Your Cart is Empty
Vimal Patel
New York Times
Excerpt: The University of California said on Wednesday that it would stop requiring the use of diversity statements in hiring, a practice praised by some who said it made campuses more inclusive but criticized by others who said it did the opposite.
Troy Closson, Alan Blinder and Katherine Rosman
New York Times
Excerpt: Many professors saw it as surrender, a reward to the Trump administration’s heavy hand. Conservative critics of academia celebrated it as an overdue, righteous reset by an Ivy League university.
Columbia University’s concession on Friday to a roster of government demands as it sought to restore about $400 million in federal funding is being widely viewed as a watershed in Washington’s relationships with the nation’s colleges. By design, the consequences will be felt immediately on Columbia’s campus, where, for example, some security personnel will soon have arrest powers and an academic department that had drawn conservative scrutiny is expected to face stringent oversight. But they also stand to shape colleges far from Manhattan.
FIRE
Excerpt: The federal government abandoned its existing process to brow-beat Columbia — and Columbia folded.
Higher education reform shouldn’t resemble a shakedown. Colleges and universities shouldn’t be bullied into accepting speech-restrictive demands because the government dangles a $400 million check over an institution’s head. Any changes made as a result of this flawed process are inherently suspect.
Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: A $10,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services is allowing a tribal college in northern Michigan to continue offering library services during a building renovation. The IMLS, which is the largest federal funding source for U.S. museums and libraries, also awarded a historically Black university in Virginia $52,000 to digitize an archival collection about the women’s college it absorbed in 1932. And an academic researcher in Florida is counting on a $150,000 grant to help school librarians better support students who are autistic.
But as of last week, those and hundreds of other federally funded programs at museums and libraries—many housed at cash-strapped colleges and universities—are in jeopardy.
