by Jay Waagmeester | Jul 8, 2026 | academic freedom, bans on critical race theory, censorship, critical race theory, education, First Amendment, Florida, free speech, Higher Education, News, Racial Justice, Ron DeSantis, Stop WOKE Act
Instead of the state determining what will be taught in university classrooms, students must be free to hear and consider even officially disfavored ideas presented to them by professors, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. More than two years after oral arguments in a case challenging the 2022 law dubbed the Stop WOKE Act, two out of three judges on a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th…
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by Anna Claire Vollers | Jun 27, 2026 | academic freedom, censorship, Higher Education, News, Public Universities, Universities
Jennifer Brooks, a history professor at Auburn University, had barely unpacked from a trip out of town earlier this month when the messages started blowing up her phone. Texts from colleagues and rumors on social media delivered the unsettling news: The Auburn Board of Trustees had voted to dissolve the school’s faculty senate and give itself ultimate authority over academic decisions…
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by Maura Finkelstein | Jun 19, 2026 | Antisemitism, Higher Education, Hillel, Israel, Op-Ed, Palestine, Students, Universities, Zionism
U.S. colleges and universities across the United States are using trainings, programming, and campus rules designed to “combat antisemitism” to directly contribute to a larger Zionist, right-wing trend that normalizes racism, Islamophobia, and the silencing of radical political thought rooted in liberation. The latest example of how this works was seen on June 5, when The Guardian broke the story…
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by Amy Goodman | Jun 12, 2026 | AAUP, Austerity, education, firings, Higher Education, Interview, labor, Layoffs, Mass Layoffs, tenure, The New School, Trump Administration
The Trump administration is continuing its assault on higher education, but in a departure from its earlier high-profile fights with individual institutions like Harvard, it is now rewriting the federal rules that govern all universities and colleges. Rules are being proposed by the Education Department and other agencies to impose the administration’s preferred policies on thousands of schools…
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by Henry A. Giroux | Jun 8, 2026 | AI, Canada, critical thinking, education, Higher Education, Militarism, Military Industrial Complex, Op-Ed, Trump Administration, War
What happens to higher education when institutions dedicated to critical thought increasingly align themselves with the logics of war, surveillance, and national security? Unless we mount an organized resistance, we may viscerally experience the answer to this question all too soon. We are already watching this transformation play out in both the U.S. and Canada as universities face growing…
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by Ryan Claycamp | Jun 7, 2026 | academic freedom, censorship, Higher Education, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Rights, News, Texas, Universities
Students at both the University of Texas and University of North Texas held mock funerals in May 2026 outside of meetings of the board of regents for their respective universities, where they mourned the loss of open discussion and academic freedom and integrity due to years of a right-wing legislative and institutional onslaught. Cameron Samuels, a law student at the University of Texas at…
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