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Bill Ackman
The Free Press

Excerpt: In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about.

I ultimately concluded that antisemitism was not the core of the problem. It was simply a troubling warning sign—it was the “canary in the coal mine”—despite how destructive it was in impacting student life and learning on campus.  I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment.

Coco Gong and Judy Gao
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The long-running debate about whether or not Universities should release statements on national and global events debate has been thrust into the limelight with recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and abortion, as well as international conflicts that impact members of the student body. The recent conflict in Israel and Gaza, for instance, has placed considerable pressure on universities across the nation regarding their official statements, and different University leaders have taken different stances on how to respond.

Richard Corcoran
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: Anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head at Harvard. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,400 Israelis, Jewish students there have reportedly been bullied, intimidated, spat on and, in at least one case, physically assaulted. Student-led protests call for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people with chants of “Intifada! Intifada! Intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!”

John Tierney
City Journal

Excerpt: After Harvard student groups blamed Israel for Hamas’s atrocities, the global backlash was so fierce that the university’s president, Claudine Gay, released a video statement that in some ways proved even more puzzling. “Our university rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs,” she said. “And our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”

This was news to the scholars with unpopular views at Harvard who have been sanctioned by administrators, boycotted by students, and slandered by the Crimson student newspaper.

Michael Powell
New York Times

Excerpt: Yoel Inbar, a noted psychology professor at the University of Toronto, figured he might be teaching this fall at U.C.L.A. Last year, the university’s psychology department offered his female partner a faculty appointment. Now the department was interested in recruiting him as a so-called partner hire, a common practice in academia. The university asked him to fill out the requisite papers, including a statement that affirmed his belief and work in diversity, equity and inclusion. He flew out and met with, among others, a faculty diversity committee and a group of graduate students.
 
But a few days later, the department chair emailed and told him that more than 50 graduate students had signed a letter strongly denouncing his candidacy. Why? In part, because on his podcast years earlier, he had opposed diversity statements — like the one he had just written.

Rick Sobey
Boston Herald
 
Excerpt: Just as the school year kicks off and students return to campus, Harvard University has been ranked as the worst college for free speech in the country. Harvard ranked last out of 248 colleges in a survey of more than 55,000 students across the U.S., receiving the only “Abysmal” rating in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse free speech rankings.

“Each year, the climate on college campuses grows more inhospitable to free speech,” said FIRE Director of Polling and Analytics Sean Stevens.

By Todd J. Zywicki
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: Identifying the problems does not answer the more important question: what is to be done? What practical, real-world policy responses are available that might arrest, then reverse, the decline of modern American higher education? And, equally important, what policy proposals will not have unintended consequences that will actually make matters worse?

By Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: Princeton University is one of the worst colleges for free speech in the country, according to FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings. But just how bad is it?

Josh Moody 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has forced changes at many of the nation’s wealthiest universities, some of which have shed hundreds of jobs amid federal funding issues and investigations.

While sector layoffs are so frequent that Inside Higher Ed has dedicated monthly coverage to rounding up such reductions, those actions are more common at small, cash-strapped colleges or state institutions reeling from budget cuts. But universities with multibillion-dollar endowments have been among those making the deepest cuts in the first half of 2025, often driven by freezes on federal funding that the Trump administration imposed with minimal notice.

Johanna Alonso 
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: More than three months after a federal court struck down an Education Department directive that barred any practices that consider race at colleges across the country, the Department of Justice declared Wednesday that diversity, equity and inclusion practices are unlawful and “discriminatory.”

But the agency’s memo goes even further than ED’s guidance, suggesting that programs that rely on what they describe as stand-ins for race, like recruitment efforts that focus on majority-minority geographic areas, could violate federal civil rights laws. The directive applies to any organization that receives federal funds, and DOJ officials warned that engaging in potentially unlawful practices could lead to a loss in grant funding.

Chris Cooper
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: It is worth noting that most DEI initiatives and offices on campus offer noncontroversial services like tutoring, mental health counseling and accessibility services like sign language interpreters. But the public and politicians were forming their opinions of DEI based on the voices of those with the megaphones and lucrative book contracts.

