Tag: Jobs

The Department of Justice is challenging state laws in Virginia that allow eligible undocumented students to pay in-state tuition. 

This is the seventh state the Trump administration has sued over such policies. Some states have fought the Justice Department, while several Republican-led states quickly agreed to stop offering undocumented students in-state tuition. The rapid change in policies spurred confusion and chaos for students as they scrambled to find ways to pay for their education. Some advocacy groups have sought to join the lawsuits to challenge the Justice Department.

Trump lawyers argued in the Virginia lawsuit and elsewhere that such policies discriminate against U.S. citizens because out-of-state students aren’t eligible for in-state tuition. In Virginia, undocumented students can qualify for the reduced rate if they graduated from a state high school and if they or their parents filed Virginia income tax returns for at least two years before they enroll at a postsecondary institution.

The Justice Department is asking a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia to bar the state from enforcing the laws granting in-state tuition to undocumented students.

The lawsuit comes amid a transition of power in Virginia, so it’s not clear how the state will respond to the legal challenge. Republicans currently lead the state, but Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, will take over Jan. 17. Neither current officials nor Spanberger responded to The Washington Post’s request for comment.

Texas A&M University will not reinstate Melissa McCoul, the instructor fired in September after a video showing a student confronting her over a gender identity lesson went viral, The New York Times reported. 

In a Dec. 19 memo that McCoul’s lawyer Amanda Reichek shared with the Times, the Texas A&M system’s vice chancellor for academic affairs, James Hallmark, wrote that he had “determined that Dr. McCoul’s dismissal was based upon good cause.”

A faculty panel determined in late September that McCoul’s academic freedom was violated and that former Texas A&M president Mark Welsh flouted proper termination processes when he fired her.

McCoul was “disappointed by the university’s unexplained decision to uphold her termination but looks forward to pursuing her First Amendment, due process and breach of contract claims in court very soon,” Reichek said in a statement to the Times.

The Department of Education is investigating whether Brown University violated the Clery Act in relation to a campus shooting earlier this month that left two students dead.

“After two students were horrifically murdered at Brown University when a shooter opened fire in a campus building, the department is initiating a review of Brown to determine if it has upheld its obligation under the law to vigilantly maintain campus security,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a Monday news release announcing the investigation. 

The release also questioned whether Brown’s video surveillance system was “up to appropriate standards” and accused the university of being “unable to provide helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin” in the aftermath of the shooting. 

The suspected shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a former Brown student, evaded capture and was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound following a five-day manhunt. While some observers accused Brown of substandard security practices, which critics say delayed the capture of the suspected shooter, others allege the FBI bungled the search.

ED is also probing whether Brown’s emergency notifications about the shooting were delayed.

The department requested various records to aid in the investigation, including copies of annual security reports; crime logs; student and employee disciplinary referrals “related to the illegal possession, use, and/or distribution of weapons, drugs, or liquor”; and copies of all Brown policies and procedures, among other campus safety documents.

The same day that ED announced the investigation into Brown, the private university in Rhode Island placed its top campus safety official, Rodney Chatman, on administrative leave as it reviews the shooting. Hugh T. Clements, the former chief of police of the Providence Police Department, will take on the top public safety job as Brown conducts a security assessment.

Brown officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

The Department of Justice has declared a slew of Department of Education programs and grants unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

According to a report by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), minority-serving institution (MSI) programs are unlawful because they award money to colleges and universities based on the percentage of students of a certain race. The report said such programs “effectively [employ] a racial quota by limiting institutional eligibility to schools with a certain racial composition” and should no longer be funded.

The report also deemed it unconstitutional that two scholarship providers, the United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, both of which award scholarships to students of a specific race, are given access to Free Application for Federal Student Aid data.

In a statement from the education department, Secretary Linda McMahon said that the report is “another concrete step from the Trump Administration to put a stop to DEI in government and ensure taxpayer dollars support programs that advance merit and fairness in all aspects of Americans lives. The Department of Education looks forward to working with Congress to reform these programs.”

The statement noted that the department is “currently evaluating the full impact of the OLC opinion on affected programs.”

The OLC also evaluated the constitutionality of two TRIO programs, the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, a scholarship that helps students from underrepresented backgrounds work towards Ph.D.s, and Student Support Services, which provides grants for institutions to develop academic support infrastructure. It ultimately concludes that those programs are constitutional and may continue to be funded.

Nevertheless, in ED’s announcement of the DOJ decision, those TRIO programs were included in a list of “affected programs.”

The Trump administration’s attack on MSI programs began in July, when the U.S. Solicitor General declined to defend against a lawsuit challenging the definition of a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) as one that enrolls a student body with at least 25 percent Hispanic students. In September, ED officially announced its plans to end these programs, terminating the majority of MSI grants for FY2025.

Supporters of MSI programs strongly criticized the OLC’s report.

“Today’s baseless opinion from the Justice Department is wrong, plain and simple. Donald Trump and his Administration are once again attacking the institutions that expand opportunity for millions of aspiring students of all backgrounds. The opinion ignores federal law, including Congress’ bipartisan support for our nation’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Minority-Serving Institutions, including more than 100 MSIs in California alone,” Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate HSI Caucus, wrote in a statement. “Every student deserves access to the American Dream. This unconscionable move by this Administration will harm millions of students who deserve better.”

Presidents of institutions that could be impacted by the legal decision are also speaking out. Wendy F. Hensel, president of the University of Hawai’i, called the news “disappointing” in a statement to the campus community. UH is an Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institution, an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution, and a Native Hawaiian Career and Technical Education grantee; Hensel said these programs are “vital” to UH and the state of Hawai’i.

She wrote that the university’s general counsel is examining the full report and that campus leadership is currently “evaluating the full scope of the impact on our campuses and programs and implementing contingency plans for the loss of funding.”

“We recognize that this news creates uncertainty and anxiety for the students, faculty and staff whose work and educational pathways are supported by these funds. We are actively assessing how best to support the people and programs affected as we navigate this evolving legal landscape,” she wrote.

Trump’s allies, however, applauded the report and ED’s efforts to end MSI programs.

“Today’s announcement is a strong step by the Trump administration to end racial discrimination in our higher education system. These programs determine funding eligibility through arbitrary, race-based quotas which unfairly assume a student’s background determines his or her educational destiny,” Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, a Republican representative from Michigan, wrote in a statement. “America was founded on the principles of freedom and equality, and that every citizen can chase the American Dream. In Congress, we are working with the Trump administration to create a fairer higher education system so every student has a strong chance at success.”

