Tag: Jobs

Last year, after finally publishing a paper I had been working on for months, I did something I had never done before: I printed it out, added a QR code linking to the open-access version and taped it to the outside of my office door.

It felt strange at first. Was I showing off? Would anyone care? But within a few days, a student stopped by and said, “Hey, I saw your paper, congrats! I wondered if this could be a theme for my thesis.” That conversation reminded me of why I became a scientist in the first place: to share the joy of discovering new things.

In academia, we often share our achievements online. Social media has become a common place to announce new papers and celebrate milestones. But there’s a difference between digital sharing and physical presence. A tweet can travel far, but it cannot spark a spontaneous conversation in the hallway. Conferences offer in-person engagement, but they are infrequent and often exclusive or too busy. Hanging a paper on your office door? That’s immediate, local and quietly powerful. It is a symbolic gesture that brings your research into the physical space of the university, something rarely done in today’s digital culture.

We also live in an age when our work, mainly publicly funded science, is under increasing scrutiny. While the broader public might not be strolling through university hallways, our colleagues, students and visitors are. Making our research visible to them is a subtle but meaningful act of responsibility. It reminds us that, as scientists, we are not just scholars: We are also stewards of public trust and investment.

Hanging a paper on a door is a small gesture. But it’s a visible one. It says: Here’s what I’ve been working on. This is how your investment in science is paying off. It’s not about boasting; it’s about transparency, accessibility and maybe even a bit of joy.

And yet, this simple gesture can feel surprisingly loaded. Many of us may hesitate. It might come across as self-promotional or draw unwanted judgment. These anxieties run deep in academic culture, where humility is expected and visibility can feel like a risk. But maybe it’s time to challenge that assumption. What if, instead of viewing it as showing off, we saw it as showing up? And if we approach it intentionally, there are ways to make the gesture more inviting than intimidating, ways that could help shift the culture without feeling performative.

Here’s a more innovative way to do it: include a QR code that links to the full text of your paper, a press release or even a short video summary for a general audience. Make it easy for anyone—students, colleagues or visitors—to dive in. Rotate papers quarterly or at least at the end of each semester. Not only does this keep things fresh, but it also turns the ritual into a routine. It becomes just another way to reflect on and share progress. And use the door as a conversation starter. Add a short note beside the paper: “Curious? Let’s talk!”

Science doesn’t need to hide behind paywalls or institutional walls. The more we share, the more we invite engagement, collaboration and understanding. Posting a paper on your door may not change the world, but it might change the hallway. And that’s a start.

So next time you publish, consider skipping the humble silence. Print the paper. Add a QR code. Tape it up. You never know who might stop by.

Former Harvard University president Larry Summers will resign from his faculty position at the end of this academic year and will remain on leave until then, a university spokesperson confirmed to The Harvard Crimson on Wednesday. The decision is the latest of Summers’s efforts to scale back his public commitments after the extent of his longtime friendship with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was revealed.

In a statement to the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, Summers said the decision was “difficult” and that he was “grateful to the thousands of students and colleagues I have been privileged to teach and work with since coming to Harvard as a graduate student 50 years ago.”

“Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues,” he said.

Summers corresponded with Epstein for years after his 2008 conviction, at one point seeking advice about how to pursue a younger colleague and calling Epstein a “very good wingman.” Over the last several months, Summers has also stepped down from his teaching role at Harvard and resigned from the OpenAI Board of Directors. The New York Times declined to renew his contract with the Opinion section, the Center for American Progress ended his fellowship and Summers stepped away from an advising role at the policy research center Budget Lab at Yale University. In past public remarks, Summers has said he is “deeply ashamed” of his actions and takes responsibility for continuing to communicate with Epstein after he was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor in 2008. Summers has not been implicated in any of Epstein’s crimes.

Also Wednesday, Harvard placed mathematics professor Martin Nowak on paid administrative leave while the university investigates his ties to Epstein, the Crimson reported. The university previously sanctioned Nowak in 2021 for facilitating Epstein’s presence at Harvard. The sanctions were lifted in 2023.

Richard Axel, a professor of pathology and biochemistry at Columbia University, announced Tuesday he would step down from his role as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to “focus on research and teaching in my lab.” He will also resign from his role as an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Axel first got to know Epstein in the 1980s, The New York Times reported. In a 2007 New York magazine profile about Epstein, Axel described him as “extremely smart and probing” and said, “He has the ability to make connections that other minds can’t make.” Axel also had dinner with Epstein and helped the children of Epstein’s associates try to gain admission to Columbia. Axel has not been implicated in any criminal activity.

“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret,” Axel wrote in a statement. “I apologize for compromising the trust of my friends, students, and colleagues. I recognize the problems this has caused, and I will work to restore this trust. What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable.”

