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      Columbia should have said, ‘see you in court,’ not ‘yes, Mr President.’ | Margaret Sullivan

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      Since early 2024, I’ve been running a journalism ethics center at Columbia University.So perhaps it’s no surprise that I see the university’s capitulation to Trump both in terms of journalism and ethics.I’ve never run a university, but I have run a newsroom. For 13 years (until I moved to New York City in 2012 to be the New York Times public editor), I was the chief editor of the Buffalo News, the regional newspaper in my home town. I had started there as a summer intern. As editor, I made a lot of decisions; the buck stopped at my desk.It’s not a perfect analogy to Columbia’s situation, but I’ve been thinking about what my options might have been if the paper’s biggest and most powerful advertiser – one important to our financial wellbeing – had gotten wind of an investigation they didn’t like the sounds of. Something that would reveal something negative about their business, let’s say.Suppose that advertiser had threatened to withdraw all their advertising unless we dropped the story. In fact, suppose they wanted promises of positive coverage – perhaps a fawning profile of their CEO, and a series about the good things the company was doing in the community.Let’s complicate it more. Let’s say that my boss, the paper’s owner, was on the advertiser’s side, or at least inclined to see their point of view.What would my options be as editor?There really would be only one: to hold fast. To make the case to the owner that if we were a legitimate newspaper, we would have to be brave and not allow ourselves to be bullied. And to refuse to pull the story. Make sure it’s bulletproof – every fact nailed down – and proceed with plans to publish it.What would happen?That’s hard to say. Maybe the advertiser would blink. Maybe the owner would fire me. Maybe I’d feel I had to resign.The point of this imperfect analogy is simply that allowing oneself – or one’s institution – to be bullied or threatened into compliance is never the right answer.And it’s especially important for strong institutions to stand up, to set an example and to insulate those who have fewer resources or are more vulnerable.Columbia has a huge – nearly $15bn – endowment. It could have withstood the withdrawal of federal funds.Columbia’s leadership could have chosen to say “see you in court” rather than “yes, sir”.Some principles are so central to an institution’s purpose that to betray them should be unthinkable. You don’t kill a valid story under pressure. Because journalism, however flawed, is about finding and telling the truth.And a university – which stands for academic freedom, for freedom of thought, speech and expression, including the right to peacefully protest – cannot buckle to demands to undermine those principles.Sadly, that’s what Columbia did, even going so far as to put an entire academic department under highly unusual supervision, and to empower beefed-up campus police to detain, remove or arrest students for various supposed offenses.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis action stains a great university, which could have recovered from a financial threat but may not recover from this capitulation.Of course, Columbia needs to work against antisemitism and against all forms of hatred and discrimination. But that’s not really – or certainly not fully – what’s at the heart of Trump’s move.“It’s all about intimidation,” as my Guardian colleague Robert Reich, a former labor secretary, wrote this weekend, “not only at Columbia but at every other university in America.”Columbia’s capitulation mirrors that of many institutions in recent weeks. A major law firm (Paul, Weiss), under pressure, struck a deal with the White House to donate $40m in legal work to enable Trump’s causes. ABC News settled a defamation suit it probably could have won. And newspaper owners, including Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, have been cozying up to Trump in many ways that harm credibility and mission.Yet some organizations have decided not to cave, but to be true to their stated and long-held principles.The Associated Press is suing, after the Trump administration severely limited its journalists’ access, punishing them for an editorial decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” on first reference in their stories, not “Gulf of America”. Another large law firm, Perkins Coie, is fighting in court after Trump’s executive order stripped their lawyers of their security clearances and denyed them access to government buildings.Take this to the bank: there is no satisfying the Trumpian demands. The goalposts will always be moved and then moved again.With its huge endowment and sea of rich alumni – some of whom, surely, would be in sympathy – Columbia had other choices. Smaller universities may not.Institutions with resources must resist thuggish bullying, not just for their own sakes, but to protect others who will find it much harder. And for another reason: at an extremely dangerous time in the US and in the world, it’s the right thing to do.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Columbia University ‘refusing to help’ identify people for arrest – White House

