Jan 16
Dear All,
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.
Letters
Alliances
Statements
Protests
Zoom calls
Academic freedom
- The Legal Status of the Assault on Higher Education
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-legal-status-of-the-assault-on-higher-education
(Missed this one by David M. Rabban from December.)
The Supreme Court initially recognized academic freedom as a First Amendment right in a 1957 decision, Sweezy v. New Hampshire. The very influential opinions in Sweezy provide a crucial perspective for understanding the significance of these recent decisions.
Writing for two more justices in his concurrence, Justice Felix Frankfurter reiterated “the dependence of a free society on free universities.” He emphasized “the grave harm resulting from governmental intrusion into the intellectual life of a university” while objecting to the attorney general’s attempted compulsion of Sweezy “to discuss the content of his lecture.” To support his views, Frankfurter quoted from a South African statement on academic freedom, which identified “the four essential freedoms of a university — to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”
In August [2025], a judge in Alabama upheld a state law that limited the teaching of eight “divisive concepts” and prohibited diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public universities.
The Alabama law prohibits classroom speech by professors at public universities that endorses concepts deemed “divisive” by the legislature. The prohibited concepts focus on race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, and national origin. They include asserting that any of these characteristics “is inherently superior or inferior;” that they should be the basis for discriminating against individuals or treating them differently; that they make an individual “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;” that they make an individual “responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same” group; that they justify assigning “fault, blame, or bias” or accepting “guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize;” or that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist.” The law also forbids “any diversity, equity, and inclusion program.” Its “safe harbors” provisions state that it does not preclude teaching divisive concepts “in an objective manner and without endorsement” or compelling “assent,” and that it should not be construed “to undermine the duty” of public universities “to protect, to the greatest degree, academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and free expression.”
Contrary to language in Supreme Court cases and to the vast majority of prior decisions throughout the country, Judge R. David Proctor rejected the First Amendment challenge to this law. He maintained that the classroom expression of professors is “government speech” that can be controlled by the state and the university. He correctly recognized that precedent in most jurisdictions did not support this conclusion, but he was confident that in his own jurisdiction “the professor’s interest in academic freedom and free speech do not displace the university’s interest inside the classroom.” He repeatedly asserted that the state legislature as well as a university’s board of trustees can determine the content of classroom speech over the objections of professors. Even if classroom teaching is not government speech, he added, the law does not violate the First Amendment because it permits discussion of the divisive concepts so long as the “instruction is given in an objective manner without endorsement.” Throughout his opinion, he seemed to equate “endorsement” with “indoctrination” and “coercion.”
… In July, Columbia reached a “Resolution Agreement” with the Trump administration. … The agreement provided that nothing in it “shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, academic decisions, or the content of academic speech.” Yet several of its provisions would have violated prior judicial interpretation of the First Amendment right of academic freedom had they had been imposed by the government. Examples include assigning an administrator to review its programs in regional studies, starting with the Middle East, creating new programs, appointing new faculty with joint positions in more than one department, limiting financial dependence on the enrollment of international students, and, most intrusively, agreeing to a “resolution monitor” who would assess compliance and maintain regular contact with both Columbia and the government of the United States.
… The plaintiffs in the Harvard case challenged a similar ultimatum from the government on First Amendment grounds. … Judge Burroughs concluded that Harvard’s rejection of these demands constituted a “refusal to surrender its First Amendment freedoms in the face of government pressure.” She cited prior cases, including Sweezy, for the conclusion that the First Amendment protects autonomous decision-making about educational issues by the university as well as “the independent and uninhibited exchange of ideas among teachers and students.” Without referring explicitly to academic freedom, she maintained that the government’s demands violated all four of the elements of academic freedom contained in the South African statement quoted by Justice Frankfurter in his Sweezy concurrence. Rejecting the government’s contention that its demands were motivated by the goal of combating antisemitism, she concluded that its “onslaught against Harvard was much more about promoting a governmental orthodoxy in violation of the First Amendment than about anything else, including fighting antisemitism.”