Also in recent weeks, Bard University announced it had opened an external investigation into the communication between Epstein and university president Leon Botstein. The university is also delaying a New York gala celebrating Botstein.

The Justice Department sued the University of California system Tuesday, alleging it has tolerated antisemitism to such an extent that it’s created a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli employees at UCLA, violating federal law banning employment discrimination.

The case continues the Trump administration’s targeting of the campus through allegations that it failed to properly respond to pro-Palestinian protests that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which sparked the recent Israel-Hamas war. The administration previously cut off research funding for UCLA, but lost in court.

“Swastikas, calls for the extermination of Jews and the Jewish state of Israel, antisemitic violence, and open harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff: this was the grim scene at the University of California Los Angeles,” the new lawsuit begins. It says “the general atmosphere of antisemitism was, and remains, so severe and pervasive that UCLA’s own official Task Force on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias concluded that the University’s failures to protect Jewish staff and faculty constituted a hostile work environment.”

The DOJ already concluded, last July, that UCLA violated other laws—the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—in its response to alleged antisemitism at a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment. Multiple federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, promptly began freezing funding; UC estimated it lost $584 million.

The Trump administration further demanded that UCLA pay $1.2 billion and make other concessions, including that it stop enrolling “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” and cease “performing hormonal interventions and ‘transgender’ surgeries” on anyone under 18 at its medical school and affiliated hospitals.

But after UC researchers sued, U.S. District Court judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California ordered almost all of the frozen funding to be restored. In November, Lin further ordered federal agencies to end their “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to UCLA and ruled that the administration can’t seek payouts from any UC campus “in connection with any civil rights investigation” under Titles VI or IX. Lin also prohibited the DOJ and federal funding agencies from withholding funds, “or threatening to do so, to coerce the UC in violation of the First Amendment or Tenth Amendment.”

Now, the DOJ has sued in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California under Title VII, a different law that bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Among other things, it’s asking a judge to force the UC system to pay damages to Jewish and Israeli employees and “modify and enforce its anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation policies and procedures to effectively prevent and correct antisemitic discrimination and retaliation at UCLA.”

Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, noted in a statement that the university has taken “concrete and significant steps to strengthen campus safety, enforce policies, and combat antisemitism,” including hiring a dedicated Title VI/Title VII officer within the Office of Civil Rights.

“We stand firmly by the decisive actions we have taken to combat antisemitism in all its forms, and we will vigorously defend our efforts and our unwavering commitment to providing a safe, inclusive environment for all members of our community,” she wrote.

In a statement, Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote that “allegations of antisemitism must be taken seriously, but this lawsuit comes amid a broader pattern in which the federal government has increasingly weaponized antisemitism to pressure and reshape higher education institutions towards a far right agenda, including through prior federal attacks on UCLA. Civil-rights enforcement should protect people from discrimination without becoming a vehicle for political overreach that undermines academic freedom, shared governance, and the independence of universities.”

Beginning this summer, professors at Florida’s 28 public colleges must use a state curriculum framework to teach their introduction to sociology courses. Aligned with the state-sanctioned sociology textbook, the framework requires that the courses do not “include a curriculum that teaches identity politics” or one that “is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

Jose Arevalo, executive vice chancellor for the Florida State College System, shared information about the framework with representatives from 26 Florida colleges during a call on Jan. 20, according to an email summary of the call provided to Inside Higher Ed. The Florida Department of Education distributed teaching materials, including an instructor’s manual and textbook, and requested that institutions submit their current introduction to sociology syllabi, “including detailed assignment schedules, topic calendars, or modules to show course coverage.”

“The framework serves as a baseline—institutions can add to it but should avoid subtracting key elements or adding content that risks violating state statutes,” Arevalo wrote in the email. “Much of the framework language can be copied directly into syllabi, with supporting exercises and textbook chapters provided.”

All state colleges received the written guidance this week, according to Robert Cassanello, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida and president of the United Faculty of Florida union.

“People in the union are really upset,” he said. “They see this as a threat to academic freedom. They see the revised textbook through the Board of Governors’ approval as a censored text.”

Sociology professors at the state’s public universities have received similar instructions through a game of telephone, with instructions passed verbally from the Board of Governors to provosts, deans, chairs and then to faculty, several Florida faculty members reported.

“They’re doing their best to avoid creating standing for a lawsuit,” Cassanello said. “This is why everything is verbal with the Board of Governors.”

The seven-page written framework applies only to general education sociology courses taught at state colleges—not electives. The document bans nine discussion points from course content, including discussions that “state an intent of institutions today to oppress persons of color,” “that argue most variations between men and women are learned traits and behaviors,” and “that describe when, how, or why individuals determine their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

The end of the document includes a “recommended course design,” written like a syllabus, that lays out seven units, suggested reading assignments and lecture topics. The guide to teaching “sociological phenomena” includes several contested theories about race and gender. For example, the framework states that while biological sex chromosomes determine different sex characteristics in men and women, they also determine “how females and males behave. This behavior is also influenced by the social relevance of these traits,” the framework says.

