Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, January 18. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Past is prologue

Political attacks on higher education that have felled two Ivy League leaders follow a long history of similar bullying. Our David Jesse explores that history.

Politicians and preachers have long condemned colleges for supposedly leading the country down the wrong path. College presidents have often borne the brunt of their words. And even campuses that are hardly activist bastions can be at risk if the fervor undercuts their support or funding streams.

Claims that colleges are liberal hotbeds out of sync with the public tend to re-emerge amid national stress, like challenging economic times, the Cold War, or clashes over U.S. political leadership.

These zealous charges can be traced back to when colleges moved away from their religious roots two centuries ago. Today’s evangelicals still call the early 1800s the beginning of higher ed’s liberalization and liberalizing influence. For an example of what was happening at the time, look no further than Harvard, which was shifting from relatively more traditional Calvinism toward Unitarian views. Some ministers of the era called for Harvard’s president to be ousted.

Other notable outcries include:

• In the early 20th century, lawmakers pushed the president of the University of North Carolina to expel professors with liberal beliefs.
• In the 1930s, the National Association of Manufacturers said it spied on Columbia University classrooms to take notes on professors.
• In the early 1950s, professors were swept up in the anti-Communist hysteria of McCarthyism.
• In the late 1950s and early ’60s, a group of Florida lawmakers went after classroom texts they considered subversive and professors they thought to be homosexual.
• In 1966, Ronald Reagan built a successful gubernatorial campaign in part by flogging the University of California at Berkeley. He labeled campus incidents “so contrary to our standards of decent human behavior that I cannot recite them to you in detail.” Soon after Reagan took office, the university system’s board voted to dismiss Clark Kerr as president.

Higher ed is often a “lightning rod” for politicians who want to try out messaging about the direction of society, Teresa Valerio Parrot, founder and principal of TVP Communications, told David.

And still, college presidents have repeatedly been surprised by the attacks, Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at the State University of New York at Binghamton, told him.

Will a strong national voice emerge in defense of higher ed? The college presidency has arguably been diminished by increasing turnover, which limits the relationships a leader can build before stepping up and inviting confrontation.

The bigger questions: How much damage will today’s political attacks do to higher education’s standing and to academic freedom before the fever inevitably breaks? Might the attacks drive any big changes, such as institutions’ becoming more responsive to student needs, bolstering governance structures, or learning to better connect with the public?

Quotable: “As long as there are political rewards for these types of attacks, I don’t think they will stop,” said Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University who studies college presidents.

Read David’s full story here.

Where do college leaders go from here?

Last month the Daily Briefing argued that too many of the most visible college leaders had followed a problematic playbook described by Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College. That playbook includes a heavy focus on avoiding lawsuits and deflecting attention. Readers chimed in.

Elizabeth S. Chilton, chancellor of Washington State University at Pullman, responded with her own, very different approach:

1. Assume you will be sued and audited. Both are so common in my experience that one learns being a leader in higher ed means being held accountable. We need to be able to open our books at any point and demonstrate that we are shepherding state, federal, and private resources responsibly and ethically. When I have been at institutions where there are findings in an audit, it means we have identified something we need to improve.
2. Seek and model transparency. Transparency and clarity support equity. I always seek to be clear about what informs my decisions. In all cases I ask how the decision will affect others. How do I ensure I am hearing enough voices while being efficient in decision making? How do I communicate the results of my decisions?
3. Take the “side” of your students, faculty, and staff. When there is a major national or international crisis or social/political event, university leaders are often called upon to make a statement. It is not our job to “take sides” per se (often the issue is so complex that identifying a distinct “side” is impossible), but to offer support and recognition to our students, faculty, and staff who may be experiencing trauma. My response is to clearly state our values, acknowledge what our community members may be experiencing, and ensure that all are informed about university resources at their disposal to support them. I also ensure that I educate myself further on whatever the issue may be.
4. Embrace change clearly and loudly. If there are things we can do better, then be clear and public about what those changes are — and follow through. I would never, ever in my professional or personal life “embrace the vague,” as Burke describes. Moreover, I know many, many leaders who are with me on that. I think if you were to talk to leaders at APLU, AAC&U, or NASH, you would find a group of higher-education professionals who are dedicated to student success (in the broadest and most sincere sense of the word), research for the public good, and social and economic benefits for their states.
5. Remember to be grateful. It is a sincere privilege to serve as a university chancellor or president and work with dedicated teams of faculty, staff, alumni, and community members who are committed to our students and our mission. To be sure, there are significant challenges and headwinds in higher education, but the stakes are high, especially for those who are underserved. For me, as a first-generation college graduate, the opportunity to work toward changing lives for the better is a true honor.

