Good morning, and welcome to Monday, November 25. Beth McMurtrie wrote today’s lead item. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Rick Seltzer wrote the rest. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

How higher ed could respond to climate concern

Young people are worried about climate change. A survey by Sacred Heart University this summer found that more than half of people aged 15 to 29 agreed with this statement: “My level of concern for climate change causes psychological distress that impacts my daily life.”

The Daily Briefing spoke to two of the study’s authors, Kirk A. Bartholomew, development director of Sacred Heart’s Institute for Sustainability and Social Justice, and Brooke Suter, an executive coach and consultant focused on sustainable leadership. Here are some key takeaways.

Young people want to take action, but they don’t think it will make a difference. Nearly 8 in 10 believe that individuals should address climate change. Yet nearly 6 in 10 say that any one person’s actions would be “very limited” or “not effective.”

Colleges have missed an opportunity to empower students. The responses suggest young people feel overwhelmed about how to tackle such a huge topic and could use more instruction on how collective action works, why voting is important, how to connect with others, and why democracy matters. Says Bartholomew, “They clearly do care and they want to contribute to positive change, but that work is hard. And they don’t see a clear path forward.”

• Only 20 percent said their colleges did very well at teaching about sustainability and social justice; another two-thirds said they did at least somewhat well. Nearly three in five said they are or would have been more likely to apply to a college that offers programs in those topics.

The skills needed to collectively address climate change may be different than what colleges are teaching. Students are interested in building capacities such as caring, interdisciplinary collaboration, systems thinking, and mindfulness. Nearly 80 percent of respondents rated these capacities as important for addressing sustainability and social-justice challenges.

These are different kinds of skills, Suter notes, than what colleges are used to teaching, such as critical thinking and analysis. “What’s called for now is being human first and combining the head with the heart and advancing relational skills, which take practice,” she says.

A new movement to build soft skills to combat climate change is largely happening outside of academe. Suter notes that some sustainability leaders, including federal officials, believe what’s lacking in the fight against climate change aren’t policy ideas or new technologies, but collective will and action.

The bigger questions: Students care about sustainability and climate change, but they aren’t sure how to turn their concern into meaningful action. Could this be an opportunity for higher education to develop multifaceted programs that meet the moment? To teach students both the technical and professional skills they need, along with the capacities to create change?

📱 For more from The Chronicle archive: The Climate-Conscious College: Faculty members across disciplines are updating curricula in ways that inspire action, not just fear

Quick hits

• Opposition to ed-secretary pick: At least three different activist organizations have come out against President-elect Donald J. Trump’s selection of Linda McMahon as the next secretary of education. MomsRising cited her support of school vouchers; End Rape on Campus raised concerns that she will weaken Title IX protections; and Accountable.us noted McMahon is being sued by former World Wresting Entertainment employees who say they were sexually abused while working as “ring boys” and allege McMahon didn’t stop the exploitation. McMahon’s lawyer has called those lawsuit baseless. (End Rape on Campus, MomsRising, Accountable.us, The Washington Post)
• Is U. of Chicago backtracking on Gaza Scholars promise? As they negotiated to end a pro-Palestinian encampment this spring, administrators agreed to publicly announce a “Gaza Scholars at Risk” initiative to hire as many as eight visiting professors from the region for one-year appointments. Some student-activists and faculty members now say the university isn’t fulfilling that commitment. Administrators disagree, pointing to a scholar the university brought to campus from the West Bank through an existing program. (WBEZ)
• “Diversity” struck from Mississippi policies: The governing board for the state’s public universities voted last week to delete the word from several policies. That included substituting a statement “on higher-education access and success” for a diversity statement that had set systemwide goals for increasing representation of underrepresented students and employees. The board said it wanted to ensure compliance with state and federal laws, even though lawmakers haven’t passed any ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion. (Mississippi Today)
• Iowa House plans higher-ed review: A new committee is set to examine the state’s three public universities, its community colleges, and its private institutions. Taylor Collins, a Republican who will lead the committee, said the state has a work-force shortage but that colleges “have been distracted by ideological agendas” that prompt questions about the return on taxpayer’s dollars. (Radio Iowa)

Dug in on the hot seat

Faculty groups turned up the pressure on two embattled presidents last week, but their governing boards have yet to budge.