“So, in teaching this, one might point out that women and men with the same credentials enter different jobs such that certain jobs are occupied primarily by women (i.e., female-dominant) some are occupied primarily by men (i.e., male-dominant) and some have roughly the same number of workers who are female and male (i.e., non-gendersegregated),” the framework says.

The document also discusses limitations to personal freedoms as a historical phenomenon, not a present one. “Students will study scientific facts, including the demographic characteristics of individuals who lived during previous generations when specific freedoms were restricted” and “how things changed as those restrictions were removed over time,” the framework says.

The state education department will likely roll out similar curriculum guidance for other areas of study in the future. In his email, Arevalo said the department is working with history professors on a general education curriculum for American history courses that “satisfy civic literacy requirements.” Results of this work could be disclosed as soon as April, he said.

Unclear Enforcement

The curriculum thinly veils the social politics of state education officials, said Katie Rainwater, a visiting scholar of global and sociocultural studies at Florida International University who has taught introductory sociology courses. Many top education decision-makers in Florida come from right-wing think tanks and colleges, including Hillsdale College, where Arevalo earned his Ph.D.; the Claremont Institute; and the Heritage Foundation.

“They’re very intentionally staffing the Department of Education office with these ultraconservative ideologues,” Rainwater said. “What we’re seeing is … people affiliated with this national conservative movement taking away the ideas that they don’t want students to be exposed to.”

The framework was developed by a “work group of sociologists,” Arevalo said in his email. It’s unclear whether it was the same sociology professors that created the state-approved textbook late last year. That group convened with four Board of Governors members and four faculty members, but Phillip Wisely, a sociology professor at Florida SouthWestern State College, was kicked out of the group by state education commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas for allegedly “advocating for gender ideology” in his sociology class. Wisely remains suspended from his teaching position, Cassanello said.

Florida Department of Education spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

It’s unclear how faculty members who don’t follow the written or verbal guidelines will be disciplined, but faculty say they’re certain there would be some kind of blowback for ignoring the rules.

Zachary Levenson, a sociology professor at Florida International University, said his department requested clarification from the provost on the rules and received no information.

“We wrote to the provost … and said, ‘Please tell us what we cannot teach, what we must teach, and what the sanction would be for violating this,’” he said. “She wouldn’t specify. She said … ‘There is no individual sanction that I can name’” and referred them to the guidelines in Florida state statute 1007.25, which outlines rules for general education and degree requirements.

He speculates that the punishment could be sanctions against the institution via the accreditor, or individual discipline. Levenson moved to Florida to teach only two and a half years ago, but he said he wants to stay in the state so that he can fight back.

“This is happening everywhere, but it’s first happening here,” Levenson said. “It was happening when I was teaching in Texas, in North Carolina, but not like this. So if we don’t nip it in the bud … it’s going to keep spreading around the country.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to every college and university president with the goal of continuing its efforts to curb voting among college students. This latest letter threatens colleges and universities if they participate in or use the data from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, claiming that if they do so, they “could be at risk of being found in violation of FERPA.”

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is the federal law that protects the privacy of student education records and applies to any institution that accepts Department of Education funds. Like many of this administration’s actions, this letter is designed to have a chilling effect, since no determination has been made by the department that participation in, or use of, NSLVE studies violates any privacy statutes.

In existence since 2013, with more than 1,000 colleges and universities nationwide currently choosing to participate, the NSLVE is a study of student political engagement at higher education institutions. The NSLVE uses data that colleges and universities voluntarily provide to the National Student Clearinghouse, which matches student enrollment records with public voting files to determine whether students registered to vote and whether they voted—not whom they voted for. NSLVE, which is housed at Tufts University, then uses the de-identified data it receives to send a confidential report to participating campuses about their own students’ voting participation.

Under the guise of protecting student privacy, the Department of Education is weaponizing FERPA to try to get to the Trump administration’s goal of weakening voter participation, especially among college students, for political reasons. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon herself stated in the press release announcing the new guidance that “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research— not influencing elections.” And the department admits in its guidance letter that its assessment that NSLVE is in violation of FERPA is based on a “preliminary analysis” and that ED merely has “concerns” about NSLVE’s use of data. The department does not conclude that NSLVE or the use of the NSLVE data violates any laws, including privacy laws.

The NSLVE primarily uses directory information—name, address and date of birth—which institutions may disclose without consent as long as they have given general public notice (including notice of the option to opt out of disclosure) at the beginning of the academic year. In addition, when other information is provided—such as gender, race/ethnicity and degree-seeking status—it is allowable because it falls under FERPA’s “studies exception.”

