Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday, March 26. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

From crackdown to crack up

Columbia University’s public negotiations with the Trump administration have become a canvas onto which higher education and its critics project their righteousness, anger, and fears. Let’s check in on some of the latest reporting and commentary as the dust refuses to settle.

Highly selective colleges’ critics have celebrated Columbia University’s offer to the Trump administration in the days since administrators offered concessions in hopes of reclaiming $400 million in withheld funding.

• “It had become unavoidably clear that Columbia could not restore a climate of free inquiry to its campus on its own. So, the Trump administration gave it a push,” Noah Rothman wrote in The National Review. As evidence of Columbia’s poor climate, Rothman cited students disrupting classrooms, distributing inflammatory literature, and bragging that they’d “shut down business-as-usual” by cementing sewage lines.
• “Many of the steps Columbia is now promising should have been made long ago in its own best interest,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued. Restricting masks “means rule-breakers have to take responsibility for their actions” and clear rules “about time, place and manner restrictions on campus speech will raise the cost for those who want to block speakers they dislike.”

But even some who supported changes at Columbia worried about the precedent they set.

• “It is disturbing to see the federal government exert its power in a way that could cripple one of the nation’s storied institutions of higher education, and in a way that, arguably, is procedurally inadmissible,” wrote Michael B. Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

The $400-million question remains: Why didn’t the university sue? Many legal scholars have argued it had a strong case that the government skipped important procedural steps needed to withhold funding, was targeting popular but protected speech, or both.

• “Many of the Trump administration’s demands … will give cover to Columbia for establishing disciplinary mechanisms its administrators may already have been planning to introduce,” The Chronicle’s Len Gutkin theorized. “Incidents like the occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall are expensive, both materially and reputationally. Most of the items … involve policies one imagines the school was considering with or without the federal government’s coercion.”
• “It may be that Columbia is trying to have its funding and its freedom, too, banking on its letter being conciliatory-enough looking for Trump to declare a win to his constituents while being vague enough to assure academics that the university is retaining its autonomy,” Justin Weinberg suggested in the Daily Nous. Even the university’s offer of a new administrator to oversee Middle Eastern studies was couched with language noting the office would follow academic procedures, Weinberg noted.

Faculty members seem unconvinced that administrators threaded the needle or did enough to support academic freedom.

• “The administration has deserted us,” Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics and vice president for Columbia’s AAUP chapter, told The Chronicle’s Adrienne Lu. “We would like to stand in solidarity with our administration, but they need to stand in solidarity with us, and right now we’re not seeing that.”

Columbia hasn’t ruled out any legal options, Katrina Armstrong, its interim president, told about 75 faculty leaders this weekend, according to a transcript The Wall Street Journal reviewed.

The Trump administration’s only response has been a warning. Officials have called Columbia’s offer a step in the right direction but haven’t yet promised to restore the $400 million.

• “Other universities that are being investigated by the Task Force should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop antisemitic behavior,” Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, said in a statement.

The bigger picture: “The leadership of academia has been pretty much absent,” Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell University, told The Chronicle Review. “Everyone is taking a duck-and-cover attitude.”

📚 For more from The Chronicle Review: What Columbia U. Should Have Done — and What Other Colleges Could Do Next

Quote of the day

“We’re just kneecapping our ability to understand.”

— Jordan Matsudaira, a professor of public policy at American University and former deputy undersecretary of education in the Biden administration

Experts are sounding the alarm about data collected by the U.S. Department of Education after its statistics and research arm stopped more than 160 contracts, fired employees, and promised to restructure, The Chronicle’s Katherine Mangan reports. Even employees who worked on reports required by Congress weren’t spared.

Key college research continues, according to an Education Department spokesperson. Contracts have been maintained to run the College Scorecard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

But former employees say that’s not enough. Federal employees worked closely with contractors to make sure information is complete, presented clearly, and presented to the public and policymakers, they said.