John Isaacson, chair of the search firm Isaacson, Miller, said college leaders must engage with different constituencies than the campus groups with which they’re most comfortable communicating.

• “They now have a quite large additional responsibility, which is to imagine the university as part of the country and to make the case for why it is essential to the nation’s success,” he said in an interview.

Quick hits

• U. of Oregon averts strike: A deal with teaching and research assistants who had been threatening to walk off the job on Wednesday would raise the pay floor for graduate employees to about $35.50 an hour. The proposed contract would also strengthen health-insurance coverage, add support for employees who are caregivers, and expand the definition of discrimination to include not using preferred pronouns. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
• Boston College swimming cleans house: The private institution’s Division I swimming and diving team will remain suspended through August, and all four of its coaches are out, in the latest fallout from a September hazing incident. Some team members have been suspended for the spring semester, and the entire team must take part in education about hazing. (The Boston Globe, Boston College)
• Inflation eclipsed state-aid increases in 2022: State-funded student aid rose by about 1 percent, to $14.9 billion in the 2021-22 academic year, according to an annual report. But that’s a 6.4-percent decrease after accounting for inflation. (National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs)
• No-confidence vote rebukes California Lutheran president: Members of the Faculty Assembly voted 122 to 3 to call for Lori Varlotta to resign or be removed by the university’s governing board, saying she had divided its community amid financial troubles. Cal Lutheran enrolls almost 1,000 fewer students today than it did in 2018. Varlotta, who is in her third year as president, has said that the campus faces challenges over the next five years but that enrollment trends are improving. (Ventura County Star)
• Wisconsin college scraps award plans over pro-Palestinian posts: Gateway Technical College had intended to give a humanitarian award to the Burlington Coalition for Dismantling Racism. But the college changed plans because of social-media posts by the coalition’s president, Laura Bielefeldt, who labeled the decision unfair to the organization and its work to advance social justice. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Stat of the day

$14.2 trillion

That’s the estimated gain in collective lifetime earnings stemming from an increase in the share of U.S. adults with college degrees from 2010 to 2020, according to a new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The share of adults with a degree rose to 45.2 percent from 38.5 percent over that time.

Unequal gains: Greater parity in college attainment across racial and ethnic groups, to at least the current rate among white adults, could bring collective lifetime earnings up $11.3 trillion more, the report says. And similar parity in earnings would mean an additional $6.3 trillion.

Comings and goings

• Frank Neville, senior vice president for strategic initiatives and chief of staff at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named president of Millsaps College, in Mississippi.
• Katie Lynch, officer in charge of academic affairs at Rockland Community College, in New York, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at Brookdale Community College, in New Jersey.
• Shu Schiller, a professor and interim dean of the College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies at Wright State University, in Ohio, has been named dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
• Ronald H. Weich, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, has been named dean of the School of Law at Seton Hall University, in New Jersey.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

I recently asked you to nominate words and phrases you’d like to ban. One in particular has drawn scorn: “It is what it is.”

“Talk about a phrase that means nothing — and adds nothing to the conversation!” wrote Lisa A. Rossbacher, president emerita at Humboldt State University and at Southern Polytechnic State University.

Jeff Pelletier, Ohio Union and student-activities director at Ohio State University, agrees. He suggested that we instead use “the much more efficient ‘whelp.’”

✏️ Readers, what other phrases do you want to banish? Or would you like to submit a favorite forgotten word? Email dailybriefing@chronicle.com, and we’ll run some of your best submissions in future Footnotes.