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Higher education groups representing administrators and faculty filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a recent executive order that threatens to strip federal contracts from colleges and other organizations over their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The coalition — which also includes a faculty group at the University of Maryland, College Park, as well as the National Association of Minority Contractors and one of its local chapters — took aim at this definition in the new lawsuit. The groups argued that the definition is overly broad and encompasses lawful practices that “routinely, necessarily, and legally recognize and vary based on race.”
A couple of months ago, we spoke with the Chronicle of Higher Education about what they are calling “the conservative hiring boom.” At the time, it seemed clear to us that there was a “vibe shift” of sorts in terms of academic norms. Standalone DEI statements were on the decline, and there were anecdotal reports of heterodox scholars being recruited for faculty positions with a goal of increasing viewpoint diversity.
In light of this, we ran a poll asking folks about their perceptions of academic job market vibes, using an informal member email survey. We collected responses from 244 people working in higher education (77% of whom are HxA members). Here’s what we found.
Over the past few years, higher education institutions have adopted emerging artificial intelligence tools in an effort to enhance nearly every aspect of campus life—not just teaching and learning but also admissions, alumni networks, fundraising and advising. Now some are even experimenting with AI’s ability to advance one of the hottest trends on college campuses: fostering constructive dialogue among students, who are more divided over politics now than at any point in the past 40 years.
In the golden decades that stretched from the end of World War II to the 2010s, there was almost no better business to be in than higher education.
What’s that you say? A university is not a business? Well, I take the point, but just the same, universities were certainly operating more and more like businesses, with glossy marketing campaigns, sophisticated plans to ensure more admitted students actually enrolled and elaborate price discrimination schemes designed to squeeze every last dollar out of students. Increasingly, they also adopted that classic business maxim: “The customer is always right.”
In our National Speech Index, FIRE asks the general public a variety of questions related to free speech, including: How acceptable is it to use physical violence to stop someone giving a speech in their community? Gen Z are 9.6 times more accepting of violence against speakers than Baby Boomers, and over 25 times more accepting of violence against speakers than the Silent Generation.
Each successive generation is more supportive of violence against speakers than the last, in most cases more than twice as supportive. About 43% of Gen Z say violence against speakers is at least rarely acceptable, and over a quarter say it’s sometimes or always acceptable.
I have been committed to earning that trust from the moment I took this job. That’s why, last spring, I formed the Committee on Trust in Higher Education. I asked ten faculty members to undertake a project of thorough self-examination.
On April 10, they submitted the culmination of this work—a careful assessment of why trust in higher education has declined, followed by twenty thoughtful recommendations for efforts Yale can undertake to begin rebuilding the public’s confidence. I encourage you to read the full report.
