How U.S. Higher Education Helped Create Nick Fuentes

In the aftermath of each new outrage involving Nick Fuentes, pundits scramble to explain how a 20-something suburban Catholic kid became one of the most influential white supremacists in America. Many insist Fuentes is an anomaly, a glitch, a fringe figure who somehow slipped through the cracks of democracy and decency. But this narrative is both comforting and false.

Fuentes is not an anomaly. He is the logical product of the systems that shaped him—especially American higher education.

While institutions obsess over rankings, fundraising, and branding campaigns, they have quietly abandoned entire generations of young people to debt, alienation, status anxiety, and a digital culture that preys on male insecurity. In this vacuum, extremist networks thrive, incubating figures like Fuentes long before the public notices.

HEI warned about this trend years ago. Since 2016, the publication tracked the rise of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, noting how TPUSA used campus culture wars to radicalize disaffected young men. HEI saw that for-profit-style marketing, donor-driven politics, and relentless culture-war agitation were creating an ecosystem where reactionaries could build both influence and profit. Fuentes did not arise outside that ecosystem—he evolved from it, even as he later turned on Kirk as insufficiently extreme.

What fuels this pipeline? A generation of young men raised on the promise of meritocracy but delivered a reality of spiraling costs, precarious futures, and institutional betrayal. Many arrive at college campuses burdened by debt, anxious about their place in an unforgiving economy, and deeply online. They bear the psychological bruises of a culture that has replaced community with competition and replaced meaning with metrics.

This is also the demographic most vulnerable to incel ideology, a misogynistic worldview built around grievance, rejection, humiliation, and resentment. Incel communities overlap heavily with the digital spaces where Fuentes built his early audience. The mix is combustible: sexually frustrated young men who feel mocked by mainstream culture, priced out of adulthood, and invisible to institutions that once guided them. The result is a fusion of white nationalism, male resentment, Christian nationalism, ironic fascism, and livestream entertainment—perfectly tailored to a generation raised on Twitch and YouTube.

And yet the higher-education establishment insisted for years that white supremacists were primarily rural “rednecks”—poor, uneducated, easily dismissed. This stereotype blinded journalists, academics, and administrators to the reality developing right in front of them. Higher Education Inquirer knew better because we corresponded for years with Peter Simi, one of the country’s leading scholars of extremism. Simi’s research demonstrated clearly that white supremacists were not confined to rural backwaters. They were suburban, middle-class, sometimes college-educated, often tech-savvy, and deeply embedded in mainstream institutions.

Simi’s work showed that white supremacist movements have always thrived among people with something to lose, people who feel their status slipping. They recruit in fraternities, gaming communities, campus political groups, military circles, and online spaces where young men spend their most lonely hours. They build identities around grievance and belonging—needs that universities once helped students navigate but now too often ignore.

This is the world that produced Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes entered higher education during a moment of fragmentation and distrust. Tuition was skyrocketing. Campuses were polarizing. Students were increasingly treated as revenue streams rather than whole human beings. Administrators were more focused on donor relations and culture-war optics than on the psychological welfare of their students. And universities outsourced so many vital functions—to police, to lobbyists, to tech platforms—that they ceded responsibility for the very students they claimed to educate.

Into that void stepped extremist influencers who offered simple answers to complex problems, validation for resentment, and a community that cared—if only in the performative, transactional sense of internet politics.

The tragedy is not simply that Fuentes emerged. The tragedy is that the conditions to generate many more like him remain firmly in place.

American higher education created the environment: hyper-competition, abandonment of the humanities, the collapse of community, the normalization of precarity, and a relentless emphasis on personal failure over systemic dysfunction. It created the audience: anxious, isolated, indebted young men looking for meaning. And it created the blind spot: a refusal to take extremism seriously until it reaches mainstream visibility.

Fuentes is not a glitch in the system. He is the system’s mirror held up to itself.

