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      ‘A Really Easy Mark for Trump’: Three Columnists on the Threats to Elite Colleges

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      Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens about Donald Trump’s attacks on Columbia University and other elite colleges and how they became vulnerable to a political and ideological reckoning.Patrick Healy: Bret, Tressie, Masha, I spoke on Thursday to a university president who told me he was just advised to hire a bodyguard. He said he’d never seen so much fear in the world of higher education — that many college presidents are “scared to death” about the Trump administration cutting their funding, Elon Musk unleashing Twitter mobs on them, ICE agents coming on campus, angry email flooding their inboxes, student protests over Gaza and Israel, and worries about being targeted for violence. I was a higher education reporter two decades ago, when universities were widely admired in America, and so I asked this president — what went wrong?He said presidents and professors had taken too many things for granted — they thought they’d always be seen as a “public good” benefiting society, but came to be seen as elitist and condescending toward regular Americans. And Americans hate a lot of things, but they really hate elites condescending to them. Now we are seeing a big reckoning for higher education — ideological, cultural, financial — driven by Donald Trump and the right.So I want to start by asking you the question I asked the university president — what went wrong for higher ed? How did colleges become easy pickings?Bret Stephens: Big question; lots of answers.The moment I realized something had gone terribly, maybe irreversibly, wrong in higher ed came in 2015, when Nicholas Christakis, a distinguished sociobiologist at Yale, was surrounded, hounded, lectured and yelled at by students furious that his wife, Erika, had suggested in an email that perhaps students could be entrusted to make their own Halloween costume decisions. The incident encapsulated the entitlement, the arrogance and the unbearably petty grievances of a generation who seemed to find their voice and power in the taking of offense. I was left asking: Who admitted these students? Who taught them to think this way? And why weren’t they immediately suspended or expelled?Healy: I remember that moment. A Harvard friend texted me and said, Glad you didn’t go to Yale? Then she backtracked with there-by-the-grace-of-God-goes-Harvard humility.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

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      Trump Pulled $400 million From Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next.

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      The administration has circulated a list that includes nine other campuses, accusing them of failure to address antisemitism.The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.The schools, a mix that includes both public universities and Ivy League institutions, have been placed on an official administration list of schools the Department of Justice said may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty.Faculty leaders at many of the schools have pushed back strongly against claims that their campuses are hotbeds of antisemitism, noting that while some Jewish students complained that they felt unsafe, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful and many of the protest participants were themselves Jewish. The Trump administration has made targeting higher education a priority. This week, the president threatened in a social media post to punish any school that permits “illegal” protests. On Jan. 30, his 10th day in office, he signed an executive order on combating antisemitism, focusing on what he called anti-Jewish racism at “leftists” universities. Then, on Feb. 3, he announced the creation of a multiagency task force to carry out the mandate.The task force appeared to move into action quickly after a pro-Palestinian sit-in and protest at Barnard College, a partner school to Columbia, led to arrests on Feb. 26. Two days later, the administration released its list of 10 schools under scrutiny, including Columbia, the site of large pro-Palestinian encampments last year.It said it would be paying the schools a visit, part of a review process to consider “whether remedial action is warranted.” Then on Friday, it announced it would be canceling millions in grants and contracts with Columbia.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

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      Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets

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      The National Institutes of Health announced a new policy Friday to cap a type of funding that supports medical research at universities, a decision that most likely will leave many with a large budget gap. The policy targets $9 billion in so-called indirect funds that the N.I.H. sends along with direct funds to support research into basic science and treatments for diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s to diabetes.Currently, some universities get 50 percent or more of the amount of a grant in indirect funds, meaning a $1 million research award would come with $500,000 to maintain facilities and equipment and pay support staff. The new policy would cap those indirect funds at 15 percent.“I think it’s going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that,” said Dr. David A. Baltrus, a University of Arizona associate professor whose lab is developing antibiotics for crops. “They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”Dr. Baltrus said that his research is focused on efforts such as keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce. He said the policy change would force his university to make cuts to support staff and overhead.The Trump administration has been sharply critical of what it derides as “woke” policies and cultures at universities, which have been bracing for a hit to their budgets. Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals, called for capping these related research funds, saying they were sometimes used to fund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Cutting such costs would “reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas,” Project 2025’s authors said.An N.I.H. social media post said the change could save the federal government as much as $4 billion and sharply cut payments to Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, which have overhead rates above 60 percent of their grant sums.Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, said in a statement late Friday that the move could “dismantle the biomedical research system, stifle the development of new cures for disease, and rip treatments away from patients in need.”She said the change could shut down some clinical trials at institutions in her state, such as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and University of Washington.The N.I.H. spent about $35 billion in 2023 on about 50,000 competitive grants to about 300,000 researchers at 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions nationwide, according to the new policy. Of that, about $26 billion directly funded research and $9 billion covered indirect costs. The policy is set to take effect Monday. More

