Daily Briefing

Good morning, and welcome to Friday, June 20. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

NIH U-turn

For a few hours, Columbia University seemed poised to claim it had threaded the needle in negotiations with the Trump administration to unfreeze $400 million in federal funding. And then it all unraveled, as The Chronicle’s Stephanie M. Lee reports.

The National Institutes of Health briefly ended its Columbia University funding freeze on Wednesday with emails sent to agency staff.

• “We have been told that we can resume funding awards to Columbia (funding pause has been lifted),” Michelle Bulls, director of the NIH’s Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, wrote, adding that grants terminated over alleged antisemitism had not been cleared for reinstatement.

Hours later, the NIH reversed course. Another email to staff said Columbia awards must be paused again. And the Trump administration publicly put forward a hard line.

• “There is no federal funding for unvetted woke ‘research’ at Columbia,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, NIH’s parent agency, said in a statement. “Any minimal disbursements that presently exist are for specific measures, including to wind down the grant entirely.”

It’s not the first high-profile backtracking at the NIH in recent months. In April it said grant recipients couldn’t run any programs that promote “discriminatory equity ideology” or boycott Israeli companies. On June 9, it rescinded that policy — only to reinstate it three days later.

Does the flip-flopping undercut Columbia’s decision to negotiate with the Trump administration? A thaw had seemed to be emerging between the two sides in recent weeks. That intensified contrasts between Columbia’s strategy and that of Harvard, which has only found itself under intensifying pressure after publicly rejecting Trump-administration demands and embarking on a legal battle.

Columbia’s leaders have been doing image rehab, arguing that they’re protecting independent governance even as they’re working with the Trump administration on goals both sides share, like bulked-up student discipline and more oversight of academics.

• “Following the law and attempting to resolve a complaint is not capitulation,” Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in a statement last week, adding: “We engaged in conversations with the government about their concerns — which were and continue to be our concerns and our community’s concerns.”

To be sure, Columbia hasn’t done exactly as the government asked, as The New York Times recently documented. Faced with a set of nine conditions, the university made changes, but with adjustments.

For example, the university said a senior vice provost would review all programs focused on the Middle East for quality and collaboration. The administration had called for placing the small Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department into receivership.

• The chair of the department that’s under fire supports the university. “We are part of a broader review that is a legitimate review,” Gil Hochberg told the Times. Any university would do the same internal review in a similar situation, she added.

But who wants to negotiate like this? If Wednesday was a show of good faith, most college leaders would want it to last more than a few hours. If progress can seemingly unravel so quickly, how can Columbia trust the Trump administration to shake on a deal?

The bigger picture: As much as critics have panned its approach, Columbia was for a brief moment on the brink of becoming the blueprint for bargaining with the Trump administration. U-turns like Wednesday’s mean any eventual compromise will be met with more skepticism from those who fear the Trump administration can’t stick to a deal.

📱 Read Stephanie’s full story: Columbia Got Some NIH Funding Back. Then It Didn’t.

Federal news

• State Dept. gives student-visa screening instructions: A Wednesday cable instructed diplomats to review student-visa applicants’ online footprints for “any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States” as well as “support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence” and “support for foreign terrorists and other threats to U.S. national security.” Such new rules had been expected after the Trump administration last month paused the scheduling of new visa interviews in anticipation of adding extra vetting requirements. New visa interviews can again be scheduled, but embassies have been directed to prioritize students who want to study at a university where international students are 15 percent or less of total enrollment. (Politico, The Chronicle)
• Some Florida colleges pull the plug on international recruiting: Valencia College, a public institution in Orlando, will stay open to new and returning international students but will “stop proactively recruiting students from abroad” because of uncertainty about student visas, according to a spokesperson. International enrollment is 2.5 percent of the institution’s 47,000 students. Seminole State College, outside of Orlando, has adopted the same stance as Valencia. (Orlando Sentinel, The Chronicle)
• Judge blocks Defense Dept. overhead cut: U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order after a group of higher-ed associations and research universities sued to try to stop the latest in a string of federal agency attempts to cap at 15 percent the indirect costs allowed under research grants. (Reuters, The Chronicle)
• Credit scores drop in face of student-loan collections: Over 3 million people with student loans saw their credit scores drop by 100 points or more in the first three months of 2025, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. That’s shortly after the Biden administration last fall ended a repayment grace period and just before the Trump administration last month restarted a collections process that can result in seized wages and tax refunds. (Associated Press)

