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higher education
The Other Side of Opportunity: What Immigrants Contribute to US Institutions
We often talk about immigrants as beneficiaries of American opportunity. But in higher education, healthcare, research and beyond, immigrants are also architects of institutional improvement.
Feb 27, 2026
The US Department of Education recently withdrew its unlawful directive that would have restricted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools and universities nationwide. The guidance was framed as an attempt to enforce “neutrality” in education. In practice, it would have narrowed how institutions identify and address inequity, discouraging efforts to create learning environments that reflect the realities of an increasingly global student population.
That national debate can feel abstract, just another skirmish in a broader culture war over higher education. But equity is not abstract. It lives in the quiet mechanics of institutions: who gets seen, who gets filtered out, and which barriers are treated as incidental rather than structural. I am reminded of this not by a court ruling or federal directive, but in the ordinary work of teaching and mentoring students from around the world as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It shows up during office hours, committee meetings, and the quiet moments when institutional rules do their work.
Americans are fluent in a familiar story about immigration: Immigrants come to the United States for opportunity—better education, better jobs, better lives. That story is not wrong. But it is incomplete. What is talked about far less is how immigrants improve the institutions they enter, often by exposing the limits of systems that were never designed with them in mind.
Case in point: Like many graduate programs, ours used procedures that filtered out applicants who had not paid an application fee before faculty review. When they failed to pay, I was never supposed to see their application. The fee, common by US standards, was prohibitively expensive in some local currencies. Until I learned about that procedure, I hadn’t fully appreciated how many judgments about who “belongs” in graduate school happen long before any evaluation of research potential or intellectual fit. Once I understood the implications of that policy, I advocated to have it amended, and a student I would never have otherwise met was later admitted and enrolled.
The real work of equity is not expanding opportunity within unchanged systems but interrogating the systems themselves—especially when those systems quietly reward conformity.
That experience crystallized something for me. The student’s presence highlighted how even well-intentioned programs can struggle to value ways of thinking they were never designed to account for. The student, meanwhile, navigated those gaps with a practicality that exposed where the system itself needed adjustment.
The same design logic operates across American institutions that confuse neutrality with fairness. Even institutions that are equity forward, including my own, must navigate a shifting and often constraining federal landscape, making progress real, but necessarily incomplete.
This kind of exclusion is not unique to admissions policies. Across higher education, international students routinely navigate US systems calibrated to financial, cultural, and administrative norms that quietly penalize difference. More than 1 million international students are enrolled in US colleges and universities, and an analysis from the Association of American Universities estimates that international students contribute nearly $44 billion to the US economy annually. Yet research consistently shows that international students experience higher levels of social isolation than their domestic peers.
From a public health perspective, these barriers are not incidental—they are risk factors that function as chronic stressors. Uncertainty around visas, financial precarity, cultural dislocation, and exclusionary policies shape mental health and academic persistence long before a student ever sets foot on campus. Research shows that rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality among international students have risen sharply over the past decade, even as access to culturally responsive mental health services remains uneven.
In public health, we name these design failures plainly: policy choices—not personal deficits. Improving the experience of international students is less about individual support than about whether institutions are willing to change the conditions they create.
What struck me most, though, was not my student’s resilience in the face of these barriers, but what institutions gain when those barriers are confronted. They were adept at finding workarounds where institutions offered only walls—and unapologetic about pointing out the walls. That resourcefulness did not just help them navigate the system; it revealed where the system itself needed to change.
The real work of equity is not expanding opportunity within unchanged systems but interrogating the systems themselves—especially when those systems quietly reward conformity.
We often talk about immigrants as beneficiaries of American opportunity. But in higher education, healthcare, research and beyond, immigrants are also architects of institutional improvement. They expose inefficiencies, challenge inherited assumptions, and force clarity around what we actually mean by merit.
Immigrants make up a disproportionate share of the US healthcare workforce, including physicians, researchers, and direct-care providers—roles that are essential as the country grapples with workforce shortages and widening health inequities.
Opportunity is not a one-way transaction. Institutions that welcome immigrants while resisting the changes their presence demands are not neutral—they are extractive.
Some people change institutions not by asking for permission, but by refusing explanations that don’t make sense. The question isn’t whether immigrants benefit from coming to the United States—the evidence is clear. The more uncomfortable and more important question is whether institutions are willing to reckon with how much they benefit from immigrants, and whether they are prepared to change to welcome them.
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Trump Robs From the Futures of Young People to Pad the Futures of Billionaires
The GOP's tax-and-spending bill includes an overhaul of critical federal student aid programs that will destroy many young people’s dreams of pursuing higher education—again, all to finance tax breaks for corporations and the rich.
Feb 26, 2026
President Donald Trump has declared that he has “won affordability.” In his State of the Union speech, he even bragged that he’s bringing costs “way down on healthcare and everything else.“
In reality, the Trump administration is making it much harder for working families to both meet their daily needs—and to fulfill their long-term dreams of higher education.
The Republican tax-and-spending plan adopted last year—the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”—includes huge tax giveaways to the rich, paid for with deep cuts to programs for working people. The Congressional Budget Office expects 7.5 million Americans to lose their Medicaid insurance and 4 million to lose some or all of their SNAP food aid benefits.
Slashing these public assistance programs will make it even harder for working families to save money for college. In fact, the same tax law also includes an overhaul of critical federal student aid programs that will destroy many young people’s dreams of pursuing higher education—again, all to finance tax breaks for corporations and the rich.
President Trump didn’t even mention student aid in his State of the Union address. But this issue is central to the health of our union. It’s about whether we as a nation believe working families deserve opportunity—or just survival.
This problem is not abstract to me. It’s personal. I am a first-generation college student and now a doctoral student. My hard-working Black family and my broader community poured everything they had into me because they believed—against every obstacle—that education could be my ladder up.