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      The Trump administration said on Tuesday that Columbia University was “refusing to help” the Department of Homeland Security identify people for arrest on campus, after immigration authorities detained a prominent Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate over the weekend.The Trump White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday the administration had given the university names of multiple individuals it accused of “pro-Hamas activity”, reiterating the administration’s intention to deport activists associated with pro-Palestinian protests.“Columbia University has been given the names of other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity, and they are refusing to help DHS identify those individuals on campus,” Leavitt said in a press briefing. “And as the president said very strongly in his statement yesterday, he is not going to tolerate that.”Khalil, a permanent US resident who helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at the university last year, was detained on Saturday night in an unprecedented move that prompted widespread outrage and alarm from free speech advocates.Trump described the arrest this week as the “first arrest of many to come”.The federal immigration authorities who arrested Khalil reportedly said they were acting on a state department order to revoke the green card granting him permanent residency.As of Tuesday, Khalil had not been charged with any crime. However, two people with knowledge of the matter told the New York Times that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was relying on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him broad power to expel foreigners if they give him “reasonable ground to believe” their presence in the US has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”. Zeteo also reported that Rubio himself “personally signed off on the arrest”.As of Monday morning, Khalil was being held at an immigration detention facility near Jena, Louisiana.On Monday evening, a federal judge in Manhattan barred his deportation pending a hearing in his case set for Wednesday.The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have joined Khalil’s legal team, led by his attorney, Amy Greer. Greer stated on Monday that she had spoken with Khalil and that he was “healthy and his spirits are undaunted by his predicament”.On Tuesday, 13 members of Congress – led by the Palestinian-American US representative Rashida Tlaib – issued a letter demanding his immediate release.The arrest came just days after Donald Trump’s second presidential administration canceled $400m in funding to Columbia University over what it described as the college’s failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment on campus.On Monday, the US education department’s civil rights office followed the cuts to Columbia with new warnings to 60 other colleges and universities indicating that they may face “enforcement actions” for allegations of antisemitic harassment as well as discrimination on their campuses.In Monday’s letters to the 60 higher education institutions, the federal education department’s office of civil rights (OCR) said that the schools are all being investigated in response to complaints of alleged “violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination”.A department statement said it sent the admonitions under the agency’s authority to enforce Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin”.“National origin includes shared (Jewish) ancestry,” the statement said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe letters stem from an executive order signed by Trump shortly after retaking office in January that purported to “combat antisemitism”. A fact sheet corresponding to Trump’s order suggested deporting international students involved in pro-Palestinian protests.In a statement on Monday, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, said her department was “deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year”.“University leaders must do better,” the former executive for the WWE professional wrestling promotion said. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers.“That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal anti-discrimination laws.”Trump had recently threatened to halt all federal funding for any college or school that allows “illegal protests” and vowed to imprison “agitators”. The president accused Columbia University of repeatedly failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment.The institution has been a focal point for campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Demonstrations erupted last spring both across the US and internationally, with students calling for an end to the US’s support to the Israeli military as well as demanding that their universities divest from companies with ties to Israel.At Columbia, such protests led to mass arrests, suspensions and the resignation of the university’s president at the time. More

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      Trump administration cancels $400m in funds to Columbia University

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      The Donald Trump administration announced on Friday that it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.The announcement comes after Columbia set up a new disciplinary committee and initiated its own investigations into students critical of Israel and its war on Gaza after Hamas’s own attack on Israel. That move by the university has alarmed advocates of free speech.It also comes at a time of widespread backlash to American universities by the Trump administration and conservatives more broadly who see the higher education sector in the US as dominated by liberals and ripe for a rightwing attack on its influence.Linda McMahon, the Trump-appointed secretary of education, had warned on Monday that Columbia would lose federal funding if it did not take additional action to combat antisemitism on its campus.A statement issued on Friday by the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the US General Services Administration, states: “These cancellations represent the first round of action and additional cancellations are expected to follow.”“For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” McMahon said in the statement.The statement also refers to ongoing “illegal protests” on college and university campuses, a phrase Trump has used to refer to some student protests, though what makes these illegal remains unclear.Columbia was central to campus protests that broke out across the US over Gaza last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment there in April and inspired a wave of similar protests in many other colleges.The first amendment to the US constitution protects the rights of people to “peacefully assemble” and to petition the government for a “redress of grievances”.The extent that pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses can be considered antisemitic is still debated across political and academic spheres. Republican lawmakers viewed the protests as antisemitic, despite the fact many protesters denied the accusations or were Jewish themselves.Trump has threatened college students with imprisonment and deportation on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform, writing: “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”A Columbia University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Columbia Spectator, that it was “reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and [pledged] to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding”.“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the spokesperson wrote.It is not immediately clear what contracts or grants would be cut under the directive. Columbia University currently holds more than $5bn in federal grant commitments, the GSA statement said.Katherine Franke, a retired legal scholar and former professor at Columbia Law School told the Guardian how she was “pushed out” of her role in January because of her pro-Palestinian activism. She had been with Columbia for 25 years.Franke says that the university was told “unless we as faculty and students take a pro-Israeli position, it [the university] will be sanctioned. And at the same time, the university is now committing itself to something it’s calling institutional neutrality.”She says that though not all the grants were cut, the Trump administration did “cut a significant part of them, and the important research that’s being done with those grants will stop”.Franke is highly critical of the way Columbia is responding to the threats from Trump, believing the institution could have done more to protect students, faculty and the pivotal role the university plays in a democracy.“If you grovel before a bully, it just emboldens the bully, and the bully has now become an authoritarian government with the capacity to act on a level that was unthinkable for us a couple of years ago,” she said.Columbia is one of five colleges currently under the new federal investigation, and it is one of 10 being visited by a taskforce in response to allegations of antisemitism. Others under investigation include the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; Northwestern University; and Portland State University. More