State of the states

• Three-year degrees in play for Massachusetts: The Department of Higher Education has been circulating draft regulations that could soon allow public and private colleges in the state to offer bachelor’s degrees that require less than the standard 120 credits. Three-year degrees have started gaining momentum across the country after advocates floated the idea for years. The traditional accreditor for New England last year approved a pilot program allowing Merrimack College, in Massachusetts, to offer three-year degrees in fields that don’t require licenses. (State House News Service, The Chronicle)
• Formal process for college mergers in New Jersey? State Sen. Joe Cryan, a Democrat who chairs the higher-education committee, has filed a bill that would require executive and legislative consent for mergers involving public colleges. As enrollment trends and financial realities heap pressure on the sector, experts told lawmakers at a recent hearing that they should support shared resources and potential mergers between institutions. (WNET)
• DeSantis ally sews up another college presidency: Pasco-Hernando State College trustees named Eric Hall president on Tuesday after he’d held the role on an interim basis for a week. Hall, a backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis who had previously been appointed by the Republican to be secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, was a finalist in the college’s 2023 presidential search that ultimately hired Jesse Pisors. Last month, Pisors abruptly resigned after the college’s board chair accused him of concealing enrollment problems, basing the allegations on a report that critics have since said is flawed. A spate of administrative turnover followed at the college. Trustees set Hall’s base salary at $325,000, which is $46,000 more than his predecessor made. (WUSF)

Quick hits

• Vocal trustee booted: Pennsylvania State University’s Board of Trustees voted 30-4 to remove Barry Fenchak on Monday, just two weeks before his three-year term was set to expire. The move means Fenchak, who was elected by alumni, is barred from returning to the board in the future. Fenchak argues he’s being retaliated against because he asked hard questions, while trustees who supported his removal cited an allegation that he made an inappropriate comment to a staff member after a meeting last year. (Centre Daily Times)
• Cal Poly San Luis Obispo stays out of the pool: The institution won’t reinstate its swimming and diving programs, its president decided, ending months of back-and-forth over plans first announced in March. Supporters who wanted to save the program secured just under $9 million in pledges, falling short of a $15-million goal administrators said would be the minimum needed to support the programs. President Jeffrey Armstrong said the cuts are necessary in light of a tight state budget and antitrust settlement that’s adding expenses to college athletics. (SFGATE)
• Washington State U. curtails track: The university is eliminating field events and limiting sprints and hurdles from one of its more successful athletic programs. Washington State said it will honor scholarships for affected athletes who remain enrolled but hasn’t said how many scholarships the program will offer in the future. Nor has the institution addressed potential savings or cuts to other sports at a time when a reconstituted Pac-12 Conference and a recently approved antitrust settlement are heaping pressure on athletic finances. (The Spokesman-Review)

Weekend reads

• Facing Research Cuts, Officials at U. of Iowa Spoke of a ‘Limited Ability to Publicly Fight This’ (The Chronicle)
• The Unraveling of the AAUP (The Chronicle Review)
• My University Values Football More Than Education (The Chronicle Review)
• How Trump Blew Up Northwestern’s Business Model (The Wall Street Journal)
• U.S. Researchers Are Speaking Up for Science in Local Newspapers (Science)
• Behind the Turmoil of Federal Attacks on Colleges, Some States Are Going After Tenure (The Hechinger Report)
• Why Did Syracuse Offer $200,000 Deals to Teens Who Had Turned It Down? (The New York Times)
• How College Basketball Regained Its Place as Top NBA Development Option (ESPN)
• The Leaders of College Sports Still Don’t Get It (The Washington Post)
• How Cleveland State Responded to Lawmakers’ Last-Ditch Effort to Save Its Wrestling Program (Signal Ohio/Open Campus)
• Who Can Afford to Become a Teacher in California? (LAist/Open Campus)

Transitions

• John Y. Walz, president of the Milwaukee School of Engineering, will retire in January. Eric T. Baumgartner, executive vice president for academics at the school, will succeed him as president.
• Nancy S. Kirkpatrick, dean of university libraries at Florida International University, has been named dean of libraries for Smith College, in Massachusetts.
• Bill Gaudelli, senior vice provost for educational innovation and assessment at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, has been named inaugural dean of the College of Lifetime Learning at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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

Footnote

We all appreciate neighbors who keep a tidy yard. And then there are the ones who like to mow the lawn just a little too much.

If the homeowners next door spring to their shed at the first sign of grass growth, keep them away from Auburn University. Its tips for Alabama lawn care will only encourage mowing maniacs to treat their lawn as something to be shaved into submission.

“You should mow at least once per week, but for faster-growing grasses like Bermuda, twice a week would be better,” Dave Han, an associate professor in Auburn’s College of Agriculture and a specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, told the university’s in-house news operation.

Who cares what’s best for the lawn? I’m looking for experts who are willing to tell the turf police to take the time they’d spend on that second weekly mow and turn it into a little community service.

They could mow my shaggy lawn once a week.

Correction: Wednesday’s Briefing incorrectly stated that the National Association of College and University Business Officers signed on to an amicus brief for the first time this week. NACUBO has in fact endorsed briefs in the past, but recently became a lead filer for the first time.