… In the subsequent UCLA case, decided in November, Judge Rita F. Lin echoed the Harvard decision. … Judge Lin found that retaliatory cancellations of government funding had prompted professors to modify their research and teaching about sex and race, had caused the university to withdraw its previous support for a project investigating “academic freedom in the context of pro-Palestinian speech,” and had instilled fear that professors would suffer retaliation for exercising their right to protest. She concluded that the government violated the professors’ “academic freedom and free speech interests.” Even if the Trump administration was “not trying to purge disfavored viewpoints from universities,” she observed, its actions had “chilling effects on constitutionally protected speech.” Citing prior Supreme Court decisions, she added that the Trump administration had also violated the First Amendment by imposing conditions on funding unrelated to the purposes of a federal program.
The Florida, Massachusetts, and California decisions are consistent with the broad consensus of judicial interpretation of the First Amendment since the Supreme Court’s Sweezy decision in 1957; the Alabama decision is not. Prior decisions have left much confusion about the meaning of academic freedom as a First Amendment right and about its relationship to the First Amendment right of free speech. But they overwhelmingly agree that the First Amendment right of academic freedom protects the content of expert academic speech by professors and the educational decisions of universities.
But will the courts, particularly the United States Supreme Court, continue to follow the existing judicial consensus? … I think that some of the justices who voted against Harvard in the affirmative action case would support its First Amendment claims. Yet it is hard to predict with confidence, especially when the Supreme Court is reversing so much prior law on so many subjects. At my most optimistic, I hope that future decisions arising from the current litigation will clarify the meaning of the First Amendment right of academic freedom while continuing to protect it.
Freedom of expression
- Professor Reinstated After Being Fired For Charlie Kirk Post
Darren Michael, associate professor at Austin Peay State University, has reportedly been reinstated and given $500,000 after being fired over posts about assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
- For Now, Judge Won’t Reinstate Kentucky Professor Calling for War on Israel
On his website, antizionist.net, law professor Ramsi Woodcock asks fellow legal scholars to sign a “Petition for Military Action Against Israel.” He says Israel is a colony and war is needed to decolonize, and he calls for the war to continue until “Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine.”
The university removed him from teaching in July. In a message to campus that month, UK president Eli Capilouto wrote, “We have been made aware of allegations of disturbing conduct, including an online petition calling for the destruction of a people based on national origin.” (Woodcock says he’s calling for the end of the state of Israel, not the destruction of Jews.)
In November, Woodcock sued UK in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, asking for restoration of his normal teaching duties and other relief. On Thursday, Judge Danny C. Reeves paused the case while the university’s investigation proceeds.
“As is customary for the University investigating claims that potentially impact the educational environment, Woodcock was removed from teaching and the law building as an interim measure during the investigation,” Reeves said. “Abstention is appropriate because those removals cannot be separated from the investigation and interference clearly would result if the Court were to enjoin any aspect of the investigation.”
Reeves added that “once the investigation is completed or any subsequent disciplinary procedures have concluded and claims have been exhausted, the stay will be lifted.”
- Dunster House Resident Dean Gregory Davis Removed After Resurfaced Social Media Posts | News | The Harvard Crimson
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/1/5/gregory-davis-removed/
Gregory K. Davis was removed from his post as Dunster House resident dean effective immediately, according to a message circulated to House affiliates Monday morning.
Davis was appointed to the role in 2024 and came under intense scrutiny in October 2025 after Yardreport — a right-wing aggregator that launched publicly in September — resurfaced years-old social media posts in which he appeared to condone violence and looting at protests and sharply criticized law enforcement and President Donald Trump.
- Clemson Settles With Professor Fired for Kirk Comments
Clemson University has agreed to rescind the termination of Joshua Bregy, an assistant professor in the department of environmental engineering and earth sciences, nearly four months after dismissing him for resharing a post on his personal Facebook page that criticized the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
As part of the settlement, Bregy will receive pay and benefits “throughout the original term of his employment,” the ACLU of South Carolina, which represented Bregy, said in a news release. In addition, Clemson provost Robert Jones agreed to “provide positive letters of recommendation to potential employers based on Dr. Bregy’s classroom teaching.” For Bregy’s part, he agreed to drop his lawsuit and resign from his position at Clemson effective May 15, 2026. He will not have any teaching, research or other faculty obligations through the spring semester, according to the release.
