More than half of respondents to The Crimson’s annual faculty survey opposed Harvard’s efforts to solicit donations for a viewpoint diversity initiative — rejecting a push to raise hundreds of millions of dollars through $10 million endowed professorships meant to broaden ideological representation.
Nearly 47 percent of faculty respondents also disagreed that Harvard has a troubling lack of ideological diversity among its faculty, while roughly 31 percent agreed. The split was little changed from last year, when 45 percent disagreed and 34 percent agreed — putting most respondents at odds with critics, including Trump administration officials, who have charged that Harvard’s faculty is too ideologically narrow.
Students returned to campus this fall after a tumultuous summer for Yale’s relations with the federal government. Since the start of the second Trump administration, universities have faced heightened pressure through threats to federal research funds, criticism of diversity policies and scrutiny into alleged antisemitism on campuses, and many of them have reached settlements. Yale seemed to be an exception. But not anymore.
As the academic year begins, the status and details of the federal negotiations remain unclear, although University President Maurie McInnis has released several comments about Yale’s talks with the federal government as pressure mounts against any settlement with the Trump administration. The ongoing period of uncertainty in the negotiations “may well continue, and we do not know for how long,” McInnis wrote in an Aug. 21 message to the Yale community.
Ghent University suspended postdoctoral scholar Nathan Cofnas as a “precautionary measure” pending a “preliminary disciplinary investigation.” The reason he is being suspended, however, has little if anything to do with him legitimately criticizing Jason Arday’s scholarship last month by documenting plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis. Ghent is instead suspending Cofnas because his expressed public views are misaligned with the university’s values and therefore “creates a reputational risk”. This is not how academic freedom should work.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recently released a “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” a less openly threatening version of the earlier “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that had been broadly rejected. More than a month prior to the release of McMahon’s letter, Vanderbilt University published “The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles,” signed by its chancellor and board chair and adopted by its board.
Whether this alignment is the result of happenstance or collaboration is impossible to know, but what is clear is the extent to which Vanderbilt is positioning itself as a model of the sort of elite higher education of which the Trump administration approves. This does not, prima facie, make the Vanderbilt model wrong, but, given the stakes, it does suggest that the model should be examined with great care.
What is college for? If you ask four different people, you’re likely to get four different answers. Universities teach students how to think. They produce groundbreaking research. They create citizens. They prepare students for jobs. They archive the wisdom of the past. And so on.
However, beneath the veneer of diversity, all university goals ultimately come down to the same thing. At their core, universities are epistemic institutions, committed to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.
When news of Iván Chaar López’s tenure denial broke last month, the scholar’s supporters pointed to what they believed was the University of Texas at Austin’s unstated reason: politics.
University President Maurie McInnis has engaged in private conversations with student leaders, as well as the faculty senate chair, about Yale’s attempts to settle with the Trump administration — a venture that has faced widespread backlash from students, faculty and alumni.
Last week, a committee of scholars convened by Vanderbilt University released a report on the state of humanities and social sciences scholarship across the United States.
As one of the signers of the report, I am all too familiar with the fact that activist scholars sometimes play fast and loose with logic and evidence to justify conclusions dictated in advance by a political program. Those who dissent can risk serious damage to their careers. Journals have been forced to apologize for research they have published — not because of poor logic or manufactured evidence, but because the results were politically unacceptable.
The University of Chicago has undergone a “curriculum degradation” in the past 13 years, according to a new analysis by an accounting professor.
Professor Ivan Marinovic, who teaches accounting at Stanford University, analyzed language used in University of Chicago course titles and descriptions between 2012 and 2025 for his analysis, published at the Heterodox STEM Substack.
He found the use of “progressive” language, such as “equity” and “intersectional” has doubled, compared to the use of “Western canon” words, such as “Bible” and “Western civilization.”
Lightning rarely ever strikes the same place twice, so the fact that higher education is experiencing yet another case of self-awareness is a miraculous occurrence.
