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

🚨 Breaking last night: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will release tens of millions of dollars in funding for the University of Maine system that it had frozen, according to Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican. University leaders called the incident an “unnecessary distraction from our essential education, research and extension activities” and said they are “eager to put the whiplash and worry of recent weeks behind us.” The funding was frozen amid antidiscrimination investigations in the wake of a blowup between Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, and President Trump over trans athletes.

Civil rights and education research slashed

The U.S. Department of Education did little to outline exactly where it cut employees on the day after it announced a roughly 50-percent reduction in its workforce. But a general picture is emerging.

The U.S. Department of Education’s research and civil-rights arms were particularly hard hit by mass layoffs announced on Tuesday night, emerging evidence shows. The department is laying off about 1,300 people, plus cutting ties with another 600 who took voluntary separation and retirement deals.

Government officials didn’t share breakdowns of who lost their jobs, despite repeated questions. An email in response to the Daily Briefing’s inquiries pointed to a news release that said all of the department’s divisions are affected by the cuts, “with some divisions requiring significant reorganization.”

But tallies of fired union members were available. Before Tuesday’s cuts, American Federation of Government Employees Local 252 represented about 2,800 of the Education Department’s 4,100 employees.

• The majority of fired employees, 969, were represented by the union, the data show.

Union job losses were particularly high in three offices that touch higher education. Those offices collectively employed 674 union members who are losing their jobs.

A rough estimate of how deeply each unit was cut can be calculated by taking the number of union job losses and comparing them to snapshots of September employment data. (Special thanks to The Chronicle’s Dan Bauman, who compiled the September data from the Office of Personnel Management and shared it with The Daily Briefing.)

Remember, this is back-of-the-envelope math that doesn’t account for employment changes since September or nonunion employees who were fired:

• 22.6 percent of Federal Student Aid: 326 union members were cut on Tuesday from the office, which had 1,440 employees in September.
• 42.7 percent of the Office for Civil Rights: 243 union members lost their jobs at OCR, which had 568 employees in September.
• 56.4 percent of the Institute of Education Sciences: 105 people were fired from the research arm, which had 186 employees in September.

OCR offices in several cities are closing, ProPublica reported. They are Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Offices are set to remain open in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Even before the cuts, OCR complaints were backlogged, and employees are questioning how the understaffed office will investigate complaints.

• “Part of OCR’s work is to physically go to places,” an OCR lawyer who hasn’t been laid off told ProPublica. “We show up and look at softball and baseball fields. We measure the bathroom to make sure it’s accessible. We interview student groups.”

Meanwhile, federal cuts to education research have hit at least 700 people outside of the government in the last week as social-science researchers for contractors like the American Institutes for Research were either furloughed or laid off, The New York Times reported.

• “This is bedrock, baseline information for how our society is functioning,” Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland at College Park, told the Times.

Educators blasted the cuts in statements. “We will fight these draconian cuts,” Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, pledged. The layoffs sow “more chaos and uncertainty,” said Kara D. Freeman, president of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Education Department leaders’ claims that eliminating half of the staff will not affect its services “is, at best, naive,” said Beth Maglione, interim president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

Conservatives who want to close the Education Department cheered the firings. “A 50-percent work-force reduction is sizable and could very well be a good thing,” Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the conservative Cato Institute, said in a statement. “It’s time to find out if it’s been a bloated bureaucracy all along.”

“We have to identify where the bloat is, where the bureaucracy is,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday on Fox News. “We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people and the good people to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that, are being met.”

• “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students,” said McMahon, who suggested Tuesday’s cuts are a step toward eliminating the Education Department and sending more money to the states.

The bigger questions: If test scores go up, will it be because students’ abilities improve or because test quality goes down? Will student aid function more smoothly with fewer federal employees focused on it? Will a smaller OCR be able to tap other agencies to build the trust and capacity needed to enforce civil-rights laws? What other functions will be called into question once more of the cuts come into view?

📱 For more from The Chronicle: What the Education Dept.’s Job Cuts Could Mean for Financial Aid

Quote of the day

“We lack a rule of law at universities, and that rule of law is needed for there to be a robust free-speech commitment.”