Unless universities confront their complicity in this radicalization pipeline—economically, culturally, and psychologically—the next Nick Fuentes is already in a dorm room somewhere, streaming at 2 a.m., finding thousands of followers who feel just as betrayed as he does.

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Sources

Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017).
Peter Simi & Robert Futrell, American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate (2010, updated 2015).
Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (2018).
Joan Donovan & danah boyd, “Stop the Presses? The Crisis of Misinformation” (Harvard Kennedy School).
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (2020).
Michael Kimmel, Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism (2018).
Whitney Phillips, “The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists.”
Brian Hughes & Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Youth Radicalization in Digital Spaces.”
David Futrelle, We Hunted the Mammoth archive on incel ideology.
Higher Education Inquirer (2016–2024 coverage of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, and campus extremism).

How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis—and Why HUD’s New Cuts Will Make It Worse

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has quietly announced one of the most drastic federal rollbacks in homelessness policy in decades: a massive cut to permanent housing under the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, with more than half of its 2026 funding diverted to transitional housing and compliance-based services. HUD’s own internal estimates warn that up to 170,000 people could lose housing as a result of the shift. For millions of Americans, especially those on the margins, this is not a policy adjustment; it is the beginning of a humanitarian disaster.

To understand how we arrived here, it is not enough to point at the Trump administration, the ideological crusade against “Housing First,” or the White House Faith Office now shaping federal grantmaking. One must also examine the educated neoliberals who built and normalized the system that made this possible.

HUD’s policy change overturns decades of federal commitment to permanent supportive housing, an evidence-backed model that dramatically reduces chronic homelessness. The new Notice of Funding Opportunity caps permanent housing at just 30 percent of CoC dollars, down from 87 percent in prior years, while the remainder is funneled toward transitional housing, work or service requirements, mandatory treatment, and faith-based compliance programs. The total funding for 2026 is roughly $3.9 billion across 7,000 grants. That amount, spread across hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness, is barely sufficient to provide minimal assistance, let alone stable housing or the comprehensive services this population needs. One-third of existing programs will run out of funds before the new awards are issued in May, leaving vulnerable individuals exposed to eviction during the harshest months of winter. Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness and a former HUD official, described the rollout as deeply irresponsible, warning that the administration is setting communities up for failure.

For decades, U.S. policy has been shaped not just by conservatives but also by a sprawling class of highly educated managers: MBAs, MPPs, JDs, think-tank fellows, foundation executives, nonprofit administrators, and “innovation” consultants. They came from America’s elite universities, fluent in market logic, managerialism, and austerity politics. They preached efficiency, accountability, metrics, and self-sufficiency. Many also personally accumulated wealth, often owning multiple homes, benefiting from investment income, and exploiting loopholes to minimize or avoid taxes. Meanwhile, the programs they manage shrink support for the poor and vulnerable.

Through their influence, housing became a program, not a public good. Public housing construction largely disappeared, replaced by a grant-driven, nonprofit marketplace controlled by elite professionals. Even the funding allocated for CoC programs, though nominally in the billions, is deliberately minimal. This scarcity forces competition, instability, and suffering among poor people. Nonprofit executives, most of whom depend on federal contracts and foundation dollars, rarely challenge the economic and political structures that produce homelessness. Accountability rhetoric replaced structural change, reframing homelessness as an issue of individual behavior rather than a systemic failure. The academy normalized the idea that poor people should suffer, teaching a generation of managers to prioritize markets, metrics, and “innovation” over human need. This bipartisan, university-trained professional class laid the foundation for the HUD cuts now threatening hundreds of thousands of lives.

HUD argues that the new model “restores accountability” and reduces the purported waste of Housing First, but decades of research contradict that claim. Permanent supportive housing reduces chronic homelessness, lowers emergency and policing costs, stabilizes people with disabilities, and is cheaper than institutionalization or shelters. Transitional housing with mandatory compliance, on the other hand, repeatedly pushes people back to the streets, disproportionately harms people with disabilities, increases mortality, inflates administrative costs, and creates churn rather than stability. The policy is not a mistake; it reflects the calculated priorities of an elite managerial class whose worldview demands austerity for the poor while allowing them to flourish materially.

