Commentary: America and Its Universities Need a New Social Contract

Danielle Allen April 13, 2025 1 min read

Danielle Allen
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The life of the mind may be a deeply personal thing, but as embodied in colleges and universities, it is also a very public thing—and the two go hand in hand. Since taking office, the Trump administration has been working to dismantle the global order and the nation’s core institutions, including its cultural ones, to strip them of their power. 

The future of the nation’s universities is very much at stake. This is not a challenge that can be met with purely defensive tactics. We must do what should have been done long ago: find our way to a new social contract between universities and the American people.

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Trump Team to Freeze Nearly $2 Billion at Cornell and Northwestern Universities

Douglas Belkin and Meridith McGraw April 08, 2025 1 min read

Douglas Belkin and Meridith McGraw
Wall Street Journal 

Excerpt: The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern, according to a Trump administration official.

The federal government is investigating both schools for alleged civil-rights violations, as part of a rapidly expanding crackdown on elite research universities across the U.S. The latest funding at issue relates to grants and contracts with the departments of agriculture, defense, education and health and human services.

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UConn Med now lets students opt out of DEI pledge of allegiance

Ross Marchand  April 07, 2025 1 min read

Ross Marchand 
FIRE

Excerpt: Great news: UConn School of Medicine administrators are going scalpels down on the school’s attempt to forcibly transplant politics and ideology into its incoming student body. 

In 2022, UConn finalized its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to “actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.” Most recently, UConn required the incoming class of 2028 to pledge allegiance not simply to patient care, but to support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Trump Demands Harvard Eradicate DEI to Preserve Its Federal Funding

Maya Stahl April 04, 2025 1 min read

Maya Stahl
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The Trump administration is demanding that Harvard University eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, reform admissions and hiring practices, and crack down on student discipline “to remain a responsible recipient of federal taxpayer dollars.”

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Commentary: Grant Terminated

Researchers Impacted by Federal Grant Terminations April 03, 2025 1 min read

Researchers Impacted by Federal Grant Terminations
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Billions of dollars in federal scientific research grants have been rescinded or suspended since the start of the Trump administration.

Below, 16 researchers across nine different research areas who have had their federal grants terminated since the start of the Trump administration share just a few of the thousands of stories behind these cuts.

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Differentiating Colleges and Universities In A Tax On Endowment Income

by Ed Yingling '70 April 02, 2025 10 min read

by Ed Yingling '70

Washington insiders believe it is very likely that a significant increase in the tax rate on university endowment income will be enacted this year. They cite the need for additional tax revenue to offset the Trump tax cut agenda and the antipathy of many Republicans to what has been happening on campuses for the last two years. They also focus on the fact that then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill in the last Congress imposing a 35 percent tax on endowment income.

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