Get ready for your day with this essential rundown of what’s happening in higher ed. Delivered every weekday morning. Subscribe now for access.
From: Rick Seltzer
Subject: Daily Briefing: Dear Colleague deadline day
Good morning, and welcome to Friday, February 28. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch:
Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.
A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.
Good morning, and welcome to Friday, February 28. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.
The U.S. Department of Education gave colleges until the end of February to comply with its Valentine’s Day “Dear Colleague” letter, which told institutions to eliminate the consideration of race from campus activities or risk losing federal funding. Little has become clear since then — except that the end of the month has arrived.
Higher-ed leaders haven’t moved in concert since the “Dear Colleague” letter unexpectedly arrived. Variously citing federal and state laws, some have removed references to diversity, equity, and inclusion work, said they’re studying the legal situation, suggested they are already in compliance with the law, or announced changes and then reversed themselves.
Institutions that made changes sometimes received blowback. More than 1,500 people signed a petition questioning the University of Arizona’s decision to remove online DEI references, KGUN reported. The Anchorage Daily News published a letter from University of Alaska faculty leaders that panned regents’ decision to ban DEI-related terms, calling it censorious and damaging to efforts to increase recruitment and retention.
But state officials continue to press changes. Consider two cases:
And the federal situation has grown more muddled. A U.S. District Court in Maryland blocked parts of two of Trump’s executive orders, with Judge Adam B. Abelson calling them too vague and threatening to free speech. The Education Department has said the guidance issued in the “Dear Colleague” letter remains in effect, however.
The “Dear Colleague” letter offers some specificity that the blocked executive orders lacked. It says educational institutions can’t segregate students or “distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” calling out operations like graduation ceremonies and student housing.
A lawsuit alleges that’s still too vague. The American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association have asked a federal court to block implementation of the letter, arguing it doesn’t define DEI and will chill speech.
Nobody seems to agree on exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about DEI. That increasingly leaves it as a political inkblot test. Experts interviewed by Inside Higher Ed gave varying definitions of differing clarity — or no definition at all.
“There’s a fine line between removing programs that are considered to be discriminatory by race and removing programs that speak to a cultural or ethnicity support for students,” Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, told NPR.
For all the questions, colleges continue to expose racial fault lines. Northwestern State University’s president, Jimmy Genovese, allegedly told the mayor of Natchitoches, La., Ronnie Williams, who is Black, that “he ought to be ashamed” of taking a front-row seat at an event “with white people being present,” The Louisiana Illuminator reported. Faculty members have called on Genovese, who is white, to apologize. The Faculty Senate president said he believed the comments were meant to be a joke and were received as such, but that doesn’t absolve Genovese of responsibility.
The bigger picture: Exactly which practices are legal was always bound to be fleshed out in regulatory and court fights. Whether the Education Department acts in the coming hours or days will tell us how quickly that messy process is accelerating.
📱 For more from The Chronicle: Our Katherine Mangan recently covered a debate over the future of DEI at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which built what is considered the largest DEI infrastructure in the country.
That’s the share of students who experienced at least one type of basic-needs insecurity between the spring of 2023 and the summer of 2024, according to new data from the Hope Center at Temple University.
That includes 48 percent of students with insecure housing, 14 percent who were homeless at some point, and 41 percent who experienced food insecurity.
We couldn’t answer all of the important questions you asked during last week’s live event reviewing President Trump’s first weeks in office. So join Sarah Brown, news editor, and your Daily Briefing scribe next week as we field as many questions as we can.
We’ll be live Thursday, March 6, at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT.
To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.
Readers have been recommending their favorite television shows about college. But it’s safe to say we can identify Pepperdine University’s least-favorite television show that’s not actually about college.
The private institution in Southern California is suing Netflix and Warner Brothers, alleging their new comedy Running Point uses the university’s branding without permission.
The show centers on a character who’s put in charge of her family’s basketball team, a fictional Los Angeles franchise called the Waves. To those in the know, the setup might sound suspiciously like the real-life story of Jeanie Buss, president and owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, who — surprise, surprise — is credited as an executive producer.
But Pepperdine’s nonfictional athletics teams just so happen to be called the Waves, and they use a color scheme that’s eerily similar to the team’s in the show. University leaders are also upset that the show includes explicit content, substance use, nudity, and profanity.
“Since its founding in 1937, Pepperdine University has established itself as a Christian university committed to academic excellence and a world-class athletics program,” Sean Burnett, Pepperdine’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “Without our permission, Netflix continues to promote Running Point, a new series that has misappropriated our trademarked name, the Waves, our colors, blue and orange, our hometown of Los Angeles, and even the year we were founded as an institution.”
Deeper beneath the surface lies more intrigue. Pepperdine has maintained a conference room in the Lakers’ home arena, the lawsuit says. And the university’s branding appeared throughout that arena when the NCAA men’s basketball tournament was held there, with Pepperdine serving as the official collegiate host, Sportico notes.
Unfortunately for the real-world university, a judge turned down its request for a temporary restraining order before the show debuted yesterday, as Deadline reported. Running Point centers on a fictional professional basketball team, Netflix stressed in opposition to the university’s lawsuit: It has “nothing to do with universities or college sports.”
Who among us could confuse professional basketball with college sports? The former has tried to minimize the number of miles athletes travel, and it splits revenue almost evenly between players and owners. The latter has been adding travel as it’s dragged kicking and screaming into cutting players in on its profits.
At least they’re not fighting over who owns the letter D.