This exception allows information to be shared for studies that “improve instruction.” The NSLVE’s research is designed to enable colleges to improve civic education on campus—something that is a stated goal of this administration. Furthermore, NSLVE reports do not contain individually identifiable information and are only shared with the institution itself. It is for these reasons that the Department of Education, since the program’s inception more than a decade ago, has found this work to be allowable under FERPA.

It is critical for colleges to understand what this letter is saying—and what it isn’t. Students deserve to have their data protected, and the federal government has a critical role to play in safeguarding their data. It is the Department of Education’s obligation to use its resources to do so. It is paramount that the government ensures any actions taken by institutions put student privacy first. But alleging potential student privacy violations when there are none is a waste of resources and undermines what is really at stake.

As recognized by the Higher Education Act’s requirement that higher education institutions provide voter registration forms to all their students, colleges have an important role to play in promoting civic engagement and participation in democracy among students. As long as they are doing it in a way that is compliant with the data sharing allowed in FERPA, the federal government must not interfere with colleges’ participation in the NSLVE— especially with threats that are not backed up with legal findings. Insights from the NSLVE are critical to strengthening nonpartisan civic engagement for college students. Restricting use of the data in an election year is not about protecting students—but instead is harmful to them and to our democracy.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced this month that the Department of Defense will no longer send active-duty military for graduate-level professional military education at Harvard University. In a video announcing the decision on social media, he claimed that officers returned from Harvard with “heads full of globalist and radical ideologies.” He added, “We train warriors. Not wokesters.”

Before I begin, I will lay my cards on the table. I am a medically retired Air Force major from a traditional, conservative, Southern Baptist background in east Tennessee. At Harvard Kennedy School, I was elected executive vice president of the student government, which represents more than 1,000 graduate students. I say this not to posture, but because I believe this decision warrants a response from someone who was in those classrooms, not as an observer, but as a leader in the student body.

Politics aside, severing ties between the military and Harvard is a mistake. While at HKS, I had the opportunity to participate in most student organizations, meet with both student and administrator leadership, and drive many of the social and policy discussions (formal and informal) across the school. In each of these settings, military members were active participants: injecting keen insight, stimulating robust dialogue or voicing perspectives that no one else in the classroom had considered.

What troubles me most about Hegseth’s announcement is that he offered neither data, evidence nor metrics to support the claim that Harvard-educated officers graduate less capable. While invoking General Washington’s assumption of command of the Continental Army in Harvard Square or the number of Harvard-trained Medal of Honor recipients, Hegseth played to emotional appeal rather than demonstrable metrics or data that support his action. But gambling with our nation’s top officers’ professional education from a well-established world-class institution is a high-risk, low-reward proposition.

In July 2025, the Kennedy School launched the American Service Fellowship, the largest single-year scholarship in the school’s history, for at least 50 fully funded scholarships worth $100,000 to American public servants, with about half of awardees expected to come from military service. Dean Jeremy Weinstein said in the press release announcing the fellowship, “There’s nothing more patriotic than public service.”

Over the past decade, HKS has trained numerous active-duty, veteran and reserve members. The list of prominent leaders with military ties includes Hegseth himself, former defense secretary Mark Esper, Senator Jack Reed and U.S. representatives Dan Crenshaw and Seth Moulton. If Harvard truly “loathes” the military, then why is the institution investing millions to bring more service members to campus?

In justifying the decision, Hegseth also asserts that Harvard has partnered with the Chinese Communist Party in its research programs. A June 2025 investigation in The Wall Street Journal reported that a 2014 Shanghai Observer article referred to HKS as the CCP’s top “overseas party school,” as decades of Chinese officials have pursued executive training and postgraduate study at HKS. But rather than supporting Hegseth’s case, this fact undermines it. If China’s future leaders and officials are vying for access to Harvard’s faculty and resources, why would we voluntarily surrender our domestic infrastructure for future officer development? The proper response to a competitor’s investment in an institution is not to abandon it, but to double down instead.

Consider what we are depriving our nation’s top military leaders of benefiting from. Harvard ranks among the top universities in national and global rankings, and Harvard’s Office of Technology Development reports approximately 391 new innovations, 159 U.S. patents issued and $53.7 million in commercialization revenue in fiscal year 2025 alone. As a prior procurement-contracting officer, these are big-deal numbers. They represent cutting-edge research and development that can rapidly accelerate our defense capabilities and technologies. I remain skeptical about an unfounded decision to deprive our top future military leaders of access to that caliber of institutional infrastructure and the opportunity to build interpersonal relationships with HKS’s scholars, policymakers and faculty.