The response in Washington has been striking. Forty-two Senate Democrats warned HUD that the shift violates the McKinney-Vento Act, undermines local decision-making, and rejects decades of federally funded research. Even twenty House Republicans urged careful implementation to avoid destabilizing services for seniors and disabled people. Yet decades of neoliberal policymaking—funded and legitimized by universities, foundations, and think tanks—have already created a system in which poverty and suffering are baked into federal policy. This latest HUD action simply codifies that worldview.

The crisis unfolding now is not just the product of Trump’s ideological war on Housing First. It is the logical endpoint of decades of privatization, the erosion of public housing, elite consensus around austerity, credentialed managerialism, the nonprofit-industrial complex, the foundation-university revolving door, and the belief—deeply embedded in higher education—that markets and metrics should govern everything. Many of these policymakers and nonprofit executives own multiple homes, refuse to pay taxes, and structure federal policy to ensure the poor remain dependent, unstable, and suffering. The people most directly harmed are those with the least political power: disabled people, elderly tenants, veterans, people with serious mental illness, women fleeing violence, and families trying to survive an economy that no longer works for them. Behind them stands a class of educated neoliberals who built the systems that made this outcome possible, often congratulating themselves for “innovation” while allowing misery to proliferate. This is not failure. This is design.

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Sources:

• Politico, “HUD to Cut Permanent Housing Funding for Homeless Programs,” 2025.

• National Alliance to End Homelessness, internal HUD funding documents, 2025.

• Ann Oliva, National Alliance to End Homelessness, statements to POLITICO, 2025.

• McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, 1987.

• HUD Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2026 Continuum of Care Program.

• Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” White House, 2025.

Why People Under 35 Are Not Afraid of Democratic Socialism

For Americans under 35, the term “democratic socialism” triggers neither fear nor Cold War reflexes. It represents something far simpler: a demand for a functioning society. Younger generations have grown up in a world where basic pillars of American life—higher education, medicine, economic mobility, and even life expectancy—have deteriorated while inequality has soared. Democratic socialism, in their view, is not a fringe ideology but a practical response to systems that have ceased to serve the common good.

Nowhere is this clearer than in higher education. Millennials and Gen Z entered adulthood as universities became corporate enterprises, expanding administrative layers, pushing adjunct labor to the brink, and relying on debt-financed tuition increases to keep the machine running. Public investment collapsed, predatory for-profit chains proliferated, and nonprofit universities acted like hedge funds with classrooms attached. Students saw institutions with billion-dollar endowments operate as landlords and asset managers, all while passing costs onto working families. When Bernie Sanders called for tuition-free public college, young people did not hear utopianism—they heard a plan grounded in global reality, a model that exists in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and other social democracies that treat education as a public good rather than a revenue stream.

Healthcare tells an even harsher story. Americans under 35 watched their parents and grandparents navigate a system more focused on billing codes than care, one where an ambulance ride costs a week’s wages and a bout of illness can mean bankruptcy. They experienced the rise of corporatized university medical centers, private equity–owned emergency rooms, and insurance bureaucracies that ration access more cruelly than any state. They saw life-saving drugs priced like luxury goods and mental health services pushed out of reach. Compare this to nations with universal healthcare: longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and far less medical debt. Again, Sanders’ Medicare for All resonated not because of ideology but because young people recognized it as a plausible path toward the kind of humane medical system described by scholars like Harriet Washington, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and Mahmud Mamdani, who all critique the structural violence embedded in systems of unequal care.

