Jun 6
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.
A week marked by more efforts to radically change higher education, this week by denying foreign students the ability to study in the US and in particular Harvard (though we now know what TRO means – temporary restraining order)
Thanks BE, EST for sharing!
Alliances
- UFS Blog on Alliances
https://www1.cuny.edu/sites/cunyufs/2025/06/03/faculty-batten-down-and-arm-up-with-compacts/
(Thanks BE for this!)
- Stand Together for Higher Ed
https://www.standtogetherhighered.org/
(Thanks EST)
Higher education is under attack. A coordinated political campaign is working to delegitimize universities, restrict what can be taught, punish open inquiry, and dismantle institutional autonomy. These efforts are already causing real harm—targeting international students, undermining financial aid, making it harder for many to access or afford a college education, and defunding life-enhancing research. They threaten the values that make higher education vital to democracy: free speech, academic freedom, inclusion, and the pursuit of knowledge. To protect those values, we must come together—across campuses, communities, and differences—in common cause.
Protests
- NYTimes: Alarmed by Trump Cuts, Scientists Are Talking Science. For 100 Hours.
Dr. Rind’s presentation was the first of many in a planned, 100-hour-long livestream featuring hundreds of climate scientists and meteorologists from across the United States. They are protesting cuts to funding for atmospheric science and calling out potential risks to weather forecasts. The livestream started on Wednesday and is scheduled to run continuously through June 1, the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Op eds
- This Is a Summer to Organize (opinion)
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/06/03/summer-organize-opinion
Faculty may long for a break, but the government is actively operationalizing Project 2025, a blueprint for remaking every public institution, with higher education being the crown jewel of its antidemocratic agenda. At his 100-day rally in Michigan, Donald Trump declared, “We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet.” Christopher Rufo, architect of the right-wing culture war, promises to plunge higher education still further into “an existential terror.”
We should be prepared for a potential wave of coordinated assaults on higher education this summer: reductions in Pell Grant eligibility for low-income students and slashed student loans, more dismantlement of scientific research funding, politicized accreditation crackdowns, new endowment taxes, expanded intimidation of international students and scholars, and further weaponization of Title VI and Title IX enforcement.
We recommend mobilizing on two simultaneous fronts this summer: by operationalizing mutual academic defense compacts (MADCs), and through direct activism. We must forge powerful alliances for mass protest. We suggest one often-overlooked but deeply strategic constituency— veterans.
How best to describe the times we are in
- Academia’s Holy Warriors
https://www.chronicle.com/article/academias-holy-warriors/
The idea is central to Deneen’s [Notre Dame political-science professor] argument in Why Liberalism Failed, which announces America’s failed — past tense — liberal tradition. For Deneen, “liberalism” refers not just to the political beliefs of self-identified liberals or progressives, but also to the broader, rights-based political philosophy that has guided both major political parties for most of American history.
As Deneen was speaking, blueberry pie was served to an audience that included Rod Dreher, the well-known American Conservative blogger and author of The Benedict Option; Matthew Schmitz, an editor of the ecumenical religious journal First Things; and Bria Sandford, editorial director of Penguin’s right-of-center Sentinel book division. The next morning, the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat arrived
In the year and a half since the conference, other writers who have staked out public positions on the nonliberal right include the Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule, the First Things editor R.R. Reno, the former Washington Examiner managing editor Helen Andrews, and the University of Dallas assistant professor of political science — and deputy editor of the journal American Affairs — Gladden Pappin. One might add Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican, who in July was named the head of President Trump’s Commission on Unalienable Rights.
The radicals, on the other hand, were those who believed that American liberalism had always been deeply hostile to the core values of Catholics.
Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule accused Deneen of failing to grapple fully with the consequences of his own diagnosis. … What was needed was not the creation of new societies — which would survive only at the forbearance of the reigning powers — but a coup against the liberal “imperium” from within. … Rather than withdrawing from the power centers of liberal society, Vermeule recommends that administrators and other elites find a “strategic position” from which, as dissatisfaction with liberalism grows, they can turn that bureaucracy to “new ends.”