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      Trump administration quietly shutters online form for student debt repayment

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      The Donald Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.Those seeking payment plans are unable to access the applications for income-driven repayment plans (IDR), which cap what borrowers must pay each month at a percent of their earnings, as well as the online application to consolidate their loans on the US Department of Education website.The quiet removal came after a federal appeals court decision earlier this week that continued a pause on Joe Biden’s Save program, an income-driven plan for loan forgiveness that would have forgiven debts after as few as 10 years of payments.Biden’s Save program has been on hold since last summer after a group of Republican state attorneys general brought forward a lawsuit against the forgiveness features. As a result, about 8 million borrowers who enrolled in Save before it was halted currently have their loans in limbo as the litigation is ongoing.It is currently unclear how borrowers who were already enrolled in income-driven plans are supposed to submit their annual paperwork to certify their incomes. It is also uncertain when or if the payment plan applications will be back up on the website.The continued setbacks in the path towards student loan forgiveness has caused concern among those with debt, and loan forgiveness activists. Critics also point out that removing payment plan options was not a part of the previous litigation.There is also criticism towards the DoE’s decision to quietly remove the applications rather than announcing it, with the department opting instead to post a banner on StudentAid.gov.The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), a non-profit dedicated to eliminating student debt in the US, released a statement in response to the sudden removal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Shutting down access to all income-based repayment plans is not what the 8th Circuit ordered—this was a choice by the Trump Administration and a cruel one that will inflict massive pain on millions of working families,” the statement says.It goes on to say: “President Trump campaigned on lower costs, but once again has chosen a path that will ensure the greatest possible harm to the monthly budgets of everyday working families.” More

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      US students rally college voters on campus: ‘We brought the polls to them’