Life expectancy itself has become a generational indictment. For the first time in modern U.S. history, it has fallen, driven by overdose deaths, suicide, preventable illness, and worsening inequities. Younger Americans know that friends and peers have died far earlier than their counterparts abroad. They see that countries with strong public services—childcare, unemployment insurance, housing supports, universal healthcare—live longer, healthier lives. They also see how austerity and privatization have hollowed out public health infrastructure in the United States, leaving communities vulnerable to crises large and small. The message is clear: societies that invest in people live longer; societies that treat health as a commodity do not.

Quality of Life (QOL) ties all of this together. People under 35 face rent burdens unimaginable to previous generations, debts that prevent them from forming families, stagnant wages, and a labor market defined by precarity. They face the erosion of public space, public transit, libraries, and social supports—what Mamdani would describe as the slow unraveling of the civic realm under neoliberalism. When they look abroad, they see countries with social democratic frameworks offering guaranteed parental leave, subsidized childcare, free or nearly free college, universal healthcare, and robust worker protections. These are not distant fantasies; they are functioning models that produce higher happiness levels, stronger social trust, and more stable democracies.

Older generations often accuse young people of radicalism, but the reality is the reverse. Millennials and Gen Z are pragmatic. They have lived through the failures of unfettered capitalism: historic inequality, monopolistic industries, soaring costs of living, and a political class unresponsive to their material conditions. They have read Sanders’ critiques of oligarchy and Mamdani’s analyses of state power and structural violence, and they see themselves reflected in those diagnoses. Democratic socialism appeals because it is rooted in material improvements to daily life rather than in abstract political theory. It promises a society where income does not determine survival, where education does not require lifelong debt, where parents can afford to raise children, and where basic health is not a luxury good.

People under 35 are not afraid of democratic socialism because they have already seen what the absence of a social democratic framework produces. They are not seeking revolution for its own sake. They are seeking a livable future. And increasingly, they view democratic socialism not as a radical break but as the only realistic path toward rebuilding public institutions, revitalizing democracy, and ensuring that future generations inherit a country worth living in.

Sources
Sanders, Bernie. Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In.
Sanders, Bernie. Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.
Washington, Harriet. Medical Apartheid.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. An American Sickness.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Baldwin, Davarian. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower.
Bousquet, Marc. How the University Works.

Epstein, Dershowitz, Summers, and the Long Arc of Elite Impunity

For many observers, Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and Larry Summers appear as separate figures orbiting the world of elite academia, finance, and politics. But together—and through the long lens of history—they represent something far more revealing: the modern expression of a centuries-old system in which elite institutions protect powerful men while sacrificing the vulnerable.

The Epstein-Dershowitz-Summers triangle is not a scandal of individuals gone astray. It is the predictable result of structures that make such abuses almost inevitable.

The Modern Version of an Old System

Jeffrey Epstein built his influence not through scholarship or scientific discovery—he had no advanced degrees—but by inserting himself into the financial bloodstream of the Ivy League. Harvard and MIT accepted his money, his introductions, and his promises of access to ultra-wealthy networks. Epstein did not need credibility; he purchased it.

Larry Summers, as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, continued to engage with Epstein after the financier’s first arrest and plea deal. Summers’ administration accepted substantial Epstein donations, including funds channeled into the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Summers and his wife dined at Epstein’s Manhattan home. After leaving Harvard, Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even as the financier’s abuses became increasingly public. Summers used the same revolving door that has long connected elite universities, Wall Street, and presidential administrations—moving freely and comfortably across all three.

Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law Professor and Epstein’s close associate and legal strategist, exemplifies another pillar of this system: elite legal protection. Dershowitz defended Epstein vigorously, attacked survivors publicly, and remains embroiled in litigation connected to the case. Whether one believes Dershowitz’s claims of innocence is secondary to the structural fact: elite institutions reliably shield their own.

Together, Epstein offered money and connections; Summers offered institutional prestige and political access; Dershowitz offered legal insulation. Harvard, meanwhile, offered a platform through which all three profited.