Personally, given my preconditions—moderate conservative, white male with a Southern Baptist upbringing, east Tennessee native and ex-military—I did not face discrimination at Harvard. In fact, I was elected to the second-highest student position at HKS. I did not encounter wokeism outright (it almost seems archaic at this point). I can say I was not brainwashed or forced into indoctrination camps for expressing differing viewpoints whether in class or on paper. I found that I am not alone in this thought, either.

Former Indiana governor Eric Holcomb, a Republican, published an op-ed in The Washington Post titled “I was a red state governor. What I saw at Harvard surprised me.” The governor writes that he was warned by friends about “woke lions” but found open-minded, problem-solving–oriented students from all 50 states. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, also a Republican, served as an Institute of Politics resident fellow at Harvard in fall 2024, when he led small student groups on bridging America’s political divide, which I attended. During my tenure at HKS, the Harvard Republican Club hosted Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Institute of Politics hosted Kellyanne Conway and Kevin McCarthy. In short, I find it difficult to characterize Harvard as an echo chamber.

When I think back to my tenure, I remember the many meetings with the dean of HKS and administrators. I remember a seasoned scholar almost obsessively driven to find common ground through constructive dialogue. I remember the vision committees navigating changes in policy, governance, technology and AI. The top student affairs administrators I met with on a weekly basis were genuine and empathetic individuals who wanted the best for student outcomes regardless of differing political or religious ideologies. I witnessed deep learning occurring with many service members, both senior and junior officers, in my classes and heard their sentiments of appreciation for their educational experience at Harvard.

Harvard makes an easy target, but a focus on easy targets makes for bad policy. This decision does not protect our military; instead, it reduces its capabilities. It deprives our best officers of access to the kind of rigorous, diverse, uncomfortable and intellectual environment that produces top strategic-level thinkers, not worse-off ones. Pulling our officers out of these environments does the very opposite of training resilient warfighters: It perpetuates a homogeneous environment and denies our future leaders exposure to world leaders. If we truly believe that we must cultivate the best minds and capabilities of the warrior class, then we should trust our officers, invest the resources and meet the challenge, not run from it.

Tennessee’s House Higher Ed Subcommittee chair has withdrawn his bill to end tenure in public universities after saying he “stumbled into a little bit of the history” and “got a little deeper than I thought I would.”

“It got me to thinking about political lines, pendulums, they’re always moving … I kind of think that way about tenure,” Republican Justin Lafferty told his subcommittee Wednesday in a brief but wide-ranging explanation for dropping the bill.

According to a video of the meeting posted on the state General Assembly’s website, Lafferty said he learned tenure goes back to the 1600s or 1700s, “a time when there weren’t that many highly educated folks,” so “it was very important to keep the best and the brightest.”

Though he didn’t use the words “academic freedom,” he echoed arguments for protecting it that proponents of tenure often use. Mentioning the Vietnam War era, Lafferty said, “In a controversial time, I kind of understand you want those protections in place to not lose the talent that you’ve been able to acquire.”

But he also suggested that he filed his bill in opposition to controversial faculty speech. He didn’t mention Charlie Kirk, but he complained about faculty speech regarding someone’s death and a “half a million” payout. (Darren Michael, a tenured theater professor at Tennessee’s Austin Peay State University, was terminated for reposting a news headline about Kirk but was later reinstated and paid $500,000.)

“With tenure now, the pendulum has swung so far that we can have state employees that we pay with our tax dollars—‘mock’ might not be the right word, but can certainly be very insensitive towards the death of another human being,” Lafferty said. “And as a Tennessean, I’m not comfortable with the fact that that person cannot be removed from a job.”

Lafferty withdrew his bill, but he may not be done targeting tenure. He said during the meeting that “we’ll maybe be back.” News Channel 5 reported that Lafferty said the bill likely didn’t have a path forward this year. He didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday.

The National Institutes of Health director will become acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and President Trump will nominate the CDC’s former acting director to lead the National Science Foundation, a White House official confirmed to Inside Higher Ed. The NIH and NSF are among the largest federal funders of university research.

The official said NIH director Jay Bhattacharya will maintain his current duties while also leading the CDC “until a permanent CDC director is nominated and confirmed.” Jim O’Neill was dismissed last week from leading the CDC, a position he had only held since late August. The NIH is headquartered in Bethesda, Md., while the CDC is based in Atlanta.

“Both are eminently qualified for these positions, and the White House has confidence in them to deliver on the president’s agenda,” the official said.

Bhattacharya’s new duties leading the CDC come as the NIH continues to lack permanent leadership in many top posts. With last week’s ending of Lindsey A. Criswell’s directorship of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, 16 directors of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the agency are in an acting capacity.

These NIH directors have departed for multiple reasons, including terminations by the Trump administration and resignations.

I often feel like the skunk at a garden party.

That’s not uncommon for journalists: Our job frequently requires us to ask hard questions and to say what others might be too polite to say (out loud, at least). I can’t blame it all on my vocation, though; I’m that way by nature, and this old dog isn’t changing.