Federal student aid programs like Pell Grants and the Grad Plus subsidized loan program helped me as I struggled up that ladder. It still wasn’t easy. I worked two part-time jobs and still could barely make ends meet. But without that help, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Now, the aid programs that I’ve depended on are under attack. Students are facing tighter borrowing limits and dramatically reduced repayment options, making it even more difficult to get out from under heavy debts. Under the new borrowing caps, the government plans to slash about $44 billion in aid over the next 10 years, affecting roughly 25% to 40% of graduate borrowers.
Making matters worse, the Pell Grant program, which helps more than 6 million low-income students a year pay for college, is facing a potential shortfall crisis. If Congress doesn’t put in new funds, the program’s deficit will skyrocket to $11.5 billion in 2027, and those grants could very well dry up.
Across the country, families who believed education was their way forward are feeling their dreams fade away. I’ve spoken to aspiring and current graduate students who are unsure if staying in school is still an option. I’ve talked to borrowers who fear they will live the rest of their lives crushed by student debt and parents who are worried they’ll never be able to afford to send their babies to college.
President Trump didn’t even mention student aid in his State of the Union address. But this issue is central to the health of our union. It’s about whether we as a nation believe working families deserve opportunity—or just survival. It’s about whether we as a nation value the futures of our young people—or only the futures of billionaires.
Higher education was supposed to be the great equalizer. But if we continue to shortchange student aid, working families will see it as either a hopeless fantasy or a life-long debt sentence.
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The Fight for Academic Freedom Is a Fight for Justice
The right-wing effort to infringe on students' right to learn is an effort to hobble higher education as a force for creating a more just society.
Nov 27, 2025
We who believe in the value of academic freedom have been disheartened these past two years as quisling administrators at some of America’s once-great universities have caved to political pressure to quash protests, cancel courses, and limit professorial speech that is critical of inequalities in US society and US foreign policy.
These attacks on academic freedom are usually framed as threats to the freedom of faculty to conduct research, publish, speak, and teach, based on disciplinary expertise, without outside political interference. This portrayal of the threat, as true as it is, misses a key point: Also under attack are students’ rights to learn. The right-wing effort to infringe these rights is an effort to hobble higher education as a force for creating a more just society.
Long ago, as an undergrad in an introduction to physical anthropology course, I played a game we called stump the prof. It wasn’t a real game; it was just a few of us trying to liven things up by asking questions we thought would be hard or impossible to answer. The prof was young and upbeat, as I recall, and never seemed put out by our antics, though he no doubt saw what we were doing. I think he liked the energy. One time I asked if apes had orgasms. That got people’s attention.
In that class, taught 50 years ago at a public university, we as students felt free to ask whatever occurred to us (within the bounds of physical anthropology, of course). Our exercise of that freedom is part of what made the class memorable. We weren’t just amusing ourselves or bugging the prof. It might sound self-congratulatory, given that our motives weren’t entirely noble, but we were wringing a lot more knowledge out of the course than we might otherwise have gotten.
The worry is that students will develop the ability to question received truths, see through the ideologies that justify social and economic inequalities, and resist manipulative political rhetoric that bypasses rationality.
What was true back then is true today: How much students learn in college depends on the opportunities they’re given. When a course is scratched from the catalog, students miss out on the knowledge that would have been available to them in that course. Students lose out, too, when certain concepts are proscribed, or when faculty self-censor for fear that discussing those concepts and related topics might get them in trouble. That’s why interference with the ability of faculty to teach what they deem important infringes on the right to learn.
Suppose, for example, that students wanted to ask how conventional gender expectations constrain our humanity. That’s a serious question deserving a serious answer. It’s a question that might be asked in a sociology or gender studies course. But if no such course exists, or if an instructor feels compelled to say, “Sorry, a group of politicians has made it too risky to talk about such stuff,” students are kept from learning. That’s a betrayal of what higher education has promised them: freedom to ask questions, freedom to pursue their curiosity, freedom to grow through the acquisition of vetted knowledge.
Right-wing ideological warriors and politicians would like to leave students in the dark about many other troublesome things: institutional racism, white supremacy, the exploitation of labor, the global havoc wreaked by US imperialism, the domination of government by corporate capitalists and the very wealthy. In relation to these matters, there is much that needs to be faced up to and talked about if we hope to understand how our society works and how to make it work better. And, yes, some courage is required.
Suppose students asked how it is possible for racial disparities—in income, wealth, education, health status—to persist even when most people overtly disavow racism. That’s another question that deserves an answer. It’s also a question that can be answered based on decades of social science research. Students shouldn’t be denied the opportunity to ask these questions and get answers because the topic makes some people uncomfortable. We should not let discomfort be weaponized to protect ignorance.
Students might also want to know how it’s possible for some people to enjoy privilege and not know it. Or how racism has historically supercharged capitalism. Again, these are all legitimate matters for university-level inquiry. But they’re also threatening to politicians who, on the one hand, serve economic elites and, on the other hand, exploit popular prejudices to mobilize voters. That’s the real reason for right-wing attacks on the disciplines and courses where students can learn about our society’s inequalities, past and present.
Critics of intellectual spaces in which students can learn to think critically about US society often claim they want to protect students from liberal indoctrination. But it’s not really indoctrination they worry about. The worry is that students will develop the ability to question received truths, see through the ideologies that justify social and economic inequalities, and resist manipulative political rhetoric that bypasses rationality. Education that imparts these abilities is indeed “liberal,” in the classical sense of being liberating. Which is the opposite of indoctrination.
Universities are dangerous places—or they can be, when faculty are free to pursue the truth even if the results disturb political and economic elites; when faculty are free to teach what they have found through their research and scholarship; and when students are free to ask tough, even off-the-wall, questions. But of course the danger is not to those who want to inquire critically about social inequalities, or employ concepts that might upend common sense, or to teach and learn about these matters. The danger is not to those who seek in good faith to fulfill the promises of higher education. It is to those whose power and privilege depend on keeping these promises from being met.
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Protesters at 100+ Campuses Tell Trump 'Hands Off Higher Ed!'
