From 2014 to 2024, the University of Nebraska Office of the President’s yearly expenses increased by about 110%, adjusted for inflation. Over the same time period the budget at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NU’s flagship campus, decreased by 0.3%.

University system officials say those increases were driven by the centralization of IT services, procurement and the management of campus facilities, cost-saving measures that began in 2018.

Pulling those multi-campus costs under one roof saved the university system millions of dollars and is generally considered a success, said Chris Kabourek, chief financial officer and interim NU president.

But not everyone is onboard with an increasing amount of money and power moving from the campuses to NU’s system-wide headquarters.

More decisions that impact the university’s research and teaching are being made in Varner Hall, where there is no formal faculty representation, said Julia Schleck, vice chair of the English department and member of UNL’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. That worries some professors, she said.

“So the fact that it comes with increased spending, at a moment when we are cutting academic programs that we used to offer to Nebraska students, is particularly concerning,” Schleck said.

It’s clear that this push for consolidation at NU is just beginning.

Fewer teenage Nebraskans, forecasted continued declining enrollment and an ambitious goal to get back into the Association of American Universities are spurring NU leaders to look for more services to centralize, Kabourek said. The goal: Free up money to invest in academics.

As Varner Hall’s spending grows and individual campus administration shrinks, leaders are considering an existential question: Should there be one University of Nebraska?

“Just looking at the data, we have to be very candid with ourselves. The status quo is not working,” Kabourek said. “Our academic rankings are not where we want them to be. Our research rankings are not where they want us to be.”

In the past three years, the university’s central administration – which oversees campuses in Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney, an ag-tech college in Curtis and the NU Medical Center – has spent $27 million more than the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

The Board of Regents recently approved cuts to UNK’s Theatre, Geography, and Recreation programs due to declining enrollment. Over the past decade, UNK’s budget has shrunk by about 14%.

Lincoln’s campus saw a slim decrease over the same period. Omaha and the Medical Center both grew, by 8% and 9% respectively. No individual campus experienced budget changes anywhere near the President’s Office, which doubled its expenditures.

This same budgetary trend is happening across the U.S. higher education map.

“There is generally a push to, instead of each university taking things on, have it be done centrally, especially with some of the smaller institutions down in enrollment,” said Robert Kelchen, higher education finance researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

But when universities shift services to the center, those changes hollow out employment opportunities in rural areas and lower capacity at those campuses, Kelchen said.

The Office of the President’s spending leapt from about $91 million to $155 million, adjusted for inflation, when IT services and facilities management were centralized in 2018. Spending has steadily grown since.

While university officials attribute that growth mainly to the added services, those aren’t the only line items driving the budget higher.

Spending on system administration – salaries for the university leadership including the president and legal team – also more than doubled. Recently, NU hired more attorneys and consolidated internal auditors from individual campuses into Varner Hall, Kabourek said.

“The idea is it’s a lot cheaper to have, I think we’re up to 12, attorneys functioning at one versus every campus having eight to 10,” Kabourek said.

A category called “general administration” has also grown by 85% in the past decade. This includes funds allocated by the Legislature, money then budgeted for specific programs and passed along to campuses, Kabourek said.

Presidential salaries, rising across the country, have also contributed to the system administration’s expenses.

“Some of it is, when I first started, we paid a president $200,000,” Kabourek said. “And now we’re paying the president a million dollars.”

Varner Hall has also gained a handful of smaller programs, including the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, which are budgeted by the President’s Office but operate across the campuses. Together, these programs made up about $25 million of budget growth.

The number of full-time system administrators in Varner Hall actually fell by around 20% during President Ted Carter’s tenure, Kabourek said, as leaders didn’t fill unfilled positions.

But with the additional services now under NU’s central umbrella, the workforce has ballooned. In 2014, there were 200 budgeted employees on the central administration payroll. In the most recent year: 506.

“Administrators tend to breed more administrators,” said Anna Sillers, data analyst for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. “Policy changes lead to more administration, data requirements lead to more administration.”

While centralizing operations has saved the university millions of dollars, the changes have left some faculty worried that top-down decision making will hinder their work.

There are non-voting student regents from each campus on the Board, but no faculty regents. While administrators at the campuses do often work directly with the Board, Schleck said, there are no regular meetings between any faculty body and Varner Hall to advise decisions being made there.

