Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, March 6. Sarah Brown wrote the top of today’s Briefing. Brock Read contributed Quick Hits. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Rick Seltzer chipped in the rest. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

A lukewarm reception

One scholar’s move opens a window into higher ed’s fraught relationship with race, as our Jasper Smith reports.

Ibram X. Kendi will join Howard University’s faculty this summer. Hiring the celebrity historian is a big statement for an institution that’s been hustling to raise its profile.

In 2020, Kendi became the primary scholar interpreting racial justice for the general public. His book, How to Be an Antiracist, became a New York Times bestseller. He’s spent the last five years at Boston University, where he founded the Center for Antiracist Research.

• Kendi defines antiracism as the practice of opposing racism: actively working to counter racist politics, behaviors, and beliefs. In higher ed, antiracism might mean acknowledging a college’s historic relationship with slavery or supporting research that examines racial inequities.

But many of Kendi’s new Howard colleagues aren’t so sure about the hire. Concerns about the decision fall into four buckets:

1. Kendi’s appointment did not involve the faculty. Recruiting high-profile hires is often hush-hush. But some professors say it’s evidence they’re being shut out of campus decision-making more broadly.
2. Kendi’s research conflicts with the approach of Howard’s Afro-American studies department. The department emphasizes African history and the cultivation of Black traditions, not the struggle against white supremacy, said Greg Carr, a former department chair who’s taught at Howard for 25 years.
3. Kendi is taking up vital resources. Some faculty members have pushed for better pay and working conditions, especially for instructors without tenure, as the university has hired big names like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
4. Kendi is a lightning rod. “The institution will attract the fire, and we’re going to have to deal with it,” Carr said.

Some faculty also worry that Kendi might be using the university’s brand to repair his image. His tenure at Boston wasn’t smooth sailing.

• Kendi laid off half of his center’s staff in 2023, as donations slowed. He faced complaints of poor leadership and financial mismanagement from former colleagues, though a university audit found no problems with his financial decision-making.
• BU plans to close Kendi’s former center this summer, when its charter expires.

Still, Howard casts the move as a slam dunk. The university just became the only HBCU to earn a Research 1 Carnegie classification, marking very high levels of research activity and funding. Administrators, alumni, students, and some faculty think Kendi will cement that status.

The move comes as Kendi’s antiracism framework has lost traction. Amid the nation’s racial reckoning in 2020 and 2021, numerous colleges signaled that they were responsive to concerns about racism, equity, and justice by creating antiracist research centers based on his model. But a conservative backlash is now in full swing:

• State lawmakers have taken aim at colleges’ efforts to teach about race and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Critics allege progressive indoctrination, scorning work to connect race with privilege and oppression. That work is a core tenet of antiracism.
• The Trump administration has threatened colleges that don’t comply with its directives to end DEI, although its most recent guidance backed off from previous suggestions to do away with course discussions about race and Black History Month celebrations.

Still, several institutions maintain antiracism centers. They include Temple University, Arcadia University, and American University, where Kendi spent three years, founding its center in 2017. Such centers focused on interdisciplinary research, community partnerships, and engagement, their directors told The Chronicle in late 2023.

The bigger question: Kendi is embracing a fresh academic identity, focusing his research at Howard on “the global African diaspora.” But what’s the future of Kendi’s seminal antiracism framework? Some colleges are preemptively eliminating or reshaping programs related to race and diversity as the Trump administration tries to make DEI a four-letter word.

📱 Read the full story: Can Ibram Kendi Find a New Home at Howard?