David McNew/Getty Images

Members of Teamsters Local 2010, a union representing 1,100 skilled trade employees at the California State University system, voted Monday to authorize a strike across all 22 campuses.

CSU refused to pay contractually guaranteed five percent raises and salary step increases in July, and the union has filed several unfair labor practice complaints against the university system, union representatives said in a news release. Teamsters members are not striking yet, but are prepared to do so “if CSU continues to break the law, ignore their contract, and refuse to pay the raises that its skilled workforce is owed,” the release stated.

“CSU is steering itself into a completely avoidable battle with the Teamsters Union. Our members will not stand by while the University commits unfair practices, misuses state funds, breaks its promises, and enriches executives at the expense of the workers who keep its campuses running,” Jason Rabinowitz, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 2010, said in the release. “CSU’s greed, dishonesty and disrespect for its workforce are indefensible. This vote makes clear that we are ready to strike if CSU continues to rip us off while lining their own pockets.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the CSU Chancellor’s office said the vote is procedural and that a strike is not necessarily “imminent.”

“The result of the strike authorization vote is disappointing, as the current labor agreement, negotiated and ratified through the collaborative collective bargaining process, contained clear contingency provisions language that tied certain salary increases to the receipt of new, unallocated, ongoing state funding. Those contingencies were not met, leading to the current reopener negotiations on salary terms,” the spokesperson said. “We believe the time and resources of all parties would be more productively devoted to the bargaining table, where meaningful progress can be made, rather than toward preparing for a strike.”

For nine years, Inside Higher Ed published an annual list of predictions known as the In-and-Out List, before taking a four-year hiatus. That ends now. In the last edition, IHE staff called 2020 “a year from hell” and a “rough year for higher ed.” 

Well, that was then. 

In many ways, 2025 pushed higher ed to the brink as the Trump administration found new ways to assert control over universities, crack down on international students and seek reforms long sought by conservatives. 

At the same time, financial issues continue to squeeze institutions’ budgets, state lawmakers are getting more involved in curriculum decisions, and bachelor’s degree holders are seeing worsening employment outcomes in part due to generative AI, which more universities are embracing.

As another year looms, colleges and universities are bracing for yet more upheavals as they try to navigate the new normal. Time—and 2026—will tell whether the sector is resilient enough to do so.

Below, we look at the rollercoaster that was 2025 and offer our own very loose predictions for what may lie ahead. Happy 2026.

It’s been a whirlwind year for higher ed—and for Inside Higher Ed. Yes, we rigorously covered President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attacks on higher education, and our readers seemed to appreciate our efforts; according to my (unscientific) analysis of our readership statistics, about 70 percent of our most-read articles this year were about the Trump administration.

But we’ve also found time, somehow, to keep up with our bread-and-butter higher education stories: how technology is changing college campuses, institutions’ financial struggles, academic freedom and free speech issues, student success, college costs and the value of a degree, the continued rise of career and technical programs, and even a few intriguing scandals.

To look back at the work we’ve done over this tumultuous year, we asked the members of our editorial team to share one of their favorite stories published this year. These are stories that may have flown under the radar, highlight a reporter’s unique strengths, or push the boundaries of what a higher ed news story can be. But most importantly, they’re stories that helped our readers make sense of the changing higher ed landscape during a year that was unlike any other.

Our Favorite Stories of 2025

Emma Whitford, faculty reporter: “Inside a Network of Fake College Websites” by Josh Moody and Kathryn Palmer

Josh and Kathryn’s investigation into a network of fake college websites built using generative AI, to me, represents the particular strengths of the small but mighty IHE newsroom. While a couple of the faux institutions had been flagged by officials, it was Josh’s curiosity and close attention to his beat that prompted his digging, which uncovered dozens more fake schools and the fake accreditors that endorsed them. The double-byline teamwork made the depth of reporting in this story possible while the newsroom simultaneously continued to churn out the news of the day.

Susan Greenberg, managing editor: “The Handwriting Revolution” by Johanna Alonso

In this story, Johanna looked at how one of most feared, criticized and occasionally, celebrated developments to upend higher education in recent years—generative AI—is changing how faculty teach and assess students. She spoke to a number of professors who are requiring handwritten assignments to ensure that students don’t use ChatGPT or other AI tools to cheat their way through class. The story is lively, timely and illuminating; it includes the voices of an array of faculty members and experts who share nuanced perspectives about the pros and cons of reverting to traditional handwritten assessments to evaluate students in the age of AI.

Ashley Mowreader, student success reporter: “Charlie Kirk: Hero of ‘Civil Discourse’ or Fount of Division?” by Ryan Quinn

One of Ryan’s many talents as a reporter is being able to take a hot topic in news coverage and deeply report on it to add layers of context, insight and inquiry that could otherwise be overlooked or misunderstood. This piece is exemplary of this type of reporting, peeling past the horror of Charlie Kirk’s murder to investigate what it means to be a figure of civil discourse.

Ryan Quinn, policy reporter: “Spending Soars, Rankings Fall at New College of Florida” by Josh Moody

This story cut through the well-worn conservative/liberal debates about what should be taught in higher ed and showed a truth that has been raising eyebrows across the political spectrum: New College of Florida was spending “more than 10 times per student what the other 11 members of the State University System spend, on average” and politicians were likely discussing closing it behind the scenes. The article also had great quotes, including a faculty member calling NCF’s approach to recruitment “kind of like a Ponzi scheme” and a former administrator saying “academically, Richard [Corcoran] is running a Motel 6 on a Ritz-Carlton budget.”

Sara Custer, editor-in-chief: “The ‘Death Spiral’ of Deferred Maintenance” by Colleen Flaherty

The editors at Inside Higher Ed have a running joke that deferred maintenance is my favorite topic because I get excited when the issue of crumbling brick facades or broken elevators comes up. I’m not a facilities nerd. I just agree with what F. King Alexander told Colleen Flaherty about deferred maintenance for this piece: “This is a huge issue that presidents have to deal with that nobody’s talking about.” The sector has rightly spent 2025 following the Trump administration, college closures and leadership controversies, but Colleen’s story is my favorite because it adds nuance to the conversations about higher ed’s financial health and is a reminder that too many colleges are one leaky roof away from closure. It’s also got a killer headline.