“It’s resulted in some recent, incredibly problematic decisions that have at least inconvenienced and at worst significantly endangered some of the research mission of some of the faculty,” Schleck said.

The IT department, now a part of Varner Hall, made necessary changes in the university’s web security system. The programs allowed for greater internal surveillance, Schleck said, which endangers confidentiality agreements for research conducted with human subjects.

In order to secure federal funding for studies, Schleck said, confidentiality standards must be upheld. Researchers now aren’t sure if they’re able to provide that confidentiality because there aren’t policies protecting that data.

“We realized it very late … but (the professor’s union) caught and questioned it and spent the year drawing up all of the potential impacts on faculty and students,” Schleck said. “But of course, this is all post implementation of the policy.”

University leadership and IT had to make timely decisions that impact faculty members, Kabourek said, to ensure the university is secure from cyber attacks.

Varner Hall’s IT team consulted with the UNL Faculty Senate before the policy went into effect, said Melissa Lee, chief communications officer.

“There may be some who disagree with the policy that devices on the University’s network should follow University standards,” Lee said. “But disagreeing with a policy is not the same as not having the opportunity to provide input.”

While there is room for improvement with faculty representation in Varner Hall, Kabourek said, faculty have the chance to give input on any changes at public board meetings.

“There’s a pretty significant communication gap. On our side, we don’t know what’s going on with Varner Hall,” Schleck said. “Decisions come down from on high. Sometimes they’re fine. Sometimes they’re really problematic for us.”

Despite the cuts to academic programs at UNK, university officials said they’ve generally tried to cut back-office functions over academics.

But now that the university has picked off lower hanging fruit, additional cuts might impact academics, Kabourek said. Incoming president Dr. Jeffrey Gold has already been working to identify duplicate programs across the campuses, Kabourek said. It will be an “all hands on deck” effort.

The university’s overarching goal is to be the first institution readmitted to the Association of American Universities after UNL was removed in 2011, in part because the AAU places less importance on agriculture research. Every other Big Ten school is part of the AAU.

UNL and UNMC are considered separate institutions for research reporting purposes, another hindrance to their rankings, Kelchen said. It’ll be a challenge to get back into the AAU even without budget cuts.

The university appears poised to clear one hurdle.

The National Science Foundation will allow UNL, UNMC and the Buffett Early Childhood Institute to start reporting research together, Kabourek said – but with the requirement that it’s part of a broader strategy to unify the university’s structure.

The university, he said, has already made that commitment to unification.

Part of Gold’s charge as the incoming president is to implement a plan for return to the AAU, Kabourek said. It’ll take significant investments.

“To get to where we want to go, we have to have all 50,000 of our students or 15,000 faculty rowing in the same direction,” Kabourek said. “Because we’re competing with Michigan and Ohio State and Minnesota, and it’s going to take all of us working together to get there.”

To be competitive with those schools, a rebrand may be in the future for some campuses. Research has shown the red block “N” symbol used by UNL is Nebraska’s most recognized across the country, Kabourek said.

“I understand people are proud of the O, or the Loper, or the shield at the Med Center,” Kabourek said. “Those have value, but we have to think about what’s best for Nebraska, best for our students and faculty. And if we’re really serious about competing, we’re gonna have to think differently.”

There was no plan to become a single entity under the “N” when the President’s Office started to centralize functions in 2018, Kabourek said. But now, as NU faces more financial headwinds, the relative success of those consolidations is inspiring leaders to consider more consolidation.

Next year’s proposed budget, up for consideration at Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting, aims to bring the system’s multi-million dollar deficit to zero with proportional budget cuts across the board and a tuition increase. The Office of the President will face its own share of cuts, Kabourek said.

“Now, if we don’t have some of the hard conversations of five versus one, we’ll be in the same place nine months from now,” Kabourek said. “It’s important to get a wide variety of opinions and make sure it’s transparent, but time is not on our side.

This post appeared on 10/11 NOW on June 19, 2024.

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Too often, when faced with the fervent demands and outlandish behavior of student demonstrators, university officials allowed them to violate institutional policies, disrupt academic life, and harass Jews. When presidents finally acted, many negotiated with the protesters and capitulated to their demands. Even those who rightly called the police often failed to impose serious consequences on the disrupters. In the end, few protesters face meaningful sanctions for their extended violations of campus policies and, in many cases, the law.