— Lee Bollinger, who retired as president of Columbia University in 2023

Bollinger gave a thoughtful yet blunt assessment of the state of higher ed, its leaders, and its political critics in an interview published in The Chronicle Review. He’s in a unique position to offer insight: Bollinger was president at the University of Michigan when it successfully defended race-conscious admissions. More recently, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute mused about arresting Bollinger as a warning to college leaders who idolize him.

Here are some other key takeaways from the interview:

• College presidents aren’t picked for their crisis-navigation skills. They’ve traditionally been chosen for their understanding of the academic way of life, Bollinger said: “They haven’t played hardball politics.”
• Leaders are retreating in the face of anger. “That impulse, I think, is driving universities too much today.”
• Universities must defend their special role in society. “The First Amendment should extend special protections to universities just as it arguably does for the press.”
• Bollinger supports institutional neutrality … with limits. Institutions can’t argue they’re neutral when it comes to racial discrimination, for example.
• Antisemitism at Columbia has become much more serious than it was two decades ago: “I think that’s changed over time, and I don’t know exactly why.”

Bonus quote: “We must make sure that when we emerge from whatever present crisis we are in, the choices we made will not make us ashamed.”

📚 Read the full conversation: Lee Bollinger on Trump, Columbia, and why capitulation won’t work.

Quick hits

• Some funding for international-exchange programs resumes: A month after the State Department suspended grants under international-education programs like the Fulbright and Gilman scholarships, about 15 percent of pending payments have resumed, according to one estimate. But it’s not clear whether more is coming or why certain payments have been restored. (The Chronicle)
• Federal landscape spurs more cuts: The Johns Hopkins University is planning layoffs and canceled health projects both at home and abroad because of the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The University of Washington is limiting hiring and canceling nonessential travel for fear of federal policy changes and a state budget shortfall. The University of Houston paused most new construction because of uncertain federal and state funding outlooks. (The Wall Street Journal, KING, Houston Public Media)
• No written evidence in Khalil deportation: The Trump administration’s effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil so far rests entirely on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assessment that the former Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist staying in the country would have “potentially serious adverse foreign-policy consequences.” A lawyer for a group challenging the arrest charged that the administration is using a “vague and overly broad” part of the law. Khalil’s case has become an early test of the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on foreign students who protest on U.S. campuses. (The Washington Post)
• Faculty rebuke lawyer for his bid to change tenure: The Faculty Senate at Emporia State University, in Kansas, passed a no-confidence vote in Steven Lovett, the institution’s general counsel, who has proposed state legislation that would limit tenure protections. Faculty members fired by Emporia State in 2023 have filed a lawsuit that names Lovett, arguing they were deprived of the tenure protections that Lovett now wants to change. (Kansas Reflector)

Comings and goings

• Farouk Dey, vice provost for integrative learning and life design at the Johns Hopkins University, has been named president of Palo Alto University.
• Ron K. Patterson, president of Chadron State College, in Nebraska, has been named president of Murray State University, in Kentucky.
• Joshua Farrelman, associate vice president for government and community relations at the University of Rochester, has been named vice president for government relations.

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

Footnote

Construction at Olney Central College required some campus tree removal, WTHI reports. That’s pretty run-of-the-mill stuff … unless you live in this particular Illinois community, which goes to great lengths to protect its cherished albino squirrels.

The City of Olney calls itself “the home of the white squirrels” in reference to its dozens of Eastern gray squirrels that aren’t actually gray. The rare albino squirrels are also found in a handful of other places, including Kenton, Tennessee and Brevard, North Carolina. But those are apparently homes away from home.

Olney officials have worked to protect their squirrels for more than two decades, according to Smithsonian Magazine. A 2002 ordinance seeks to keep dangerous predators off the streets by dictating that cats can’t run free. More recent rules give squirrels the right of way on public streets and establish $750 fines for anyone who harasses one of the rodents.

Local squirrel counts nonetheless suggest albino squirrels could go the way of the giant flying squirrel. Dwindling numbers suggest they could become extinct in the area soon as 2034, estimated John Stencel, a retired biologist who taught at Olney Central College and who started the squirrel counts in 1977.

Recent developments offer causes for optimism, however. Last fall’s squirrel count jumped by eight, to 81. And Olney Central College is compensating for its tree-cutting by installing nesting boxes. You could say it’s building homes in the home of the white squirrels.