Education

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares40 Views

    Trump’s revenge spree on Harvard echoes well beyond education | Jan-Werner Müller

    by

    In record time, a court has at least temporarily put a stop to the Trump administration’s latest attack on Harvard University, part of a larger retaliation spree that began in April.On Thursday, Kristi Noem had revoked Harvard’s certification to host international students, causing fear and existential uncertainty for thousands of young people and their families. The swift restraining order comes as a relief. But it is no cause for complacency.Attacks will not stop, and it is naive to think that this is all primarily a Harvard problem, or even only a challenge to higher education. Noem’s letter to Harvard makes clear that Trump and his sycophants will weaponize the state against anyone who incurs their displeasure. Courts may prevent the worst, but the whole pattern has to end if we want to have any hope of living in a country free of fear and featuring at least minimum respect for the rule of law.As Harvard’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security rightly pointed out, Noem’s revocation fits into the Trump administration’s orgy of vengeance prompted by Harvard’s refusal to comply with evidently illegal demands issued in mid-April. Among other things, Trumpists had asserted their right to determine appropriate levels of “viewpoint diversity” among faculty and students. After Harvard sued, $2.2bn in research funds were frozen, followed by Linda McMahon, the education secretary, asserting at a cabinet meeting on 30 April that Harvard was failing to report “foreign money that comes in”. This line of attack has now been extended with absurd claims that Harvard “coordinates with the Chinese Communist Party” and is somehow “pro-terrorist”.The background noise to the official letters has been a steady stream of social media posts from the president, throwing invective at Harvard instead of conducting the serious government business of maligning Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. The founder of a university whose attendees received a $25m settlement has accused the US’s oldest university of “scamming the public”, constituting a “threat to democracy”, and exposing innocent young Americans to “crazed lunatics” (as opposed to non-crazed lunatics). It is a well-known pattern in authoritarian regimes that underlings try to please the leader by anticipating his wishes and imitating his style. Official letters, posts, and press statements from DHS and the Department of Education not only fail to provide evidence and violate procedural safeguards; they not only make up ad hoc demands that have no basis in law; they also contain the signature capital letters, spelling mistakes, and kindergarten-level invective familiar from the president’s rhetoric. It is governance driven by a desire to please Fox viewers, online Maga mobs, and the Avenger-in-Chief.Incompetence hardly makes the measures harmless. They instill fear even when courts step in (and no, not all Ivy League undergrads are spoilt kids who never have anything to fear). Noem, in a further escalation, demanded footage and audio from all protests at Harvard. It is a clear signal for young people to shut up and fall in line. But there was also a signal to foreign faculty: the letter emphasized that it was a “privilege to employ aliens on campus”. The threat aligns with the nativism of xenophobe-in-chief Stephen Miller, who is not just going after people who are in the country without proper paperwork – foreigners as such are a problem.But Noem’s rhetoric also aligned with the logic of authoritarian populist leaders who claim uniquely to represent what they call “the real people”: even citizens will not be free from the accusation by Trump and his sycophants that they are not proper Americans. Trump, at the April 30th cabinet meeting, declared: “The students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have, is not American.” And Noem made it clear in her letter that her weaponization of the state will not be confined to campus; she wrote that the “evils of anti-Americanism” have to be rooted out in “society” at large.We can draw larger lessons from this – so far – failed attack (eight investigations, involving six different agencies, are still ongoing). One has to be ready – Harvard’s lawyers clearly were. Universities have to stand with each other; Noem warned all of them that they have to “get their act together” or else. Not least, university leaders have to explain to a larger public how Trumpists, in an unprecedented spree of national self-destruction, are busy preventing cancer cures, damaging American soft power, and killing one of the country’s major exports, namely higher education.As with so many other Trump policies, the assault on universities is actually not popular. Even after years of journalists and some professors priming people to think that campus is controlled by woke commissars and “Marxist maniacs” (Trump’s expression – I am still looking for them in the Economics Department), a clear majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s approach to higher education. Conservatives have stoked resentment of “liberal eggheads” for decades, but when their children get sick, they will still want to have access to the best medical schools; no parents wants their kids, away at college, to become pawns – as the Harvard Crimson put it – in political games and subject to an administration’s caprice. And even JD Vance is unlikely to send his offspring to Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest (no disrespect!).

    Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares40 Views

      in US Politics

      Hong Kong targets ‘top talent’ as Harvard faces international student ban

      by

      Hong Kong’s education bureau has called on the city’s universities to “attract top talent” by opening their doors to those affected by the Trump administration’s attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling international students.Last week the Trump administration revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effectively banning the university from accepting foreign students. A US federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the government from enforcing the ban, which would have reportedly forced students currently enrolled and not graduating this year to transfer to another institution or lose their legal status and visa.Harvard has launched legal action, but it has done little to assuage concerns among students thrown into limbo. Experts have warned the US the ban could be a boon for foreign institutions looking to attract talent.On Monday Hong Kong’s education bureau said it had “promptly called on all universities in Hong Kong to introduce facilitation measures for those eligible with a view to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of students and scholars, and to attract top talent”.The Hong Kong Science and Technology University announced on Friday an open invitation to any affected foreign students, offering a place to those forced to leave Harvard as well as those with confirmed offers.“The university will provide unconditional offers, streamlined admission procedures, and academic support to facilitate a seamless transition for interested students,” it said.Hong Kong is home to five of the world’s top 100 universities, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, however in recent years they have been made to integrate national security and patriotic themes into studies, after China’s ruling Communist party tightened its grip on the semi-autonomous city.More than 2,000 students from Asia are currently enrolled at Harvard, with an unknown number accepted and waiting to start.“A lot of people in east Asia have some sort of fantasy and feel the prestige of Harvard,” said Taiwanese student Chu, who asked that his real name not be published.Chu was expecting to start a Masters in Science in August, and has already paid about $3,000 in visa and accommodation fees, and deferred his hospital residency for a year“I either stick with Harvard or I just go back to my residency training,” he said. “There’s no other alternative I have.”In a lawsuit filed against the Trump administrations attempted ban, Harvard said the move would immediately blunt its competitiveness in attracting the world’s top students.“In our interconnected global economy, a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage”, it said, adding foreign students were “a key factor” in the college maintaining its standing in academia.The vast majority of Harvard’s foreign students – about 1,200 currently studying – are from China. On China’s Xiao Hong Shu app, a Chinese masters student from Sichuan, said she had given talks to campus classmates about unequal access to education in her home country.“As a fresh graduate studying abroad in the US for the first time, I’ve overcome a lot to get here,” she said. “But when the hammer came down today, it was the first time I truly realised just how small I am.”A spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, Mao Ning, said on Friday that China “opposed the politicisation of educational cooperation”, and warned the move would “harm the image and international standing of the United States”.On the social media platform Weibo, a series of related hashtags, including “Trump is destroying Harvard”, saw more than 200 million interactions, including many viewing it as the latest skirmish between the US and China. Among the reasons cited by the Trump administration for revoking Harvard’s program was an accusation that it fostered “coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang More

    • 125 Shares56 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge blocks Trump administration’s ban on Harvard accepting international students

