AFSA Week in Review
The week's top news, views and other higher-ed reform highlights
AFSA HIGHLIGHTS
Hail! Hail! To Michigan! Alma Matters Substack Page. Michigan’s ditching of faculty DEI statements sent shockwaves through Ann Arbor and could herald bigger changes ahead.
Ellis Goes Rogue James A. Bacon on JeffersonCouncil.org University of Virginia Board of Visitors Member Bert Ellis made it clear to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors Thursday that he had run out of patience. He will refuse to vote in favor of another spending project until the University gets serious about cutting costs. “I’m voting no on this project and all others, and no on any expenditures brought to this board.”
Saying All The Right Things At Stanford Alma Matters Substack Page. We cherry-picked key excerpts from a Stanford Review interview with school President Jonathan Levin
Rufophobia Is Rising. But Why? Sean Paige for the Alma Matters Substack. Leading CRT and DEI critic Chris Rufo reportedly has Trump's ear. That's triggering panic attacks inside the higher-ed establishment.
NEWS
The Trump NIH Pick Who Wants to Take On ‘Cancel Culture’ Colleges Liz Essley Whyte for The Wall Street Journal. Jay Bhattacharya would consider academic freedom at universities and medical schools seeking NIH grants.
UMich ends required DEI statements in hiring — but stops short of cutting funds to DEI programs Jennifer Tabbany for The College Fix. The University of Michigan on Thursday announced it will no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions — but several members of its Board of Regents at their monthly meeting denied reports they plan to cut DEI spending at this time.
House Republicans Aim to Pass Higher Ed Overhaul Jessica Blake in Inside Higher-ed. The wide-ranging legislation likely won’t move forward in the Senate but serves as a marker for Republicans’ higher-ed priorities in the next Congress.
Professors ‘not sad’ about murder of health insurance CEO Micaiah Bilger for The College Fix. Two professors at Columbia and Saint Louis universities are facing criticism for social media posts that appear to trivialize the recent murder of a major health insurance company’s CEO.
Does Diversity Training Work? Adrienne Lu in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Scant evidence, and mixed results, suggest it doesn’t.
Yale event explores role of ‘merit’ in higher education and hiring Raleigh Adams for The Colleg Fix. The Buckley Institute hosted a “firing line” debate on Tuesday afternoon on the role of “merit” in college admissions as well as hiring. “Is merit a valid measure?” the debate asked, or has it outlived its usefulness?
A Year After the First Antisemitism Hearing, What’s Become of the Presidents Who Testified? Josh Moody for Inside Higher-ed. Last Dec. 5, Congress held the first of three hearings on campus antisemitism. Of the seven presidents who testified, four are gone and one is on the way out.
Harvard alumni selected for Trump’s cabinet have repeatedly clashed with the University Sophia Ghafouri for The Harvard Independent. The relationship between Harvard and two alumni appointed to key positions in Donald Trump’s administration has been marked by tension and public clashes. R-NY Elise Stefanik ’06 and Peter Hegseth ’13 have criticized the University on multiple occasions, basing their criticisms on what they view as Harvard’s liberal agenda.
UMass Boston's Cyber-bullies Frank and Louie in The Flickering Beacon. As part of UMass Boston’s grand plan to control every aspect of our lives in and out of work, the Chief Information Officer (CIO)’s office issued a new “technology acceptable use policy” which is anything but acceptable.
VIEWS
Civic-Ed’s New Wave is Transforming Academia John Murawski for RealClearInvestigations. The classical learning and civics revival has long been associated with Christian private schools at the K-12 level and independent colleges like Hillsdale College and the recently launched University of Austin. But the new wave of civics centers, while enthusiastically backed by conservatives, is rejecting the appeal of a cloistered virtue, and instead adapting traditional educational philosophies to operate within existing university cultures.
Partisan Professors The Honest Broker blog by Roger Pielke Jr.. The lack of diversity among professors is problematic for both education and research, ostensibly the overriding purposes of universities. A more insidious and fundamental issue is that some extremely partisan faculty (and administrators) have commandeered university departments, centers, institutes — even entire campuses —and repurposed them for political advocacy.
College Presidents Might Want To Have Their Lawyers On Speed Dial Frederick Hess in Forbes. It’s been a tough stretch for college presidents, but things are about to get tougher.
Universities Need to Stop Coddling Students with Canceled Classes Keri Ingraham and Peter Biles for Real Clear Education. As just the latest example of elite universities coddling students, classes were canceled following the election result of Donald Trump's victory, allowing students time and space to cope.
A Trump Voter Walks Into My Office Jonathan Zimmerman for The Wall Street Journal. I’ve heard some colleagues say that self-censorship by Trump supporters is their problem, not ours: that they should show some backbone and speak their truth. But if we discovered that, say, black, Muslim or female students were afraid to express what they think, would we simply tell them to buck up?
It’s Time for Harvard Students To Pick Up a Book Claire V. Miller in The Harvard Crimson. Literature is worryingly absent from many Harvard students’ course of study. My proposal? The College should instate a new requirement: an English course.
How to ‘Make Your Campus Palestinian’ Olivia Reingold in The Free Press. At the largest gathering for Palestine in the U.S., college students are taught how to take the anti-Israel movement to the next level.
VIDS
Matt Beienburg from the Goldwater Institute spoke with The James G. Martin Center about new model legislation that is helping to protect students' rights.