Oct 24
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.
You can read this formatted at: https://cunytracker.github.io/CUNYTracker/oct-24.html
Statements
- UFS Executive Committee statement: Not This Compact
We call on the Board of Trustees of CUNY and the Chancellery of the City University of New York to steadfastly resist any pressures to enter into this McMahon-Mailman compact or any similar compact which would undermine the mission and values of CUNY.
- ACE: Statement by Higher Education Associations in Opposition to Trump Administration Compact
https://www.acenet.edu/News-Room/Pages/Statement-Trump-Administration-Compact.aspx
The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education opens with the assertion that “American higher education is the envy of the world and represents a key strategic benefit for our Nation.” We wholeheartedly agree. Yet we are deeply concerned that the compact’s prescriptions threaten to undermine the very qualities that make our system exceptional.
The conditions it outlines run counter to the interests of institutions, students, scholars, and the nation itself. It would impose unprecedented litmus tests on colleges and universities as a condition for receiving ill-defined “federal benefits” related to funding and grants.
That is why our associations, which span the breadth of the American higher education community and the full spectrum of colleges and universities nationwide, are unified in our opposition to the compact.
(There is a familiar immediate past chair on ACE’s board)
Academic freedom
- NYTimes: All but 2 Universities Decline a Trump Offer of Preferential Funding
One of the two, Vanderbilt University, signaled it had reservations.
- White House hits roadblock in effort to get top colleges to agree to deal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/10/20/trump-administration-college-compact/
- Many Colleges Have Turned Down Trump’s Compact. Now Some Are Willing to Talk.
Vanderbilt University’s chancellor on Monday declined to explicitly reject or accept the compact, but pledged that his institution would “provide feedback and comments as part of an ongoing dialogue.” The University of Arizona declined to sign, but sent the administration its own statement of principles as a “contribution toward a national conversation about the future relationship between universities and the federal government.” Before ending his letter, Suresh Garimella, Arizona’s president, wrote: “I look forward to further discussion.”
The same day, Washington University in St. Louis also announced it would participate in that conversation. Though WashU wasn’t among the nine institutions to receive the compact — which has since been opened to all of academe — it did join a Friday meeting with Trump administration officials. Explaining the institution’s rationale, Andrew D. Martin, the chancellor, wrote in a letter to campus that, “It’s important for WashU to have a seat at the table for these discussions.”
- Vanderbilt Didn’t Accept or Reject the Compact. The Chancellor Plans to Provide Feedback Instead.
Whereas presidents for seven out of the nine original recipients of the compact explicitly stated they were declining to sign the document as written, Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt’s chancellor, wrote, “Despite reporting to the contrary, we have not been asked to accept or reject the draft compact. Rather, we have been asked to provide feedback and comments as part of an ongoing dialogue, and that is our intention.”
Heuser had previously sent the Faculty Senate a letter urging a full-throated rejection of the compact. “The ‘Campus Compact’ is a troubling assault on the independence of higher education,” he wrote one day after White House officials sent the compact to college presidents. “It endangers academic freedoms, politicizes institutional policies, and threatens the diversity and rigor that define our universities.” Vanderbilt’s American Association of University Professors chapter, Faculty Senate, and students and alumni later put out their own statements backing rejection, with varying vehemence.
- The MAGA case for academic freedom lies in a period Trump loves
The GI Bill sits near the top of the list of government policies that helped make America great in the mid-20th century. The 1944 law’s generous provisions for returning World War II veterans, and especially its grants of free college tuition, paved the way for the creation of a huge new middle class of productive, educated citizens.
It’s this postwar period — the late 1940s, the 1950s and the early 1960s — that President Donald Trump is generally understood to be talking about when he vows to make America great again.
(Maybe it is the 1880s, but nevermind)
But there’s another reason that the GI Bill kicked off a period of American greatness. You’ll find it tucked into Title II, Chapter 4, where the law states: “No department, agency, or officer of the United States … shall exercise any supervision or control, whatsoever, over any State educational agency, or State apprenticeship agency, or any educational or training institution.”