Yet, the protesters and their allies complained about “authoritarian” crackdowns, betrayals of democratic values, and free-speech violations as their camps got cleared away. Their complaints can be attributed partly to ignorance; a student speaker at Harvard University’s commencement, for example, proclaimed to a cheering crowd that the university had violated students’ “right to civil disobedience,” a right she genuinely seemed to believe that they had. One poll showed that more than half of those who said they supported chanting “From the river to the sea” were unable to name the river and the sea to which the chant referred. When a young woman at New York University was asked what she wanted the university to do, she turned the question to her friend: “Why are we protesting?”

Many of the protesters’ complaints, however, are part of a campaign to get universities to serve an anti-Israel and anti-American political agenda. As Roua Daas, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, recently explained, one of the strategic purposes of campus encampments is to advance a Marxist “sharpening of contradictions,” highlighting the tensions between institutions’ professed values and their actual behavior. She noted, for example, that “students have . . . used mass demonstrations and disruptions on public property to capture public attention and then force the state and police to repress us in full public view.” These students and their allies want to get arrested, so that they can then produce propaganda designed to convince people that American universities are not committed to free speech. The mendacious and naïve alike serve these goals by repeating claims about “peaceful protests” and free-speech violations, never acknowledging that the encampments are often illegal, dangerous, and prohibited by university codes of conduct.

Though the strategy does not appear to be working off campus—polls show that many Americans think the protests and encampments have gone too far—colleges and universities have been badly shaken. These institutions have themselves to blame, as they are hypocritical about free expression on campus, though not in the way the protesters think. University administrators have historically been lenient toward those demonstrating for causes they support; they have used prejudicial admissions and hiring to create left-leaning campus communities; and they insist that social-justice activism is essential to their institutional missions. They have thus allowed their campuses to become ideological tinderboxes.

Unlike Max Frisch’s Biedermann, college and university administrators should take the agitators at their word.

The campus protesters and their off-campus supporters’ beliefs were on full display at the People’s Conference for Palestine, held in a publicly funded convention center over Memorial Day weekend in Detroit. Organized by several far-left groups, including the People’s Forum, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Palestinian Youth Movement, the gathering featured many of the most radical people and groups involved in university protests and encampments. Students from around the country met for three days to discuss strategy, tactics, and their common goals: the destruction of Israel, the eradication of Zionism, and the radical transformation of the United States.

The conference had close ties to Palestinian terrorism. A promotional video featured Salah Salah, a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and participants included Wisam Rafeedie, also affiliated with that organization, and Sana’ Daqqa, the wife of Walid Daqqa, who spent 38 years in prison for his role in the abduction, torture, and murder of an Israeli man in the 1980s. The crowd gave Rafeedie a standing ovation and Daqqa a hero’s welcome.

During panel discussions, the audience cheered loudest when speakers endorsed violent resistance or called for the eradication of Israel. Between sessions, participants chanted genocidal slogans and danced to contemporary remixes of nationalistic music from the First Intifada.

The speakers at the conference repeatedly endorsed terrorism (what they called “armed resistance”) and placed the protests and other actions in North America (and Europe) in the context of such violence, including the intifadas and October 7. In an opening address, emcee Mohammed Nabulsi, long involved in the Palestinian Youth Movement, set the tone by “extending our salutations . . . to our noble, steadfast resistance, who continues to defend our people and honors our dignity in struggle” and recognizing the “brave and noble resistance that defends our people from beneath the rubble, from beneath the ground”—almost certainly a reference to Hamas.

Several speakers on the panel devoted to “Palestinian Resistance and the Path to Liberation” also endorsed violence. Abdaljawad Omar, a Palestinian academic, called the idea that “resistance is terrorism” a myth. He added that, without “the events of October 7th . . . the political possibilities we now witness would not exist,” among which he included “the rise of the student movement in the United States and North America and Europe” and “the demands for divestment and boycott of academic institution[s].” Another speaker, Ashraf Talhed (whose talk has since been deleted), said that “liberation only comes from armed struggle” and informed the audience that “there are many wars to come, people. We have to be ready for this.”

That wasn’t all. Speaking on another panel, Sara Kershnar of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network mentioned “the right to resist and armed resistance” and said, “in that way, we are unequivocally with the resistance in Palestine.” To loud applause, a speaker from South Africa told the crowd that the most important aspect of their movement was “armed struggle because if the enemy refuses to die it must be killed.” And a representative from Writers Against the War on Gaza explained that the group provides “political education . . . to normalize armed struggle, and this often looks like putting on a film screening with a panel discussion afterwards or publishing writings by or about revolutionaries.”