(Deenan also raises the ire of David Brooks:)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/trump-vance-morality.html
- Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions | Margaret Sullivan | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/02/national-parks-libraries-museums-trump
It seems counterintuitive, but this is all a part of a broad plan that the great 20th-century political thinker Hannah Arendt would have understood all too well.
Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated.
“A people that can no longer believe in anything cannot make up its mind,” said Arendt, a student of authoritarianism, in 1973. Eventually, such a public “is deprived … of its ability to think and judge”, and with people like that, “you can then do what you please”.
Academic freedom
- Red states tell colleges: Race and gender classes are out, civics in
New laws in Ohio, Utah and Florida are reshaping general education, the core classes college students take to meet graduation requirements. The laws mandate that students take civics courses focused on Western civilization and bar classes centered on race or gender from counting toward core requirements.
State lawmakers have the authority to regulate curriculums and set requirements for graduation, but higher education experts say that until recently, they have let public colleges and universities lead the way. That began to change in 2020 after the first Trump administration issued an executive order to stamp out “divisive concepts” about race and gender in the federal government, according to the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers.
“This is a new type of local intervention,” said Keith E. Whittington, founding chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance. “Some of the proposals are making more elaborate interventions about what the curriculum ought to look like and are also increasingly interested in the content.”
- House Democrats Air Grievances With McMahon
The Trump administration has recently criticized what it sees as a lack of viewpoint diversity at Harvard University and demanded that the institution hire more conservative professors if it would like to regain access to federal grant funding. At a Senate hearing Tuesday, McMahon said a federal law that prevents discrimination based on race and national origin gave the department the authority to make such demands.
Takano [California Democrat] snapped back, saying, “I think it’s pretty clear you haven’t thought through this idea of viewpoint diversity.”
- NYTimes: A Professor Was Fired for Her Politics. Is That the Future of Academia?
But that night, reading Kanazi’s words while taking in the news, she felt a pitch of fury and despair at the rising number of dead in Gaza and her sense that too few Americans were similarly horrified. She believed in her right to state her beliefs and share those of others, like Kanazi, with whom she sympathized. Besides, the post would disappear from her Instagram stories by the following evening.
Two days later, on a Friday, Finkelstein got an email from Jennifer Storm, the director of equity and Title IX at Muhlenberg, asking her to come to a meeting the following Monday — with a lawyer if she wanted one.
But the meeting, which took place a week later on Zoom with Finkelstein’s lawyer present, was entirely about her repost. Finkelstein was told not to return to campus and locked out of her email. Her classes would be reassigned to an adjunct professor while the college hired an outside firm to investigate.
The investigation stretched over the spring semester. Then, in May, Finkelstein received a new letter from the college: She was being fired, with cause. This despite her having tenure, a historic form of academic job protection meant to insulate scholars from the steamrolling power of both politics and public opinion. Less noticed at the time, but arguably more prophetic, was how the mechanics of her firing trammeled yet another longtime standard in the academy, that of professors’ deciding among themselves when and if a colleague should be fired.
Freedom of expression
- The Trump administration’s big week of gaslighting and censorship
Over the course of the past week alone — in the name of academic, scientific and online “freedom” — Trump and his administration’s bigwigs have explicitly threatened free speech in at least a half-dozen different ways.
- NYTimes: A Student at Brown Channeled Elon Musk. Then He Got in Trouble.
Thousands of administrative employees at Brown University woke up this spring to an email with pointed Elon Musk-like questions about their job responsibilities.
Please describe your role, it asked. What tasks have you performed in the past week? How would Brown students be affected if your job didn’t exist?
The March 18 email was from a sophomore, Alex Shieh, who explained that the responses would be included in a story for The Brown Spectator, a new, as yet unpublished conservative newspaper on campus.
Two days later, Brown notified Mr. Shieh that he was under investigation for possible violations of the university’s code of student conduct, including its prohibitions on invasion of privacy, misrepresentation and emotional or psychological harm.
With that, his case — and that of two Spectator students who were later placed under investigation — became the latest flashpoint in the free speech wars on American college campuses.
Brown eventually cleared all three students of wrongdoing. But their case is yet another example of how universities continue to struggle with protecting the rights of students to express themselves on campus, after years of trying to adjudicate just when political expression tips into harassment.
