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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.
Joe Cohn
Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: When protesters took over Columbia University’s Butler Library on May 7, prevented others from using the library for their studies, vandalized the building, and apparently assaulted university staff, they were not just violating the university's rules. They were also engaged in criminal activity.
As HxA has previously stated, the right to protest from any point of view on any topic is an essential aspect of freedom of speech vital to the health of college campuses. But the right does not extend to occupying buildings, excluding others from shared spaces, vandalism, violence, or any other attempt to disrupt the functioning of an institution of higher education. Those activities prevent others from engaging in open inquiry (including research and studying) and can—as they did at Butler Library—also endanger people.
Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein
Persuasion
Excerpt: On May 5, Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent Harvard University a letter declaring that the school “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided,” effectively rendering Harvard ineligible for government funding for any new research. It was the latest volley in what has been a contentious battle between Harvard and the Trump administration.
Harvard has absolutely earned everyone’s scorn. For years, our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), has been criticizing Harvard for creating an ideological monoculture, cultivating an environment hostile to viewpoint diversity, and failing to address the problem of anti-Semitism on its campus. However, the administration’s actions towards Harvard pose a far greater threat to higher education and the principles of academic freedom than any of the sins committed by Harvard itself.