The speakers left no doubt of their belief that Palestinian liberation requires Israel’s destruction and the eradication of Zionism. Nabulsi was straightforward at the outset: The purpose of the conference was to “craft a path forward that truly brings the Zionist state and its military and its imperialist backers to their knees.” He spoke of their “commitment . . . to liberate every inch of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” (perhaps specified for the students in the audience). Rafeedie, who said that “these Zionists lie like they breathe,” was clear: “There is no longer a place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian. The only solution is one democratic Palestinian state on all Palestinian land, which will end the Zionist project in Palestine.” Kershnar agreed, opening her remarks by mentioning her “lifelong struggle to dismantle Zionism and the state of Israel.” Alluding to the activity of the last eight months, she said, “There is no going back. From here, Israel is going to fall.” Loud applause ensued.

This is the context in which calls for a ceasefire must be understood. Echoing what has been said on many campuses recently, Nabulsi noted that “a ceasefire is the floor of our demands” because it represented only an immediate need in the longer struggle to destroy Israel. Daas concurred, underscoring the importance of efforts to “weaken the state of Israel.” “This is the building of a revolutionary movement, and students feel that,” she said. “Students feel the revolution, they feel it in their blood, they feel it in their soul, they feel it in their heart, and, ultimately, that is what drives us.” Many student protesters are surely demanding a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons, but the vanguard of these movements knows the real purpose: to help Hamas and the broader Palestinian resistance.

Many of the talks expressed Marxist ideas, and the theme of revolution resounded throughout the conference. Several speakers viewed the destruction of Israel as the key to various other revolutionary causes. In an opening keynote, Yara Shoufani, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, claimed that “Gaza stands at the center of the world, waging a heroic battle, not only against Zionism and its backers, but in service of world revolution.” Repeating a refrain heard on campuses many times this year, Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center, added on a later panel that “literally all oppressed people are not free until all of us are free, and we can say without a shadow of a doubt in this political moment that Palestine is the road map for global justice, that Palestine is the road map for freedom of all people.” She said the struggle serves “all movements against U.S. imperialism” and mentioned “the ongoing struggle for land back and decolonization for the indigenous people of this land.” During her panel, Kershnar noted, “In this country, Palestine is understood as a front of antiracist struggle alongside black liberation and indigenous sovereignty” and added that “it is crucial to the future of humanity and the very survival of the planet that we dismantle Zionism.” Speakers advocated for revolutions in several other countries. For many, Palestine is the centerpiece of a leftist omni-cause that is anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-police, in addition to anti-Zionist.

At their core, the Marxist and nationalist ideologies on display at the conference are ersatz religions, detached from reality. Their proponents believe that struggle against Israel is not just political but existential. They view Palestine’s cause as linked to the global struggle for justice. A Korean-American speaker, Ju-Hyun Park, for example, highlighted the endlessness of the fight: “Revolution is not a one-time thing. Revolution is not a short-term goal. Revolution is a lifetime of dedication and action to transform our worlds. Revolution is an entire historical era that will span generations.” Park, who proudly declared that “the DPRK has never once recognized the Zionist tumor that goes by the name of Israel,” said it “was no exaggeration” when Sana’ Daqqa claimed that “We will not capitulate. It is either victory or death.” He said that “all of humanity” faces “a choice between liberation and extinction.”

The academic Omar made the stakes explicit in his talk on a text by Bassel al-Araj, who was imprisoned for planning attacks against Israel. He called the late criminal’s writings a “a love letter to the struggle imbued with a kind of sublime necessity that resonates deeply with the Palestinian experience, a defense of the wonder, the awesomeness of struggle, even when it includes the horrific.”

These are the beliefs and goals of those organizing, supporting, and seeking to harness the protest movements that have emerged in America and elsewhere since October 7. They view the demonstrations as a front in their war against Israel, Zionism, and American empire. As Nabulsi said, their “fundamental role is to generate political and social crisis within the American ruling class,” with the goal of making “the continued prosecution of this war politically, socially, and economically untenable.” The “unsanctioned marches, bridge and train shutdowns, airport caravans and shutdowns, encampments, building takeovers, targeting of weapons manufacturers . . . shutting down events, bird-dogging,” Nabulsi admitted, is aimed at changing American policy in Gaza: “We need to be clear. The chief target has been the Biden administration. Ultimately, the Biden administration, and to an extent the Democratic Party, is the primary vessel that controls the policies and the decisions that actually impact our people in Gaza.”