- [CCNY] President’s Statement on January 8 Off-Campus Protest
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/presidentsoffice/blog/statement-january-8-protest
We reiterate our commitment to creating an environment where all members of our community can thrive and feel protected. CCNY has always convened campus communities composed of people whose views differed from one another, sometimes in radical and passionate terms. What united our campus, despite those differences, was a clear sense that the way forward lay in mutual engagement, and that mutual engagement required civil parameters. I commit the campus to the difficult, daily work of repairing those civil ramparts and moving forward on the mission to educate the whole people.
- Amid Criticism From Lawmakers, U of Arkansas Rescinds Dean Offer
Emily Suski, an associate dean at the University of South Carolina law school, was supposed to assume her new role as dean of the University of Arkansas law school July 1. But five days after university officials announced Suski’s hire, they rescinded their offer based on outside feedback.
University of Arkansas spokespeople declined to comment further on the nature of the feedback, but a state lawmaker said that the rescission is political. In an Instagram post, Arkansas representative Nicole Clowney, a Democrat, wrote that the university’s decision to rescind Suski’s offer was a “horrifying, unprecedented and absolutely unconstitutional abuse of state power.”
According to Clowney, several state lawmakers learned after Suski’s hire was announced that she had signed a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the students in two cases challenging state laws against transgender athletes’ participation in sports teams that match their gender identity. Clowney did not name the lawmakers but said “at least one constitutional officer” was among them.
- Report: State Lawmakers Enacted a Record 21 Censorship Bills in 2025
The legislatures in all 15 states that passed higher education censorship bills are Republican-controlled. Measures range from curricular control to curtailing faculty governance.
“Censorship is, sadly, now an intractable reality on college and university campuses, with serious negative impacts for teaching, research, and student life,” Amy Reid, program director of Freedom to Learn at PEN America, said in a news release. “With threats of formal sanctions and political reprisals coming from both state and federal governments, campus leaders and faculty feel they have no choice but to comply, and are increasingly acting preemptively out of fear. Politicians are expanding a sweeping web of political and ideological control over higher education in American campuses, reshaping what can be taught, researched, and debated to fit their own agenda. That’s dangerous for free thought in a democracy.”
Most of the proposed bills introduced last year contained some kind of indirect censorship, the PEN report states. It divides such bills into six categories: curricular control; tenure restrictions; institutional neutrality mandates; accreditation restrictions; diversity, equity and inclusion bans; and governance restrictions.
In total, state lawmakers passed 20 out of 78 bills that contained indirect censorship—some of which also included gag orders. The 26 percent rate of passage is “remarkably strong,” the report states. Among the new laws are Indiana’s aforementioned HB 1001; Idaho’s Senate Bill 1198, which prohibits faculty from making “critical theory” courses a requirement for majors or minors; and Kansas’s Senate Bill 78, which allows institutions to sue their accreditor if punished for following state law—useful primarily because several of Kansas’s state laws violate accreditors’ academic freedom standards.
The PEN report also covers federal pressure to censor colleges and universities. In 2025, the Departments of Justice and Education launched more than 90 investigations into alleged Title VI violations. T
(PEN America report)
https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-campuses-25-web-of-control/
- At Least 26 Faculty Members Faced Scrutiny for Charlie Kirk Comments. Here’s What Happened Next.
The Chronicle reviewed the cases of 26 faculty members who drew attention for online comments about Kirk.
- Twelve were fired or faced termination proceedings, at least initially, or are no longer employed. Three were later reinstated.
- Three returned to teaching. Two have fought, so far unsuccessfully, to return to teaching.
- Two retired.
- A handful appear to remain on leave.
Anti-woke/anti-DEI is simply racism
Visas
- Trump Admin. Touts 8,000 Student Visas Revoked
The Department of State has revoked 8,000 student visas since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the department shared on the social media site X on Monday, as part of the president’s massive deportation campaign. In total, the administration has revoked 100,000 nonimmigrant visas, the department wrote, which is about double the number revoked in former President Joe Biden’s last year.
According to Fox News, the department said that the majority of the student and specialized worker visas were revoked due to crimes; about half were because of drunk driving. U.S. colleges and universities enroll more than 1 million international students.