Several times in the last couple years I’ve found myself at gatherings of college leaders that included representatives of highly selective, wealthy institutions. Without fail, during discussion of some higher education issue or another, one or more of them will refer to their own institution as “elite.”

That’s a record-scratch moment for me. Sometimes I can let it go, but at a Washington gathering hosted by an Ivy League university not too long ago, I couldn’t help myself. I had kept quiet for a few hours, but I couldn’t contain myself as participants (from what my colleague Rachel Toor calls “fancy-pants schools”) kept referring to themselves as “elite” while bemoaning why their relationship with the federal government had soured.

I started (rather obnoxiously, I’ll admit) by reading a definition of the word: “a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.” I suggested, (dis)respectfully, that if we had some clear definition of “superior” that everybody could agree on, it might be reasonable to refer to the Yales and Amhersts and UVAs of the world that way.

But I’d posit that in higher education, there is no clear definition of “superior” or any other synonym of elite. Some colleges and universities are often perceived as the best because they’ve been around the longest, or because U.S. News and other rankers, with methodologies that usually favor wealth and selectivity and research output, have deemed them so. Or because my colleagues in the national media focus on them obsessionally at the expense of thousands of other institutions.

(As I wrote recently, I’m totally up for a rigorous discussion about how we might go about defining “best” or most valuable—those that do the most to help their students reach their educational goals they’ve set, say, or whose learners learn or develop the most during their time at the institution. Anyone interested?)

When we call a set of colleges and universities “elite”—and when people at those institutions refer to themselves that way—what are we really communicating?

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries define “elite” as “belonging to a group of people in society that is small in number but powerful and with a lot of influence, because they are rich, intelligent, etc.”

And Thesaurus.com’s top synonyms for the word are “exclusive” and “silk-stocking.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

There is nothing inherently wrong with exclusivity or with being influential, and goodness knows that the dozens of highly selective, usually wealthy, most visible and powerful colleges and universities that journalists and pundits frequently refer to as “elite” contribute enormously to our society. They generally do well by and for the students fortunate enough to get admitted, they produce important research and knowledge, they prepare leaders, and they deliver hefty economic benefits to society and their students. (I, it’s important to acknowledge, am one such individual beneficiary.)

And it feels a little unfair to be kicking them while they’re on the defensive, which they are more than ever in the 40 years I’ve paid close attention to higher education.

But as the name of this column indicates, I’m raising this issue out of (tough) love. Yes, these institutions contribute enormously, but several aspects of how they operate have helped put them in their currently difficult spot (which has been made much worse by a Trump administration that is punishing these institutions for its own political, class-warfare reasons).

Among the reasons why the most highly selective private and public colleges and universities (appropriately) find themselves under scrutiny:

• Their benefits disproportionately accrue to the already privileged. Yes, most of them have made recruiting lower-income, first-generation and minority students a higher priority in the last 10 to 15 years than they had previously, and they (with help from organizations like the American Talent Initiative) deserve credit for doing so.

But the 2017 publication of the so-called Chetty data (more formally known as Opportunity Insights’ social mobility index), which reinforced years of work by the Pell Institute and others, showed that many of higher education’s best known institutions reinforce rather than combat a social order than advantages the wealthy and the white. While the Chetty study has been unreplicable, this recent graphic from James Murphy (focused on representation of low-income learners) speaks volumes.

While this is most problematic at selective private colleges, many public flagship universities have also been moving in the wrong direction on the accessibility front, as they chase wealthier out-of-state learners over working-class and transfer students from their own backyards.

• They often aren’t good citizens of higher education broadly. There are plenty of examples of wealthy institutions behaving in service of their less fortunate counterparts: Ivy League institutions like Brown, Princeton and Harvard have worked with historically Black universities, and Stanford’s Community College Outreach Program and Ed Equity Lab do great work with needy institutions and students, to name a few. And many creations of wealthy and selective universities have benefited the rest of higher education (and the world), like the internet.

But pursuing their own agendas, as they can reasonably be expected to do, often comes at the expense of the rest of higher education. Using their wealth advantage to eliminate loans for low-income students obviously helps those students fortunate enough to get one of their precious slots, but it also ratchets up the national financial aid competition in ways that are bad for other institutions. And right now, flagship universities around the country—seeing their international enrollments threatened—are increasingly picking off talented (and full-tuition-paying) domestic students from their regional public university peers.

Self-interest trumps good citizenship in other ways, too. Most highly selective and wealthy institutions are grudging participants, at best, in national associations of colleges, and they’ve bristled at accreditation, often arguing that they should be treated differently from other institutions.

