Author: intelNews

DEFENDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ● PROTECTING FACULTY RIGHTS

Attacks on DEI pose barriers to our ability to teach effectively

Colleagues,

This past week I spoke to The Post & Courier about the upcoming Day of Action for Higher Education, organized by AAUP. I told the reporter that, aside from limiting academic freedom, attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by our state’s Republican legislators are preventing us from being able to teach effectively. I brought up my field of work, Intelligence and Security Studies, where the lack of women in positions of leadership is dire. Women often approach problems differently and tend to notice details that others miss. They are also more security conscious, which is arguably why their contributions to the field are so effective. However, the DEI bill that the state is about to pass would prevent me from even talking about this subject, let alone seeking the next generation of national security leaders in my classes. Legislators who legislate without first consulting with the workers whose lives and careers will be affected by legislation is the opposite of democracy.

As a reminder, the South Carolina House of Representatives has passed Bill H.3927, which prohibits state agencies, including higher education institutions like CCU, from promoting DEI. The bill will head to the SC Senate before heading to the governor’s desk for signing. On the surface, the bill focuses on organizational policies and practices. However, it includes deliberately vague language by targeting “any programs promoting DEI.” This can be interpreted to mean academic programs, or even individual courses. Because of that, if this bill is enacted, it will be the most aggressive state-level anti-DEI law in the entire nation.

By restricting DEI-related content, the bill will almost certainly lead to increased state-level censorship in curricula, impeding academic freedom and the ability to address diverse perspectives in teaching and research.

If you are concerned about these developments, please join us on April 17 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. for an important Analysis and Strategy session. Details about the meeting will be shared with members via email. Please bring with you colleagues who care about these unprecedented attacks on higher education. As always, we are stronger together.

In Solidarity – Joseph Fitsanakis, PhD, President AAUP/AFT-CCU

Student visa dragnet reaches small colleges. In the past week, hundreds of international students discovered that their visas had been revoked. Inside Higher Ed has uncovered dozens of visa terminations that have not been reported elsewhere, many of them at regional public universities and small private colleges. That number is almost certainly a fraction of the total.

● Many colleges are reluctant to publicly confirm any student visa revocations, anxious to avoid attracting federal scrutiny and uncertain how to navigate an increasingly fraught legal gray zone.
● Yet more than a dozen officials at small colleges said a number of students had their visa status terminated in recent days but requested their institutions be kept anonymous to avoid retaliation and ensure students’ privacy.
● One college official said 25 students’ visas were revoked. Many of the small colleges struggling to respond to student visa revocations have come to rely on international tuition dollars to support flagging revenue from shrinking domestic enrollment or declines in state funding. If they lose more to student visa revocations—or experience a decline in international applicants due to the Trump administration’s policies—it could be catastrophic.

Conservatives seize the moment to remake higher ed. In a Heritage Foundation forum last week called “Reclaiming the Culture of American Higher Education,” the architects of Project 2025 offered insights into how conservative thinkers operating the levers of power at the Education Department view the current state of American higher education.

● The speakers posited attacks on DEI as being at the center of their efforts to “restructure” university governance to align with “conservative values.” These measures are part of a broader strategy to shape the ideological direction of academic institutions.

Arkansas governor says professors should be fired if they are ‘indoctrinating’ students. “Arkansas students go to our colleges and universities to be educated, not to be bombarded with anti-American, historically illiterate woke nonsense,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “We will make it so that any professor, tenured or not, that wastes time indoctrinating our students instead of educating them can be terminated from their job.”

● Sanders has tried this before. A federal judge last year ruled Arkansas couldn’t ban two teachers from discussing critical race theory in the classroom. An appeal of that preliminary decision is pending before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Embattled University of West Florida trustee resigns. Scott Yenor, chair of the Board of Trustees at the University of West Florida, who has a history of misogynistic comments, resigned last week..

● Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University, made national headlines in 2021 when he made misogynistic remarks at the National Conservatism Conference, taking aim at feminism and arguing that women should not pursue certain career fields, such as engineering. He also described “independent women” as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.”
● In a series of social media posts in February, Yenor seemed to imply that only straight white men should be in political leadership posts.
● Yenor and other conservative trustees appointed at UWF in January faced protests from the community. But it was ultimately pressure from state lawmakers over other remarks that seemed to push Yenor out.

DEFENDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ● PROTECTING FACULTY RIGHTS

South Carolina’s “Liberty Caucus” just declared war on universities.