Loss of expertise
Funding cuts
- NYTimes: Congress Is Reversing Trump’s Steep Budget Cuts to Science
If enacted, the president’s bid for an overall cut in scientific funding to $154 billion from $198 billion — a plunge of 22 percent — would have been the largest reduction in federal spending on science since World War II, when Washington and the seekers of nature’s secrets began their partnership.
This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee released a bipartisan package of bills that largely scraps Mr. Trump’s planned cuts. Analysts say that, if the proposed budgets hold up in the weeks ahead, Congress will set aside roughly $188 billion for federal research — a drop of about 4 percent from the most recent annual budget.
- US Senate passes bill to boost federal science spending after White House sought major cuts | Reuters
The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to approve billions of dollars in funding for federal science agencies, rejecting deep cuts proposed by President Donald Trump in space and other areas.
The Senate bill approved significant science funding for NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration above what the White House had sought. NSF will receive $8.75 billion for research efforts including in quantum information science, artificial intelligence and other areas.
- Trump’s college agenda may have a lasting impact on research, culture
The Trump administration’s unprecedented drive for control over American universities has upended schools coast to coast, pushing — or outright forcing — vast and wide changes to the rules, culture and finances of higher education. It is hitting schools large and small, public and private, in states red and blue, with profound implications for the economy, national security and the future of science.
While some of the shifts could unravel if political agendas reverse — and some of the cuts are still being litigated in court — university leaders are concluding that many of the changes made so far to research, diversity and campus culture are likely to last long after President Donald Trump leaves office.
(There is much more to this comprehensive article!)
- ED Panel Signs Off on New Earnings Test
an advisory committee on Friday signed off on regulations that would require all postsecondary programs to pass a single earnings test.
The new accountability metric, set to take effect in July, could eventually cut failing programs off from all federal student aid funds—an enhanced penalty that appeared key to the committee reaching consensus Friday. Before the compromise, programs that fail the earnings test would only have lost access to federal student loans. Under the proposal, college programs will have to show that their graduates earn more than a working adult with only a high school diploma.
The proposed regulations aren’t yet final. The department is required to release them for public comment and review that feedback before issuing a final rule.
(Also)
- Researchers May Be Forced to Rely on a Court You’ve Never Heard Of
Inside, etched into the stone wall, is a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same, between private individuals.”
It’s apt for what’s in this building: the Court of Federal Claims, a legal venue where the U.S. government is always the one being sued. The building is now poised to be the site of fights over droves of terminated research grants.
A majority of [supreme court] justices say this 16-judge court likely has jurisdiction over lawsuits regarding thousands of National Institutes of Health federal research grants that the Trump administration has tried to terminate, as well as other fights concerning canceled grants. If the Supreme Court sticks by its current thinking in final rulings, the Court of Federal Claims could be handling fights over countless grants that the Trump administration and future higher ed-targeting presidencies may try to cancel in the future.
One catch: This court doesn’t have the authority to actually restore the grants. It can award money for canceled ones, but experienced lawyers who practice before it disagree on whether it will provide compensation even approaching what the grants were worth—they can be for millions of dollars apiece.
Attorneys also say that researchers likely won’t have the right in this court to challenge their grant terminations; they’ll have to rely on their universities to sue on their behalf because the institutions are the legal parties to research grants. Overall, it’s generally unclear how a research grant-related case would turn out in this court.
“This is—I think esoteric is probably an understatement,” said Bob Wagman, president of the Court of Federal Claims Bar Association and a lawyer before the court for 25 years.
NSF
NIH
- NYTimes: Appeals Court Upholds Prohibition on Trump’s Medical Research Cuts
The ruling on Monday upheld a lower court’s judgment in April that the Trump administration could not drastically slash funding from the National Institutes of Health.
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that one of the Trump administration’s earliest attempts to kneecap universities, through proposed reductions to grants from the National Institutes of Health, was unlawful. The proposal brought an outpouring of opposition from hundreds of universities and hospitals, which warned that the cuts could cost them billions and make it impossible to continue studies in areas like cancer, genetics and infectious disease.
NEH
NEA
DOE
Fulbright
Federal Agencies
DOE/OCR
- Trump’s Education Department is Ignoring Discrimination Against Black Students — ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-education-department-civil-rights-racial-harassment
Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discrimination … don’t matter,” one attorney said.
