The Chaos in Higher Ed Is Only Getting Started

January 24, 2025 1 min read

Ian Bogost
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The Department of Health and Human Services has told employees of several health agencies, including the NIH, to stop communicating with the public. Even more disruptive for universities, the committee meetings for reviewing NIH grant proposals have also been abruptly put on hold until at least February 1.

“This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities,” Jane Liebschutz, a medical doctor and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, posted on Bluesky, in reference to the grant-review shutdown. The UCLA professor Lindsay Wiley echoed the sentiment, adding on Bluesky that the pause, which affects the distribution of a multibillion-dollar pool of public-research money, “will have long-term effects on medicine & short-term effects on state, higher education & hospital budgets. This affects all of us, not just researchers.”

Click here for link to full article


Leave a comment


Also in National Free Speech News & Commentary

The ICE Detention of a Columbia Student Is Just the Beginning

March 10, 2025 1 min read

Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin
The Free Press

Excerpt: On Saturday evening, federal immigration authorities arrested an anti-Israel activist who helped lead protests against the Jewish state on Columbia University’s campus after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack. As progressive activists and free speech advocates protested the move to revoke Mahmoud Khalil’s green card over civil liberties concerns Monday, President Donald Trump warned that Khalil’s arrest would be the first “of many to come.”

Read More
Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia Is Moved to Detention in Louisiana

March 10, 2025 1 min read

Ana Ley
New York Times

Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, 30, emerged as a public face of students opposed to the war, leading demonstrations and granting interviews. He delivered a message that his side viewed as measured and responsible but that has been branded by some, including the Trump administration, as antisemitic.

Over the weekend, Mr. Khalil was at the center of the news again. He was arrested by federal immigration officials in a drastic escalation of President Trump’s crackdown against what he has called antisemitic campus activity. Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, had been living in Columbia’s student housing when he was detained and then transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La.

Read More
Commentary: NYT and Bloomberg refuse mention high-quality study showing that DEI training has counterproductive results

March 10, 2025 1 min read

Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: One of the most odious forms of censorship in modern science. or in any discipline that produces empirical results, is to simply ignore the results of or even refuse to publish a study simply because it gives results you—or a journal or a newspaper—don’t like because they go against current ideology.

Now we have another case, with two media organizations—this time including the NYT—ignoring a study on the inimical (yes, inimical) effects of DEI training on intergroup harmony. Both articles are from late last year.

Read More