Canary: Higher Ed Issues Landscape Report 03/10/25

March 10th, 2025

• What We’re Watching: President Trump addresses Congress, surveys of students and presidents, labor activism
• Campus Antisemitism Update: canceled grants at Columbia, antisemitism report cards, Palestinian Studies
• ICYMI: drag shows banned, new rural students data, DEI
• What we’re reading: hard lessons, higher ed’s sustained power, research disarray

What We’re Watching

President Trump Addresses Congress

President Trump’s address to Congress last week lasted over 1 hour and 40 minutes, but mentioned higher education only sparingly. Three themes caught our attention:

Foreign students: Announcing plans for a “gold card” immigration route for “the most successful job-creating people from all over the world,” Trump suggested they would play a role in helping to retain foreign students.

“They [will] have to pay tax, create jobs. They’ll also be taking people out of colleges and paying for them so that we can keep them in our country, instead of having them being forced out. Number one at the top school as an example, being forced out and not being allowed to stay and create tremendous numbers of jobs and great success for a company out there.” - President Trump (CNN)

Transgender student athletes: Trump invited Peyton McNabb to Congress for the address, referencing the story of how she was permanently injured during a high school volleyball game when she was struck by a ball that had been spiked by a transgender athlete.

“Peyton, from now on, schools will kick the men off the girls team or they will lose all federal funding.” - President Trump (CNN)

DEI: Trump made several mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion policies, conflating them with “wokeness,” and celebrating their demise.

“We’re getting wokeness out of our schools and out of our military. . . We don’t want it. Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone. It’s gone. And we feel so much better for it. Don’t we? Don’t we feel better?” - President Trump (CNN)

In many ways, the speech was notable for what it didn’t mention: campus protests, antisemitism, NIH funding, administrative bloat, college presidents or professors, foreign gifts or influence — all of which have become negative themes in higher education, and often highlighted by Trump. Nevertheless, the press narrative has remained the same, post-speech.

Surveys

Inside Higher Education released two surveys — one of college presidents, and one of students. The presidential survey was based on answers from nearly 300 university leaders to a wide-ranging set of questions.

• 51 percent—believe their institution is responding adeptly and appropriately to the rise of AI, but only 29 percent said the same was true across the sector.
• 56 percent—question whether the presidency can be capably handled by one person.
• 49 percent—believe their institution has too many academic programs and needs to close some.
• 45 percent—noted that their institution updated speech policies within the last 18 months.

The survey was startling for how presidents rated the effectiveness of higher education within its current political context. 58% of presidents said they were highly concerned about the growing divide among Americans over higher education. However, only 3% believed higher education was responding effectively to that divide.

“Presidents should be making very clear and very concrete what the practical benefits of their university are, not just for the students that attend that university but for the community, the state at large. Thinking about the long-term development of the U.S. as a science power or a technology power is very much a story of the university.” - Joshua Zingher, Old Dominion University. (Inside Higher Ed)

Inside Higher Education’s survey of students noted that nearly two thirds of students, “consider themselves customers of their institution in some capacity,” meaning that they expected their needs to be met because of what they pay, rather than because of the institution’s mission or values.

“We need to focus on a more meaningful conversation about the value we provide and the outcomes we generate for students and society . . .rooted in evidence that shows how students’ lives and communities improve after degree completion. . . We have a responsibility to communicate this impact effectively—through data, outcomes and success stories—to students, parents, industry leaders and policymakers.” - Jhenai Chandler, NASPA (Inside Higher Ed)

Labor activism

Two unions representing almost 60,000 employees at the University of California started multi-day strikes last Wednesday, picketing campuses in response to stalled negotiations on new contracts.

"We are forced to strike due to UC's persistent unfair labor practices, blowing the whistle as patient and research advocates on a staffing crisis that threatens patient care and critical research -- all while the university funnels billions into capital projects and inflates top salaries by 40%." - Dan Russell, UPTE's statewide president (Yahoo)

Meanwhile, at Penn State, some faculty members are pushing to unionize, saying a faculty union is “long overdue” and that now is the time to act.

“Over multiple administrations, we have experienced summary changes . . . that have sown confusion and fear throughout our community . . . What we need instead is stability, transparency, and a guaranteed voice in shared decision-making.” - Penn State Faculty Alliance (Onward State)

Campus Antisemitism Update

On Friday, the federal government announced it was cancelling grants to Columbia University worth $400m, “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”

The news came after protestors, police and news crews had descended on Barnard College last week as demonstrators were evicted from a campus building occupation. In an editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the president of Barnard spoke about “her line in the sand,” criticizing student protestors for disrespectful, disruptive and antisemitic behavior.

“They operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and “Zionist billionaires,” and calls for violence and disruption at any cost. They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is. . . no one really knows whose interests they serve. Columbia has disavowed the group.” - Laura Ann Rosenbury, Barnard College

The editorial was striking for its scathing, exasperated tone, in marked contrast to other thought leadership pieces by college presidents over the last year — perhaps signifying a vibe shift within university leadership that now more closely aligns with President Trump’s position.

Several other recent stories speak to the evolving nature of the debate around antisemitism on college campuses.