      by

      A US federal judge on Friday blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.Meanwhile, the Trump administration has accused Columbia University of violating civil rights laws, while overseas governments had expressed alarm at the administration’s actions against Harvard as part of its latest assault on elite higher education in the US.Harvard University announced on Friday morning that it was challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for the school previously defying the White House’s political demands.In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action violates the first amendment of the US constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders”.“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission,” Harvard said in its suit. The institution added that it planned to file for a temporary restraining order to block the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the move.The Trump White House called the lawsuit “frivolous” but the court filing from the 389-year-old elite, private university, the oldest and wealthiest in the US, said: “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most are graduate students and they come from more than 100 countries.Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services’ office for civil rights late on Thursday cited Columbia University, claiming the New York university acted with “deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present”, marking the date when Hamas led the deadly attack on Israel out of Gaza that sparked a ferocious military response from the Jewish state, prompting prolonged pro-Palestinian protests on US streets and college campuses.“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” said Anthony Archeval, the acting director of the office for civil rights at HHS, in a statement on the action.It continued: “We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.” Columbia University had not yet issued a statement on the citation as of early Friday morning.Orders by the Trump administration earlier this month to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University raised alarms within the Department of Justice, the New York Times reported. A federal judge denied a search warrant for the investigation.Earlier this year, Columbia University agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration in response to $400m worth of grants and federal funds to the university being cancelled over claims of inaction by the university to protect Jewish students.Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full. The judge, an Obama administration appointee, scheduled hearings for 27 May and 29 May to consider next steps in the case.The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students’ disciplinary records and paper, audio or video records on protest activity over the past five years in order to have the “opportunity” to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated.Before Harvard filed suit, the Chinese government early on Friday had said the move to block foreign students from the school and oblige current ones to leave would only hurt the international standing of the US. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology extended an open invitation to Harvard international students and those accepted in response to the action against Harvard.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Friday afternoon, despite the judge’s ruling, Chinese students at Harvard were cancelling flights home and seeking legal advice on staying in the US and saying they were scared in case Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents came to their accommodation to take them away, as they have done to other foreign students.The former German health minister and alumnus of Harvard, Karl Lauterbach, called the action against Harvard “research policy suicide”. Germany’s research minister, Dorothee Baer, had also, before Harvard sued, urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, calling it “fatal”.Harvard’s lawsuit lists as the plaintiffs the “President and fellows of Harvard college” versus defendants including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Justice and the Department of State, as well as the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program and individual cabinet members – Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; and Todd Lyons, the acting director of Ice.The White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said on Friday: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.”She added: “Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits.”Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, wrote an open letter to students, academics and staff condemning an “unlawful” and “unwarranted” action by the administration.“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” it said.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

    • 113 Shares41 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration halts Harvard’s ability to enroll international students

      by

      The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter.The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions.The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted a copy of the letter on X, formerly known as Twitter. In it Noem said: “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”“The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem continued.Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.”The former governor of South Dakota also accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.In a separate press release, the homeland security department said: “Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the US government.”A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university – and this nation – immeasurably,” the spokesperson said.“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”Pippa Norris, an author and Paul F McGuire lecturer in comparative politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the Guardian on Thursday that Trump “is basically cutting off international knowledge to American students, he is reducing soft power, and therefore weakening America … And for me personally, it’s going to mean tremendous problems in terms of teaching.”Norris said “about 90%” of her students are international, so if she “can no longer recruit international students, then the demand and participants, etc, is going to go down”.She continued: “Imagine that you’ve come, you’ve spent a lot of money and resources to come to Harvard, and you’ve got in, and your second or third year of the undergraduate degree, or the second year of your master’s degree, and [they] say: ‘Well, I’m sorry, you know, you’re not going to be able to study here next year.’ I mean, it’s devastating.”Leo Gerdén, an international student from Sweden, called the announcement “devastating” in the university newspaper Harvard Crimson.“Every tool available they should use to try and change this. It could be all the legal resources suing the Trump administration, whatever they can use the endowment to, whatever they can use their political network in Congress,” Gerdén said, adding: “This should be, by far, priority number one.”The university currently hosts nearly 6,800 international students, with many being on F-1 or J-1 visas, according to university records. International students make up about 27% of the university’s population.The latest decision from the homeland security department comes amid growing tensions between federal officials and Harvard over the Trump administration’s claims that the university has implemented inadequate responses to antisemitism on its campus.The Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, following an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding.A Trump-appointed antisemitism taskforce has pointed to “just how radical Harvard has become” as nationwide anti-war protesters – including students – demonstrated against Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, which has killed at least 53,000 Palestinians in the last year and a half.The Trump administration has also ordered the university to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programming, restrict student protests, and disclose admission details to federal officials.In response to the federal cuts, the university – with an endowment of more than $53bn – filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in April that “no government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”.Garber also said: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights … The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s first amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.”Of how this will impact Harvard’s future, Norris said: “Why would any further international students apply to America, not just Harvard, if they can’t know that they’ve got a guaranteed place?“[This halt is] going to benefit Oxford and Cambridge and many other academic institutions, because of course, the best of the brightest could apply wherever they would. America, again, is going to have problems as a result.”Jenna Amatulli contributed reporting More

