Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday, August 13. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

AAUP’s activist turn

In word and deed, the American Association of University Professors has inched away from the notion that there’s a line between campus politics, American politics, and international politics.

The AAUP ended its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts, it announced on Monday, lifting a taboo from faculty members who don’t want to coordinate with other academics or institutions because of deep disagreements like human-rights concerns. A newly adopted policy calls academic boycotts “legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education,” a reversal from a stance in place since 2006 that suggested such boycotts were harmful to academic freedom and a threat to “the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.”

• Learning and knowledge production depend on basic freedoms and human rights that faculty members and students sometimes lack in the United States and around the world, the association now says.
• Only institutions that violate academic freedom or fundamental rights should be subject to boycotts under the new policy. It specifically says boycotts shouldn’t target individual scholars pursuing “ordinary academic practices,” or involve religious or political litmus tests.
• The change removes a barrier faced by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel at a time when the Israel-Hamas war has sparked intense protests on campus. The AAUP’s 2006 stance against academic boycotts came in response to a call from Palestinian intellectuals to cut off all Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed the new position. “Freedom of belief and respect for a universal standard of human rights mandates that academics must be free to refrain from supporting or working with educational institutions complicit in human rights abuses — whether land theft, racist discrimination or genocide,” its communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in a statement.

Last week, the AAUP came out swinging in the presidential campaign, calling for “all those who care about higher education, academic freedom, and the future of democracy” to organize their campus communities.

• The AAUP’s president called the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, a fascist, citing the politician’s remarks that called professors “the enemy” and his praise of Hungarian President Viktor Orbán for seizing more control of that country’s universities.
• Conservative state lawmakers introduced more than 150 bills between 2021 and 2023 that the AAUP said would undermine academic freedom, pointing to a previously released report.
• The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 “offers a frightening glimpse into an authoritarian future,” the AAUP warned. The Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from Project 2025 even though many members of the former president’s administration helped to draft it.

The bigger picture: The AAUP is both a union and a membership association that helps to define norms and standards for higher ed, including academic freedom. The last few days put to rest any question about whether it’s at odds with the political right.

AAUP president: “Professors are scared to death”

Todd Wolfson, the AAUP president and an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, answered questions from the Daily Briefing after the association released its statement last week excoriating the Trump-Vance presidential ticket. The following conversation took place before the AAUP updated its stance on academic boycotts. It has been edited for clarity and length.

Would you say it’s fair to call this an extraordinary statement?

This is a pretty extraordinary moment. I don’t know the last time we had a campaign that’s running for president and vice president and called the professoriate the enemy, or that said they thought — this is JD Vance, Trump has not said this, but you imagine there’s some alignment here given Trump’s statements on higher ed — that they would like to emulate Hungary and Viktor Orbán and take universities and put them in a nonprofit so they can politically control what’s been taught, researched, what students are learning, what students and faculty can say.

That’s extreme to me. That’s as extreme of a statement as I’ve ever heard in the U.S. context.

What was the genesis of the statement?

We have 40-some-odd thousand members. Many professors are scared to death right now about the fall, about what they saw last spring under Biden’s presidency, what they expect could be happening in the fall, and what they could face, particularly under a Republican administration but also, frankly, under a Democratic administration.

As the only union that solely represents higher education, we needed to let our members know that we are prepared to take on folks who are calling us the enemy.

What do you mean about what happened last spring under the Biden administration?

This wasn’t the president’s doing, but there were hearings throughout the spring by the House Education and Workforce Committee where presidents were hauled down to D.C. and all sorts of spurious accusations were leveled at universities, at faculty, at students.

The charges that were leveled by Republicans on the Education and Workforce Committee were completely out of touch with the reality of our campuses.

Is there any risk of escalation with Republicans who already say professors are too liberal?

It’s a complex dynamic we’re dealing with. We certainly represent plenty of Republicans, and the problem here is not with Republicans. It’s with a right-wing takeover of the Republican party that I don’t think represents our members’ views on higher education.

Could that escalate things? Possibly. But I think that from our vantage, we have to think first and foremost about our members and their very real, tangible fears and let them know that we’re standing next to them and going to fight for them.

In such a polarized, charged time, it can be very hard to point out a problem without drawing a line and saying we’re on the other side of this person.