In other words, the Congress that wrote the GI Bill and passed it unanimously made clear that its generous funding came with no strings attached. None “whatsoever.”
But that’s not what is happening. Indeed, the golden age of strong and independent higher education appears to have come to an end. Today, the president who says he wants to make America great again by reviving the spirit of the 1950s and ’60s is presenting a very different offer to the nation’s colleges and universities.
According to the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” proposed by the Education Department this month, colleges and universities will need to consent to a laundry list of federal control to receive substantial federal funding. Among those conditions: Schools would have to agree to a gag order prohibiting their faculty, staff and leaders from speaking about many political or cultural issues. They would need to enforce the Trump administration’s ideas about gender identity. Some institutions would need to offer free tuition to students who are studying the federal government’s preferred academic topics; all would be required to purge programs that the government says include incorrect thinking about political topics. The schools would be subject to price controls that are antithetical to the tradition of free markets. And all of these policies would be policed by the government, which could enact heavy financial penalties on schools it deemed out of compliance.
- How the Compact Curtails Academic Freedom
Let’s focus on matters of free expression and academic freedom by examining the compact in three broad categories: viewpoint diversity, institutional neutrality and student expression. …
The compact requires “a broad spectrum of viewpoints … within every field, department, school and teaching unit.” What can this mean? Must a department of immunology have vaccine skeptics? Must an economics department have Marxists? Must a sustainability school have climate skeptics? Must a political science department have democratic socialists? In ironic contrast with the compact’s demand for a “commitment to rigorous and meritocratic selection based on objective and measurable criteria in the appointment process,” selecting faculty based on their beliefs to achieve a broad spectrum of viewpoints within every field puts ideology ahead of academic merit.
(and more)
- Reading Between the Lines on Compact Responses
Resolution in opposition of the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”
Freedom of expression
- FIRE Is Wrong. Raucous Protest Is Free Speech.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/fire-is-wrong-raucous-protest-is-free-speech
The flaw in the rankings lies in their failure to account for the central role of disruptive, nonviolent protest in the development of free-speech doctrine and a concomitant abandonment of bedrock First Amendment tenets. The history of the First Amendment reflects a long tradition of contentious political protests, including campus protests, in the United States. From labor unions’ so-called “free-speech fights” at the turn of the 20th century to the civil-rights sit-ins and antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s to the recent pro-Palestinian campus encampments, political dissent has often involved discordant and clamorous protests. They have provided the context for many of the leading First Amendment court decisions in the latter half of the 20th century.
FIRE’s model of proper protest, conversely, is more akin to a polite debating exercise. … But political protest is rarely so limited to the solemn scenes evoked by Martinez and embraced by FIRE. It’s usually a group activity, sometimes in the form of mass demonstrations. It is often tumultuous, noisy, and disruptive. That’s the point. Disrupting ordinary routines, choreographed speakers, or other aspects of your daily programming is what protest is all about. The goal of protest is to direct your attention elsewhere, to the object of protest.
- UT Austin Blocks Grad Student Assembly Political Speech
Officials at the University of Texas at Austin blocked the Graduate Student Assembly from considering two resolutions against Texas state laws last week, arguing that the student-run body must follow institutional neutrality policies.
Mateo Vallejo, a first-year master’s student and representative in the GSA for the School of Social Work, drafted two resolutions for the assembly to consider: one condemning Texas SB 17, which bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Texas public institutions, and another against Texas SB 37, a state law that, among other changes, put faculty senates at public institutions under the control of university presidents and boards.
On Oct. 10, GSA president David Spicer submitted the two resolutions to Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Christopher J. McCarthy for approval. According to the assembly bylaws, the dean of students’ office must approve all proposed GSA legislation before it can be considered by the full assembly, effectively giving the office an opportunity to veto, Vallejo explained. Once a bill is submitted to the dean’s office, the assembly cannot make any changes to the text. Vallejo, Spicer and the GSA vice president were careful to follow the bylaws during the drafting process to give administrators as little reason as possible to shut the resolutions down.
