Columbia University’s Interim President Resigns Amid Trump Administration’s Pressure Over Campus Activism

Columbia University’s interim president, Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong, resigned on Friday, just days after the university made significant concessions to the Trump administration in exchange for the restoration of $400 million in federal research funding. Armstrong's resignation follows a tumultuous period for the institution, already reeling from the departure of her predecessor, Minouche Shafik, in August 2024.

Armstrong, who had stepped into the role of interim president during a time of political and social unrest, faced mounting pressure over the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian student activism, which sparked national controversy and calls for accountability from political leaders, including former President Donald Trump and his administration. Armstrong’s resignation marks the latest chapter in a series of leadership shifts at Columbia as it navigates the increasingly polarized political environment surrounding campus protests.

 

Effective immediately, Claire Shipman, co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, has been appointed acting president. David J. Greenwald, chair of the Board of Trustees, praised Armstrong for her dedication to the university, acknowledging her hard work during a time of “great uncertainty.” Greenwald’s statement highlighted Armstrong’s contributions to the university, saying, “Katrina has always given her heart and soul to Columbia. We appreciate her service and look forward to her continued contributions to the University.” Armstrong, who will return to lead the Irving Medical Center, had taken on the interim presidency in a period marked by increasing tensions on campus over political activism and its fallout.

Political Pressure and Concessions to the Trump Administration

The resignation comes amid significant political pressure, as the Trump administration imposed a set of demands on Columbia in exchange for the release of crucial federal funding. Earlier this month, the administration presented the university with nine conditions to restore the $400 million in research grants that had been frozen over accusations of antisemitism linked to campus protests.

In an effort to regain the funding, Columbia conceded to these demands, which included a ban on students wearing masks to conceal their identities during protests, except for religious or health reasons. Additionally, Columbia agreed to hire 36 new campus security officers with the authority to arrest students involved in protests. The university also committed to increasing institutional oversight by appointing a new senior vice provost to monitor the university's Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies.

Perhaps most notably, Columbia pledged to adopt a stance of “greater institutional neutrality,” a policy that the university said would be implemented after working with a faculty committee. The decision was seen as an attempt to quell political tensions while navigating the contentious issues surrounding student activism.

A Leadership Crisis at Columbia University

Armstrong’s resignation follows the departure of Minouche Shafik, who faced widespread criticism for her handling of campus protests against the war in Gaza. Under Shafik’s leadership, Columbia became a focal point of national debates about free speech, activism, and the role of universities in responding to global conflicts. Shafik ultimately resigned after facing intense scrutiny for her handling of the protests and the occupation of an academic building by students, an incident that ended with NYPD officers forcibly removing the students.

In Armstrong’s case, her tenure was similarly marred by controversies surrounding the university’s response to the growing political activism on campus. The university's handling of pro-Palestinian protests, particularly those related to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, led to calls for stronger action from political figures, especially within the Republican Party. Armstrong’s decision to oversee negotiations with the Trump administration over the university’s federal funding placed her at the center of a storm of political and social unrest, further intensifying the pressure on her leadership.

Columbia's Future Amidst Political Turmoil

The resignation of Armstrong is a significant moment for Columbia, as the institution grapples with the broader implications of political activism within academia and the increasing role of government in shaping university policies. As the university enters another phase of leadership instability, the question remains: how will the next president balance the competing demands of activism, free speech, and political pressures from outside forces?

Columbia’s decision to adopt a policy of institutional neutrality and increase security measures reflects the complex and polarized environment that universities are navigating in today’s political climate. The growing influence of political figures like Trump and the scrutiny placed on universities over their responses to student protests signal a new era for higher education, one where the lines between campus activism and political power are increasingly blurred.

As the search for a permanent president continues, Columbia University will need to chart a course that both addresses the concerns of its diverse student body and faculty while navigating the external pressures that have shaped the university’s recent trajectory. The role of universities in fostering open dialogue, supporting activism, and protecting the rights of students will likely continue to be a central issue in higher education for years to come.

Conclusion

The resignation of Katrina Armstrong adds to a growing list of university presidents who have faced intense political pressure and scrutiny over campus activism, particularly surrounding Middle Eastern and global conflicts. Columbia’s next steps will be crucial not only for the future of the institution but also as a bellwether for how universities across the country navigate the increasingly complex landscape of political activism, academic freedom, and government intervention. The institution’s response to these challenges will undoubtedly have long-term implications for the role of higher education in a polarized society.

University of Phoenix Reportedly Considering Public Offering or New Buyer (David Halperin)

Bloomberg reports that the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Vistria Group are considering a sale or an initial public offering for the for-profit school they jointly own, the University of Phoenix. Unnamed sources told Bloomberg an IPO could occur as soon as the third quarter of 2025.

For the past two years, Phoenix’s owners have been in talks with the University of Idaho about the state university acquiring the for-profit school. While U of Idaho President C. Scott Green has touted the deal as a revenue raiser and step into the future, the sale has bogged down amid concerns by legislators and others in the state. Last June, the two sides agreed to continue negotiations but that Phoenix’s owners could talk with other potential suitors.

The leak to Bloomberg may be a sign that Phoenix’s owners are ready to move on. But it could instead be a bluff aimed at fooling Green, a self-styled dealmaker, into revitalizing efforts to buy the school.

Green’s plan has been thwarted again and again, with negative votes in the Idaho legislature, a successful court challenge by the state’s attorney general, criticism from the state treasurer, and sharp scrutiny from news outlets in the state.

The Green school deal has assumed that operation of Phoenix would bring millions in new revenue to fund his university. But it ignores that running a for-profit college, one that has repeatedly gotten in trouble with law enforcement for deceiving students, would be a tremendous challenge: If Green pushed to end Phoenix’s predatory practices and improve student outcomes, it probably would start losing money, because predatory practices, coupled with high prices and low spending on education, have made up the school’s secret sauce. But if Green allowed the deceptive conduct to persist, the school could face more legal peril. And, whatever route he took, Green’s school might end up assuming massive liability for student loan debt the government has cancelled based on past abuses at Phoenix.

At its peak, Phoenix was the largest for-profit college in the country and got upwards of $2 billion a year in federal student aid, while reporting dismal graduation rates and high levels of loan defaults.

Phoenix’s owners pursued a deal with Idaho only after the trustees of the University of Arkansas rejected a similar purchase negotiated by that school’s president.

Phoenix’s parent company, Apollo Education Group, had been publicly traded until Apollo and Vistria took the company private in 2017.

There have been previous marriages between big state universities and large predatory for-profit colleges that were seeking to evade the stigma and regulations that the industry’s bad behavior has provoked. The University of Arizona’s purchase of Ashford University has turned into a fiasco both for Arizona, which rebranded the school University of Ariziona Global Campus (UAGC), and for Ashford’s previous owner, now-shuttered Zovio. Meanwhile, Graham Holdings sold predatory Kaplan University to Purdue, while locking that Indiana state school into a 30-year service contract that allows Graham to keep making big money. The arrangement harms Purdue’s reputation, and Purdue Global has struggled financially. Both Purdue Global and UAGC continue to enroll students in their sub-par, overpriced programs.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]  

Elite University Presidents: Most Hated Men (and Women) on Campus

In prestigious universities across the country, the figurehead of the institution—the president—has become a symbol of frustration and resentment among students, faculty, and staff. These figures, often once revered as academic leaders, are increasingly viewed as little more than corporate CEOs, prioritizing the interests of wealthy trustees and donors over the very people who make the university what it is: the students and the dedicated faculty and staff who carry out its mission.