Josh Moody, business, finance and leadership reporter: “International Student Visas Revoked” by Ashley Mowreader

As the Trump Administration began revoking student visas, the indefatigable Ashley Mowreader worked to identify which institutions and how many students were affected, resulting in a widely-read map that was cited in legal filings and by numerous other publications. Inside Higher Ed tracked 1,800-plus students who lost their F-1 or J-1 status as the Trump administration cracked down on immigration. Our reporting helped contextualize the federal government’s broadside against international students and the many subsequent lawsuits via reporting that informed and illuminated and resulted in one of our (deservedly) most-read pieces of 2025.

Sara Weissman, nontraditional students and minority-serving institutions reporter: “Grief Fuels Growth of Turning Point’s Campus Footprint” by Kathryn Palmer

Charlie Kirk’s killing called for a deep, nuanced look at the movement he created, and that’s exactly what Kathryn delivered in this story. The feature was beautifully written and richly detailed. It took Turning Point USA students’ grief seriously while also drawing on a range of scholarly perspectives to add balance and provide context about the movement’s present and future. The story also offered valuable framing for our ongoing coverage about the ways the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting roiled campuses in the months that followed.

Katherine Knott, news editor: “How Trump Uses the DOJ as Tool of ‘Fear-Mongering’” by Jessica Blake

This piece from Jessica helped to illuminate how another federal agency was applying pressure to colleges and universities and what’s at stake for higher ed more broadly. Her reporting came after the Department of Justice played a role in the resignation of Jim Ryan, who was president of the University of Virginia and faced questions from federal investigators about how he handled diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campus. The timely story took readers beyond the news of the day and behind the scenes into the tactics of the second Trump administration.

Kathryn Palmer, research, technology and innovation reporter: “Preserving the Past of HBCUs” by Sara Weissman

Sara’s story on the effort to preserve the history of HBCUs was timely, well-reported and beautifully written. It featured so many voices and presented HBCUs as institutions that illuminate the complexities of America’s history at a time when the federal government is moving to sanitize it. Her story showed how HBCUs are integral to telling the story of Black America and why it’s an important story to preserve. The historical photos put it over the top.

Johanna Alonso, admissions and enrollment reporter: “Texas Ban on Transgender Course Content Sows Chaos” by Emma Whitford

No one in the history of hitting the ground running has ever hit the ground running quite like Emma Whitford did when she came on as Inside Higher Ed’s faculty reporter this past September. Since then, Emma, who had previously worked at IHE from 2019 to 2022, has covered near daily clashes between faculty and administrators with persistence, precision and clarity. This story about verbal policies banning professors from teaching about gender identity in Texas perfectly encapsulates her incredible ability to root out the truth of complex controversies. From there, she continued to follow this story for weeks as more information came out about the nature of the ban and as faculty questioned the legitimacy of the verbal policy. The saga also demonstrates conservative leaders’ continued efforts to erode academic freedom, which has been a significant theme for the past several years and will surely continue into 2026.

Jessica Blake, federal policy reporter: “Florida Universities Sign Agreements With ICE” by Josh Moody

This was a great scoop that Josh gathered by going back to the basics of journalism and making a public records request. And as someone who completed a bachelor’s degree while working part-time for Investigative Reporters and Editors, I’m a sucker for any story rooted in FOIA. He took an event that was making headlines throughout Florida and across the country and advanced the story, giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at which universities were striking agreements with the Trump administration and how.

Colleen Flaherty, senior editor for special content: The First 100 Days newsletter, Day 88 by Katherine Knott

We were supposed to avoid federal policy pieces due to the onslaught of those this year. But assuming that guidelines are more like suggestions, I have to go with this edition of After the First 100 Days, our weekly federal policy news roundup, by singular news editor Katherine Knott. Back in April, when the newsletter was still called the First 100 Days, the White House was targeting higher ed with such speed and force that it was unnervingly unclear how far things would go. Then came Day 88—or, as Katherine wrote—what “will be remembered as the week that Harvard said no and higher ed started to fight back.” It was a crucial moment for higher ed in 2025, and Katherine’s weekly analyses have otherwise become crucial reading for me. After the 100 Days is an IHE membership perk but I promise this isn’t a sales ploy, hence the gift link!

Ask just about any federally funded researcher to describe 2025, and they use words like chaotic, demoralizing, confusing, destabilizing and transformational.

“It’s been a very destabilizing year [that’s made] people question the nation’s commitment to research,” Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Inside Higher Ed.

She expects 2026 to be a year of rebuilding and standard setting.

Speaking of the National Institutes of Health, which calls itself the world’s largest public biomedical research funder, Pierce said the research community is expecting more major regulation and written policy changes in 2026, which will shed more light on how grants will be funded, how much the federal government will invest in the research enterprise and what priorities will emerge from this administration.

If the administration’s attacks on federally funded research in 2025 are any indication, the federal government of 2026 will likely be just as willing to advance its conservative ideological agenda by controlling universities through the nation’s research enterprise. And while the administration may not let up in the new year, courts stymied some of its most sweeping changes in 2025 and may continue to be an obstacle in the new year.

Soon after President Donald Trump started his second term in January, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education and numerous other federal agencies that collectively send billions in research dollars to universities, began freezing and terminating hundreds of grants. Many of the targeted grants—including projects focused on vaccines, climate change, and health and education disparities among women, LGBTQ+ and minority communities—were caught in the crossfire of Trump’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and so-called woke gender ideology.

Not only would the terminations lead to the loss of jobs, staff and income, a lawsuit filed by a group of NIH-funded researchers in April predicted that “scientific advancement will be delayed, treatments will go undiscovered, human health will be compromised, and lives will be lost.”

The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify.”

Scott Delaney, cofounder of Grant Witness

Terminated federal grants encompassed a wide range of research projects. Some of the casualties included funding to study the erosion of democracy, the effectiveness of work study, dementia, COVID-19, cancer and misinformation. Others supported teacher-training programs and initiatives designed to attract more underrepresented students into STEM fields.

“The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities,” read a letter the NIH sent to numerous researchers back in March, terminating their active grants. “[R]esearch programs based primarily on artificial and nonscientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

But it didn’t stop there.

The Trump administration also temporarily froze billions more dollars in federal research grants at a handful of the nation’s wealthiest, most selective institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles, for allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus and ignoring the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, among other allegations. (Most of the universities got their money back after cutting deals with the administration or via court orders.)

And because the NIH, NSF, ED and several other federal agencies also laid off thousands of workers, researchers with questions had far fewer resources to help them navigate changes to application and award processes.