The OCR regularly resolves dozens of racial harassment cases a year and did so even during Trump’s first administration. In the last days of the Biden administration, OCR workers pushed to close out several racial harassment agreements, including one that was signed by the district the day after Trump was inaugurated. With Trump in office, the agency has shifted to resolving cases involving allegations of discrimination against white students.
Internal department data obtained by ProPublica shows that more than 1,000 racial harassment investigations initiated in previous administrations still are open. Most of those complaints involve harassment of Black students.
Not only has the Education Department failed to enter into any resolution agreements in those racial harassment cases, but it also has not initiated investigations of most new complaints. Since Jan. 20, it has opened only 14 investigations into allegations of racial harassment of Black students. In that same time period, more than 500 racial harassment complaints have been received, the internal data shows.
- NYTimes: Cooper Union Settles Jewish Students’ Suit and Alters Protest Policies
The settlement, which was announced Thursday by lawyers representing 10 Jewish students, will require Cooper Union to recognize that discrimination or harassment based on a person’s Zionist beliefs — in addition to their Jewish identity more broadly — violates its nondiscrimination policies.
The settlement also requires Cooper Union to bar student protesters from wearing masks intended to conceal their identities and to approve in advance all student posters and fliers to make sure they are not discriminatory. While the First Amendment allows beliefs such as Zionism — the support of the existence of a Jewish state in Israel — to be criticized, such expression can veer into harassment if it is overly pervasive or targeted, said Ziporah Reich, a lawyer with the Lawfare Project, the pro bono law firm that represented the students.
As part of the settlement, Cooper Union will appoint a dedicated Title VI coordinator responsible for overseeing the school’s compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including dealing with anti-Zionist discrimination and harassment.
Cooper Union will also provide mandatory training for all faculty members, staff, administrators, students and trustees on its nondiscrimination policies, including on how protesting against Zionism can cross the line into antisemitism.
Congressional actions
State actions
Institutional assaults
Admissions
Accreditation
- Texas Drops ABA Oversight of Lawyers Amid Anti-DEI Crusade
For the first time in 43 years, lawyers who want to practice in Texas will no longer be required to hold a degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, the Texas Supreme Court decided last week.
The new Texas policy comes amid the broader crackdown on higher education accreditors by the Trump administration and its allies, and specifically on the ABA, which has become a target of the Republican-led anti-DEI crusade in recent years. Indeed, the ABA suspended its diversity, equity and inclusion standards last year. Now Texas has become the first state to say it will no longer rely on the accreditor to help to set law licensure standards.
“ABA accreditation provides a nationally recognized framework for quality assurance and transparency; portability of licensure through recognition of ABA accreditation by all 50 states, which is critical for graduates’ career flexibility; consumer protections and public accountability through disclosure standards; and a baseline of educational quality that correlates with higher bar passage rates and better employment outcomes,” the deans of eight of the state’s 10 ABA-accredited law schools wrote in a letter to the Texas Supreme Court in June.
- Following Texas, Florida Drops ABA Oversight of Lawyers
For now, though, a new law school accreditor has yet to emerge. And experts say it’s unlikely most law schools will abandon their ABA accreditation any time soon, because it’s created reliable professional standards that make it easier for lawyers to practice in multiple states.
Justice Jorge Labarga, the only dissenting vote in the Florida opinion and the only justice who wasn’t appointed by DeSantis, cautioned that a new law school accreditor would have a tough time rivaling the ABA.
Harvard
Columbia
Indiana
Texas A&B
- NYTimes: Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/tamu-plato-race-gender.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
The university is reviewing courses under new rules restricting teaching about race and gender. Administrators told a philosophy professor to cut some lessons on Plato to comply.
And professors are worried that they are losing the academic freedom they prize.
“A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato?” Dr. Peterson [philosophy professor at Texas A&M University} said in an interview on Wednesday. “What kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”
- NYTimes: This Is No Way to Run a University
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/plato-texas-academic-freedom.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
what, exactly, can be taught? … A bill passed last spring by the Texas Legislature undercut faculty control on public university campuses and clamped down on what can be taught, the First Amendment be damned. Last fall, the Texas A&M University system separately introduced policy changes aimed at purging woke curriculums. Under these measures, administrators have conducted a sweeping review of course materials, aiming to root out officially disapproved ideas about race and gender that professors may impart to their students.
