Colleges and Universities

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares15 Views

    Can the Trump Administration Stop Harvard From Enrolling International Students?

    by

    The Trump administration is relying on an obscure bureaucratic lever to stop the school, the latest in a series of aggressive moves.The Trump administration wants to halt Harvard from enrolling international students. But how can the federal government dictate which students a private university can and cannot enroll?The government has enormous power over who comes into the United States, and who doesn’t. For college and universities, the Department of Homeland Security has a vast system just to manage and track the enrollment of the hundreds of thousands of international students studying across the country at any given time.But a school needs government certification to use this database, known as SEVIS, for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. And this vulnerability is what the Trump administration is exploiting against Harvard.Homeland Security says that effective immediately, it has revoked a certification that allows Harvard to have access to SEVIS. Oddly enough, the students may still have valid visas. But Harvard is no longer able to log them into this all-important database.The announcement was a significant escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure Harvard to fall in line with the president’s agenda.Here’s what we know so far.How does Harvard use the SEVIS database?For each international student, Harvard inputs data into SEVIS to show that a student is enrolled full time, and thus meeting the terms of the visa that the student was issued.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares25 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Arresting International Students or Revoking Visas

      by

      Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California provided temporary relief to some international students while a legal battle continues.A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s wide-reaching effort to detain and deport international students, barring the federal government from arresting those students or revoking their visas while the case plays out in court.Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, granted a temporary injunction protecting international students who were among the thousands whose visas were revoked earlier this year without clear justification, writing that government officials had “uniformly wreaked havoc” and “likely exceeded their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously” by the mass revocation of students’ immigration status.“The relief the court grants provides plaintiffs with a measure of stability and certainty,” Judge White wrote in the 21-page order. “That they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”Judge White’s ruling said that the order applied to all “similarly situated individuals” who participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is the system governing student visas. In the order, he expressed suspicion that the Trump administration was trying to place future visa “terminations beyond judicial review.”“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation,” Judge White wrote, “defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns. It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”The order comes hours after the Trump administration halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and it is likely that this nationwide order could at least in part prevent the Trump administration’s move from being enforced. More

    • 163 Shares40 Views

      in Elections

      Justice Dept. to Use False Claims Act to Pursue Institutions Over DEI Efforts

      by

      The department’s use of the law is all but certain to be met with legal challenges.The Trump administration plans to leverage a law intended to punish corrupt recipients of federal funding to pressure institutions like Harvard to abandon their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Justice Department officials announced late Monday.President Trump’s political appointees at the department cited antisemitism on campuses as justification for using the law, the False Claims Act, to target universities and other institutions that Mr. Trump views as bastions of opposition to his agenda and a ripe populist target to rile up his right-wing base.“Institutions that take federal money only to allow antisemitism and promote divisive D.E.I. policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights — inaction is not an option.”The department’s use of the law is all but certain to be met with legal challenges. Last week, the Justice Department notified Harvard, which receives billions in government grants, of an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government by failing to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action.The department will seek fines and damages in most instances where violations are found. But it will consider criminal prosecutions in extreme circumstances, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche warned in a memo to staff.The initiative will be a joint project of the department’s anti-fraud unit and its Civil Rights Division, which has been sharply downsized and redirected from its historical mission of addressing race-based discrimination to pursue Mr. Trump’s culture war agenda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares67 Views

      in Elections

      Gen Z: How Will You Remake the American Dream?