By some estimates, the government disrupted upward of $17 billion in NIH grants alone this year, according to Scott Delaney, a former lawyer and Harvard University epidemiologist who the university laid off as a result of grant terminations.

Earlier this year, he cofounded Grant Witness, a website that has been tracking grant cancellations at the NIH, NSF and the Environmental Protection Agency. While both the NIH and NSF have since restored thousands of grants, Delaney said those and other restorations won’t be enough to repair the now-fractured relationship between faculty and federal funding agencies.

“The true damage comes from the betrayal, the sense of uncertainty and the loss of trust researchers have—or had—vis-à-vis with the federal government. That’s really hard to quantify,” he told Inside Higher Ed this month. “In the years ahead, there will be folks who don’t want to plan long-term research projects because they don’t know if their funds are going to get summarily yanked out from underneath them; folks who don’t want to continue their careers in academic research or train in academic research; trainees who would have had training grant support who don’t now and go do something else. And some researchers will just leave the country.”

In addition, some of the Trump administration’s research funding proposals have stoked worry this year about the long-term sustainability of the nation’s academic research enterprise.

Numerous agencies—including NIH, NSF and Department of Energy—have attempted to cut university reimbursement rates for indirect research costs. Higher education and science advocates characterized such policies as “shortsighted and dangerous,” and said it would hamper university budgets, hurt the economy and stymie scientific progress. Although federal courts have since blocked the rate caps, the mere anticipation of such policy changes led some universities—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University—to freeze hiring and, in some cases, graduate admissions.

But by September, the NIH said it was on track to spend its full $47 billion budget by the end of the fiscal year that month.

However, the NIH awarded 3,500 fewer competitive grants this year with the biggest declines at the Institutes of minority health, nursing, human genome, alcohol abuse and alcoholism and mental health, according to The New York Times. Those changes are part of the White House’s plan to streamline scientific funding by eliminating wasteful spending and cutting “woke programs” that “poison the minds of Americans.”

As 2025 fades into 2026, the federal research funding picture isn’t looking as bleak—at least not on the surface.

A flurry of litigation from universities, individual researchers, trade associations and labor unions prompted several federal agencies to reinstate some research grants.

All things considered, 2025 “could have been worse, but it was still awful,” Delaney said, noting that there are still thousands of grants in limbo at the NSF, DOE and numerous other agencies beyond the NIH.

“So many people fought so hard—some of them sacrificed their jobs inside these federal agencies—and they succeeded in many ways. To tell a story that doesn’t include both their sacrifice and their success discredits what was a Herculean and heroic effort for scientists, many who have never spoken up in a political way before this year,” he added. “But it’s also important to emphasize that this fight isn’t over, and we need to keep fighting. It can get worse.”

‘Not Insulated From Politics’

Katie Edwards, a social work professor at the University of Michigan, is one of the researchers who sued the NIH. In March, the agency canceled six grants she was using to research mental health and violence prevention among marginalized young people, including Indigenous and LGBTQ+ youth. Valued at $10 million, the grants supported roughly 50 staff, community collaborators and trainees and put them all at risk of losing their jobs.

“For many trainees—especially those who are LGBTQ+ or people of color—the message they internalized was painful: that research on their communities is ‘ideological’ or expendable,” Edwards wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “The emotional toll of fighting for and protecting staff, reassuring community partners, and trying to navigate a constantly shifting federal landscape has been immense.”

University of Michigan

Although her grants have since been reinstated—albeit some with reduced dollar amounts, administrative delays and anti-DEI language in the notice of award—and her team has resumed their work, this year has forever changed her perspective on research.

“This year made clear that science is not insulated from politics—and that researchers must be prepared to defend not only their projects, but the people those projects exist to serve,” Edwards said. “Federally funded research with marginalized communities requires constant vigilance, strong partnerships, and collective resistance. We cannot simply adjust our science to political winds when real communities rely on this work.”

But not every researcher who appealed a grant termination got their money back.

In March, the Education Department informed Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, that it was cancelling her six-year grant to examine the impact of receiving federal work-study funding on enrollment and persistence among low-income students four and a half years into the grant.

Teachers College appealed the decision in April, but the government rejected it in September, stating that Education Department grants were specifically excluded from Columbia University’s settlement with the Trump administration. Support from a private foundation allowed Scott-Clayton and her team to resume their research this November, but she told Inside Higher Ed that the disruptions to research have been “extremely unsettling and demoralizing.”

And she’s not certain that 2026 will be any better.

“Even though I believe in the value of what I do, self-doubt can flare up when an authority as significant as the federal government formally declares your work to be a waste of resources,” she said. “I am not sure what the future of our field looks like if our federal government no longer values research evidence. And I am not sure what our society looks like if the federal government can make decisions so arbitrarily without any consequences or constraints.”

New Year, Old Concerns

This year is ending with unresolved questions about what the Trump administration’s research policies will ultimately be, and how much the federal government will fund research. Pierce at the Association of American Medical Colleges said she expects next year will provide answers.

Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said “I think the [the Energy Department’s] Genesis mission and the prioritization of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is going to be a key driver in—I guess you could say—filling in the cracks of the foundation of the research enterprise that has been kind of hit by this earthquake in the past year.”

Wesley Lapointe/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The continuing resolution that ended the historically long federal government shutdown in November expires Jan. 30, and Congress is leaving town for the holidays without passing funding bills for some major science funding agencies, including the NIH, NSF and Energy.

Trump proposed slashing about $5.2 billion from the NSF. But House appropriators have suggested cutting $2.1 billion, while senators only put forth axing $60 million, according to an appropriations debate tracker from the AAAS. And while the president proposed cutting nearly 40 percent from the NIH—$18.1 billion—the House and Senate have instead suggested increasing its funding by roughly $1 billion, the tracker shows. That pushback from Congress is promising, advocates say.

And colleges and universities are still waiting for federal research funding agencies to set indirect cost reimbursement caps, after litigation blocked their plans to set the limit at 15 percent. The forthcoming OMB guidance setting those caps is also supposed to help agencies implement Trump’s controversial August executive order directing “senior appointees” to take charge of awarding, denying, reviewing and terminating new and already awarded grants. Among other changes, that order also said grants can’t “promote” racial preferences or “the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic,” and that they “should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players.”

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Further, the NIH is eyeing ways to reduce how much of its grant dollars researchers can use to pay scientific journals to publish their work. The proposed options ranged from limiting how much could be spent per publication or capping the percentage of a grant that can go toward publishing fees overall, to no longer funding publication costs whatsoever. The NIH said in the summer that it planned to make whatever policy it chose effective early next year, but it only recently released the public comments, and an agency spokesperson said he couldn’t provide a definitive implementation timeline.