Spicer followed up, asking why the GSA was prohibited from engaging in political speech when others have done so in their official capacity at UT Austin. He pointed to an op-ed by Provost William Inboden in the conservative magazine National Affairs and a statement from University of Texas System Board of Regents chairman Kevin P. Eltife, who said the university was “honored” to be among the institutions “selected by the Trump Administration for potential funding advantages” under Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
“Like attacks on the Faculty Council, silencing GSA through institutional neutrality is an attack on the notion of shared governance,” Spicer said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “GSA appoints students to university-wide committees and, previously, Faculty Council committees. GSA is the one space at UT Austin where students can voice issues impacting their graduate education.”
- Amid Trump’s Assault on Free Speech, Advocates Stay Busy
ameel Jaffer, a civil rights litigator for more than 25 years, said there is no question that President Donald Trump’s assault on free speech is unprecedented in his lifetime. And while he noted there may be some rough comparisons to be made with the McCarthy era, it almost certainly has no parallel in the last 100 years.
But Jaffer, who now serves as executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, admitted that he didn’t predict such a contentious climate a year ago. In fact, he said, it wasn’t until about the 100th day of Trump’s second term that it set in how different the political landscape had become.
(The 100th day, what?)
Other nonprofit groups from across the political spectrum had started to recognize the same patterns, and none of them were comfortable with the direction in which things were going. Collectively, in a letter addressed to the “leaders of American institutions,” Knight and six other free speech advocacy organizations called on the country to “stand more resolutely” against Trump’s “multi-front assault on First Amendment freedoms.”
Despite the letter, Trump’s attack on First Amendment rights only escalated, as he made further funding freezes, presented more sweeping demands to institutions and proposed an unprecedented compact for higher ed that officials say would give preferential financial treatment to institutions that acquiesced to the president’s agenda.
“It’s definitely a lower point for First Amendment rights, at least in terms of people’s belief that they can exercise those rights without consequence,” said Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “We still have those rights. That’s the important thing … [But] while some groups may be willing to go to court to vindicate their rights, litigation has a cost. And many people might think it’s simply easier to conform their speech to what the administration wants.”
Jaffer said the last 10 months have shown the limits of litigation. The justice system is only effective if judges feel comfortable ruling against Congress or the White House, and under the Trump administration and its “campaign of intimidation,” that may not always be the case, he said.
“The truth is, like, the Knight Institute is doing just fine. It’s our democracy that I’m more worried about,” Jaffer admitted. “At this point, ordinary Americans are going to have to defend their First Amendment freedoms, and they’re going to have to defend those freedoms by asserting them in court, by exercising them through public protest and by conveying to the political leaders that these freedoms are important to them.”
- Two Champions of Academic Freedom Go to War — The AAUP and FIRE are at it. Again.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/two-champions-of-academic-freedom-go-to-war
When The Chronicle’s Emma Pettit posted a thread on X describing the “burst of debate” around the topic of viewpoint diversity, there was no reason to expect a social-media blowup. Her tweets were dry and informative, a roundup of relevant opinion coverage, in our pages and elsewhere, arguing for and against the notion that many academic disciplines would benefit from an infusion of non-left-wing faculty members.
But then the X account of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) responded: “Fascism generally doesn’t do great under peer review.” The post went on to speculate that the low number of conservatives in the academy could be a result of the fact that “the intellectual values of academia, which emphasizes critical inquiry & challenges traditional norms … may be inherently less appealing to those with a more conservative worldview.” (Who writes the AAUP’s X posts? I asked an AAUP spokesperson, who told me that a number of people have access to the account.)
The second part of the statement paraphrases a longstanding hypothesis about the dearth of conservatives in academe, although one under increasing pressure today. But the controversy that followed surely had more to do with the sloganeering about fascism, a streamlined restatement of something the AAUP’s president, Todd Wolfson, said in an interview with Pettit last month: “Fascist ideology does not do very well in a peer-reviewed process, right?”
The incontinent petulance of social-media style notwithstanding, these flare-ups reflect some real differences between the two organizations. The first has to do with the principled defense of academic freedom. Not for the first time, the AAUP — or at least its X account — has accused FIRE of mainly supporting right-wing causes, defending the token liberal here or there to keep up appearances. Lukianoff, by the same token, implied that the AAUP avoids defending conservatives. Is there any merit in either charge?