Richard (Biff) Williams’s alleged behavior prompted no-confidence votes at two different universities. Williams recently apologized after a lawsuit from administrators at Utah Tech University accused him of creating a toxic environment while he was president there — including by leaving a phallic display of two eggplants and a zucchini on the porch of an administrator who’d had a vasectomy.

• At Missouri State University, where Williams is currently president: The faculty senate passed a no-confidence resolution calling Williams’s conduct out of line with the institution’s “commitments to ethical leadership and inclusive excellence,” the Springfield News-Leader reported. In addition to concerns about his behavior at Utah Tech, faculty members said he had deflected and failed to adequately explain himself. The institution’s board stood by Williams, according to the Springfield Daily Citizen.
• At Utah Tech, where Williams was formerly president: The faculty senate voted for a no-confidence resolution in senior leaders, citing “profound concern” over the way they responded to the Williams case, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Faculty members also want the institution to hire an outside investigator to reexamine Williams’s alleged behavior.
• Also in Utah, but at the state level: The Utah Board of Higher Education changed a policy so that presidents who resign in the face of misconduct allegations can no longer receive their full salary for a year, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Williams resigned as Utah Tech president in January but kept collecting his $357,000 salary until he started at Missouri State in July.

Bashar Hanna faces a union revolt after losing a lawsuit that accused him of retaliating against an administrator who was involved in filing a misconduct report against him. A jury recently awarded $3.9 million to a former business-school dean who alleged he was terminated for helping an administrative assistant file a sexual-harassment report against Hanna in 2017 at Bloomsburg University.

• In the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education: The head of the union representing faculty members said Hanna should resign or be fired from his current position as president of Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The union is threatening no-confidence votes if Hanna remains. But Hanna has the backing of the institution’s board, and the system says an appeal of the jury’s finding is forthcoming.

Stat of the day

255 acres

That’s how much land in Bristol, Conn., Brown University is transferring to the Pokanoket Tribe, The Providence Journal reported.

Brown gave most of the land to the tribe this month, signing it over to a trust established by the tribe’s members. A remaining portion is slated to be transferred by the summer of 2026, after a museum’s collections are moved to Brown’s home of Providence, Rhode Island. Another 120 acres in the area that Brown owns will be sold to local government.

The transfer comes seven years after the Pokanoket Tribe occupied the site for a month. The tribe considers the undeveloped land, which surrounds Mount Hope, to be sacred.

An agreement guarantees multiple tribes access and restricts development. The Narragansett Indian Tribe, which is Rhode Island’s only federally recognized tribe, notably isn’t on the list.

Comings and goings

• TK Darrin Martin has been named president of Bluefield State University, in West Virginia, after serving as interim president since November 2023.
• Wendy Osefo, an assistant professor in the School of Education at the Johns Hopkins University and star of the reality-television show The Real Housewives of Potomac, has been named a visiting professor at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut.
• Kimberly Guyer, interim associate vice president and dean of students at Florida State University, has been named vice president for college life at Muhlenberg College.

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

Footnote

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has watched less recent television and film than I. Nonetheless, this question posed by a Vogue headline caught my eye: Why are there so few good, accurate TV shows about college?

Many films portray a reasonably authentic college experience, argues the column’s author, Emma Specter. But when it comes to TV shows, she finds only one: The Sex Lives of College Girls, which recently returned for its third season.

Sorry, reality-television enthusiasts, but the professor who appears in the series The Real Housewives of Potomac isn’t what we’re looking for here. Not only is reality TV decidedly unrealistic, but Specter is looking for the student experience, not the faculty one.

“Why aren’t there more TV shows that nail the specific strangeness of being a child and an adult at once surrounded by fellow adult-children who all seem to want you to chug Franzia out of a funnel?” Specter asks.

I suspect the second half of that question offers an answer. We err when we assume traditional-age college students spend their time on campus drenched in wine. Some prefer beer. Many don’t drink at all. Substance use aside, the variety in campus culture, location, and format means that one person’s accurate representation of being a young adult at college is another’s fun-house mirror.

Nonetheless, this is an opportunity to ask you, dear readers, to suggest some good shows that focus on college — student life or otherwise. You can help me shake my reputation as unplugged from TV land, or at the very least surface something good for your fellow readers to watch.

📺 Do you know a good TV show about college? Despite the musings above, it doesn’t have to be focused on the student experience.

Email the show’s name and why you like it to dailybriefing@chronicle.com. Include your name and title, and your submission could appear in a future Footnote.