Just this week, Science published a memo showing that NSF is scaling back its reviews of grant proposals, citing its “significantly reduced” workforce and a need to expedite approvals and denials to address a “significant backlog of unreviewed proposals and canceled review panels” from the government shutdown. The memo also said NSF program officers are “expected to maximize their use of available automated merit review tools, especially tools that identify proposals that should be returned without review.”

And the NIH ordered staff last Friday to start using a “computational text analysis tool” to scan current and new grants for words and phrases that may mean they’re misaligned with NIH priorities. Staff were told to look out for terms such as “health equity” and “structural racism.” How this and the NSF policy changes will work in practice remains to be seen.

The educational improvement research field also awaits word on the future of the congressionally required Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which the administration gutted early this year amid its ongoing push to dismantle the larger Education Department. IES is the federal government’s central education data collection and research funding agency. Education secretary Linda McMahon hired a special adviser to “re-envision” it, but the plan hasn’t been released.

Overall, Pierce said 2026 “will continue to be a challenging year, especially for those researchers, institutions and trainees that have seen their grants terminated.” But she noted medical research is marked by passion for improving the nation’s health.

“It’s an incredibly resilient field,” she said.

The suspect wanted in connection to a mass shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine was found dead in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., authorities said at a news conference Thursday night.

They identified Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, as the man they say barged into an engineering classroom at Brown last Saturday and opened fire on students attending a review session. Valente died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“We are 100 percent confident that this is our target and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved,” Rhode Island attorney general Peter Nerhona said.

Officials said they believed Valente was also connected to the murder of MIT nuclear physicist Nuno Loureiro earlier in the week. The same rental car had been spotted near Brown and outside Loureiro’s home, authorities said.

Loureiro was shot at his home Monday night and died at the hospital the next day. His home in Brookline, Mass., is about 50 miles from Brown. Authorities said that in the 1990s, Valente had attended the same university in Lisbon as Loureiro.

Brown President Christina Paxson said at the press conference that Valente had been a student at Brown in the early 2000s but withdrew. She noted that he was a physics student and had likely spent a lot of time in the Barus and Holley science building, where Saturday’s shooting took place.

Paxson wrote in an update Friday that the students injured Saturday were all improving; three had been released from the hospital and six remained in stable condition.

Officials said Valente entered the U.S. in 2000 on a student visa; he became a lawful permanent resident in 2017.

On Friday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending the green card lottery program through which Valente entered the country in 2017. The Diversity Immigrant Visa program, or DV1, allows some 50,000 people a year from low-immigration countries to participate in a random selection process for entry to the U.S.

Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote on X. “This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. … At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

This story was updated 12/19 with news about the condition of the injured Brown students and the Trump administration’s pause on a visa lottery program.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will close its area studies centers in 2026, faculty members within the centers told Inside Higher Ed.

The six centers—the Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies—are all expected to close at some point next year.

“Our leadership team is taking a thoughtful and targeted approach, looking into areas that can be streamlined for greater efficiency, strengthening our operations while meeting our fiduciary responsibility to the people of North Carolina,” the UNC media relations department said in a statement. “A number of factors were taken into consideration while evaluating Centers and Institutes and some programs have been identified to be sunset [sic] in 2026. The list is not finalized at this time.”

Further updates will come after the January Board of Trustees meeting, the spokespeople said.

In a “budget reductions update” to the board’s finance and infrastructure committee in November, university officials said they planned to save $7 million in annual spending from “centers and institute reductions” made over several years, with a goal of $3 million in budget reductions before the end of this fiscal year in June 2026. A total of 14 centers and institutes will be decommissioned, according to the presentation.

The higher ed sector underwent rapid change in 2025, as leaders navigated new and evolving federal and state policy, emerging technologies and shifting employer expectations for graduates, all while responding to the diverse and pressing needs of students.

For practitioners, faculty, staff and administrators looking to impact student success in the new year, Inside Higher Ed identified 26 data points that outline the major trends of 2025 and those to watch out for in 2026.

1. 80 percent of college students rate the quality of their education as good or excellent, up 7 percentage points from 2024.
2. 83 percent of the class of 2023 remained enrolled for two terms and the national persistence rate rose to 77.6 percent, up from 74.8 percent in 2019.
3. Two-thirds of Americans say a four-year degree isn’t worth the cost because graduates leave without a specific job and with large amounts of debt.
4. Nearly 10 percent of incoming first-year students speak a first language other than English; of these students, approximately half are U.S. citizens.
5. One-third of students said they’re thriving, reporting high levels of success in relationships, self-esteem, purpose and optimism.
6. 15 percent of colleges are using AI for student advising and support; an additional 26 percent use genAI for predictive analytics in student performance and trends.&
7. 70 percent of Americans believe higher education is “going in the wrong direction” due to high costs, poor preparation for the job market and ineffective development of students’ life skills.
8. 62 percent of students said they have “very high” or “somewhat high” trust in their college or university; 11 percent rate their trust as “somewhat low” or “very low.”
9. 23 percent of stop-outs said they won’t re-enroll because they can’t afford upfront costs; 15 percent said they are already too burdened by student debt to re-enroll.
10. 45 percent of students want colleges to encourage faculty members to limit high-stakes exams to improve their academic success; 40 percent want to see stronger connections between classroom learning and their career goals.
11. 36 percent of students have not participated in any extracurricular or co-curricular experiences while in college; an additional 39 percent say they’re very involved in at least one activity.
12. 71 percent of students have experienced financial trouble while enrolled in college, and 68 percent said they ran out of money at least once since the start of the year.
13. 43 percent of students say they study in the evening, while 18 percent said they study at night.
14. 84 percent of students say they know when and whether to use generative artificial intelligence to help with their coursework; the majority attributed this knowledge to faculty instruction or syllabi language.
15. 24 percent of parenting students said they missed at least one day of class in the past semester due to a lack of childcare.
16. 71 percent of students said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus; 54 percent believe it’s acceptable to block other students from attending a campus speech.
17. International enrollment declined 1 percent in fall 2025, with 17 percent fewer new students coming to U.S. campuses this past fall.
18. As of August, 37 percent of students said federal actions to limit diversity, equity and inclusion have had no real impact on their college experience.
19. 57 percent of students said cost of living is “a major problem,” for college students today; 55 percent said mental health issues are a major problem, as well.
20. 49 percent of high school students who didn’t apply for FAFSA said they didn’t believe they qualified for aid.
21. 59 percent of Americans are in favor of awarding green cards to foreign students who graduate from American universities so they can work in the U.S.
22. 87 percent of Gen Z said they feel unprepared to succeed at work due to limited guidance, unclear paths to career from school and uncertainty about which skills matter most.
23. Two-thirds of college presidents are concerned about student mental health and well-being.
24. Only 44 percent of students say they know some information about post-graduation outcomes for alumni of their college or university; 11 percent say they’re not sure where to find this information.
25. 67 percent of students said they don’t use AI in their job searches; 29 percent said they avoid it because they have ethical concerns about using the tool.
26. 94 percent of employers think it’s equally important for colleges to prepare a skilled and educated workforce and to help students become informed citizens.