      by

      Americans of all ages are increasingly skeptical of the American dream. As a new crop of shiny young people graduate from high school, college and professional schools this month, we wanted to ask: What might a new vision for the future look like?The old version of the dream seems increasingly irrelevant for people in their teens and 20s. Sociologists call it the success sequence: graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, in that order. Buying a house for those kids to run around in is supposed to be the capstone.But with untenable costs locking many out of the housing market and parts of the country becoming uninsurable because of potential climate damage, homeownership is no longer a top goal for everyone.Because finding the right job can prove difficult and many entry-level jobs could be vulnerable to artificial intelligence, some Americans in their 20s and 30s sought the solace of steady, unglamorous government work … until this year, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. It’s not just the federal work force that’s in disarray; our entire democracy seems more precarious than it’s been in a long time.More people are questioning the value of higher education than in recent memory, with only a quarter of Americans saying that college is extremely or very important. Nearly 50 percent of Americans “say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job,” according to Pew Research.“Gen Z on Marriage: In This Economy?” read a headline in The Wall Street Journal last year, and it could also act as a mission statement for people in their 20s, who are either putting off or forgoing marriage and babies entirely.Tell us about about your American dream.Readers 18 to 30, what does the American dream look like for you, regardless of what the phrase means in popular culture? More

    • 138 Shares71 Views

      in Elections

      Trump’s Push to Defund Harvard Prompts Clash Over Veteran Suicide Research

      by

      The proposed termination of medical research funded by the V.A. is part of the Trump administration’s broader pressure campaign against the university.The Trump administration’s move to cancel a slew of federal contracts at Harvard University has sparked an internal clash over the impact on medical research intended to help veterans, including projects involving suicide prevention, toxic particle exposure and prostate cancer screening, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.The dispute among officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs has focused in part on a collaboration with Harvard Medical School to develop a predictive model to help V.A. emergency room physicians decide whether suicidal veterans should be hospitalized, according to the records.Canceling that contract would result in “more veteran suicides that could have been prevented,” Seth J. Custer, an official in the V.A.’s Office of Research and Development, wrote in a May 8 email asking leaders at the agency to reverse their decision. But John Figueroa, a longtime private industry health care executive and a senior adviser to Doug Collins, the veterans affairs secretary, said that researchers at other institutions could do the work instead.Peter Kasperowicz, a V.A. spokesman, said that the department’s research contracts with Harvard were “under review.” He said the goal of the review was to ensure that “the projects best support the Trump administration’s veterans-first agenda.”Mr. Custer declined to comment. In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Figueroa said the V.A. was examining “every contract” it had issued. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment. So did a spokeswoman for Harvard.The tensions inside the V.A. over the Harvard contracts demonstrate how President Trump’s use of research funds as leverage in his broader pressure campaign on universities carries political risks. Mr. Trump and other Republicans have courted veterans as a key political constituency, and Mr. Collins has repeatedly promised that veteran care would not be affected, even as he enacts major cost-cutting measures and other changes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares71 Views

      in Elections

      Jewish Student Who Held Out in Lawsuit Against Harvard Agrees to Settle

      by

      Shabbos Kestenbaum sued Harvard University over allegations it did not do enough to curb antisemitism. He had continued his lawsuit even after other students settled.Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who became a public figure as a fiery speaker at the Republican National Convention, on Thursday settled his lawsuit accusing Harvard of allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus.The terms of the settlement are confidential, but in a lengthy statement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he was “so proud to help lead the student efforts combating antisemitism within institutions of higher learning across the country, including by suing my alma mater.”He said that his lawsuit “drew the nation’s attention to the scourge of antisemitism at Harvard and other campuses, and it also caught the attention of President Trump and his Department of Education.”Harvard released a statement saying that the university “and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere.” It said that both sides were “pleased to have resolved the litigation.”In recent weeks, Harvard has gone to court to fight a Trump administration freeze on billions of dollars in federal research funding to the university. The freeze came after Harvard refused to comply with demands from the administration that Harvard do more to combat antisemitism — including by allowing the government to be involved in admissions, hiring and instructional decisions, among other things.The litigation and his outspokenness made Mr. Kestenbaum the face of the Republican-led campaign against antisemitism in universities, and something of a polarizing figure on Harvard’s campus.He graduated from the divinity school in May 2024, and in July he spoke at the Republican National Convention.“My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism,” Mr. Kestenbaum said in his convention speech. “Too often students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American and that is antisemitic.”He has been in demand since then as a speaker for Jewish groups across the country.In his statement following the settlement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he had campaigned with Mr. Trump because the president planned to hold universities accountable.Mr. Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, was a second-year divinity school student when the campus became the site of protests over the war in Gaza. Some Jewish students accused protests of veering into antisemitism, a charge that protesters, some of them Jewish themselves, have strongly denied.In January 2024, Mr. Kestenbaum and five other Jewish students sued the university, accusing it of becoming “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” That case was settled the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.Harvard agreed to take a number of steps, including adopting a strict definition of antisemitism.But Mr. Kestenbaum refused to go along with the settlement and continued to litigate on his own, culminating in Thursday’s agreement. More

