Teaching and Learning
What Can You Do When Students Won’t Read (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2025): How one faculty member handled a course where students weren’t doing the reading.
How One Professor Tracked Grade Inflation at His College (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 14, 2025): The history scholar explains why it matters that there’s been a spike in students graduating with Latin honors.
5 Strategies to Create Inclusive Learning Environments for International Students (Thilagha Jagaiah, Faculty Focus, April 14, 2025): Many international students bring deeply ingrained learning experiences from their home countries, which may differ significantly from those in the U.S. These differences profoundly shape their approach to education, influencing their self-esteem and academic success.
Embracing Anger to Find Joyful Agency (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, April 10 2025): Invisible agreements shadow our classroom interactions and curriculum, capping the potential for connection, feeling, and joy in community with each other (45-min. podcast).
Why Aren’t Students Reading (Graham Vyse, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2025): 3-minute video explanation!
Will AI Change Our Uniquely Human Traits? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2025): Reports on results of a survey by Elon University of hundreds of experts — academics, business leaders, policy makers, researchers, and others — for their thoughts on how artificial intelligence will shape us over the next 10 years.
How University Students Use Claude (Anthropic, April 8, 2025): A report on how college students are using Anthropic’s genAI bot, Claude, in their academic work.
Higher Education and the Trump Administration:
Universities in the Crosshairs
Trump Administration Threatens Harvard with Foreign Student Ban (AlJazeera, April 17, 2025): US Department of Homeland Security tells Harvard to comply with President Trump’s demands or lose visas for foreign students.
Trump Administration Asks IRS to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status (Jacob Bogage and Jeff Stein, Washington Post, April 16, 2025): The directive to the IRS is a significant escalation of President Donald Trump’s feud with Harvard University and other Ivy League institutions and other nonprofit groups.
Harvard Had No Choice (Michael Dorf, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 16, 2025): Giving in to the administration’s demands would have been ruinous.
Why Harvard Decided to Challenge Donald Trump (Jeannie Suk Gersen, New Yorker, April 15, 2025): The moves are part of an attack on institutions, including the legal profession, nonprofit organizations, and the press, that play essential roles in a democratic society. And, in a development that has been decades in the making, civil-rights laws have been reduced to cudgels for coercing universities into subservience.
Trump’s Harvard Whiplash (Thomas Chatterton Williams, The Atlantic, April 15, 2025): The demands the Trump administration is placing on the university are internally contradictory.
Harvard Resists Trump’s Demands (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, April 14, 2025): University leaders said the administration’s demands are an attack on its independence. Hours later, billions in grants were frozen.
Trump Administration Will Freeze $2 Billion After Harvard Refuses Demands (Vimal Patel, New York Times, April 14, 2025): Federal officials said they would freeze the money after Harvard said it would not submit to requests to overhaul hiring and report international students who break rules.
Harvard Faculty Sue Trump Administration Over Funding Cut Threats (Ashleigh Fields, The Hill, April 12, 2025): Harvard University faculty sued the Trump administration on Friday over a federal assessment of the school’s spending amid allegations of their “failure” to protect students from antisemitism.
The Feds Want to Cement Change at Columbia With a Consent Decree. How Would That Work? (Dan Bauman, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11, 2025): The government is considering the use of a consent decree — a legal and regulatory measure that would put a federal judge in charge of ensuring the university’s compliance with its pledges to President Donald Trump, likely beyond the end of his second term.
White House May Seek Legally Binding Control Over Columbia Through Consent Decree (Lauren Gambino, Guardian, April 10, 2025): The proposal comes from the administration’s antisemitism taskforce who have reportedly expressed skepticism that Columbia was acting in “good faith”. If Columbia resists, the justice department would need to present its case for the agreement in court, a process that could drag on for years with the university risking its federal funding in the interim.
These 77 Colleges Have the Most to Lose from Trump’s Cuts (Phillip Levine, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2025): Is yours among them?
International Scholars and Students
Visa Cancellations Sow Panic for International Students, with Hundreds Fearing Deportation (Annie Ma, Makiya Semnera, and Christopher L. Keller, AP, April 16, 2025): The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.
International Students in the U.S. Are Reeling Amid Revoked Visas and Terminated Records (Alexa Robles-Gil, Science, April 15, 2025): Thousands of international students and recent graduates have had their ability to study and work in the U.S. called into question by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent weeks.
