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Ben Austen
New York Times
Excerpt: Since January, the Trump administration has waged war on the nation’s wealthiest and most prestigious universities, freezing billions of dollars in research grants to Harvard and blasting away at Columbia’s institutional autonomy.
But collateral damage from these attacks has engulfed schools of all types, including the country’s 1,100 community colleges, which educate about 6.4 million undergraduates each year — roughly 40 percent of the national total and more than twice as many as are enrolled at every highly selective college and university in the country combined.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: More than three months after a federal court struck down an Education Department directive that barred any practices that consider race at colleges across the country, the Department of Justice declared Wednesday that diversity, equity and inclusion practices are unlawful and “discriminatory.”
But the agency’s memo goes even further than ED’s guidance, suggesting that programs that rely on what they describe as stand-ins for race, like recruitment efforts that focus on majority-minority geographic areas, could violate federal civil rights laws. The directive applies to any organization that receives federal funds, and DOJ officials warned that engaging in potentially unlawful practices could lead to a loss in grant funding.
Kevin Carey
The Atlantic
Excerpt: In March 2019, a team of investigators from the U.S. Department of Education’s fraud-prevention team arrived at a Houston trade school for what was supposed to be a routine inspection. Several of the students the team wanted to interview, however, were nowhere to be found. At the end of a long and frustrating day, the investigators headed back to their car. That’s when two of the missing students appeared in the parking lot. They wanted to talk in a place where school administrators couldn’t overhear them.
Erin Shaw and Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: A new report from education consulting firm EAB documenting results from a survey of thousands of high school students and first-year college students shows a worrying trend for viewpoint diversity on college campuses: prospective college students are intentionally self-sorting into ideologically aligned universities.
The data reveal that 29% of prospective first-year college students reported removing a college from their “might apply” lists based on political reasons. More students dropped potential colleges for being “too conservative” or being in a Republican-controlled state than for being “too liberal.” The report also notes that higher-income students were more likely than others to remove colleges across all political reasons.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Jim Ryan’s decision last month to step down as president of the University of Virginia in the face of pressure from the Trump administration drew renewed attention to the political appointees steering the public institution who will pick the next campus leader.
Multiple onlookers blamed Ryan’s resignation at least partly on the university’s Board of Visitors, which has been dramatically reshaped over the last three-plus years by Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointments. Since taking office in 2022, Youngkin has stocked the board with former GOP lawmakers, Republican donors and members of the Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group that called for Ryan’s ouster.
Justine McDaniel, Susan Svrluga and Emily Davies
Washington Post
Excerpt: Columbia University disciplined more than 70 students for participating in a May protest of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, the school said Tuesday, days after university officials hoping to cut a deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding attended a meeting at the White House.
The university suspended or expelled more than 80 percent of the students sanctioned in connection with a demonstration at the university’s Butler Library, according to university spokeswoman Millie Wert. Some will have their degrees revoked, while others were put on probation.
