Feb 27
Please find a partial summary of some of the actions taken by the federal government as relates to Higher Education in general and CUNY in specific in the past week.
Academic freedom
- UNC Board OKs Definition of What Academic Freedom Is, and Isn’t
The University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted Thursday to approve a lengthy definition of what academic freedom does and doesn’t protect throughout the state university system. It says academic freedom includes the right to teach and research “controversial or unpopular ideas related to the discipline or subject matter,” but also says “academic freedom is not absolute.”
https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=68662&code=bog
The move came despite opposition from the American Association of University Professors, which, alongside the American Association of Colleges and Universities, wrote the seminal 1940 definition of the concept. In a statement, AAUP said UNC’s definition “will chill speech on campus and lead to more retaliation against faculty teaching or discussing politically contentious topics. The imprecise language in this policy will open the UNC System to lawsuits when faculty are retaliated against or fired.”
The feelings of the statewide, elected UNC Faculty Assembly appear more complicated. Assembly chair Wade Maki, along with the UNC system, started the push to write the definition. His body approved sending a definition to the system in October, but the system added extensive language to that, including that “academic freedom is not absolute” and definitions of what academic freedom isn’t.
After the board put out the latest iteration for public comment last month, it heard feedback both for and against. In response, the system incorporated more edits “mostly proposed by leadership of the Faculty Assembly,” said Andrew Tripp, the system’s senior vice president for legal affairs and general counsel. Among the changes was editing a line that said teaching “clearly unrelated to the course description” wouldn’t be protected to instead say teaching that “lacks pedagogical connection to the course, discipline, or subject matter” wouldn’t be protected.
Maki told the board Thursday that, “while there was a faculty consensus in our work defining what academic freedom is, there is not faculty consensus on the additions describing what academic freedom is not.” But, he still said, “This has been a bold project, challenging and worthy.”
- Florida Hands Down Sociology Curriculum to State Colleges
Beginning this summer, professors at Florida’s 28 public colleges must use a state curriculum framework to teach their introduction to sociology courses. Aligned with the state-sanctioned sociology textbook, the framework requires that the courses do not “include a curriculum that teaches identity politics” or one that “is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
“People in the union are really upset,” he [Robert Cassanello, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida and president of the United Faculty of Florida union.] said. “They see this as a threat to academic freedom. They see the revised textbook through the Board of Governors’ approval as a censored text.”
Sociology professors at the state’s public universities have received similar instructions through a game of telephone, with instructions passed verbally from the Board of Governors to provosts, deans, chairs and then to faculty, several Florida faculty members reported.
“They’re doing their best to avoid creating standing for a lawsuit,” Cassanello said. “This is why everything is verbal with the Board of Governors.”
The seven-page written framework applies only to general education sociology courses taught at state colleges—not electives. The document bans nine discussion points from course content, including discussions that “state an intent of institutions today to oppress persons of color,” “that argue most variations between men and women are learned traits and behaviors,” and “that describe when, how, or why individuals determine their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”
Freedom of expression
- The War on Student Speech
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/free-speech/2026/02/24/war-student-speech
In the U.S., the rights to protest and speak freely are codified in the Constitution and apply to all persons in the country—not just citizens. Recently released court records show that Mahdawi and others apprehended for pro-Palestinian activism were, in fact, arrested for speaking out. They reveal that government officials sought to justify such arrests not by alleging criminality but by accusing the activists of speaking up for Palestine, expressing antisemitism and undermining the foreign policy of the United States.
In a separate case, U.S. District Judge William Young ruled last month that the federal government’s policy of targeting international students and faculty members for exercising their free speech rights was unlawful and violated the First Amendment. “There was no policy here,” Young said. “What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people.”
The court ruling reflects what academic experts and First Amendment advocates have been saying for months: that the Trump administration is stifling free speech on campus, particularly in support of liberal causes, by arresting students purely for their activism—and seeking to hold universities accountable by investigating them for tolerating antisemitism. That, in turn, has prompted not only greater restrictions on campus protests and censorship of student media, but also a rise in student self-censorship.