They do not care about the principles they sometimes cite to advance their goals. As Nabulsi exclaimed, “They tell us they want us to save democracy. We want to save our people. To hell with their democracy.”

They do not care about our universities, either. They are simply using them as pawns in their revolutionary struggle. As Daas said, “We are in the belly of the beast . . . we are located in the primary supporter and sustainer of Israel’s power, and our universities are expressions of that.” Whereas before students would work within the institution, now “the role of the student movement has shifted, and now we are working to transform our institutions . . . the target is the institution.” While students are entitled to share their views on campus, academic leaders need to recognize and reject these efforts to infiltrate their schools.

Administrators should also note the connection between off-campus activists and student demonstrations. We already know, for example, that outside agitators were sharing recruiting documents and giving students pro bono legal assistance. The conference’s attendees confirmed the extent of the collaboration. As the Writers Against the War on Gaza representative at the conference noted, “we were at the encampments, and . . . we were kind of lending our support through media trainings initially, but . . . ended up becoming somewhat of organizers.” Daas, who complained that claims of outside coordination were false, later insisted that anti-Israel groups “must continue to build power on campus, we must continue to agitate students, to mobilize them, and organize them, and . . . we must do this in tandem with the community.”

The looming question for higher education leaders is whether protests will return in the fall. Universities need to be ready if they do. These demonstrations are supported by off-campus activists, who want to exploit and further corrupt our educational institutions. The people involved view American universities as part of both a long-term war to eradicate Israel and undermine the United States. The vanguard of these movements is driven by a quasi-spiritual desire for revolution. They will not be satisfied by civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas.

University administrators can and should use the ordinary means at their disposal—reasonable time, manner, and place restrictions—to quash the more aggressive demonstrations. They can enforce their existing policies against harassment, discrimination, and creating a hostile environment to the same effect. If they haven’t already, they should adopt official policies of institutional neutrality, ruling out the political statements, divestments, and academic boycotts that protesters are demanding.

Administrators and faculty could also offer educational opportunities, including ones that will appeal to their students’ moral instincts but give them a chance to think through the complexity, history, and politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict. They have compassion for the suffering in Gaza: But do they understand what happened on October 7? They want to divest from material support for war: Do they want to sleep in tents and eat food supplied by supporters of Hamas? Have they studied what terms such as “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid” really mean? Those who already think like the speakers at the Detroit conference might be too far gone to be reached, but many students participating in the protests might reconsider when presented with history and facts.

In the long term, colleges and universities must reform their admissions and hiring processes. Institutions should reevaluate what they look for in the people who join their campus communities. Free speech must be protected, but prospective students need to respect the academic purposes of these schools. They should be selected primarily for their academic promise, not their activist commitments.

The ultimate question is this: Will academic leaders recognize the danger they have brought to their campuses, or will they hand the activists a pack of matches?

This article appeared in City Journal on June 19, 2024.

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All of this might have been enough to convince the people who run Harvard that they needed to make some changes, and, in fairness, they have made a few small ones. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences did away with mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring but replaced them with a service statement that could easily be used to weed out candidates on the same grounds. And it partially adopted institutional neutrality, leaving out a key and currently essential part: that political divestment to get the university to take sides is off the table—National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood saw this coming.

But, despite these small steps, or even because of how small they were, it was reasonable to remain skeptical about whether Harvard had really understood the message. Professor and Dean of Social Science Lawrence D. Bobo has made it eminently clear that it did not get through to him.

Rather than admitting the need for soul-searching and real, substantive changes, he argues in a new editorial posted to The Harvard Crimson that faculty who criticize Harvard publicly should be sanctioned by the university. Yes, you read that correctly. Instead of recognizing that Harvard is under intense scrutiny and suffering a reputational crisis because it has proven itself to be morally and intellectually corrupt, Professor Bobo thinks the way to restore calm to campus is to weaken the academic freedom of Harvard’s faculty even further.