As an old guy, I hold some historical grudges, particularly against the institutions that helped shape me. In one particularly galling moment from the Obama administration’s review of accreditation in 2011, a Princeton lobbyist, channeling then-president Shirley Tilghman, argued to a federal accreditation panel that institutions can learn best from those “with the same backgrounds and the same experiences in higher education.” (Princeton was upset that its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, had dared to ask the university to prove that its undergraduate thesis requirement benefited its learners.)

Tilghman suggested that it made no sense for Princeton and its neighbor Mercer County Community College to be judged by the same accreditor. “It is a very fine community college,” Tilghman wrote. “It serves the student population it serves exceedingly well. But I have nothing in common with Mercer County Community College … There is so little that we have to say to each other, other than that we reside within the same county.”

The nation’s most powerful institutions have sometimes stood idly by when other colleges and universities have been under attack. Most said and did little to nothing when Ron DeSantis and other Southern governors targeted their states’ public universities with attacks on diversity, tenure and governance in the early part of this decade.

Of course, the critics eventually came for the Ivies and the other wealthy and most selective colleges and universities, and they’ve arguably been left with far fewer friends and defenders because of their arrogance and selfishness.

These institutions have disproportionate visibility and significance and power, and we all need them to thrive. They will be fine—beyond fine—but they have serious work to do to regain public confidence and trust.

One place to start would be to stop viewing themselves as superior to their peers and to more fully engage as parts of a larger ecosystem that benefits them as much as it does the community colleges and regional public and private colleges that successfully educate a far greater proportion of Americans than the “elite colleges” do.

Can we please stop using that term?

Last year, analysts projected a significant long-term budget shortfall for the Pell Grant program—the first in more than a decade—sending shock waves through Congress.

And while the Legislature tried to address it with a $10.5 billion Band-Aid, the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projection shows that even such an emergency action won’t be enough to prevent devastating deficits for the long-standing financial aid program that helps low-income students pay for college.

The report, released late Thursday evening, projects that by the end of fiscal year 2026, which ends Sept. 30, the Pell Grant program will be short $5.5 billion; that number skyrockets to $11.5 billion in fiscal year 2027 if Congress doesn’t make cuts or put in new money. And by 2036, the final year included in the CBO’s 10-year projection, the cumulative toll could reach up to $132 billion if Congress doesn’t up its spending to keep pace with inflation. (The 10-year deficit would be about $104 billion if adjusted for inflation.)

“A $100 billion 10-year projected shortfall isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a fire alarm,” said Alex Holt, senior adviser for higher education at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Pell awards are already set for the 2025–26 academic year and many grants have already gone out the door, so Congress can’t address the shortfall by clawing back federal dollars, experts said. That means lawmakers will have to find the $5.5 billion before grappling with the larger long-term shortfall.

Without new money, students in future years could see changes to the maximum award, how many semesters they can use the grant for and when. The last time Pell faced a shortfall, Congress cut eligibility for the grant during the summer term, which was restored in 2017. And last year, when the CBO projected a $2.7 billion funding gap, the Trump administration proposed cutting the maximum award by more than $1,600 a year and blamed Congress for the program’s “chronic mismanagement.”

Any cuts to the program would be a blow for the more than seven million low-income students who rely on it, advocates say.

Higher education policy experts and student advocacy groups have warned about the looming consequences of a Pell Grant shortfall for years, but even they say that the scale of the CBO’s numbers came as a bit of a surprise.

“Most analysts and advocates were of the mind that the $10.5 billion that Congress generously provided in the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] would make the program whole through fiscal year 2026,” said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

What this shows, Baime added, is that “substantially more appropriations will be needed” to keep the program afloat.

Holt added that Congress has largely avoided making tough choices related to Pell and now “the bill really has come due.”

“These one-year fixes are not sustainable. Congress made the program more expensive and now they either need to find a way to cut costs, find the money to pay for it, or both,” he said. “If you’re worried about low-income students, then you need to be worried about protecting Pell, and to protect Pell you need to get serious about how to pay for it.”

Increasing Demand on Pell

In the 2020–21 academic year, the Pell Grant went to 6.4 million students, costing $26.5 billion.

By this current academic year, about 7.6 million students received the Pell Grant, according to CBO, which would cost about $34 billion in discretionary funds. Yet Congress hasn’t substantially increased funding for the program beyond the one-time funding last summer.

The flat funding is in spite of Congress’s decision in 2020 to expand access to the Pell Grant program as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act. That expansion took effect in spring 2024, and a recent analysis found that 1.5 million additional students are now eligible to receive the maximum Pell Grant this academic year.

Starting July 1, that number will only increase more as students in short-term workforce training programs will be able to use the Pell Grant to pay for their classes as well.

Students in the short-term workforce programs won’t receive nearly as much in aid as the maximum $7,395 that students who are working toward a credential can access. However, experts worry Workforce Pell could exacerbate the shortfall.