At the heart of the growing discontent is the trend of university presidents restricting freedom of speech and assembly, stifling student activism, and limiting open debate in the name of "campus safety" or "institutional stability." Instead of acting as advocates for open discourse, many university presidents have aligned themselves with powerful corporate interests, turning their backs on the very values that once defined higher education. The administration's agenda is often dictated by the whims of major donors, whose influence can shape everything from university policy to the hiring and firing of professors.

The University of Chicago, long a beacon of academic freedom, has seen its leadership take a hard turn in recent years, placing increasing restrictions on student demonstrations and dissent. Under the guise of maintaining "campus order," the administration has been known to deploy private security to break up protests and limit public forums for free speech.

Harvard University, with its enormous endowment and prestigious reputation, has become another example of an institution where the president seems more concerned with appeasing donors than listening to the students and faculty. The administration has been criticized for prioritizing relationships with donors over addressing the deepening student debt crisis and growing concerns about inequality in higher education. The university has faced a wave of student-led protests demanding action on climate change, affordable tuition, and the rights of adjunct faculty, all of which were largely ignored or dismissed by the top administration.

Harvard’s massive endowment—reportedly the largest of any university in the world—has been a focal point of controversy. While it continues to grow, many argue that the university could be doing far more to address the financial burdens of its students, particularly the mounting debt facing undergraduates. Instead, the administration has focused on expanding its brand and maintaining its status as an elite institution, often prioritizing donor preferences and legacy admissions over efforts to make education more accessible. Legacy admissions, in which children of alumni are given preferential treatment, have been a point of contention, with critics arguing that this practice entrenches privilege and reduces opportunities for marginalized students.

Even at places like Princeton University, long considered a champion of academic freedom, President Christopher Eisgruber has come under fire for clamping down on student speech and assembly. While Princeton’s administration claims to support free expression, it has quietly enacted policies to restrict protestors’ access to the administration building, citing concerns about “disruption” and “disorder.” Eisgruber, who has connections to powerful alumni, has been accused of using his position to protect the interests of wealthy donors while ignoring the voices of those who are most directly affected by the university's policies.

The University of Southern California (USC) is another prime example of a university where the president’s priorities have come under increasing scrutiny from students, faculty, and staff. Under President Carol Folt, USC has become emblematic of a trend where the administration appears more aligned with wealthy donors and corporate interests than with the needs of its campus community.

Folt, who took over as USC's president in 2019, was thrust into the spotlight during a period of significant unrest. The university had already been embroiled in scandals—including the high-profile college admissions bribery scandal—and was facing criticism for its handling of sexual assault allegations within its medical school. Rather than addressing these issues head-on, many argue that Folt’s administration focused instead on securing funding from high-profile donors and expanding the university’s brand, while sidelining the concerns of students and faculty.

This prioritization of external donors is evident in USC’s massive fundraising campaigns, which often overshadow initiatives aimed at addressing student debt, affordability, or academic freedom. USC's endowment has grown exponentially under Folt’s leadership, but student loan debt continues to be a crippling issue for many Trojans, and the concerns of adjunct faculty members remain largely ignored.

Furthermore, Folt’s administration has faced criticism for its efforts to suppress dissent on campus. For instance, student protests related to labor rights, housing issues, and calls for greater diversity on campus have been met with limited response or, at times, outright hostility. In 2022, when USC students protested the administration's handling of campus housing shortages, they were met with heightened security measures and a lack of genuine engagement from university leadership. These actions—along with Folt’s ties to the private sector, particularly her background in environmental policy and corporate leadership—have fueled perceptions that USC’s administration is more interested in protecting its brand than in creating an inclusive, participatory academic environment.

USC also exemplifies the growing disconnect between students, faculty, and administration when it comes to issues of free speech and assembly. Protests have become less frequent, as many students feel their voices will not be heard, and faculty members, particularly those in non-tenure track positions, are often too fearful of retribution to publicly criticize the administration.

The discontent with university leadership is not confined to the campus. In recent years, presidents from some of the nation's most elite institutions, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have faced intense scrutiny and backlash during hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives. These public hearings, aimed at addressing the growing issues of student debt, university funding, and the influence of wealthy donors on campus, have highlighted the widening disconnect between top university administrations and the communities they are supposed to serve.

During a House hearing in 2022, Lawrence Bacow of Harvard, along with MIT's President L. Rafael Reif and Penn's President Amy Gutmann, faced tough questioning from lawmakers who were deeply critical of how these institutions have handled student debt, tuition costs, and their ties to corporate interests. Bacow, in particular, faced pointed questions about Harvard's massive endowment and the university's refusal to use its resources to address skyrocketing tuition and student loan debt. Both Reif and Gutmann were grilled on how their institutions have prioritized securing donations from wealthy alumni and corporate entities over the well-being of students and faculty. The hearing exposed a troubling pattern where the presidents of these prestigious institutions seemed more concerned with maintaining their institutions' financial health than with addressing the needs of their campus communities.

Legacy admissions, a practice entrenched at many of these elite schools, also came under fire during the hearings. Critics argued that such policies perpetuate inequality, giving children of alumni—many of whom come from wealthy backgrounds—unfair advantages in the admissions process. This has contributed to the growing perception that these universities, while claiming to offer merit-based opportunities, are fundamentally shaped by privilege and corporate interests.

These public confrontations highlighted the growing frustration with university presidents who are seen as out of touch with the everyday realities facing students and faculty, as well as the increasing influence of money and corporate interests in higher education. The presidents of these universities, once seen as respected leaders, have become targets of anger and resentment, with many on Capitol Hill and on campus calling for a shift in how these institutions are governed.

These are just a few examples of elite universities where the power structure has shifted toward those who have the financial means to dictate the terms of the campus experience. As tuition costs rise and student loan debt becomes a crushing burden for many, university presidents seem more determined than ever to serve the interests of trustees and donors, rather than advocating for the people who should be their true constituents: the students, faculty, and staff who make up the heart of the academic community.

The impact of this shift has been profound. On campuses across the country, students are increasingly feeling that their voices don’t matter. Faculty members, once seen as the intellectual core of the institution, are being sidelined in favor of administrators who prioritize financial concerns over academic integrity. And staff members—many of whom are underpaid and overworked—are being pushed to the margins as well.

But it’s not just students who are feeling the heat. Faculty and staff have found their own platforms for protest increasingly under attack. At places like Yale University, where former President Peter Salovey faced criticism for neglecting the needs of faculty and for his lukewarm responses to issues like labor rights and the treatment of graduate workers, professors staged walkouts and organized petitions to voice their discontent with the administration's disregard for their well-being.

In this new era, university presidents are no longer the beloved leaders of intellectual discourse—they are the gatekeepers of corporate power, more concerned with securing funding from wealthy donors than with fostering an inclusive, open, and critical academic environment. The fallout from this shift is only growing, as campuses become hotbeds of dissent, with students, faculty, and staff increasingly questioning the direction of higher education and the people at the helm.

As the divide between administration and the campus community continues to widen, one thing is clear: the once-admired university president is now among the most hated figures on campus, seen not as a champion of academic values, but as an enforcer of an increasingly political and profit-driven agenda.

University Presidents Called to Action

Elite universities, long considered the pinnacle of higher education, have become increasingly entwined in a broader conversation about privilege, access, and power. From their controversial legacy admissions practices to their outsized political influence, these institutions are not merely places of learning—they are gatekeepers of social and economic power, shaping the future through both exclusion and influence. Beyond their academic roles, these universities have extended their reach into local communities, using their enormous wealth and influence to take control of land, shape urban landscapes, and solidify their power within regional politics.