Want more data? Subscribe to our weekday newsletter on Student Success here.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is publicly expressing concern about the Education Department working with Palantir, a controversial artificial intelligence and data analysis company that serves the U.S. military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The AAUP says it learned of the partnership when FedScoop reported that it noticed a message referencing Palantir on the website foreignfundinghighered.gov Dec. 4. An hour later, the website showed “a login page with the Palantir logo,” and, a couple of hours after that, “the Palantir logo was replaced with an Education Department logo,” the outlet wrote.

Foreignfundinghighered.gov tracks foreign gifts and contracts data for higher ed institutions. If a foreign source provides a college or university more than $250,000 in a year, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires the institution to report the payment to the federal government.

In an email to Inside Higher Ed, the Education Department described Palantir’s involvement in the past tense. It said Palantir was involved with the foreign funding portal as a subcontractor for Monkton, a company that has long handled privacy and data issues for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

“After soliciting feedback from institutions of higher education, the Trump Administration has upgraded the portal to make it easier for colleges and universities to report their foreign gifts and contracts as required,” Julie Hartman, the Education Department’s press secretary for legal affairs, said in a statement.

The AAUP held a news conference Wednesday raising concern about Palantir’s past work and about critical statements that Palantir leaders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel had made about higher ed.

“We want transparency,” AAUP president Todd Wolfson told reporters. “We want to know what Palantir is doing on this contract and we want to know how much they stand to make.” He said it “seems to be yet another front aimed at surveilling and criminalizing our colleges and universities,” and could indicate a “shift toward treating higher education not as a public good, but as a security threat to be monitored.”

The department didn’t tell Inside Higher Ed how much Palantir is being paid. Hartman said “universities’ clear disclosure and public transparency requirements have been in statute for decades,” adding that the AAUP’s “baseless assertion that the portal is a ‘politicized punitive action’ demonstrates their utter disregard for the rule of law.”

She said, “the Trump Administration is ending the secrecy surrounding foreign dollars and influence on American campuses.” Palantir spokespeople didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Department of Education has accumulated a backlog of more than 800,000 applications for income-driven loan repayments (IDR) as of Dec. 15, according to the most recent status report in a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

The union originally sued the department in March for pausing all applications to IDR plans, loan consolidation and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but the case was quickly settled as the department reopened the application portal and committed to providing regular status updates.

For five months, the status reports carried on and the case remained quiet. But then, in September, AFT filed an amended class action complaint and motion for preliminary injunction, arguing that just because the portal is open doesn’t mean it is working properly. Tens of thousands of applications were going untouched, violating the rights of the borrowers who submitted them.

In October, the department again reached a settlement with the plaintiffs, committing to process applications, and the motion was stayed. But now, with the latest status report released, AFT argues that the department isn’t holding up its end of the deal.

“The problem is they don’t appear to have kept their word,” Randi Weingarten said in a news release Wednesday. “The borrower backlog remains eye-popping, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon clearly has no idea how to manage this process.”

In addition to the backlog of pending loan repayment applications, the report shows that only 170 borrowers at the end of their IDR plan and 280 borrowers who have completed their PSLF payments have received their rightful loan forgiveness.

Weingarten suggested that in addition to loan forgiveness being low on the Trump administration’s list of political priorities, much of the backlog is due to major staffing cuts.

“Perhaps [Secretary McMahon] shouldn’t have sold the Department of Education off for parts,” the union president said. “President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance may believe affordability is a hoax, but hundreds of thousands of Americans just trying to get ahead are bleeding—and the administration’s lack of action is rubbing salt into the wound.”

So, until the department “follows the law and processes every single outstanding application,” she added, AFT will not stop fighting its case.

We’re approaching the end of a year that was at various times frightening, difficult and downright ridiculous. We hope that, despite the struggles higher education faced this year, you can still find something to be thankful for this holiday season, whether it’s generous donors making big differences for small campuses, colleges striving to improve cost transparency, or institutions supporting their communities through tough times.

If not, maybe you can take some inspiration from the videos below.

Here are Inside Higher Ed’s favorite holiday greetings, from the wacky to the artsy to the classy, showcasing the talents and holiday spirit of students, staff and faculty across the country.

Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn.

This slapstick sketch depicts Quinnipiac’s mascot, Boomer the Bobcat, messily preparing to welcome community members to his abode for Christmas dinner. Despite mishaps like spilling a bowl of assorted vegetables all over the floor and whisking what looks like mashed potatoes so feverishly they go flying, Boomer ends up putting out a beautiful spread—roast turkey, green beans, deviled eggs and more—for his delighted guests.

University of Louisiana at Monroe

The ULM Chamber Singers bring us a stirring adaptation of the 12 Days of Christmas entitled, no surprise, the 12 Days of Finals. Among the listed gifts is “ten paddlers paddling,” referring to the campus’s unique access to Bayou DeSiard, where students can borrow a kayak for free and paddle around to their heart’s delight.

Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, Utah

Salt Lake Community College brings us another musical video, this time in the form of a tribute to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. President Greg Peterson takes on the titular role, singing: “We’ve made the most of this beautiful year, full of big hopes and holiday cheer. It’s education for you—it’s SLCC.edu. Will you join us next year?” Fuzzy video filters take the viewer back to old-school PBS, making the homage all the more nostalgic.

The University of Texas, Dallas’s Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology

This video highlights an annual tradition in an animation business development course at UT Dallas. The students are asked to design a holiday card and their peers then vote on the 10 best cards in the class. The winners’ cards are then printed and sold to fundraise for the school’s Student Emergency Fund. “I’m glad that our class is helping people have the reassurance that they need that they’re safe on campus and that somebody’s looking out for them if something does happen,” one of this year’s participants said.

Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash.

College holiday greetings love to get a little bit meta. In this greeting, Gonzaga president Katia Passerini realizes she has forgotten to write a poem for this year’s holiday video. Luckily, student Alexis Sandoval just so happens to have a Christmas poem prepared, saving the day. Different members from the campus community, from a security leader to the university chaplain, recite the poem, bidding viewers to “rejoice in faith, carry peace and love into a happy New Year.”

Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills, Ill.

In this feel-good sketch, President Pamela Haney tries to bake a sweet treat for the college’s leadership team, but is missing a few key ingredients, including kindness and dedication. Luckily, teams from across the campus come to the rescue, bringing Haney everything she needs to finish making the cake. As one administrator says, “it’s amazing what we can do when we all work together.”

Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.

This year, the women’s liberal arts college celebrated 150 years since it welcomed its first class in 1875. As part of that celebration, the holiday video this year compiled archival footage and images submitted by alumni of winters on campus over the past century-and-a-half. The video, which features students sledding, ice skating, skiing and playing in the snow, is set over a song composed for the Class of 1948’s junior class show, which bemoans leaving Wellesley’s campus behind.

Community College of Philadelphia

“My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music is everyone’s favorite non-Christmas Christmas song. Why has it entered the holiday songs zeitgeist? Who can say for sure, but I think we’re all glad it has. This particular rendition by CCP students and faculty sets the classic tune against a hip-hop beat and features a sick guitar solo.

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Uh-oh—President Peter Mohler is supposed to be helping write Christmas cards, but he’s nowhere to be found! This cheeky sketch shows that he’s shirking his responsibilities to do much cooler and more fun things, like play video games with students or shoot hoops with Big Al, the institution’s elephant mascot. Luckily, when his colleagues finally find him, he’s already finished the holiday cards. Crisis averted!

Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

“What’s one Tulane memory you hope never melts away?” this video asks a gaggle of sweater-clad Tulane students. More than one note a once-in-a-lifetime Gulf Coast blizzard that shocked and delighted Tulane students this past January, with one saying it was “like a dream.” Others mention friends, sports championships and exploring the city of New Orleans.

For humanities faculty, the past five years have felt like a relentless assault on our ability to do our jobs. We have endured COVID, generative AI, budget cuts, and bitter fights over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s war on Gaza. At times it has been a challenge to remain human, let alone humanistic: to calm the nervous system enough to read a book, refine an argument, or show up for our colleagues and our increasingly fragile students. Now we are facing the Trump administration’s effort to gut-renovate our universities under the pretext of “combatting antisemitism.” With local enablers paving the way, that destruction may yet succeed.

In February of this year, a few colleagues and I co-founded a group called Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS), which now has more than 200 members on more than two dozen campuses. Our group, which is predominantly made up of academics at Massachusetts colleges and universities but includes members from across New England, is one of several such efforts nationwide that have coalesced into a new National Campus Jewish Alliance. We recognize that Jewish safety is inseparable from the safety of all people, and we work to foster academic environments that reduce antisemitism by treating educators as partners, not as suspects. I’d like to share a few examples of what this looks like in practice.

Fearmongering Versus Tea

As a Jewish professor of Arabic at Boston University, I mentor students with many different identities: Arab, Jewish, both or neither. After Oct. 7, 2023, I watched them struggle to metabolize the horrors in Israel and Gaza. They identified with various “sides” of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; what they shared was a sense of helplessness and a hunger for facts and insights beyond those found on Instagram. They needed contact with solid reading material, with trusted adults and, above all, with each other. My colleagues and I were in pain too. By mid-October, a few of us began meeting to discuss how to nurture a respectful and humane campus climate for ourselves and our students.

As we looked around for helpful approaches, we noticed one very unhelpful one: Keep people constantly triggered so their brains can’t process new information or perspectives.

Instead of trying to lower the temperature after Oct. 7, one influential institution on our campus immediately began stoking fear of antisemitism. On Oct. 18, they sent out an email telling students to record and report all instances of “antisemitism and anti-Zionism.” They encouraged students to submit videos and screenshots of their classmates. They conflated antisemitism and anti-Zionism, strongly implying that criticism of Israel’s government threatened the identity and even the safety of Jewish students at BU. They ignored the inconvenient facts that a great proportion of anti-Zionists at BU are Jewish and that nationwide, plenty of Israel supporters are antisemitic. Even worse than this bad-faith conceptual stew was the subtext. We know you’re scared. We know you feel everyone hates you. Although this university has 4,000 Jewish undergraduates, you’re basically alone and unsafe here. But don’t worry; we have your back. This gaslighting maneuver only stoked the anxieties it purported to calm.

What my colleagues and I did instead was much smaller in scale. Four tenured humanities professors (all moms, as it happened) started gathering students for tea. We chose to work together because we did not agree about what was happening or should happen in the Middle East, but we respected and liked each other. Each of us personally invited a few students, for a total of about 12 per gathering. This was not an advertised event but a series of private teas. My colleagues brought concerned Muslim and Arab students, liberal Zionist students, and eventually some leaders of BU Students for Israel and the Hillel. I invited Arabic learners from various backgrounds and some pro-Palestinian students I knew, including some leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine. (Others, who had been doxxed, were scared to come.) We brought substantial and slightly awkward snacks, things like pistachios, clementines and pomegranates to keep people’s hands busy. We sat around in armchairs, more conversation circle than summit meeting. And we made one ground rule: For these 90 minutes you can’t talk about the region, which we can’t fix, but only the BU campus, which we share.

When we passed a timer around the room, giving every student and faculty member 60 seconds to say what was on their minds, everyone heard at least one thing they didn’t expect. One male Jewish student who sometimes wore a kippah and sometimes didn’t told of how differently people looked at him in those two situations. The Muslim women—hijab-wearing or not—understood. As trust grew, students felt comfortable asking each other questions like, “Why do people tear down posters of Israeli hostages?” or “Why did your group blast disco music over our die-in?”