    • 138 Shares70 Views

      in US Politics

      Oklahoma high schools to teach 2020 election conspiracy theories as fact

      by

      As part of the latest Republican push in red states to promote ideologies sympathetic to Donald Trump, Oklahoma’s new social studies curriculum will ask high school students to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results.The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said: “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”The revised curriculum standard comes at the behest of Ryan Walters, the state school superintendent, who has publicly voiced his support for Trump. In October, Walters lauded Trump in an interview, saying that “Trump’s won the argument on education”.Walters, who has also advocated for ending “wokeness” in public schools, went on to say: “We have education bureaucrats that are left-wing, elitist, that think they know best for families, and they have become so radicalized that our families are going: ‘What is going on here?’”Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for K-12 public school students, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were revised at Walters’ direction. The Republican official has spent much of his first term in office not only lauding Trump but also feuding with teachers’ unions and local school superintendents.“The left has been pushing left-wing indoctrination in the classroom,” Walters said. “We’re moving it back to actually understanding history … and I’m unapologetic about that.”As part of his revisions, Walters also proposed removing education about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd’s murder, Tulsa’s NBC affiliate KJRH reports.The outlet further reported that the revisions were expected to cost the state’s taxpayers $33m in new textbooks and related material.Other efforts by Walters includepromoting Trump-endorsed Bibles across classrooms, as well as supporting an attempt to establish the US’s first public religious charter school – a case the conservative-majority supreme court seems open to siding with.The new standard raised red flags even among Walters’ fellow Republicans, including the governor and legislative leaders. They were concerned that several last-minute changes, including the language about the 2020 election and a provision stating the source of the Covid-19 virus was a Chinese lab, were added just hours before the state school board voted on them.A group of parents and educators have filed a lawsuit asking a judge to reject the standards, arguing they were not reviewed properly and that they “represent a distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective”.While many Oklahoma teachers have expressed outrage at the change in the standards, others say they leave plenty of room for an effective teacher to instruct students about the results of the 2020 election without misinforming them.Aaron Baker, who has taught US government in high schools in Oklahoma City for more than a decade, said he’s most concerned about teachers in rural, conservative parts of the state who might feel encouraged to impose their own beliefs on students.“If someone is welcoming the influence of these far-right organizations in our standards and is interested in inserting more of Christianity into our practices as teachers, then they’ve become emboldened,” Baker said. “For me, that is the major concern.”Leaders in the Republican-led Oklahoma legislature introduced a resolution to reject the standards, but there wasn’t enough GOP support to pass it.Part of that hesitation likely stemmed from a flurry of last-minute opposition organized by pro-Trump conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, which has a large presence in Oklahoma and threatened lawmakers who reject the standards with a primary opponent.“In the last few election cycles, grassroots conservative organizations have flipped seats across Oklahoma by holding weak Republicans accountable,” the group wrote in a letter signed by several other conservative groups and GOP activists. “If you choose to side with the liberal media and make backroom deals with Democrats to block conservative reform, you will be next.”After a group of parents, educators and other Oklahoma school officials worked to develop the new social studies standards, Walters assembled an executive committee consisting mostly of out-of-state pundits from conservative thinktanks to revise them. He said he wanted to focus more on American exceptionalism and incorporate the Bible as an instructional resource.Among those Walters appointed to the review committee were Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and a key figure in its Project 2025 blueprint for a conservative presidential administration, and Dennis Prager, a radio talkshow host who founded Prager U, a conservative non-profit that offers “pro-American” educational materials for children that some critics say are not accurate or objective.In a statement to the Associated Press, Walters defended teaching students about “unprecedented and historically significant” elements of the 2020 presidential election.Recounts, reviews and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss all confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, and Trump lost dozens of court cases challenging the results.In addition to the curriculum revisions, a proposed rule approved by the state board of education in January mandates that parents enrolling their children in the state’s public schools show proof of immigration status.Describing the rule, which has been met with widespread outrage among parents, students and immigration advocates, Walters said: “Our rule around illegal immigration accounting is simply that … It is to account for how many students of illegal immigrants are in our schools.” More