Consider the irony: this institution consistently ranks dead last and occupies its own “abysmal” category for free expression on campus. This is the same place that forced Carole Hooven out for stating there are two sexes. Tyler J. VanderWeele was canceled for his views on marriage. Bobo himself participated in the punishment of Professor Roland Fryer, whose academic work Bobo had previously criticized. After a sexual harassment investigation recommended sensitivity training for Professor Fryer, Professor Bobo and the then-dean of FAS Claudine Gay suspended him for two years and closed his lab.

It is not surprising but still stunning that Professor Bobo thinks the solution to Harvard’s ills is to clamp down on faculty speech. His desire to punish faculty members who “incite external actors—be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government—to intervene in Harvard’s affairs” is yet another revelation of how firmly entrenched the problems at the university are.

His perspective, which implies that Harvard’s issues are merely a public relations problem rather than a profound moral and intellectual crisis of its own making, reveals a level of arrogance and entitlement shared by too many faculty members—an attitude that urgently needs to be corrected.

Calling donors and alumni “external actors” and suggesting they should have no role in the institution’s governance is wrong and insulting.

Alumni do participate, for example, in selecting Harvard’s board members. Donors are obviously entitled to have a say in how their donations are used. Alumni and donors are undoubtedly members of the Harvard community, and any self-respecting person associated with Harvard should demand that Bobo retract this claim and apologize.

Harvard relies on the media to share news about its research and societal contributions. The idea that its faculty should protect it from negative scrutiny suggests a cultish commitment to face-saving that is at odds with Harvard’s commitment to truth and only deepens public suspicion of the institution. It is also deeply ironic given that Bobo published a public editorial criticizing Harvard and its policies but would happily take away his colleague’s speech and limit their ability to voice their concerns.

Beyond all of this, universities, including private ones like Harvard, need to recognize that their autonomy and academic freedom are granted as part of a social contract from which American society expects to benefit. They should be generally free to govern their own affairs and allowed a broad degree of latitude out of respect for academic freedom, but academics have done such incredible damage to their own sector that the most recent poll shows that public confidence in higher education has dropped to 28 percent. When will they recognize just how strained their relationship to American society is and accept that they are largely to blame for it?

The idea that Harvard should respond to scrutiny by closing in on itself and punishing faculty who make public criticisms of the university is both perfectly on brand and so stunningly obtuse that it beggars belief. Bobo accuses his colleagues of “conscious action that would seriously harm the University and its independence.” However, he and any like-minded colleagues should realize they are harming Harvard.

As Dean of Social Science at Harvard, Bobo is powerful. He controls funding and has huge influence over the careers of scores of faculty; his remarks are clearly intended to threaten his colleagues to follow particular norms and suggest an informal policy that punishes particular speech and expression, which is the antithesis of Harvard’s mission of pursuing “truth.”

Bobo and his colleagues should remember the following warning from the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 Declaration of Principles:

If this profession should prove itself unwilling to purge its ranks of the incompetent and the unworthy or to prevent the freedom that it claims in the name of science from being used as a shelter for inefficiency, for superficiality, or uncritical and intemperate partisanship, it is certain that the task will be performed by others.

Rather than asking how they can protect themselves from richly deserved and necessary criticism, Professor Bobo and his colleagues should ask themselves what they can do to earn back the trust and respect of alumni, donors, and the American people.

This post appeared on Minding The Campus on June 17, 2024.

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Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording. The views expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of ACTA.

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The bill landed on Landry’s desk on May 31 after flying through the state legislature with strong Republican support. Sponsored by Republican senator Valarie Hodges, the controversial bill reflects a growing push from conservative lawmakers to exercise greater influence in higher education governance. Critics, however, have raised concerns that the legislation could be an overstep that threatens public institutions’ accreditation status and with it, their ability to receive crucial federal funding.

The bill first passed the Senate with an initial vote of 28 to 10 on May 7 before easily getting through the House on May 28, receiving amendments that only further reinforced gubernatorial power.

Experts predicted that when it went back to the Senate for re-approval, the lawmakers would reject the amendments and send it to a conference committee for further discussion. But Senate president Cameron Henry, a Republican who had previously doubted the bill’s progression, told The Louisiana Illuminator that senators got more comfortable with the proposal once they learned it only applied to boards for which the governor appoints a majority of members.

Mary Papazian, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), was disappointed to see such strong political support for the bill, noting that it removes the ability for the board to choose its own chair.