"We're not only out to defeat Trump, but to also win a vision for affordability, security, and freedom for our generation—both in higher education, and in our democracy," said one student organizer.
Nov 07, 2025
Students and professors at over 100 universities across the United States on Friday joined protests against President Donald Trump's sweeping assault on higher education, including a federal funding compact that critics call "extortion."
Crafted in part by billionaire financier Marc Rowan, Trump's Compact for Excellence in Higher Education was initially presented to a short list of prestigious schools but later offered to other institutions as a way to restore or gain priority access to federal funding.
The compact requires signatories to commit to "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas," while also targeting trans student-athletes and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
"The attacks on higher ed are attacks on truth, freedom, and our future. We're organizing to protect campuses as spaces for learning, not control—for liberation, not censorship," said Brianni Davillier, a student organizer with Public Citizen, which is among the advocacy groups and labor unions supporting the Students Rise Up movement behind Friday's demonstrations.
BREAKING: Students and faculty from across NYC have come together to tell Apollo CEO Marc Rowan that it’s going to be a lot harder than he thinks for billionaire greed to destroy higher education.
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— Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt.bsky.social) November 7, 2025 at 11:43 AM
At the Community College of Philadelphia, protesters stressed that "higher education research saves lives." Duke University demonstrators carried signs that called for protecting academic freedom and transgender students. Roughly 10 miles away, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they unfurled a banner that read, "Stand for Students | Reject Trump's Compact."
Professors from multiple schools came together for a rally at Central Connecticut State University, according to Connecticut Post.
"The compact would require universities submit to a system of government surveillance and policing meant to abolish departments that the government disapproves of, promote certain viewpoints over others, restrict the ability of university employees to express themselves on any major issue of the day," said James Bhandary-Alexander, a Yale Law School professor and member of the university's American Association of University Professors (AAUP) executive committee.
AAUP, also part of the coalition backing the protest movement, said on social media Friday: "Trump and Marc Rowan's loyalty oath compact is [trash]!! Out with billionaires and authoritarians in higher ed! Our universities belong to the students and higher ed workers!"
Protesters urged their school leaders to not only reject Trump's compact—which some universities have already publicly done—but also focus on other priorities of campus communities.
At the University of Kansas, provost Barbara Bichelmeyer confirmed last month to The University Daily Kansan that KU will not sign the compact. However, students still demonstrated on Friday.
"They did say 'no' but that's like the bare minimum," said Cameron Renne, a leader with the KU chapters of the Sunrise Movement and Young Democratic Socialists of America. "We're hoping to get the administration to hear us and at least try to cooperate with us on some of our demands."
According to The University Daily Kansan, "Renne said the groups are also pushing for divestment from fossil fuels, improvements in campus maintenance, and the removal of restrictions on gender ideology."
Some schools have declined to sign on to the compact but reached separate agreements with the Trump administration. As the Guardian reported Friday:
At Brown University in Rhode Island—one of the first institutions to reach a settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year—passersby were invited to endorse a banner listing a series of demands by dipping their hands in paint and leaving their print, while a group of faculty members nearby lectured about the history of autocracy.
"Trump came to our community thinking we could be bullied out of our freedom," said Simon Aron, a sophomore and co-president of Brown Rise Up. "He was wrong."
Brown isn't the only Ivy League school to strike a deal with Trump; so have Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, the alma mater of both Rowan and Trump. Cornell University followed suit on Friday amid nationwide demonstrations.
"November 7th is only the start," said Kaden Ouimet, another student organizer with Public Citizen. "We're building a movement of students, faculty, and campus workers to demand our colleges do not comply with the Trump regime, and its authoritarian campus compact."
"We know that to fully take on autocracy, we have to take on the material conditions that gave rise to it," the organizer added. "That is why we're not only out to defeat Trump, but to also win a vision for affordability, security, and freedom for our generation—both in higher education, and in our democracy."
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Cornell Becomes Latest University to Submit to Trump's 'Extortion' Over Student Protests
The government claimed that Cornell had violated civil rights law by allowing students to protest against Israel. Even though the agreement required the school to admit no wrongdoing, it still agreed to pay a $30 million fine.
Nov 07, 2025
Cornell University became the latest school to cave to demands from the Trump administration on Friday, inking a deal that would restore $250 million in unpaid research funds stripped by the federal government as part of its crusade against higher education and efforts to punish schools that allowed students to freely express pro-Palestine views.
Following a months-long investigation by the government for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Ivy League school agreed to pay a $30 million fine to the government, which claimed that Cornell had violated the law by not sufficiently cracking down on student protests against Israel's genocide in Gaza. The administration accused the school of failing “to protect Jewish students.”
In March, the Department of Education launched investigations into 60 major US universities, with Education Secretary Linda McMahon describing students' peaceful demonstrations against Israel that had swept campuses the previous year as "relentless antisemitic eruptions."
As The Guardian reported earlier this week, the civil rights investigation at Cornell had been spurred by a nonspecific, anonymous complaint that a professor “is supporting Hammas [sic] and their beliefs. He is literally brain washing students to hate and discriminate towards a certain religions [sic]–Jews." The complaint demanded that the professor be "black listed" from teaching.
Following this complaint, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights announced an investigation into the school for "failing to respond to incidents of harassment."
In a letter to the school community on Friday, Cornell's president, Michael Kotlikoff, said that the resolution made explicit that its agreement to pay out the lofty fine to the Trump administration was "not an admission of wrongdoing" by the university.
In addition to paying the fine, the school also had to set aside another $30 million to invest in "research programs that will directly benefit US farmers through lower costs of production and enhanced efficiency.”
And while Kotlikoff said he would refuse a deal that allowed the government to “dictate our institution’s policies,” the agreement requires the school to comply with several of the Trump administration's ideological goals.
It agreed to restrict its use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and turn over data on the racial makeup of its student body to demonstrate that it is complying with the 2023 Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action. It also agreed to train staff using a Justice Department memo ordering colleges to abandon "transgender-friendly” policies.