Anti-woke/anti-DEI is simply racism
- NYTimes: Trump’s Attacks on Black History Betray America
The Trump administration’s framing of Black history as “D.E.I.” — and “D.E.I.” as harming white Americans — recasts its attack on Black history as protecting white Americans. As administering justice. Which is the justification of nearly every Klan and racist mob attack in history. The justification of the Atlanta attack in 1906.
- Opinion | Here are the people Trump is trying to delete
(Sexism too)
About 80 percent of the erased images contained one or more targeted keywords, such as gay, transgender, women, Hispanic and Black.
Entire demographics are being scrubbed from records of both America’s past and present — including people of color, transgender people, women, immigrants and people with disabilities. They are now among America’s “missing persons.”
People who aren’t White are an especially frequent target of government erasure.
Women (alongside racial minorities) have been disproportionately fired in purges of National Institutes of Health science review boards and senior military leadership positions. A landmark study on women’s health — the Women’s Health Initiative — was canceled entirely in April, though eventually restored after significant public outcry. The Labor Department likewise canceled grants for women’s apprenticeship programs last week.
More broadly, the terms “woman” and “women” have also appeared on banned-word lists for federal agency websites, grant applications and other external communications, including at the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration.
Visas
- Attacks on Chinese Students Could Wreak Havoc on Higher Ed
The targeting of students in “critical fields” in particular could devastate STEM programs and research labs at smaller universities across the country, where Chinese international students are heavily represented. Rubio did not clarify what fields could be considered critical, potentially setting the stage for a sweeping focus on areas where GOP lawmakers have raised concerns about sensitive national security research being shared with the Chinese government.
At a press conference yesterday, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to “get into the details” of how the new visa scrutiny would be applied or what “critical fields” the department was referring to, because it “might give up our hand and make certain things less effective.”
“‘Aggressively revoking’ visas based on political ideology is a gross violation of basic free expression principles that anchor the academy,” he [Jonathan Friedman, managing director of U.S. free expression at PEN America] wrote to Inside Higher Ed.
(Also)
https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-across-u-s-fear-chill-on-enrollments-of-foreign-students
The visa-interview suspension capped a week of bad news: The nominee to oversee the student-visa system vowed to end work authorization for recent international graduates, a move that could seriously dent the appeal of American colleges. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned foreign students who had not updated their employment records that they could face deportation. And the Trump administration took the unprecedented step of revoking Harvard University’s authority to enroll international students as part of an all-fronts showdown with one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. Other colleges could be next, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in announcing the decision: “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
- Trump administration claims Chinese students ‘exploit’ U.S. universities
- What the New Travel Ban Means for Higher Ed
https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-the-new-travel-ban-means-for-higher-ed
And taken together, the two proclamations underscore the extent to which international students are simultaneously in the crosshairs of two of the most contentious and virulent issues of the Trump presidency, its opposition to immigration and its fight to force higher education to bend to government’s agenda.
Restrictions on international students are a powerful lever to use against colleges, many of which have come to rely on the higher tuition paid by foreign students in a time of leaner budgets and domestic demographic declines. At the graduate level, visa holders are the backbone of American research and science.
Undocuments students
- Texas Ends In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students
Thousands of undocumented students in Texas no longer have access to in-state tuition. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state on Wednesday over its policy of allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public universities. Within hours, Texas sided with the Justice Department, and U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor granted a permanent injunction, quashing the policy.
In an interview before the permanent injunction, Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice at the UCLA School of Law and co-director of the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said he didn’t believe a legal ruling in the Justice Department’s favor would necessarily affect other states, such as California, with similar laws. He said Texas used a residency criterion to decide eligibility for in-state tuition, an approach more vulnerable to legal challenges than some of the criteria other states use.
But even if other states go unscathed, losing in-state tuition benefits is “extraordinarily significant” for the “massive” undocumented population in Texas, he said.
Funding cuts
- CUNY advocates push for $100M to bridge funding gap and enhance student services
(Thanks BE)
- Scientific Community Fears for Future of STEM Workforce Amid NSF Overhaul
Of the approximately 1,500 grants the agency recently terminated, at least 750 came from the NSF’s education directorate, according to Grant Watch, an independent website that tracks terminated NSF grants. And that’s not the only shake-up happening at the NSF, which Congress created in 1950 to “promote the progress of science; advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and secure the national defense.” The Trump administration has also laid off staff and proposed slashing the agency’s budget.