Knowledge as a Shield—Not a Light

For centuries, elite universities have served as both engines of knowledge and fortresses of power. They are not neutral institutions.

They defended slavery and eugenics, supplying “scientific” justification for racial hierarchies.
They exploited labor—from enslaved workers who built campuses to adjuncts living in poverty today.
They marginalized survivors of sexual violence while protecting benefactors and faculty.
They accepted fortunes derived from war profiteering, colonial extraction, hedge-fund predation, and private-equity devastation.

Epstein did not invent the model of the toxic patron. He merely perfected it in the neoliberal era.

A Four-Step Pattern of Elite Impunity

The scandal surrounding Epstein, Dershowitz, and Summers follows a trajectory that dates back centuries:

1. Wealth accumulation through exploitation
   From slave plantations to private equity, concentrated wealth is generated through systems that harm the many to benefit the few.

2. The purchase of academic legitimacy
   Endowed chairs, laboratories, fellowships, and advisory roles allow dubious benefactors to launder reputations through universities.

3. Legal and cultural shielding
   Elite lawyers, confidential settlements, non-disclosure agreements, and institutional silence create protective armor.

4. Silencing of survivors and critics
   Reputational attacks, threats of litigation, and internal pressure discourage transparency and accountability.

Epstein operated within this system. Dershowitz defended it. Summers benefited from it. Harvard reinforced it.

Larry Summers: An Anatomy of Power

Summers’ career illuminates the deeper structure behind the scandal. His trajectory—Harvard president, U.S. Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, adviser to hedge funds, consultant to Big Tech—mirrors the seamless circulation of elite power between universities, finance, and government.

During his presidency, Harvard publicly embraced Epstein’s donations. After Epstein’s first sex-offense conviction, Summers continued to meet with him socially and professionally. Summers leveraged networks that Epstein also sought to cultivate. And even after the Epstein scandal fully broke open, Summers faced no meaningful institutional repercussions.

The message was clear: individual wrongdoing matters less than maintaining elite continuity.

Higher Education’s Structural Complicity

Elite universities were not “duped.” They were beneficiaries.

Harvard returned only a fraction of Epstein’s donations, and only after the press exposed the relationship. MIT hid Epstein’s gifts behind false donor names. Faculty traveled to his island and penthouse without demanding transparency.

Meanwhile:

Adjuncts qualify for food assistance
Students carry life-crippling debt
Administrators earn CEO-level pay
Donors dictate priorities behind closed doors

This is not hypocrisy—it is hierarchy. A system built to serve wealth does exactly that.

A Timeline Much Longer Than Epstein

To understand the present, we must zoom out:

Oxford and Cambridge accepted slave-trade wealth as institutional lifeblood.
Gilded Age robber barons endowed libraries while crushing labor movements.
Cold War intelligence agencies quietly funded research centers.
Today’s oligarchs, tech billionaires, and private-equity titans buy influence through endowments and think tanks.

The tools change. The pattern does not.

Universities help legitimate the powerful—even when those powerful figures harm the public.

Why This Still Matters

The Epstein scandal is not resolved. Court documents continue to emerge. Survivors continue to speak. Elite institutions continue to stall and deflect. Harvard still resists meaningful transparency, even as its endowment approaches national GDP levels.

The danger is not simply that another Epstein will emerge. It is that elite universities will continue to provide the conditions that make another Epstein inevitable.

What Breaking the Pattern Requires

Ending this system demands more than symbolic gestures or public-relations apologies. Real reform requires:

Radical donor transparency—with all gifts, advisory roles, and meetings disclosed
Worker and student representation on governing boards
Strong whistleblower protections and the abolition of secret NDAs
Robust public funding to reduce reliance on elite philanthropy
Independent journalism committed to exposing institutional power

Ida B. Wells, Jessica Mitford, Upton Sinclair, and other muckrakers understood what universities still deny: scandals are symptoms. The disease is structural.

