Tag: Events

Fiscal year 2023 marked a mixed bag for university endowment returns.

While a complete picture is not yet available—not all institutions have published their latest figures—some of the nation’s richest universities saw sluggish returns, according to their financial reports. Some blamed the slide on the underperformance of private equity and venture capital investments.

Results differed sharply from the sky high returns of fiscal year 2021, more closely resembling endowment performances in FY 2022, which showed mostly modest returns across the board. Many officials emphasized in university financial reports that long-term investment strategies and 10-year returns matter more than the results in any one year.

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How Top Endowments Fared

The rich mostly got richer in fiscal year 2023, but only slightly so; with a few notable exceptions, the majority of the top 20 endowments (as identified in a February report by the National Association of College and University Business Officers) saw returns under 5 percent.

Harvard University, which has the largest single-institution endowment in the nation, saw a 2.9 percent return in fiscal year 2023. Harvard’s endowment was recently valued at $50.7 billion. But even the nation’s richest university isn’t immune to inflationary pressures.

“Inflation has been persistent in every arena—wages, supplies, construction costs—and is not yet behind us. Interest rates are higher than they have been in decades, which adds to our costs and puts pressure on the broader financial markets,” Chief Financial Officer Ritu Kalra told Harvard’s in-house magazine. “Going forward, we will need to watch the pace of operating expense growth, which was nearly double this year’s revenue growth. That was purposeful this year, but that level of growth is not sustainable over the long run.”

Elsewhere, the University of Michigan reported a 5.2 percent return on its $17.9 billion endowment and Columbia University saw a 4.7 percent return on its endowment of $13.6 billion.

Stanford University reported a 4.4 percent return on its $40.9 billion endowment (reversing a 4.2 percent loss in FY2022). Robert Wallace, chief executive officer of Stanford Management Company said in a statement that “strong results in most asset classes during the past year were partially offset by losses in our venture capital and growth equity portfolios.”

Cornell University had a 3.6 percent return, lifting its endowment to $10 billion.

Others saw smaller returns on their investments.

Yale University, which has an endowment valued at $40.7 billion, saw a 1.8 percent return for FY2023. Other institutions with multi-billion dollar endowments fared similarly; the University of Pennsylvania clocked a 1.3 percent return on its $21 billion endowment, while the University of Virginia reported a 2 percent return on its endowment of $13.6 billion.

Overall, the top 20 higher ed institutions underperformed compared to institutions in other sectors with similarly-sized endowments. Estimates published by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service earlier this year found that foundations and endowments with assets over $1 billion earned a median return of 7 percent for FY 2023, while plans under $1 billion saw a median return of 8.6 percent.

And some of the nation’s largest university endowments actually noted losses this year.

A preliminary performance summary from The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company indicated a 2.8 percent loss on its $54.5 billion in endowment funds.

Princeton University reported a 1.5 percent loss on its $35.8 billion endowment, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw a 2.9 percent loss on its $24.7 billion endowment. Similarly, Duke University saw a loss of 1 percent on its $11.6 billion endowment and Vanderbilt University had a 2 percent loss on its $9.7 billion endowment.

Among institutions with the top 20 largest endowments, some—including the University of Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis—have not yet published their endowment figures. Those returns, which will be included in annual financial reports to be released next year, should offer a more complete picture of how institutional investments performed in FY2023.

Big Gains Elsewhere

Outside the top 20, a number of universities noted strong returns.

According to the Pensions & Investments U.S. Endowment Returns Tracker, the biggest was 10.5 percent for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by a 9.8 percent return for the University of Nebraska Foundation; 9 percent for the University of Illinois Foundation; 8.6 percent for Syracuse University; 8.2 percent for the University of Arkansas Foundation; 7.8 percent for the University of Colorado Foundation; 7.5 percent for Leigh University; 7 percent for the University of Minnesota Foundation; and 7 percent for Case Western Reserve University.

Columbia University administrators updated policies and altered language around student group events and protests in mid-October, shortly after large campus protests by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace drew media attention, according to reporting from the Columbia Spectator that Inside Higher Ed confirmed independently.

The university later suspended both SJP and JVP on November 10, the day after the groups held a walkout. In announcing the suspensions, which the university said were due to the groups “repeatedly violat[ing] University policies related to campus events,” officials explicitly referenced the newly added language.

A university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that while “the special events process is not new,” clarifications were made in October.

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“Our campus has been operating in a highly charged atmosphere where safety concerns are real, not theoretical,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “In the days after October 7, faced with intense emotions on all sides and urgent demands for many events (vigils, protests and more), the University felt an obligation to restate and clarify these policies as clearly as possible to make sure there would be no misunderstanding of them.”

Screenshots of the university’s Student Group Event Policy and Procedure and University Event Policy before the Oct. 12 protests—taken from the WaybackMachine—and after show the specific changes. They include a 10-day advance notice requirement for approval of any “special events,” newly defined as being held outside or in excess of 25 attendees; assertions that the university has the right to “regulate the time, place and manner of certain forms of public expression”; and a clarification that administrators have “sole discretion” over punishment for student groups and their members.

The changes were made by a Special Committee on Campus Safety, which did not include any faculty or student members.

David Lurie, president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said that university administrators making updates to student group policies on their own was an aberration and a “gross violation” of shared governance, superseding “well established, extensive procedures” for the sanctioning of students’ political speech.

“What they’ve done is taken something that should be running through existing disciplinary channels that involve our right of appeal, that involve advisory boards, that include faculty and student representation, and eliminated all of those,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “In its place they’ve created a kind of star chamber that is able to take these actions unilaterally.”

The Columbia spokesperson said that student group leaders were sent notice of the policy updates—what the spokesperson called “restatements” of policy—ahead of the walkout that ultimately led to the suspension of SJP and JVP.

“[The groups’] compliance with [the procedures] started to slip, and the [groups’] advisers issued numerous warnings that clearly laid out that failure to respect the required processes would have consequences,” the spokesperson wrote.

Student emails obtained by the Spectator confirm that the university asked representatives in the office of Undergraduate Student Life to send out notices of the changes to student groups on Oct. 25 and Nov. 7—the latter, two days before the walkout, specifically citing the 10-day approval requirement for events.

Lurie said that while he looks forward to further clarification from the university, he believes Columbia “created this new events policy in order to use it exactly as they did,” by suspending SJP and JVP.

At a plenary meeting of the University Senate Friday afternoon, shortly after the Spectator published its reporting, Columbia’s senior vice president Gerald M. Rosberg, who chairs the Special Committee on Campus Safety, confirmed the policy changes were made unilaterally by university leaders, including president Minouche Shafik, and took on an apologetic tone.

“I know I am going to be living with this for a long time to come,” Rosberg said, adding that the university was looking into “reexamining” the policy.

Lurie, who attended the plenary as an observer, confirmed Rosberg’s comments.

“My suspicion is there’s things [university administrators] did that they regret, and that they were looking for a way to walk back right now,” he said. “And I really hope they will, because this portends very poorly for the future of the university.”

The Columbia spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions about the timing of the policy changes or Rosberg’s comments on Friday in time for publication.

California prosecutors have charged a community college faculty member with involuntary manslaughter and battery with serious bodily injury in the death of a Jewish protester during off-campus Israel-Palestine demonstrations.

On Thursday, Ventura County sheriff’s detectives arrested Loay Alnaji, a now-suspended employee of Moorpark College, part of the county’s community college district. His faculty webpage was taken down, but the Wayback Machine archive from earlier this month showed Alnaji as a full-time faculty member. According to Alnaji’s attorney, he is a Jordanian Muslim.

“Effective immediately, Mr. Alnaji will be placed on administrative leave,” the community college district said in a statement Thursday. “… Necessary protocols have been taken to ensure the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff, which will remain our top priority.”