The legacy admissions system, which provides preferential treatment to the children and grandchildren of alumni, is a glaring example of how these universities perpetuate privilege. Institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford—universities that consistently rank among the top in the nation—have long utilized this practice to ensure that the doors to elite education remain open to those already within the circles of power. By admitting students with lesser academic qualifications solely because of their family connections, these schools continue a long tradition of insularity, effectively reserving spaces for the wealthy and well-connected. Despite growing opposition, including recent moves by California’s private colleges to ban legacy admissions, the practice remains a powerful force, locking out more qualified, diverse applicants and ensuring that the privileged maintain access to elite institutions.

In addition to these admissions practices, elite universities exert considerable influence on the political landscape. The recent revelations about their political spending—millions funneled into federal campaigns, overwhelmingly favoring Democratic candidates—highlight a disturbing trend. Universities like Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins are not neutral players in the policy arena; they are active participants in shaping the very policies that benefit their interests. Whether it’s lobbying for federal funding, securing advantageous tax policies, or influencing regulations related to higher education, these universities use their wealth to protect and expand their power. These schools are not just centers of academic pursuit—they are political players in their own right, using their financial clout to shape the policies that govern education, tax law, and more.

Beyond their influence in academia and politics, elite universities increasingly exert power over the very land on which they sit. In many cities, top-tier universities like Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chicago are not just educational institutions—they are economic and political powerhouses. With multi-billion-dollar endowments, these institutions often wield more financial clout than entire cities. They routinely expand their campuses, purchasing properties, and in some cases, entire neighborhoods, often displacing long-standing communities in the process. This process, commonly known as "university-led gentrification," transforms urban spaces, driving up property values and rents while pushing out lower-income residents.

Universities often justify their land acquisitions as part of their mission to expand their campuses, build new research centers, and offer more housing for students and faculty. However, the impact on local communities can be severe. In many cases, universities use their tax-exempt status to avoid paying property taxes on the land they acquire, depriving local governments of revenue while also claiming a disproportionate share of urban space. This allows them to grow their influence without contributing fully to the neighborhoods in which they are embedded.

This land-grabbing behavior has sparked resistance in cities across the country. In Boston, for example, Harvard and MIT have been critiqued for taking over large swaths of land in the Allston and Kendall Square neighborhoods, displacing low-income residents and local businesses. In New York, Columbia’s expansion into Harlem sparked protests from community members who felt their homes and livelihoods were being sacrificed to the university’s growth. In many cases, these universities lobby local governments to secure favorable zoning laws, tax breaks, and exemptions that allow them to build at will and maintain their growing empire.

Both legacy admissions and political donations underscore a fundamental truth: elite universities are not just educational institutions—they are institutions of power. They maintain an oligarchic structure that privileges those already in positions of wealth and influence, while shaping local economies and political systems to ensure their continued dominance. By hoarding access to elite education, they perpetuate a system in which the children of the wealthy have a head start in both education and society, while simultaneously lobbying for policies that further cement their own influence. Through their land acquisitions, gentrification, political donations, and admissions practices, these universities continue to consolidate their power, reinforcing an elitist status quo that leaves many outside looking in.

In all of this, university presidents have increasingly positioned themselves as moral arbiters, asserting their institutions’ commitment to social justice, inclusion, and equality. Yet this moral high ground becomes precarious when their administrations take extreme measures to suppress resistance. Protests against their policies—whether regarding gentrification, climate change, or labor rights—are often met with heavy-handed tactics. University leaders, eager to preserve their public image, have been known to deploy security forces, call in the police, or even collaborate with local governments to disband protests. In some cases, these universities have resorted to legal action against student and faculty activists, silencing dissent through threats of discipline, expulsion, or other punitive measures.

This duplicity becomes even more apparent when considering the moral stands many university leaders take in public, promoting inclusivity, diversity, and progressive values, while simultaneously suppressing those who challenge their institution’s power dynamics. In the face of mounting resistance from marginalized communities or student groups, these leaders prefer to maintain control over their campuses and public narratives, often using administrative power to quash any movements that may disrupt the status quo.

Yet, history has shown that even the most entrenched systems can change, and university presidents are not beyond the possibility of transformation. Just as some figures in the Bible experienced profound revelations that led them to change course and right their wrongs, university leaders, too, can have moments of reckoning. Consider the example of King David, whose heart was changed after his confrontation with the prophet Nathan over his sin (2 Samuel 12). David, once blinded by his own power, repented and chose a path of humility and righteousness. In the same way, university presidents, confronted by the voices of resistance, public outcry, or moral awakening, could choose to lead their institutions toward a more just and equitable future. In the New Testament, Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) serves as another powerful reminder that no one is beyond redemption. Saul, who once persecuted early Christians, was transformed into Paul, one of the most influential apostles in Christian history. Similarly, a university president could choose to recognize the harm their institution has caused and decide to enact transformative policies that benefit marginalized communities and dismantle the systems of privilege they have helped sustain.

Moses is another figure whose story exemplifies the power of divine revelation to shift course. As a prince of Egypt, Moses had everything at his disposal, yet he chose to stand up to Pharaoh when he recognized the injustice of the Hebrew people’s oppression. His moment of conviction led him to free his people from slavery, even though it required courage to defy a powerful ruler (Exodus 3-4). In the same way, a university president must stand up to the powerful trustees and donors who expect to maintain the status quo. To act in the face of such resistance requires profound moral courage—a willingness to lead against entrenched interests that protect wealth and privilege.

Another key figure in the Old Testament is Esther, who displayed extraordinary courage in a moment of great moral clarity. She risked her life by standing up to King Xerxes to save the Jewish people from annihilation (Esther 4). As the queen, she was in a powerful position, but it was only when she realized the enormity of the injustice at hand that she chose to act. Similarly, university presidents with the power to challenge the status quo can, like Esther, use their positions to advocate for justice and equality, even if it means confronting powerful forces that wish to preserve an unjust order.

As university presidents come face to face with the overwhelming issues of racism, injustice, and climate chaos, there exists the possibility of moral revelation—a turning point where they confront the gravity of their actions and their institutions’ role in perpetuating harm. The growing calls for racial justice, fueled by movements like Black Lives Matter, demand an acknowledgment of the systemic racism embedded in these universities. Whether through the disproportionate representation of wealthy white students or the stark inequities in faculty and leadership diversity, these institutions must reckon with their participation in racial oppression. Similarly, as the climate crisis deepens, universities’ investments in fossil fuels and their ongoing complicity in the destruction of the environment have become focal points for student activists and global environmental movements. Universities, often perceived as beacons of progress, have a responsibility to divest from industries contributing to ecological collapse and instead use their vast resources for environmental justice.

And yet, one of the greatest challenges these university leaders will face lies not only in the resistance of external forces like protestors, activists, and the general public, but also in the powerful trustees and donors who hold significant sway over the institutions’ direction. Many universities are closely tied to wealthy benefactors and influential trustees whose interests often align with maintaining the status quo—whether through preserving investment strategies, political stances, or traditional admissions processes. These figures are not simply investors in the university's future; they are powerful stakeholders with the resources to shape institutional policies and procedures, often with little regard for social justice or environmental responsibility.

For a university president to truly lead with courage and integrity, they must be willing to go against these powerful forces. This would require challenging the entrenched interests of those who have long benefited from an elite, exclusionary system and are reluctant to embrace the radical changes needed to address systemic injustice. It takes immense fortitude to stand up to trustees and donors who view universities as tools for preserving their wealth and influence, rather than forces for good in the world.