Epstein was not an anomaly.
Dershowitz is not an anomaly.
Summers is not an anomaly.

They are products of a system in which universities serve power first—and truth, only if convenient.

If higher education wants to reclaim public trust, it must finally decide which side of history it is on.

Entangled Frontiers: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the UAE, South Sudan, and the Israel-Palestine Arena — Implications for Higher Education, Censorship, and Global Governance

The global higher education landscape is increasingly shaped by conflicts, diplomacy, and shifting regional alliances. The relationships among Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), South Sudan, and the Israel-Palestine conflict highlight the interconnections between geopolitics, humanitarian crises, and the responsibilities of universities as institutions of knowledge, ethics, and justice. These contexts influence not only student mobility and research collaboration but also institutional priorities, funding flows, and academic freedom. Understanding the intersection of geopolitics and higher education is essential for institutions seeking to engage globally with integrity, equity, and impact.

For scholars and administrators, these regions exemplify the challenge of balancing opportunity and risk. Research and student engagement opportunities abound in humanitarian crises, fragile states, and post-conflict zones, yet these are embedded in complex political and ethical landscapes. Additionally, the growing pressures on American universities to navigate internal censorship, legislative constraints, and donor-influenced agendas have profound implications for their global credibility and ability to engage abroad. This article explores each of these regions in depth, examines the cross-cutting implications for higher education, and discusses the domestic pressures in U.S. higher education that shape international engagement.

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Saudi Arabia and Yemen

The war in Yemen has devastated the nation, creating one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history. Civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, millions of people have been displaced, and famine and disease threaten vast swathes of the population. Saudi Arabia, as the leading actor in the coalition intervening in Yemen, has faced both international criticism and pressure to negotiate. Recent diplomatic initiatives have suggested that Riyadh may be seeking to recalibrate its involvement, including attempts to engage Houthi representatives in peace talks. For higher education institutions, these shifts have important implications for student mobility, research opportunities, and refugee education programs. Yemen's crisis represents not only a humanitarian emergency but also a research frontier in global health, humanitarian logistics, and post-conflict educational reconstruction.

Saudi Arabia’s position on Israel adds another layer of complexity for global academic partnerships. The Kingdom continues to insist that it will not normalize relations with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state. This position affects regional alliances, funding priorities, and the willingness of other states to engage in collaborative academic initiatives. For universities, this reality translates into both opportunities and constraints. Scholarship programs, research funding, and institutional partnerships linked to Saudi Arabia may be influenced by the Kingdom’s foreign policy priorities. Institutions engaging with Yemen must navigate a humanitarian context that is deeply intertwined with the diplomatic posturing of a regional superpower.

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The United Arab Emirates

The UAE has emerged as a significant regional actor, leveraging economic strength to expand its influence across Africa, the Red Sea corridor, and the Middle East. Its normalisation with Israel through the Abraham Accords marked a historic diplomatic shift in Arab-Israeli relations, yet the UAE has simultaneously articulated clear objections to unilateral Israeli annexation plans in the West Bank. In Africa, the UAE has deepened ties with South Sudan and other fragile states through financial agreements, including banking cooperation and long-term oil-backed loans. These interventions exemplify how foreign investment, diplomacy, and regional security concerns intersect in ways that directly affect higher education.

For universities, the UAE represents both opportunity and caution. Institutions can engage with new funding streams, branch campuses, and international partnerships facilitated by Gulf state investment. At the same time, ethical considerations are paramount. Funding sources tied to conflict zones, extractive economic deals, or contested geopolitical agendas require careful institutional scrutiny. Universities must develop frameworks that incorporate conflict sensitivity, ethical risk assessment, and transparency. The UAE’s dual role as a facilitator of academic mobility and a participant in contested geopolitical spaces underscores the complexity of engagement in regions influenced by external power.