The bigger picture: “We’ve just lost the most reliable, gold standard, nonpartisan source of information on education in the U.S.,” Sheida White, who spent 25 years as a researcher with National Center for Education Statistics before becoming a consultant for it in 2018, wrote on LinkedIn. Those who believe good policy require good data had better hope White’s wrong.

📱 Read the full story: ‘Breathtakingly Irresponsible': Former Workers Decry Decimation of Education Dept.’s Data Warehouse

Quick hits

• AAUP joins more lawsuits: The American Association of University Professors joined other groups in at least two lawsuits filed against the Trump administration on Tuesday. One filed with the Middle East Studies Association seeks to stop the deportation of students and faculty members who aren’t citizens and who attended pro-Palestinian protests. The other accuses the federal government of trying to chill dissent and restrict campus speech by withholding $400 million from Columbia University. (The Chronicle, American Federation of Teachers)
• Should antisemitism investigations collect personal data? The Trump administration told civil-rights attorneys starting campus antisemitism investigations in February to collect the names and nationalities of students who might have taken part in harassment, The Washington Post reported. That unusual request could feed a list of people targeted for deportation, though an Education Department official maintains it’s necessary to evaluate how colleges addressed allegations. (The Washington Post)
• EPA axed grants despite knowing it lacked authority: When telling grantees — including colleges — that it was cutting off funding, the Environmental Protection Agency cited a clause that applied to awards made between August 2020 and September of last year. But nearly half of the terminated grants were made final or modified after September. Agency lawyers instead decided the errors would “play out via the disputes process, or litigation, for those recipients that choose to pursue those avenues.” (The Washington Post)
• New gen-ed mandate becomes law in Utah: Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed a bill overhauling the introductory courses required of all students at public colleges to include those focused on Western civilization and the founding fathers, among other topics. The courses will first be offered at Utah State University and later expanded to other campuses over four years. Students will be required to take a dozen credits covering American institutions and “perennial questions about the human condition,” drawing heavily from books about the rise of Christianity, ancient Israel, Greece, and Rome. Faculty critics had called for a veto, noting that the legislation means 40 percent of the gen-ed curriculum would be set by the state, and calling it a breach of academic freedom. (The Salt Lake Tribune)
• Pennsylvania college plans drop from DI to DIII sports: Saint Francis University said the change would cut travel time, giving students the ability to better balance academics, athletics, and personal growth once it’s effective in 2026. (The Chronicle)

Comings and goings

• Mary E. Earick, dean of the New Mexico Highlands University School of Education, has been named dean of the Northern Illinois University College of Education.
• Louise Fincher has been named president of Emory & Henry College, after serving as interim president since August.
• Margo DelliCarpini, vice president for Commonwealth Campuses and executive chancellor at Pennsylvania State University, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at the College of New Jersey.
• Nick Pace, interim dean and a professor in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, has been named dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky.

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

Footnote

Bowdoin College, in Maine, is touting the largest-ever gift in its 231-year history: $50 million from Reed Hastings, the Netflix co-founder and executive chairman.

The money is set to create “The Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity,” which will hire 10 new faculty members, support professors who want to use artificial intelligence, and hold workshops about using the technology.

“As AI becomes smarter than humans, we are going to need some deep thinking to keep us flourishing,” Hastings, who graduated from Bowdoin in 1983 before doing graduate work at Stanford University, said in a statement.

No word on whether those of us at home can get a start on deep thinking by watching such Netflix hits as Love is Blind and Is It Cake? — or whether we’d be better served by tuning into WWE’s Monday Night Raw, which the streaming giant started carrying this year.

“Bowdoin is ideally positioned to meet the challenges and opportunities of AI,” Safa Zaki, the college’s president, said in a statement. “Our deep commitment to the liberal arts and the common good position us to think together about what we are going to value in human cognition, and what we will want our AI systems to do — or not do — going forward in service to humanity.”

Presumably, one thing we’ll want our AI systems to do is recommend television shows that will keep us tuned in to Netflix.