Colleagues,

On Wednesday the South Carolina House of Representatives passed Bill H.3927, which prohibits state agencies, including higher education institutions like CCU, from establishing or maintaining offices that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and forbids mandatory DEI-related training. The bill also bans contracts with vendors that uphold DEI policies. Next, the bill will head to the SC Senate before heading to the governor’s desk for signing. It will almost certainly become a law.

On the surface, the bill focuses on organizational policies and practices. However, it includes deliberately vague language by targeting “any programs promoting DEI.” This can be interpreted to mean academic programs, or even individual courses. Because of that, if this bill is enacted, it will be the most aggressive state-level anti-DEi law in the entire nation.

In the past, the AAUP and individual colleges and universities in the state had been able to convince the so-called “Liberty Caucus” (the MAGA wing of the SC legislature) that interfering with in-class instruction would be detrimental to academic freedom and academic instruction more broadly. That is no longer the case.

Institutions like the Medical University of South Carolina, University of South Carolina, Clemson University, and The Citadel, expressed concerns about potential increased costs and operational impacts of the legislation. Sadly it doesn’t appear that CCU joined the list of advocates against the bill.

For us here at CCU, this legislation raises significant concerns. The prohibition of DEI initiatives will sabotage our efforts to foster inclusive and supportive educational environments, and will negatively affect faculty development programs and student engagement strategies alike. Additionally, by restricting DEI-related content, the bill will almost certainly lead to increased state-level censorship in curricula, impeding academic freedom and the ability to address diverse perspectives in teaching and research.

We have been fighting against legislation like this at the state level for nearly three years now. This development constitutes a significant victory for the enemies of academic freedom and constitutes a direct assault on our profession. It is a declaration of war against everything the AAUP/AFT stands for. And we will fight it!

In Solidarity – Joseph Fitsanakis, PhD, President AAUP/AFT-CCU

Trump and Musk set their sights on humanities cuts. Exactly how many staff members and grants will be slashed from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) remains unclear, but prior cuts at the Education Department and National Institutes of Health offer a grim forecast.

● Meanwhile, the AAUP has decried the attack on the NEH as an “attack on ordinary people and our ability to know and understand the world around us”.

AAUP warns university lawyers not to give out student/faculty names, nationalities. The AAUP is warning college and university lawyers not to provide the US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights the names and nationalities of students or faculty involved in alleged Title VI violations.

● The AAUP’s warning comes after The Washington Post reported last week that Education Department higher-ups directed OCR attorneys investigating universities’ responses to reports of antisemitism to “collect the names and nationalities of students who might have harassed Jewish students or faculty.” The department didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday..

As Universities yield to Trump, higher ed unions are fighting. From lawsuits to protests, labor organizations representing faculty, grad students and other workers are resisting. Discussions about what to do next continue.

● In response to federal pressures, some universities are yielding to the Trump administration’s demands to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and restrict campus protests to maintain crucial federal funding. This compliance has sparked significant opposition from higher education unions and faculty members.
● Academic labor organizations, including the AAUP and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, are actively mobilizing to resist these federal mandates. They argue that such directives threaten academic freedom and undermine institutional autonomy, leading to organized protests and legal challenges against the administration’s actions.

The confusion in higher ed right now ‘knows No bounds’. Higher education attorney Jim Newberry says his firm is struggling to find answers amid the federal policy uncertainty.

● Higher education institutions are experiencing significant confusion due to recent federal policy changes, including cuts to the Department of Education and the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. These abrupt shifts have left administrators and legal experts struggling to interpret and comply with new directives.
● Jim Newberry, a higher education attorney, describes the current situation as a “sketchy mosaic,” highlighting the challenges in navigating the evolving landscape. Institutions are concerned about the long-term implications of these policies on academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and the overall stability of the higher education sector.

DEFENDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ● PROTECTING FACULTY RIGHTS

We don’t just talk the talk. We walk the walk!

Colleagues,

Last week alone, the AAUP, along with allies, filed three lawsuits against the Trump administration.

● It sued the Trump administration on behalf of all AAUP members for illegally revoking $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University in an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and academic freedom. Along with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AAUP believes that the funding cuts and other demands, which undermine critical scientific and medical and suppress speech, are an unlawful attack on higher education and must be stopped.

● Meanwhile, the Middle East Studies Association and three AAUP chapters, as well as AAUP National, filed suit to protect free speech rights across colleges and universities from the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s immigration deportation policies.

