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Ian Bogost
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The start of spring semester is a hopeful time on college campuses. Students fill the quads and walkways, wearing salmon shorts or strappy tank tops. Music plays; Frisbees fly. As a career academic, I have been a party to this catalog-cover scene for more than 30 years running. It looks made-up, but it is real. Every year in the United States, almost 20 million people go to college, representing every race, ethnicity, and social class. This is college in America—or it has been for a long time.
But college life as we know it may soon come to an end.
Nolan L. Cabrera
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: This is a call to my dear faculty friends and colleagues in higher education institutions. In the first months of the new presidential administration, and indeed since the election, many have been searching for answers. I have been in more meetings, gatherings and brain dump sessions than I can count, all focused on the same existential question: What does this all mean?
I am not calling for us to be lacking in strategy or unaware of our contexts. However, I am extremely concerned that a number of my fellow academics are engaging in pre-emptive self-censorship.
Keith E. Whittington
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine
Excerpt: Yesterday the Trump administration launched yet another massive financial blow at a university because it has done some things the administration does not like. This time the University of Pennsylvania's medical research is being decimated because the administration disagrees with the Penn athletic department's transgender policies.
Troy Closson, Alan Blinder and Katherine Rosman
New York Times
Excerpt: Many professors saw it as surrender, a reward to the Trump administration’s heavy hand. Conservative critics of academia celebrated it as an overdue, righteous reset by an Ivy League university.
Columbia University’s concession on Friday to a roster of government demands as it sought to restore about $400 million in federal funding is being widely viewed as a watershed in Washington’s relationships with the nation’s colleges. By design, the consequences will be felt immediately on Columbia’s campus, where, for example, some security personnel will soon have arrest powers and an academic department that had drawn conservative scrutiny is expected to face stringent oversight. But they also stand to shape colleges far from Manhattan.
Kathryn Palmer
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: A $10,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services is allowing a tribal college in northern Michigan to continue offering library services during a building renovation. The IMLS, which is the largest federal funding source for U.S. museums and libraries, also awarded a historically Black university in Virginia $52,000 to digitize an archival collection about the women’s college it absorbed in 1932. And an academic researcher in Florida is counting on a $150,000 grant to help school librarians better support students who are autistic.
But as of last week, those and hundreds of other federally funded programs at museums and libraries—many housed at cash-strapped colleges and universities—are in jeopardy.
Caroline G. Hennigan and Bradford D. Kimball, Crimson Staff Writers
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.
The resolution, which called on Harvard to “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.
Juliana Kim
NPR
Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Education has launched investigations into 52 universities in 41 states, accusing the schools of using "racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities."
Nicholas B. Dirks
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The first time Donald Trump threatened to use the power of the presidency to punish a university, I was the target. At UC Berkeley, where I was chancellor, campus police had at the last moment canceled an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right political pundit who was then a star at Breitbart News, because of a violent attack on the venue by a group of outside left-wing activists who objected to Yiannopoulos’s presence.
I didn’t worry much about Trump’s threat at the time. I now realize that was a mistake. American universities did not cause the onslaught that the second Trump administration is unleashing upon them. But they would be in a much stronger position today if they had made a proactive case to the public for their own importance—and taken steps to address their very real shortcomings.
Ana Ley
New York Times
Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, 30, emerged as a public face of students opposed to the war, leading demonstrations and granting interviews. He delivered a message that his side viewed as measured and responsible but that has been branded by some, including the Trump administration, as antisemitic.
Over the weekend, Mr. Khalil was at the center of the news again. He was arrested by federal immigration officials in a drastic escalation of President Trump’s crackdown against what he has called antisemitic campus activity. Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, had been living in Columbia’s student housing when he was detained and then transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La.
Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is True
Excerpt: One of the most odious forms of censorship in modern science. or in any discipline that produces empirical results, is to simply ignore the results of or even refuse to publish a study simply because it gives results you—or a journal or a newspaper—don’t like because they go against current ideology.
Now we have another case, with two media organizations—this time including the NYT—ignoring a study on the inimical (yes, inimical) effects of DEI training on intergroup harmony. Both articles are from late last year.
Elisabeth Stewart and Luke Grippo
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Resources Committee of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) announced on Wednesday that a proposal for the University to cut financial ties with entities implicated in “Israel’s illegal occupations, apartheid practices, and plausible acts of genocide” will not move forward, citing a lack of campus consensus.
Student advocates across campus reacted to the decision with frustration, disappointment, and support. But one sentiment they did not express was consensus — about the issue, about the Committee’s decision, or even about the process behind it.
Jaweed Kaleem
LA Times
Excerpt: After the Trump administration told schools to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs or face federal funding cuts, USC has deleted the website for its university wide Office of Inclusion and Diversity and merged it into another operation, scrubbed several college and department-level DEI statements, renamed faculty positions and, in one case, removed online references to a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students.