Cornell also agreed to "conduct annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry." The school specifically agreed to query students about "whether they believe the changes Cornell has made since October of 2023," when Israel launched a two-year genocide in response to Hamas attack, "have benefited the Cornell community."
The Trump administration has notably ordered schools to abide by a wide-ranging definition of "antisemitism" that not only punishes displays of bigotry against Jewish people, but also criticisms of Israel's government and policies.
Cornell also agreed to seek out “experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing,” suggesting that the school will be expected to discipline and investigate pro-Palestinian organizations on campus, which the administration has baselessly accused of "material support" for terrorism.
Cornell's agreement with the administration comes as students at more than 100 campuses across the country have launched demonstrations against Trump's efforts to coerce schools into signing his “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” in exchange for priority federal funding and other “positive benefits.” Critics have described it as a "loyalty oath" and an "extortion agreement."
Though several schools have declined to sign onto the compact, Cornell is not the first school to bend to the Trump administration's demands to restart the flow of federal funding: Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia have all cut similar deals.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has argued that there was little basis for Cornell to be fined for civil rights violations.
"If the Trump administration had evidence that Cornell systemically discriminated against Jewish students in violation of Title VI, it wouldn't let the university off the hook for a $30 million investment in research about AI, robotics, and farming," Jaffer said. "But, of course, there's no such evidence. The settlement only confirms what we already knew—that the Trump administration's Title VI allegations were baseless and made in bad faith."
"That doesn't mean there weren't antisemitic incidents on Cornell's campus. There were. But there's just no support for the notion that Cornell or other major American universities were indifferent to antisemitism," he continued. "The problem wasn't that universities were indifferent to antisemitism, but that they allowed trustees, advocacy groups, demagogues, etc. to pressure them into treating as 'antisemitism' all kinds of political expression and advocacy that was entirely legitimate."
A report from the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which analyzed discrimination complaints sent to the Civil Rights Office found that "all but one of the 102 antisemitism complaint letters we have analyzed focus on speech critical of Israel; of these, 79% contain allegations of antisemitism that simply describe criticisms of Israel or Zionism with no reference to Jews or Judaism; at least 50% of complaints consist solely of such criticism."
Though the payout was far less than the $200 million settlement Columbia agreed to pay earlier this year, Spencer Beswick, a postdoctoral associate at Cornell's Humanities Scholars Program, wrote on social media that his university was guilty of "capitulation to extortion."
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Most Campus 'Antisemitism' Probes Target Criticism of Israel, Not Anti-Jewish Hate: Report
The report shows how a landmark civil rights law "is being cynically misused to squash political dissent and speech that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians," said one AAUP leader.
Nov 06, 2025
Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, pro-Israel and far-right advocacy groups have driven a surge of federal civil rights investigations conflating true antisemitism with university professors and students' criticism of the US-backed Israeli government and its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
That's according to Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine, a report published this week by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
"Our members, because of their expertise on the region, have long borne the brunt of allegations that falsely equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism," MESA president Aslı Bâli said in a statement. "Complaints like these penalize scholars for teaching basic facts about the region."
The report begins: "Over the past two years, the United States government has taken unprecedented steps to suppress campus speech—including scholarship, advocacy, and protest—opposing the state of Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. This crackdown has paved the way for profound transformations in US colleges and universities."
"A long-standing 'Palestine exception' to the First Amendment now threatens to give way to a new reality: Palestine is less an exception to academic freedom than it is a pretext for erasing the norm altogether, as part of an authoritarian assault on the autonomy of higher education and on the very idea of racial and gender equity," the document warns.
The analysis comes as President Donald Trump continues his sweeping attack, aiming to shut down the Department of Education, deport foreign students critical of Israel, and bully campus leaders into signing an "extortion agreement" for federal funding.
"In effect, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is no longer being used to address racial discrimination in higher education," Bâli told the Guardian, which first reported on the findings. "Instead, Title VI has been repurposed as part of the administration's broader effort to remake higher education in line with its right-wing political and cultural agenda."
AAUP and MESA found that "more investigations were opened in the last two months of 2023 (25) than in all previous years combined (24). Investigations broke record numbers in 2024 (39) and are on track to do so again in 2025 (38, as of September 30)."
"All but one of the 102 antisemitism complaint letters we have analyzed focus on speech critical of Israel; of these, 79% contain allegations of antisemitism that simply describe criticisms of Israel or Zionism with no reference to Jews or Judaism; at least 50% of complaints consist solely of such criticism," the document states.
The report highlights that "the Biden administration opened more antisemitism probes against colleges and universities (65) than for all other types of racial harassment combined (38)," and "the Trump administration appears to have halted racial harassment investigations altogether."
The federal probes "are producing a new system of government surveillance and monitoring of campus speech," the report notes, with over 20 schools agreeing to share internal data on discrimination complaints with the government.
Examining Trump's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, the researchers found that the Department of Education "has continued to open very high numbers of antisemitism probes even as its staff has been slashed by the Trump administration," and "in its high-profile campaigns against prestigious universities, the task force has systematically ignored the procedural requirements of Title VI, unlawfully cutting off vast sums of funding before any meaningful investigation, let alone findings."
For at least 78% of the complaints examined by AAUP and MESA, pro-Israel and right-wing advocacy organizations—including those without any campus presence—served as complainants or represented them. Such groups have also been involved with private lawsuits intended to redefine antisemitism as including criticism of Israel and restrict such criticism at universities.
"Antisemitism lawsuits surged after October 7, 2023 (two filed before that date, 26 since)," according to the analysis. "No court has yet made a final judgment in favor of plaintiffs. In nine cases, Title VI claims have been dismissed, including on free speech grounds; nine lawsuits have settled, some of which resulted in even more draconian policy changes on campuses than government investigations."
AAUP general counsel Veena Dubal said that "the findings in this report underscore how the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which passed in response to years of nonviolent civil disobedience against racial injustice—is being cynically misused to squash political dissent and speech that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians."