“The chair is often selected because the person is well-respected among their peers and is able to facilitate discussion amongst the board,” she said. “If the chair is seen as partisan, it could undermine their authority amongst board members.”

Papazian also expressed concern that the bill could threaten institutional autonomy and undermine board members’ ability to adhere to their fiduciary duties.

“Boards think independently and act collectively, and partisan agendas can imperil an institution’s long-term success … While boards should seek input from many different sources, including lawmakers, they also have a legal duty to protect their institutions from any influence that may conflict with the priorities that the board has established in collaboration with the president,” Papazian said.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the accrediting body for Louisiana’s public universities, requires that governing boards for its accredited institutions remain free from undue external influence.

Rosalind Fuse-Hall, director of legal and governmental affairs at SACSCOC, declined to provide Inside Higher Ed a full analysis before Landry signed the legislation, but said the bill “as passed by both chambers and sent to the Governor could raise questions regarding an institution’s compliance with standards of the Principles of Accreditation.”

The SACSCOC Board of Trustees makes the final decision on accreditation-related actions at its June and December meetings. But as Fuse-Hall told The Illuminator, determining a violation of the principles is not as simple as a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Even if the rule does not violate accreditation standards on its face, the law could lead to the board being undermined by external force, and that would be a violation, which could lead to loss of accreditation, Papazian said. Colleges and universities that aren’t accredited can’t receive federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education act.

Fuse-Hall was careful to note that although SACSCOC is a “gatekeeper” of sorts for federal financial aid, it doesn’t have the final say.

“Whether this bill will jeopardize an institution’s federal financial aid is a decision that is made by the federal student aid office and not SACSCOC,” she said.

According to The Illuminator, Hodges doesn’t deny that the intentions behind the bill are political. “We need to align policy initiatives on the boards and commissions with the Republican governor that we elected to get the job done,” she said.

Michael Poliakoff, president and CEO of the conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni supports the bill.

“Given the urgency of major reforms, it is reasonable for the governor, who is responsible for the public institutions in his/her state, to select the person who will lead the board,” he said.

In previous comments to local news media, Governor Landry said the bill is about ensuring accountability—that taxpayer dollars invested in higher education result in positive outcomes.

“This fight is all about universities,” he said in an April interview with WAFB-TV. “The people of this state are ready for these universities to start taking some responsibility for putting out students that are graduating with degrees that they can’t even get a job for.”

Other state governors have made similar moves to gain greater authority over higher education boards. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has taken aim at “woke activism” by pushing legislation to defund DEI, and using a swath of board member replacements to drive a conservative overhaul of New College of Florida. He also signed off on a bill that undercut transparency in presidential searches; several Republican lawmakers have since been tapped to lead Florida colleges.

And in Virginia, a controversial memo sent from Attorney General Jason Miyares to Governor Glenn Youngkin unequivocally stated that by law the university board members have a “primary duty” to the commonwealth and therefore the governor. Democrats in the legislature tried to counter the governor’s assertion through a bill that would let universities hire their own counsel and not have to default to counsel provided by the Attorney General’s office. But that was quickly vetoed.

This post appeared on Inside Higher Ed on June 6, 2024

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Instead of requiring a DEI statement for a tenure-track at Harvard, applicants will be asked to send a “service statement,” as flagged by Steven McGuire, a fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. 

Aspiring tenure-track professors at Harvard can use that statement to explain their “efforts to strengthen academic communities, e.g. department, institution, and/or professional societies.” 

The original diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statement required a statement “describing efforts to encourage [DEI] and belonging.” 

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences told Fox News Digital that it has “expanded its approach to learning about candidates being considered for academic appointments by requesting broader and more robust service statements as part of the hiring process.” 

“In making this decision, the FAS is realigning the hiring process with long-standing criteria for tenured and tenure-track faculty positions,” the statement continued. “These criteria include excellence in research, teaching/advising, and service, which are the three pillars of professorial appointments.”

Harvard Kennedy School historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad attacked the decision, arguing that the removal of DEI statements from the application process “may discourage applicants who are the strongest supporters of DEI to not apply for a job at Harvard given the broader context for this change,” The Boston Globe reported. 

Former Harvard Dean Lawrence Summers celebrated the news on Monday. 

“I am glad to see that Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science has ended the practice of requiring diversity statements and replaced them with statements on university service,” Summers wrote. 

“This should represent a major pivot towards emphasis on academic values and away from identity in appointment decisions,” he continued, adding that “Harvard is finding its way back towards the right core values.” 