The University of Southern California’s actions — similar to some other universities throughout the country — appear to be aimed at avoiding federal scrutiny, according to USC faculty and staff and reviews of portions of the USC website archives.
By Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Princetonians for Free Speech Original Content
“Princeton Doubles Down on DEI Amid Nationwide Attacks,” the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported recently – and a few weeks later, the Trump Administration launched at warp speed a profusion of legal and rhetorical attacks on universities and their DEI programs for alleged sins against freedom of speech and for “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.” The Administration may make major cuts of outlays to universities, and Vice President J.D. Vance and others have spoken of taxing income on university endowments.
Eva Cherniavsky and Amit R. Baishya
Technology Review
Excerpt: We write as former members of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). Both of us resigned from CAFPRR after the refusal of the MLA Executive Council to advance Resolution 2025-1 to the organization’s delegate assembly.
Responding to the genocide in Gaza and citing the revised position of the AAUP on the legitimacy of academic boycotts, the resolution called on MLA members to embrace boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) actions against Israel. We recount some of the events that led to our decision and present three major concerns that arise from disallowing the debate.
By Daniel Diermeier and Andrew D. Martin
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: American research universities are vital to the nation’s economy, security, and democratic systems. Their capacity for research and innovation is unmatched. They offer students a proven path to higher wages and career advancement. If they are properly focused on their core purpose, universities are an essential training ground for civic life in a pluralistic society. At a time when everything is contested, universities insist on reason, evidence, and truth.
With so much at stake, universities must return to their foundational purpose and recommit to the core principles that sustain them.
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.
Thomas F. Powers
Quillette
Excerpt: The Trump administration’s opening policy blitzkrieg (on day one alone: 48 “presidential actions,” a record 24 Executive Orders, and 78 past executive orders revoked) has touched many different policy areas, but none more powerfully than DEI.
How effective will Trump’s legal assault be? The dominant interpretations of DEI and radical progressive ideology set forth in books today focus on the causal role of bad ideas and other “cultural” factors. If these interpreters are correct then, regardless of how decisive they are, the actions of the Trump administration are superficial and doomed to fail unless accompanied by some broader intellectual and cultural movement to change Americans’ hearts and minds.
Charlie Yale
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: The Trump administration has used its power to marginalize transgender people to the point of rejecting the fact of their existence. If the Senate passes the language of H.R.28, legal protections against discrimination for trans students across the country could be in jeopardy, and the situation for trans students — including those on our own campus — could become far more dire than it already is.
That is why Princeton must take action to bolster resources and current protections for transgender students outside of Title IX as well as release a statement clearly condemning the legislation.
Andrea Brower
Common Dreams
Excerpt: For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.
The number of the similar cases is impossible to know, due in part to near media omission. Many people who have faced or are currently facing investigations are instructed that they must remain silent (and isolated) as to not “compromise” the investigation. Some are quiet because their jobs, prospects for future employment, and safety are at stake. What is clear is that the trials are wide-reaching, extraordinarily punitive, largely coordinated, and were coming down rapidly across the country at educational institutions of all types even before Trump was sworn in.
Vitus Larrieu
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: An executive order signed by President Donald Trump and released on Wednesday, Jan. 29 calls for Princeton and other universities to “monitor” and “report activities by alien students and staff” for actions that constitute antisemitism.
The executive order gives various federal agencies — including the Department of Education — 60 days to create a list of all cases involving a university alleging civil rights violations related to antisemitism that occurred following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A Title VI case related to antisemitism at Princeton was opened by the Department of Education in January 2024, referencing chants at pro-Palestine protests in October 2023.
American Association of University Professors Statement
Excerpt: As Donald Trump assumes the presidency for a second time, the outlook for higher education is dire. The new administration's agenda for higher education has been thoroughly prepared by a series of statewide legal assaults on public colleges and universities in North Carolina, Florida, Texas and elsewhere, as well as by the high-profile congressional witch hunt that within the past year brought down the presidents of three Ivy League institutions.
In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” This is undoubtedly such a time.
Kenneth Chan
Daily Princetonian
Excerpt: If the 2024 election was a rebuke of American institutions, it was an even stronger rebuke of the educational elite. The Democratic Party, long the party of American labor, has become the party of the college educated. As college students preparing to be the leaders of tomorrow, that sounds like a good thing. This institution supposedly selects the brightest students in the nation. It is supposed to mold our minds for leadership in the world.
It seems our leaders have forgotten how to lead a pluralistic and economically diverse society. To renew confidence in tomorrow’s leaders, the solution at Princeton must be a return to common values. One way to do this is a new civic education requirement.
Robby Soave
Reason Magazine
Excerpt: Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed a bevy of executive orders earlier this week, including one that seeks to end the federal government's pressure campaign on social media companies.
