It’s time for conservative faculty to stop “keeping their heads down until tenure.” Universities need bold, excellent conservative scholars—not undercover ones—to strengthen their institutions. Having worked at a free-market think tank before academia, my sympathies were clear. Yet as the only openly right-wing faculty member in my college, I earned tenure, served as program director, and became department chair. Here is my advice.
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.
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.
Nearly a year into his tenure as Texas Tech’s chancellor, Brandon Creighton was still making the case that he was the right man for the job. As chair of the Senate Education Committee, Creighton spearheaded laws aimed at curbing what GOP leaders saw as liberal influence on campuses and making college degrees worth their cost — an overhaul his supporters say is unmatched by other states.
Now, from inside one of the university systems he once regulated, Creighton is going further than the laws he wrote require, positioning Texas Tech as a model for other universities. One of Creighton’s first acts as chancellor was to require faculty across Texas Tech’s five campuses to seek approval before teaching lessons involving gender identity, sexual orientation, or certain ideas about race and sex.
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.
Vague. Undefined. Overbroad. Burdensome. Legally contested.
That’s how major higher ed groups are describing the Trump administration’s latest effort to crack down on what it considers diversity, equity and inclusion by requiring colleges and universities to sign a pledge that they will comply with “executive orders prohibiting unlawful discrimination on the basis of race or color” to receive federal funds. The proposed pledge warns that race-based scholarships, hiring preferences, diversity statements and more may constitute illegal discrimination, in the government’s opinion.
The Trump administration launched two new investigations into Harvard University “amid allegations that it continues to discriminate against students on the basis of race, color, and national origin,” the Department of Education announced in a news release Monday.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights said it received new complaints about antisemitic harassment on Harvard’s campus—an issue the administration has already spent a year investigating and which the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit about last week. OCR will also investigate claims that Harvard is continuing to use race-based preferences in admissions.
Harvard University will allow active-duty troops to defer their admission for up to four years in response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ban on academic involvement with the school — a rebuke of his attempt to sever ties between the Ivy league school and the military.
The university will also work with students accepted into the Harvard Kennedy School’s programs to get expedited consideration at four other graduate schools that have not been banned by the Defense Department, according to a person familiar with the plans and a letter written for prospective students obtained by POLITICO.
Cancel culture is a myth. It’s brought to you by conservatives who want to malign higher education. The real danger to freedom at our universities is President Donald Trump and his Republican henchmen, who have tried to censor any speech they don’t like.
That’s what you’ll hear from a lot of my colleagues on campus. They’re right about Trump and the GOP, but they’re wrong about cancel culture. It’s alive and well. Look no further than last week’s controversy at Columbia University, where a forum about press freedom was called off because of objections to a student editorial.
On Feb. 28, U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint attacks on Iran, starting a war that has now lasted nearly four weeks.
Despite the 6,000-mile distance between New Jersey and Iran, many University community members have expressed concerns about the destruction happening in the Middle East, as well as confusion about American motivations for entering the war.
Professor George explained that he does not believe there is “one single uniquely correct model for colleges and universities.” The success of College of the Ozarks demonstrates the strength of its distinctive mission—not the need for every college to adopt the same model.
On April 10, 2026, a committee of 10 professors at Yale University published a report examining issues including the suppression of free speech. The Daily Princetonian published an article outlining perspectives from multiple Princeton professors on the report and its potential implications for Princeton. PFS released a related editorial, Yale issues a clarion call for change, joining other leading universities. Where is Princeton? PFS put Yale’s report in the context of the growing consensus amongst a widening circle who believe University leaders must take responsibility for their role in reaching this critical point. President Eisgruber is not among this list of reformers.
About two-thirds of grades at Harvard College last school year were A’s. That doesn’t count A-minuses, which were another 18 percent, meaning fewer than one in six grades were a B-plus or lower. You might have guessed grading at Ivy League schools was lenient, though not this lenient.
Grade inflation — like the inflation of a currency — is a collective action problem. Professors increase the share of A’s they hand out because they know other professors are doing so and breaking from the herd would have costs. Just 35 percent of grades at Harvard were A’s in the 2012-2013 academic year, but the number climbed at a rapid clip and then surged during the covid pandemic.
As the University undergoes budget reduction measures, the Board of Trustees has officially approved the operating budget for the 2026–2027 fiscal year. In a report recommending key budget parameters, the University signaled the beginning of a “gradual reduction” in graduate student enrollment, asked academic and administrative units to trim budgets, and revealed curtailed funding available for faculty raises and graduate students.
While subject to change, the total operating budget for fiscal year 2027, which runs from July 2026 to June 2027, is currently set at $3.407 billion — a small increase from this year’s projected spending of $3.336 billion.
Four years ago, a user on a subreddit for Princeton asked, “What are some easy but interesting distribution requirement fillers for LA, SA, EM, EC? I’m basically asking for the humanities side of ‘rocks for jocks.’” This sentiment remains widespread at Princeton. During course selection periods, I often encounter inquiries on apps like Reddit or Fizz about easy classes to fulfill Princeton’s distribution requirements.
It’s time we say the quiet part out loud: many Princeton students are gaming the system. Rather than exploring the foundations and methodologies of a broad range of disciplines, they’re engineering the narrowest possible encounters with classes outside of their comfort zone and interests.
Attorneys with the US Department of Justice have reportedly said they felt pressured to accuse the University of California of discriminating against Jewish students and faculty, at the urging of the Trump administration, in what one lawyer described as a “hit job”.
Nine attorneys, some of whom requested anonymity, shared insider accounts with the Los Angeles Times of the federal government’s investigation into California’s research university system. The attorneys said they felt pushed to conclude the UC had violated the law before they had determined the facts. All of the attorneys eventually resigned.
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.
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?
Former University President Lee Bollinger, Law ’71, called on universities to take “collective action” against President Donald Trump’s administration amid its “authoritarian assault” on higher education in his first interview with Spectator since stepping down from the presidency in May 2023.
Since leaving his post after more than two decades as Columbia’s 19th president, the University has cycled through three presidents—Minouche Shafik, Katrina Armstrong, and Claire Shipman, CC ’86, SIPA ’94—as it experienced intense national scrutiny for its response to campus protests over the war in Gaza.
When the College announced its policy of institutional restraint in December 2024, it entered uncharted territory. There was no precedent for such a policy in Dartmouth’s history, which left room for much debate over its implications. Now, however, the policy has found its analogue in a surprising place — not at another university, but at the CBS headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
And yet, rather than reassuring us about Dartmouth’s policy, the case at CBS News is quickly becoming an omen about what exactly could go wrong with institutional neutrality at Dartmouth, and how a policy designed to promote free speech could be co-opted just as quickly to restrict it.