Antisemitism rankings: the Anti-Defamation League released its second-annual Campus Antisemitism Report Card. The report ranked 135 schools based on 30 criteria across three categories: administrative policies, Jewish Life on Campus, and campus conduct and climate concerns.

“While many campuses have improved in ways that are encouraging and commendable, Jewish students still do not feel safe or included on too many campuses.” - Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League (CNN)

Student and local newspapers reported on their home campus scores, while national media reported more broadly.

In addition, the report card was grasped as an earned media opportunity by university communication teams at colleges that performed well according to the ADL’s metrics.

Speciality rankings and reports — especially in free speech and ROI — have become a fixture in the higher education landscape over the last decade. Coverage of the ADL’s report card, both earned and owned, suggests that a strategy that creates a ranking out of a hot-button issue could be an effective strategy for other advocacy organizations in the future.

CUNY Hunter College: Faculty remain committed to a cluster hire of academics focused on Palestinian Studies, despite political pressure from New York governor, Kathy Hochul.

In response to a demand from Hochul last month, Hunter College removed two job postings that contained references to “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.” Hochul argued that those references constituted “antisemitic theories.” The jobs are in the process of being reworded and resubmitted.

“Nowhere in the ad does it specify where the candidate’s position is on any of these issues. There is nothing about the recognition and affirmation of the experiences, histories, and power structures in which [Palestinians] exist that is fundamentally antisemitic, unless you imagine the very existence of Palestine is offensive.” - Heba Gowayed, Hunter College (The Nation)

Federal taskforce: The new multi-agency Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will visit ten university campuses to investigate antisemitic incidents that have been reported since Oct. 7, 2023.

ICYMI: Drag Shows, Rural Students, DEI Backtracking

Texas A&M: Regents passed a resolution barring drag performances from all eleven A&M-member institutions, saying the performances are inconsistent with the system’s “mission and core values” because they will likely to contribute to a hostile environment for women.

“These events often involve unwelcome and objectively offensive conduct based on sex for many members of the respective communities of the universities, particularly when they involve the mockery or objectification of women.” - Texas A&M Resolution (TAMU)

“Public universities can’t shut down student expression simply because the administration doesn’t like the ‘ideology’ or finds the expression ‘demeaning.’” - Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE Attorney (FIRE)

Rural Students: Just 61 percent of rural 12-27-year-olds think they can get a college degree in their home region, compared to 77 percent of those in urban areas, according to new Gallup polling. (Gallup)

“Gen Z students deserve the chance to choose their future based on what they want to do, not where they live. Ensuring our education system meets the needs of the next generation is a shared responsibility, and it will take all of us to make it happen.” (Next Gen Insights Hub)

Backtracking on DEI: After heavy protest from students, University of Cincinnati President Neville Pinto said the school is not halting DEI programming yet, reversing plans announced last week.

"I want you to know that we see you and we hear you. Like every public university, we are the intersection of a cultural collision of competing ideologies that will challenge us for the foreseeable future” - Neville Pinto, UC President (WLWT)

Meanwhile at the University of Pennsylvania, lawmakers walked out of a meeting with interim President Larry Jameson, which was meant to address the university’s rollback of DEI policies, after Jameson referred to diversity as a "lightning rod."

“Some of us took umbrage with the fact that someone would actually say that in front of a room of people of color” - State Sen. Anthony Williams (WHYY)

“I don’t think they understand the gigantic signal that they’ve sent to students, to faculty, to the community, to the entire country about whether Black and brown students and historically underrepresented populations are going to be protected on this campus” - Jamie Gauthier, Philadelphia City Councilmember (The Daily Pennsylvanian)

?? What We’re Reading

The Washington Post: Academia Is Finally Learning Hard Lessons

• “By presenting their expertise as part of a political fight, academics were not only squandering their credibility. They were asking to be treated like political adversaries. And in a real political fight, the ability to get your opponent’s journal article retracted is way less important than his ability to cut off your supply lines.”

YouTube | Peter Thiel: Why Higher Ed’s Power Isn’t Waning Anytime Soon

• “The top universities in the country are the ones that have been around for close to 400 years. At this point, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford—Stanford being the top university west of the Mississippi—have proven to be very durable. If an immortal being looks back, it can see that institutions can decline for a long time before collapsing. Does that suggest we need institutions in some sense, even if they have largely been hollowed out? Is there something about the continuum from generation to generation that makes these ideas necessary, even if they are not what we think they are?”

The Atlantic: Inside the Collapse at the NIH

• “The longer the pause on NIH funding has dragged on, the more the American research community has descended into disarray. Universities have considered pausing graduate-student admissions; leaders of laboratories have mulled firing staff. Diane Simeone, who directs UC San Diego’s cancer center, told me that, should the pause continue for just a few more weeks, dozens of clinical trials for cancer patients—sometimes “a patient’s best chance for cure, and long-term survival,” she told me—could be at risk of shutting down.”

#?? Trending on Social This Week

Sources:

• Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok)
• Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol)
• Sadie (@Sadie_NC)

Legend Labs is a brand and communications consulting firm for the digital age. We help ambitious leaders create, grow, and protect their Legends. This analysis of reputation-related trends in higher education features insights from Meltwater and direct social media & web analysis.

For more information, email us at [email protected].