FAFSA Update (US Department of Education)

In preparation for another High School Senior 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) Week of Action (Jan. 13-17), the U.S. Department of Education (Department) is encouraging high school counselors, principals, and other school leaders; superintendents; parent and community groups; and local and state education organizations to take action raising awareness about the FAFSA, especially focusing on helping students complete the FAFSA application.

In support of critical student and family outreach, the Federal Student Aid (FSA) office is publishing a set of FAFSA guides for non-English speakers in the 10 most spoken languages in the U.S. outside of English and Spanish, as well as making interpretive services available in these languages. Users may access the guides from the FAFSA Support in Other Languages page. Some guides (in Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, French, Korean, and Russian) are available now, and remaining guides (in German, Arabic, and French Creole) will be published in the coming months.

In addition, FSA shared updated resources, including:

Pro Tips for Completing the FAFSA Form -- information for preparing to complete and submit the FAFSA form.
Federal Student Aid YouTube Channel: FAFSA Videos -- videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA form, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form.
2025-26 Counselor Resource for Completing the FAFSA Form -- a tool for counselors and other advisors with information and resources to help guide students and families through the FAFSA form.

The Department published a new report, The Impact: Fighting for Public Education, demonstrating what can be accomplished by investing wisely in public education. If leaders at every level of government continue to embrace what works for students, we won’t just continue to raise the bar in education—we will create prosperity and lead the world for generations to come.

Trump Administration Threatens to Cut Off Grants to Higher Ed

More information at the College Investor. 

Nvidia, Microsoft Stock Fall in Wake of New AI Model From DeepSeek (Bloomberg Podcasts)

Exposing Duchateau: A Shocking Case of Academic Misconduct at Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Emmanuel Legeard)

A Flagrant and Repeated Breach of Academic Ethics (Université Libre de Bruxelles and European Journal of Applied Physiology)

For several years now, Jacques Duchâteau and his team at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have sought to misappropriate the 3/7 Method, a strength-training protocol I independently developed more than 20 years ago. Jean-Pierre Egger revealed the method — while respecting its intellectual property — during seminars and university lectures in 2012. Regardless of this elementary fact, ULB’s claims are contradicted by ample evidence proving my authorship, such as correspondence with Egger dating back to 2008, his documented public presentation at the University of Lausanne in 2012 within the ISSUL Master’s program, and Duchâteau’s recorded presentations at the French National Institute of Sport (INSEP).

THE 3/7 METHOD, ALSO KNOWN AS THE LEGEARD PROTOCOL (Presented by Jean-Pierre Egger at the University of Lausanne in 2012)

(You can download the full .pdf here: (PDF) Emmanuel Legeard Le 3–7 Master en sciences du sport, Université de Lausanne)

Initially, Jacques Duchâteau organized conferences about me — curiously, without my involvement or consent — where the 3/7 Method was even referred to as “Legeard’s Method”. Gradually, Duchâteau resorted to insinuating that the method might not solely be my creation, a claim he knew was false. My method has never been modified by anyone. At the time, I dismissed these rumors as baseless. However, it became clear that this was a calculated strategy to dilute my rights and claim ownership of my work.

2014: DUCHÂTEAU PRESENTS THE “LEGEARD’S METHOD” AT INSEP

Subsequently, Duchâteau’s team — including Séverine Stragier, Stéphane Baudry, and Alain Carpentier — published a 12-page article in the European Journal of Applied Physiology about my method. Shockingly, my name, Emmanuel Legeard, WAS ENTIRELY OMITTED ! This publication, titled “Efficacy of a new strength training design: the 3/7 method”, audaciously describes the method as “new”, a blatant misrepresentation given its development over two decades ago and its public introduction in 2012 by Egger.

European Journal of Applied Physiology’s predatory publishing — Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer-review process, and is highly opaque.

The misrepresentation has not gone unnoticed. T.C. Luoma, a renowned American sports journalist and editor of T-Nation — a site with over three million monthly visitors — highlighted the issue, stating:

“That’s why reading about the 3/7 method aroused my interest. It’s a set-rep scheme developed by French strength coach Emmanuel Legeard in the early 2000s.”