● Lastly, along with the AFT, the AAUP and a coalition of educators, school districts, and unions, filed a legal action against the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education and mass firings that will decimate the crucial services that benefit every person residing in the US. This lawsuit was the first filed since President Trump’s executive order attempting to shutter the department.

Funds from members enable AAUP to file these lawsuits, which are meant to protect academic freedom and defend higher education. You can help by joining AAUP National and our local chapter here at CCU. To do that, please consult our chapter’s “Join AAUP” webpage. Email me if you have questions. The fight is just starting. Be part of it!

In Solidarity – Joseph Fitsanakis, PhD, President AAUP/AFT-CCU

The AAUP Podcast is back. The AAUP’s podcast, AAUP Presents, is back with a special episode focused on AAUP’s recent statement “Against Anticipatory Obedience.” The statement offers guidelines to AAUP chapters about how to respond to attacks on higher education like those being launched by the Trump administration and its rightwing allies.

● Henry Reichman, a professor emeritus of history at California State University–East Bay and one of the statement’s writers, walks listeners through the history of attacks on American higher education and the recommended actions in the face of such attacks.
● Part two of the podcast episode discusses the specific steps faculty can take to strengthen their university handbooks in order to safeguard academic rights and governance. The guests in part two are Mark Criley, a senior program officer in the Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance at the AAUP, and Monica Owens, a senior program officer and field services representative in the AAUP’s Department of Organizing.

Also listen to Academic Freedom on the Line. While you’re at it, lake a listen to this new limited podcast series hosted by the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF). CDAF serves as a resource and knowledge hub for those seeking to build a flourishing higher education system, rooted in institutional autonomy, workplace democracy, and freedom from coercion and external interference.

● The guests of the podcast are are center Director Isaac Kamola and CDAF fellows Tim Cain, Don Moynihan, and Vineeta Singh. Isaac Kamola is an associate professor of political science at Trinity College. He is also the founder of Faculty First Responders, a program that monitors rightwing attacks on academics and provides resources to help faculty members and administrators respond to manufactured outrage. Tim Cain is a professor in the University of Georgia’s Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education and associate editor for the Review of Higher Education. Don Moynihan is the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab.

University of Michigan shutters DEI office. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, whose efforts to promote diversity have long been considered among the nation’s most ambitious, is closing its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as its Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, university leaders announced on Thursday of this week.

● Since 2016, the University of Michigan university has invested nearly $250 million into DEI initiatives, leading to a 46% increase in first-generation students and a 30% rise in Pell Grant recipients. But, in response to Donald Trump’s executive orders and potential federal funding cuts, the university has announced the closure of its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion. Following the closure of the two offices, the university says it plans to reallocate resources to enhance financial aid, expand scholarships, and bolster mental health services, aiming to continue supporting diversity and inclusion through direct student assistance.

Why Dr. Jason Stanley, a scholar of fascism, is leaving Yale for Canada. Two months into Trump’s second term, Dr. Stanley has announced he has decided to leave Yale for the University of Toronto. He will follow two prominent colleagues, Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, both history professors, to Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

● Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University, was one of the most forceful voices in higher education opposing the first Trump administration. His book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, published in 2018, identified and analyzed 10 pillars of fascism. His most recent book is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. “History suggests that when the central government targets universities in ways we are now witnessing in the United States, it is a signal of encroaching authoritarianism,” he wrote in The Chronicle. “We would do well to take such signals both literally and seriously, if we are to preserve what history teaches is a bulwark against authoritarianism—a vibrant, robust, and independent university system.”

Rightwing attack on libraries continues. If you are interested in monitoring national and local efforts by rightwing zealots to censor and defund public libraries, please consult this PowerPoint presentation put together by AAUP/AFT-CCU executive committee member ‘A.’

● The presentation provides a comprehensive overview of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which we highlighted in our last issue. It also summarizes bill S.104, which is making the rounds in the South Carolina Senate. This bill threatens to defund every public library unless it certifies four times a year that it does “not offer any books or materials that appeal to the prurient interest of children under the age of seventeen in children, youth, or teen sections of libraries and are only made available with explicit parental consent”. It also touches on bill H.4059, which requires every school district to set up a Material Review Committee to review book challenges.

DEFENDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY ● PROTECTING FACULTY RIGHTS

This is not just another attack on universities. It is an attack on free thought.