… certainly give the impression that something like an official AAUP position is emerging. That position has two planks. First, it refuses to grant any legitimacy to the notion that some disciplines might be afflicted by a disabling degree of political homogeneity; after all, those complaining about being kept out are “fascists,” who by definition have no place. Second, it insists that if conservative ideas are underrepresented, that is only the result of good epistemic hygiene, as enforced by peer review. Ideas are not rejected for being conservative, but for being wrong.
Funding cuts
- SUNY Has Lost $32M Due to Federal Cuts
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/10/21/suny-has-lost-32m-due-federal-cuts
The State University of New York system has lost about $32 million in federal grants due to the Trump administration’s cuts, system chancellor John B. King announced last week, according to Spectrum News 1. That’s out of about $700 million in federal grant funding that the system receives annually. Some of those cuts were due to the administration eliminating grants for projects that it considers to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“In some cases, those grants were cut precisely because of the commitment we have to diversity, equity and inclusion,” said King, a former education secretary who has been critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on anything it considers DEI. “Many are research grants, so you’re talking about research into things like cancer and innovations that will drive economic development in the state.”
- In Fourth Week, Federal Shutdown Increasingly Hinders Higher Ed
Just two weeks into the shutdown, the Georgia Institute of Technology said payment was delayed for federally funded research, which represents more than $100 million in monthly expenses for the institution.
Local Hawai‘i media reported that the University of Hawai‘i system, which includes 10 institutions plus community-based learning centers, is spending $20 million every two weeks out of internal funds to pay thousands of federally funded workers during the shutdown. System president Wendy F. Hensel told the Board of Regents that the challenge is “primarily cash flow.” It’s unclear what will happen if the shutdown goes past Oct. 31.
(Go Wendy, 40M is a lot to cover.)
Luke Oeding, an associate professor of math and statistics at Auburn University in Alabama, said his research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research is being disrupted.
“We just want to do our science and find ways to get that science funded,” Oeding said.
DOE
- With shutdown cuts, Trump moves closer to eliminating Education Department
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/10/18/trump-education-department-cuts/
The prolonged government shutdown is helping the Trump administration advance its goal of closing the Department of Education — a longtime conservative aim that congressional Republicans have failed to act on.
The agency had already reduced its staff by half earlier this year. Now, blaming the shutdown, the Education Department is trying to lay off another 465 people, cutting deeply into multiple offices. That includes federal officials who oversee special education programs and another round of slashing at the Office for Civil Rights.
“There’s something opportunistic about what we’re watching right now,” said Jim Blew, who served in a senior position at the Education Department during the first Trump administration. “These guys have very clear goals. When you give them an opportunity to achieve them, they go full bore.”
If allowed to go into effect, the layoffs would decimate the Office for Civil Rights, which was already cut in half earlier this year, and gut offices that oversee every major K-12 program. That includes the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program for students with disabilities and the $18 billion Title I program, which aids high-poverty schools. Smaller programs such as one that supports charter schools were also hit.
The people who work on grants to tribal colleges and historically Black colleges and universities were also let go, just weeks after the administration rerouted $495 million in grant funding to those schools. TRIO, a $1 billion suite of grants to support veterans and college students from low-income families, was gutted.
“The fact that Trump is gleefully using the shutdown as a pretext to hurt students is appalling,” said Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “No one is forcing Donald Trump to fire the people who make sure students with disabilities can get a good education — he just wants to.”
- Trump Gutted the Institute of Education Sciences. Its Renewal Is in Doubt.
Soon after Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration gutted the federal government’s central education data collection and research funding agency, the Institute of Education Sciences. Researchers say the move jeopardized the nation’s ability to figure out how to improve K–12 and higher education and its capacity to hold publicly funded schools, colleges and universities accountable.
In the eight months since the Department of Government Efficiency and the Education Department announced the slashing of more than $1 billion in multiyear contracts administered by IES, there have been mass layoffs followed by some new job postings; litigation over canceled studies and contracts, followed by reports of some restorations; a request for public comments about how to “modernize” IES, despite the administration’s continued push to shutter the department housing it; and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s temporary appointment of a special adviser to “re-envision” IES, who must now finish her work amid a government shutdown.