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The district didn’t return a request for comment Friday, and someone answering the phone at Moorpark College referred questions to the district.

In a statement early this month, the county sheriff’s office said Paul Kessler, 69, “died as a result of injuries sustained during an altercation at a Pro-Israeli/Pro-Palestinian event, both of which were occurring simultaneously at the intersection of Westlake Blvd. and Thousand Oaks Blvd.” That’s in Thousand Oaks, California.

“Witness accounts indicated that Kessler was involved in a physical altercation with counter-protestor(s),” the statement said. “During the altercation, Kessler fell backwards and struck his head on the ground. Kessler was transported to an area hospital for advanced medical treatment. On November 6, 2023, Kessler succumbed to his injuries.”

In a news conference Friday, neither the county sheriff nor its district attorney, Erik Nasarenko, provided much detail about what prosecutors are alleging Alnaji actually did to cause Kessler’s death. Explaining the manslaughter charge, Nasarenko said investigators received no evidence that Alnaji came to the protest intending to harm or kill. “He killed another with criminal negligence—specifically, reckless conduct that carried with it a high risk of death or great bodily injury,” Nasarenko said.

“We did not file murder because there was no intent on the defendant’s part to commit one,” Nasarenko said. “We also did not file a hate crime at this time, although that investigation is ongoing.”

Nasarenko said that Kessler himself “taught sales and marketing to a number of satellite college campuses.” A spokesman for the district attorney told Inside Higher Ed in an email Friday that “there’s nothing more that I can provide about the confrontation.”

Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach Alnaji, who pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment Friday. Ron Bamieh, Alnaji’s lawyer, said he has video showing Alnaji was 6 to 7 feet away from Kessler, on the other side of a Shell gas station sign, when Kessler fell. Bamieh declined to provide the video to Inside Higher Ed, saying it’s evidence in a criminal case.

“The video makes it clear that the battery was independent of the fall,” he said. “They didn’t happen back-to-back.”

He said Kessler falls 4 or 5 seconds after the two separate. Bamieh said Alnaji hasn’t denied law enforcement’s allegation that Alnaji hit Kessler’s right cheek with a megaphone, although the video doesn’t show that part.

“I think there was a battery committed in self-defense—Mr. Kessler pushed his phone in my client’s face,” Bamieh said. “… He was calling him ‘baby beheader’ when he did, I don’t know why he did it.”

At a news conference Friday, Bamieh showed reporters videos of what he said was Kessler flipping people off at the protest and repeatedly shouting an Arabic swear word.  He told Inside Higher Ed that “nobody would feel good about convicting a man looking at the evidence I’ve seen.”

California prosecutors have charged a community college faculty member with involuntary manslaughter and battery with serious bodily injury in the death of a Jewish protester during off-campus Israel-Palestine demonstrations.

On Thursday, Ventura County sheriff’s detectives arrested Loay Alnaji, a now-suspended employee of Moorpark College, part of the county’s community college district. His faculty webpage was taken down, but the Wayback Machine archive from earlier this month showed Alnaji as a full-time faculty member. According to Alnaji’s attorney, he is a Jordanian Muslim.

“Effective immediately, Mr. Alnaji will be placed on administrative leave,” the community college district said in a statement Thursday. “… Necessary protocols have been taken to ensure the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff, which will remain our top priority.”

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The district didn’t return a request for comment Friday, and someone answering the phone at Moorpark College referred questions to the district.

In a statement early this month, the county sheriff’s office said Paul Kessler, 69, “died as a result of injuries sustained during an altercation at a Pro-Israeli/Pro-Palestinian event, both of which were occurring simultaneously at the intersection of Westlake Blvd. and Thousand Oaks Blvd.” That’s in Thousand Oaks, California.

“Witness accounts indicated that Kessler was involved in a physical altercation with counter-protestor(s),” the statement said. “During the altercation, Kessler fell backwards and struck his head on the ground. Kessler was transported to an area hospital for advanced medical treatment. On November 6, 2023, Kessler succumbed to his injuries.”

In a news conference Friday, neither the county sheriff nor its district attorney, Erik Nasarenko, provided much detail about what prosecutors are alleging Alnaji actually did to cause Kessler’s death. Explaining the manslaughter charge, Nasarenko said investigators received no evidence that Alnaji came to the protest intending to harm or kill. “He killed another with criminal negligence—specifically, reckless conduct that carried with it a high risk of death or great bodily injury,” Nasarenko said.

“We did not file murder because there was no intent on the defendant’s part to commit one,” Nasarenko said. “We also did not file a hate crime at this time, although that investigation is ongoing.”

Nasarenko said that Kessler himself “taught sales and marketing to a number of satellite college campuses.” A spokesman for the district attorney told Inside Higher Ed in an email Friday that “there’s nothing more that I can provide about the confrontation.”

Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach Alnaji, who pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment Friday. Ron Bamieh, Alnaji’s lawyer, said he has video showing Alnaji was 6 to 7 feet away from Kessler, on the other side of a Shell gas station sign, when Kessler fell. Bamieh declined to provide the video to Inside Higher Ed, saying it’s evidence in a criminal case.

“The video makes it clear that the battery was independent of the fall,” he said. “They didn’t happen back to back.”

He said Kessler falls 4 or 5 seconds after the two separate. Bamieh said Alnaji hasn’t denied law enforcement’s allegation that Alnaji hit Kessler’s right cheek with a megaphone, although the video doesn’t show that part.

“I think there was a battery committed in self-defense—Mr. Kessler pushed his phone in my client’s face,” Bamieh said. “… He was calling him ‘baby beheader’ when he did, I don’t know why he did it.”

At a news conference Friday, Bamieh showed reporters videos of what he said was Kessler flipping people off at the protest and repeatedly shouting an Arabic swear word. He told Inside Higher Ed that “nobody would feel good about convicting a man looking at the evidence I’ve seen.”

The University of Arizona has just 97 days’ worth of cash on hand—significantly less than previously forecast, a recent Board of Regents meeting revealed. The news has prompted significant scrutiny and raised the specter of deep institutional cuts to restore stability to the university’s reserves.

Since the revelation at the Nov. 2 regents’ meeting, the faculty has criticized senior administrators for mismanagement, accusing them of losing track of more than $240 million through accounting errors and flawed financial projections.

Now UA officials have until Dec. 15 to submit a plan to the regents to restore cash-on-hand levels to the 120 days’ worth the board requires. Details of the plan remain unclear, and the process is fraught with faculty concerns over mismanagement and a lack of transparency. The crisis has also caught the attention of state officials, who have stressed a need for accountability.

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The Revelation

In June, UA’s chief financial officer, Lisa Rulney, told regents the university had 156 days of cash on hand. But by November that estimate had fallen to 97 days.

“The last few months have exposed the depth of our financial vulnerabilities,” Rulney told the board at the Nov. 2 meeting, revealing the staggering financial discrepancy.

She attributed the decline partly to a flawed revenue-projection model, which exaggerated the amount of cash on hand by an estimated 30 percent. UA has since replaced the model.

“I want you to know that when I told you we were forecasting 156 days of cash on hand, I was not hiding the ball or trying to obfuscate a problem that we have at the University of Arizona,” Rulney said.

Rulney and UA president Robert Robbins also pointed to spending on strategic investments.

“We made a bet on spending money,” Robbins said. “We just overshot.”

Rulney noted strategic investments were focused on helping UA to reach the “fourth industrial revolution”—a reference to an increasingly technology-driven world—and “to increase our rankings.”

Robbins also cited the cost of providing merit- and need-based financial aid, the growth in research expenditures, and a $55 million loan to the athletics program, which has not been paid off.

