John Murawski
RealClear Investigations
Excerpt: Alarmed by academia’s dominant ideological ethos of social justice activism – particularly the holy trinity of race, sex, and gender – more than two dozen dissident groups have emerged seeking to rebalance the culture at leading public and private universities across the country, including Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCLA, Williams, the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia.
They are expected to gain traction with Donald Trump back in the White House.
Why Evolution is True
Jerry Coyne
Excerpt: The time has come that many have feared but many will celebrate: DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) is effectively gone from campuses by federal order.
Since virtually every institution of higher learning depends on some federal funding, this gives colleges the choices of abandoning DEI or abandoning federal money. You know which they’ll prefer. The former, of course, but they’ll try to have both, sometimes by duplicitous practices.
Bill DeMora
The Columbus Dispatch
Excerpt: Though I haven’t served in the Senate long, I’ve seen my fair share of outrageous bills, and Senate Bill 1 stands as the worst by a mile. It’s authoritarian, anti-union, anti-free speech, and a cowardly display of the majority party’s inability to defend its beliefs in the marketplace of ideas unless it can control the entire market.
Still the “Advance Ohio Education Act” was passed by the Ohio Senate. It should be called the Ohio Higher Education Destruction Act.
Tanya J. Vidhun
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Bharat N. Anand said the University is encouraging teachers to broach controversial subjects in classrooms at a Harvard Graduate School of Education virtual event on Thursday.
The University has been widely criticized in recent years for both speech policies and a perceived lack of ideological diversity. After a year of exceptional protest activity, Harvard officials have launched a series of initiatives aimed at improving dialogue and understanding the campus speech climate and academic freedom.
Michelle Goldberg
New York Times
Excerpt: In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, a gathering of Trumpist thinkers and politicians, titled “The Universities Are the Enemy.” It contained the usual complaints about critical race theory and gender ideology, but it went much further, arguing for a frontal attack on the power and prestige of higher education writ large.
Put aside, for a moment, the hypocrisy of this message coming from a man catapulted into the highest strata of American society by Yale Law School. The striking thing about Vance’s speech was its deep hostility to the entire academic enterprise, not just the so-called woke parts. He wasn’t talking about making more room for right-wing ideas in universities or even dreaming of taking them over. He wanted to destroy it all.
Ellie Wolfe
Baltimore Banner
Excerpt: Faculty at the Naval Academy are no longer permitted to use materials in the classroom that teach about systemic racism and sexism, according to an internal email obtained by The Baltimore Banner.
The changes come as the Trump administration has targeted diversity programs, signing executive orders to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices across the federal government and halting grant funding for programs that study diversity.