The AFSA Weekly Review
The week's top news, views, vids, and other higher-ed reform highlights
AFSA HIGHLIGHTS
2025: A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campus Princetonians for Free Speech. Edward L. Yingling, the co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech and a driving force behind the alumni free speech movement, outlines what must be done to make 2025 a breakthrough year for free speech on campus.
Can Cornell Alumni Steer Their University Away from Campus Madness? The National Review. Upcoming trustee elections represent a chance for sane graduates of the troubled institution to push it in the right direction -- despite the university’s interference.
DFTD's Kenny Xu Talks DEI on Fox News @ Night Fox News @ Night Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse Executive Director Kenny Xu was on Fox News Wednesday night discussing President Trump's momentous early moves on federal “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (or DEI) initiatives.
A whisper of fresh air at UVA The Jefferson Council. In December the University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences emailed faculty members with a new form to use in their annual assessments. Much to the wonder of a correspondent who conveyed the details to me, missing were the usual boxes requiring expositions of professors’ contributions to diversity in teaching, research, advising and so forth.
Should what happens in the classroom stay in the classroom? The “Alma Matters” substack page. Will "the Chatham House Rule" catch fire as a campus free speech reform in 2025?
NEWS
Bias reporting systems were a nightmare on campus — and now they’re everywhere The Eternally Radical Idea. Neighbors reporting neighbors for speech that is protected under the First Amendment is textbook totalitarianism, and it must not be tolerated. More reporting on the alarming off-campus use of secret snitching systems can be found here.
Diversity, equity, inclusion course mandates cost taxpayers nearly $2 billion nationwide, says study Fox News. Undergraduate students at public universities spent at least 40 million student hours satisfying DEI general education course requirements.
Cornell shrouds president’s statue with enormous tarp to hide anti-Israel graffiti The College Fix. Cornell University recently covered the statue of its founding President Andrew Dickson White after the historic statue was doused in bright red paint by pro-Palestinian protesters on the first day of the spring semester. More coverage of this story can be found here and here.
How could Trump’s blitz of executive orders impact higher ed? The Chronicle of Higher Education. The new President’s early flurry of executive orders and policy revocations sends a message about opposition to DEI that could prompt colleges to act preemptively, some higher-ed experts say. More on this story can be found here, here, and here.
‘Countercultural groundswell’: Yale freshmen want stronger free speech protections The College Fix. Freshmen at Yale University voiced strong support for free speech compared to their older peers in a new poll, giving rise to hopes for the future of the Ivy League campus. The Yale Undergraduate Student Survey by the Buckley Institute found a “significant turn in favor of free speech, driven largely” by freshmen.
Survey: college students don’t want statements after political events Inside Higher Ed. A December survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found half of students don’t think colleges should make statements about political events. Two experts weigh in on when an institution should or should not do so.
‘Crush Zionism’: Pro-Hamas protestors barge into Israeli history class at Columbia The College Fix. Anti-Israel protestors barged into an Israeli history class at Columbia University on Tuesday to pass out pro-Hamas flyers that showed the Star of David being destroyed. More coverage can be found here, here, and here. Here’s a firsthand account of what went down from the professor leading the class.
Columbia posts security guards outside Jewish and Israel-related courses The Washington Free Beacon. Columbia University is posting security guards outside of Jewish studies courses a day after pro-Hamas students stormed an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers.
MIT still requires DEI essay from grad students after abandoning faculty pledge The College Fix. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology still requires a diversity, equity and inclusion essay for some students despite banning DEI faculty statements last spring. The requirement by MIT’s Sloan School of Management has drawn criticism from scholars, students, and alumni, with some accusing the school of being hypocritical for failing to eliminate all DEI mandates.
As Utah universities close DEI offices due to new law, students and staff find workarounds The College Fix. Public universities in Utah are shutting down DEI offices to comply with a new state law, but they are opening new centers that offer the same or similar services under new names, a review by The College Fix has found.
Academia, student groups help combat Trump inauguration ‘anxiety’ The College Fix. Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president Monday, prompting various educational institutions and student groups to offer ways to deal with the “anxiety” surrounding the 45th president’s second term.
Students are getting politically conservative in their college essays — and it’s getting them into the Ivy League The New York Post. More and more high school seniors are getting political on their college applications — and it’s paying off. Applicants writing about volunteering for conservative organizations or even door-knocking for President Trump in their admissions essays are getting into top schools, according to college admissions advisor Christopher Rim.
FIRE to University of Texas at Dallas: Stop censoring the student press Thefire.org The University of Texas at Dallas has a troubling history of trying to silence students. Now those students are fighting back.
AI finds widespread radical left bias in Stanford writing and rhetoric program The Stanford Review. It is no secret that Stanford is overwhelmingly liberal, with 93% of voters breaking for Biden in the postcode 94305. While this reflects the values of many students and faculty, it raises important questions about how such homogeneity might affect the range of perspectives presented in academic discussions. Stanford’s mandatory program in writing and rhetoric (PWR), tasked with instructing students in writing, slants predictably to the left.
VIEWS
Does DEI hurt or help Jewish students? The New York Times. Some students and professors are questioning whether campus diversity, equity and inclusion offices should do more to combat antisemitism, or whether D.E.I. itself is the problem.
Is the “Covid Cohort” of college students less woke? The James J. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. This year’s freshmen may be adjusting their ideological assumptions — if adults let them.
Is classroom discussion a dying art? Edsurge.org. Research and news coverage in recent years suggest that students don’t participate in class conversations for fear of being canceled or outed for their political beliefs. Studies indicate that this is especially true among conservative students, who believe their liberal classmates and professors will punish them for holding different views. But some say this narrative is over-emphasized.
The end of DEI? The Free Press. Trump is ending racial preferences, and America will be better because of it.
EVENTS
Turley To Headline UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance April 3 Annual Meeting
Join the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance to celebrate a successful year defending free speech at our annual meeting at the Carolina Club on April 3rd, 2025. Arrive at 6:00 PM for cocktails and stay for dinner at 7:00, when keynote speaker Jonathan Turley will discuss the indispensable right to free speech in America and the state of higher education.
Register for this event here.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor, columnist, television analyst, and litigator. Since 1998, he has held the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School. He has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, including representing members of Congress, judges, whistleblowers, five former Attorney Generals, celebrities, accused spies and terrorists, journalists, protesters, and the workers at the secret facility Area 51. Turley has testified before Congress over one hundred times, including during the impeachments of Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. He was also lead counsel in the last judicial impeachment in US history. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA TODAY. Called the “dean of legal analysts” by The Washington Post, Turley has worked as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox.
RESEARCH AND RESOURCES
Tools for Conservative Education Reformers The American Mind. Conservatives interested in higher education reform have spun their wheels for decades. They have demanded free speech, stopping racial preferences, abolishing DEI offices, and ending tenure in the hope of getting universities to appreciate Western civilization. While conservative causes are noble, the mismatch between means and ends predestined its reforms to failure. Opportunities to reform universities are coming. But conservatives must be willing to take the time to understand how universities work and how to use the levers of power within the academic system to their advantage.
A new report on the University of Wyoming suggests that one tool of change available to conservatives is program review.