But university presidents who choose to go against these forces can become true moral leaders. They can take inspiration from figures like Moses, who boldly defied Pharaoh’s power to liberate the oppressed, or Esther, whose bravery in standing up to the king saved her people (Esther 4). In doing so, they would not only transform their institutions but also serve as examples of ethical leadership in a time when such leadership is sorely needed.

The courage to defy powerful donors and trustees would mark a dramatic shift in how elite universities operate. Presidents could, if they choose, champion a new vision—one where social justice, racial equality, and environmental sustainability are at the forefront of institutional priorities. Just as Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt toward a promised land of freedom, so too could university presidents lead their institutions out of the grip of elitism and corporate influence, steering them toward a more equitable and just future.

Both legacy admissions, political donations, land control, and the suppression of protest point to a deeper issue: elite universities have built themselves into institutions of unparalleled power. These universities operate not only as educational establishments but also as political and economic entities, constantly reinforcing a structure of privilege, wealth, and exclusion. The dissonance between their public declarations of moral authority and their actions to protect entrenched power reveals the true nature of these institutions. They are not the bastions of free inquiry and social good they often claim to be—they are powerful, self-interested players in a system that serves to preserve the very inequalities they profess to challenge.

However, the possibility remains that these institutions—guided by transformative leadership—could embrace a new path. University presidents could heed the call for justice, as many leaders in history have, and change the trajectory of their institutions, opting to lead in ways that promote true equity, racial justice, and environmental stewardship. These universities—once seen as places of learning and opportunity—could become what they claim to be: inclusive, just, and truly committed to the betterment of society. They are the architects of the future they seek to create: one where the privileged no longer remain firmly entrenched at the top, and where political, economic, and educational structures are reshaped for the common good. Whether through legacy admissions, political spending, land control, or suppressing protest, these institutions continue to consolidate their power, but with the right leadership, they can still pivot toward a more just future—one that embodies the values they espouse.

[Editor's note: This essay, written for elite university presidents, is intended as a rhetorical device rather than a statement of facts. We find that everyone has their own "mythology" or set of mythologies they follow. As with all our work, we value your feedback.]

US Department of Education calls for an end to social justice and equity. What will universities do?

On February 14, the US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, called on universities to end efforts for social justice and equity.  

There was no mention in the letter about legacy admissions at elite and highly selective universities which systematically discriminate because of social class.  

According to the Dear Colleague letter:

The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.

The Higher Education Inquirer will document those with power in higher education who fall in line and are complicit in these anti-democratic efforts. 

We hope there will be dissenters with power, university presidents, trustees, and donors, who are willing to come forward and organize others to do the same thing. But we know that struggles like this cannot depend on those with power to step forward. 

We pray that these people in power, at the very least, will not prohibit action from students who want to exercise their God-given civil rights, including First Amendment rights of speech and assembly.

Stay tuned for more articles. 

Supporting CUNY Students Demanding Divestment at CUNY Public Hearing (Rabbi Dovid Feldman)

From Neturei Karta:

On February 10, 2025, students and activists gathered at the CUNY College Board of Trustees Public Hearing to demand divestment. Rabbi Dovid Feldman stood in solidarity with the students, supporting their call for justice and urging them not to be intimidated by false Zionist accusations. This powerful moment highlights the growing movement for divestment and the unwavering courage of those standing up for what is right. The rallying cry was clear: "Divest! We will not stop; we will not rest!"

Higher Education Inquirer: Increasingly Relevant

The Higher Education Inquirer continues to grow.  Last month the number of views rose to more than 45,000.  And our total number of views has increased to more than 440,000. While we had added advertisements, we have not received any SEO help, and we do not pay Google for ads. 

We believe our growth stems largely from our increasing relevance and in our truth telling, which other higher education news outlets are unwilling to do in these times.

Our devotion to transparency, accountability, and value for our readers guides us. 

We invite a diverse group of guest authors who are willing to share their truths. The list includes academics from various disciplines, advocates, activists, journalists, consultants, and whistleblowers. We back up all of this work with data and critical analysis, irrespective of politics and social conventions. We are willing to challenge the higher education establishment, including trustees, donors, and university presidents.

Our articles covering student loan debt, academic labor, nonviolent methods of protest, and freedom of speech are unparalleled. And we are unafraid about including other issues that matter to our readers, including stories and videos about mental health, student safety, technology (such as artificial intelligence), academic cheating, and the nature of work.  And matters of war, peace, democracy, and climate change. 

Our focus, though mainly on US higher education, also has an international appeal. 

Some of our work takes years to produce, through careful documentation of primary and secondary sources, database analysis, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. We share all of this information for everyone to see at no cost.  

Of course, we could not operate without all your voices. We welcome all your voices. Something few other sources are willing to do.    

Essays in the Transformation of Higher Education (Dan Morris and Harry Targ)

From Upton Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University (lulu.com)

Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Macro and Micro Analyses of Higher Education
Chapter Two: Discourses On Ideology
Chapter Three: Branding
Chapter Four: What Do Universities Do?
Chapter Five: Universities and War:
Conclusion
Appendix

Introduction

In the following pages, you are going to find a lot of specific information about what is happening at one major public research university, but we believe what is happening at Purdue is analogous to a canary in a coal mine. We believe that Purdue under Mitch Daniels, a former George Walker Bush administrator and Governor of Indiana, is becoming a high profile and influential spokesperson for the transformation of public higher education in the 21st century in directions that we find dangerous and that go against how we value higher education. We realize that, while we address extensively institutional changes and policies at Purdue, Indiana’s Land Grant University, our interest is in using this case study to illustrate larger patterns and issues that should be of concern to readers who care about the future of higher education in a broader sense.

Harry Targ's pieces do tend towards a wider-angle perspective than do those by Dan Morris, although both of us rely on our "boots on the ground" level understanding of Purdue to counteract and contest official media versions of what is happening at Purdue. We write at a moment when there is something of a "media desert" in terms of local news coverage of higher education in small markets such as Lafayette, Indiana. We have both tried to work to rectify the "media desert" landscape in our community by contributing to the Lafayette Independent, an electronic newsletter. We appreciate efforts by local journalists such as Dave Bangert and the student staff of the Purdue Exponent to offer coverage of the university in ways that are more substantial, and, often, more critical, than what one finds in the area's only mainstream newspaper, the Journal and Courier, and main local TV news source, and the Purdue NPR radio station, whose ownership in the last year has been mysteriously transferred to an Indianapolis corporation. Paradoxically the richest data for many of the essays below come from the official daily public relations newsletter from Purdue called Purdue Today. This public relations source celebrates Purdue’s latest connections with multinational corporations, the military, and state politics, and provides links to editorials published by Purdue’s President and other officials in the national press. Ironically, oftentimes what Purdue celebrates becomes the data for our more analytical and discursive writings.

Like alternative media sources, we see this book as another intervention in offering an alternative view of what is happening at our campus, but we also write with the hope that readers can apply the readings we bring to Purdue to begin conversations about the promise and problems of contemporary higher education on campuses. The authors wish to praise and encourage further research and activism around the transformations of higher education in general. We identify with what some scholars have referred to as Critical University Studies (CUS). The essays below, we believe, are part of this emerging tradition of critical and self-reflective scholarship.

The authors also wish to identify at least three major elements of the transformation of higher education. First, Purdue, like many other universities, is once again pursuing research contracts with huge corporations, and perhaps most importantly, the Department of Defense. As essays below suggest, Purdue research is increasingly justified as serving the interests of United States “national security.” Often this is conceptualized as helping the United States respond to “the Chinese threat,” rarely identifying what exactly is the threat, or considering the possibility that contributing to a new arms race with a perceived adversary may increase, rather than reduce, the possibility for conflict between nations.