The last tea occasioned two tiny breakthroughs. One student suggested BU’s “Jewish trustees and donors” were blocking the student movement to divest from Israel. Really? Together we checked the website: In fact, two of our most senior trustees are Arab. The student was taken aback, changing her view without ever being accused of antisemitic bias; everyone learned something. Later, a Palestinian student asked a pro-Israel Jewish student what the word “Zionism” meant to him. He began defining it, starting with “the right of the Jews to have self-determination in their ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael.” As she looked confused, he blushed and stammered, using more Hebrew words she didn’t understand. Finally he stopped: “I’m sorry, I’ve never had to explain this before. I’ve always been in Jewish schools or camps or Hillel or places where everyone just understood what Zionism means.” The conversation moved on. The next day he and his roommate came to my office to worry that he had not “represented his side” well enough; we talked for an hour; I assured him that he represented only himself, a student trying to learn and figure out what he believed. I doubt his politics changed, but the moment of aporia made everyone more human. When CJFS organized a Freedom Seder the next April, both he and his roommate came.

Administrators have asked us how to scale up this effort. My long-term hope is to train students and colleagues to be peer educators in their own networks. But it would need to start small, with faculty and staff who trust each other. There are no shortcuts.

Policing Versus Conversing

Such efforts may soon be complicated by a harmful state-level effort by the politicians and legacy Jewish groups who make up the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism, which was established by the state legislature in 2024 and has been touted as a model for other states.

The Commission furthers a nationwide plan to advance a program of what is fair to describe as “Don’t Say Palestine” policies. It aligns with the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) state-by-state Jewish Policy Index, which calls for such commissions, and follows the exact playbook of the Israel advocacy group ICAN (the Israeli-American Civic Action Network), which aims to bring hyperlocal pro-Israel advocacy to cities, towns and school boards, especially in blue states. A Massachusetts state senator has praised ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt for encouraging the establishment of the commission; ICAN has boasted of its influence on the process.

One reason our group, Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff, has grown so fast is that everyone can see the Trump administration weaponizing antisemitism to attack universities and degrade civil rights. But another reason is anger at this state-level commission right here in our beloved Massachusetts, which has taken its eye off actual antisemitism and focused instead on policing discourse about Israel.

The Commission conflates Jewishness with Zionism, pushing the incoherent and dangerously vague International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and other sloppy ideas. But a deeper problem is its punitive approach, which focuses on policing a boundary of what is and isn’t antisemitic. In its 13 months of hearings, the Commission has modeled the punitive approach by attacking educators, publicly haranguing the (Jewish) president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) for two hours last February over some materials on an MTA website. In its final report, released in November, the Commission aims to institutionalize the punitive approach by creating a mechanism through which members of the public can report “problematic curriculum” in K-12 schools, as well as an anonymous reporting system for suspected acts of bias in K-12 schools “which may not rise to the level of a hate crime.” If adopted in any city or town, these measures will create an unpedagogical climate where teachers are afraid to teach and students hesitate to speak up in class: No one wants to be reported as an antisemite, even if the charge is disproven later. At best, such a climate will only drive anti-Jewish bias underground; at worst, because schoolchildren and college students are sensitive to hypocrisy, it will spark resentment and feed an anti-Jewish backlash. Several Concerned Jewish colleagues have written movingly on this commission’s dangers; CJFS has released a Shadow Report detailing its faulty assumptions and missteps.

The question is what to do instead. What is a humane, pedagogical response to rising tensions and the ambient normalization of bigotry in all forms? Again, learning can happen only in an environment of respect and trust.

Let’s take an example of casual classroom antisemitism. In March 2024, my Core Curriculum class was reading Foucault and discussing the Panopticon surveillance regime. When the talk turned to Internet culture and public discomfort with social media, one normally tuned-out student suddenly piped up: “The Jews want to ban TikTok. They’re against its pro-Palestine content.” The Jews. Because we all automatically love Israel and hate free speech? Luckily, I was the teacher; I could explain why it was incorrect to say some entity called “the Jews” either wanted or were able to control social media. I could cite a 2020 Pew research poll saying 41 percent of Jewish Americans are emotionally unattached or weakly attached to Israel. (Among secular Jews, that figure is 67 percent.) I could point out that the great majority of Israel’s U.S. supporters are not Jewish at all: One Evangelical lobby group, Christians United for Israel, claims ten million members, 2.5 million more than the total number of Jews in America. If this discussion happened today, I could cite a survey from The Washington Post finding that about 4 in 10 American Jews believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. And because I feel safe in my classroom—because my university does not endorse the conflation of Jewishness with Zionism—I could personally vouch that many Jewish people disavow nationalism altogether.

Now, let me share an example of misperceived classroom antisemitism from my 40-person general education course, War in Arabic Literature and Film. The course confronts some difficult material set in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine. We learn how war can harden sectarian identifications and gender roles. We read some American and Israeli authors as sidelights. We do a lot of social-emotional scaffolding and role-taking; students sit in small discussion groups, and I collect exit notes.

One student, a self-described “proud Zionist,” was a wonderful presence in the course’s fall 2024 first run. But one day she was crying after class, and her exit note said: “I loved this course and was about to recommend it to all my Jewish friends, but now I can’t, because I feel today’s discussion was antisemitic.” That day’s session had focused on Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, a stunning Israeli film about Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, paired with a student presentation on Edward Said’s classic essay, “Permission to Narrate.” (Incidentally, Waltz violates the IHRA definition of antisemitism, comparing the Sabra and Shatila massacre to Auschwitz.)

I caught up with my student and we talked for an hour in the street and in my office. Raised to sincerely experience criticism of Israel as antisemitic, she felt hurt by the student presentation. I did not try to tell her about Edward Said’s humanistic outlook, deep empathy for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, or anything else. Instead, trusting her seriousness and troubled by her distress, I suggested: What if she was upset not by the reading material, but by the frame? Would she have preferred me to assign the Said essay as a primary source to analyze rather than an authoritative secondary source for a presentation? She said yes, that would be different. I offered to revisit that part of my syllabus the following year, empowering students to talk back to Said if they wished. She contributed enthusiastically to class for the rest of the semester.

I am so grateful that this brave young woman shared her concerns with me rather than running to a dean, a “problematic curriculum” hotline, or a politico-religious organization, as students are being urged to do. By talking to each other honestly like intelligent adults, we both learned something.

These experiences have convinced me that policing “antisemitic” speech about Israel is not only unjust but deeply counterproductive: it breeds suspicion between well-meaning people, making it harder for us to unite when genuine neo-Nazism rears its head. You can’t stamp out antisemitism, fear of Palestinians, or any other prejudice; only slow heart-changing conversations can melt it away. So, to foster a campus climate of real inclusion, we need to convene and converse, not record and report. The details are tricky, but teachers and students can figure them out together. Our administrations and governments just have to give us the respect, job security and academic freedom to do so.