It remains unclear whether and how the Congressional Budget Office accounted for new costs related to Workforce Pell; the regulations that specify which training programs and students are eligible have yet to be finalized.

Some, like Baime from AACC, say the “overwhelming financial pressure” put on Pell is from the 2020 expansion, not Workforce Pell. But Ben Cecil, the deputy director of higher education policy at Third Way, a left-of-center think tank, says, “We can’t underestimate the effects of Workforce Pell on the projected shortfall.”

Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent addressed the potential shortfall during a talk at the Community College Legislative Summit earlier this week, noting that Pell has had bipartisan support but that the lack of new money could force some “hard decisions” at the Education Department. He added that ED wants to work with Congress to identify which areas should be cut versus gain more support and acknowledged that Workforce Pell is a wild card.

“We don’t know what the behavioral change will be, which makes costing this out a little bit of an imperfect science at the very beginning,” he said.

Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, a leading advocacy group for federal student aid, said the numbers for Workforce Pell are “soft,” compared to the “firm” numbers for FAFSA Simplification.

“FAFSA Simplification is doing exactly what we hoped for from a policy point of view—that more students are seeing this as a simpler form. The barriers are taken down. They’re completing the form, and they’re getting the aid for which they’re eligible,” she said. “Now the piece is that we have to call on Congress and the president who signed this into [law] to give Pell sufficient funding to keep that promise.”

But getting Republicans in Congress to support an additional $16 billion at minimum for the Pell Grant program could prove difficult, especially as lawmakers are looking to trim—not increase—federal spending. Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass a federal budget for fiscal year 2027.

Rep. Tim Walberg, the Republican chair of the House Education and Workforce committee, said in a statement Friday that the shortfall has been known “for some time,” and House Republicans want to make the program sustainable for future students.

“In reconciliation, House Republicans proposed targeted reforms to reduce the shortfall and encourage completion—a responsible approach that recognizes fiscal realities,” he said. “We will continue to advocate for concrete solutions to ensure Pell remains strong and focused on students with the greatest need.”

Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House education committee, declined to comment.

Still, Cook remains hopeful. The Pell Grant has always been a bipartisan program that represents the core beliefs of American democracy, she said, and that should be the kind of leverage that’s needed to get lawmakers on board.

“We have a fundamental belief in this country that we should help everyone who wants to pursue higher education be able to afford it,” Cook said. “And I think every lawmaker—many of whom have been Pell Grant recipients like me—will look at the need for an educated workforce in their districts and their states and see that this is absolutely a program that demands their support.”

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Harvard University of failing to comply with a federal investigation into whether its admissions processes are discriminatory.

The federal government alleged in a court filing that the Ivy League university has unlawfully withheld “information necessary to determine whether Harvard, which has a recent history of racial discrimination, is continuing to discriminate in its admissions process.” The Trump administration alleged in the lawsuit that Harvard “has slow-walked the pace of [document] production and refused to provide pertinent documents relating to applicant-level admissions decisions.”

The Trump administration said in the filing that it brought legal action “solely to compel Harvard to produce documents relating to any consideration of race in admission” and is not accusing Harvard of discriminatory conduct, seeking monetary damages or the revocation of its federal funding.

“The Justice Department will not allow universities to flout our nation’s federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide the information required for our review,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a DOJ news release. “Providing requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices. If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it.”

Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the same news release that the Department of Justice “will continue fighting to put merit over [diversity, equity, and inclusion] across America.”

Applicant data sought by the DOJ includes grade point average, standardized test scores, essays and extracurricular activities, disaggregated by race and ethnicity, according to the court filing, which also noted that the federal government’s initial requested deadline was April 25 of last year. Harvard provided hundreds of pages of documents in response but the court filing says it handed over “aggregated admissions data”—not “individual-level applicant data.”

A Harvard spokesperson denied claims of wrongdoing in an emailed statement.

“Harvard has been responding to the government’s inquiries in good faith and continues to be willing to engage with the government according to the process required by law,” the spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “The University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach.”

Friday’s lawsuit is the latest salvo from the Trump administration in a nearly yearlong fight with Harvard that has included efforts to cut off $2.2 billion in federal research funding and to prevent it from hosting international students. Harvard has managed to successfully fend off those efforts and sued the Trump administration last April. Harvard won that legal battle with the federal government last fall but remains in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, as the president and others have accused Harvard of permitting antisemitism, among other allegations.

Despite Harvard’s legal victory, rumors of a settlement have persisted for months. Any such deal would follow similar agreements struck with the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Virginia, Cornell University and Northwestern University. 

However, while a deal has supposedly been in the works for months, Harvard reportedly has been resistant to pay a fine as part of any such settlement. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that the federal government had dropped its request for a fine as part of the settlement, only to be immediately countered by Trump, who demanded Harvard pay $1 billion.