Second, the work below and other writings in CUS, highlight the purposive transformation of the content of higher education. Universities are moving resources away from the liberal arts, creating new programs in “artificial intelligence” and “data science,” and in response to political pressures are diminishing programs that emphasize interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and the structural problems of race, class, gender, and sexual preference in history and contemporary society. Essays below on “civics literacy” suggest that leading administrators at Purdue, while refusing to defend its universally praised Writing Lab after it was ridiculed on Fox News for its recommendation that student writers select gender-neutral terms such as postal worker when writing about occupations, seek to avoid the controversaries around Critical Race Theory by requiring all students to study in some fashion “civics literacy.” President Daniels has made it clear that the study of civics literacy will illustrate the “vitality” of US political institutions (as opposed to over-emphasizing the slaughter of the original inhabitants of the North American continent or the history of slavery and white supremacy).

Third, the essays below do not dwell enough on the transformation of the university as a workplace. While there have been attacks for years on the tenure system, a system of job security which was initially designed to protect faculty from external political pressures, recent additions to the transformations of the university as a work site should be noted.

Adjunctification is a term that refers to the qualitative increase in the hiring of various forms of part time instructors: full-time instructors for a set time period, instructors to teach less than a full complement of courses, and instructors with various arrangements that limit their work life, their ability to do research and prepare for their class time, and their time to serve the many needs of students. The fundamental trend in higher education is to “cheapen” and make insecure instructors, ultimately to destroy the job security that comes with academic tenure. In many cases this impacts negatively on the quality of the educational experience. (In colleges and universities in general about 70 percent of classes now are taught by instructors who are not tenure-line faculty).

And finally, every effort is made by universities to limit and derail the workplace concerns of non-teaching staff, particularly opposing their right to form unions.

One positive development from all of this-destroying the tenure system and job security, adjunctification, increased exploitation of graduate students, and finally restricting the rights and the wages and benefits of staff has been the rise of labor militancy. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and various unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the United Electrical Workers (UE) with a history of militancy have been organizing graduate students and staff.

Finally, the authors acknowledge that in the months after we completed our manuscript, Purdue administrators and trustees have announced a series of initiatives without an appropriate level of input from university stakeholders and the wider Lafayette area community:

1. Purdue is building a housing complex near the Discovery Park part of campus to attract higher income earning technologists to relocate in West Lafayette. To encourage new high-income residents, the West Lafayette city government has authorized $5,000 cash incentives for any purchasers of these new housing units adjacent to Purdue. Such offers are not available to lower income earners or students.

2. To deal with record enrollments, Purdue has purchased a privately constructed apartment complex across from campus at a price well more than the cost of its construction.

3. Purdue officials have expanded partnerships with Saab, Rolls Royce, the Raytheon Corporation, one of the world’s five largest military contractors, and undertaken a controversial business mission with the Indiana governor to Taiwan to pursue research and production of semi-conductors, in part to respond to what Purdue officials have described as a ”Chinese threat” to national security in the United States.

4.The College of Liberal Arts has announced it will be partnering with the College of Science to develop a new interdisciplinary degree program in artificial intelligence. CLA calls its “new field” of interest, “sociogenomics.”

5. Purdue received an award recognizing its “excellence in counterintelligence,” one of only four such award recipients in 2022. Purdue joins those few universities which protect “sensitive national information from foreign adversaries.” The award announced in Purdue Today, August 24, 2022, noted that the university continues to work with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and the FBI.

In short, the transformation of Indiana’s Land Grant university continues at a rapid pace. And while the essays below concentrate on the developments and forces leading to these changes, the broader point of this collection of essays is to suggest that higher education in the twenty-first century is changing in a rapid and largely deleterious way. The appended essay by Carl Davidson reflects a similar critique of the university during the height of the Cold War. What we are witnessing today is a revitalization of that trend.

For those who value the university as a site for informing students about the world and debating the value of changes occurring in it, the developments highlighted in these essays are a warning. And for faculty and students alike the antidote to the militarization of the university, the transformation of the curricula, and the disempowering of those who work in universities is organizing against those elements of change that are antithetical to the educational process.

And More:

“The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue has created a category of its own. As part of the nation’s leading national security university, it is rapidly becoming the world’s premier institution focused on Tech Statecraft, a new model of diplomacy bridging the gap between technology experts, government officials and policymakers, and business leaders to ensure tomorrow’s tech secures our freedoms,” said (Daniel) Kurtenbach. ‘I’m excited to contribute to the Krach Institute’s already-impressive momentum by enhancing and building its innovative partnerships and relationships to achieve our shared vision of a future that prizes individual freedom through trusted technology.’ ”

https://www.citybiz.co/article/378157/krach-institute-for-tech-diplomacy-at-purdue-names-daniel-kurtenbach-as-chief-growth-officer/

Homepage - Tech Statecraft (techdiplomacy.org)

At Ohio universities, trustees are in charge, and students are customers (Ohio Senate Republicans)

 

Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University

WHO WE ARE

The Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML) is a broad-based coalition of over 40 organizations on Cornell University's Ithaca Campus and in the surrounding community. Many of these orgnizations are publicly members of CML; the others wish to remain anonymous.
 

COALITION MEMBERS

The Arab Graduate Student Association
Asian Pacific Americans for Action
The Basic Needs Coalition
Black Students United
The Buddhist Sangha
The Cadre Journal
Climate Justice Cornell
Cornell Progressives
Ithaca Ceasefire Now
Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell
The Mass Education Campaign
The Muslim Educational and Cultural Association
El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx at de Aztlán
Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell
The People’s Organizing Collective Cornell, United Students Against Sweatshops Local 3
The South Asian Council
Students for Justice in Palestine
Young Democratic Socialists of America

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to educate, empower, and organize our community to take action against imperialism, settler colonialism, and all other forms of oppression. Our struggles are deeply interconnected, and it is only through our collective resistance that we will achieve mutual liberation.

OUR FOCUS

Today, we join international humanitarian organizations, political leaders, scholars, activists, and most recently the state of South Africa incondemning Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people. We come together in solidarity with the people of Palestine in particular because Palestine is among the clearest manifestations of American economic and military hegemony—the force that perpetuates imperialism, racism, white supremacy, transphobia, homophobia, as well as religious- and gender-based violence across the world's historically exploited nations and populations.

DIVESTMENT DEMANDS

We find Cornell University complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people through its endowment investments in weapons manufacturers and military technology developers, its corporate and institutional partnerships with the producers of these technologies, and its lack of screening procedures and transparency around these ties. Cornell must take immediate action to sever its ties with the US-backed Israeli siege on Palestine which has already left more than 30,000 Palestinians dead. We demand:

1. Divestment from any company complicit in genocide, apartheid, or systematic cruelty against children perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, in accordance with Cornell's 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration. As outlined in Cornell's 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration, the Board of Trustees must consider divestment from companies whose actions constitute "genocide, apartheid, or systemic cruelty to children." By doing business with Israel as it conducts its genocide, responsibility for these three morally reprehensible actions fall on the shoulders of the following weapons companies: BAE Systems, Boeing, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, and ThyssenKrupp. In order for Cornell to abide by its own divestment standards and precedents for divestment (in the cases of the Sudanese genocide and the fossil fuels industry), the university must immediately liquidate all of its holdings in the companies listed above and enact a moratorium on all investments in arms manufacturers that supply weapons, munitions, and other military supplies to Israel.