The Harvard Medical School (HMS) released a report on April 21, 2026 following an assessment on the state of open inquiry and public discourse at HMS. This yearlong assessment began in May 2025 and was led by the HMS Open Inquiry Working Group (OIWG), culminating in a 40-page report that offers 11 key recommendations to “serve as a roadmap for fostering and advancing a culture at HMS that is dedicated to open inquiry and respectful discourse.”
A proposal for proctoring on all examinations will be considered by two faculty committees before potentially reaching a faculty vote in May, according to Dean of the College Michael Gordin. This unprecedented proposal comes amid administrative concerns about cheating, especially given the prevalence of generative AI tools.
The change would constitute the most significant alteration to date to Princeton’s honor system since its establishment in 1893. Under the Honor Code, students pledge both to refrain from infractions of academic dishonesty and to report any academic integrity breaches they witness.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from requiring colleges and universities to collect and report admissions data disaggregated by race and gender, Reuters reported.
The temporary restraining order, issued by U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor IV in Boston, comes in response to a lawsuit filed last week by 17 Democratic states over the administration’s demand that colleges and universities complete the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement survey by March 18. Saylor’s order extends the deadline through March 25 “to permit a hearing and orderly resolution of the issues.”
“I’ve had the tremendous privilege of knowing so many fantastic students at Princeton, who I know will become extraordinary military leaders. And I think that it would be a massive shame if that potential was eliminated,” the student said in response to an announcement that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ’03 made on Feb. 27. In a video posted on social media, Hegseth announced that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) will end sponsorship for graduate students at Princeton and other Ivy League institutions beginning in the 2026–27 academic year.
University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote in a statement to the ‘Prince’ that there are “a dozen active-duty military graduate students currently enrolled at Princeton, representing all four branches of the U.S. Armed services with all but two of those students enrolled at SPIA.” As the policy currently stands, active-duty service members may be unable to attend Princeton for graduate school while remaining in service.
In July of this year, the American Association of University Professors endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. Reactions from higher ed commentators played out exactly how you might expect: where defenders saw an obligatory bulwark of academic freedom against GOP incursions, critics saw an own-goal that only further justified those attacks.
However justified the AAUP’s decision may have seemed to some, new research suggests that it will only further fracture public trust in higher education.
Renowned legal scholar and public intellectual Cass Sunstein joins John Tomasi to examine one of the most important and contentious questions in higher education today.
Drawing on his decades of experience at institutions including the University of Chicago and Harvard, Sunstein reflects on what universities get right, where they fall short, and why debates over viewpoint diversity have become so central to the future of academic life. Offering both philosophical reflection and practical insight, Sunstein explores the tensions between academic freedom and institutional accountability, the role of administrators in shaping intellectual culture, and why ideological homogeneity may pose risks even when everyone involved is acting in good faith.
Virginia Tech governing board member John Rocovich has refused to resign after Gov. Abigail Spanberger removed him last week after 16 years. Rocovich stated in a four-page letter addressed to the Secretary of the Commonwealth that he will not resign before his term ends on June 30, 2027. There was no sign of him at the board’s committee meetings on Monday in Blacksburg.
Spanberger’s decision is the latest effort by her administration to shake up governing boards at Virginia’s colleges and universities, amid concerns within the higher education community about the politicization of public university governing bodies. She recently appointed four new members to Tech’s governing board.
The Harvard Crimson reports that “Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of ‘viewpoint diversity.’” If so, it’s an initiative that would improve Harvard. But it sure is a big-budget one.
But the point of these rumored endowed professorships at Harvard is to promote “viewpoint diversity,” and the ecosystem for the professors to get hired does not fit the Harvard endowment model. Who will Harvard hire from?
The Crimson Editorial Board
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: This summer, Harvard College swapped the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the language of “culture and community,” closing the Harvard College Women’s Center and BGLTQ spaces, only vaguely promising to keep services unchanged. DEI might have failed at Harvard, but without increased transparency, the cautiously-worded rebrand will suffer a similar fate.