    • 138 Shares73 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration piles pressure on Harvard with $450m more in cuts

      by

      Eight federal agencies will terminate a further $450m in grants to Harvard University, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday, escalating its antagonization of the elite institution over what officials frame as inadequate responses to antisemitism on campus.The latest funding cuts come after the administration cancelled $2.2bn in federal funding to the university, bringing the total financial penalty to approximately $2.65bn.“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination,” the Trump administration’s taskforce to combat antisemitism wrote in a statement. “This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement.”The cuts represent a flexing of federal power over the US’s oldest and wealthiest university, first triggered by campus protests against Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza – one that is only expected to expand in the coming days – but encompasses a far broader set of grievances against the institution and others like it perceived as politically liberal.Harvard has so far refused to yield, with the university’s president, Dr Alan Garber, who is Jewish, calling the previous attacks “illegal demands” from the administration “to control whom we hire and what we teach”. The university has refused to comply with the administration’s demands, outlined in a letter last month, which included shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs; cooperating with federal immigration authorities; and banning face masks, which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters.The school, which has an endowment of more than $53bn, had launched legal action against the initial $2.2bn funding freeze, arguing the university faced no choice after the Trump administration “threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status”.The Trump administration’s taskforce to combat antisemitism justified the latest funding reduction by claiming Harvard had “repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and antisemitic harassment plaguing its campus”.They referenced a series of alleged incidents, including a fellowship awarded by the Harvard Law Review, which the taskforce characterized as evidence of “just how radical Harvard has become”.Nationwide campus protests appear to be continuing, even as Columbia students were arrested last week. Dozens of students at California State University campuses are staging hunger strikes in solidarity with Gaza, as they simultaneously call on their school to divest from Israel.Harvard recently published its own investigations into allegations of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus, but these self-regulatory efforts appear to have done little to satisfy administration officials.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration’s announcement of the new funding cuts was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration; Sean R Keveney, acting general counsel at the US Department of Health and Human Services; and Thomas E Wheeler, acting general counsel at the US Department of Education.Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. More

    • 138 Shares140 Views

      in Elections

      Tufts Student Returns to Massachusetts After 6 Weeks in Immigration Detention

      by

      Freed after her painful ordeal in a federal facility, Rumeysa Ozturk expressed joy, gratitude and continued faith in American democracy.Rumeysa Ozturk returned to Massachusetts on Saturday evening, eyes welling with joy and gratitude at the end of her six-week odyssey in federal custody, a case that stirred outrage over President Trump’s immigration crackdown.A flight carrying Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen studying at Tufts University on a student visa, touched down at Boston Logan International Airport one day after a federal judge in Vermont ordered that she be immediately released from a detention facility in Louisiana.Speaking in a room at the airport, she flashed smiles and looked happy and relaxed, but also became visibly emotional at times. Ms. Ozturk thanked supporters for their kindness and expressed love for the country that imprisoned her and is still trying to deport her.“America is the greatest democracy in the world,” she said, adding, “I have faith in the American system of justice.”Ms. Ozturk, a fifth-year doctoral student, was among more than a thousand international students whose visas were canceled by the federal government and who have faced deportation. The moves came as the Trump administration escalated its attack on higher education, saying its goal was to root out antisemitism.Ms. Ozturk had written an opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands. Her supporters denied that she was antisemitic, and said that she was detained in retaliation for her speech in violation of the First Amendment.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