2. The termination of all corporate partnerships with companies complicit in the genocide, apartheid, or systematic cruelty towards children perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Cornell currently maintains corporate partnerships with a number of weapons companies whose products have been used against civilians in Gaza. These companies include BAE Systems, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Cornell Systems Engineering also partners with RTX (Raytheon), which is described as being “an extended part of the Cornell Systems Engineering community.” Cornell’s partnerships with these weapons companies amounts to complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We are therefore calling on Cornell University to sever their corporate partnerships with these companies as soon as possible. We call on Cornell University to begin this process immediately and to have fully dissolved these partnerships by the end of the 2024 calendar year.

3. A comprehensive ban on the research and development of any technologies used by the Israeli Offensive Forces at the Jacobs Cornell-Technion Institute in New York City. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a partnership between Cornell University and the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), is part of Cornell Tech, a campus for graduate research in New York City. Independently of Cornell Tech, Technion researches and develops geospatial, intelligence, and weapons technologies used by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Cornell Tech’s publicly stated founding purpose is “to advance technology as a means to a better quality of life for all communities [...] around the world.” Its “Diversity and Inclusion” mission includes “[engaging] in research that promotes justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion” and “[educating and training] ethical technology leaders of the future.” In light of Technion’s numerous connections to Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine, Cornell Tech’s supposed commitment to ethical and just technological development rings hollow. We demand a comprehensive ban on the research and development of any technologies used by the Israel Offensive Forces at the Cornell Tech/Technion Campus in New York City.

As Israel continues its relentless genocide in Gaza and further militarizes its occupation of the West Bank, the world watches as Palestinians are displaced, starved, and killed every day. The horrors of Israel’s siege on Gaza are broadcast in full display across multiple news outlets and social media platforms, and yet, the American institutions that fuel this violence refuse to act.

Thirty years ago, when over fifty other universities across the country divested from South African apartheid, Cornell faltered in its commitment to humanity and never severed its ties with a state dependent on the perpetuation of horrific racial violence. Today, the global community once again stands at a crossroad—Cornell University has the opportunity to do what it couldn’t three decades ago.

Cornell University must make a choice: to toe the line drawn by a foreign nation and remain complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people, or to establish itself as a leader among elite educational institutions by being the first to materially recognize the Palestinian right to life and dignity.

We envision a future for Cornell University that does not fund and partner with the corporate entities responsible for the decimation of an entire people, their cultural artifacts, and the land they inhabit. The Board of Trustees must have the courage and moral fortitude to cut ties with Israel’s unrelenting campaign of violence against Palestine so that Cornell may truly do the greatest good.

For more information about our divestment demands, the companies listed as divestment targets, Cornell's complicity in Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people, and Cornell's violation of its own standards, procedures, and values, see CML's full Divestment Report. 

DEMANDS FROM LIBERATED ZONE

Cornell students, staff, faculty, and community members join the cross-campus wave of organizers establishing liberated zones in solidarity with Gaza. The campers' ongoing act of nonviolent resistance will include teach-ins, art builds, and other activities to highlight the urgency with which Cornell must act in response to the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Students from across the globe have joined together to protest the genocide in Gaza during which the Israeli Offensive Forces have murdered over 34,000 Indigenous Palestinians in under seven months. Students are organizing in outrage that Palestinian universities have been obliterated with weapons funded and developed through Cornell University's partnerships and investments. Distinctly, the Cornell University Board of Trustees adopted a commitment in 2016 to divest from companies engaged in "genocide, apartheid, and systematic cruelty against children.” Cornell's failure to divest is not only a violation of the university's stated policies, but also an act of genocide denialism.

Cornell’s refusal to cut ties to Palestinian genocide reflects its history of profiteering from the violent dispossession of Indigenous Peoples across North America. Cornell is the largest beneficiary of the Morrill Act of 1862, which redistributed Indigenous land as public domain to states to establish and endow land-grant institutions. Through the dispossession, Cornell accrued nearly 1 million acres of land, some of which it sold for profit, and some to which it currently retains the rights. Today, Cornell showcases its land-grant status—its status as an institution supposedly dedicated to the promotion of practical disciplines such as agriculture, mining, and engineering—to signal its commitment to accessible higher education and mask its refusal to provide reparations or restitution to the 251 tribal nations affected by land-grant dispossession. Cornell's settler colonial project in the United States is the foundation for its settler colonial interests in Palestine. Through this encampment, students highlight Cornell's role in dispossession and genocide across the globe.

The encampment on the oldest commons on Cornell's campus invites all members of the community to support the students' demands that Cornell University:

1. Acknowledge its role in the national genocide of Indigenous Peoples through the Morrill Act and its sale of 977,909 acres of Indigenous land; return all mineral interests to Tribal Nations dispossessed by the Morrill Act; provide restitution for the dispossessed nations; provide restitution for the Cayuga Nation; establish an Indigenous Studies department; and return surplus land in New York state to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Lenni Lenape, and their descendants who have been forced out of New York.

2. Annually disclose a comprehensive account of its endowment and land holdings, and divest from entities involved in “morally reprehensible activities,” in accordance with Cornell’s 2016 Standard to Guide Divestment Consideration.

3. End profit-generating partnerships, volunteer arrangements, and other significant corporate and academic affiliations with institutions involved in “morally reprehensible activities,” including but not limited to the dissolution of the Jacobs-Technion Cornell Institute and all other partnerships with the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

4. Call for an unconditional, permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

5. Establish a Palestinian Studies program housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with an accredited minor that is available to all undergraduate and graduate students. Representatives from Cornell’s chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine” must serve on the committees that oversee the hiring of the program’s faculty.

6. Publicly acknowledge and protect anti-Zionist speech, viewpoints, and histories in both religious and academic contexts. Recognize the legitimate and historical claim that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

7. Remove all police from campus, beginning with the elimination of police presence at demonstrations. Replace police with an emergency response team composed of healthcare workers and first responders trained in de-escalation. A majority of team members must be providers who share lived experiences and identities with Cornell’s diverse student body.

8. Ensure total legal and academic amnesty for all individuals involved with the Liberated Zone and related demonstrations.
 

POINTS OF UNITY

1. The principal contradiction of our world is that between the exploited nations and the exploiters in the imperial core: imperialism.

2. The underdevelopment of the exploited nations was and is the dialectical necessity for the development of the exploiters.

3. Capitalism has always been a global, racialized system—primitive accumulation could not have occurred without genocide, enslavement, and ecocide.

4.Imperialism creates a stratification that rewards some proletarians as settlers and/or citizens, thus forming a labor aristocracy.

5. The labor aristocracy’s wages and incorporation into the nation-state allow them to benefit from the exploitation of the low-waged labor of the exploited nations, intensifying imperialism in the form of unequal exchange.

6. Unequal exchange precludes the universality and internationalism of the proletariat, and hinders the solidarity of the “workers of the world”.

7. Imperialism manifests itself in a variety of other ways today, in sanctions regimes, indebtedness, military intervention, nuclear aggression, extractivism, and other forms.

8. Capitalism cannot be defeated globally while imperialism persists—without anti-imperialism, efforts at socialism in the exploiting nations can only produce social imperialism.

9. The obligation of revolutionaries today is to challenge imperialism by any means necessary. In the exploiting nations, that primarily means acting in solidarity with anti-imperialist movements in the exploited nations.

10. Solidarity cannot be simply symbolic—it must be material; it must be something we can hold in our hands.
 

CONTACT US
Information address: cml.information@proton.me
Press address: cml.press@proton.me

U.S. Department of Education's Trump Appointees and America First Agenda

The U.S. Department of Education has announced a team of senior-level political appointees who will support the implementation of President Trump’s America First agenda.  