Now, the rage at the College is “viewpoint diversity,” exemplified in its Intellectual Vitality initiative and DEI rebrand. We agree with the premise: the academic mission requires engaging with diverse perspectives. But as Harvard’s institutional emphasis on diversity shifts to the intellectual, students from backgrounds affected by the DEI purge may find themselves unsupported.
Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: In the nearly seven months since President Trump took office again, academic associations, faculty unions, researchers and other groups have used the legal system to push back on the administration’s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government.
So far, district and appeals courts have largely suggested that the executive branch’s actions are unconstitutional and ruled in favor of university advocates, handing down preliminary injunctions, restraining orders and a few final judgments that have blocked the Trump administration’s goals. But based on the few cases that have reached the Supreme Court, some higher education experts worry the tide may be turning, and the high court’s conservative majority will ultimately side with the president.
Dhruv T. Patel
Harvard Crimson
Excerpt: Harvard will immediately rename its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to “Community and Campus Life,” the University announced Monday.
The move comes as the Trump administration continues its campaign to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programming at universities. In two April letters outlining demands to Harvard, federal agencies urged the University to dismantle its DEI programming — or lose billions of dollars in federal funding.
American Association of University Professors Press Release
Excerpt: The national AAUP and our Harvard chapter filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking to block the Trump administration from demanding that Harvard University restrict speech and restructure its core operations or else face the cancellation of $8.7 billion in federal funding for the university and its affiliated hospitals.
“The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” says Andrew Manuel Crespo, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard University and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants.”
Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
Washington Post
Excerpt: The University of Virginia’s governing board voted Friday to dissolve its office of diversity, equity and inclusion, joining other efforts by President Donald Trump and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to remove DEI initiatives in the state and beyond.
The Board of Visitors, overwhelmingly controlled by Youngkin appointees, voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that dismantled the office. It said state law does not call for such stand-alone offices, but the resolution allows the university to transfer programs “permissible” by law to other homes. It was not immediately clear what would qualify as permissible.
A new report commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University, Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences, brought together senior scholars to assess the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
In this webinar, recorded on June 11th, HxA President John Tomasi joins report co-author Ashley Rubin (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa) and Regina Rini (York University) to critically discuss the report’s conclusions, where it leaves work undone, and what a genuine path toward healthier scholarly norms might look like.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) recently released a study by David Primo measuring faculty viewpoint diversity through campaign-contribution data. The average faculty donor scored only slightly to the right of progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The findings and criticism traveled quickly. John K. Wilson, writing in InsideHigherEd, pronounced the study “worthless” because most faculty never make campaign contributions, so a sample of donors cannot describe the average professor. On the narrow point he is right: a sample of donors is not a sample of all faculty. “Worthless” is a serious conclusion—a verdict that, applied consistently, would discard nearly every measure we have.
The U.S. Department of Defense will end sponsorship for graduate students at Princeton and other Ivy League institutions beginning in the 2026–27 academic year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ’03 announced in a video on social media Friday.
Hegseth said the Pentagon would stop funding active military students’ attendance in graduate programs, fellowships, and certificate programs at dozens of “elite” universities, which he characterized as incompatible with military training priorities.
The fact is that foundations that have successfully influenced academia have learned to use a set of levers that are precisely calibrated to work effectively within the existing structures of higher education. These levers align with academia’s distinctive norms, work with natural intellectual incentives, and are based in a keen understanding of the organizational psychology within colleges and universities.
What follows is a study of that architecture—a picture of ten of the levers that foundations can use to influence scholarship.
The George Washington University law professor and prominent legal commentator says our study confirms what many already suspected about Princeton's faculty.
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law is in the midst of a free-speech emergency. When a major American law school teaches its students that the right way to respond to political opponents is to silence them, something has gone wrong. And when it then attempts to protect those disruptive students from public criticism by threatening other students’ speech, it’s a crisis.