(Source: T-Nation Forums)

2023: THE DUCHÂTEAU TEAM’S UNABASHED IDEA THEFT

Last year, Grigoraș Diaconescu, an international rugby player, shared his outrage after discovering a post by Gaël Deboeck, identified as the head of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation at ULB. Deboeck congratulated Alexis Gillet, a doctoral student, for using the 3/7 Method to “prove” what I demonstrated 20 years ago. Unsurprisingly, the publication made no mention of the method’s original creator. It is now evident that ULB intends to mislead the public into believing that their laboratory developed the 3/7 Method. These unethical actions demand accountability.

2023: THE DUCHÂTEAU TEAM’S UNABASHED IDEA THEFT

CONSEQUENCES OF THIS ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

If the Université Libre de Bruxelles believes I will quietly accept the theft of my work, they are mistaken. This scandal, indicative of dishonesty incompatible with academic integrity, must result in sanctions. Public funding cannot continue to support crooked research where my work is falsely attributed to impostors like Jacques Duchâteau, Séverine Stragier, Stéphane Baudry, Alain Carpentier, Gael Deboeck or Alexis Gillet. I have been lenient for years, but my patience as the rightful creator has reached its limit. I have begun publicly correcting this falsehood online, as seen in similar cases — such as one involving the University of Zurich — which have led to severe consequences for academic dishonesty.

Dr Emmanuel Legeard, Ph.D. — Creator, among quite a few others, of the 3/7 Method, also known as the “Legeard Method”.

This article originally appeared on Medium.

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)

How University of Arizona Global Campus’ Online Recruitment Ads Drain Its Finances (Jeremy Bauer-Wolf)

In 2020, the University of Arizona acquired Ashford University, an online for-profit college that a California court later found guilty of having deceived students about job prospects, transfer opportunities, and degree costs.

Feeling pressured to better compete in the online education market — especially as Arizona State University broadened its virtual options — University of Arizona leaders recast Ashford as the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC.

Administrators pledged to rehabilitate UAGC and abandon the exploitation that landed the former Ashford in legal hot water. UAGC, as its president said in 2022, is “well-positioned to provide adult learners with affordable college credentials that can better prepare them for careers in a rapidly evolving global economy.”

But beneath the rebranding efforts, problems remain. The University of Arizona has spent massively on marketing UAGC, as an audit that consultancy EY conducted last year revealed, a hallmark tactic of predatory for-profit institutions that dress up their junk degrees as prestigious offerings.

UAGC runs extensive and expensive ad campaigns on Google and Facebook, yet fewer than 1% of those reached enroll. This amounts to the university paying $11,521 for every student enrolled from those campaigns, the audit shows.

For context, this is almost as much as the University of Arizona’s in-state tuition and fees per student in the 2023-24 academic year, which federal data estimates to be about $13,000.

And one higher ed consultancy, RNL, found that in 2022, the median cost of recruiting an undergraduate student, minus personnel expenses, was only $1,652 for a four-year private college and $282 at a four-year public institution (though proponents of online education argue this is comparing apples to oranges).

But ultimately, UAGC’s investment has not improved enrollment. It continues to bleed, as it did in Ashford’s later days, dropping from about 107,000 students in fiscal year 2015 to 51,000 in fiscal year 2023.

Criticism from some of the University of Arizona’s faculty has also erupted. In the waning days of 2024, Nolan Cabrera, a professor at the university’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, wrote a public warning to students, urging them not to enroll in UAGC.

Cabrera told New America in a later interview he went public with his criticisms to protect students — and the University of Arizona’s reputation. UAGC, he said, is only hurting students with poor-quality programs, draining resources and sullying its standing as a top-class, R1 institution.

Blake Naughton, UAGC’s vice provost for academic affairs, teaching, and learning for online initiatives said in an emailed statement that “accreditors, government agencies, and other external reviewers” recognize “UAGC’s commitment to the quality of its degree programs.”

“UAGC has developed an innovative model that is validated through reaffirmations of quality by UAGC’s institutional and programmatic accreditors, which includes Quality Matters certification representing the gold standard in online courses, and enthusiastic partnerships with businesses and military employers,” Naughton said. “Further, UAGC faculty are leaders in the scholarship of online teaching and learning, regularly publishing and presenting on the efficacy of its ‘quality at scale’ model.”