U.S. Cites Mideast Pease Process to Justify Move to Deport Student (Hamed Aleaziz and Jonah E. Bromwich, New York Times, April 15, 2025): Mohsen Mahdawi, who led Columbia protests, engaged in activities that could threaten attempts to end the war in Gaza, a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Efforts to Halt Student Deportations Risk Trump Retaliation (Patrick Jack, Inside Higher Ed, April 11, 2025): Institutions are scrambling to quell panic caused by visa revocations, while seeking to avoid incurring wrath of regime intent on cutting funding.
NAFSA Releases Initial Analysis of Visa Revocations and Other Actions Targeting International Students and Scholars (Erica L. Stewart, NAFSA, April 10, 2025): As of April 10, there have been more than 800 reports of international students and scholars either having their visa revoked and/or their record in SEVIS terminated.
Trump Administration and Higher Education: Academic Freedom, DEI, Admissions, and Speech
Is Admissions Trump’s Next Higher Ed Target? (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, April 14, 2025): The administration wants “comprehensive admissions reform” at colleges. It’s unclear what that means or how it would be enforced, but pressure to avoid scrutiny could affect admissions practices.
5 Takeaways from a Conference on Free Speech in Higher Ed (Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, April 11, 2025): Leaders in higher education spoke candidly about their concerns regarding trust in higher education and Trump’s targeting of foreign students.
House Education Committee to Hold Another Antisemitism Hearing with College Presidents (Marc Rod, Jewish Insider, April 10, 2025): The May 7 hearing will feature the presidents of California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo), Haverford College and DePaul University.
Extra Credit Reading
Two articles by Wooster’s Christa Craven: Protecting All Students Requires Listening to Them: Reflections on the Implementation of Ohio’s Anti-Trans ‘Bathroom Bill’ (Ms. Magazine, April 4, 2025) and Whose Safety Are We Protecting with Ohio’s New ‘Bathroom Bill’? Ohio’s bill is just one of over 500 anti-LGBTQ Bills the ACLU tracked last year across the nation.
A Logical Gap Behind Attacks on the Humanities (Katina L. Rogers, Inside Higher Ed, April 17, 2025): One argument imagines the humanities to be both powerful and dangerous, while the other sees humanities education as irrelevant and a waste of time.
In Court Filing, Trump Administration Blasts AAUP Lawsuit Against Immigration Order (Matan H. Josephy and Laurel M. Shugart, Harvard Crimson, April 15, 2025): Lawyers for the federal government asked a judge to reject a lawsuit from the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors, arguing that the group misapplied the First Amendment in their condemnation of Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech.
What Comes After DEI? (Emma Green, New Yorker, April 14, 2025): Colleges around the country, in the face of legal and political backlash to their diversity programs, are pivoting to an alternative framework known as pluralism.
University Presidents: Higher Education Must Do Better, But Politically Driven Government Intervention Is Not the Solution (Former College and University Presidents, Fortune, April 8, 2025): Letter signed by 43 former presidents.
Future Imperfect
Ohio House Budget Requires Private Colleges Comply with Diversity Ban to Be Eligible for Scholarship (Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal, April 11, 2025): According to language from the House’s version of the budget, private colleges must automatically accept the top 10% of all high school graduates and comply with parts of Senate Bill 1 — Ohio’s massive new higher education law that is set to take effect in June and only applies to public universities and community colleges.
Florida’s DOGE Agency Asks University Faculty to Hand Over Research (Ian Hodgson, Tampa Bay Times, April 10, 2025): Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office has asked colleges and universities across Florida to hand over detailed information on grants received by faculty and research over the last six years.
UF (University of Florida) Partners with ICE for On-Campus Immigration Enforcement (Vivienne Serret, Florida Alligator, April 10, 2025): The University of Florida is partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an effort to crack down on undocumented international students.
San Diego State University to Spend $1.3 Million on AI-Enabled Surveillance Cameras (Teal Davis, The Daily Aztec, April 9, 2025): University police say the cameras – which have feature recognition, track walking patterns across campus and can develop “face watchlists” – will create a safer campus, however some have concerns about privacy and discrimination.
Mississippi Libraries Ordered to Delete Academic Research in Response to State Laws (Michael Goldberg and Candice Wilder, Mississippi Today, April 8, 2025): Lawmaker says the removal of scholarly material from library databases would provoke backlash in a state where minorities have fought for equal access to education.
On the Bookshelf
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World (Penguin Random House, 2024): Reviewed by Joshua Kim (Inside Higher Ed, April 17, 2025): How the roots of economic inequality help to explain the assault on higher education.
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)