"This is a perverse outcome," Dubal declared, as AAUP prepares for Friday protests pressuring leaders at over 100 institutions to reject the president's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" and make schooling more affordable.
As AAUP president Todd Wolfson said in a statement about the day of action earlier this week, "From attacks on academic freedom in the classroom to the defunding of lifesaving scientific research to surveilling and arresting peaceful student protesters, Trump's higher education policies have been catastrophic for our communities and our democracy."
"We're excited to help build a coalition of students and workers united in fighting back for a higher education system that is accessible and affordable for all and serves the common good," he added. Other supporting groups include Campus Climate Network, College Democrats of America, Gen-Z for Change, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace, March for Our Lives, and Sunrise Movement.
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100+ US Campus Protests to Call Out Trump Attacks and Unaffordable Education
"Trump's higher education policies have been catastrophic for our communities and our democracy," said one union leader as the president pressures universities to sign a "loyalty oath."
Nov 04, 2025
Aiming to "organize millions of students to disrupt business as usual and force our schools and our political system to finally work for us," progressive groups and labor unions are planning a nationwide day of coordinated protests at over 100 US campuses on Friday, November 7.
Planned by Students Rise Up, in coordination with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Higher Education Labor United (HELU), the upcoming demonstrations "will be the first in a series of nationwide days of protests leading up to student strikes and worker actions on May Day 2026," according to organizers.
In addition to the unions, groups backing the effort include Campus Climate Network, College Democrats of America, Gen-Z for Change, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace, March for Our Lives, and Sunrise Movement, whose executive director, Aru Shiney-Ajay, stressed in a Tuesday statement that "everyone deserves an accessible, affordable, and quality education."
"Everyone deserves to be safe at school—no matter their race, gender, or immigration status," Shiney-Ajay said. "Everyone deserves the freedom to peacefully protest. We're joining with worker allies to demand our administrations and politicians start fighting for an education system that works for our generation."
We demand an end to student debt! We're disrupting business as usual on Nov 7 to demand college affordability, the freedom to teach & learn, and safety for the most vulnerable on our campuses. Signs made by Josh MacPhee 🔥 grab one when you protest this Friday! #DefendHigherEd#EndStudentDebt
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— AAUP (@aaup.org) November 4, 2025 at 11:14 AM
The plans for the protests come as campus administrations are considering President Donald Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," which schools can sign for priority access to federal funding and other "positive benefits." Critics have condemned it as "authoritarian" and an "extortion agreement," and some top universities have declined to sign on.
Alicia Colomer, managing director at Campus Climate Network, said Tuesday that "young people are making their message very clear: Universities should be a place of learning, not propaganda machines. That's why students, workers, and alumni around the country are taking action."
As part of Friday's protests, organizers said, participants will urge campus leaders to reject Trump's "loyalty oath" and, more broadly, "commit to freedom of expression, college for all, and security for all at school."
Asked to comment on the day of action, Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the US Department of Education—which initially offered the compact to a short list of prestigious universities—repeated previous statements, telling Inside Higher Ed that "the Trump administration is achieving reforms on higher education campuses that conservatives have dreamed about for 50 years."
"Institutions are once again committed to enforcing federal civil rights laws consistently, they are rooting out DEI and unconstitutional race preferences, and they are acknowledging sex as a biological reality in sports and intimate spaces," Biedermann added, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Meanwhile, AAUP president Todd Wolfson put out a statement taking aim at the president's assault on higher education.
"From attacks on academic freedom in the classroom to the defunding of lifesaving scientific research to surveilling and arresting peaceful student protesters, Trump's higher education policies have been catastrophic for our communities and our democracy," he said. "We're excited to help build a coalition of students and workers united in fighting back for a higher education system that is accessible and affordable for all and serves the common good."
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Now Is the Time to Show Our Collective Power
Let’s stand together and go on the offensive to create a social democratic vision for higher education and other universal public goods now under assault by Trump and his right-wing allies.
Nov 03, 2025
There is no question that the contemporary system of higher education in the United States was facing several crises (commodification of education, access and affordability, faculty precarity, violations of academic freedom, the “rationality crisis”, administrative bloat, etc.—what we generally refer to as the neoliberalization and corporatization of education) before the Trump administration began its assault on colleges and universities in 2025. Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) related to education have magnified these crises. At the very least, he has forced those of us working in higher education to seriously reflect on what needs fixing. I point to these EOs as an illustration of intent to destroy colleges and universities as public goods by his administration, supporters, and surrogates, including Chris Rufo and Marc Rowan, two of the most notable agents who are not shy about using the authoritarian playbook. They are deliberately pushing the limits of legal and constitutional mores and precedents to achieve their goals. This should not be a controversial interpretation of intent, considering how transparent the expression of the authoritarian turn has been and continues to be when it comes to higher education and, well, everything else.
Their goal, and the goal of at least some elements of the capitalist class, is to dismantle the administrative state as part of the long-running backlash against FDRs New Deal programs that were rooted in the progressive ethos that government should directly serve the needs of the people. The construction of an enemy is crucial in executing the backlash. Today, the targets are, though not exclusively, teachers and what they do in the classroom, college and university professors, immigrants, transgender people, and the working class writ-large. Collectively, it’s time for faculty to show their power, moving beyond the lines of defense they have already established, creating networks of solidarity across industrial sectors, all while conducting political education about how the system works and who benefits under capitalism. It’s time we start to engage in discussing different tactics and overall strategies that include, but are not limited to, building the capacity for strike actions in collaboration with unions nationwide.
The good news, and perhaps to this end, is that Trump’s attacks have galvanized organized opposition from within higher education institutions. A bevy of coalitions led by faculty have taken the lead in pushing back against not only the Trump administration’s Education Department, but also against internal, administrative pressure to comply. The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban university system in the United States, led by faculty, has evolved to become one of the leaders in the national call for mutual academic defense compacts across the US. Galvanized by recent attacks on academic freedom and the weaponization of antisemitism by political and administrative actors, the CUNY Alliance to Defend Higher Education is one of the many initiatives that have popped up across the country.