To cut that material from a class because it might set off alarms about “gender ideology” would only further politicize the classroom. It is importing today’s culture war into the ancient agora — turning the modern academy into a parody of its ancient namesake, a place where discussion is replaced by prior restraint.
Texas A&M seems to have concluded that the safest way to handle the ideas contained in a classic text is to bury them. This is no way to run an institution of higher education.
Texas’s authoritarianism does not end at the classroom door, either. Last September, my [FIRE president] organization sued to stop a brazenly unconstitutional Texas law banning all “expressive activities” on campus between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. — a measure clearly aimed at campus protest. The law doesn’t even try to hide its targeting of “speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.”
First Amendment advocates often warn about a slippery slope. Once censorship starts at the margins, core freedoms are next. In Texas, university administrators and state commissars are skipping the slope and going straight for the trap door.
UNC
- AAUP Condemns UNC System Policy That “Further Empowers Those Attempting to Censor Teaching and Learning” | AAUP
UNC System President Peter Hans’ new policy reclassifying course descriptions and syllabi as public records and mandating the creation of an online database to house all course syllabi for a given semester poses a clear and unnecessary risk to North Carolina’s students, faculty, and communities.
This policy will stifle academic freedom, chill free inquiry, and expose educators and students to politically motivated attacks and targeted harassment. At its core, this new directive is an effort to intimidate instructors whose research and teaching delves into subject matter that some politicians don’t want to see explored. Dark money–funded right-wing activists and their allies in the UNC System’s leadership are attempting to strangle critical thought and the free exchange of academic thought by harassing faculty, disrupting student learning, and threatening the pursuit of truth. Ultimately, Peter Hans’ regulation amounts to a doxxing database that will further empower those attempting to censor teaching and learning in the UNC System.
Faculty, students, and all North Carolinians must defend shared governance and academic freedom as the UNC System leaders seek to undermine critical inquiry in service of Project 2025 and the Trump–Vance administration’s assault on higher education.
UVA
- How UVA’s presidential search missed what took us an hour to find
Using publicly available records — specifically the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine — we traced the evolution of Beardsley’s CV across multiple versions and time-stamped snapshots. What we found suggests not a handful of cosmetic edits but a pattern of strategic self-presentation that should have prompted basic follow-up questions in any serious presidential search. The résumé is very much the problem — not because it was sanitized, but because it raises fundamental questions about academic integrity that the search process failed to address.
This research took approximately one hour, the old-fashioned way—no AI.
But the DEI scrubbing is only the beginning. Once we read the 2025 CV the way faculty routinely read candidates’ dossiers — with an eye toward disciplinary norms, verifiability, and the integrity of the record — additional issues emerged. Two stand out because they go directly to due diligence: the doctorate itself and the presentation of scholarship.
Beardsley earned an Ed.D. in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. The dissertation’s abstract page, available through ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, lists two authors: “Scott Cochrane Beardsley” and “Robert Zemsky.” Zemsky chaired Beardsley’s dissertation committee.
That listing is highly unusual in doctoral education, where the dissertation is expected to demonstrate that the candidate can frame a research question independently, choose and defend methods, analyze evidence, and take intellectual responsibility for the conclusions. Collaborative research is common — and often valuable — in faculty life. But the dissertation occupies a special category: it is the singular work that qualifies a candidate for a doctoral degree.
On page 9 of Beardsley’s CV, he claims to have “Published over 70 peer-reviewed and/or edited articles, books, research papers …” We reviewed Appendix A, where Beardsley lists numerous items under “Peer-Reviewed and/or Edited Articles and Books.” We counted the entries. Excluding op-eds, there are 32 entries, not “over 70.” If you add the eight op-eds, the total is 40 publications. Perhaps there are some papers that he chose not to include on the CV. If so, why?
More concerning than Beardsley’s inability to count is his claim regarding published peer-reviewed articles. We found no entries in academic, peer-reviewed journals.
