wrote that Columbia was found to have acted “with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Officials said, “Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law.” As a result of that finding, ED called on MSCHE to take action on the matter.
Dan Mangan
CNBC
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Education said Wednesday that Columbia University has failed to meet the standards for accreditation because the Ivy League school “is in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” for allegedly tolerating harassment of Jewish students on campus.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, an accrediting institution that Columbia belongs to, of the alleged violation. The department noted that by federal regulations, “accreditors are required to notify any member institution about a federal noncompliance finding and establish a plan to come into compliance.”
Erin Shaw
Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: A win for open inquiry has appeared amidst relentless uncertainty in higher education. The Western Association of Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), the accreditor of most universities in California and Hawaii, is reconsidering the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements for accreditation in light of the Trump Administration’s executive order on accreditation.
Though the total banning of all things “DEI” represents another political intrusion on academic freedom, dropping DEI as an accreditation requirement allows more space for freedom of thought in higher education as institutions are no longer bound to a particular partisan orthodoxy.
Rose Horowitch
The Atlantic
Excerpt: No one would be surprised to learn that an elite university has a plan to counteract the structural barriers to the advancement of a minority group. Johns Hopkins University’s latest diversity initiative, however, has managed to put a new spin on a familiar concept: The minority group in question is conservative professors.
Several elite red-state public universities have recently established academic centers designed to attract conservative scholars. And institutions that haven’t sought out conservative faculty may soon find new reasons to do so. The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard hire additional conservative professors or risk losing even more of its federal funding.