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South Sudan

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, has struggled to stabilize since its independence in 2011. Recurring conflict, economic dependence on oil, and weak governance structures have hindered the development of higher education infrastructure. Agreements with the UAE, including long-term oil-backed loans and financial cooperation, highlight the influence of foreign investment on the state’s trajectory and, by extension, its educational system.

For higher education, South Sudan presents both a critical research site and an urgent development need. Universities can contribute to capacity-building, curriculum development, and scholarship programs for displaced or return diaspora students. Research in post-conflict governance, peace studies, and resource management can inform broader academic understanding of fragile states. Yet these opportunities come with ethical and practical complexities. Partnerships with South Sudanese institutions must navigate the implications of resource-linked foreign investment, the risk of perpetuating inequality, and the fragility of governance structures. Universities engaging in South Sudan must balance their commitment to education with a nuanced understanding of political and economic realities.

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Israel and Palestine

The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to shape the global higher education discourse, affecting student mobility, refugee education, research collaborations, and institutional partnerships. Saudi Arabia’s insistence that normalization with Israel is contingent upon Palestinian statehood and East Jerusalem as its capital remains a critical point of leverage in regional diplomacy. The UAE, despite having normalized with Israel, continues to assert that Israeli annexation of the West Bank represents a “red line” that could destabilize the region.

For universities, this context presents both opportunities and ethical challenges. Engaging with Palestinian students, hosting refugee scholars, and conducting research on human rights and humanitarian crises are vital areas of academic intervention. At the same time, institutions must navigate funding sources, regional political sensitivities, and reputational risks. Academic freedom in research on Israel and Palestine is often contested, both abroad and domestically in the United States, where political and donor pressures shape what research is feasible, safe, or fundable.

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Censorship and Academic Freedom in U.S. Higher Education

Recent developments in American higher education highlight the fragility of academic freedom, which directly affects international engagement. Surveys indicate that over one-third of U.S. faculty perceive a decline in academic freedom, and approximately 70% report self-censorship on topics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. Legislation in several states, framed under terms like “viewpoint diversity” or “campus neutrality,” imposes constraints on curriculum, speech, faculty tenure, and university governance. These pressures are compounded by donor influence, administrative oversight, and the politicization of higher education.

Censorship and self-censorship are not abstract concerns; they have tangible impacts on research agendas, global partnerships, and the capacity of universities to host refugee or international scholars. Institutions with programs in global health, humanitarian response, Middle East studies, or post-conflict development must contend with domestic pressures that may limit the scope of inquiry or public engagement. The erosion of academic freedom in the United States thus has a direct effect on the credibility and effectiveness of universities abroad, as it mirrors, in some respects, the constraints faced by institutions in fragile or authoritarian states.

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Cross-Cutting Themes

Several themes cut across these regional and domestic contexts. First, conflict and displacement in Yemen, South Sudan, and Palestine create urgent educational needs for refugees and internally displaced scholars. Universities must develop programs that provide access, mentorship, and flexible pathways to education. Second, foreign investment and resource-linked funding—from the UAE in South Sudan to Saudi-backed initiatives in Yemen—underscore the ethical complexities of international partnerships. Transparency, due diligence, and conflict-sensitive frameworks are essential. Third, diplomatic realignments, including the Abraham Accords and evolving Saudi-Israel relations, create new corridors for collaboration but also introduce geopolitical risk. Fourth, domestic censorship and political pressures in the U.S. affect research capacity, ethical engagement, and the freedom to examine contentious topics, directly influencing global credibility.

Finally, structural inequality and systemic injustice are central concerns. Funding flows, research agendas, and student access are all mediated by power structures that can perpetuate inequities. Universities must be conscious of whose voices are amplified, whose perspectives are sidelined, and how partnerships with conflict-affected states influence the production of knowledge. Ethical global engagement requires institutions to address these imbalances proactively.

