Pratheepan Gulasekaram of the University of Colorado, said Trump’s Department of Homeland Security “is acting as though they are unbounded by congressional laws and can simply remove people at their discretion. This should scare all Americans — citizens, green card holders and student visitors.” Kevin Johnson, immigration law professor and former dean of the UC Davis law school, said he is concerned the Trump administration’s actions could discourage prospective students from applying to American universities in the future. “It’s going to have an impact on students coming, impact on universities in paying revenues, and that means there’s likely to be fewer foreign scholars who decide to come to the U.S. or stay after they’ve gotten a degree here,” he said.
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by Anna Bauman, St. John Barned-Smith, Bob Egelko, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: April 9th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Berg said the NIH’s justification that it can terminate a grant because it no longer “effectuates agency priorities” will “almost certainly” be litigated. “When a grant is awarded to a university, there are terms and conditions that go with the grant. It’s basically a legal contract,” he said. “The question of whether the rationale they’re giving is actually legal is very much an open question. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that the great majority of the terminations that have been done are in fact legal.” … A federal judge in Massachusetts has also enjoined the NIH’s recent guidance to cap the amount of money it sends to institutions to cover indirect research costs after a cavalry of Democratic attorneys general, institutions and trade associations argued in a lawsuit that the plan is “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the APA.
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by Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: April 2nd, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Every year, maintenance costs for University of California and California State University campuses total a combined $1.5 billion. But those repairs don’t always get made. The unpredictable nature of the state’s budget means there isn’t always enough money to make all the necessary fixes. State revenue has been sporadic, with hundreds of millions some years and no money in others. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget does not include any money for repairs, known as deferred maintenance, or other infrastructure projects. Absent a long-term funding plan, the deferred maintenance backlog has grown to an estimated $9.1 billion for the University of California and $8.3 billion for Cal State University as of the 2023-24 school year, driven by aging buildings and increasing costs for labor and parts.
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by Victoria Mejicanos, Matthew Reagan and Mercy Sosa, CalMatters.
Posted: April 1st, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of the K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction. “All of President Trump’s executive actions are lawful, constitutional and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said.
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by Hurubie Meko and Troy Closson, The New York Times.
Posted: March 13th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The U.S. Department of State has released a small portion of frozen funding that has imperiled key international education and exchange programs like the Fulbright and Gilman scholarships. Some funding is “trickling through,” a month after the State Department quietly suspended all grant payments, said Mark Overmann, executive director for the Alliance for International Exchange. Overmann, whose organization represents groups and providers that run exchanges and support global-education programming, estimates that about 15 percent of pending payments have begun to be disbursed over the last few days… Overmann said that it is unclear if the payments signal a regular resumption of funding, nor is there any indication about why specific spending has been restored. He also noted that the money that has been coming in does not cover operational or staff costs for the groups that administer many of the State Department programs.
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by Karin Fischer, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: March 12th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Monday, UCLA announced a new campuswide initiative to combat antisemitism, with Chancellor Julio Frenk saying the university is at an “inflection point” that compels it to “end hate however it manifests itself.” UCLA was not among the California universities that received the Education Department letter, but it is under multiple federal investigations by the Trump administration into alleged anti-Jewish incidents. Pro-Palestinian students, staff and faculty accused UCLA of prioritizing efforts to tackle antisemitism while avoiding equal focus on reports of racism and bias against Arab Americans, Palestinian Americans and Muslim Americans, saying the university was overreacting in fear of the Trump administration’s threats to cut funding. Roughly $1.1 billion of UCLA’s $11 billion budget comes from federal sources. UCLA officials denied the allegation, saying the university is working to address all reports of discrimination and has been planning its antisemitism initiative since January…
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by Jaweed Kaleem and Daniel Miller, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: March 11th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The USDA told its employees Monday to “temporarily no longer issue any payments or authorize any other releases of funding” to the University of Maine System while the department evaluates whether it should “take any follow-on actions related to prospective Title VI or Title IX violations,” according to a letter obtained by the Portland Press Herald. The agency began investigating Maine’s university system for gender-related civil rights violations the day after President Donald Trump and Gov. Janet Mills got into a public confrontation over the state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls sports.
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by Kay Neufeld and Riley Board, Portland Press Herald.
Posted: March 11th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The public institutions in California include Santa Monica College, Sacramento State University and four University of California campuses: Berkeley, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Four private colleges and universities in California were also included: Chapman University, Pomona College, Stanford University and the University of Southern California. UC said in a statement Monday that it is aware of the letter and added that the university is “unwavering in its commitment to combating antisemitism and protecting the civil rights of all our students, faculty, staff, and visitors.”
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by EdSource Staff, EdSource.
Posted: March 10th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Trump gloated about the arrest on Monday. “Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” the president wrote. “This is the first arrest of many to come.” Donald Trump signed an executive order in January targeting what he described as “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.” The president has also threatened to revoke federal funding from universities that allow what he called “illegal” protests. Trump has attacked Columbia, pulling $400 million in funding, alongside nine other universities that had pro-Gaza encampments and protests. The Trump administration claims these protests are antisemitic rather than First Amendment-protected rallies against a brutal assault on Gaza.
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by Peter Wade, Rolling Stone.
Posted: March 9th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the iconic Geisel Library at UC San Diego on Friday to participate in a rally aimed at defending science from what supporters described as federal disruptions, particularly under the Trump administration. The rally, dubbed by organizers as “Stand Up for Science,” saw attendees from various scientific fields come together in a unified stand against what they say are dangerous cuts to scientific funding, censorship in regards to language in science and purges of federal programs.
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by Amber Coakley, Fox 5 San Diego.
Posted: March 8th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