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      College students formed a steady line outside a campus art museum to vote early on Tuesday at a pop-up polling place at the University of Minnesota.The one-day site, enabled by new state laws that allow for pop-up early voting, helps populations like student voters, who may not have access to transportation to get off campus, easily access the polls.“We brought the polls to them,” said Riley Hetland, a sophomore and undergraduate student government civic engagement director, who helped plan the event.Hetland said the group has been going to classrooms and hosting tables around campus for weeks to get people registered to vote and help them make a plan to cast ballots. So far, they have gotten 12,000 students to pledge to vote, double their goal of 6,000, a sign of the enthusiasm young people have to perform their civic duty in the presidential election, she said. More than 600 people voted during the seven hours the pop-up site was open on Tuesday, organizers said.Across the country, college campuses and campaigns have ramped up efforts to register and energize college voters, especially in critical swing states. The Democratic party is counting on high turnout on college campuses, which tend to lean Democratic..Kamala Harris’s campaign on Wednesday announced it was launching an early voting push targeting students on campuses in battleground states, including a seven-figure ad buy to primarily target students on social media.College campuses are also organizing their own get-out-thevote efforts. At the University of California Berkeley, hundreds of students came together recently for an event called Votechella, which featured music and on-site voter registration, the state university system said. The name is a nod to Coachella, the popular music festival held annually in southern California.At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, students have reacted positively to outreach efforts on campus, where a second voting hub opened on Monday, according to CBS News.Nevaeh McVey, a student, told CBS: “I come from a place where I wasn’t really educated about how to vote or who to vote for, and I think getting the younger population to vote is extremely important in times like these. I just think [this initiative] makes it really easy and accessible for us students to do.”The push to mobilize young voters comes as some students are facing challenges in casting their ballot. Leaders of some Republican-controlled states have worked to limit student voting, writing legislation to limit the use of student identification cards as an ID at polls and shuttering on-campus polling precincts.Proponents of these measures claim that they are necessary to prevent voter fraud, while others have railed that voting is too easy for university students.The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has urged the US justice department to investigate text messages they believe targeted young people to dissuade them from voting. The organization received complaints from voters who received a text that read: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.”College students could prove integral in tipping swing states, as they are traditionally permitted to vote either in their home state or where they attend school. Some students have registered in the state where they believe their vote might have the most impact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’ve seen dozens of elections up and down the ballot over the course of the last few years that have been decided by as close as one vote,” Clarissa Unger, co-founder and executive director of Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, told ABC News.“Every single college student’s vote can be consequential.”Throughout the day on Tuesday, the line for the pop-up site in Minnesota held dozens of people who passed by between classes, came to campus specifically for the voting site or walked over from their dorms. A 30ft inflatable eagle helped set a fun atmosphere for voting – and the free pizza didn’t hurt.There are election day polling places on campus, but the pop-up site is the only on-campus early voting opportunity. And it doesn’t require voters to live in any specific precinct – any Minneapolis voter could cast a ballot there on Tuesday. Joslyn Blass, a senior and undergraduate student government director of government and legislative affairs, said the group has pushed for early voting because there could be various obstacles – like an exam or getting sick – that can get in the way of voting solely on 5 November. “We really prioritize the early voting site, just because you never know what’s gonna happen,” she said.Madelyn Ekstrand finished her class for the day and waited about an hour to cast her ballot. The 21-year-old senior said abortion access and the climate crisis were important to her, so she was voting for Harris.“I’m happy to see people my age getting out and voting and being proactive and not waiting till the last second,” she said. More

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      Could young voters in Michigan hand the state to Kamala Harris?