    • 175 Shares107 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

      by

      Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.Many private colleges and universities have begun to push back against Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts, bans on diversity initiatives, and targeting of foreign students, while faculty at more than 30 universities, most of them public, have passed resolutions calling for a “mutual defence compact” – a largely symbolic pledge to support one another in the face of the government’s repressive measures. But in conservative states, where local attacks on higher education were in vogue before the US president took office, faculty trying to fight back find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: against state legislators as well as against Trump.Some have persevered, although for now that resistance has been limited to statements and resolutions calling on the universities themselves to put up a more muscular response. The faculty senate at Indiana University, Bloomington, voted in favor of a defence compact last month, days before Republican legislators passed a sweeping overhaul of the state school’s governance. In Georgia, Kennesaw State University became the first – and so far only – school in the US south to join the call for the solidarity pact, in part to protest the state scrapping a decades-old initiative to increase the college enrollment of Black men, which was pulled as part of the broader Trump-led crackdown on diversity initiatives. This week, faculty at the University of Miami in Ohio and at the University of Arizona – both states with Republican-majority legislatures – also passed resolutions in favor of mutual alliances among universities.The resolutions are nonbinding, as faculty senates play an advisory role at most universities, and so far no administrations have responded to the call. But the idea, those behind it say, is to send a message.“All universities in all states are under threat,” said Jim Sherman, a retired psychology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed the resolution passed by faculty there. “If we don’t stand together and talk about what each of us is experiencing, how we’re dealing with it, and what the options are, then we’re standing alone, and that’s much more difficult.”Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, first came up with the plan to organize faculty in the “Big Ten” conference, a group of 18 large, mostly public universities, to put up a united front against the Trump administration. But schools outside the conference showed an interest, and the solidarity effort quickly outgrew the consortium to include other, mostly public colleges and universities across the country. Boxer also praised other collective initiatives that have since emerged, including by a group of “elite” universities quietly strategizing to counter the Trump administration policies, but called on more universities to publicly unite in their resistance.“A lot of the attention has been on Harvard, and the Ivy Leagues, and the universities that Trump has name-dropped, and I’m glad that Harvard did what they did, obviously, but they’re sitting on a $50bn endowment, and they can do things that we can’t in a public university,” Boxer said, referring to the university’s public defiance of Trump’s demands and a lawsuit it filed against the administration.Large state universities – particularly those in blue states with sympathetic legislators – had other advantages, Boxer noted, including strong connections to alumni in local government and the broader community.That is a harder case to make in Republican-controlled states – some of which, like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – had essentially drawn up a blueprint for attacking diversity initiatives and academic freedom in the years leading up to Trump’s election. In Indiana, the recently passed measures, which legislators attached to a budget bill at the last minute, would establish “productivity” quotas for tenured faculty and end alumnis’ ability to vote for the university’s board of trustees, which would fall under the full control of the state’s governor, Mike Braun.“There is a lot of anxiety,” said Sherman. “If Indiana is any indication, red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government.”Taking a public stance in a climate of growing repression is not easy, faculty say. In Florida, where Ono is headed, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was an early champion of the battle against diversity initiatives and said this week that he expects the incoming president to abide by the state’s mission to “reject woke indoctrination”.In Georgia, at a statewide faculty leadership meeting this week, scholars from across the state’s universities debated how to defend programmes supporting Black students, help international students facing visa revocations, and prepare to fight proposed state legislation that would impose further restrictions on diversity initiatives and criminalize the distribution of some library materials.“Faculty want to do something, they want to respond, but they also see the inevitability of their university system and their lawmakers doing it. There’s no stopping that train here in Georgia,” said Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who also leads the state’s American Association of University Professors conference.“There are state-level attacks, there are federal attacks,” he said. “We are taking it from all sides.” More

