Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, May 8. Sarah Brown wrote Quick Hits. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Beckie Supiano wrote the rest. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

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Campus leaders grilled again

The latest congressional hearing to interrogate college leaders for their handling of antisemitism on campus, which took place on Wednesday, was the fourth such session in 17 months. More of the same? Not entirely. It differed from those that came before it in a few respects:

• A wider inquiry. The group of presidents called to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce represented a set of institutions less well-known than those at prior hearings — Haverford College, California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and DePaul University — marking an effort by the committee to expand its investigation.
• A new witness. The presidents were joined by David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and former national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, who laid out the distinction between protected speech and discrimination. He described the high bar for a college to be in violation of Title VI, the federal antidiscrimination law: indifference to discrimination that denies students access to an education.
• A charged backdrop. This was the first such hearing since President Trump began his second term, unleashing a torrent of executive orders and other actions citing antisemitism and discrimination as reasons to withhold colleges’ federal funding — actions that have recently been met with at least some coordinated responses from the sector.

Previous hearings have been largely embarrassing for higher ed and have resulted in several presidents losing their jobs. How did it go this time?

Republican members staked out a problem. In their telling, college leaders have allowed antisemitism to run rampant on campuses, making Jewish students feel unwelcome and unsafe.

Many of the committee’s Democrats pushed back. Invoking moments like Trump’s reluctance to condemn antisemitic sloganeering and Nazi symbolism at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va., they argued that Republicans were waging a political attack on higher ed, not a good-faith effort to fight antisemitism. Several also said that an administration committed to rooting out discrimination against Jewish students would not have gutted the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which handles such cases.

The presidents made the case that they’re making progress. Wendy Raymond, of Haverford, and Robert L. Manuel, of DePaul, offered apologies for events on their campuses. This hearing — perhaps because more time has elapsed since the height of the pro-Palestinian protests last spring — stood out for presidents’ emphasis on lessons learned and actions taken.

• Quotable: “I am deeply sorry,” said Manuel during his opening remarks, in comments directed toward the university’s “students, our parents, our faculty, our staff, our alumni, and our friends.” He also addressed two Jewish DePaul students who were attacked in a hate crime, saying he was “sorry for the pain that they’re experiencing” before describing new campus policies.

But they largely accepted Republicans’ framing. At times the witnesses took issue with lawmakers’ descriptions of particular incidents. But none of them repeated the tack of pushing back on the hearing’s overarching premise that Michael H. Schill of Northwestern University took last year. The strongest moment of pushback was teed up by a Democratic lawmaker: When ranking member Robert C. (Bobby) Scott of Virginia asked the presidents late in the hearing if they agreed that their campuses were “hotbeds of antisemitism,” as Republicans have said, all three said they did not.

The presidents didn’t present a united front. When asked for specifics on how they’d taken disciplinary action, Manuel and Jeffrey D. Armstrong, of Cal Poly, provided them. Raymond declined to. Throughout the hearing, when Raymond was grilled on details, she often began by restating a general intolerance for antisemitism but saying she would not get into individual cases. This did not go over well with the Republicans on the committee, several of whom singled her out.

• Quotable: “These university presidents who are former presidents failed to answer these direct questions,” said Representative Elise M. Stefanik, Republican of New York, referring in a pointed exchange with Raymond to the professional fallout for presidents who had been seen as evasive at earlier hearings.

The bigger questions: How will this attempt to broaden the inquiry into campus antisemitism land when more of higher education sees itself as under a bad-faith, politically motivated attack? And what does it mean for the sector at large that this group of presidents neither fought back nor stuck together?

For more from The Chronicle:
Under Republicans’ Scrutiny, College Presidents Apologize for Their Handling of Campus Antisemitism
5 Key Moments From Another Congressional Grilling of College Leaders

Quick hits

• U. of Washington faces federal review: Trump’s antisemitism task force announced late Monday that it was reviewing “recent incidents of antisemitic violence” at the University of Washington’s flagship Seattle campus. The review comes in response to student protesters’ attempted occupation of a building on Monday, which resulted in nearly 30 arrests. The task force said that it appreciated quick action by university leaders to condemn the disruption and send in police officers, but that “the university must do more to deter future violence.” (Department of Health and Human Services)
• Europe ramps up poaching efforts: The European Union’s executive body announced an investment of 500 million euros — about $565 million — in recruiting and retaining top scientists. The program aims to take advantage of uncertainty in the United States, traditionally the world’s preeminent research hub, as the Trump administration slashes federal grants on topics such as diversity and climate change and freezes or cancels funding at the nation’s top research universities over alleged civil-rights violations. Over the next two years, the EU program will pay for new long-term grants and relocation expenses. (Stat News)
• Indiana U. faculty question buyouts. An early-retirement incentive package taken by 35 faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington prohibits them from criticizing the institution. A university spokesperson said officials used standard nondisparagement language for separation agreements. Some experts questioned whether it was appropriate for higher-education institutions to impose such conditions, saying they could amount to censorship. (Indiana Public Media)
• New poll touts higher ed’s value. Ninety percent of recent graduates reported having a positive college experience, according to a new survey by the student-loan company Sallie Mae. Most respondents — who received undergraduate degrees between 2019 and 2024 — said they were employed, and three-fourths were working in a field related to their degree. While just 37 percent of recent grads said they used campus career services, those who did so were more likely to have a job in their field. (Sallie Mae/Ipsos)

Quote of the day

“Take it from someone who knows: It could get worse — far worse.”

—Anna L. Peterson, a professor of religion at the University of Florida, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, warned counterparts across the country that the effort to “rid Florida’s universities of woke ideology” under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is spreading nationally.

Transitions

• Prabhas V. Moghe, executive vice president for academic affairs at Rutgers University, has been named the sole finalist for the president of the University of Texas at Dallas.
• Lanisa S. Kitchiner, former chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, has been named associate vice president for global and diaspora engagement at Howard University.
• Ethan Pollock, a professor of history and Slavic studies and chair of the history department at Brown University, has been named dean of the college.
• Brad Carson, president of the University of Tulsa, plans to step down at the end of May.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com. You can also find Transitions online here.

Footnote

For some casual observers, the 2024 thriller Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes, may have served as the best recent refresher on the Catholic Church’s process for choosing a new pope.

But the University of Chicago students taking “The Italian Renaissance: Dante, Machiavelli, and the Wars of Popes and Kings” get a much more hands-on lesson. The course is built around a simulation (not a re-enactment: the outcome is not preordained) of the conclave of 1492.

This is the 15th time the professor, Ada Palmer, has run the simulation, but “the first time that it has been interrupted by the death of an actual pope,” writes religion reporter Ruth Graham in a New York Times feature story that’s well worth your time.

The story contains a host of colorful details, including the student whose character was selected as the pope noting that the timing made him, as far as he knew, the only person then claiming the title.

While the course sounds like a lot of fun, role-playing is a well-regarded pedagogical approach to studying history for a reason. “Pope LARP,” as the Chicago course is known, underscores the kind of lesson that students of history do well to learn: that any of us might have a hand in how it unfolds.

Clarification: The Quick Hits section of yesterday’s newsletter mentioned “The Toast,” a celebratory event for graduating students at Wichita State University. The university has run the event for several years, but new festivities focused on certain groups of students, like multicultural graduations, will now be added to it.