Current legislation targeting DEI upholds the most radical media-amplified voices as representative of the whole, even though these voices have been largely unsuccessful on many public campuses. Our university is not Columbia or Harvard, yet it seems as if legislators are attempting to punish our institution for the sins of its private counterparts. But when there are no loud moderate voices, how can we expect the public to see anything other than the extremes?

Jennifer Ruth 
Academe Blog 

Excerpt: Yesterday, the Department of Education announced investigations into Columbia University, Northwestern University, Portland State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, explaining that “widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported” at these five institutions.

Given the confusion that reigns in and over higher education today, it’s worth trying to think this through a bit.

Khoa Sands ‘26

Elite academia has been dominated by the question of free speech and free expression over the past year. 2024 has seen the explosion of pro-Palestine campus protests, throwing institutions into disarray. At Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, and other universities, administrators struggled to respond as activists occupied campus and harassed other students. Scenes of chaotic fighting at UCLA were played on televisions across the country. 

Rich Lowry
National Review

Excerpt: DEI is a bad idea whose time came with a vengeance several years ago, but now its continued ascendancy is in doubt. Perhaps the most important event this year outside of the presidential election is the intellectual collapse of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is poisonous hokum that is finally being exposed as such.

DEI has been one of the most morally perverse and damaging fads in recent American history.

Robby Soave
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: While other educational institutions pulled back on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the University of Michigan doubled down, spending nearly $250 million since 2016 on employees and programming that fill this ever-expanding niche.

The verdict? Spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless hours, specifically designing plans to make the campus more equitable, diverse, tolerant, and affirming of minority students…backfired utterly.

Paul Brest and Emily J. Levine
New York Times

Excerpt: With colleges and universities beginning a new academic year, we can expect more contentious debate over programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Progressives are doubling down on programs that teach students that they are either oppressed peoples or oppressors, while red states are closing campus D.E.I. programs altogether.

Jessica Wills
Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: At the end of May, Stanford’s faculty senate formally voted to approve free expression and institutional neutrality statements, making Stanford the third university in the last month to put into writing its dedication to these principles.

The new Statement on Freedom of Expression proclaims that the “freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university.” The language in Stanford’s statement closely mirrors the “Chicago Statement” on free expression, which FIRE considers to be the gold standard for campus free speech policies.

Khoa Sands
The Princeton Tory

Excerpt: Across the country, students are occupying university campuses and decrying their own schools. Chaos has unfolded at numerous universities. As authorities attempt to control the protest, criticism has mounted over perceived excessive force. The upcoming Democratic Party Convention in Chicago promises to be marked by radical demonstrations. The year was 1968.

Samuel J. Abrams
Minding the Campus

Excerpt: Closing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) offices around the country is a powerful step in halting the illiberal and divisive harm-centric monoculture that has taken over higher education. However, there remain far too many student-facing administrative offices that seek the same goals.

Whether in residential services or student life offices, administrators wield significant power and influence over students, affecting their learning and future trajectories. It’s crucial to address any dangerous or divisive behavior exhibited by these administrators.

Matthew Wilson
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: The eating clubs, like the University as a whole, must avoid becoming ideological echo chambers or so-called safe spaces where people go to avoid the risk of having their convictions or worldview challenged. Unfortunately, Charter’s new visitors policy — enacted to protect students from those whose ideas and mere existence they erroneously and ridiculously believe threaten their safety — does just the opposite. The new policy is intellectually indefensible and must be immediately revoked.

Courtney Tanner
Salt Lake Tribune

University of Utah faculty vented their frustrations Monday over the state’s rollback of diversity efforts across public education — with one professor saying it’s “planting the flag of hatred” and another suggesting the school’s president should have done more to fight the legislation.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: Over 100 universities have adopted some version of the University of Chicago’s Principle of Free Expression, also called the “Chicago Statement”: a strong version of free speech, pretty much adhering to the First Amendment. But the same doesn’t hold for another mainstay of our free-speech program: the Kalven Principles. This is the principle of institutional neutrality

I want to note that another university has just joined the three having official institutional neutrality. And that is Columbia University

Suzanne Nossell
CNN

Excerpt:  In a matter of months, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — or DEI — has gone from a guiding light on US college campuses to a deprecated doctrine blamed for chilling speech and imposing groupthink in higher education.