    • 225 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Head Start avoids Trump’s cuts, but advocates are ready to defend it: ‘There’s too much good in this’

      by

      Tanya Stanton felt a sense of relief when she heard last week that the Trump administration seems to have reversed course on eliminating the Head Start early education program. She directs early learning programs at You Thrive, a Florida non-profit that provides Head Start services to approximately 1,100 children in the central part of the state.On Friday, the Trump administration released an updated “skinny budget”, which lays out the executive office’s discretionary spending priorities. It doesn’t contain a proposal to shut down Head Start, as mentioned in an administration memo obtained by the Associated Press in April. And that means thousands of families can breathe easier; the program served 833,000 low-income students nationwide in fiscal year 2022.Relief, however, does not mean that Stanton wants to lessen the pace of the advocacy that followed the announcement. “If anything, this has taught us that you can’t sit idle,” she said. Too much is at stake.Florida currently has over 45,000 children enrolled in 860 Head Start sites, the third highest number of students in the country behind California and Texas. In 2024, it received over $544m in federal funds. The budget may no longer target Head Start funding, but the administration closed half of the program’s 10 regional offices and federal funding freezes have affected its programs, and it does propose eliminating other programs that Head Start families rely upon, including preschool development grants and community block grants.“Until Congress passes and the president signs a final funding bill, we urge all Head Start supporters to continue advocating for the preservation of this vital program,” said Wanda Minick, Florida Head Start Association’s executive director.View image in fullscreenFor You Thrive’s Stanton, it has been a surprise to realize how little many Americans understand the full impact and scope of the program. Head Start has served 39 million children and families since its inception in 1965, according to government statistics. At its most basic level, Head Start provides free childcare in a nation where households can pay more on average for childcare than on their housing. Access to childcare has a major economic impact on families and communities, since a US Chamber of Commerce study finds that states can lose up to $1bn a year when parents and guardians can’t find or afford childcare. That is not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Head Start employees, whose possible job losses would also have ripple effects on their households and communities.Head Start is actually multiple programs that do much more than education and childcare. Early Head Start is for infants to three-year-olds, and its staff work on parenting skills with families one-on-one. Children also receive medical care such as dental, vision and mental health screenings. Head Start serves kids from ages three to five, and there’s also a Migrant Head Start for children of agricultural workers.Building stronger familiesDoing away with Head Start would have immediate effects for affected families and their greater communities, but could also have long-term – even generational – consequences, said child and family policy expert Elliot Haspel, author of Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. He noted a 2022 study showing that the children of Head Start participants were more likely to graduate high school and enter college; less likely to be teen parents and enter the criminal justice system; and had higher self-esteem – all of which translated to a 6% to 11% increase in wages.In her book A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle, Emory University historian Crystal R Sanders examined the impact Head Start had on economic opportunity in civil rights-era Mississippi. Through the Child Development Grant of Mississippi (CDGM), which ran from 1965-68, “federal money was going directly into the hands of working-class black people, something that had never happened in the state of Mississippi”, Sanders said.CDGM parents had the opportunity to work and go back to school. Many earned a GED or high-school equivalency, and some pursued college degrees, which resulted in better-paying jobs and even home ownership. “Head Start gave them a leg-up, too,” Sanders said. “That’s still true today.”For Lee Ann Vega, education manager at You Thrive, threats to Head Start are not just devastating – they’re personal. “It makes me sad for not only my families, but it makes me so sad for the children,” she said.Vega, 51, has Head Start to thank not only for a job but also for setting her on the right path in life. She and her brother were enrolled in Head Start after her mother abandoned the family due to substance abuse, and her father was working three jobs. The support she received inspires her passion for helping other children.“There’s so many days that I wake up and I thank God for allowing me to be a part of this process. Because Head Start works,” she said.Stanton of You Thrive said: “We are here to help the families achieve self-sufficiency.” To achieve this, staff work one-on-one with families to establish personalized goals. For some families, it means locating temporary or permanent housing. For some, it means entering higher education or learning new technical skills.View image in fullscreen“Some of them may not even know how to navigate on a laptop or computer,” Stanton said.Sometimes this leads to a job at Head Start itself, where former parents make up more than 20% of the program’s workforce. And while childcare as a whole pays low wages, Stanton noted that Head Start’s regulations, in a change made under the Biden administration, require that teachers earn as much as local public preschool or kindergarten teachers.