These coalitions have developed under the strain of what feels like daily attacks against the mission of higher education and all its community members, particularly the most vulnerable. This opposition is grounded in the idea that faculty governance should dictate how colleges and universities operate as institutions of higher education focused on the pursuit of truth in the interest of the public good.
Mobilizing the working class means promoting a long-term, positive vision for public higher education.
At the core of this idea is the material reality that faculty, or faculty labor power, as Clyde W. Barrow has explained, is the sole "producer of value": without faculty, there are no students, no knowledge being produced and taught, therefore no colleges and universities. Historically, administrators—from Board of Trustees, Presidents, Vice Presidents, Provosts, and Deans, what I call the Administrative Elite—are called upon to play a supportive role in the governance of colleges and universities. The employment relation between administrators and faculty is fundamentally a managerial one, where administrative dictates carry the implicit and at times explicit weight of exerting discipline against the perceived violators of college rules, regardless of governance structures and safeguards. To be sure, there are more guardrails against administrative overreach if faculty and staff are protected by a contractual bargaining agreement (CBA) backed by a strong union presence in the workplace. But as we have seen at CUNY and elsewhere, even a CBA cannot stop administrators from acting with McCarthyite impunity.
Colleges and universities, whether public or private, are creatures of the state. Either through regulatory means executed by the state or federal governments or both, through accreditation, or through fiscal dependency, institutions of higher education are subject to the political-economic imperatives of elected politicians and wealthy donors. In turn, they communicate their interests through formal and informal channels directly to boards of trustees, chancelleries, and college and university presidents with the goal of influencing how faculty do our jobs, placing limits on the range of what they deem to be acceptable actions and behavior. To be sure, given the diverse nature of higher education institutions across the country, the Administrative Elite will impose limits to the extent that they are called upon to do so by their respective institutional decision-making hierarchy. While there are well-meaning administrators in positions of power, some who intentionally rise through the ranks of faculty, they are nevertheless subject to the demands placed on them within this hierarchy, oftentimes placing them at odds with competing interests between the state government, politically motivated dictates, and students and faculty, particularly during moments of crisis. We cannot assume that this Administrative Elite will side with faculty and student interests if threats against their institutions are framed as existential. And we cannot convince them to do the “right thing” if their overall material interests are aligned with the dominant political and managerial hierarchy that rules over them.
This brings us to the question of faculty governance. The modern system of faculty self-governance, which dates back to the rise of the modern university in the early 20th century, rests on the assumption that faculty occupy a distinct and “professional” status in American society as intellectuals. The rise of the modern university also coincides with the rise of “corporate liberalism”, within the capitalist state, and the emergence of the corporate university. Historically, the corporate university evolved to adopt the logic and methods of the market as guiding principles which, as Larry G. Gerber has explained, deprofessionalizes and undermines faculty governance.
Since the 1970s, one manifestation of the “market model” that Gerber identifies is the increasing number of precarious employment in the form of “contingent” faculty and the simultaneous decrease in the number of tenure-track faculty lines at colleges and universities. Contingency in employment is one step towards deprofessionalization. The advantages of having a deprofessionalized workforce, as far as managers are concerned, is that workers become vulnerable and more easily subject to employer disciplinary actions. In this case, it also leads to weak faculty governance structures because faculty are already bursting under the full weight of teaching loads, pressure to research and publish, and serve in various committees, leaving no time to participate extensively in governance structures. Some faculty may continue to adjust to the constant juggling of work demands placed on them, while others tune out, keep their heads down, and carry on.
From a broader, social, political, and economic perspective, some faculty may carry on their work under the belief that they are professionals, distinct and separate from other workers who contribute their labor to maintain our workplaces in order. Here, for example, I am thinking of janitorial staff, clerical workers, and safety and security staff. One of the most successful accomplishments of the neoliberalization of the university system is getting us to believe that we are all individuals, working for our own benefit, separate and apart from other workers in a system that commodifies our experience. In other words, the logic of the market obliterates the social relations necessary to produce knowledge. It also produces the belief that as professionals, faculty, in whatever rank, are part of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), defined by Barbara and John Ehrenreich in 1977 as “salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor may be described broadly as the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations.”
Christopher Newfield recently captured the consequences of this neoliberalization process. Referring to the current political climate, he says:
Academics are not well prepared for this moment. This was unfortunately foretold by the Ehrenreich prophecy: the PMC was too subservient to capital and its representatives to build an independent power base, in the teeth of disapproval. Not a class but a contradictory class position, academics have a diverse membership that lacked a class interest in aligning with the noncollege working class, in spite of such an interest held by many individual members. They also failed to build organizational power for themselves; instead, they bonded with senior managers and their superiors through academic senates and status-based private bargains, in a stable PMC-capital overlap of interests.
Newfield suggest that,
[W]e must work step by step, in an organizational way, toward direct control of universities. If we do, we’ll be of real use to our knowledge allies—government scientists,public health advocates, local news journalists, community researchers, theater company directors, et al.—in building the self-governing knowledge systems we need to block authoritarian implosion and get a future we want.
As uncomfortable as it may make some individuals who identify and occupy the class position of the PMC, one conclusion that I suggest we draw from Newfield’s observation and analysis is that we must engage in anticapitalist politics within the university and, by extension, at the state level. There’s a reason why Trump deemed this word to be a threat to national security, conflating it with the word anti-fascist.
As the Trump administration continues to exert pressure using the full weight of the federal government, the Justice Department, and compliant Administrative Elites, we must move forward with a clear agenda for improving the system of higher education we have inherited. And I would argue that we must do so in collaboration with labor across different sectors and with the full acknowledgement that education in general and higher education in particular are public goods worth preserving and expanding. We must create the conditions so that the cost of attacking our communities is so high that they’ll at least think twice before doing so. It’s time for New York City labor unions, for example, to exercise their power and work strategically to overcome the legal and ideological limitations that have held them back for decades. For nearly 60 years, as New York State employees, we are prohibited from striking. It’s time we challenge the Taylor Law, which has been hindering our ability to mobilize New York’s working class, and reflect on any lessons to be learned from the 2005 TWU strike.