I guess the thing I would say is a question back: Why is a union, or the leadership of that union that represents tens of thousands of people, being asked to hold back when people who are actual candidates for the most important public office in the land are allowed to run rampant with statements?

Anything else to share?

In a general sense, I would say there is new leadership at AAUP. The executive officers were elected this summer, and this new leadership, our vision is to build a strong, organized sector that can stand up for the critical values of higher ed.

Quick hits

• U. of Chicago stops withholding diplomas: The private university hadn’t issued diplomas to five students, alleging they were involved in pro-Palestinian encampments, but it recently informed them their cases had been dismissed and their diplomas would be sent by mail. (Chicago Sun-Times)
• Faculty Senate president placed on leave without warning: Dawn McLin, a psychology professor at Jackson State University, in Mississippi, was accused of abusing her power, her fellow faculty members said, raising concerns about due process and shared governance. McLin has overseen votes of no-confidence in administrators. The university’s top lawyer told the Faculty Senate at a meeting last week that administrators are looking forward to “a more collaborative, collegial relationship.” (Mississippi Today)
• Rutgers professor set to teach after Trump comments: The public New Jersey university placed Tracy Budd, a non-tenure-track professor in its writing program, under review after she posted on Facebook that she hoped the attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump this summer would “inspire others.” But she’s scheduled to teach this fall, said a spokesperson, who declined to share further details about personnel matters. (NJ.com)
• Montana State wins Covid-refund lawsuit: The state’s Supreme Court ruled against a student who sued the university, seeking a refund because Montana State switched to online learning in the early days of the pandemic. The institution never pledged it wouldn’t shut down campus and change to remote instruction if it had good reason, the court found last week, continuing a mixed record for lawsuits seeking money back for pandemic campus closures. (Daily Montanan, Stateline)

Online education hits close to home

It’s time to stop conflating online learning with distance learning, suggests the latest Changing Landscape of Online Education report, or CHLOE 9, which is being released today by the market-research firm Eduventures and the nonprofits Quality Matters and Educause.

More than 300 chief online-learning officers shared what they’re seeing through a survey in the first two months of this year. Here are key takeaways:

• Online education helps colleges recruit students in their region, 92 percent of chief online-learning officers said. That’s higher than the 87 percent who reported that it helps them pursue students outside of their region.
• Even on-campus students want online education, according to 77 percent who said campus-based students are asking for online options.
• Online classes are often first choices, with 60 percent of chief online-learning officers saying online classes tend to fill up first.
• Colleges aren’t saving money by putting classes online. Only 17 percent said online education is a way to reduce institutional costs, compared to two-thirds who said such a goal isn’t realistic.
• Budgets are tight. Four in 10 chief online-learning officers said their budgets were inadequate, even though only 16 percent said their budgets shrank.
• Two-year colleges have embraced online education more than others. Public two-year institutions were most likely to report integrating online learning into their institutional strategy, with 48 percent saying they’d done so. Four-year private colleges were least likely, with just 20 percent saying the same.

“The big surprise is the enthusiasm for online learning among on-campus students,” Robert Ubell, senior editor of the report and vice dean emeritus at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, told the Daily Briefing in an email.

Comings and goings

• Mark Lombardi, president of Maryville University, in St. Louis, will retire in June 2025.
• Ricardo Izurieta, an associate professor in the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida, has been named dean of the School of Health Sciences and Public Health at California State University at Los Angeles.
• Waded Cruzado, president of Montana State University, plans to retire in June 2025.

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

Footnote

My longstanding love of the family drama known as freshman move-in day should be well-known at this point. The joy and jitters of students beginning a new academic endeavor are on full display for the world to see, enhanced by the fact that everyone’s hauling heavy stuff on a tight deadline in the heat.

Believe it or not, move-in days are already upon us once again. And, just like last year, I’d like to mark the occasion by sharing reader-submitted photos. It’s impossible to fully capture the essence of being there, but it’s still fun to see the unexpected items students bring, as well as the logistical feats campuses pull off to get everyone into the dorms quickly and safely.

📦 Send us move-in photos from your campus. Include your name and title, tell us how we should credit the photo, and share a brief description of what’s pictured. We’ll publish submissions in future Footnotes. Email dailybriefing@chronicle.com.