Federal news express

• Judge expands block on overhead-payment cap: Judge Angel Kelley of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on Wednesday, preventing the Trump administration from reducing National Institutes of Health overhead reimbursements to 15 percent while three lawsuits challenge the change. Kelley wrote that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in overturning the cuts. Just after the cap was announced last month, the judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking it in 22 states that sued. (STAT, The Chronicle)
• Antisemitism hunt at U. of California: The Justice Department has started investigating whether the university system has taken part in a “pattern or practice” of discrimination by allowing an antisemitic work environment. It’s the third time in a week the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism has announced scrutiny of higher-ed institutions. (U.S. Department of Justice, The Chronicle)
• Humanities funder walks back DEI restrictions: The National Endowment for the Humanities said it is removing funding restrictions on “discriminatory equity ideology” and other support for DEI in response to a court injunction halting two of President Trump’s executive orders. (National Endowment for the Humanities, The Chronicle)
• ACLU sues over “Dear Colleague” letter: The U.S. Department of Education overstepped its authority, violated the First Amendment, and infringed on academic freedom with last month’s guidance discouraging institutions from considering race, alleges a Wednesday lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, two of its state chapters, the National Education Association, and the NEA’s New Hampshire chapter. It’s the second such challenge to the guidance. (ACLU, The Chronicle)
• Law professors circulate defense of DEI: Legal scholars are sharing a memo arguing that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are in fact legal under federal law. They were motivated by reports of institutions reassigning staff members and scrubbing websites in the wake of threats from the Trump administration. (WBEZ/Open Campus)
• FIRE criticizes anti-protest rhetoric: A social-media post from President Trump that threatened colleges and protesters “will cast an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said. Colleges have a track record of cracking down on legally permissible speech when their federal funding may be in jeopardy, but even students who violate policies must receive due process, the free-speech watchdog added. (FIRE)

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Quick hits

• OpenAI’s academic plunge: The creator of ChatGPT announced Tuesday that it will disburse $50 million in funding to a consortium of 15 research institutions “dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education.” Some members of the NextGenAI consortium, including Duke, Harvard, and Ohio State Universities, will put funds toward science and health research; others, including Howard and Texas A&M Universities, will develop or expand curricula. The artificial-intelligence company has thickened its portfolio of academic partnerships since striking its first such deal with Arizona State University in January 2024. (Open AI, The Chronicle)
• Pro-Palestinian art comes down at UNT: Two students pulled artwork featuring the phrase “The murder of people = genocide” from an exhibit at the University of North Texas after state Republican lawmakers sought its removal, calling it antisemitic and “factually false.” In a letter to university officials, State Rep. Mitch Little had suggested that by hosting the exhibit, North Texas was failing to comply with an executive order from the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, that requires colleges to punish antisemitic rhetoric. (The Texas Tribune)
• Merger makes headway: New Jersey City University trustees voted on Wednesday to enter merger talks with Kean University, meeting a state regulator’s requirement that the university pick another public institution for a potential partnership as it works to recover from a financial crisis in 2022. (New Jersey City University, N.J.com)

Comings and goings

• Nicole R. Hall, associate vice president for career and professional development at the University of Virginia, has been named senior associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students.
• Angela King Taylor has been named vice chancellor for student affairs at University of Missouri after serving as interim vice chancellor since June 2023.
• Rebecca Bott-Knutson, dean of the Van D. and Barbara B. Fishback Honors College at South Dakota State University, has been named dean of the Virginia Tech Honors College.

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

Footnote

If you regularly see squirrels on campus, you know when spring is just around the corner. The little critters start going, well, squirrelly.

But they have not always been little critters. About 5 million years ago, North America was home to giant flying squirrels about the size of a modern house cat.

One such prehistoric rodent made a surprise appearance at the Gray Fossil Site at East Tennessee State University, McClatchy reports. Researchers unearthed a partial fossil from a species previously known to be from Eurasia.

“There had been some uncertain reports from Florida, but the specimen of the Gray Fossil Site provided new information and helped to confirm that somehow these giant flying squirrels crossed the Bering Land Bridge,” said Isaac Casanovas-Vilar, co-author of a study on the creatures.

A cooling climate likely cut the squirrels’ range to warmer territory before driving them to extinction. Otherwise, these rodents might still roam the continent today, announcing impending seasonal change by getting squirrelly at a much larger scale.

Correction: Monday’s Briefing gave the incorrect home state of the University of Findlay and Bluffton University. They are located in Ohio, not South Carolina.