A candidate for one of the most prestigious presidencies in American higher education submitted materials that, at a minimum:
- systematically removed documented accomplishments in the midst of a politically charged leadership crisis that quickly became the predicate for UVA’s search;
- presented a dissertation record that appears to list two authors, including the committee chair — a highly irregular signal for a credential meant to demonstrate independent scholarly capacity;
- blurred corporate and academic publishing categories under the label “peer-reviewed” and claimed unpublished, unverifiable internal documents as research outputs;
- relegated scholarly work to an appendix rather than presenting it as the core of an academic record;
- relied heavily on promotional corporate metrics and autobiographical padding in a document that should have been built for scrutiny and did so in a context where the search firm’s leadership had previously offered unusually effusive public endorsement of his work — a relationship that should have heightened, not relaxed, the demand for demonstrably independent vetting.
- ‘This is war’: In texts, U-Va. board members plot with Youngkin, decry DEI
The board members coordinated frequently with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) or his top aides in nearly every major debate at the flagship university in Charlottesville in the past year — which some observers have described as an unusual level of involvement by the state leader. The conservative appointees also spoke in candid, sometimes inflammatory terms about the university’s then-president, James E. Ryan, his supporters and diversity policies.
“This is war!” Stephen Long wrote on April 17 to a fellow board member about a professor who sought to preserve diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
- UVA Board Members Blast Lawmakers, Faculty in Texts
Text messages obtained by a public records request reveal that University of Virginia board members freely shared criticism and outrage amid recent campus tensions.
University of Virginia board members blasted state lawmakers as “extremist” and faculty members as “out of control” in a batch of text messages published by The Washington Post.
In other text messages, Sheridan expressed frustration with the UVA Faculty Senate, which has demanded answers about whether Ryan was pushed out by the board and the DOJ agreement.
When Board of Visitors secretary Scott Ballenger texted Sheridan in October to say the Faculty Senate was debating a resolution to demand a meeting with Sheridan and then–interim president Paul Mahoney, she responded, “That is insane.” When he told her the Faculty Senate was weighing a resolution of no-confidence in Mahoney, Sheridan wrote, “So embarrassing. For them.” She added in response to another text from Ballenger, “This is out of control.”
(All messages are here:)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/040e55cf-fea3-4a07-8ec9-83c6dd9dfc41.pdf
- Advocates criticize Virginia deal with DOJ over tuition for undocumented students
The Justice Department said a in-state tuition benefit for undocumented students in Virginia illegally favors them over citizens from other states who wouldn’t qualify for the lower rates.
“The Attorney General of Virginia has abandoned his duties to defend Virginia law and the people of the Commonwealth, so we must,” ACLU of VA senior immigrants’ rights attorney Sophia Gregg said in a statement, adding the agreement was an effort “to manufacture a predetermined outcome to deprive Virginian students of not only their futures but their day in court.”
Others
Court cases
The long game
Op eds
How best to describe the times we are in
- NYTimes: Trump Is Pushing a Culture War That Knows No Bounds
Trump and his allies are applying a financial and regulatory chokehold on an array of corporations, institutions and special interest groups that he is convinced are aligned with the Democratic Party and the left against him.
Along similar lines, Shari Berman, a political scientist at Barnard, wrote by email:
“Trump has been strikingly successful in weakening nongovernmental constraints on executive power. Media organizations, major corporations, law firms, universities and civil society groups have all come under sustained pressure.”
(Higher education is just a small part of this accounting of devastation of the past year.)
- NYTimes: The Great Unraveling Has Begun
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/opinion/peace-conflict-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
But over the past decade, that peace has begun to unravel. Today, it is on the precipice of collapsing altogether. If that happens, the consequences will be catastrophic. We can already see the devastating cost: According to my calculations, from 1989 to 2014, battle-related deaths from cross-border conflicts averaged fewer than 15,000 a year. Beginning in 2014, the average has risen to over 100,000 a year. As states increasingly disregard limits on the lawful use of force, this may be just the beginning of a deadly new era of conflict.
The relative peace of the last eight decades should not be taken for granted. For centuries, war was perfectly legal. It was, in fact, the main way in which states resolved their disputes. Countries could force one another into treaties at the point of a gun and then enforce those very same treaties with war if they were broken. States that won wars had the legal right to keep what they took — land, goods, people. States rose and fell, took land and lost it, and the people living in the territory over which they fought suffered the consequences.