The Creation of UAGC

Those inside and out of University of Arizona — state officials, faculty, college students and their advocates — were immediately skeptical of UAGC’s potential quality and value when the university acquired Ashford in 2020. The deal was a complex one that involved the University of Arizona creating a new nonprofit entity, which bought Ashford for $1. In return, UAGC would provide almost 20% of annual tuition revenue to Ashford’s former parent company, Zovio, though that arrangement later fell apart in 2022.

Before the acquisition, Ashford followed the blueprint of one of the most notorious for-profit colleges in American history: the University of Phoenix. Andrew S. Clark — an executive who contributed to the University of Phoenix’s rise — and the company he later worked for, Bridgepoint, replicated deceptive practices around credit transfers, financial aid, and recruitment at Ashford.

In 2017, California’s attorney general alleged Ashford misled prospective students about their chances of securing financial aid, the cost of attendance, the transferability of credits, and how well its programs prepared them for certain careers. The attorney general also accused it of deceiving investors and the public by exaggerating the percentage of working alumni who said their degree helped them in their current jobs.

This complaint was still unresolved by the time University of Arizona acquired it in 2020.

In 2022, the court ruled against Ashford and Zovio. The judge in the case was persuaded by estimates that Zovio made roughly 1.2 million misleading calls to potential students from March 2009 to April 2020.

The University of Arizona painstakingly crafted a public relations campaign to try to cleave UAGC’s reputation from Ashford’s. This was despite widespread concerns among its faculty and staff about Ashford, Cabrera said in an interview.

The administration never truly responded to those fears that Ashford was still peddling poor-quality education, he said. In fact, negotiations surrounding Ashford were so secretive that University of Arizona representatives who were involved with them signed non-disclosure agreements, obfuscating details of the deal, Cabrera argued. (The University of Arizona has said because Zovio was a publicly traded company, the institution “was required to undertake its work on a confidential and ‘need to know’ basis.”)

“You know the old adage, ‘you get what you pay for’?,” Cabrera said, referring to the $1 price tag of the acquisition. “That should tell you everything you need to know.”

UAGC has maintained an anemic graduation rate, only reaching 15% to 20% after the University of Arizona’s acquisition, according to the audit. The University of Arizona’s graduation rate stands between 60% to 70%. The retention rate of full-time students has also only improved modestly, from 24% in 2019 to 30% in 2022, according to federal data.

Mitch Zak, a University of Arizona spokesperson, said in a statement that it and UAGC have different academic models, thus their graduation rates aren’t comparable.

“The majority of UAGC students are working adults and military service members with varying priorities and responsibilities, which results in their taking fewer courses per year than traditional U of A students,” Zak said. “Non-traditional online students nationwide are not expected to graduate in the same timeframe as traditional university undergraduates.”

Recent news reports have also detailed how, like Ashford’s graduates, some UAGC students have said they can’t find sound jobs after leaving and alleged that the institution misled them about the value and cost of their degrees.

Cabrera said the University of Arizona’s leaders have not prioritized improving student outcomes, but rather an online education arms race and particularly beating out Arizona State, reflecting the longstanding rivalry between the two most prominent public universities in the state.

Cabrera said the two institutions are in constant competition — in public college rankings, like U.S. News & World Report’s, in enrolling more students, and other peripheral aspects of their academics, such as who employs more Nobel Prize laureates.

But if the University of Arizona’s leadership was so worried about its reputation, it shouldn’t have scooped up Ashford, Cabrera argued. Its association with Ashford and its shoddy education demeans the value of a University of Arizona degree, too, he said.

Zak pushed back against Cabrera’s allegation, saying that “priority is to ensure that UAGC is meeting the needs of its students, most of whom could not access traditional higher education.”

He also separately in his statement criticized Cabrera, saying the professor is not an expert in online education and did not reach out to UAGC leaders or faculty “to learn more about the differences between the U of A and UAGC as well as the complexities associated with providing access to higher education to working professionals.”

Major Marketing Costs

Amid this firestorm, UAGC’s enrollments continue to slip.

Zak argued this decline “was expected and planned for during the transitional period” as the institution works to integrate the former Ashford into the University of Arizona. He said UAGC is trying to lift enrollment, including through programs that help stopped out students return to college.

Still, the enrollment downturn raises questions in particular about the efficiency of its marketing efforts.

