Free Speech, Useless Degrees, and a Rich Shortstack Buffet of New Nobel Laureates, New College Rankings, and a Blueprint for Reform from the Martin Center
We also revisit Berkely in 1964 and Amy Wax, academic boycotts, and the College Cost Reduction Act in 2024
Welcome to our 29th issue of Paideia Times Weekly – see ‘em all lined up here, a list that includes our year-in-review, our (very short) survey (please try it) and a recent special issue touting an anonymous donor’s $100 million gift to the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. You can read more about it below, but I have selfish reasons for promoting it: to recall my labors in the big shoulders city’s great Newberry Library tracking down Chretien de Malesherbes’ free press memo to his boss Louix XVI. They lost their heads, but I earned a UC masters degree; thus my alumni thanks to anonymous.
Also read Elizabeth Janice’s four free speech stories below and tell me that A.J. Liebling wasn’t wrong when he remarked, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” And check in on Amy Genito’s gracious summary of the College Cost Reduction Act.
Finally, please remember my plea….
1200 pledges by the end of November…
… so we can start the new year at a gallop. Enjoy the issue—and a break from presidential politics (of the Trump/Harris kind). Write me directly if you have questions or suggestions. Thank you for your time. Peter Meyer
GOVERNANCE
The AAUP Does a U-Turn on Academic Boycotts
The American Association of University Professors has suddenly reversed course and dropped its longtime opposition to academic boycotts, in which scholars and scholarly groups refuse to work or associate with targeted universities. In 2005, the AAUP spoke out against this form of protest, but it now says boycotts “can be considered legitimate tactical responses.” Critics of the change accuse the association of abandoning its commitment to academic freedom. Some, citing the group’s February call for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine, say the association is becoming anti-Zionist. And while the new policy does not mention Israel, they fear it will have negative consequences for Jews on campus. Cary Nelson, a former AAUP president, predicts that the revised stance will open the door to hundreds of individual micro-boycotts of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty—including, for example, the right to refuse to write letters of recommendation for students wishing to study at Israeli universities—as well as efforts to criminalize collaborative research projects between faculty in America and Israel. ---Elizabeth Janice
Sources
AAUP Faces Criticism for Reversal on Academic Boycotts (Inside Higher Ed)
The AAUP Abandons Academic Freedom (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Further Reading
The AAUP Is Right. Supporting Boycotts Is Academic Freedom (Chronicle of Higher Education)
The Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as a Defense of Academic Freedom (Academe Blog)
Campus Protest Hypocrisy Reveals Need For Student Education on Free Speech (Reason)
Colleges Say GOP Bill to Protect Free Speech Would Do the Opposite (Inside Higher Ed)
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PURPOSE
Congress Cracks Down on “Useless” Degrees: A New Era of Accountability in Higher Education
According to The Federalist, enough members of Congress believe that colleges are handing out “useless degrees” to propose the College Cost Reduction Act (CCRA), which would impose financial penalties on schools whose students can’t repay loans, linking tuition to job outcomes. With college enrollment dropping due to high costs, student debt, and a changing job market, only 22 percent of Americans now believe a four-year degree is worth the cost. Some public universities, like those in Wisconsin, are closing campuses, as higher education struggles to prove its worth. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal highlighted the struggles of Suffolk University grad Marshall, who regretted not opting for trade school after experiencing two college closures and accumulating over $100,000 in debt. Senior Jade Gilliam felt betrayed and paused her education, while the abrupt shutdown of Birmingham-Southern College left student-athletes like Carter Tyus facing uncertain futures. A SHEEO study revealed that less than half of students from closed institutions continued their education. A recent piece in Higher Ed Dive spotlighted a Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce study, which revealed that while graduate degrees promise higher earnings, tuition costs surged from $3,000 to $10,000 between 2000 and 2020. This hike has led to mounting debt, particularly for marginalized students, who earn at least $10,000 less than their White peers. To tackle this issue, researchers proposed tying federal loan access to graduates’ earning potential, aiming to boost accountability for colleges. ---Amy Genito