The military operation [Venezuela] is not justified by the right of self-defense. Drug trafficking is not an “armed attack” on the United States — the standard in international law for a legal act of self-defense. Even if Mr. Maduro illegally seized power and is guilty of criminal conduct, those facts do not create a lawful justification to use military force against Venezuela. Nonviolent means — economic and diplomatic sanctions — are the only legal response under international law. The decision to use military force to topple a disfavored government will not stop with the United States. We can count on others to follow our example.
- How universities can fight back against Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/01/15/university-trump-lee-bollinger-review/
(Review of Lee Bollinger’s new book with just a touch of shade thrown.)
The Trump administration’s assault on higher education has been relentless. Since the president took office again, officials have canceled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research contracts; demanded that schools stop all programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion; and called for governmental oversight of hiring to ensure political diversity in some departments.
Lee C. Bollinger’s new book, “University: A Reckoning,” is a response to this attack. While President Donald Trump wants schools to align their work with his priorities, Bollinger underscores higher education’s potential to challenge the priorities of whoever is in power. He paints an idealized portrait of institutions that offer transformational opportunities to students while advancing knowledge in ways other organizations cannot.
Blowback
- NYTimes: $25 Billion. That’s What Trump Cost Detroit.
(Nothing to do with Higher Education, but…)
Superior technology ultimately wins out. By the time the automobile industry is dominated by E.V.s, G.M. and Ford may have fallen well behind China, thanks to the Trump administration.
This isn’t industrial policy; it’s industrial suicide.
Coming attractions?
- Texas Launches Portal for Public to File Complaints Against Colleges
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board officially launched its Office of the Ombudsman website Friday, providing a portal where students and members of the public can file complaints against the state’s public colleges and universities.
The new office was mandated by Senate Bill 37, legislation that went into effect Jan. 1, which increases state control over public higher education by giving governing boards authority over curriculum, faculty governance and hiring and requiring academic program reviews. It also established the ombudsman’s office to manage complaints and investigations into alleged violations of the state’s DEI ban or of the other provisions of SB 37.
The new ombudsman’s office will have five days to notify any college or university named in a complaint through the portal, The Austin American-Statesman reported, and the institution will have 175 days to respond. If it is found in violation of state law, the ombudsman can recommend that the Legislature withhold funding until the institution comes into compliance.
Higher Education as a Public Good
- Opinion | Is college worth it? This quiz shows the reality.
Tracking projects
AI misdeeds
- NYU Professor Uses AI Oral Exams to Outsmart AI-Written Assignments - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/nyu-professor-ai-oral-exam-mckinsey-memo-business-school-2026-1
That’s when an NYU business school professor decided to fight AI-assisted coursework with AI-powered oral exams.
Panos Ipeirotis, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who teaches data science, wrote in a blog post published last week that he became concerned about student assignments that read like “a McKinsey memo” but lacked genuine understanding.
(and that’s it, the rest is paywalled)
- The Solution to AI Cheating Is Within Our Grasp
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-solution-to-ai-cheating-is-within-our-grasp
When ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in 2022, I was reasonably confident that my prompts were LLM-proof. I have modified them since then to make them even more so. But I have started to realize that such modification is an exercise in futility that wasn’t doing much for anyone, least of all students. The papers submitted this semester were mostly poor quality; they also all sounded alike because the use of large language models was rampant; and the teaching team found it increasingly hard to assess if a student knew anything at all, even if they were increasingly using words of four syllables or more (“legitimacy,” anyone?).
A technique to reliably detect AI use exists: It is called “watermarking.” It is not a magic solution and would, indeed, require collective action from universities. But a world where students would not use LLMs for writing assignments (unless instructors specifically asked them to) is well within the realm of possibility.
A watermark is like a trademark printed in invisible ink, a serial number on a gun, or the VIN of a car. The watermark can simply indicate that the text is machine-generated, or it could be much more detailed in identifying provenance.
Obviously, watermarks involve a burden on the AI company. OpenAI, in this case, needs to modify its LLM model since the watermark is literally hidden in the text it produces. There is a chance this will degrade the quality of the output. But the Journal assures us that, according to OpenAI’s own internal surveys, this was not the case. “People familiar with the matter” told the Journal that “when OpenAI conducted a test,” they “found watermarking didn’t impair ChatGPT’s performance.”
And just because it is fun
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