“We had assumed when we used cash on hand to support athletics that there would be an increase in revenue, and it just turned out not to be the case,” Robbins told regents, adding that the loan has not been paid back “fast enough.”

Another factor, largely absent from the public discussion but noted in board documents, was the university’s purchase of the online, for-profit Ashford University in 2020. The deal, made in an effort to expand UA’s online offerings, led to the creation of the University of Arizona Global Campus. Though the purchase only cost $1, the deal has clearly added to UA’s financial woes.

“The acquisition of UAGC added $265.5M in operating costs, thus increasing the denominator in the days [on hand] cash formula,” reads part of an executive summary provided to the board.

(University officials did not respond to most questions sent by Inside Higher Ed but sent the following statement about Global Campus: “We will not have an operating loss in FY25 due to UAGC. UAGC is making one-time investments as part of its transition into the University of Arizona. UAGC brought $40 million in cash to fund these efforts while also realizing the amortization and depreciation.”)

Further complicating matters but not mentioned in the executive summary: the Department of Education is looking to recoup $72 million in discharged loans after it determined that Ashford defrauded students. It is unclear whether UA will be on the hook for those funds.

The executive summary also pointed to inflationary costs and “market pressures on salaries.”

With the problem now in plain sight, Rulney noted that hard choices lie ahead for the university. In both public remarks from the administration and documents provided to the board, officials indicated that potential solutions include implementing a hiring freeze and selling off assets. A four-year tuition guarantee and university financial aid are also on the chopping block; generous discounts for out-of-state students have undercut tuition revenues.

Faculty Concerns

On Nov. 6, with the campus community still reeling from news of the dwindling cash supply, Robbins addressed the Faculty Senate, speaking for more than 40 minutes. In his remarks, Robbins noted that there had been a “miscalculation” on cash reserves.

“I was as surprised as all of you to learn that we didn’t have 156 days’ cash on hand,” Robbins said.

He noted that the path ahead was unclear but warned that “draconian cuts” could be coming—especially for units with structural deficits, though he did not specify which ones. (UA did not respond to questions from Inside Higher Ed about programmatic cuts.)

Robbins also indicated that individual sports could be eliminated and even floated the idea of severing athletics from the university—a seemingly unprecedented move—while maintaining some control.

“I have suggested that we move athletics out of the university and have it be run by a board but with the president still making decisions about who the athletic director is,” Robbins told faculty.

At the Nov. 6 meeting, several faculty members blamed Robbins and Rulney for UA’s financial issues.

“We must make it very clear to our colleges, to our workers, to our students that we will not be punished for the administration’s complete mismanagement of our university’s finances,” said Katie Zeiders, a professor of human development and family science. She urged faculty members to ask tough questions and stand together to resist program, job and salary cuts.

Others questioned the apparent lack of accountability by Arizona’s Board of Regents.

“As the CFO and the president work their way out of this difficulty of their own making, they need to listen to shared governance, as much if not more than the Board of Regents. The Board of Regents has encouraged and incentivized shortsighted risk-taking that has led us here,” said faculty chair Leila Hudson, a professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Hudson suggested that the issue is a “a crisis of management, not a crisis of revenue.” She added that the situation has been exacerbated by a lack of transparency from top administrators, arguing that “the president and the chief financial officer have not been straightforward or consistent in their attempts to explain this sudden crisis.”

Hudson also questioned why faculty members weren’t informed of the issue sooner, noting that she had participated in a meeting of UA’s Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee (of which Rulney is a member) the day before the Board of Regents was informed of the financial trouble. Hudson said those concerns were not raised in the committee meeting—an omission that represents a breakdown in the practice of shared governance.

She also questioned the acquisition of Ashford University—which she said many faculty members opposed at the time—and the administration’s public silence on that deal, even though it was mentioned as a factor in board documents.

Hudson said the Faculty Senate is considering requesting a forensic audit to better understand the problem, which she argues is compounded by “a lack of accountability” at UA.

Powerful state lawmakers have also weighed in on the university’s major financial miscalculations.

Arizona governor Katie Hobbs told local media earlier this week that she was “certainly concerned about this coming to light now and the potential lack of oversight” by the Board of Regents. “It’s something that we’re looking into,” she said, adding that UA’s financial problems “should have certainly come to light sooner.”

What’s Next?

A university spokesperson did not offer specifics about the development of the plan to restore the university’s cash reserves but told Inside Higher Ed that “all options are on the table,” adding, “When the mitigation actions are finalized and approved, we will share them.”

Some regents have indicated support for sweeping cuts.

Regent Larry Edward Penley, former president of Colorado State University and past chancellor of the Colorado State University system, stressed the need for “immediate actions” in the next 60 days, including possibly cutting salaries and eliminating numerous jobs. Penley also made a passing reference to past state budget cuts as high as 10 percent, telling Robbins he would likely have to cut budgets across all of UA’s colleges.

That has some faculty members worried. But when they asked Robbins at the faculty meeting about the possibility of a 10 percent reduction, the president suggested cuts wouldn’t go that deep.

In a recent opinion piece, board chair Fred DuVal pointed to various struggles across the higher education sector, including program cuts at West Virginia University, and furloughs or layoffs at the University of Missouri, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan. DuVal argued that universities are facing increasing costs, often accompanied by a lack of revenue to make up for it. Ultimately, DuVal suggested, economic pressures will drive similar hard decisions at UA.

“This is no time for business as usual. Higher education is being disrupted—like everything else—by technology, demographics, and politics. President Robbins enjoys the full support of the board as he makes the tough decisions this situation requires,” he wrote in an Arizona Daily Star editorial. “He will be providing the Board of Regents a plan to address this issue by December 15. The board believes we need to act decisively, and we expect a plan that does so.”

A professor is suing the Mayo Clinic medical school after a department chair threatened to fire him following a CNN interview in which he criticized the National Institutes of Health for not backing a COVID-19 treatment and a New York Times interview in which he said testosterone improves athletic performance.

Dr. Michael J. Joyner, an anesthesiology professor, filed the lawsuit Monday in a Minnesota state court in Olmsted County against the Mayo Clinic, Mayo’s College of Medicine and Science, Dr. Gianrico Farrugia and Dr. Carlos B. Mantilla.

Dr. Farrugia is Mayo Clinic’s president and chief executive officer. Dr. Mantilla is the chair of the anesthesiology and perioperative medicine department who threatened Dr. Joyner’s job in a letter that thrice brought up Dr. Joyner’s use of “idiomatic” language.

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That included Dr. Joyner telling CNN he was frustrated with the NIH’s “bureaucratic rope-a-dope” and calling NIH’s guidelines a “wet blanket” discouraging doctors from trying convalescent plasma on immunocompromised COVID-19 patients. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech organization, published Dr. Mantilla’s letter earlier this year.

Dr. Joyner’s lawsuit says that, the day after CNN published that January article, “Mayo initiated a disciplinary process against Joyner for his interview comments because they criticized the NIH, and Mayo administrators were worried that NIH would retaliate by cutting their funding.”

“In his 36 years at the Mayo Clinic, Joyner had participated in hundreds of media interviews without incident,” the suit says. “Yet in March 2023, Mayo disciplined Joyner for media interview statements regarding his own research and conclusions. Joyner’s punishment included a one-week unpaid suspension, denial of any salary increase at his next annual review, and the threat of termination for failure to comply with the Mayo Public Affairs (‘PA’) Department’s preclearance and oversight of any media interviews. These sanctions represent a direct and ongoing attack on Joyner’s academic freedom.”