Anti-DEI activist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo called the decision a “small victory” in a post on X Monday.

“This is a small victory, but a signal that our campaign is gaining momentum,” he wrote. “We will not stop until the entire DEI apparatus is dismantled and salted over.”

Harvard’s decision follows closely after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first elite school to remove DEI statements from its faculty hiring process.

A university spokesperson told Fox News Digital at the time that “requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT” and added that the decision was made by the school’s president, Sally Kornbluth, with the support of the Provost, Chancellor, and all six academic deans.

“My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

This post appeared on Fox News on June 4, 2024.

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This welcome shift recognizes the incompatibility of DEI with rigorous education, the pursuit of truth, and equality of opportunity. Now, policymakers can defeat this scourge of discrimination in public higher education by ending DEI indoctrination in the classroom — building on recent victories over the bloated bureaucracies whose shock troops promote discriminatory practices in hiring and admissions and conduct mandatory training in DEI concepts.

For instance, just last month, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees voted to redirect $2.3 million from DEI programs to public safety.

In April, the Iowa legislature passed a law that abolished DEI bureaucracies at all public universities.

And the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first elite private university to end the use of “diversity statements” — requiring applicants for faculty positions to write a statement declaring their fealty to the DEI regime.

DEI is on the defensive across the country as Americans realize that the dogma cloaks its radical and discriminatory aims in feel-good buzzwords.

The ideology behind DEI divides the world into the simplistic categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed,” calling for discrimination against those deemed “oppressors” to achieve “equity” and “social justice.” DEI thus rejects the American ideal of equal opportunity regardless of race or religion.

The recent explosion of anti-Israel protests on many campuses represents the logical endpoint of this ideology. In the upside-down world of DEI, Jews — a group that has endured the Holocaust and countless acts of repression — become “oppressors” because of their alleged proximity to “whiteness.” The loathsome antisemitism of these protests does not contradict the principles of DEI but rather fulfills them.

Furthermore, proponents of DEI make little secret of their disdain for America’s founding principles as they seek to tear down our constitutional republic. Ibram X. Kendi, a leading academic in the “antiracism” wing of DEI, sees the United States as so fundamentally racist that he has called for a “Department of Antiracism” that would strike down any law or policy deemed insufficiently “antiracist.” For Mr. Kendi, Americans cannot be trusted to govern themselves. They require the oversight of an enlightened elite schooled in DEI theories.

The pushback against DEI bureaucracies and “diversity statements” is a commendable first step in restoring universities to their core education and research missions. But to complete this work, university decision-makers must also address DEI in the classroom.

According to a recent report by Speech First, more than two-thirds of major universities require students to take DEI courses to obtain a degree. These courses teach students concepts such as “antiracism,” identity politics and gender identity.

Yet many of those same universities that force DEI indoctrination down students’ throats fail to prepare them for citizenship by educating them in the fundamentals of American history and civics. Indeed, less than 20% of general education programs require students to take a course in American history or government, according to an American Council of Trustees and Alumni analysis of over 1,100 colleges and universities.

At many institutions, students can graduate having mastered the ability to identify microaggressions but knowing nothing about the Civil War. They’ll read Mr. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” but not The Federalist Papers. And they’ll spend more time pondering the evils of “cisgender” privilege than studying the history of constitutional rights.

Thankfully, these DEI requirements are receiving more scrutiny. George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University recently rejected proposals to add DEI to graduation requirements.

But Americans must go further to fix these flawed curricula. The Goldwater Institute, where I work, is advancing the Freedom From Indoctrination Act — a commonsense reform prohibiting public universities from forcing students to take DEI courses to graduate. It also requires public universities, which have a crucial role in preparing students for thoughtful citizenship, to include instruction in fundamental principles of American civics. Under this policy, students would learn about important elements of the American system of self-government, including the separation of powers, equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and landmark Supreme Court cases.

Public universities are institutions that educate the next generation of scientists, entrepreneurs and leaders. They have a responsibility to provide their students with rigorous instruction that prepares them for successful careers and responsible citizenship. The Freedom From Indoctrination Act helps to refocus universities on this crucial mission rather than promoting poisonous DEI ideology.

Americans must reform academic curricula to achieve a lasting victory over DEI.

This post appeared in The Washington Times on June 3, 2024.

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