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      So few students wanted to join the campus Republican party when Abigail Sefcik began studying at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) that she was rapidly voted in as its president.“The group was only four or five people. Nobody else wanted to do it,” she said.Four years later, Sefcik has turned her back on the Republicans and is supporting Kamala Harris for president.“In 2020, I voted for Donald Trump. I was being sucked into his void and I said some really disparaging things about other people. I did some things that I would just really call shameful when I think of them,” said the political science student in her final year at university.“But after a couple of years, I decided that there wasn’t a lot that the Republicans stood for that I really cared about.”Rejecting Trump and the Republicans was one thing, but Sefcik found little to inspire her in Joe Biden’s run for re-election. Then the president dropped out the race in July and Harris rapidly became the de facto Democratic candidate.“I couldn’t identify with Joe Biden as a good leader. When we were looking at a ticket with Biden and Trump, of course I was going to vote for Biden. But I would do so unwillingly because we know what the alternative would be,” she said.“Kamala Harris provides a way out for a lot of voters. Her youth, for one thing, has inspired a lot of young people.”A recent Harvard Kennedy School poll gives Harris a two-to-one lead over Trump among voters aged 18 to 29. Harris has the support of 64% of younger voters to 32% for Trump principally because of significantly higher approval ratings on the issues of the climate crisis, abortion rights and healthcare. Harris also scores much better with younger voters on empathy, reliability and honesty.View image in fullscreenThe Kennedy School polling director, John Della Volpe, said the findings showed “a significant shift in the overall vibe and preferences of young Americans” in favour of Harris compared with Biden.“In just a few weeks, Vice-President Harris has drummed up a wave of enthusiasm among young voters. The shift we are seeing toward Harris is seismic, driven largely by young women,” he said.The challenge for the Harris campaign is to translate that enthusiasm into votes where it matters.SVSU is one such place. The university has about 7,000 students. The vast majority can vote in Michigan, a battleground state that Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016.With polls showing the former president and Harris closely tied in Michigan, student votes potentially carry significant weight in a state that the vice-president’s campaign sees as a key part of her clearest path to victory alongside two other Rust belt states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.Leah Craig is campaigning for Harris on campus and registering her fellow students to vote. She did not volunteer for Biden’s campaign even though she would have voted for him. But Harris prompted Craig to get involved.“It was reinvigorating, to say the least. When Biden was the candidate, I wasn’t really passionate about it and it just felt like I was going into another election of the-lesser-of-two-evils kind of a thing. But the Harris campaign brought a new level of attention to a lot of issues that people of my generation are really passionate about,” she said.“We now have an easier candidate to embrace, an easier candidate to advocate for, an easier candidate to appeal to young people.”Many students at SVSU talk about Harris’s relative youth. Although at 59 she is old enough to be a grandmother to the students, they see a sharp contrast in energy and spirit compared with Biden and Trump. Noah Johnson, president of the SVSU Democrats, also credits a determined social media campaign for drawing in younger voters.“A lot of it is due to a big initial social media push. I saw it definitely resonate with some people, like Charli xcx when she tweeted out the Kamala brat thing. That was effective with young people. And similarly, like the coconut tree meme,” he said.“It’s like a permission structure. It wasn’t cool or popular to be a fan of Biden. Students were like: ‘Sure, I support his policies.’ But it was very rare to find a young person that was actively a fan of him. It was more: ‘I’ll vote for him, especially because I like him more than Trump.’ But I’ve definitely seen, especially from my less politically engaged friends, they’re actively excited to go out and vote for Kamala even if they’re not doing anything else.”Still, the Harvard youth poll found a significant gender gap, with the vice-president garnering 17% more support among young female voters than those who are male, although a majority of young men say they will vote for Harris. Sefcik said she saw that at SVSU, where the small membership of the campus Republican party is mostly male while a majority of the college Democrats are women.Trump held a rally at SVSU last week but said little to directly address younger voters or their concerns, perhaps because relatively few students attended and the former president failed to fill the 4,000-seat sports hall.A student who did attend and said he supported Trump didn’t want to give his name. Asked why not, he replied: “There’s no problem at SVSU. I feel like people are respectful of each other’s views. I have friends on both sides. But it’s not like that outside. Saying you vote for Trump could cost you a job.”Many of SVSU’s students come from rural and small-town Michigan, and grew up in Republican neighbourhoods and homes. Sefcik’s disillusionment with Trump went hand in hand with questioning her upbringing in a religious and politically conservative family. But she also became more dismayed with the Republican party as she experienced it from the inside.Sefcik said that as president of the campus Republicans, she would attend fundraising events where the donors expected to hear how she was suffering at the hands of “woke” students and liberal professors.“They want to hear about how hard it is to be a conservative college student and how the system is just not benefiting you anymore. And so you sort of learn these two or three talking points to reinforce that. But in my experience, it wasn’t hard, because people who identified as Democrats were kind and most welcoming people I ever met,” she said.The SVSU Republicans declined a request for an interview.Two days after Trump’s rally, a different student crowd turned out to hear Bernie Sanders speak in support of Harris on the campus.Sanders hit all the right notes for a young audience. Abortion rights, the housing crisis, the US moving ever closer to becoming an oligarchy. He gave a discourse on the dangers of electing Trump again, warning that if he is returned to the White House the world will have “lost the struggle” against the climate crisis.But Sanders also illustrated the gap with Harris as he called for universal public healthcare – “Medicare for all” – in contrast with her much weaker proposals for drug price controls and greater regulation of medical providers.Some of Harris’s more active supporters on campus say that she falls short on some policies but they see other strengths. Although Harris has avoided putting her race and gender at the fore of her campaign, Craig said it was important to some students.“From what I’ve observed around campus, it makes people of our demographic feel more heard and seen and that’s a really big thing, too,” she said.Several students see Harris as a break with being raised in an age of apprehension. Sefcik said people her age “grew up with the fear after 9/11 and have never known a world where we were sort of safe”. She said Trump exacerbated that with his attacks on minority groups and by packing the supreme court to strip women of control over their bodies.Craig described students who recently began at university as spending their teenage years living in the “Trump era of American carnage”.“This is all they’ve ever known. The Biden years are pretty much scrambling to undo what had been done and fix things. I feel like there’s a certain level of despondency whereas, as Harris herself said, she is about bringing joy to people, making it a little more positive and upbeat as compared to the same old. It’s a new approach,” she said.Still, the challenge of making sure students actually vote remains. There are reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic on that score. Four years ago, a historic high of 66% of American college students voted in the presidential election, a huge leap from 2016, when just 52% turned out.The Institute for Democracy & Higher Education called the increase “stunning” and attributed it to a range of factors, including student activism on “racial injustice, global climate change, and voter suppression”. Revulsion with Trump also drove a lot of people to the polls.Harris’s supporters also note that nearly half of SVSU students voted in large numbers in the midterms two years ago, just months after the US supreme court threw out the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v Wade – a larger turnout than in the rest of Saginaw county.Craig is pushing a widely heard message among Democrats that Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016 by 10,704 votes is equivalent to just two ballots in each of the state’s election precincts.“We are telling them, all it takes is taking a couple of people with you. Talk to your friends, reach out on social media. You don’t have to go knocking door to door, you don’t have to be standing out here with a clipboard. You don’t have to go do anything terribly crazy. You just have to get two people to vote,” she said. More