    • 138 Shares140 Views

      in Elections

      University of California’s New President, James Milliken, Will Come From Texas

      by

      James B. Milliken will lead the California system, relinquishing his position as the chancellor of the University of Texas system.The University of California system announced on Friday that its new president would be James B. Milliken, a longtime public university leader who currently serves at the University of Texas system and previously ran the City University of New York and the University of Nebraska.At a fraught time in higher education, Mr. Milliken, 68, is regarded as an experienced and relatively safe choice to lead the nation’s most prestigious public university system.Mr. Milliken, known as JB, will take over the system of nearly 300,000 students at a time when the Trump administration is targeting the nation’s elite universities — and has the U.C. system in its cross hairs. All 10 University of California campuses are under investigation by the administration for various reasons, including admissions practices and allegations of antisemitism.So far, the California system has escaped some of the deep federal funding cuts the White House has announced that it was imposing at other universities. The system does, however, face a proposed cut of about 8 percent in its share of the state budget, as California seeks to manage a projected long-term deficit.In announcing Mr. Milliken’s selection, the University of California Board of Regents said that the new president “understands how critical U.C.’s contributions are to the state and the country, and he has decades of experience leading public institutions during times of unprecedented change in higher education.”Highlighting Mr. Milliken’s commitment to low-income students, the regents referred to his stewardship of the City University of New York system, where he served from 2014 to 2018.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares89 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Considers Executive Order on College Athlete Payments

      by

      College athletes have signed deals worth millions of dollars since the N.C.A.A. allowed student-athletes to become paid endorsers.President Trump is considering an executive order to examine payments made to college athletes and whether they have created an unfair system, two people briefed on the matter said Friday.Mr. Trump’s focus on the issue — which he’s talked about in the past, one of the people briefed on the matter noted — was renewed after he spoke with Nick Saban, the famed former University of Alabama football coach, backstage at an event Thursday night in Tuscaloosa, where Mr. Trump delivered an address to graduates.The Wall Street Journal first reported on Mr. Trump’s consideration. The two people who were briefed on it were not authorized to speak publicly.The executive order would address newly expanded opportunities for student-athletes to monetize their athletic careers. Last year, the N.C.A.A., the organization that governs much of college sports, agreed to settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit that had accused it and its member schools of exploiting student-athletes while hoarding the profits of the lucrative college sports industry.The $2.8 billion settlement, which is nearing approval, created a revenue-sharing plan for college athletics in which schools would start directly paying their athletes, a major shake-up of the college sports landscape. The N.C.A.A. has already removed restrictions on athletes monetizing their athletic careers through endorsements and sponsorships — known as “name, image and likeness” payments.The changes initiated an arms race in college athletics, as wealthy teams offered larger and larger compensation packages to lure top talent into their programs. Star players have since signed deals worth millions of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares131 Views

      in Elections

      See Where Federal Dollars Flow to Universities Around the Country

      by

      <!–> [–><!–> –> <!–>Each circle is a university: PublicPrivate–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>In fiscal year 2023 alone, roughly $60 billion flowed from the federal government to universities in all 50 states, funding research on an array of topics, like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and rare isotope beams. Funding went to small colleges, like the College of St. […] More