While the analysis doesn’t reveal the full extent of UAGC’s marketing splurge, it likely devotes hundreds of millions of dollars to it, based on figures in the EY audit. A similar institution to UAGC, the University of Maryland Global Campus, also dropped $500 million on just two six-year advertising contracts, according to a separate audit.

UAGC is investing significantly in lead generation, a strategy colleges have tried for more than a decade. They pay for advertisements to appear on webpages, particularly social media platforms, that typically summarize a program and also try to entice prospective students to click a new link for more information.

That ad takes prospects to a separate webpage, where they can fill in their name and other information, becoming a “lead” that a college can try to convince them to enroll.

Yet UAGC’s use of lead generation has been astonishingly fruitless, the audit shows.

Fewer than 1% of students reached through UAGC’s top five paid marketing sources, including Google and Facebook, actually enroll. The numbers concerning Facebook are particularly bleak — only 0.5% of prospective students end up enrolling at UAGC after clicking an advertisement on the platform. The auditor said this means it effectively costs the university more than $34,000 in marketing dollars just for one person to enroll from Facebook.

Even UAGC’s most successful lead generation source — Google search ads — converted just 3% of prospects, with each enrollment costing more than $7,500.

These figures are even more staggering considering UAGC pays to find 85% of its prospects, according to the audit. By contrast, Arizona Online — the university’s self-created online program, which still operates, in parallel to UAGC — buys just 50% of its student leads.

Zak said that UAGC has since “refined” its marketing to “prioritize efficiency and effectiveness,” but did not go into greater detail.

“UAGC has implemented a targeted approach in alignment with its mission of serving non-traditional learners,” Zak said. “UAGC is focused on retention and success and focuses on students who are most likely to benefit from a flexible and supportive learning environment. UAGC leverages data analytics, audience segmentation, and advanced tracking mechanisms to help improve conversion rates and reduce marketing costs.”

He later said that UAGC serves nontraditional students like working adults, military members and first-generation college attendees.

“Reaching those students in a competitive marketplace requires a different approach than traditional four-year universities,” Zak said.

The University of Arizona has faced budget problems broadly and last year said it had a $177 million budget deficit, which it has since reduced significantly.

But for all the university’s publicity efforts around UAGC, prospective students recognize Arizona Online as part of the institution’s brand, more so than UAGC, the audit said. Maintaining both platforms has actually spurred “market confusion,” according to the audit.

To remedy this, the University of Arizona has angled to integrate UAGC and Arizona Online, and Zak pointed to a university statement last year that said the audit findings validate this merger.

Still, this “confusion” underscores broader marketing challenges, like relying heavily on lead generation, a strategy UAGC has leaned into despite the fact that experts have said it’s inefficient to boost enrollment.

In part, that’s because institutions don’t recognize that students won’t make life-altering choices, like where to attend college, based on what’s essentially a pop-up ad, two marketing experts wrote in a 2022 essay.

“Prospective students prudently take their time researching your programs’ offerings in addition to many others,’” they wrote. “They are not naïve, impatient or easily persuaded by glitzy ads and copy. They spend many months researching and deliberating.”

Worse, lead generation can be used for nefarious or even predatory recruitment efforts. Some lead generation companies, for instance, have caught consequences from the Federal Trade Commission, particularly those that target current and former military members.

What To Do Now?

Thus far, the University of Arizona Global Campus is a failed experiment, Cabrera said. He was inspired to publish his concerns about UAGC publicly after students enrolled in its programs began to reach out to him.

Students were distressed. They told him in emails and direct messages on social media that UAGC faculty in education programs couldn’t guide them properly. He said he lost count of how many students contacted him — he estimated more than 20 over an 18-month period.

“For all the political bickering, real students are getting hurt, real students getting harmed here,” Cabrera said. “They’re making a bet, but students are getting hurt in the process.”

The University of Arizona declined to comment on the UAGC students who contacted Cabrera. UAGC faculty later wrote a public rebuttal to Cabrera, arguing his piece was based on his “rather than on facts and thus lacked the academic rigor of factual data from credible sources.”

But the UAGC faculty piece did not refute specifically any data Cabrera cited, including numbers from the EY audit.

In Zak’s emailed statement, he said UAGC students “have access to academic support teams, career services, student access and wellness support teams, and a combination of tools, technology, and guidance to help them progress.”

Cabrera remains unconvinced.