Dr. Joyner is asking for monetary damages and an order that the defendants “cease their retaliation and interference with Joyner’s communication about his research.” The Academic Freedom Alliance says it’s funded all of Dr. Joyner’s legal expenses to this point.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, the Mayo Clinic said Dr. Joyner had also been disciplined back in 2020. It said there was a “reasonable expectation that he remedy his lack of professionalism and mutual respect for others.”

“Mayo Clinic did not discipline Dr. Joyner for statements he made about testosterone or transgender athletes,” the statement said. “Mayo disciplined Dr. Joyner for continuing to treat coworkers unprofessionally in violation of Mayo policy and for making unprofessional comments about the National Institute(s) of Health’s (NIH) guidelines for convalescent plasma. Dr. Joyner’s comments about the NIH were not the expression of a scientific opinion, as is protected by our academic freedom policy. Instead, his comments were the unprofessional venting of his personal frustration with the NIH’s decision not to recommend a therapy he had championed.”

Cornell University graduate student workers have voted 1,873 to 80 to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board announced last week. There were about 3,175 eligible voters, the NLRB said.

The new union—Cornell Graduate Students United, affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)—will represent all master’s and doctoral students at the Ithaca, Cornell Tech (Roosevelt Island) and Geneva campuses who are teaching assistants, research assistants, graduate assistants or graduate research assistants.

Valentina Luketa, UE’s national coordinator for higher education, said there was a failed attempt in 2017 to unionize Cornell’s grad workers. Now, they are among 28,000 grad workers who have joined UE in the last year and a half, she said Friday, “part of the wave of the graduate workers unionizing across the country.”

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Luketa said the Cornell grad workers’ demands include, among other things, higher pay, expanded dental and vision benefits, and the elimination of international student fees.

In an emailed statement Friday, Joel M. Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, said, “Throughout this process, our priority was ensuring that graduate assistants had a voice through voting. Cornell has long-standing relationships with several other bargaining units on campus, and we now welcome the opportunity to build a relationship with UE. We look forward to negotiating a collective bargaining agreement that reflects Cornell’s values and addresses the needs of our students.”

My 18 students stare at their sewing needles as if I have just handed them a 19th-century divining rod. They are enrolled in my first-year seminar, Autobiography in the Age of the Selfie, and on the first day, when I asked them why they had chosen this topic, their responses ranged from “it fit into my schedule” to “I like to read” and “my mom told me to take a class with the president.”

This seminar, teaching first-semester first-year students, has always been my favorite class. This is my opportunity to teach some beloved literary content, to reassure new students all will be well and to introduce skills they will need to be successful in college. I am deeply engaged with this course, and with each offering I aim to push the boundaries far beyond what students expect or have previously experienced in class.

I keep experimenting, to keep me on my toes, but, more importantly, to reawaken students to just how interesting and fun (in a very academic sense) learning is. Too often by the time our overachieving students land at my university, they resemble exhausted salary workers who have put in long hours in high school doing everything they rightfully think is required to be admitted to a highly selective liberal arts university. In other words, they have had a job for the past four years that too many of them did not find particularly enjoyable. I see it as my responsibility to demonstrate that their next four years will be transformative.

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The way Southwestern University’s first-year seminar program is structured is both inventive and strategic. Our incoming students begin the seminar a week before the rest of their scheduled courses; in their first week, classes run four consecutive days, for periods alternating between two and three hours. This schedule demands innovative pedagogy to hold students’ interest and presents an opportunity for them to form the first of their campus friend groups. Also, a real bonus for students is that the first-year seminar program ends before the rest of their classes, typically by the end of October, meaning they have a lighter load the last weeks of the semester.

My syllabus consists of a mixture of texts, films, an off-campus trip, poetry memorization, dance instruction and what I’ll call other projects. I warn students there are heavy reading assignments, including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Walden, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Year of Magical Thinking and a few excerpts from Mark Twain’s Autobiography (I’m a Twain scholar and look for every opportunity to infuse a bit of Clemens into my teaching).

During the first week, we have two activities that are foundational to the course. First, we all watch Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film, Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey, where students are introduced to the course’s themes of truth, identity and time. Shortly after the film was released, I met Nobel Prize recipient Kip Thorne, who served as the film’s science adviser and became a friend. While he was proud that actual physics was embedded throughout the movie, he emphasized that it was all about love across time and space; he encouraged me to watch it again (and again).

The film is relatively long and complicated (all that real science), and I love watching my students’ expressions as the credits roll, from trying to figure out “how does a space film fit into the genre of autobiography and memoir” to rubbing away the tears brought on by the father-and- daughter scene and wondering why Matt Damon’s character is so angry. “All will be revealed,” I tell them, and you will be the ones to figure it out.

Because Southwestern emphasizes the concept of paideia—bringing together perspectives from different fields to help students build their critical thinking skills and expand their ways of knowing—I invite faculty from different disciplines to give their interpretations of time. A physics professor discusses its representation as a physical dimension and, just for fun, provides a brilliant explanation of the theory of relativity (immediately after he exited the classroom, one of my students told me he wanted to be a physics major). A music professor and conductor talks about Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack and how his subtle alteration of the time signature of the waltz underscores the quest for new worlds. My students are amazed by this contextual information.

At the end of the first week, I hand out needles and thread. I start with my supposition that humans have always evidenced a strong desire to leave a record of their existence and that autobiographies and memoirs represent only a fraction of what humans have made in that regard over the ages. I ask for examples, and my students volunteer cave paintings, poems, pyramids and songs. All fine, I agree, and I then introduce another means of expression that occupies a definitional gray area.

Quilting, defined both as a handicraft as well as an art form, has traditionally been a vehicle of expression for those who are poor, illiterate and female. Students read Kathleen Spivack’s “The Moments-of-Past-Happiness Quilt” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” A student reads a quotation to the class that I hand him: “After all, a woman didn’t leave much behind in the world to show she’d been there. Even the children she bore and raised got their father’s name. But her quilts, now that was something she could pass on” (Sandra Dallas).

The time has arrived, I announce, for everyone to create their own autobiographical quilt square. My students gape in disbelief. I am fortunate to have as my co-instructor a staff member who is an expert quilter, and she shares some of her gorgeous autobiographical quilts. My students examine her work, awestruck. Rather taken aback, we discover that not one of my students has ever sewn two pieces of cloth together or, for that matter, held a sewing needle. They panic and are convinced that I have given them an impossible task. They anxiously ask what they are supposed to do to satisfy this requirement. I tell them to create a square that represents their life, and they can sew, paint, draw, glue anything they desire. This open-endedness overwhelms them, and they suspect that somehow there is a downside to my encouraging their creativity. Before class is over that day, we all take the first step in the process, and everyone has learned how to thread a needle.

Over the course of the next several weeks, the last 15 minutes of the 75-minute class session is devoted to quilting. Students sit in a circle, helping each other with their design, untangling knots, talking about their reading and writing assignments, and encouraging each other.

My co-instructor and I provide much positive affirmation, and it soon becomes apparent that this is my students’ favorite time. They begin telling me they’ve figured out why I have given them this assignment, that I’m trying to demonstrate quilting is like composing an essay; that while mistakes will be made, they can always be edited and redone; and that quality takes time. I smile and agree, saying they have me all figured out. They share that when they feel stressed at night, they will take out their quilting ring and start sewing that the act of stitching calms them. They confide with pride that students in the residence halls don’t know how to quilt, but they do. I ask them to think about the audience for their square, and they say mothers, fathers and grandparents.

Courtesy of Laura Skandera Trombley

At the end of the fall semester, there is a first-year research symposium, and I announce that we will be participating. Each of their 17 squares has been framed and set up on a long table. Some of my students tear up, because they never thought they could create anything so personal and beautiful. I ask everyone to squeeze together for a picture that I will post on my Insta. They laugh and smile proudly. Curious students, staff and faculty members walk over to converse with them. My students, now all quilters and writers, tell their audience about the autobiographies they’ve read and their favorite writers, about the meaning of Interstellar, the process of quilting and why the course’s themes make sense to them now. Paideia is no longer just a concept but a means of understanding their existence.