The "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" executive order reaffirms the free speech rights of social media users and prohibits government agents from engaging in unconstitutional censorship.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: One of President Donald Trump’s latest executive orders aims to end “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion policies and could upend programs that support underrepresented groups on college campuses.
Whether the order, signed late Tuesday night, will be effective is not clear, some experts cautioned Wednesday. Others celebrated it as the end of DEI in America.
Jack Fowler
National Review
Excerpt: For reputation-tattered Cornell University, 2024 was a bad year — the pain self-inflicted. As the school prepares for late-February elections of alumni members to the Board of Trustees, one wonders: Will 2025 deliver another (self-infliction encore!) Ivy League black eye?
Some concerned graduates are refusing complacency while the university board relentlessly rubber-stamps the administration’s ideological obsessions, tarnishing the once-prestigious brand. They have grabbed an opportunity -- the formal, annual election of two new alumni trustees -- to put two fresh-thinking, independent, and unendorsed (more on that below) candidates on the ballot.
Cary Nelson and Joe Lockard
Quillette
Excerpt: On 10 January 2025, Katherine Franke announced her departure from the Columbia University Law School. After she issued a public statement, she had it republished on the Academe blog of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Two of Franke’s law-school colleagues had filed a complaint after Franke gave an interview to Democracy Now on 25 January 2024, in which she claimed that IDF veterans enrolled at Columbia had a history of harassing other students but that the university was not taking this harassment seriously. The complaint stated that Franke had “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin.” An independent law-firm investigation found that she had violated university anti-discrimination policy.
Martin Gurri
City Journal
Excerpt: Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to “get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram” marks an astonishing turnaround in the long, twilight struggle over information in the digital age. In this conflict, it should be noted, Zuckerberg has played a Hamlet-like part, uncertain whether to be or not to be an advocate of openness and free speech. His latest decision to embrace a set of grand principles was doubtless influenced by political considerations; now he stands accused of currying favor with the free-speech rebels of the incoming Trump crowd.
But at 3 billion monthly active users and 100 billion pieces of content daily, Facebook remains, at least for now, the brontosaurus in the room when it comes to social media.
Haley Gluhanich
FIRE
Excerpt: When tenured Millsaps College professor James Bowley sent an email sharing his opinion on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, he didn’t anticipate it would result in his termination. But in a perfect storm of overreach and red tape, that’s exactly what happened.
On Nov. 6, 2024 — the day after the election — Bowley emailed the students in his “Abortion and Religions” class, canceling that day’s session to “mourn and process this racist fascist country.” With only three students in the class, Bowley got to know them quite well, including their political feelings, and knew canceling class would be best for those students. As Bowley told FIRE, “I just want to be caring and kind to my students, whom I knew would be troubled by the election.”
By Marisa Hirschfield ‘27
Last year, for a comedy show on campus, I wrote a sketch about the fictional Society to Lessen Unamerican Teaching (note the acronym), a group that wants to rewrite history textbooks in Florida. In the skit, the characters pitch ridiculous falsehoods about American history (e.g., Hillary Clinton wrote the Communist Manifesto and also brought smallpox to the New World). My intention was to satirize classroom censorship of historical injustice and expose the absurdity of legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which shapes curricula in a politically-pointed way.
Katherine Franke
Academe Blog
Excerpt: For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 attacks, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I have ardently defended students’ right to peaceful protest on our campus and across the country. I truly believed that student engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated tradition at Columbia University of student protest.
Instead, the University has allowed its own disciplinary process to be weaponized against members of our community, including myself. I have been targeted for my support of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors.
Bobby Ramkissoon
FIRE
Excerpt: Amid the urban hum of downtown Seattle and the friendly clatter of a FIRE supporters’ meetup, a consequential alliance was born.
Two alumni of the University of Washington, separated by generations but united by a shared purpose, converged in conversation. Cole Daigneault, a freshly minted graduate from the class of 2024, and Bill Severson, a two-time UW graduate who earned his bachelor’s and law degree in the early 1970s, lamented over the encroaching illiberalism at their alma mater. That evening’s conversation, later sustained through an alumni email listserv, soon crystallized into Husky Alumni for Academic Excellence.
Greg Lukianoff
The Dispatch
Excerpt: It’s very hard for me not to be pessimistic about the state of free speech in higher education. As president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), I have first-hand knowledge of just how dire things have been and continue to be on campus. Or, it was until a few weeks ago.
Perhaps the most promising development this year has been the shattering of academia’s illusion of invulnerability. For too long, higher education has fancied itself untouchable and irreplaceable, but it’s beginning to recognize that neither of these assumptions are true.
Khoa Sands
Princeton Tory
Excerpt: While democracy emphasizes a particularized government consciousness that reflects the collective awareness and identity of a specific demos, liberalism prioritizes the universality of individual rights and freedoms shaped by historical consciousness. The tension between these forms of consciousness underlies key debates in contemporary political philosophy regarding which political regime is most preferable.