DEI programs are not inherently censorious. On the contrary, an open marketplace of ideas requires that everyone be able and willing to speak up. If barriers including prejudice, stereotyping or intimidation inhibit certain students from joining in classroom discussions or extracurricular life, the vitality of the public square diminishes. Steps to eliminate those obstacles range from training professors to elicit broader in class participation, supporting students with weaker academic backgrounds, or fostering community among sometimes isolated minorities.

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, college campuses around the country have been embroiled in intense anti-Israel protests. Elite college campuses have seen particularly aggressive demonstrations that have frequently included outright support for Hamas.

While First Amendment advocates have expressed hope that these recent controversies would show just how easily abused anti "hate speech" rules on college campuses are, many administrators seem to be taking the opposite position, advocating for more censorship, not less.

Katherine Knott
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses are behind the recent spike in campus antisemitism, several House Republicans said Tuesday during a hearing on “confronting the scourge of antisemitism on campus.”

“I think DEI is a fraud and what we’re seeing now on campuses is proof of that,” said Burgess Owens, the Utah Republican who chairs the House higher education subcommittee.

Charlie Yale
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: During his 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination, a video of then-Harvard freshman Pete Buttigieg made its way around the internet. In the video, Buttigieg asks Larry Summers — Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton — a question at a talk Summers gave on campus about how American economic policy could hail “a tangible qualitative human improvement worldwide.”

It is a real privilege as a student in a changing world to be able to hear speakers from every walk of political life talk about what they think is important. But, fundamentally, these events do not advance discourse on pressing issues if attendees are not given the opportunity to question the speakers. Students deserve the opportunity to ask questions of political leaders who speak on campus, and not just the questions that are pre-selected by a leader’s staff.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution is True

Excerpt: As time goes by, The Atlantic seems to be getting less and less woke and more and more sensible. Who would have guessed that it published an article not only highlighting the problems of higher education, but saying that perhaps Trump’s intervention has called these to our attention? At any rate, if you click on the title below, you’ll go to the archived version of the article written by E. Thomas Finan, author and professor of humanities at Boston University.

Amann S. Mahajan
Harvard Crimson 

Excerpt: Harvard’s graduate student union requested that the University guarantee academic freedom protections for graduate students’ teaching and research pursuits in a new contract proposal on Thursday, joining a growing roster of graduate unions that have requested similar provisions in recent years.

The proposal, presented during a bargaining session with University negotiators, would establish a definition of academic freedom for graduate students in their work as teaching and research assistants. It would also nod toward broader free speech protections, codifying student workers’ right to “express themselves peacefully as members of society or as representatives of their fields of instruction, study, or research.”

FIRE

Excerpt: Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio, challenging two federal immigration law provisions that give him unchecked power to revoke legal immigrants’ visas and deport them for protected speech.

Since March, Rubio and the Trump administration have waged an assault on free speech, targeting foreign university students for deportation based on bedrock protected speech like writing op-eds and attending protests. Their attack is casting a pall of fear over millions of noncitizens, who now worry that voicing the “wrong” opinion about America or Israel will result in deportation.

Julian J. Giordano 
Harvard Crimson 

Excerpt: Harvard will turn over I-9 forms for nearly all employees in response to an inquiry by the Department of Homeland Security, the University’s human resources office wrote in an email to current and recent employees on Tuesday afternoon.

The University will not immediately turn over information on students who are currently or were recently employed in roles open only to students. Harvard is evaluating whether those records are protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, according to the Tuesday email. An I-9 form is a federal document used to verify a person’s authorization to work in the United States.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: The Trump administration’s landmark settlement with Columbia University threatens the institution’s independence and academic freedom, higher education experts say. Many warn that the agreement marks a threat not only to higher education, but also to democracy at large.

Higher education faculty, legal experts and free speech advocates say the settlement is unlawful, pointing to the quick investigation, vague allegations and unprecedented way federal funds were retracted before Columbia had a chance to appeal. Some went as far as to compare the executive actions to past power grabs by authoritarian leaders in countries like Hungary, Turkey and Brazil.