“Head Start is an economic boon for communities, whether it’s the jobs it creates at those centers or the jobs that allow Head Start parents to work,” said Sanders, the Emory historian.The Trump administration budget proposal from April stated that eliminating Head Start aligned with its “goals of returning control of education to the states and increasing parental control”. That argument, Sanders said, “would suggest that they are actually not familiar with Head Start because Head Start prioritizes parental involvement”. Head Start standards require each agency to include parents on policy councils that decide or approve everything from enrollment and curriculum criteria to staffing.Tocra Waters is co-president of the policy council at Verner Early Learning Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where her three-year-old son Sincere has been enrolled in the county’s only Early Head Start program since the summer of 2023.The program provided crucial support at an unsettled time in her life. Waters and her two children had transitioned to a new home after spending time in a shelter, where Waters had gone after leaving an abusive partner. Sincere was “closed off” around people he didn’t know, she said.In home-based visits, Waters learned how to set boundaries and rules for Sincere, while he learned colors and improved his motor skills. Now in a classroom at Verner, Sincere has made friends and interacts more with others in all settings. “He’ll say, ‘Hi, morning, have a nice day,’ and it just melts my heart,” Waters, 32, said.Waters has seen her own confidence increase through her participation in the policy council. She values “that opportunity to be able to bring suggestions to the table … being an African American or a Black woman, in spaces, it seemed like we were not heard at times,” she said. She trusts Verner to care for her son and said its services “allowed me to be able to provide for my kids and still chase my dreams”.A future without funding?Verner, a non-profit center, received $3.2m, or 60% of its $5.3 operating budget this year from Head Start funding to support 139 children. Although the administration’s plans to eliminate Head Start funding gave CEO Marcia Whitney “heart palpitations”, she noted that “we as an organization would not cease to exist” if funding disappeared.However, they would start charging tuition for many of its programs, a move that would price out most of their Early Head Start families and force some to leave their jobs to stay at home with their children.The situation is far more critical for centers like those run by You Thrive Florida, where 98% of their funding comes from Head Start; the rest comes from the United Way and the state.While the Trump administration said eliminating Head Start would allow state and local governments to have control over education, Haspel said “states are absolutely not prepared to make that kind of shift”. He pointed out that states struggled to distribute pandemic stabilization grants to childcare programs because they lacked the staff and technological infrastructure to transfer funds as quickly and easily as the federal government.According to Minick, Florida would need to invest $688m to replace Head Start services. Florida already has its own version of Early Head Start, the School Readiness program. But it has stricter eligibility requirements; parents must work up to 20 hours a week and contribute co-pays. Minick estimates that those rules mean that only 13,000 of the more than 40,000 students in Head Start could now enroll (the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program currently has no waiting list). And Florida’s legislature is considering slashing its funding for state-run early learning programs by up to 8%.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenFor Sanders, the question is less whether the state governments can administer these programs but whether they are willing to do so, especially in states with a history of educational and racial segregation. “Historically, when we have left complete control of education to states, that has created inequality,” she said. When the CDGM received federal funding as one of the nation’s first Head Start programs, she noted, “the segregationist governor of Mississippi could not take away money from working-class Black people”.Even with an annual budget of $12bn, Head Start at best serves half of eligible children. “I don’t envision Americans truly saving any money by doing away with Head Start,” because it is so underfunded, Sanders said.Because the program has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception, Haspel “would be somewhat surprised” if Congress agreed to the administration’s initial request to eliminate it completely. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the government on 28 April on behalf of a coalition of Head Start providers and parents, alleging that the executive branch does not have the power to impact Head Start’s funding without congressional approval.Stanton, for one, is hopeful. Longtime Head Start staff across the nation – people who have worked for the program for 30 or 40 years – told her that they have experienced tough moments like this before, though perhaps not of this magnitude.“I’m just a believer. I’m like, there’s too much good in this,” she said. More