“The state of free speech on college campuses right now is both precarious and quiet,” said Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at the nonprofit PEN America. “Faculty and students tell us there is a ton of anxiety on campus, and that anxiety is leading to self-censorship, opting to just not say something that they think might cause controversy.”
- N.C. Community College Fires Professor for Kirk Comments
“Did he deserve to die? No. But he was a racist piece of shit. And Turning Point USA is a racist, piece-of-shit organization,” Schulte said in the audio, which he said was recorded by a student. “And they just started a group on this campus. And it’s people like them that are coming into these classrooms and recording us, trying to get us fired because they don’t agree with us.”
Schulte is running as a Democrat for a seat in the statehouse, and he told the News & Observer that he plans to sue the college. He joins a still-growing list of academics who have been fired, suspended or investigated for speaking ill of Kirk in the wake of his killing last fall.
Visas
- Federal Agents ‘Made Misrepresentations’ to Enter Columbia Dorm and Detain Student, University Says
Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security entered a residential building on Columbia University’s campus early Thursday and detained a student, according to a statement from university officials.
Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said in the statement that the university’s “understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person.’”
The institution is working to gather more information, contact the student’s family, and provide legal support, the statement said. The Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, reported that the arrested student was a neuroscience researcher named Ellie Aghayeva; the dean of Columbia’s School of General Studies confirmed in an email to school affiliates that a student named Ellie was arrested.
Shipman’s message instructed the Columbia campus community that law enforcement must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to enter any nonpublic areas of the campus, including housing and classrooms.
An administrative warrant is not sufficient to gain access to those areas, the statement said, and the university’s public safety office should be contacted to respond to any request to enter the campus.
Funding cuts
- NYTimes: The Human Cost of Trump’s War on Science
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/opinion/doge-hiv-funding.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Thirteen months into the second Trump administration, science, medicine and public health have been hijacked by a cadre of grifters and ideologues and by the politicians in obvious thrall to both. Federal institutions have been all but dismantled. Researchers have been defunded en masse and the universities that support them deliberately destabilized. Discourse on crucial scientific questions and key public health challenges has been stifled. And, along the way, trust has been broken between scientists, the nation’s leaders — and the people that both are supposed to serve.
The president’s attacks on this legacy have been relentless and all-encompassing. He has turned the federal health department over to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxer. For months, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget all but froze operations at the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His newly established so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, fired thousands of civil servants from The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a process that was wildly disorganized, frequently unlawful and needlessly cruel. Global health initiatives were also eviscerated.
Stacked against these measures, the administration’s explanations — which focus on cutting waste and eliminating so-called woke politics from science — have been inadequate and disingenuous.
It can be difficult to imagine a future in which American science does not prevail. But, as the president’s many critics have warned, institutions like the C.D.C., F.D.A. and N.I.H. will be far more difficult to rebuild than they have been to destroy — especially if their intended beneficiaries lose all faith in them or forget why they existed in the first place.
(And then goes on to chronicle the destruction on a Northwestern Professor’s lap and the impact on the community that has.)
Federal Agencies
DOE/OCR
- NYTimes: Justice Department Sues University of California Over Antisemitism
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/us/justice-department-ucla-lawsuit.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
The Trump administration accused the university’s Los Angeles campus of not doing enough to curb antisemitism, months after the government tried to cut research money and demanded more than $1 billion.
Filed nearly seven months after the Justice Department sought a range of policy concessions and more than $1 billion from the university, the lawsuit represented a significant escalation in the long-running dispute between the Trump administration and one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious public university systems.
The University of California — a 10-campus juggernaut in the country’s most populous Democratic state — has been one of the Trump administration’s prime targets. Last year, in a sharp break from the Justice Department’s norms, civil rights lawyers were given a list of colleges to investigate, including the University of California.
Lawyers assigned to that inquiry last year, The New York Times previously reported, were initially given one month to show that antisemitism was pervasive in the U.C. system.
After Tuesday’s lawsuit involving U.C.L.A., Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, criticized the government for regularly using “antisemitism to pressure and reshape higher education institutions toward a far-right agenda.”
