Dear Samuel, In a landmark ruling, a federal court yesterday ruled that the Trump administration, as part of a broad assault on our civil rights, violated the First Amendment in carrying out a policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for ideological reasons. The AAUP, the Middle Eastern Studies Association and several AAUP chapters […]
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University of Southern California (USC) Interim President Beong Soo Kim has been handed a great gift in the form of the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Currently, the nine universities that have been asked to review the draft Compact have not been asked to sign it; instead, they have been […]
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With drastic improvements, the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was launched ahead of the October 1 deadline—marking the earliest rollout in the program’s history. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon contrasted the milestone with the Biden-Harris administration’s botched launch two years ago, when technical failures delayed aid processing for millions of students. […]
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American colleges and universities are facing an unprecedented moment of adjustment. President Trump’s second term has brought sweeping higher education reforms—executive orders against “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) bureaucracies, stricter enforcement against campus anti-Semitism, new scrutiny of foreign funding, and heightened pressure on institutions that grant privileges to illegal aliens. We anticipated a spectrum of […]
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Every September, the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center releases its annual survey on Americans’ knowledge of the Constitution. The survey has, for nearly two decades, charted the ebb and flow of civic awareness in the United States. The latest results, released recently, suggest that something unusual is happening: Americans are remembering—or perhaps relearning—how […]
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The headline on this epistle is from a great satiric song written in the middle of the last century by the late humorist and Harvard grad Tom Lehrer. Harvard has indeed been fighting the federal government fiercely this year, scoring a major victory last Wednesday when an Obama-appointed federal district judge, Allison Burroughs, declared that […]
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Recent conflicting statements between President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, combined with reports of student deportations, have created widespread confusion about America’s current policy on international students. Contributors to Minding the Campus have already critiqued Trump’s remark that he would allow 600,000 Chinese students into the country, and have argued that the administration […]
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Author’s Note: This article is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. On Sunday, the […]
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President Trump has aggressively pushed forward on reforming the Smithsonian Institution, starting with eight marquee museums located in the heart of Washington, D.C. Trump announced the reforms in a bold post on Truth Social, declaring, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and […]
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Business and economic statecraft are not the same thing; what makes sense in one arena does not necessarily apply in another. What may be financially profitable in the near term can lead to national defeat not long after. This week, President Trump announced a plan to welcome 600,000 Chinese students into American universities. For perspective, […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by the National Association of Scholars on August 26, 2025. It is crossposted here with permission. Amidst public outcry for higher education to reform, along with pressure from the Trump administration and the Department of Education (ED), it seems that a divide is growing amongst college and university leadership—some are […]
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Harvard does not trust the Trump administration. The Trump administration does not trust Harvard. Yet, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. The best way forward is for Harvard—and other elite schools—to make a deal on one important aspect of their dispute: Provide admissions transparency in exchange for student visa forbearance. If that […]
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President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4th. This law is the most consequential legislation affecting higher education for the past couple of decades. Like any legislation, it was a product of compromise, but overall, as I predict, it will move higher education and the country in the right […]
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In a sweeping move that could reshape job training opportunities for young Americans, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced on May 29 an immediate halt to operations at all contractor-run Job Corps centers nationwide. All closures were said to be finalized by June 30, but the administration is facing legal pushback. The decision to close […]
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The English language is not strong enough, nor are my skills in using it, to fully describe the unmitigated disaster that the federal program of financial assistance for college students has been, especially in the case of student loans. That program has: Incentivized academic mediocrity and penalized academic merit and accomplishment; Materially raised the cost […]
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The Trump administration just issued an Executive Order to prohibit accrediting organizations from imposing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies on universities. The Secretary of Education shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, hold accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, accreditors who fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Harvard Salient on May 22, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s styleguidles, it is crossposted here with permission. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) moved to suspend international students’ current and future enrollment at Harvard University, citing serious concerns about national security, institutional noncompliance, and a […]
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The Commission on Accreditation (CoA) of the American Psychological Association (APA) released a memo a few weeks ago to inform clinical psychology programs of their decision “to immediately and temporarily suspend evaluation of programs for compliance with several specific accreditation standards. The suspended standards are those related to faculty and student program actions in the […]
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Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is from an article originally published by Diogenes In Exile on May 5, 2025. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is cross-posted here with permission. It is high noon, and the dust is swirling between higher education accreditors and the executive branch of the U.S. government. The president has […]
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When people ask me, “What is the worst thing the federal government has done regarding higher education,” I say it is a close call between two policy blunders: its entering the student loan business for college students, and the creation of the U.S. Department of Education (ED). But if forced to choose, I would say […]
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Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is from an article originally published by the National Association of Scholars on May 6, 2025, and is cross-posted here with permission. The deluge of education news out of the White House has yet to cease. President Trump signed six Executive Orders (EOs) at the end of last month, encompassing a range […]
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Scarcely a week goes by lately without news that another university has had federal funding restricted by the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal recounts that latest restrictions: “Harvard ($2.26 billion), Cornell ($1 billion), Northwestern ($790 million), Brown ($510 million), Columbia ($400 million), Princeton ($210 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ($175 million).” These actions […]
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Author’s Note: This article is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. The saga over […]
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The New York Times article, “Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard: An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization,” tells a very different story than its title and subhead, one which suggests that Harvard’s arrogance might be leading […]
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On April 16, 2025, Nicholas Decker, a PhD student at George Mason University (GMU), published a Substack essay titled “When Must We Kill Them?,” which calls for violence against President Donald Trump and his administration. Decker, who identifies as a liberal and open-borders advocate in his X bio, bases much of his argument on Trump’s […]
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President Trump recently signed Executive Order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” taking aim at the Smithsonian museums for curating exhibits that twist and disparage American history. The order states: [T]he Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western […]
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Harvard University and the Trump Administration have collided. The Crimson reports that: Harvard will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a message to affiliates Monday afternoon. The sequence of events suggests […]
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Author’s Note: This article is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, enter your name and email under “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” located on the right-hand side of the site. On March 27, […]
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The first thing that one needs to understand about the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) is that it exists in its own dimension of reality. It’s called “Planet UMass” for a reason. The second thing that one needs to understand is that much as federal law supersedes state law, university policy supersedes all laws, and […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the College Fix on April 9, 2024. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. While the University of Michigan (UMich) leadership recently announced its plans to roll back “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programming, it may face resistance from its own faculty. […]
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