Additionally, NSF announced new priorities that include not funding projects aimed at recruiting more Americans from underrepresented backgrounds to the STEM workforce—a key focus for the agency historically.
The Trump administration says all these changes are part of its plan to reform the NSF, correct an alleged “scientific slowdown,” build a “a robust domestic STEM workforce” and “rapidly accelerate its investment in critical and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology.” The NSF sends billions to colleges and universities to support STEM education and nonmedical scientific research.
- NYTimes: White House Unveils New Details of Stark Budget Cuts
The White House budget is not a matter of law. Ultimately, it is up to Congress to determine the budget, and in recent years it has routinely discarded many of the president’s proposals. Lawmakers are only starting to embark on the annual process, with government funding set to expire at the end of September.
Targeting the Education Department, the president again put forward a roughly $12 billion cut, seeking to eliminate dozens of programs while unveiling new changes to Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for college.
The maximum award would be capped at $5,710 for the 2026-7 award year, a decrease of more than $1,600.
Mr. Trump and his budget director, Russell T. Vought, “are clearly hiding their policy goals, because they would hurt the middle class, the working class and the vulnerable,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who leads her party on the House Appropriations Committee.
- New Details of Trump’s Budget Cuts Alarm Researchers
- Trump Wants Grant Makers to Become Political Appointees
Officials say the policy, which would make it easier to fire thousands of government employees, is designed to increase accountability. But experts say it would increase corruption and threaten the nation’s health and economy.
In April, the Office of Personnel Management posted to the Federal Register a proposed rule “to increase career employee accountability” by allowing agencies to quickly remove from critical positions employees “who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.” That could include any employee with “substantive participation and discretionary authority in agency grantmaking,” such as those involved in drafting funding opportunity announcements, evaluating grant applications and recommending or selecting grant recipients.
NSF
- NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION FY 2026 Budget Request to Congress
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF-FY26-CJ-Entire-Rollup.pdf
(NSF PROGRAMS TO BROADEN PARTICIPATION (BP)) Total, Broadening Participation Programs FY24 appropriated: $1,613.85M FY26 (Request) $171.31M
(That’s 10.6 percent of the good old days. This is just a request for upcoming levels of funding, but whoa what a request.)
Fellowships and Scholarships: -91.4% Postdoctoral Programs: -67.8%
NIH
- New HHS document details deep NIH cuts as part of Trump budget request
The “budget in brief” document doubles down on a previous request to slash NIH’s discretionary budget to $27.5 billion, an $18 billion or nearly 40% reduction.
- NYTimes: The Gutting of America’s Medical Research: Here Is Every Canceled or Delayed N.I.H. Grant
In all, the N.I.H., the world’s premier public funder of medical research, has ended 1,389 awards and delayed sending funding to more than 1,000 additional projects, The Times found. From the day Mr. Trump was inaugurated through April, the agency awarded $1.6 billion less compared with the same period last year, a reduction of one-fifth. (N.I.H. records for May are not yet comparable.)
Fulbright
- Fulbright proposals screened for mentions of race, gender, and climate
https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/latitudes/2025-06-04
The blackballing of certain Fulbright finalists mirrors the Trump administration’s action to terminate hundreds of federal research grants that are counter to presidential orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion. But in the case of Fulbright, the administration is acting unilaterally to nix awards for both American and foreign applicants that for decades have been selected jointly, effectively telling other countries that they don’t have final say in the spending of their own funds.
Agencies
DOE OCR
- Senate Dems Grill Trump’s Pick to Lead the Office for Civil Rights
“This administration has fired more than half of the staff at OCR, and President Trump is now asking, in his budget, to slash that by $49 million next year, so explain to me how those firings and that funding cut will help reduce that backlog? I want to understand how you’re going to square that circle,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asked early on in the hearing.
