The judicial system would find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university, said philosophy professor Noelle McAfee, one of the plaintiffs.
Governor Andy Beshear expressed concerns that House Bill 490 could be misused to target individuals and programs based on subject or political grounds, potentially violating contractual agreements.
Having worked alongside so many dedicated members of this university for the past 30 years, I've seen firsthand the remarkable impact Texas A&M has on students, communities and our state. I am honored by the trust and confidence of the Board of Regents and Chancellor [Glenn] Hegar, and if given the opportunity, I look forward to building on the incredible work already underway and leading Texas A&M into its next chapter.
Harry Keyishian's case, Keyishian v. Board of Regents, remains the most important legal ruling in defense of academic freedom, enshrining it as a special concern of the First Amendment.
Rosenberg felt that some of these messages crossed the line into bigotry. One note accused Israel of harvesting the organs of murdered Palestinians. Another, from a medical-school resident, warned of a sinister, unnamed group of people 'pulling the strings, who have orchestrated every war to ever happen, the ones who profit off of death and sickness.'
The concept of viewpoint diversity burst on the political scene in 2002 with the publication of David Horowitz's 'Academic Bill of Rights.' Horowitz argued that universities should seek greater pluralism and diversity.
It's a case of the regulator not doing its job properly. These colleges don't appear consistent with the OfS requirements on academic freedom and freedom of expression, so they shouldn't have been registered in the first place. The lack of transparency is striking. If institutions are built around enforcing a confessional worldview rather than academic freedom, then they shouldn't be registered by the OfS or receiving public funds.
The exhibition included large-scale translucent paleta sculptures embedded with handcuffs and firearms, an illuminated paleta cart bearing the phrase "U.S. Department of Stolen Land Security" and paintings juxtaposing Indigenous iconography, pop cultural imagery and references to contemporary border politics.
In 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17 into law, banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public institutions across the state. In the years since, the University of Texas at Austin has been steadily remaking itself in the image demanded by conservative legislators across town.
It's been a hard year for higher education. He argued that the sector has been insulted, demeaned and assaulted, which has "disrupted our work" and "threatened our ability to do what we do for students, for communities and for America."
Academic freedom includes the right to teach and research "controversial or unpopular ideas related to the discipline or subject matter," but also says "academic freedom is not absolute." The move came despite opposition from the American Association of University Professors, which wrote the seminal 1940 definition of the concept.
While faculty at the state's public research universities-Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma-will keep their tenure, new teaching staff at the 23 affected colleges will shift to renewable contracts tied to "teaching effectiveness, student completion, job placement, and economic alignment."
In a letter addressed to Purdue leadership, which was publicized Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, dozens of signatories argue that the university soft banning students based on their nationality erodes higher education's core values of meritocracy, equality and academic freedom. They called on Purdue to clarify any instructions it has given graduate admissions committees and to restore offers to scores of international students they say the university rescinded last year.
Over the past several years, Texas has moved from griping about "woke campuses" to fundamentally restructuring the governance, curriculum, and tenure protections of its public universities. The cumulative effect is not reform. It's consolidation of power. And the target is the traditional independence of higher education. TL:DR - send your kids to Texas public universities, and it's like having the Texas legislature teach your kids.
I assume that it's intended to provide ammunition to go after disfavored faculty and/or to instill such a chill on campus that nobody would dare to say anything provocative in the first place. Whether those motivations are locally held or are meant to keep the university below the radar of certain culture warriors, I don't know. The effects are the same either way, and they're devastating to the mission of a university.
When I saw the Association of American Universities' rejection of the White House's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," I knew that the institutions invited to join the agreement were likely to reject it, too. At a time when organizational communication seems to be the province of PR firms, it is still true that a missive from a group representing some of our country's most prestigious research institutions carries substantial weight in U.S. higher education.
In a November email to faculty, Houston president Renu Khator wrote that the university's responsibility is to "give [students] the ability to form their own opinions, not to force a particular one on them. Our guiding principle is to teach them, not to indoctrinate them." The recent memo, sent by college dean Daniel O'Connor, asks faculty to "document compliance" with Khator's note.
We argue that "faculty members could hold strong viewpoints and yet act in accordance with the highest professional standards." We state emphatically that "it is not possible to make faculty experts refrain from articulating any political viewpoint" while adding that "it is possible to require that they limit the viewpoints expressed in classes to those that are academically justifiable and germane, and to create a space in class where other defensible positions can be expressed."
They say the state's process for developing the textbook and new course framework was opaque, rushed and designed to pressure universities into adopting censored learning materials without a legal directive to do so. Furthermore, the textbook-a heavily edited version of an open-source sociology textbook titled Introduction to Sociology 3e-now makes only cursory mentions of important sociological concepts regarding race, gender, sexuality and other topics that have drawn Republican ire.
When members of the American Historical Association (AHA) gathered in Chicago for their annual conference from January 8-11, 2026, many hoped the professional society would condemn the undermining of education and historical research in the United States and abroad. While the majority of members who attended the conference's business meeting on January 10 voted in favor of two resolutions denouncing the destruction of education infrastructure in Gaza and attacks on core principles of education in the United States, respectively, the wins were short-lived.