Mr. Wolfson’s organization was among the labor groups that sued last year to curb the Trump administration’s attacks on the California system. “Civil rights enforcement should protect people from discrimination,” he said, “without becoming a vehicle for political overreach.”
Institutional assaults
- Can Ted Mitchell Marshal Higher Ed Against Trump?
As president of the American Council on Education, Ted Mitchell is at the tip of the spear. A year ago, when the Trump administration moved to slash federal research funding, ACE joined a lawsuit to stop the cuts. This was a major departure for the influential higher-ed advocacy group, which is hardly ever a plaintiff in litigation. In Trump’s second term, ACE has taken a notably pugilistic approach. In addition to fighting in courtrooms, Mitchell has been active in the court of public opinion, casting the Trump administration’s agenda as both unlawful and unwise. But not everyone agrees on the nature of the Trump threat or how to respond to it, which puts Mitchell in a tricky spot. Can he unite this disparate constituency?
(And then you have to listen…ughh)
- At Annual ACE Meeting, a Call to Uphold Higher Ed’s Mission
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Higher education can’t afford to back down and surrender its independence. That’s the message American Council on Education president Ted Mitchell sent at the opening plenary of ACE’s annual meeting Thursday morning, calling on college leaders to resist a “federal takeover” by the Trump administration.
At last year’s meeting, in the early days of the second Trump administration, Mitchell struck a fighting stance in his remarks, telling attendees, “We’re under attack.” Now that the extent of that attack has become clear—if not entirely successful—Mitchell argued that colleges must remain true to their mission, even under fire from a federal government willing to target those who don’t fall in line with their political priorities.
“Free speech is under threat,” Mitchell argued. “It’s under threat from the right, and it’s under threat from the left. We need to improve tolerance and viewpoint diversity on our campuses. Let me just say—cancel culture is wrong, whether it comes from the left or the right.”
Duncan and Pressman took the stage after Mitchell, discussing the parallels between Orbán’s rule in Hungary and the way Trump has wielded power in his second term.
“I’m not saying the United States of America is Hungary, but what I think Hungary offers at this moment is a case study in what institutional and state capture looks like,” Pressman said.
He painted a picture of Hungary as a nation captured by an authoritarian promising to protect it from “marauding outside forces,” only to impose his ideological agenda on universities and rule through a system of severe punishments and lavish rewards.
Accreditation
- ED Changes Timeline to Recognize New Accreditors
he Education Department is looking to speed up the process by which aspiring accreditors seek and receive federal recognition, announcing changes Thursday that could potentially help more agencies gain approval before President Trump leaves office.
Historically, the recognition process can take up to five years, making it rare for a new accreditor to join the marketplace. In fact, the department says just four agencies with the power to make institutions eligible for federal student aid have been approved since 1999. Seven accreditors currently serve as gatekeepers of federal aid for 3,000 institutions, according to ED. (Institutions have to be accredited by a federally recognized agency for their students to receive federal aid.)
But ED isn’t waiting for the rule-making process to make clear how it views the current regulations. In an interpretative rule released Thursday, officials said that aspiring accreditors can seek federal recognition two years after filing their articles of incorporation and completing another so-called accrediting activity, such as adopting accreditation standards.
Indiana
- U.S. Plans to Stop Funding Low-Earning Degrees. Indiana May Just End Them.
Starting this summer, most college programs will have to show that their students earn more than someone with only a high school diploma to avoid being cut off from federal funding, as part of a new accountability measure.
Congress created the earnings test known as Do No Harm when it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. The Education Department is still working to finalize the regulations that outline how it will work.
But one state is close to passing legislation that would directly import the federal test into state law—and take it further. While the federal law will cut off students attending failing programs from receiving federal student loans, Indiana’s Senate Bill 199 would end such programs entirely at public universities and Ivy Tech Community College.
In Indiana, the average salary for a high school graduate is just over $35,000, and about a dozen public institution programs would fail based on recent federal data—though the state Commission for Higher Education, a group of gubernatorial appointees, could grant exemptions. So far, the state’s flagship university and Ivy Tech haven’t publicly taken a position against it, but the state commission supports the bill.