Sources
Congress Should Make Universities Pay For Handing Out Useless Degrees (The Federalist)
Americans are losing faith in four-year college degrees (Financial Times)
New Problem With Four-Year Degrees: The Surge in College Closures (Wall Street Journal)
Rising costs, student debt turn graduate degrees into a ‘risky’ proposition, research finds (Higher Ed Dive)
Further Reading
The Top U.S. Colleges Offering the Best Value for 2025 (Wall Street Journal)
Is College Worth it Anymore? Key Factors to Consider Before You Enroll (Wall Street Journal)
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PUBLIC TRUST/EXTERNAL ORDERS
Shortstack: From Teen Suicide to Hazing Deaths, College Rankings to Presidential Resignations, Closing the Digital Divide, a Blueprint for Reform, and More
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books. To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school (The Atlantic)
Are You Digitally Smarter Than a 5th Grader? From novices to natives, everyone has blind spots about the veracity of online content (Education Next)
Has Social Media Fueled a Teen-Suicide Crisis? Mental-health struggles have risen sharply among young Americans, and parents and lawmakers alike are scrutinizing life online for answers (New Yorker)
The U.S. News College Rankings Are Out. Cue the Rage and Obsession Every year, U.S. News & World Report publishes rankings that often change very little, though they draw attention and frustration from universities and applicants (New York Times)
The 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S.: Princeton, Babson and Stanford Take the Top 3 Spots The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking includes 25 new colleges in the top 50 this year (Wall Street Journal)
Nobel Physics Prize Awarded for Pioneering A.I. Research by 2 Scientists With work on machine learning that uses artificial neural networks, John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “showed a completely new way for us to use computers,” the committee said. (New York Times)
New York's College-in-Prison Challenges This past April, New York State announced a $7M investment that includes a commitment to scaling up higher education programming in prisons to ensure that students in every state facility have a classroom ready for them. (RealClearEducation)
Ex-Frat Leaders Sentenced in Hazing Death of Penn State Student Brendan Young, 28, and Daniel Casey, 27, will spend two to four months in prison for their roles in the 2017 death of Timothy Piazza, a 19-year-old from New Jersey (New York Times)
Brandeis President Steps Down Amid Budget Issues and Protests The university has seen major drops in enrollment, even as the president invited students concerned about protests and antisemitism on other campuses to transfer (New York Times)
Rutgers President Announces Resignation After a Year Rocked by Protests Jonathan Holloway was Rutgers’ first Black president. He helped the university grow but also faced criticism and questioning in Congress over pro-Palestinian encampments on campus (New York Times)
Universities Secretly Take Billions in Foreign Money American colleges and universities are accepting billions of dollars in foreign money without reporting it, according to a new report (The Center Square)
Sorry, Harvard. Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now The likes of Georgia Tech, Clemson and Ole Miss are drawing students from the North who want to have fun and save on tuition. The shift is boosting the economies of cities across the region. (Wall Street Journal)
CBS Rebukes Anchor Over Tense Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates Executives said the interview, conducted by the morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil, had fallen short of network editorial standards. (New York Times)
Why the Rise in Legacy Admissions Bans? The Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to diversity advocates last year when it gutted affirmative action. It also gave them ammunition (Politico)
Online Learners Earned Fewer Degrees Than Their Peers During For-Profit College Boom the report shows that those enrolled in online-only degree programs between 2012 and 2017 were 8.3 percentage points less likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than their peers who had some in-person instruction.