In the spring semester, I run into a few of my former pupils, who volunteer to come visit the class when I teach it next year. They explain to me that it would be helpful if they talked to new students about how to take a class with me and to reassure them that in the beginning it might not make sense, but it will come together in unexpected ways. I thank them, decide to take them up on their generous offer and start planning for next time.

Ohio lawmakers have been wrangling since March over a highly contested higher education bill that would prohibit public colleges and universities from implementing diversity, equity and inclusion programs and remove job protections for tenured faculty members and staff, among other restrictive measures.

Senate Bill 83, the Higher Education Enhancement Act, proposes a massive overhaul of the state’s public higher ed system. It bans colleges from establishing mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion programs and allows universities to fire tenured professors for a broad list of reasons, including as part of retrenchment, which under the bill does not require an institution to declare financial exigency. The bill would also create a posttenure review process and slash employees’ collective bargaining rights.

Other provisions, including a ban on faculty strikes, a requirement that all syllabi be publicly available for at least two years and that all students take a civics course, have been variously added and removed from the bill as lawmakers have heard from unhappy constituents opposed to such measures. The latest version of the bill, introduced last week, is the 11th rewrite.

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Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said the latest version of the bill represents “one step forward and two steps back.”

“We were pleased to see the strike ban dropped from the bill, because that’s a fundamental collective bargaining right,” she said. “However, the very broad definition of retrenchment essentially would give carte blanche to management at our universities to shutter programs and terminate faculty positions.”

The bill is currently stalled in the House higher education committee, where it has been the subject of four hearings since May. Meanwhile, there’s been significant pushback from faculty, students and administrators who oppose the bill.

Unlike anti-DEI legislation that has gained quick support in Texas and Florida, the Ohio bill touches on a host of other topics. But despite a Republican supermajority in the state Legislature, the bill still faces roadblocks.

A Senate hearing on the bill in April lasted more than seven hours as all but three of more than 100 people who commented spoke out against it. (Some 500 people in all had signed up to speak.)

“Our goal was to try to accommodate as many objections as we could without sacrificing the core principles of the bill, certainly, which is to enhance higher education in Ohio,” State Senator Jerry Cirino, the Republican who sponsored the bill, told The Ohio Capital Journal.

The Board of Trustees at Ohio State University expressed strong opposition to the proposal in May. The presidents of the University of Cincinnati and Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, also issued public statements opposing the bill.

“We acknowledge the issues raised by this proposal but believe there are alternative solutions that will not undermine the shared governance model of universities,” the Ohio State trustees wrote.

State Representative Tom Young, a Republican and chair of the House higher education committee, said he is satisfied with the current version of the bill and feels “very good” about its chances of moving out of committee. He added that he’s heard “next to zero” concern about the bill from his constituents in southwestern Ohio.

“The bill has come a long way from when it was first introduced … The key points that were objectives, as far as I was concerned, were accomplished,” he said.

Both Republican and Democratic members of the committee have said they still have hesitations about the measure, however. That includes Representative Gail Pavliga, a Republican on the committee whose district includes Kent State University.

“She’s not strongly in favor of the current version, or any version that’s been put out this far,” said John Billings, Pavliga’s constituent aide. He noted that voters in her district overwhelmingly oppose the bill.

“I have had exactly zero people that have contacted me in favor of it,” he said.

Representative Joe Miller, a Democrat and ranking member of the committee, views the bill as an infringement on labor rights, free speech and faculty job security that will deter top-tier faculty from coming to Ohio.

“Why would a professor choose to work in these conditions when weighing an institute of higher education in Ohio against those in other states?” Miller wrote in an email.

“I don’t like to deal with hypotheticals, but what I do know is that it is obvious from the overwhelming amount of testimony against SB 83 in the Senate that students, faculty and colleges do not want this bill to pass,” he added.

Unpersuasive Amendments

The many changes to the bill have not changed many minds.

The most significant amendment was the removal of the prohibition on faculty strikes, which would have made them a fireable offense.

The cut was “meaningless” to faculty representatives who see the broad justifications for retrenchment as equally detrimental if not more so than a ban on strikes.

Under the new definition of retrenchment outlined in the bill, institutions can eliminate programs and/or tenured faculty positions “to account for a reduction in student population or overall funding, a change to institutional missions or programs, or other fiscal pressures or emergencies facing the institution.” Faculty with between 30 and 35 years of tenure are excluded from this mandate.

Workload, employee evaluation and tenure policies also are prohibited subjects in collective bargaining under the current version of the bill. Critics say such measures “effectively [end] meaningful tenure.”

“It is so broad that, virtually, you could use any scenario to justify retrenchment,” Kilpatrick, of the state AAUP, said. “A program conceivably could lose a single student and they could say, ‘We’re going to retrench.’”

Young said the legislation has to create a one-size-fits-all policy that leaves “enough leeway” for university leaders to decide what works best for their institutions.

“If universities are going to survive, they have to rightsize their universities to adhere to the demands of the Legislature, the governor and Jobs Ohio,” he said, referring to a state-run economic development corporation.

State Representative Mary Lightbody, a Democrat on the committee and a former college instructor, said she understands the need for some retrenchment.

“The number of students that we have coming into our colleges and universities is lowering and their interests are shifting. So you do have to have some flexibility,” Lightbody said. Still, she wonders, “Are we just giving the university administrators permission to take apart and dismantle what had been a highly popular and very significant program at the university?”

Jill Galvan, a board member of the AAUP branch at Ohio State University, the state’s flagship institution, doesn’t buy the argument that intent of the bill is to support college administrators as they cut costs.

“The state contribution to universities has just really declined, and so the idea that the state is a defender of the budget at universities, it’s just really ridiculous,” Galvan said.

Students and free speech advocates were most concerned about the anti-DEI provisions in the bill and a prohibition against institutional leaders and employees taking stances on “any controversial belief or policy”—including climate, foreign and immigration policies, electoral politics, DEI, marriage, or abortion.

Updated language now allows institutions to take stances on those subjects when the ban would affect “funding or mission of discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.” Opponents say the change is not enough.

“In order for this bill to no longer be of concern for free expression advocates, it would have to remove all references to mandated institutional neutrality, whether specific or general,” said Jeremy Young, program director for Freedom to Learn at PEN America, a free speech organization.

He characterized such mandates as “terrifying,” “counterproductive” and “draconian.”

“This is a system that is guaranteed to create absolute paralysis and absolute fear all over the campus.”

Clovis Westlund, who directs student advocacy at the grassroots organization Honesty for Ohio Education, agreed that the DEI measures are harmful.

“Senator Cirino has spoken about the idea of intellectual diversity that he believes this bill is promoting. We believe that this anti-DEI language is actually doing the opposite,” Westlund said.

Rag Ban, president of the Miami University chapter of the Ohio Student Association, is unhappy that the anti-DEI provisions are still included in the bill. “It’s a little insulting that they make these little changes to the bill and then parade it as new, when really, on the fundamental level, it’s the same bill,” Ban said. “It’s just a slap in the face to marginalized students who already faced discrimination on campuses.”

The student association has stated its “fervent commitment to combating” the bill. Students representing at least 10 colleges held a mock funeral for higher education at the statehouse in June, and most recently they held a protest during a governance symposium on Oct. 23 at which trustees from all 14 of Ohio’s public universities talked with legislators and weighed in on the bill.