“This is a form of academic Stalinism,” said Rep. Ed DeLaney, a member of Indiana’s House Education Committee. He said, “Every breathing human being knows that borrowing for college has risks” and that nuclear scientists make more than piano teachers. Yet the bill would end programs entirely, even for people who know the risks or have enough money to not care, he said.
University of Texas
- UT San Antonio Folds Race and Gender Studies Department
The University of Texas at San Antonio is dissolving its Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies, The San Antonio Express-News reported Friday.
The department—which houses undergraduate majors in African American studies; Mexican American studies; and women’s, gender and sexuality studies—launched in 2020. But effective Sept. 1, it will be combined with the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, though officials did not disclose a new name or leadership for the new department.
Others
- Virginia State Terminates 6 Professors Without Due Process
“We have a combined 90 years of service to the Commonwealth,” Temu said. The six professors also brought in $10 million in grant funding this year alone.
The AAUP is circulating a petition, calling on the VSU administration to fully restore all six professors with pay, benefits and access to their research facilities and data.
“The University’s refusal to follow its own procedures is a deliberate denial of due process,” the petition states. “If this is allowed to stand, tenure is meaningless at VSU, and it tells every faculty member that job security can be destroyed without cause, without transparency, without governance, and without a hearing.”
AI misdeeds
- Einstein - AI Homework Agent
Einstein is an AI with a computer. He logs into Canvas every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework — automatically.
Has his own computer: Einstein isn’t a chatbot. He has a full virtual computer — he can browse the web, watch videos, read PDFs, and interact with any site just like you would.
Logs into Canvas for you: Einstein connects to your Canvas account, sees your assignments, and submits completed work — automatically.
Watches lectures & videos: Einstein can watch recorded lectures, pull out key concepts, and use them to answer assignments accurately.
Reads & writes essays: Give him a reading assignment and he reads the full text, understands it, and writes original essays with proper citations.
Participates in discussions: Discussion board posts, peer replies, forum responses — Einstein reads the thread and contributes thoughtful responses.
No more copy-pasting: Forget switching between ChatGPT and your LMS. Einstein reads the assignment, solves it, and submits it directly.
Every subject covered: Math, physics, CS, history, literature, econ — if it’s on Canvas, Einstein can handle it.
Works while you sleep: Set him up and forget about it. Einstein checks for new assignments and knocks them out before the deadline.
Telegram & Discord too: Optionally connect Telegram or Discord to message Einstein on the go — check deadlines, ask questions, or tell him to skip one.
Will my professor know? Einstein submits assignments from your account just like you would. The work is original and generated per-assignment — not copied from a database.
And just because it is fun
- NYU Wants Students to Put Down Their Phones. Will They?
https://www.chronicle.com/article/nyu-wants-students-to-put-down-their-phones-will-they
This week, New York University will begin a new initiative aimed at getting students to spend less time on their phones. It’s called NYU IRL (short for “in real life”), and it spans the university’s Manhattan, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai campuses, where students will be enticed to enter “device-free zones” called “the Nest” (“Al‑’Ush” (العُشّ) and 玉兰栖所, in Arabic and Mandarin, respectively). The rooms have charging phone lockers and feature crafts and board games, nudging students to, literally, check the internet at the door.
Along with the rooms, NYU IRL, which Linda G. Mills, NYU’s president, announced earlier this year, includes new resources for faculty to try “device optimization” in their classrooms, such as making it a featured topic in the university’s faculty learning exchange week, which is happening now. NYU will also host in-person events like a “supper club” in its dining halls.
- Buzzy UCSD Math Readiness Report Failed to Mention Calculator Ban
Pamela Burdman, founder and executive director of the math education equity nonprofit Just Equations, explained this discovery and the potential impact of the calculator ban in her own report, published Wednesday.
Again, some links are behind paywalls. The shortened wapo links are gift articles; the Chronicle links should be available through a CUNY library. I have online access to the WSJ articles through CUNY.
These digests are now archived at