Richey is currently senior chancellor for the Florida Department of Education and has twice served in OCR before, including a brief stint as acting secretary of civil rights at the end of Trump’s first term and the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
Institutional assaults
Harvard
- White House convenes meeting to brainstorm new Harvard measures - POLITICO
But with the low-hanging policy options already underway, the administration knows it will need to get more creative to keep squeezing the school, according to two administration officials and another person familiar with the talks, who like others in the story were granted anonymity to share details of private conversations.
(Quoth AI: In “The Sopranos,” “squeeze” generally refers to a tactic used by Tony Soprano and his associates to financially strain or control an individual or business, often through extortion or manipulation. )
- NYTimes: A Stephen Miller Staffer and Tough Talk: Inside Trump’s Latest Attack on Harvard
The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review. The startling accusations show how the Trump administration is wielding power in pursuit of its political agenda.
In a series of letters that have not been previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a “cooperating witness” inside the student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed.
But the aggressive language in the letters from the Justice Department’s two top civil rights lawyers appeared to have overstated the allegations in pursuit of an additional way to punish Harvard. In that way, the episode fits a broader trend in how the administration is wielding federal investigatory powers to impose its political agenda.
- NYTimes: Harvard Argues Cutting Off Its Government Funding Is Wasteful
In a court filing on Monday, Harvard University painted a bleak picture for its research enterprise if the funding taken away by the Trump administration is not restored.
“The harm would be severe and long lasting,” John H. Shaw, the university’s vice provost for research, wrote in the 17-page declaration that is part of Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration. “Money cannot repair the lost time, talent, and opportunity.”
- ENHANCING NATIONAL SECURITY BY ADDRESSING RISKS AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
A PROCLAMATION
Crime rates at Harvard University — including violent crime rates — have drastically risen in recent years. Harvard has failed to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus. Given these facts, it is imperative, in my judgment, that the Federal Government be able to assess and, if necessary, address misconduct and crimes committed by foreign students at Harvard.
(Believe the Clery reports and you won’t conclude the same: https://www.hupd.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum2276/files/2024-10/2024%20Annual%20Security%20Report%20Cambridge%20Campus%20Clery%20Act%20Criminal%20Statistics_0.pdf)
These concerns have compelled the Federal Government to conclude that Harvard University is no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs.
Considering these facts [sp? ed.], I have determined that it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University or in an exchange visitor program hosted by Harvard University.
- NYTimes: Trump Pushes to Restrict Harvard’s International Students From Entering U.S.
- Trump proclamation seeks to restrict international students from Harvard
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/04/harvard-visa-ban-trump-international-students/
- President Trump suspended Harvard from participating in the student-visa program, effectively prohibiting foreign nationals from attending the nation’s most prominent university
- MOTION FOR A TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.285083/gov.uscourts.mad.285083.56.0.pdf
This suit challenges the government’s continuing unlawful and retaliatory actions to bar Harvard University from hosting international students and scholars.
- ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR A TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25964963-harvardtrotwo060525/
For purposes of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b), the President and Fellows ofHarvard College (“Plaintiff”) has made a sufficient showing that it has provided notice toDefendants Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, Immigration and CustomsEnforcement, Todd Lyons, Department of Justice, Pamela Bondi, Student and Exchange VisitorProgram, Jim Hicks, Department of State, and Marco Rubio (collectively, “Defendants”) and that,unless its Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (“TRO”), [ECF No. 56 (the “Motion”)],is granted, it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hearfrom all parties.
- NYTimes: Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Order Curtailing Foreign Students at Harvard
Columbia
- Trump Escalates Attack on Columbia University by Threatening Its Accreditation - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/nyregion/columbia-trump-accreditation-civil-rights.html
(Damned if you do, damned if you don’t)
The federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which two weeks ago found that Columbia violated civil rights laws by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of Jewish students, sent a letter on Wednesday to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the nongovernmental organization that accredits Columbia.
The letter said that because Columbia was in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws, the Education Department believes it fails to meet the standards for accreditation.
“University accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards,” Linda McMahon, the federal education secretary, said in a news release. She said the government looked forward to being “fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards, including compliance with federal civil rights laws.”
President Trump has described the accreditation process as his “secret weapon” to force ideological changes at universities. But the Trump administration does not have direct control over which universities are accredited. Instead, those decisions are made by nongovernmental organizations certified by the government, in a complex process meant to insulate universities from political interference.
