Pick Three: No time for all the articles? Here are three you might want to read.
How I’m Handling AI This Fall (Emily Pitts Donahoe, Substack, July 25, 2025): A potentially ill-fated plan.
Justice Department Declares DEI Unlawful (Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2025): The nine-page memo builds on the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Among the practices banned: narratives about how an applicant has overcome obstacles.
Conservative Group Requests Materials for Over 70 UNC Courses (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, July29, 2025): The Oversight Project, founded by the Heritage Foundation, is using an open records request to search for terms like “DEI” and “gender identity.” Faculty say it encroaches on academic freedom.
Teaching and Learning
A Professor’s Dilemma (Leonard Steinhorn, Inside Higher Ed, August 1, 2025): Knowing a student used AI is not the same as being able to prove it.
How to Convince Students to Use Effective Study Strategies? (Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, Learning Scientists, July 31, 2025): A repost from 2023, the author looks to research to understand students’ motivations and to pick up and stick with effective learning strategies.
Professors’ Role – or Lack Thereof – in Setting AI Policies (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2025): The author breaks down the highlights from a new AAUP report with findings from a faculty survey about colleges’ use of AI.
Joyful Justice (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, July 31, 2025): Alexandra Kogl shares about her chapter in Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education in this 44 min. podcast.
Want to Save Democracy? Teach Art History (Sarah Rogers Morris, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 2025): Visual comparison cultivates thinking skills that are vital to political life.
Test Analysis Worksheet Encourages Student Metacognition (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2025): Requiring students to complete a reflection exercise correlated with improved scores on the next exam.
Reaching (Not Just Teaching) Today’s Students: A Communication Cheatsheet (Laura Nicole Miller, Faculty Focus, July 30, 2025): Communication is hard. Even in the best of circumstances, every interaction carries not just the message we intend to send but also our own assumptions, our students’ assumptions, and the ever-growing complexity of language and tone, not to mention the medium itself.
Thinking Big and Lofty with Course Design (Tony’s Teaching Tips, July 30, 2025): Before you dive into writing a course description and defining those course objectives, you want to think big about why the course matters. Why is the course valuable, important, meaningful, significant? Why should it exist? Why are you teaching it?
The Case for ‘Slow Teaching’ (Pamela Scully, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2025): Constant pings and alerts from Canvas and Blackboard are doing your students more harm than good.
Study Shows AI’s Negative Effects as Ohio State University Requires Students to Use AI in Classrooms (George Shillcock, WOSU, July 29, 2025): A study from MIT found those who use ChatGPT to help write essays showed less brain activity than those who used only their brain.
What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom (Piers Gelly, LitHub, July 28, 2025): A semester-long dive into the AI Discourse.
#AHRSyllabus: Teaching modules on historical practice from the American Historical Association. A collaborative project designed to help teachers and students look “under the hood” at how historians in the early 21st century do the work of history. Each contribution to the syllabus will feature a practical hands-on teaching module that foregrounds innovative uses of historical method in the classroom.
Academic Freedom and the Trump Administration
Universities Are Making Deals with Trump (Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2025): Here’s how they stack up.
Duke U. Gets Caught in Trump’s Net (Kate Hidalgo Bellows, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 2025): The university must now contend with an investigation into its law review, a letter criticizing its medical-school diversity and admissions policies, and a $108-million funding freeze affecting its health arm.
Brown Strikes Deal with Trump Administration (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2025): Unlike Columbia, the Ivy League institution will not make a direct payment to the government. But it has made a handful of concessions, including handing over admissions data.
The Devil’s in the Data (Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2025): Columbia will share new details about prospective students it admits and rejects. Is it laying the groundwork for more aggressive government intervention?
Federal Officials Open Probes into Duke University’s Law Journal, Medical School (Natalie Schwartz, HigherEd Dive, July 29, 2025): The investigations into the North Carolina college come less than a week after the Trump administration struck a controversial deal with Columbia University.
Can Academic Freedom Survive the Surveillance State? (Charlie Tyson, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2025): Two bizarre weeks in a Boston courtroom and the threat to intellectual life in America.
What DOJ Letters to UVA Say About Trump’s Attack on Higher Ed (Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2025): Higher education legal experts shared three key takeaways.
22 New State Laws Censor Higher Ed, PEN America Finds (Natalie Schwartz, HigherEd Dive, July 28, 2025): The bills, which were enacted during the first half of 2025, “have been just as devastating” as federal attacks on the sector, the free speech group said.
Extra Credit Reading
Why Universities Must Not Capitulate to the Trump Regime (John K. Wilson, Inside Higher Ed, August 1, 2025): Colleges that settle with the Trump administration have no guarantee of safety from further retaliation.
‘Everything, everywhere, all at once’: How Trump Has Upended Higher Ed Finance in 2025 (Ben Unglesbee, HigherEd Dive, July 31, 2025): Experts at the National Association of College and University Business Officers’ annual conference broke down the wave of policy changes the sector is facing.
Right-Leaning Faculty Likelier to Be ‘Hostile’ to Jews, Report Finds (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2025): On the other hand, non-Jewish faculty who identified as “extremely liberal” were more likely to be hostile to Israel, a survey found. But 90 percent of all non-Jewish faculty were hostile to neither Jews nor the country.
They Attack Because We’re Strong, Not Weak (Frank Fernandez, Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2025): A longer-term view makes clear how strong U.S. higher ed actually is—though the rules are now being reset.
Future Imperfect
Georgetown President Says ‘We Police’ the Faculty (Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2025): What?
Trump Administration Pushes States to Exclude Immigrant Students from In-State Tuition (Gregory Svirnovskiy and Bianca Quilantan, Politico, July 26, 2025): The Justice Department argues these tuition laws unfairly offer a benefit to foreigners that is unavailable to U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Thinking Ahead
How to Create a Syllabus (Kevin Gannon, Chronicle of Higher Education): Advice Guide.
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)