Colleagues,

If you want to know what is coming our way, look no further than the University of Virginia. On March 7, the UVa Board of Visitors voted unanimously to dissolve UVa’s Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Center for Community Partnerships in response to a White House executive order directing schools that receive federal funding to end DEI programs. One of the Board’s leading members, Bert Ellis said: “This board unanimously voted to rip out the entire DEI infrastructure and everybody who works in the DEI infrastructure. Every aspect of DEI is to be ripped out, shredded and terminated.” Read more below.

In a recent editorial in The New York Times, Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review and a professor in the English department at Yale University, dismisses the view that what we are witnessing is just another attack on higher education by conservatives. She argues that “what we are witnessing is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist” in the United States. O’Rourke’s article is below.

There is no question we are witnessing history being made, in the worst way possible. It is a dark, dystopic, and dangerous turn for America and the world. Please don’t sit on the sidelines while all this is happening around us. Join us. If we are going to go down, at least let’s go down fighting.

In Solidarity – Joseph Fitsanakis, PhD, President AAUP/AFT-CCU

Accreditation Is Trump’s ‘Secret Weapon’. This article by Greg D. Pillar (an associate provost) and Laurie Shanderson (an accreditation specialist) outlines three possible scenarios for how the Trump administration’s push to reshape accreditation could impact higher education.

● In the State-Controlled Model, the Department of Education could be eliminated, allowing states to create their own accrediting bodies with ideological priorities. This would result in a fragmented system where degrees from politically influenced accreditors may not be recognized by employers or other institutions, leading to declining academic quality and public trust.
● In the Politicized Accreditation scenario, the federal government could introduce conservative-aligned accrediting agencies, pressuring traditional accreditors to conform or risk losing federal recognition. Institutions that refuse to switch may face funding penalties, creating a divided system where accreditation decisions are driven by ideology rather than academic quality.
● The Higher-Ed Divide scenario envisions elite institutions retaining accreditation through traditional agencies while regional and smaller colleges are forced into alternative accreditors with less credibility. This would deepen socioeconomic disparities, limiting students’ ability to transfer, pursue graduate education, or secure competitive jobs, effectively stratifying higher education.

Congress Eyes More Control Over Colleges. Over the course of its first 75 days, the 119th Congress introduced more than 30 pieces of legislation concerning higher education—more than half of which came from members of the GOP. Taken together, the proposals offer a sketch of the Republican agenda to crack down on colleges.

● Given the emphasis on higher education in this session of Congress and the stakes for colleges, Inside Higher Ed is tracking higher-ed related bills. The searchable database currently includes 31 bills introduced since January.
● Combined, the proposed legislation and potential for sweeping changes could lead to an unprecedented amount of federal focus on higher ed that college and university advocates say could heavily discourage international enrollment, indirectly increase the cost of attendance and cause a chilling effect on campus free speech.

This is the End of the University as We Know It. Writing in The New York Times, Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review and a professor in the English department at Yale University, argues that “what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist” in the United States.

● According to O’Rourke, historical conservative distrust of academia has escalated into a direct assault. the Trump administration’s actions against universities represent an unprecedented attack on academic freedom. The goal appears to be to instill fear in universities, forcing them to comply with ideological shifts. The administration’s actions echo authoritarian strategies, compelling universities to self-censor. While academia has faced previous political pressures, this moment is unique in its ambition to dismantle the university system itself. The consequences could be long-lasting, eroding both America’s intellectual foundations and its global standing.

White House launches assault on federal agency for America’s libraries. An executive order issued by the Trump administration on March 14 calls for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the nation’s only federal agency for America’s libraries. The American Library Association (ALA) has issued a statement against this vile action.

● “As seedbeds of literacy and innovation, our nation’s 125,000 public, school, academic and special libraries deserve more, not less support. ALA implores President Trump to reconsider this short-sighted decision. And we call on all Americans who value reading, learning, and enrichment to reach out to their elected leaders and Show Up For Our Libraries at library and school meetings, town halls, and everywhere decisions are made about libraries.“

‘Every aspect of DEI is to be ripped out,’ UVa official says. The University of Virginia has begun to completely dismantle all DEI initiatives across its 12 schools and multiple departments. This appears to be led by Bert Ellis, who sits on UVa’s governing Board of Visitors and has been a vocal critic of DEI in higher education.

● The UVa Board of Visitors voted unanimously March 7 to dissolve UVa’s Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Center for Community Partnerships in response to a White House executive order directing schools that receive federal funding to end DEI programs. “This board unanimously voted to rip out the entire DEI infrastructure and everybody who works in the DEI infrastructure,” said Ellis. “Every aspect of DEI is to be ripped out, shredded and terminated.”