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Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic
Excerpt: On President Donald Trump’s first day back in the White House, he issued an executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government. Its sweeping language forbids DEI “mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities,” and orders the termination of all DEI positions—hundreds if not thousands of roles. Trump and his allies are also trying to curtail DEI in corporations that contract with the state, colleges that get federal funds, and more.
The ambition of these anti-DEI efforts mirrors the earlier, heavy-handed push, including by the Biden administration, to embed DEI practices into almost all of America’s most important institutions. It also underscores just how widely and variably the term DEI is now used across society.
John K. Wilson
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: On Feb. 14, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued an extraordinary Dear Colleague letter ordering all colleges and schools, public and private, that receive federal funds to implement massive changes and repression of free speech within 14 days. As the letter repeatedly warned and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency posted, “Institutions which fail to comply may face a loss of federal funding.”
The Feb. 14 letter is a full-fledged attack on affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion. It is also one of the worst attacks on academic freedom by the government in the history of American higher education.
Ian Bogost
The Atlantic
Excerpt: Jennie Bromberg was somehow still exuberant last weekend about her future career in public health. In January, she interviewed for a competitive Ph.D. program in epidemiology at the University of Washington, one of several to which she has applied. “I loved them. It was amazing,” she told me by phone while on a walk with her Australian shepherd. But the email that arrived from UW shortly after she got home was not the acceptance letter that she’d hoped for. Nor was it even a rejection. Instead, it said that she’d been placed in grad-school purgatory.
The Trump administration has frozen, slashed, threatened, and otherwise obstructed the tens of billions of dollars in funding that universities receive from the government, and then found ways around the court orders that were meant to stop or delay such efforts.
Jessica Blake and Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the federal workforce; crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and cut spending have faced swift pushback from higher education associations, students, legal advocacy organizations and colleges, and they’ve turned to the courts to seek relief.
So far, federal judges have temporarily prevented Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team from accessing student financial aid data and blocked the National Institutes of Health from capping payments for costs indirectly related to research. Elsewhere, legal challenges blocked a freeze on federal grants and loans and stopped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from laying off employees.
Washington Post Staff
Washington Post
Excerpt: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that the newspaper’s opinions section would now be focused on “personal liberties and free markets” and won’t publish anything that opposes those ideas. With the shift, opinions editor David Shipley has resigned, and The Post is searching for a successor.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” the billionaire Amazon founder wrote in an email to Post staffers that he also published on X. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Sharon Otterman
New York Times
Excerpt: Dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators barged into Milbank Hall on Barnard College’s Manhattan campus on Wednesday and staged a sit-in over the expulsion of two students who interrupted a class on Israel, sparking a showdown with Barnard’s administration.