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References & Sources

1. PEN America, “New Report Unveils Alarming Tactics in Censorship of Higher Education,” pen.org

2. Times of India, “Is Academic Freedom on the Decline? 35% of US College Professors Say Yes,” timesofindia.indiatimes.com

3. Times of Israel, “Faculty Survey Reveals Fear, Self-Censorship at US Universities,” timesofisrael.com

4. Associated Press, “Under Threat from Trump, Columbia University Agrees to Policy Changes,” apnews.com

5. The Guardian, “US Universities’ Faculty Unite to Defend Academic Freedom After Trump’s Attacks,” theguardian.com

6. Le Monde, “UC Berkeley, the US Capital of Free Speech, Stands Firm Against Trump,” lemonde.fr

THURSDAY: "The New Mayor of New York City" on Zoom (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies)

 

Click here to view as webpage

Thu. November 13: Zoom only

The New Mayor of New York City: A Post-Election Debrief A City Works Media Roundtable moderated by Laura Flanders   Thursday, November 13 1:00pm - 2:30pm Virtual-only via Zoom. Free and open to all.   Click here to register. Please register to access virtual event info and reminders.  (slucuny.swoogo.com/13November2025/register)   Guest Speakers: Claudia Irizarry Aponte - Labor and Work Reporter, THE CITY; Faculty, CUNY Newmark School of Journalism Liza Featherstone - Columnist, Jacobin and The New Republic; Contributing Writer, The Nation Amir Khafagy - Senior Labor Reporter, Documented Maya King - Politics Reporter, The New York Times Moderator: Laura Flanders - Host, Laura Flanders & Friends; Host, City Works Maya King Amir Khafagy Claudia Irizarry Aponte Liza Featherstone Laura Flanders

Tune in for a live City Works post-election roundtable that the Murphy Institute at CUNY SLU is organizing to discuss initial analysis and reactions to the election for the next mayor of New York City. The roundtable will be moderated by award-winning journalist Laura Flanders. Panelists will compare actual election results to their pre-election reporting on the mayoral race, pre-election polls and voter analysis, and general media coverage of the candidates. Speakers will provide our audience with insights on the actual voting results, including demographic/geographic trends that emerged in the electorate, and the impact that labor and social movements had on the election. Following the roundtable discussion, we will select questions from the live virtual audience to present to the panel for their comments.

Tue. December 9: in-person & Zoom event

The 2005 NYC Transit Workers Strike:  Reflections on the 20th Anniversary A conversation with Roger Toussaint, former president of TWU Local 100   Tuesday, December 9 6:30pm – 8:30pm (New York / E.T.)   In-person at CUNY SLU (map) & Virtual via Zoom livestream Free and open to all.   Click here to register. Please register to access in-person and virtual event info and reminders.  (slucuny.swoogo.com/9December2025)   Guest Speaker: Roger Toussaint - Former President, Transport Workers Union Local 100   Featuring: Joshua B. Freeman - Author, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II (2000) and Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia (2025) Kafui Attoh - Associate Professor, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies; Author, Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay (2019)     Roger Toussaint  Joshua Freeman  Kafui Attoh 

The 2005 NYC transit workers strike, led by Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 under Roger Toussaint, remains deeply relevant to American workers in 2025. It highlights enduring lessons about labor militancy and the challenges of taking bold action in the face of legal repression and public sector austerity. The strike was a rare instance of a major U.S. union defying anti-strike laws—specifically New York’s Taylor Law—shutting down a city of millions to protect pension rights and resist a two-tier workforce.   How did TWU Local 100 mobilize an entire city to support workers, despite a hostile, well-funded corporate media campaign to vilify transit workers? What was won—and lost—as a result of the strike? What are the key lessons?   Join us on the 20th anniversary of the historic 2005 transit workers strike to learn from Roger Toussaint, former president of TWU Local 100; Joshua Freeman, labor historian and author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II; and Kafui Attoh, Professor of Urban Studies at CUNY SLU.