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      Ex-senator and university president’s spending is under state scrutiny

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      Increased spending by the recently resigned University of Florida president Ben Sasse is coming under scrutiny after a student-run newspaper found that he awarded secretive consulting contracts and gave high-paying jobs to former members of his US Senate staff and Republican allies – actions that he defended on Friday.Both Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida’s chief financial officer are calling on the state university system’s governing board to investigate after the Independent Florida Alligator reported this week that as school president, Sasse gave six former staffers and two ex-Republican officials jobs with salaries that outstripped comparable positions. Most did not move to Gainesville – but work remotely from hundreds of miles away.Sasse, a former Nebraska senator, became the school’s president in February 2023.Overall, Sasse’s office spent $17.3m during his first year compared with the $5.6m spent by his predecessor Kent Fuchs in his final year. The university has an overall budget of $9bn.DeSantis’s office issued a statement saying that the governor “take[s] the stewardship of state funds very seriously and [has] already been in discussions with leadership at the university and with the [governing] board to look into the matter”.The chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, wrote on the social media platform X that the Alligator’s report “is concerning” and that the governing board “should investigate this issue to ensure tuition and tax dollars are being properly used”.Sasse resigned on 31 July, citing his wife’s recent diagnosis with epilepsy after years of other health issues. His hiring by the governing board to head Florida’s flagship university (UF) had been controversial as his only previous experience was five years as president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska, which has just over 1,600 students. UF has 60,000 students and 6,600 faculty members and is one of the nation’s top research universities.In a lengthy statement posted to X on Friday, Sasse defended the hirings and consulting contracts, saying they were needed as UF launches new satellite campuses and K-12 charter schools around the state, increases its work with artificial intelligence and looks to improve in the fields of medicine, science and technology.He said all the hirings were approved in the normal budget process, that some got raises to secure their services amid “competing opportunities and offers”, and he welcomes an audit.“I am confident that the expenditures under discussion were proper and appropriate,” he said.According to documents obtained by the Alligator, Sasse hired Raymond Sass, his former Senate chief of staff, to be the university’s vice-president for innovation and partnerships, a new position. His pay is $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made in Sasse’s Senate office. Sass still lives in the Washington DC area. He did not immediately respond on Friday to a phone message and email seeking comment.James Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, became UF’s vice-president of communications, earning $432,000 annually. His predecessor had earned $270,000. He still lives in Washington. He did not immediately respond on Friday to an email seeking comment.Taylor Silva, Sasse’s former Senate press secretary, was given the new position of assistant vice-president of presidential communications and public affairs. The job has an annual salary of $232,000. Silva did move to Gainesville. No contact information for Silva could be located. Silva is not listed in the university directory.Three of Sasse’s other former Senate staffers also got jobs with UF.Besides his former staffers, Sasse hired two others with strong Republican party ties.He hired the former Tennessee commissioner of education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice-president of pre-kindergarten to grade 12 and pre-bachelor’s programs at a salary of $367,500. She still lives in Tennessee. She did not immediately respond to an email on Friday seeking comment.He also hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, as director of presidential relations and major events at a salary of $205,000. She also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.Because most of these appointees still live outside Florida, travel expenses for Sasse’s office ballooned to $633,000, more than 20 times the amount spent annually under Fuchs.Sasse also hired McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser, to a $4.7m contract. The secretive firm is one of the country’s most prominent management consulting firms. The university has declined to say what its work includes. The firm did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.He also awarded about $2.5m in other consulting contracts, the Alligator reported. More