Mobilizing the working class means promoting a long-term, positive vision for public higher education. At CUNY, that positive vision should include the democratization of the governance structures and decision-making processes, allowing for community, faculty, and student representation and voting power within the Board of Trustees (BoT). As the institution’s policy-making body, CUNY’s BoT is made up of 17 members, with the vast majority being political appointees (ten appointed by the Governor and five by the Mayor), and only two representing the direct interests of faculty and students (the Chairperson of the University Faculty Senate and the Chairperson of the University Student Senate). Maybe it is time to reflect on and rethink what faculty governance means, in practice, under the existing neoliberal regime where administrators have so much power over university governance.
As part of a democratic and representative discussion, a key question to be addressed is what would a decommodified version of education look like? How can we decouple a college credential from the process of teaching and learning that can inspire students to view a diploma as more than a ticket into the labor market? A crucial component of this positive vision would also include providing full, government-funded free tuition for students and the infrastructure necessary to support their education. The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing faculty and staff at CUNY, has already taken steps towards achieving this vision.
In the short term, we are bracing ourselves for the Trump show of force to come down on the city, as he has promised, if Zoran Mamdani is elected as our new Mayor in New York City. We need a strong coalition of groups to not only resist but to put forward a positive vision of the city we want. One of these coalitions is already taking shape aiming to “protect and prepare” for the onslaught that is sure to come.
Statements and resolutions are important, at the very least, to set the record straight about which side we are on and where we stand in a time of crisis. But they cannot replace organized, strategic actions that will have a positive impact on our workplaces and our communities. Moments of struggle can bring out the best, and worst, in people. We saw that during the Covid-19 pandemic. Let us not wait but be proactive in this fight. Let’s stand together and go on the offensive to create a social democratic vision for higher education that affirms the value of knowledge and truth-seeking for the benefit of the public good.Keep ReadingShow Less
How to Stop Tyrant Trump From Destroying Our Country
The institutional forces arrayed against Trump are not rising to the occasion to counter his fast-expanding fascist dictatorship.
Oct 26, 2025
In snarling defiance of the Constitution and federal laws, Tyrant Trump’s egomaniacal drive is destroying our country. He is tearing apart the social safety net, health and safety protections, the people’s access to economic justice, worker/union rights, and electoral standards. He is undermining the critical separation of powers and pushing the cowardly GOP Congress and the six GOP Supreme Court “Injustices” to enable his outlawry, corruption, and promote police state actions.
Exempted and rewarded are the giant corporations with massive tax breaks, weak law enforcement, and corporate welfare subsidies, bailouts, and de facto immunities for their corporate crimes. After all, President Donald Trump is first and foremost a gigantic self-enrichment machine, profiting from his shameless, leveraged use of the White House.
The institutional forces arrayed against Trump are not rising to the occasion to counter his fast-expanding fascist dictatorship. Trump has thrown so many devastating dictates against those who have historically protected our democracy that they have become punch-drunk.
Let’s do an inventory:
1. The first responders should be America’s lawyers and their bar associations. Do you hear much from them? The state bar associations don’t seem to be troubled by Trump’s jettisoning of the rule of law. The giant American Bar Association has filed just one lawsuit against the “US government, more than two dozen federal departments and agencies, and the heads of those departments and agencies, asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s ongoing unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms and to enjoin the government from enforcing the policy.” Otherwise, there has been no mobilization of some of the 1 million plus practicing lawyers to act on their professional duties as “officers of the court.” Too many corporate lawyers in their firms are doing just fine and are not willing to challenge the Trump attack on the rule of law.
2. Universities/colleges, former hotbeds of action on civil rights, environmental health, and opposition to illegal wars, are on the defensive, reeling from Trump’s extortionate bullying that threatens them with illegal cancellation of federal grants if they do not become vassals to his straitjacketed demands. Fortunately, nearly a dozen universities have rejected his outrageous commands, but they have not engaged in proactive opposition to Trump’s many cuts and closures of the federal government’s long-standing education programs.
3. The American labor movement, stripped of its protections by Trump’s takeover of the National Labor Relations Board, the Labor Department, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and unilateral cancellation of the collective bargaining, union agreements with federal workers (whom he fires en masse), is not tapping its potential to fight back. Granted, the federal workers’ union has filed lawsuits, with some temporary success. But there hasn’t been an organized Day of Labor protest with millions of workers on the streets and in front of the White House and Congress saying to Trump: “You’re Fired.” The bureaucrats running the AFL-CIO, one block from the White House, and its member unions are nowhere near that stage of robust urgency these times demand. Labor leaders’ sinecures and pay are still intact, compared to their anxious and vulnerable rank and file.
4. The organized religions are supposed to be the custodians of civilized norms that undergird our laws. The scriptures call for individual and social behavior that is under direct attack by the Trump Dump in Washington, DC and his obeisant Republican governors. Religious leaders have been eerily quiet, fearful of being drawn into the Trumpsters’ cruel and vicious blasts of internet threats and slander. Their organizations, like the National Council of Churches, are also kept on the sidelines by a vociferous evangelical Christian nationalist minority in their ranks. Their courageous roles on the ramparts in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights struggles are distant, and are not motivating a robust response to Trump’s attacks on morality and justice.
5. The country’s professionals are frightened by Trump’s assault on scientific programs (climate, weather, pandemic, environment, etc.) It is ignorant, callous, and unrelenting. It is as if Trump’s goal is to envelop America inside a 21st-century DARK AGES. Professionals are shocked at the lies, delusions, fantasies, and quackeries that he blasts from his ever-foulsome mouth. They watch powerlessly his dismantling of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Imagine, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research and analysis department is being closed.