Blueprint for Reform Student learning should be at the center of all efforts to reform higher education. The content of student learning heavily influences the kinds of thinkers and citizens graduates will become (Martin Center)
Columbia Student Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve To Live’ Sues University for Suspending Him One of the leaders of the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University, who was suspended after a video of him saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” resurfaced (NY Sun)
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EXTERNAL ORDERS
Free Speech on Campus 60 Years After the Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was born in the fall of 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley, when students demanded that the university lift its restrictions on political activism. These days, however, it’s more about what you can’t say on campus. “What started as safe spaces and trigger warnings are now almost always one-way actions, cancellations and censorship of ideas progressives don’t like,” Andy Kessler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has released its 2025 College Free Speech Rankings of 251 colleges. The University of Virginia is ranked #1 for free speech. Berkeley is #225. And New York University, Columbia University, and Harvard University are at the bottom of the list. All three received an “abysmal” rating for their speech climate. According to Greg Luckianoff, president and CEO of FIRE, students became enchanted with the idea of “enlightened censorship” about ten years ago. Since then there have been over 1,000 attempts to investigate professors on campus, overwhelmingly concentrated at elite colleges, Luckianoff said in a recent podcast. “And we know this is a wild undercount,” he continued, “because when we polled professors, one in six said they had been either investigated or threatened with investigation for speech, academic freedom, research—all things that tenure, academic freedom, and free speech are supposed to protect.”
---Elizabeth Janice
Sources
What Happened to Free Speech? (Wall Street Journal)
Building a Free Speech Culture with Greg Lukianoff (Big Think)
Further Reading
UCLA aims to rebuild trust with free speech zones, more security (Los Angeles Times)
Rebuilding the Infrastructure of Academic Freedom (Academe Blog)
Free Speech Is Not Enough (City Journal)
Twitter Wars: Alex Berenson and James Lawrence on the Frontlines of Free Speech (UNC AFSA)
The Future of Academic Freedom (New Yorker)
Academic Freedom Under Fire (The Atlantic)
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PURPOSE
Penn Professor Sanctioned for Racist Comments. A Slap on the Wrist or a Fair Punishment?
Amy Wax, the controversial law professor at the University of Pennsylvania accused of making racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks, has finally been stripped of her chaired professorship, suspended for a year at half pay and denied summer pay in perpetuity. (See PTW here.) She was also publicly reprimanded and must note in future public appearances that she speaks only for herself and not the university or law school. Despite persistent calls for her firing, Wax, who has been at Penn since 2001, isn’t losing her job or tenure. She has a long history of offensive statements—e.g., she allegedly described some non-Western countries as “shitholes” and said that “women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men.” (Wax has denied making some of the comments and said that others were taken out of context.) She also invited a white nationalist, Jared Taylor, to speak to one of her classes. Many students say that they could never trust Wax to grade them fairly. But many professors, including those who found her comments profoundly racist, object to disciplining her, on the grounds of academic freedom. Columbia University professor John McWhorter argued in The New York Times that “upholding the ideals of free speech means living with the discomfort—or even anger and injury—that offensive ideas can cause.” ---Elizabeth Janice
Sources
Penn Professor Amy Wax Punished for ‘Derogatory’ Statements but Won’t Lose Job (Inside Higher Ed)
Penn Suspends Amy Wax, Law Professor Accused of Making Racist Statements (New York Times)
She Is Outrageous, Demeaning, Dangerous. She Shouldn’t Be Punished. (New York Times)
Further Reading
LAWSUIT: Historian fights back after Pennsylvania state senator sues him for criticizing book (The Fire)
The Review: The political capture of academic freedom (Chronicle of Higher Education)
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PUBLIC TRUST
UChicago Receives Anonymous $100 Donation to Promote Free Speech
An anonymous donor has given a gift of $100 million to the University of Chicago to support its work on behalf of free speech and to expand the impact of its Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. The forum was launched last year to promote free and open discourse at the university and around the world. The donation comes at a time when colleges across the country are struggling to find the right balance between protecting free speech and ensuring safe campuses following the pro-Palestinian student demonstrations last spring. According to the university, the gift is believed to be the largest donation ever to a higher education institution in support of free speech.
---Elizabeth Janice
Sources
University Of Chicago Given $100 Million To Advance Free Inquiry (Forbes)
U of Chicago Receives $100M Gift to Support Free Speech (Inside Higher Ed)
Further Reading