National Free Speech News & Commentary

UConn Med now lets students opt out of DEI pledge of allegiance

April 07, 2025 1 min read

Ross Marchand 
FIRE

Excerpt: Great news: UConn School of Medicine administrators are going scalpels down on the school’s attempt to forcibly transplant politics and ideology into its incoming student body. 

In 2022, UConn finalized its own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to “actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination and racism.” Most recently, UConn required the incoming class of 2028 to pledge allegiance not simply to patient care, but to support diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Trump Demands Harvard Eradicate DEI to Preserve Its Federal Funding

April 04, 2025 1 min read

Maya Stahl
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The Trump administration is demanding that Harvard University eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, reform admissions and hiring practices, and crack down on student discipline “to remain a responsible recipient of federal taxpayer dollars.”

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Commentary: Grant Terminated

April 03, 2025 1 min read

Researchers Impacted by Federal Grant Terminations
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Billions of dollars in federal scientific research grants have been rescinded or suspended since the start of the Trump administration.

Below, 16 researchers across nine different research areas who have had their federal grants terminated since the start of the Trump administration share just a few of the thousands of stories behind these cuts.

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Differentiating Colleges and Universities In A Tax On Endowment Income

April 02, 2025 10 min read 4 Comments

by Ed Yingling '70

Washington insiders believe it is very likely that a significant increase in the tax rate on university endowment income will be enacted this year. They cite the need for additional tax revenue to offset the Trump tax cut agenda and the antipathy of many Republicans to what has been happening on campuses for the last two years. They also focus on the fact that then-Senator JD Vance introduced a bill in the last Congress imposing a 35 percent tax on endowment income.

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Commentary: I’m Cornell’s President. We’re Not Afraid of Debate and Dissent.

March 31, 2025 1 min read

Michael I. Kotlikoff
New York Times

Excerpt: Cornell University recently hosted an event that any reputable P.R. firm would surely have advised against. On a calm campus, in a semester unroiled by protest, we chose to risk stirring the waters by organizing a panel discussion that brought together Israeli and Palestinian voices with an in-person audience open to all.

The week before, I extended a personal invitation to our student community, explaining that open inquiry “is the antidote to corrosive narratives” and is what enables us “to see and respect other views, work together across differences and conceive of solutions to intractable problems.”

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Commentary: The End of College Life

March 30, 2025 1 min read

Ian Bogost
The Atlantic

Excerpt: The start of spring semester is a hopeful time on college campuses. Students fill the quads and walkways, wearing salmon shorts or strappy tank tops. Music plays; Frisbees fly. As a career academic, I have been a party to this catalog-cover scene for more than 30 years running. It looks made-up, but it is real. Every year in the United States, almost 20 million people go to college, representing every race, ethnicity, and social class. This is college in America—or it has been for a long time.

But college life as we know it may soon come to an end.

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