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Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D.
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy, Substack
Excerpt: Diversity statements started to be commonly required for applications for university faculty positions starting in the 2010s. These statements—often one- to two-page essays detailing a candidate's commitment to advancing diversity, enquiry, and inclusion goals in their academic work—have been a fierce topic of debate. On the extremes, one side sees diversity statements as simply asking faculty candidates to demonstrate how they advance the university’s values. The other side sees them as thinly veiled ideological filters in hiring.
After a decade, following intense controversy over the use of these statements in hiring, the UC system has officially put an end to the practice.
John Tomasi
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: In a rare and admirable act of institutional defiance, Harvard University has rejected demands from the Trump administration that would have compromised its autonomy, chilled academic freedom, and upended core principles of academia. The government’s letter to Harvard — citing a broad civil rights investigation — demanded detailed records, ideological audits, and structural changes that amount to an effort at direct political control. Harvard was right to say no.
The administration’s demands are a serious threat to academic freedom. Yet Harvard's resistance will ring hollow unless it pairs its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning about the internal failures that made it vulnerable to such scrutiny in the first place.
Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True
Excerpt: Yes, Harvard should have already made some of these reforms, and I know it’s trying to enact some of them, but allowing political forces to control how colleges and universities are run takes one of America’s glories–the quality of its higher education that already attracts students from throughout the world–and turns it into an arm of one political party or another.
Susan Svrluga
Washington Post
Excerpt: With billions of dollars in federal funding at risk, Harvard University officials on Monday rejected Trump administration demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, admissions and hiring practices. The administration responded Monday night by saying it would freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding to the Ivy League school.