Prospects Moving Forward

The House committee will hold its next public hearing on the bill on Nov. 15, after which members will decide whether to vote the bill out of committee. Opponents of the bill are hopeful that it will not pass despite Republican control of the state Legislature.

Lightbody said unless major changes are made, the bill is unlikely to get a single vote from Democrats. She also believes it may be difficult to get enough Republicans on board for it to become law.

“I hope that there are enough members in the majority who are listening to their constituents,” she said. “If they’re hearing, as I am, from their constituents about concerns … then I’ll be interested if they’re able to push this forward.”

Pranav Jani, president of the the Ohio State AAUP chapter, is doubtful about the prospects of the legislation.

“SB 83 keeps failing to inspire support from House legislators, and Senator Cirino keeps removing provisions to get it passed,” he said. “His narrative, of course, is that he’s listening and compromising, but we just know he’s not winning.”

The University of Austin, founded by and stocked with national conservative figures, has received approval from the state of Texas to grant degrees and will begin accepting applicants for fall 2024, according to an announcement Wednesday.

“We’ll give you an intellectual environment focused on the free exploration of ideas, not self-censorship,” declared a video announcement posted to the social media platform X.

Plans for the University of Austin were announced in fall 2021 in the Substack newsletter of conservative writer Bari Weiss, who is listed on the fledgling institution’s Board of Trustees. At the time, President Pano Kanelos declared that universities had failed in their mission and that UATX, as it is known, would be “dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth.”

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UATX officials told The Texas Tribune the university has raised $200 million so far.

A number of prominent conservatives and controversial academics are affiliated with the university. In addition to Weiss, they include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago geophysics professor and outspoken critic of diversity, equity and inclusion programs; Joshua Katz, who was fired from Princeton University over a relationship with a student; and Hillsdale College history professor Wilfred McClay, who contributed to the widely panned “1776 Report” commissioned by the Trump administration.

Other mainstream academics—including former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers and E. Gordon Gee, current president of West Virginia University—are UATX advisers.

While the state has extended UATX degree-granting authority, the university is not yet accredited. Its website notes that it is currently in the process of seeking accreditation. 

Colleges and universities are legally required to protect students from antisemitism and Islamophobia, the Education Department reminded institutions Tuesday.

“Hate-based discrimination, including based on antisemitism and Islamophobia among other bases, have no place in our nation’s schools,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon wrote in a Dear Colleague letter.

The letter is the second reminder in the last six months that a university will be in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if it fails to address prohibited discrimination against students. Campuses are seeing a rise in antisemitic incidents and protests, as well as increased Islamophobia, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month. The Biden administration has been under pressure from Congress and others to do more to address campus antisemitism and protect Jewish students.

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Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and other Biden administration officials met last week with Jewish students, as well as representatives of U.S. Jewish organizations. The administration also said last week that it would start tracking antisemitic threats and work with colleges to respond.

“The rise of reports of hate incidents on our college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict is deeply traumatic for students and should be alarming to all Americans,” Cardona said in a statement. “Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all other forms of hatred go against everything we stand for as a nation … College and university leaders must be unequivocal about condemning hatred and violence and work harder than ever to ensure all students have the freedom to learn in safe and inclusive campus communities.”

Cardona told CNN that the Office for Civil Rights has received “eight or nine” complaints concerning antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on campuses. The office has investigated several institutions for allegedly failing to respond to discrimination based on race or national origin. Earlier this year, investigators found that the University of Vermont had mishandled antisemitism complaints, potentially creating a hostile environment for some Jewish students—an indication of how the office could approach similar complaints.

“Through this letter we urge school communities to be vigilant of your students’ rights under Title VI, understanding that we in OCR are and will be,” Lhamon said in a statement. “Jewish students, Israeli students, Muslim students, Arab students, and Palestinian students, and all other students who reside within our school communities have the right to learn in our nation’s schools free from discrimination.”

I’m writing in response to a recent article (“Should Colleges Engage in Ethics Education?,” Oct. 19) by Steven Mintz concerning the role of ethics in an undergraduate education. He suggests that, given the recent controversial events involving Ukraine and Israel and students’ various reactions to them, we should consider making ethics a required subject for students. While I agree with the broad suggestions he makes about this and that ethics should be taught more widely, I have some reservations about his proposals.

Mintz notes that the essence of a liberal arts education includes the ability to think carefully and reason about moral problems affecting society. There is no escaping the kinds of social and political problems that are matters of moral concern, not to mention other issues that arise for students about interpersonal relations, sexual relationships, academic integrity, substance abuse, etc. It is not farfetched to think that students would benefit from some actual study related to these important areas of their lives.

The issue concerns how one should implement such an approach at colleges and universities. Should we just require students to take an ethics course from the Philosophy department? Should this be one course or two? Should we focus on general matters of analysis, or more applied areas of discussion? There are different ways to approach teaching the subject to students and Mintz canvases different ideas for doing this and notes some problems.

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While Mintz is right to raise some concerns, I would demur at his suggestion that ethics should as a general matter be taught outside of Philosophy departments (or maybe Religion departments). What struck me as unusual about his article is how much of the material mentioned is already addressed directly in existing ethics courses that I teach. For instance, he suggests that any courses should help students learn how “to think critically and reason morally” about different issues. This sentence looks like it’s taken straight out of the syllabus for my ethics course I teach every year.

Learning to understand diverse moral frameworks is already part and parcel of every general ethics course being taught in Philosophy departments. Students are taught a range of perspectives in courses that aim, not to indoctrinate students to this or that view, but to expose them to a broad range of approaches and issues. The aim is to improve students’ understanding and ability to think through different moral issues and perspectives, so they can avoid the kinds of knee-jerk, emotional reactions that seem to characterize many students’ initial reactions to moral problems. Moreover, these courses are precisely in the areas that Mintz suggests might provide helpful areas of focus. Every year Philosophy departments offer courses on general ethics and applied areas, including environmental ethics, business ethics, and biomedical ethics.

Mintz worries that the content of ethics courses in Philosophy may be too abstract and suggests ethics be taught by faculty within every discipline. While it is surely the case that matters of ethics arise in different courses, and individual faculty may be well placed to encourage reflection in particular cases, my experience is that to be effective students need a broad and systematic perspective. Not only have philosophers been teaching ethics for over two thousand years, and so know something about the pitfalls of teaching the subject, but the fact is that almost every Philosophy professor has taken courses in ethics as part of their training and is familiar with the subject.

One can sympathize with Mintz’s worry that Philosophy departments may approach things too abstractly. But the proper response to this is to go to these departments and ask them to create ethics courses that have a large applied component. Many existing courses on ethics already contain a good deal of applied material (on abortion, euthanasia, war, vegetarianism, etc.). It wouldn’t take much effort for Philosophy programs to create a broader, general ethics course to cover the kind of material Mintz wants.

While I’m not sure about the ethics of killing birds for sport, this would also be a way to kill two birds with one stone. Having students take an ethics course as part of their education would help expose them to a central discipline in the liberal arts as part of their curriculum. Most ethics courses include discussion of “reasoning” as a specific part of the course. This is beyond teaching students about the content of ethics as it applies to a range of issues that affect them. Requiring such courses would be helpful for students trying to navigate the complexities of the world, and for society which surely needs an ethical citizenry.

–Mark Couch
Associate professor of philosophy
Seton Hall University

During my senior year of high school, I applied to dozens of colleges, eager to finally prove to myself that I could “make it out” of my low-income neighborhood. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would soon adopt the academic identity first-generation, working-class (FGWC) student—meaning that I come from a working-class background and would become the first in my family to graduate college.