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      Harvard’s Black Student Enrollment Declines After Affirmative Action

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      Defying expectations, a Supreme Court decision curtailing race-based admissions still had a relatively small impact at some highly selective schools like Harvard, even as other schools saw big changes.The predictions were dire. In the course of a bitterly contested trial six years ago, Harvard University said that if it were forced to stop considering race in admissions, the diversity of its undergraduate classes would be badly compromised.Now, a year after the Supreme Court struck down the school’s admissions system, effectively ending affirmative action in college admissions everywhere, the numbers are in for the first class to be admitted, and the picture is more nuanced and complex than predicted.The proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard this fall has declined to 14 percent from 18 percent last year, according to data released by the institution on Wednesday — a dip smaller than the school had predicted, but still significant.Asian American representation in the class of 1,647 students remained the same as last year, at 37 percent. Hispanic enrollment has gone up, to 16 percent from 14 percent. Harvard did not report the share of white students in the class, consistent with past practice, and it is hard to make inferences because the percentage of students not disclosing race or ethnicity on their applications doubled to 8 percent this year from 4 percent last year.The post-affirmative-action demographic breakdowns have been trickling out over the last three weeks, and overall Black students appear to have been most affected. The percentages of Black students declined sharply at some elite schools, although surprisingly, they held steady at others. The suit against Harvard had accused it of discriminating against Asian Americans to depress their numbers, while giving preferences to members of other minority groups. Admissions experts suggested even before the new numbers came out that the most coveted schools, like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, would be best positioned to maintain their Black enrollment because the students who were admitted to them were very likely to accept. So in that view, they are unicorns, part of a highly selective ring of schools that scooped up the top students and remained relatively unaffected by the ban on race-conscious admissions.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

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      The Sunday Read: ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Going to College’

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      Jack D’Isidoro and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioBenjamin B. Bolger has been to Harvard and Stanford and Yale. He has been to Columbia and Dartmouth and Oxford, and Cambridge, Brandeis and Brown. Over all, Bolger has 14 advanced degrees, plus an associate’s and a bachelor’s.Against a backdrop of pervasive cynicism about the nature of higher education, it is tempting to dismiss a figure like Bolger as the wacky byproduct of an empty system. Then again, Bolger has run himself through that system, over and over and over again; it continues to take him in, and he continues to return to it for more.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More

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      Lauren Scruggs Makes History as Americans Win Olympic Fencing Gold