The Trump Administration, by Executive Order, has already required colleges and universities to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion measures and schools are scrambling to be compliant with this new federal policy. New policies may also affect grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Notable actions the Department of Education has already taken include: 

• Dissolution of the Department’s Diversity & Inclusion Council, effective immediately;
  • Background:The Diversity & Inclusion Council was established following Executive Order 13583 under then - President Obama. President Trump has rescinded the Executive Orders that guide the Council and issued a new Executive Order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” that terminates groups like the Diversity & Inclusion Council. DEI documents issued and related actions taken by the Council have been withdrawn.
• Dissolution of the Employee Engagement Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility Council (EEDIAC) within the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), effective immediately and pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”;
• Cancellation of ongoing DEI training and service contracts which total over $2.6 million;
• Withdrawal of the Department’s Equity Action Plan;
• Placement of career Department staff tasked with implementing the previous administration’s DEI initiatives on paid administrative leave; and
• Identification for removal of over 200 web pages from the Department’s website that housed DEI resources and encouraged schools and institutions of higher education to promote or endorse harmful ideological programs.

At least four appointees to the Department of Education, as well as including incoming Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, have worked at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). AFPI's higher education proposals are posted here and noted at the bottom of this article. AFPI has been accused of using dark money to prevent student loan forgiveness and its rhetoric clearly advances this agenda.

Rachel Oglesby – Chief of Staff

Rachel Oglesby most recently served as America First Policy Institute's Chief State Action Officer & Director, Center for the American Worker. In this role, she worked to advance policies that promote worker freedom, create opportunities outside of a four-year college degree, and provide workers with the necessary skills to succeed in the modern economy, as well as leading all of AFPI’s state policy development and advocacy work. She previously worked as Chief of Policy and Deputy Chief of Staff for Governor Kristi Noem in South Dakota, overseeing the implementation of the Governor’s pro-freedom agenda across all policy areas and state government agencies. Oglesby holds a master’s degree in public policy from George Mason University and earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wake Forest University. 

Jonathan Pidluzny – Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs 

Jonathan Pidluzny most recently served as Director of the Higher Education Reform Initiative at the America First Policy Institute. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Academic Affairs at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, where his work focused on academic freedom and general education. Jonathan began his career in higher education teaching political science at Morehead State University, where he was an associate professor, program coordinator, and faculty regent from 2017-2019. He received his Ph.D from Boston College and holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Alberta. 

Chase Forrester – Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations 

Virginia “Chase” Forrester most recently served as the Chief Events Officer at America First Policy Institute, where she oversaw the planning and execution of 80+ high-profile events annually for AFPI’s 22 policy centers, featuring former Cabinet Officials and other distinguished speakers. Chase previously served as Operations Manager on the Trump-Pence 2020 presidential campaign, where she spearheaded all event operations for the Vice President of the United States and the Second Family. Chase worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the Senate run-off races in Georgia and as a fundraiser for Members of Congress. Chase graduated from Clemson University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a double-minor in Spanish and legal studies.

Steve Warzoha – White House Liaison

Steve Warzoha joins the U.S. Department of Education after most recently serving on the Trump-Vance Transition Team. A native of Greenwich, CT, he is a former local legislator who served on the Education Committee and as Vice Chairman of both the Budget Overview and Transportation Committees. He is also an elected leader of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee. Steve has run and served in senior positions on numerous local, state, and federal campaigns. Steve comes from a family of educators and public servants and is a proud product of Greenwich Public Schools and an Eagle Scout. 

Tom Wheeler – Principal Deputy General Counsel 

Tom Wheeler’s prior federal service includes as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, a Senior Advisor to the White House Federal Commission on School Safety, and as a Senior Advisor/Counsel to the Secretary of Education. He has also been asked to serve on many Boards and Commissions, including as Chair of the Hate Crimes Sub-Committee for the Federal Violent Crime Reduction Task Force, a member of the Department of Justice’s Regulatory Reform Task Force, and as an advisor to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, where he worked with the CDC and HHS to develop guidelines for the safe reopening of schools and guidelines for law enforcement and jails/prisons. Prior to rejoining the U.S. Department of Education, Tom was a partner at an AM-100 law firm, where he represented federal, state, and local public entities including educational institutions and law enforcement agencies in regulatory, administrative, trial, and appellate matters in local, state and federal venues. He is a frequent author and speaker in the areas of civil rights, free speech, and Constitutional issues, improving law enforcement, and school safety. 

Craig Trainor – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Office for Civil Rights 

Craig Trainor most recently served as Senior Special Counsel with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary under Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), where Mr. Trainor investigated and conducted oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice, including its Civil Rights Division, the FBI, the Biden-Harris White House, and the Intelligence Community for civil rights and liberties abuses. He also worked as primary counsel on the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government’s investigation into the suppression of free speech and antisemitic harassment on college and university campuses, resulting in the House passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023. Previously, he served as Senior Litigation Counsel with the America First Policy Institute under former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Of Counsel with the Fairness Center, and had his own civil rights and criminal defense law practice in New York City for over a decade. Upon graduating from the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, he clerked for Chief Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Mr. Trainor is admitted to practice law in the state of New York, the U.S. District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Madi Biedermann – Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Communications and Outreach 

Madi Biedermann is an experienced education policy and communications professional with experience spanning both federal and state government and policy advocacy organizations. She most recently worked as the Chief Operating Officer at P2 Public Affairs. Prior to that, she served as an Assistant Secretary of Education for Governor Glenn Youngkin and worked as a Special Assistant and Presidential Management Fellow at the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump Administration. Madi received her bachelor’s degree and master of public administration from the University of Southern California. 

Candice Jackson – Deputy General Counsel 

Candice Jackson returns to the U.S. Department of Education to serve as Deputy General Counsel. Candice served in the first Trump Administration as Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, and Deputy General Counsel, from 2017-2021. For the last few years, Candice has practiced law in Washington State and California and consulted with groups and individuals challenging the harmful effects of the concept of "gender identity" in laws and policies in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Candice is mom to girl-boy twins Madelyn and Zachary, age 11. 

Joshua Kleinfeld – Deputy General Counsel 

Joshua Kleinfeld is the Allison & Dorothy Rouse Professor of Law and Director of the Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law. He writes and teaches about constitutional law, criminal law, and statutory interpretation, focusing in all fields on whether democratic ideals are realized in governmental practice. As a scholar and public intellectual, he has published work in the Harvard, Stanford, and University of Chicago Law Reviews, among other venues. As a practicing lawyer, he has clerked on the D.C. Circuit, Fourth Circuit, and Supreme Court of Israel, represented major corporations accused of billion-dollar wrongdoing, and, on a pro bono basis, represented children accused of homicide. As an academic, he was a tenured full professor at Northwestern Law School before lateraling to Scalia Law School. He holds a J.D. in law from Yale Law School, a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and a B.A. in philosophy from Yale College. 

Hannah Ruth Earl – Director, Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Hannah Ruth Earl is the former executive director of America’s Future, where she cultivated communities of freedom-minded young professionals and local leaders. She previously co-produced award-winning feature films as director of talent and creative development at the Moving Picture Institute. A native of Tennessee, she holds a master of arts in religion from Yale Divinity School.

