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Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee released the full version of a long-awaited tax bill Monday that does for higher ed exactly what they suggested it would in a draft version Friday: dramatically increase the excise tax on wealthy colleges’ endowments.
If the legislation passes, the tax rate for each institution would range from 1.4 to 21 percent, depending on the size of its endowment and the number of students it enrolls, according to the 339-page bill. As with the existing endowment tax, the increases would apply only to private institutions.
Daniel J. Solomon
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: Ever since the change of administration in Washington, campus conservatives have been snared in a novel predicament. Once academe’s outcasts and eccentrics, those on the right now elicit suspicion and rage. Our cries against the left’s capture of the humanities have risen to the ears of the White House, and the Department of Education has put an ultimatum to the universities: acquiesce to state interference in curriculum, hiring, and internal governance, or lose billions in federal funding.
Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: As President Trump’s broadside attacks on higher education continue, few institutions have shown a willingness to push back publicly. But behind closed doors, the sector has already pumped millions of dollars into federal lobbying efforts this year to plead their case in Washington.
An Inside Higher Ed analysis of federal lobbying data shows that some of the universities in Trump’s crosshairs have dramatically increased spending this year compared to the first quarter of last year, hiring advocates on the Hill to represent their interests to lawmakers.
Alice Dreger
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: Two questions – what counts as activism in academia and what (if anything) should be done about it – formed the core of our lively webinar last Wednesday as I spoke with the University of Wyoming’s Martha McCaughey and the University of Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg and took questions from Heterodox Academy members.
Dhruv T. Patel and Grace E. Yoon
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 reaffirmed in a Monday letter that the University would not bow to interference from the Trump administration — even as he suggested Harvard and the government “share common ground.”
In a three-page message addressed to United States Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who announced one week ago that the Trump administration would no longer issue any grants or contracts to Harvard, Garber defended Harvard’s record on antisemitism and doubled down on the University’s refusal to concede to what he called an unlawful attempt to shape its core values.
Ilya Somin
Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine
Excerpt: Yesterday, federal District Judge William K. Sessions, III, of the District of Vermont ordered the immediate release of Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, whom ICE had detained and slated for deportation based on her anti-Israel speech.
In earlier posts on this topic, I have urged universities to file lawsuits challenging Trump's speech-based deportation policy, rather than letting students like Ozturk fend for themselves. I was happy to see that many schools (including my undergraduate alma mater Amherst College) filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit brought against the policy by the American Association of University Professors (the court recently issued a preliminary ruling in favor of AAUP, allowing the case to go forward). But universities should do more to protect their students.