Adding to the confusion, Congress is planning to provide at least $740 million to IES for fiscal year 2026, despite the administration only requesting $261 million for the agency.
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning, education-focused think tank, said the big challenge for Amber Northern, the special adviser tasked with reforming IES, “was that DOGE came in and burned it to the ground.”
State actions
- Texas Governor Appoints Ombudsman Who Will Oversee Higher Ed
The new office, which will be housed under the state Higher Education Coordinating Board, will serve as a go-between for state lawmakers and colleges and universities. It also will manage complaints and investigations related to reported violations of either the DEI ban or some provisions of Senate Bill 37, which state lawmakers passed earlier this year and that requires state institutions to make a number of changes.
Faculty and academic freedom groups have raised concerns about this new watchdog, speculating that the ombudsman could give the governor more power over universities. Under the law, the ombudsman can recommend that state lawmakers cut off a university’s ability to spend state funds until it complies.
Institutional assaults
- NYTimes: White House’s Aggressive Tactics Are Complicating Its Education Agenda
As skepticism of the compact mounted, the White House reached out to Arizona State University, the University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis, hoping the three schools would effectively slide into seats at the negotiating table intended for schools that had rejected initial offers.
This week, Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, warned that “any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.”
Still, the rejections from top academic institutions highlight the risks of the president’s penchant for enforcing loyalty through aggressive, punitive tactics that can alienate potential allies. Mr. Trump’s polarizing political instincts have hampered his ability to build the sort of coalitions often needed to pass significant legislative reforms, or even to end the current government shutdown.
When it comes to higher education, the White House has largely ignored the legislative process while trying to impose policy changes on college campuses, which the West Wing views as hostile to conservatives broadly and Mr. Trump, specifically.
“The debate about whether the Trump administration is negotiating in bad faith, or good faith, is resolved once you see the compact,” said Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown who has often focused on free speech. “That doesn’t look like an administration that’s really looking out for intellectual inquiry.”
- The Trump administration is reaching out to more universities about its funding-advantage proposal after several early invitees rejected it
- The sweetheart deal is over for academia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/19/colleges-universities-viewpoint-diversity-trump/
(Hard to get through, but conservative writer for the post does her best to spin this compact)
Harvard
- Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles | News | The Harvard Crimson
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.
The scale of reductions in the Social Science division was not immediately clear, though several departments in the division experienced decreases over the coming two years ranging from 50 percent to 70 percent.
The reductions — detailed by five faculty members and in emails obtained by The Crimson — stipulate smaller Ph.D. admissions quotas across dozens of departments. Departments were allowed to choose how they would allocate their limited slots across the next two years.
The German department is currently projected to lose all its Ph.D. student seats, according to a faculty member familiar with the matter. The History department will be admitting five students each year for the next two years, down from 13 admitted students last year, according to two professors in the department.
The Sociology department has opted to enroll six new Ph.D. students for the 2026-27 academic year, but forfeit its slots for the following year, according to an email from the department’s chair.
(Also)
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/10/22/harvard-slashes-admissions-phd-candidates
Dartmouth
- UVA, Dartmouth Latest to Reject Trump’s Higher Ed Compact
“As I shared on the call, I do not believe that the involvement of the government through a compact—whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House—is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission,” Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock wrote in a message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which the president also shared with her community.
(Also)
U of Virginia
- NYTimes: University of Virginia Won’t Join White House’s Compact for Colleges
The University of Virginia became the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of White House demands.
Paul G. Mahoney, Virginia’s interim president, said that while the university agreed with many principles outlined in the proposal, it wanted “no special treatment” in funding.
“A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of the vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education,” Mr. Mahoney wrote in a note to Linda McMahon, the education secretary, and two other administration officials.
Several university leaders who said they agreed with some provisions in the document seemed to be more put off by the “carrot” in the agreement — the special funding considerations.
They voiced concerns that it set up an illegal two-tiered system for doling out federal funding, allowing schools that signed on to the deal to escape merit-based consideration in federal grants.