He said the University of Arizona’s leaders have not fulfilled their promise to purge the educational sins of Ashford. The reality is that enrollment continues to plummet, while UAGC’s exorbitant spending on lead generation, with little return, highlights a systemic issue: UAGC, Cabrera said, has seemingly prioritized its push for new students over reforming Ashford’s remnants, which is still making headlines.

This month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would cancel $4.5 billion in loans for 261,000 students who attended Ashford. And last year, the Education Department discharged $72 million in loan obligations for more than 2,300 former Ashford students.

In light of some of the continued problems, the University of Arizona should reassess its fundamentals of online education. It should prioritize meeting the core principles of academic quality and comprehensive student support over marketing its new venture. A stronger focus on student needs would drive more meaningful outcomes and enhance the university’s reputation in the online education space.

As Cabrera suggested, without a realignment of priorities, UAGC risks being an expensive endeavor with little impact. Its reliance on extensive marketing campaigns, like flashy Facebook ads, may eventually draw attention but will struggle to make up for the gaps in delivering long-term value to students.

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

Old-school flip phones are making a comeback as some look for simpler lifestyle (CBS Mornings)

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

Protesters Interrupt Israeli History Class at Columbia University With Anti-Zionist Fliers (Storyful News and Weather)

Frances Perkins, Secretary if Labor (Friday's Labor Folklore)

View and share as a webpage. Friday's Labor Folklore

Thank you Frances Perkins! First Woman Cabinet Secretary Longest-serving Secretary of Labor Key Architect of the New Deal

"I came to Washington to work for God, FDR and the millions of forgotten, plain common working men."

Born in Boston, Mass. (1880) and graduated high school in Worcester. Earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics from Mount Holyoke College where she became involved in progressive politics and the suffrage movement. Held a variety of teaching positions and volunteered at settlement houses, including Hull House in Chicago, where she worked with Jane Addams. She moved to Philadelphia where she worked as a social worker and enrolled in the Wharton School where she studied economics. Moved to Greenwich Village, where she attended Columbia University, earning a master's degree in 1910. She became active in the suffrage movement, speaking on street corners and attending protests.

Achieved statewide prominence as head of the New York office of the National Consumers League where she lobbied for better working hours and conditions. As a professor of sociology she taught classes at Adelphi College. She witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a pivotal event in her life. As the appointed head of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York she promoted fire safety; in 1912 she was instrumental in getting the New York legislature to pass a "54-hour bill" capping the number of hours women and children could work.

She married Paul Caldwell Wilson, an economist and was insistent on keeping her birth name. Gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, in 1916. Throughout the remainder of her marriage her husband would be institutionalized frequently for mental illness. She supported herself and raised their young daughter alone. In 1929 New York governor Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as the state's Industrial Commissioner where she championed the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, workplace health and safety and an end to child labor. In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her the Secretary of Labor becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet position in the United States. She helped shape the New Deal, working to design and implement the Social Security Act of 1935.

She helped millions of people get back to work during the Great Depression and she fought for the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Was the longest-serving Secretary of Labor (12 years) whose successful programs were supported consistently by President Roosevelt. Following her career in government service she remained active as a teacher and lecturer until her death in 1965, at age 85. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter named the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor as "The Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building." On Dec. 16, 2024 President Joe Biden designated the Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark in Newcastle, Maine. President Biden's designation was issued as he directed in Executive Order 14121, Recognizing and Honoring Women's History (March 27, 2024).

In 1933, Roosevelt summoned Perkins to ask her to join his cabinet. Perkins presented Roosevelt with a long list of labor programs for which she would fight, from Social Security to minimum wage. "Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before," she told Roosevelt. "You know that, don’t you?" (Wikipedia)

from the play I Am Not Content an Hour with Frances Perkins by Stephen LaRocque ------------------------ A staged reading by Kathie Mack (video : 1.51 min.)

Thank You Frances Perkins (song : 2.21 min.) by Austin Moffa

Friday's Labor Folklore Saul Schniderman, Editor forward to a friend

Sources from which I summarized, paraphrased or quoted directly: Wikipedia, "President Biden designates Frances Perkins homestead as new national monument," press release, 12/16/2022; Executive Order 14121, Section 3a report, Dec. 2024; Hall of Secretaries, U. S. Dept. of Labor.