- No, Trump Is Not Pulling Columbia’s Accreditation. Here’s What You Need to Know.
In terms of individual colleges, the federal government has no direct authority to interpret an accreditor’s standards, said John R. Przypyszny, a lawyer who specializes in accreditation. So Trump alone can’t revoke Columbia’s accreditation, which would cut off access to federal financial aid.
The Education Department’s letter, sent Wednesday, argued that Columbia has violated the standards of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Because Columbia failed to adequately respond to antisemitic behavior during protests against the war in Gaza, the department’s Office for Civil Rights concluded last month, the institution has violated Title VI, which bars discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, including shared Jewish ancestry. Therefore, the letter continues, Columbia “fails to meet the standards for accreditation,” the department said in a news release. In light of that, the department said, the Middle States Commission must require the university to “establish a plan to come into compliance.”
- NYTimes: To Bolster Columbia Inquiry, Prosecutor Likened Hamas Graffiti to Cross Burning
The Justice Department, intent on pursuing a criminal case against student protesters at Columbia University, argued that graffiti with a Hamas symbol outside the home of the school’s interim president threatened her life and was comparable to a racist cross burning, newly unsealed court documents show.
The photo showed graffiti in bright red paint on the building where the university president lived, with the words “free them all” and an inverted triangle.
(How freeing protestors becomes pro-Hamas, I’ll leave for others, but the article mentions an accompanying instagram post.)
The records also underscore how determined the Trump administration was to press forward with a case judges viewed as weak. Justice Department leaders pushed for an investigation of a student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, but federal judges in New York rejected the administration’s efforts to get a search warrant four times, in what some veteran lawyers described as an unusually prolonged disagreement between federal prosecutors and the courts.
Indiana
- This is saw on bluesky this week
Indiana’s governor fired all the elected members of Indiana University’s Board of Trustees. Given a recent policy change, he’ll be able to fill those seats with appointees. Which means he’ll basically have unilateral control over IU decisions, including who gets hired, tenured, and fired.
- Indiana U. Requires Buyout Takers to Pledge No Disparagement — a Move More Often Seen in Corporations
- Indiana U: Most Complaints Under Law Were “Form of Protest”
out of 46 complaints it received in 2024 under a state law that threatens the jobs of faculty who don’t foster “intellectual diversity,” 37 were “frivolous complaints …”
“An example of a typical complaint: ‘Professor xxxx studies the black female experience and is an award-winning teacher and prolific publisher,’”
- NYTimes: Republicans Trying to Control Indiana University Meet Little Resistance
Republicans passed a new law that would require university boards to measure the productivity of tenured faculty. Faculty were downgraded to “advisory only” roles in university decision-making. Degree programs that graduated too few students would be closed.
And at Indiana University, whose flagship campus in Bloomington is ranked among the nation’s top 100 schools, the state’s governor was given new power over the school’s governing board.
The moves align with a conservative playbook to reduce faculty power on campuses perceived by many on the right as bastions of liberal thought. This year, several other Republican-led states passed laws requiring reviews for tenured faculty and the reorganization of programs at public institutions that have low enrollment.
Many faculty members see the Indiana bill as an attack on their university’s independence and part of an effort to restrict their own freedom to teach and speak. They read Dr. Whitten’s [President of Indiana University] silence as support for the changes.
Indiana’s experience has been emblematic of the pressures facing public universities. But several factors — an active protest movement on campus, a state with strong conservative leanings and Dr. Whitten herself, a leader at odds with many on her campus — have created especially tense conditions.
Dr. Whitten’s administration acted almost immediately. The university called in the Indiana State Police, which stationed snipers on rooftops and arrested 57 people, including a handful of faculty members.
(Snipers!!!)
Dr. Whitten and the faculty have long had a frosty relationship. Earlier that spring, more than 800 faculty member approved a vote of no confidence in Dr. Whitten. (More than 3,000 were eligible to vote.)