(Also)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/10/17/uva-trump-compact-agreement-rejection/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2025/10/22/uva-settles-justice-department
- NYTimes: White House Moves Toward Settlement With First Public University
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/politics/trump-virginia-university.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The Trump administration is closing in on a deal with the University of Virginia, four months after government pressure forced the school’s previous president to resign.
A settlement would be the first time a public university has cut a far-reaching deal with the Trump administration as part of the White House’s extraordinary pressure campaign to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system.
Among the terms reached in the past week, the University of Virginia would not pay a financial penalty nor submit to a direct monitoring arrangement, according to three people briefed on the negotiations.
The university would be required to continue to take steps to come into compliance with the administration’s expansive interpretation of a 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended explicit consideration of race in admissions to higher education, according to three people briefed on negotiations.
Higher education leaders have increasingly viewed the administration’s insistence on an outside monitor, like Columbia agreed to include in its deal in July, as a potential infringement on academic freedom. Instead of including a monitor, who would report to the government on the university’s compliance, the University of Virginia would instead agree to provide regular updates to the government on how the university was addressing the administration’s civil rights concerns, two of the people said.
- NYTimes: University of Virginia Makes Deal With White House to Halt Investigations
The deal, which avoids the hefty fines agreed to by some private, Ivy League colleges, was viewed as something of a victory among leaders of the Charlottesville, Va.-based campus. It was signed one week after Paul Mahoney, the school’s interim president, rejected a White House offer of preferential treatment for research funding.
Under the terms of the agreement, Virginia will adhere to the administration’s interpretation of a 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended explicit consideration of race in admissions to higher education as long as that guidance is “consistent with relevant judicial decisions.” Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out in a memo in July how that ruling, along with federal civil rights law, should be applied to schools receiving federal funding.
Legal experts and higher education officials have argued that schools can still consider race as part of a holistic review of a student’s application. But the Trump administration has adopted a broader view, suggesting that race cannot be considered at all, to justify its attacks on policies and programs that promote racial diversity.
(Also)
- Trump put universities in a bind. U-Va. charted a way out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/22/university-virginia-settlement-compact-monitors/
(The Washington Post editorial board has shifted its politics 180 degrees)
Universities understandably want to stop fighting with Trump, who has proven willing to choke off federal funds. Proponents of aggressive affirmative action will no doubt be dismayed by the deal, which leaves the university precious little room to balance its classes or its faculty by race. But they should take heart that the deal seems confined mostly to areas the government has traditionally overseen, rather than more sweeping intrusions on academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
The original compact proposed meddling in curricular decisions that are at the core of the university’s truth-seeking mission, such as getting rid of programs that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Agreeing to that would have undermined the university’s mission in a way that accepting scrutiny of admissions, DEI programs and the use of race in hiring does not.
Whatever your opinion of its reading of civil rights law, the Trump administration is right that campuses need more viewpoint diversity and tolerance for those challenging orthodoxies. Monocultures tend to be insular and prone to groupthink, and academics are not exempt from this tendency. Disciplines that touch on politics are worse off if more than half the political spectrum is missing from discussions. Nor will such skewed classrooms be welcoming places for conservative students, who have as much right to an education as anyone else.
- What Does UVa Have to Change Under Its Deal With Trump? Here’s What We Know.
As part of a new deal with the Trump administration, the University of Virginia won’t have to pay money. It won’t have to write apology letters or adopt any specific policies. Several federal investigations into its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been halted.
The university will have to report back regularly to the Justice Department on compliance with civil-rights law. Even there, the details are scant — a contrast with previous agreements between Trump and colleges.
The Justice Department is suspending its probe into UVa so long as the university complies with civil-rights law and follows, where applicable, the department’s July guidance on “unlawful discrimination.” The guidance states that the 2023 Supreme Court decision ending race-conscious admissions effectively bans a wide variety of DEI practices — including identity-based facilities, certain affinity groups, and criteria used as a proxy for race.