AFPI Reform Priorities

AFPI's higher education priorities are to:

• Reform America’s Dysfunctional Higher Education Accreditation System

• Rethink Public Financing of Postsecondary Study to Encourage Competition and Accountability

• Open New Pathways to Family-Sustaining Careers

• Combat the Politicization of Higher Education and Encourage Viewpoint Diversity on U.S. Campuses

• Protect Students’ and Professors’ First Amendment Rights

 Related links:

Trump's Education Department dismantles DEI measures, suspends staff (USA Today) 

California State University changes 'illegal' program that excluded White men (Fox News)

America First Policy Institute Team

America First Policy Initiatives

Owners of Shuttered For-Profit Hussian College Sue ex-CEO, Charging Embezzlement (David Halperin)

The owners of shuttered for-profit Hussian College have sued the school’s former president and CEO, Jeremiah Staropoli, seeking $162 million in damages and penalties and claiming that Staropoli and close associates in the company embezzled funds and then conspired to cover up the alleged misdeeds.

On September 5, father-and-son Hussian owners David and Joshua Figuli sued Staropoli, other former Hussian employees, and two lending companies in Pennsylvania state court, alleging a racketeering conspiracy, fraud, embezzlement, and other abuses. The lending companies, contending there was a basis for federal court jurisdiction, removed the case from the state court to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

While the companies and some of the former employees have filed answers to the complaint or moved to dismiss the case, Staropoli has not responded. In a recent court filing, the Figulis say they have tried to serve Staropoli with the complaint seven times and that Staropoli “appears to be evading service.”

Staropoli did not respond to a request for comment from Republic Report. The Figuli’s attorney also did not respond.

The Hussian closure

Hussian College, founded in Philadelphia in 1946, closed in summer 2023. At the time it shut down, Hussian had hundreds of students at campuses in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, and California, plus online offerings, and taught programs in business, information technology, criminal justice, health sciences, and the arts. Hussian, in 2018, had expanded by taking over Tennessee-based for-profit Daymar College, a school that had in 2015 agreed to a $12.4 million settlement to end a lawsuit, alleging deceptive practices, brought by Kentucky’s attorney general.

For academic year 2021-22, the last year for which the U.S. Department of Education published data on the school, Hussian received $14.8 million in federal student aid dollars from the Department — about 74 percent of the school’s revenue.

In June 2022, accrediting agency ACCSC, the gatekeeper for the schools’ eligibility for federal student grants and loans, had put all the Hussian and Daymar campuses on system-wide warning, citing concerns about student achievement at the schools. But ACCSC removed the warning and renewed Hussian’s accreditation in December 2022.

The Figulis announced the closure in June 2023, two weeks after Joshua Figuli informed Hussian students by email that the school’s board of directors had replaced Staropoli because it had “lost confidence in his leadership.” Figuli wrote in a separate email to faculty and staff that a “gut-wrenching process of discovery” had produced “shockingly revealing” information about the state of the school under Staropoli.

Around the time of the announced closure, more than 15 Hussian faculty, staff, students, and parents spoke with Republic Report. They told me that Hussian repeatedly had been pressed by vendors for extended and blatant failures to pay its bills, that students had not been receiving federal aid disbursements in a timely manner, that Hussian owed money to many students, and that Hussian was enrolling new students even as it was about to close.

One Hussian employee at the time reported to me evidence of financial misconduct, improper expenses, and computer access manipulation by Staropoli. The employee also said that Joshua Figuli, who stepped in as CEO when Staropoli was dismissed, was failing to respond to calls and emails from students and staff who were trying to find out what was going on.



The lawsuit’s allegations

The lawsuit filed in September by the Figulis places the blame for Hussian’s collapse squarely on Staropoli, who joined Hussian as CEO in 2017, and a group of employees he brought in. The Figulis admit to knowing that Staropoli had past ties to some of these employees, but they claim the ties turned out to be much deeper than Staropoli told them, including, they allege, one employee engaged, before and after being hired, in an apparent romantic relationship with Staropoli. The Figulis allege that Staropoli caused Hussian to pay large and unwarranted bonuses to these favored employees, and even allowed one of them to work for Hussian while remaining on the payroll of a competitor school.

The Figulis also allege that Staropoli conspired with the two lending companies to make deals behind their backs and that Staropoli created fake email addresses for the Figulis so that he, not they, would receive confirmation of the deals.

The Figulis say that under Staropoli’s leadership, Hussian was failing to return to the government millions in unearned federal and state student aid, as required by law, and that Staropoli was concealing from them the schools’ “dire state of cash flow” and its failure, also, to transmit hundreds of thousands owed to students.

And they allege that school money was used to pay for Staropoli’s family and friends to vacation in Orlando and Nashville; for charges from Staropoli’s country club in Delaware; for tuition payments to Drexel University for one of the favored employees, despite that same employee ending Hussian’s tuition reimbursement policy; for “nondescript transfers to VENMO”; and more.

The Figulis claim that the alleged improper actions of Staropoli and other defendants induced them “to provide loans, advance costs, provide capital infusions, forego collections, and execute guarantees that summed to total direct losses in excess of $6,948,110.93.”

The two lending companies have moved to dismiss the case, one former employee has done the same, and another former employee filed an answer to the complaint. But former employee Steven Wojslaw, according to a filing by the Figulis, was served but has not filed any response.

Wojslaw filed his own lawsuit against Hussian in 2022, after he apparently put his own money into the company. When he was terminated, he sued to get the money back. That case was settled. Meanwhile, Velocity Capital Group, one of the lenders the Figulis have now sued, filed last year its own lawsuit in New York against Hussian and the Figulis, seeking its investment back. The Figulis have filed a counterclaim in that lawsuit.

In their new case against Starapoli, Velocity, and the others, the Figulis filed a motion on December 2 seeking permission to amend their original complaint to clarify, add, and withdraw certain claims, in part to respond to the motions to dismiss.

Who is Jeremiah Staropoli?

A former employee says information that the company learned around the time the Figulis forced out Staropoli came as “a giant shock” to the company. “It was insane,” this ex-employee says. “There were multiple victims: the Figulis, but also the staff, the students, and the government.” The ex-employee asks, “Why don’t people go to prison” when they “destroy so many lives?” This employee says that, as the school struggled, many employees believed the Figulis were the enemy, who wouldn’t invest enough money and time “to help Staropoli save the company,” but that the facts in the new lawsuit tell a different story.

Jeremiah Staropoli is a former president of the Towson, Maryland, campus of Brightwood College, a for-profit chain owned by now-collapsed Education Corporation of America. He also previously worked for the for-profit college operations Kaplan and DeVry. According to his LinkedIn page, he also was previously president of the Kentucky-based The Keeling Group, an IT consulting firm “specializing in custom software development, cloud consulting, network integration and higher education regulatory compliance solutions.”

Staropoli also was once listed as part of the management team of a fledgling coding bootcamp operation owned by the Figulis called AcademicIQ, but that business apparently never took off. Hussian College and AcademicIQ shared an address on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia, along with a campus of non-profit Harrisburg University. David Figuli until recently served on the Harrisburg University board of trustees.

Hussian also has a connection to Colbeck Capital Management, slippery operators of campuses of the Art Institutes (now closed) and South University (still open) that were acquired in the wake of the collapse of Dream Center Education Holdings. Hussian acquired the Los Angeles-based Studio School, in which Colbeck had been an investor, and renamed the school Hussian College Los Angeles; Staropoli told me in 2019 that Colbeck-backed Studio Enterprise remained “a service provider” to the school.

The mess at Hussian seems to be just the latest example of how the federal investment in for-profit colleges often ends up as waste, fraud, and abuse — with taxpayers ripped off, students locked out in the cold, and some for-profit executives walking away with cash and fancy perqs. The for-profit college industry, recalling the lax enforcement in the first Trump term under Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, is salivating at the impending restoration of the leader of scam Trump University as leader of the United States. But, if it has any integrity at all, the new department that Elon Musk is supposedly setting up for Trump — committed to rooting out federal government waste, fraud, and abuse — should investigate this industry promptly.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]