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      After Scruggs, 21, became the first Black American woman to win an individual Olympic fencing medal, she clinched gold for the U.S. team.After Lauren Scruggs clinched the gold medal for the United States in the women’s fencing team foil competition on Thursday, she threw off her mask and spun around, her eyes and mouth wide open.It was the team’s first-ever gold in the event. But it wasn’t the first big moment for Scruggs at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.On Sunday, Scruggs, in her Olympics debut, became the first Black American woman to win an individual Olympic fencing medal for the U.S.“Fencing has largely, historically, been a non-Black sport,” Scruggs told NCAA.com in a July interview. “So I hope to inspire young Black girls to get into fencing and to think that they can have a place in the sport. I just hope that more people who look like me, little girls like me, feel they have a place in the sport.”A Queens native and a rising senior at Harvard, Scruggs was around 7 when she started fencing. She was inspired by her older brother, Nolen, who was eager to try fencing after seeing “Star Wars,” “Good Morning America” reported.“As the younger sibling, I always wanted to do whatever he did, so I started fencing, and I stuck with it,” Scruggs told BET in an interview last month.Scruggs clung to the sport’s competitive nature, telling “Good Morning America” that it channeled her creativity. But as a Black fencer, she felt added pressure whenever she stepped onto the piste.“Growing up in fencing, no one really looked like me,” she said in the “Good Morning America” interview. “I think in order to prove myself, I really had to be the best at the tournaments.”She kept winning those tournaments. Scruggs was accepted into the Peter Westbrook Foundation, an organization founded by Peter Westbrook, the first Black American man to win an Olympic fencing medal.The organization supports young fencers from underrepresented racial and economic backgrounds. Scruggs, who now volunteers as a mentor for the group, eventually wants to own her own fencing club, she said in the BET interview.Scruggs is a six-time world champion and the youngest U.S. foil fencer to win the Junior World Championship, according to her Harvard bio. She has been named a first-team All American three times at Harvard and was the 2023 N.C.A.A. national champion.She was No. 11 in the International Fencing Federation’s world rankings when she arrived in Paris.“I think my success in fencing has also helped break stereotypes about what Black people can do and who can be a fencer,” she told “Good Morning America.” More

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      Is This the End for Mandatory D.E.I. Statements?

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      Harvard and M.I.T. no longer require applicants for teaching jobs to explain how they would serve underrepresented groups. Other schools may follow.For years, conservatives condemned the use of diversity statements by universities, which ask job applicants to detail their commitment to improving opportunities for marginalized and underrepresented groups.Critics called such statements dogmatic, coercive and, in one lawsuit seeking to end the practice in California, “a modern day loyalty oath” that recalled when professors were required to denounce the Communist Party.But the use of diversity statements continued to grow, and eventually became a requisite when applying for a teaching job at many of the country’s most selective universities. That seems to be changing.Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each recently announced that they will no longer require diversity statements as a part of their hiring process for faculty posts.The decisions by two of the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning could influence others to follow suit.“The switch has flipped as of now,” said Jeffrey S. Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Many professors on hiring committees, he said, may have been reluctant to voice their concerns about mandatory diversity statements before now. “But I think the large, silent majority of faculty who question the implementation of these programs and, in particular, these diversity statements — these people are being heard.”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

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      Police Arrest M.I.T. Protesters After Suspensions Ramp Up Tension

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      Several protesters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were arrested on Thursday after blocking access to a parking garage on campus, a day after some students involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment there received notices of suspension from the university.University police arrested “fewer than 10” people, according to a statement posted Thursday night on M.I.T.’s emergency management website. It was unclear what charges they would face, and a university spokesperson declined to comment further.The university had set a Monday deadline for protesters to vacate the encampment on the Cambridge campus or face suspension. Since then, the M.I.T. administration has begun sending notices of suspension to students who it says defied the deadline. Administrators would not say how many students had been suspended.“This means you will be prohibited from participating in any academic activities — including classes, exams or research — for the remainder of the semester,” said a letter received by one student and viewed by a reporter. “You will also be prohibited from participating in commencement activities or any cocurricular or extracurricular activities.”The university had detailed the consequences of suspension in a letter to student protesters before the Monday deadline, making clear that those who had previously been disciplined “related to events since Oct. 7” would also be barred from university housing and dining halls.As an additional condition of suspension, some students also lost their eligibility to be employed by the university, a penalty that cut off the income of graduate student employees who were suspended.“I don’t know what comes next,” said Prahlad Iyengar, a first-year graduate student who said he had lost his income and housing as a result of his suspension. “I have friends and a community, and I can find a place, but there are people affected who are housing- and food-insecure, some with children.”M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, was one of three university leaders who were harshly criticized last year for their testimony in a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism. The other two, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned in the fallout.Although Ms. Kornbluth did not face the same level of criticism, hundreds of M.I.T. alumni signed a letter calling for the university to take stronger actions to combat campus antisemitism.In a letter to the campus on Monday, she wrote: “This prolonged use of M.I.T. property as a venue for protest, without permission, especially on an issue with such sharp disagreement, is no longer safely sustainable.” More