Arizona
- Arizona Rejects Compact, Others Leave Options Open
(Also)
Others
- U of Illinois System Bans Consideration of Race, Sex in Hiring, Tenure, Student Aid
The University of Illinois system is telling its institutions they can’t consider race, color, national origin or sex in hiring, tenure, promotion and student financial aid decisions—a move that’s drawn opposition from a faculty union at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In another message Krall provided, a UIC official wrote that “faculty may no longer submit a Statement on Efforts to Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the dossier, nor may faculty members be evaluated on norms related to” DEI. The official wrote that the system “made this decision after carefully considering the increased risk to our faculty and to the University that these criteria present in the current climate.”
- Compact Live Updates: Syracuse and Wash U Say They Will Not Endorse Compact
While we’re tallying campuses, Emory University’s interim provost said on Tuesday that the institution has “no plans” to sign the document, according to The Emory Wheel.
Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud told the institution’s faculty senate that Syracuse will not sign the compact, The Daily Orange reports. He did say that he found some parts of the compact “sensible,” including a provision that calls on colleges to expand support for members of the military and veterans.
The long game
- Stefanik and Cotton Send Letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent Requesting Investigation into the Council on American-Islamic Relations
This letter follows Chairwoman Stefanik’s July oversight of City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez and CUNY’s decision to hire Saly Abd Alla, a former employee of CAIR. Chairwoman Stefanik called the hire, “unacceptable to New York taxpayers.”
https://files.constantcontact.com/81b76c35801/4f8e2529-a69f-4745-87fa-6de3215c488d.pdf?rdr=true
How best to describe the times we are in
- NYTimes: How Crypto Corrupted America
Cryptocurrency has found its hero in Mr. Trump. And in this unlikely moment of triumph, its most powerful proponent has laid bare the paradox at the heart of this brave new world of “new money.” Crypto was supposed to free us from the chains of government control, but now it is finally revealing what that freedom really means: removing all checks on the power of the wealthy to do what they want, discharged at last from law, supervision and civic obligation — even if the result is autocracy. Mr. Trump, with his thirst for money and power, has in one fell swoop both exposed and embraced the corruption at the heart of digital currencies — a corruption inherited from the libertarian ideals that created them.
Mr. Trump seems to have understood something that escaped generations of libertarian politicians and philosophers: Rather than dissolving the power of the state totally, he could do so selectively, to put himself and his allies above the law, while using the full force of the state to punish his adversaries; to promote crypto, while also insisting he be in charge of the Fed; to pardon allies, while having his enemies charged.
Heroes
- NYTimes: Wikipedia Volunteers Avert Tragedy by Taking Down Gunman at Conference
The armed man came striding up the aisle at a conference for Wikipedia editors Friday morning in Manhattan, several witnesses said.
A man in an orange sweatshirt rushed the stage. He was not in law enforcement, but a Wikipedia contributor on the conference’s “trust and safety team”: Richard Knipel, the City University of New York’s “Wikimedian-in-residence.” He grabbed the gunman from behind.
(Also)
And just because it is fun
- Jury Awards $6M in CSU Harassment Case
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/10/23/jury-awards-6m-csu-harassment-case
(There is nothing funny about this case. But a one-time CSI president—who left soon after a no-confidence vote—was on the losing end of this case.)
Anissa Rogers, a former associate dean at CSUSB’s Palm Desert campus from 2019 through 2022, alleged that she and other female employees were subjected to “severe or pervasive” gender-based harassment by system officials. Rogers alleged she observed unequal treatment of female employees by university administrators, which was never investigated when she raised concerns. Instead, Rogers said, she was forced to resign after expressing concerns.
(Also)
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article312595678.html
David M. deRubertis, lead trial attorney for Rogers, argued in court that the gender-based mistreatment was inevitable after top university officials ignored a 2015 campus climate survey that suggested a culture of fear, intimidation, gender-based mistreatment and bullying at the university. The survey also recommended adopting an anti-bullying policy and an audit of human resources practices and policies. University president Tomas Morales testifed that neither recommendation was implemented.
The CSU board of trustees, Morales and former dean of the Palm Desert campus Jake Zhu were named as defendants in the lawsuit.
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