When decision day rolled around, I opted for the large, nonselective public university in my hometown. Despite my fantasies of moving away to a prestigious university in a big city, the financial and logistical realities of my situation led me elsewhere. When I told one of my teachers about this decision, she simply said, “Don’t worry, you’ll move away for graduate school instead.” That was the first time I’d heard about graduate school and that it could be a possibility for me.

Confronting Isolation

For many FGWC graduate students, pursuing an advanced degree means moving away from home or going to a nearby institution with drastically different characteristics than their home community. While this experience allows one to get to know themselves and assume a sense of independence, it can be isolating. In her book Moving Up Without Losing Your Way, Jennifer M. Morton discusses how isolation is a cost that FGWC students pay when they feel that their success comes at the detriment of the people they love.

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But how does this differ for undergraduate and graduate FGWC students? Unlike undergraduate programs, which often offer specific resources for first-generation students, graduate programs are typically small and insulated from the rest of the campus. It can be difficult to find a variety of people to build community with. In my graduate program, most of my peers have parents who not only have a four-year degree but have also even gone to graduate school.

I found myself navigating new social norms of a small, private, highly selective institution and its student body, whose lives and experiences differed drastically from my own. Although I’m fortunate to have wonderful colleagues in my immediate professional circle, I often question, “Where do FGWC students fit in the academy?” Our invisibility at many graduate schools, as well as sometimes marginalization, makes it no surprise that working-class students report lower sense of belonging than their middle- and upper-class peers. I was desperate to find mutual aid and support and fell into a common mistake of FGWC students: oversharing. I thought, “If I just explain more about myself, they’ll realize I’m not that different.” It didn’t work. In fact, I would leave such interactions with peers feeling even more alienated.

But when I voiced my sense of isolation to my support system back home, it was hard to articulate the difficulties I faced. Those people had invested in me. They believed in me. Figuring out how to articulate my struggle navigating a new space felt selfish and out of touch. After all, pursuing higher education is a privilege that many in my community are not afforded. Who was I to complain? So when catching up with well-meaning family and friends, rather than explain my challenges and insecurities, I simply said, “The classes are really difficult.” Ultimately, I have found myself straddling two social worlds: one where I feel unsure that I belong and another where my reality as an upwardly mobile professional is not understood.

Reconciling Working-Class Mannerisms With Middle-Class Culture

When I was offered a competitive fellowship for my graduate program, I was beside myself with excitement—I’d secured thousands of dollars for my studies. Yet I quickly found that non-FGWC students weren’t quite as thrilled. To them, it wasn’t much money at all. Don’t get me wrong, graduate training in this country can be exploitative, and we should all support union efforts to pay graduate students a livable wage. But for someone from a FGWC background, I would be making more money at 22 than my mom did for most of my adolescence. Those experiences are typical of FGWC students, who often work multiple jobs throughout both undergraduate and graduate school to support themselves and their families.

Upon this realization, I felt naïve for believing that I had “made it.” Moreover, by not knowing the customs, lingo and inner politics of the academic bureaucracy, I constantly felt that I was doing everything wrong. I didn’t have the knack of dropping well-known researchers’ names in passing conversation. I didn’t know what “esoteric” or “dramaturgy” meant. And I honestly can’t say I knew how to pronounce important European names like Michel Foucault’s. Those mistakes continuously highlighted and reinforced my otherness. From the outside, such small moments of being out of sync might seem unimportant, but to FGWC students like me, they exemplify why we often experience intense forms of impostor syndrome.

Tips to Survive (and Thrive) in Your First Year

As I’ve progressed in grad school, however, I’ve learned some lessons that I’d like to share with other students like me. The most basic one: if you are a FGWC student, you are not alone, even if it feels like it. Leaning on the support and experiences of people in your community can make navigating your first year more manageable. In fact, it’s one of the three C’s that I’ve adopted and recommend you consider as well.

Creating community within your institution may be easier said than done, but it is essential. And it must be radical, wherever you find it, in the way that feminist scholar Kathie Sarachild defines radical as getting to the root of social problems. This is key for scholars confronting inequality in academic spaces. For FGWC graduate students, finding people with shared experiences is essential to our capacity for critical conversations about higher education. And that can happen in a variety of ways. You may find blogs, books or social media accounts from authors that validate your experiences. I’ve personally found comfort and support from nonacademic authors who write about their working-class lives.

• Consciousness-raising. Part of the hidden workload for FGWC students is recognizing what behaviors, values and skills are prioritized at their college or university. For example, “weed-out” classes can systematically filter out students who don’t fit neatly into cultural or intellectual institutional norms. Accumulating language to articulate those experiences and disparities is an important way to engage in consciousness-raising about how institutions need to reconsider the assumptions on which they base their policies and practices.

For me, this involved rethinking how to navigate exclusive spaces while holding on to the values of my community and to translate what I learn in ways that support other FGWC students. My mentorship and collaboration with other FGWC students are a few of the ways I work to leave the door open behind me. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins describes this as an “outsider within” status in which one holds different perspectives on taken-for-granted assumptions because their race, class and/or gender identity do not match hegemonic academic spaces. Our contexts as FGWC students shape our world outlook, and once I recognized that, I realized how valuable my insights really were.

• Claiming space. Though not always validated, your experiences as a FGWC student are always valuable. Our perspectives complicate traditionally held ways of thinking in the academy, yet our insights are highly beneficial as well. Departments and institutions are eager to advertise and recruit the “new majority” of students—but their advocacy often ends there.

Be strategic about sharing your experiences and allow them to foster a sense of belonging among other FGWC students that challenges the dominant structure of the academy. In the face of growing commodification of FGWC students’ experiences, resist this pressure by carving your own space. Scholar Tara Yosso defines this as resistant capital, or “knowledge and skills fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges inequality.” One way I do this is through my research on FGWC student experiences. But perhaps more important, resistant capital means practicing affirmations of your worth and ability that reject negative messages about who belongs in higher education.

You Can Do This

A mentor once told me, “Whatever you do, don’t quit during your first year.” Of course, I thought about quitting every day. But looking back, I understand what she meant. It isn’t about the degree or external affirmation—it’s about a commitment to yourself despite the challenges. As you move through your graduate program, remember that you are adapting to a system that wasn’t built for you. But that shouldn’t stop you. Gather the information you need to succeed and resist narratives that attempt to dissuade you of your brilliance. In the end, only you can define success for yourself, and the rest of us will be cheering for you when you do.

An article in Forbes, entitled “The Reckoning with Campus Culture After Hamas,” articulates an argument that is being voiced, in hushed tones, by many administrators at elite colleges and universities: that these institutions have been too tolerant and too accepting of the actions and priorities of student activists that are at odds with these schools’ core purposes and values.

Passionate campus protests are, of course, nothing new. At my campus, 30 years ago, Texas Longhorn athletes marched through campus to demand a more inclusive curriculum and a more diverse student body. At Wesleyan, around the same time, protesters organized a hunger strike and threatened to handcuff the president. Their demands included upgrading the African American Studies program to a department, increasing the number of faculty members of color, requiring sensitivity training for campus police and undertaking “a comprehensive study of race relations on campus.”

Yet there is a sense that something changed over the past decade at the nation’s most selective and well-resourced institutions, which goes beyond speakers being shouted down or vocal demands for divestment from companies engaged in fossil fuel production or doing business with Israel. These campuses, many fear, are becoming more fragmented and fractured, more politicized and polarized, more activist and less academic and accepting—and less open-minded and forbearing.

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“A fish,” we are told, “rots from the head down,” and it’s perhaps not wholly surprising that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Harvard dead last in its commitment to academic freedom.