Professional organizations are protesting with statements. They, however, need to put more muscle into their resistance to the Trump onslaught. Their best argument is that Trump is weakening our country’s national security by sabotaging our preparedness against pandemics, climate violence, and uncontrolled cybersecurity attacks, not to mention uncontrolled generative artificial intelligence dangers, which knowing critics have called the ultimate approaching omnicide. Professionals know how to dramatize these arguments.
6. The mass media has been attacked mercilessly by Trump, extortionately suing them, slandering them by name, expelling them from the White House press events, threatening their TV/radio licenses, and pending mergers. It used to be political suicide for politicians to be so brazenly trashing the media.
Reporters for the original content newspapers have been exposing Trump for years, daily and vibrantly. But their editors have not been keeping up with what is being reported with powerful editorials and op-eds calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump—the most impeachable president by far in American history. (See: Letter to President Trump—22 Impeachable Offenses) It doesn't help that Democratic leaders—Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY)—have told their flocks never to mention the word “impeachment.” The anemic Democratic Party is mocked inside Trump’s circle.
7. The civic community—the most fundamental bastion of democracy—is ahead of its elected politicians. This has been demonstrated by packed town meetings demanding aggressive accountability for our nation's Chief OUTLAW. (See: my book Civic Self-Respect) Organized demonstrations have been growing and rising. On October 18, 7 million demonstrators in over 2,700 locations participated in the “No Kings” rallies.
A good guess is that nearly 5% of adults have exerted themselves upfront against the Trump/Elon Musk/Vice President JD Vance lust for total power. Remember in 2016, Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler.”
With those numbers of people power, future mass demonstrations already planned should ask their participants to pull out their cellphones and contribute to funding new, strong, full-time citizen groups at the grassroots and in Washington, DC to carry on with impressive impacts long after the protesters drift away when the rallies end.
Indivisible’s (indivisible.org) huge demonstrations could have raised $35 million with an average instant donation of just $5 per person. Such a plea needs careful planning, trustworthy transparency, and recruitment capabilities ahead of time.
There are so many other innovations ready and able to make town meetings, directly called by the people, and public rallies/marches far more effective. But they require their civic leaders to return the calls from experienced supporters who believe that “none of us are as smart as all of us.” Ezra Levin—call me—I have suggestions for you.
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Three More Top Universities Reject Trump's Extortion Compact for Funding
Brown University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pennsylvania—the president's alma mater—all rejected the proposal.
Oct 16, 2025
Three more leading US universities have joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in rejecting President Donald Trump's compact that critics have condemned as an "extortion agreement" and "loyalty oath" for federal funding.
Brown University's Wednesday decision and Thursday announcements from the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania came ahead of the Trump administration's October 20 deadline for the nine initially invited schools to respond to the "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education."
Although the University of Texas said it was "honored" to receive the offer, it has not officially signed on to the compact to receive priority access to federal funding and other "benefits." Neither has any of the other institutions: the University of Arizona, Dartmouth College, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia.
Bloomberg reported Monday that "a few days after MIT rebuffed the proposal, the administration extended the offering to all higher education institutions," citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.
Brown's president, Christina Paxson, released her full letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other Trump officials on Wednesday. She pointed out that "on July 30, Brown signed a voluntary resolution agreement with the government that advances a number of the high-level principles articulated in the compact, while maintaining core tenets of academic freedom and self-governance that have sustained the excellence of American higher education across generations."
"While a number of provisions in the compact reflect similar principles as the July agreement—as well as our own commitments to affordability and the free exchange of ideas—I am concerned that the compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown's governance, critically compromising our ability to fulfill our mission," Paxson wrote. "While we value our long-held and well-regarded partnership with the federal government, Brown is respectfully declining to join the compact."
Penn, also part of the Ivy League, rejected the compact on Thursday. In a statement, its president, Dr. J. Larry Jameson, said that "for 285 years, Penn has been anchored and guided by continuous self-improvement, using education as a ladder for opportunity, and advancing discoveries that serve our community, our nation, and the world."
"I have sought input from faculty, alumni, trustees, students, staff, and others who care deeply about Penn," with the goal of ensuring that "our response reflected our values and the perspectives of our broad community," Jameson detailed. "Penn respectfully declines to sign the proposed compact," and provided the US Department of Education with "focused feedback highlighting areas of existing alignment as well as substantive concerns."
"At Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability," he added. "The long-standing partnership between American higher education and the federal government has greatly benefited society and our nation. Shared goals and investment in talent and ideas will turn possibility into progress."
As The Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper, noted:
At a Wednesday meeting, Penn's Faculty Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the University to reject the agreement.
"The 'compact’ erodes the foundation on which higher education in the United States is built," the October 15 resolution read. "The University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate urges President Jameson and the Board of Trustees to reject it and any other proposal that similarly threatens our mission and values."
Penn is the alma mater of Trump and Marc Rowan, a billionaire private equity financier who helped craft the compact.
The Trump White House told the student newspaper that "any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers' support."
Despite the risk of funding loss, the University of Southern California also rejected the proposal on Thursday. In a statement to the campus paper, the Daily Trojan, interim president Beong-Soo Kim said that "although USC has declined to join the proposed compact, we look forward to contributing our perspectives, insights, and Trojan values to an important national conversation about the future of higher education."
Critics of the compact have called on educational leaders to oppose it. In a joint statement earlier this month, American Association of University Professors president Todd Wolfson and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten urged "all college and university governing boards, campus administrations, academic disciplinary organizations, and higher education trade groups to reject such collusion with the Trump administration and to stand firmly on the side of free expression and higher education as the anchor of opportunity for all."
Acquiescing, they argued, "would be a profound betrayal of your students, staff, faculty, the public, higher education, and our shared democracy—one that would irretrievably tarnish your personal reputation and compromise your institution's legacy. We urge you not to capitulate and not to negotiate but to unite now in defense of democracy and higher education."
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