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      America’s problem is massive inequality – not ‘woke’ educated elites | Robert Reich

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      More than a third of Harvard’s graduating seniors are heading into finance or management consulting – two professions notable for how quickly their practitioners “make a bag”, or make money, reports the New York Times.Similar percentages show up in other prestigious universities.Frankly, if anything, I’m surprised that only a third of graduating seniors at Harvard and similar places are heading into finance and consulting.In this era of raging income inequality and billionaire robber barons, the bags are gigantic. At Goldman Sachs they start at $105,000 to $164,000. At McKinsey, $100,000 to $140,000.And that’s just the first year.Think of it: make a bag and then do whatever you really want to do without ever again worrying about money. Make a bag and support whatever good causes you believe in without having to work at social change. Make a bag and you’ll never have to grovel to those with wealth and power.When I graduated Dartmouth College in 1968, almost no one I knew went into finance or consulting. In those days, inequalities were minuscule compared with now. The bags at that time could have fit into a glove compartment.One of the least-discussed but most profound consequences of America’s surging inequality is the number of talented young people now devoting themselves to making bags.Remarkably, though, most talented young people are not yet in the bag.For most of the last 43 years I’ve taught at several of America’s most prestigious universities. The biggest change I’ve seen over the years isn’t how starry-eyed students have become about finance and consulting.It’s how passionate they’ve become about making the world better.Sure, I’ve noticed the mini-stampede into finance and consulting. But graduates out to make a bag are still the minority.Most graduates are joining non-profits, entering politics or becoming community organizers, public defenders, teachers, healthcare workers, diplomats, staffers on congressional committees, union organizers and environmental activists.The conservative columnist David Brooks bemoans this trend. In a recent column he laments that at elite universities “the share of progressive students and professors has steadily risen, and the share of conservatives has approached zero”.He cites a May 2023 survey of Harvard’s graduating class showing 65% identifying as progressive or very progressive.Why is this happening? Brooks thinks the gen Z cohort at prestigious universities is so tormented by the cognitive dissonance between their positions of privilege and their commitments to social justice that they must “prove to themselves and others” that they’re “on the side of the oppressed”.It doesn’t seem to have dawned on Brooks that, at least since the start of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2017, the meaning of “progressive” has shifted from someone who wants a more just society to someone who simply wants to preserve democracy.To be a “progressive” at a prestigious university these days – indeed, to be a progressive anywhere in America – is no longer to be on the political left as the left used to be defined. It’s to be on the side of the constitution, the rule of law, and a modicum of decency.This is why so many more undergraduates and professors now deem themselves progressive.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI agree with Brooks that elite universities should dismantle arrangements that let the privileged members of society pass down their educational privileges to their children, while locking out most everyone else – for example, by ending affirmative action for legacies and calling on the private sector to remove college prerequisites for decent-paying jobs.But Brooks and other conservatives are dead wrong about which elite is holding back the rest of America. It’s not the educated class. It’s the moneyed class.America’s corporate and financial elites have flooded American politics with money in order to receive government subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks – all of which ratchet up their wealth, entrench their power and make it harder for average working people to advance.Trump and much of his Republican party are deploying criticisms of the educated class to pose as populists on the side of the people.Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of ’06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents. Or Senator Josh Hawley, Stanford class of ’02 and Yale Law ’06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of “moral rot”.It’s all a thinly veiled cover for their efforts to help the wealthy make even bigger bags while keeping everyone else – especially average workers – down.At this moment, Republicans are promising the moneyed class that in return for financial backing in the upcoming election, they’ll get an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts – which disproportionately boosted the wealth of big corporations and the rich – plus additional tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.This could expand the national debt by roughly $1tn over the next decade, rendering it impossible for the government to invest in things average Americans desperately need – such as childcare, eldercare, affordable housing, and, yes, affordable higher education.Brooks thinks that if present trends continue, there will be a populist uprising – “a multiracial, multiprong, right/left alliance against the educated class”.For Brooks, the lesson is that the educated class must “seriously reform the system or be prepared to be run over”.He’s wrong. The real lesson is we must reform the system created by the moneyed class – or be prepared to run the moneyed class over.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More