(Just to be fair, only 948 showed up to be possibly counted https://www.idsnews.com/article/2024/04/behind-the-vote-faculty-lost-confidence-whitten-administration)
Others
- Universities quietly negotiating with White House aide to try to avoid Harvard’s fate, source says | CNN Politics
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/31/politics/universities-negotiate-trump-administration-harvard
(So says an anonymous source likely named Stephen Miller)
College and university leaders have been privately negotiating with a deputy to top Trump aide Stephen Miller in hopes of avoiding the same aggressive targeting of Harvard University, a person familiar with the matter said, as the administration looks to escalate its attacks on the Ivy League institution and other schools.
Blowback
- Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/trump-harvard-higher-education-law/682985/
But the Trump administration’s attack didn’t end there. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s letter announcing this move also doubled as a request for documents, instructing Harvard to deliver five years of video or audio of “any protest activity involving a non-immigrant student,” plus disciplinary files, before the ban will be reconsidered. The next morning, Harvard sued and won a temporary restraining order.
The letter represents the Trump administration’s latest assault in its war on Harvard, in which the government is effectively trying to nationalize a private university.
- NYTimes: World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts
For many of the others, the political turmoil in Washington has dried up job opportunities in what Professor Ladher [professor at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore] calls “the best research ecosystem in the world.” Some decided they would now rather take their skills elsewhere, including Austria, Japan and Australia, while others opted to stay in India.
- NYTimes: Denying Visas to Chinese Students Could Backfire on America
For the millions of Chinese who have studied in the United States, myself [ Li Yuan] included, it is a sobering and disheartening development. It marks a turning point that America, long a beacon of openness and opportunity, would start shutting its doors to Chinese who aspire to a good education and a future in a society that values freedom and human dignity.
- NYTimes: The U.S. Lit a Beacon for Science. Under Trump, Scientists Fear It’s Dimming
But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to “any city, any university I want,” he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.
- Exclusive | CUNY Labor School chairman resigns day after coming under fire for spreading ‘antisemitic conspiracy theories’
- DOGE vowed to make government more ‘efficient’ — but it’s doing the opposite
The added reviews extend beyond financial issues to questions of policy and political speech, including press releases.
At some parts of the National Institutes of Health, per an employee there, every grant must now be fed through an AI tool to screen for references to concepts deemed unpalatable by the Trump administration, such as “DEI, transgender, China, or vaccine hesitancy,” the employee said. Further delaying grants is another new requirement: NIH staff must check to ensure the recipient isn’t on the list of colleges and universities that have drawn Trump’s wrath, including Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Brown and Cornell.
At the State Department, employees are spending hours combing through official documents to remove the words “diverse,” equitable” and “inclusive,” said a staffer there, months after Trump issued his executive order ending diversity efforts.
- NYTimes: Candidate Criticized Over Diversity Blocked From Becoming U. of Florida President
(Hard to feel sorry for the player, but this empowers Chris Rufo even more…)
Paul Renner, a member of the Board of Governors who voted against Mr. Ono’s confirmation, said in an interview on Tuesday that Mr. Ono had led a university that embraced diversity, equity and inclusion programming. Mr. Renner said he did not find Mr. Ono’s attempt to distance himself from those efforts sincere.
(Also a next day recap)
“This should teach a lesson to academics across the country: MAGA’s goal is the complete transformation of our education system,” the College Democrats, an organization on the Florida campus, said in a statement after the vote, noting, “They cannot be appeased.”
(Also see: The Ruination of Santa Ono)
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-ruination-of-santa-ono
When an accomplished man is reduced to pandering, it’s a sad spectacle.
- America’s college crisis - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/06/college-wage-premium-jobs-grads/683036/
(This paywalled story is about Americans not buying the value of college, but what it shows to me is how easily one parties members get manipulated by political propaganda and it didn’t even take a generation to do so.)
Tracking projects
AI doom story of the week
- NYTimes: A.I. Killed the Math Brain
That’s when it hit me: A.I. is just as much a challenge to numeracy — our knowledge and ability to use mathematics and reason quantitatively — as it is to literacy.
The worry is that we, as a society, will become innumerate, not just illiterate. A.I. appears to be exacerbating an alarming trend in which our basic education is failing our young citizens. And that crisis is aimed at the most basic elements of that education: reading, writing and arithmetic.
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