In a blistering recent article, John Tierney, for three decades a New York Times reporter and columnist, denounces Harvard and its new president and past dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Claudine Gay, for exercising a double standard on free speech on campus. Among the cases he cites are those involving Roland Fryer (who was suspended for two years following a sexual harassment investigation that was widely considered to be seriously flawed), Carole Hooven (who was accused of “transphobic and harmful remarks”), David Kane (after he brought Charles Murray to speak), Kit Parker (whose class on policing techniques was canceled after critics claimed that the techniques were unethical), J. Mark Ramseyer (who faced scrutiny over a scholarly article on Korean comfort women) and Ronald Sullivan (who was dismissed from his position as dean of Winthrop House after he joined Harvey Weinstein’s defense team).

But the problem goes beyond academic freedom.

In a recent blog posting, Fredrik de Boer decries that failure of administrators and most faculty members at elite institutions to push back against a set of trends that he considers toxic:

There’s a growing consensus among many administrators at the elites that things tilted far too much into the student-first territory and that contrarian points of view were not sufficiently protected.

One of the oddities of elite higher education is that these institutions have become absurdly difficult to get into, and yet applicants want to get admitted precisely because they are exclusive. Then, when the students arrive, many feel enormously guilty and struggle to rectify their lottery win.

On the one hand, student activists tell administrators that they are complicit with racism, genocide and global warming and environmental devastation, while at the same time, these very students are willing to take “blood money” and resources from the very institutions that they deplore and accuse of a host of offenses. Nor, postgraduation, will they redact where they went to college.

So let me say this: most of those students are well minded and want to make a better world. But they have no idea about what to do with their energy and passion. The elite universities themselves have let them down by not helping them redirect their rage into pragmatic and productive directions.

Having a die-in is one thing. Seizing the opportunity to educate others, to raise money for humanitarian relief or to advocate through political channels is certainly less sexy but also more meaningful and impactful.

Undergraduates and graduate and professional students at elite private institutions have much more power and influence than in the past. They have a seat at the table and a voice in most major campus decisions. (For example, a student who, reportedly, helped co-organize the shouting down of a federal judge at Stanford Law School is now on the search committee for the school’s new dean.)

These students no longer, thank goodness, are willing to tolerate sexist (or worse) behavior in labs or the underfunding of women’s sports and a host of other abuses. It’s imperative, in my opinion, that students’ voices be heard and that they be in the room where it happens.

After all, much needs to be done to make improvements, fix policies, update systems, overcome traditional academic paralysis and make life better for everyone, both students and those who work with them. It’s a wonderful thing that there are now formal channels (including union negotiations) that students can use to instigate institutional change.

But, I fear, for many in the TikTok generation, visibility too often means going viral and doing things that get picked up and get a reaction—even if, ironically, those things cut against the activists’ own values. For example, protesting the lack of a hate speech policy by engaging in hate speech to underscore its harm. (That how one undergraduate student president eventually got booted out of that position).

Institutions, which hate bad PR, tend to give in. Yet there is more and more fatigue at having to respond to a Twitter explosion or a Fox News article or a New York Times op ed. Increasingly the response is “Who cares what X has to say?” Even when big donors or alumni scream “no more,” there’s a temptation to respond curtly, “Thanks for your input.”

Elite higher education is currently in a strange, uncomfortable place. Activist students, in the words of the fast food burger ad, want to have it their way … but also apparently without any consequences or genuine sense of responsibility. That’s not wholly surprising. They see few relevant role models as they engage in activism and try to promote change. Certainly not from the self-described activist scholars who teach them.

Many students are impatient and don’t trust campus leadership, but they haven’t formulated a constructive path forward. When you hear students telling a dean to launch a helicopter brigade to deliver relief or airlift people in response to a natural disaster or civil unrest abroad, let alone end the conflict in the Middle East, it’s hard not to scoff. The challenge is to channel their idealism in a more productive way.

Of course, for all the media focus on protests and outspoken students, the overwhelming majority have their heads down, just trying to get their degrees. But these students, too, are extraordinarily privileged, and they need to be encouraged do more to make the world a better place.

Those with particular leanings might work on projects dedicated to struggling regions or their own neighboring communities. The best-funded institutions have the apparatus to make the world a better place. These institutions might well support engineering students to go to a challenged region and work with locals in a respectful way to develop, for example, clean water solutions that will have a lasting impact.

The elites are, right now, at a loss about what to do. These institutions have lost their moral compass, and many of these students are floundering. These institutions need to look for a path forward. Let me suggest one.

In the recent past, there was a lot of talk about the value of requiring young people to perform national service. The benefits would be huge. Participants might develop leadership, organizational and communication skills. They’d interact with people unlike themselves while doing genuine good by providing disaster relief or tutoring services or preserving the natural environment and reducing pollution. They’d take part in a shared endeavor that’s larger than themselves.

That didn’t happen, certainly not at the scale this society needs. But what if students at elite institutions were required to sign a social contract as a condition of attending their university? By this, I don’t mean a contract to behave in a civil manner or to respect their classmates, but to take part in a public service activity. The aim is not to restrain conduct, not to have a chilling effect, but to have a shared purpose.

The goal is to ensure that these privileged students work together to make change happen for the purpose of helping others, directly and meaningfully.

Self-important university leaders have long been the scourge of faculty, and a British study supports that view—finding evidence that “narcissistic” vice chancellors, who are equivalent to American university presidents, really do make an institution worse.

Displayed through “excessive financial risk taking and empire building,” narcissism damages an institution’s research and teaching, as well as its performance in rankings, the paper found.

Researchers measured narcissism based on the size of a vice chancellor’s signature—an approach used in recent research in accounting, finance and management—and tracked the performance of U.K. universities between 2009–10 and 2019–20.

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The study, published in Research Policy, examined the signatures of the leaders of 133 universities, a total of 261 vice chancellors over that period, and found that those deemed to have more narcissistic leaders registered declines in key measures, such as the National Student Survey and the Research Excellence Framework. It also showed that older and more prestigious universities were more likely to employ narcissistic bosses.

The authors described the position of vice chancellor as a “high-status, high-visibility role that is occasionally recognized with a knighthood.” As such, it arguably provides narcissistic individuals with opportunities to satisfy their need for excessive admiration and a stage to perform on, they said.

“We argue that it is worthwhile to examine universities as they represent the ideal environment for narcissists to shine.”

One of the authors, Richard Watermeyer, professor of education at the University of Bristol, told Times Higher Education that there were many notable examples of narcissistic university leaders, such as those who refused to negotiate on pay and conditions, which has formed the cornerstone of recent industrial action.

Speaking on behalf of the group of researchers, he added, “There is good evidence that universities, as hypercompetitive and highly stratified organizations, are tolerant of and even incentivize and reward narcissistic behavior, and at all levels, allowing those who choose to act in such ways to do so with impunity.”

The four-person team identified excessive financial risk-taking and empire-building strategies as key characteristics of narcissism.

Watermeyer said extreme narcissism causes people to privilege their own needs for reassurance and admiration above all else; as the trait is associated with overconfidence, it often means that narcissists ignore the advice of others.

“Not quite the clear head required for leading highly complex organizations, and research and teaching missions, of multiple moving parts, whose success depends on the integration of multiple leadership contributions,” he added.

Those in charge of hiring leaders should measure the egotism of candidates using psychometric tests, suggested the research team, which included Thanos Verousis of Vlerick Business School, Shee-Yee Khoo of Bangor Business School and Pietro Perotti of the University of Bath.

They also said universities should consider the expected negative effect of narcissism on university performance when setting the wages of a vice chancellor.

However, Watermeyer said narcissism was not a problem exclusive to university leaders—but rather was ubiquitous in academic life as a form of self-preservation and resilience to rejection.

“It may also be theorized as a response to hypercompetition, which requires those in universities to constantly broadcast their excellence to get and stay ahead of a chasing pack,” he added.