That’s just what happened at UCLA this past month.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s civics school has been controversial since early 2023, when the campus Board of Trustees called to “accelerate” its development before faculty even knew it was underway. The board’s then-chairman said on Fox News he was trying to “remedy” a lack of “right-of-center views” on campus.
The university said it selected the international law firm K&L Gates last summer to review “allegations and concerns” regarding the school. Over more than seven months, the review team analyzed hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewed dozens of people. The report is complete, reportedly at a cost of $1.2 million and running more than 400 pages. But the university is refusing to release any of it—despite calls from students, faculty and media to at least reveal some contents.
What the series has not yet addressed, however, are the genuinely difficult legal and cultural questions that Terms of Respect has evaded. By seemingly resolving tensions between speech and equality, and reframing what appears to be a free-speech debate as an ongoing push-and-pull about civility norms, Eisgruber avoids discussing ways in which our laws, norms, and culture already treat, and sometimes curtail, expressive freedom, and how universities can apply their obligations and stated commitments faithfully. Relatedly, he relies upon an underexplored approach to chilling effects, the phenomenon recognized in First Amendment doctrine that certain policies or social realities are suspect because they place an informal prior restraint on expression. Eisgruber’s unequal concern with chilling effects — sometimes equating it with censorship, sometimes overlooking it entirely – demonstrates an incomplete theory of how universities get free speech right.
The Princeton chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) met Monday afternoon for a discussion surrounding academic freedom and the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.
Fewer than 30 faculty members attended the meeting, compared to the over 50 members present at the chapter’s inaugural meeting. Faculty members reformed the Princeton chapter of the AAUP last March amid attacks on higher education from the Trump administration. Since then, they have convened monthly to discuss updates and to identify threats to higher education.
Catie Ratliff
C-ville.com
Excerpt: WUVA, the sole student broadcast news and culture outlet at the university published an exclusive interview with interim President Paul Mahoney on October 12. Fourth-year Sophia Bangura, one of the student journalists who worked on the project, was terminated from the organization three days later for “insubordination” for asking follow up questions during the interview and declining to apologize to the interim president’s office.
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.
On Sept. 18, 1894, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents issued the greatest declaration in defense of academic freedom ever made by a university—an achievement even more remarkable because it was the first statement espousing academic freedom ever made by an American college, and one that introduced the concept of institutional neutrality.
At many American universities, progressive assumptions seem embedded in the machinery of campus life. Left-wing speakers and views are applauded, while conservative views (on abortion, for example) are often treated as beyond the pale.
Yet mission statements and promotional materials tend to describe the university’s purpose in nonpartisan terms. When studies show the dearth of right-leaning faculty, administrations typically insist this is just the result of neutral search processes. A gap has opened between the impartial, truth-seeking role universities claim for themselves and the policies they pursue.
Higher education in the United States and the faculty members central to its mission are under unprecedented, destructive, and sustained attack, part of a larger assault on democratic governance, civil society, and knowledge itself.
I just returned from the University of Wyoming, where I debated the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Todd Wolfson over the need for colleges and universities to maintain institutional neutrality. The debate was organized by the Steamboat Institute and was live-streamed.
The formal question presented for debate was: “Is institutional neutrality necessary to preserve the university as a forum for open inquiry rather than an actor in political disputes?” I spoke in favor of institutional neutrality while Wolfson argued against it as a necessary component to higher education.
What happens when an entire profession can’t see what’s hiding in plain sight in its own data? That puzzle animated Stony Brook University sociologist Musa al-Gharbi’s keynote at the Heterodox Academy 2026 West Coast Regional Conference, held recently at UC Berkeley.
The deeper problem, he contends, is not bad-faith activism but a structural one: peer review, editing, and committee deliberation only correct for bias when the people doing the correcting actually differ from one another, and the academy and the press increasingly do not. His full speech is transcribed below.
The faculty, administrators, and trustees who establish graduation criteria at America’s most prominent colleges and universities have made a clear set of judgments about what every educated citizen should know. Their choices suggest that familiarity with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is more essential than an understanding of economics, American history, and the Constitution.
