The Ivory Tower Under Siege

When thousands of ICE officers descended on Minnesota last month for "Operation Metro Surge," students at Augsburg University and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities didn't just feel fear—they changed how they physically move through their world. Scott Carlson's reporting reveals students now stick to skyways and underground tunnels between buildings, avoiding the open air where enforcement visibility is highest.

This isn't paranoia. It's adaptation to a new reality where ICE has made clear that college campuses are no longer treated as sensitive locations deserving special consideration. The psychological toll extends far beyond undocumented students—even those with legal status describe a "perception of danger everywhere."

Universities face an impossible position: they can't promise protection they can't deliver, yet their silence feels like abandonment. Some are posting "know your rights" resources. Others are training staff on what to do if ICE arrives. None of it addresses the fundamental shift: for many students, campus no longer feels like sanctuary. It feels like territory.

Columbia art historian Janet Kraynak doesn't mince words: universities are "sleepwalking into irrelevance" by uncritically embracing AI. Her essay is a provocation—and a necessary one.

The core argument cuts deep: the "inevitability" narrative around AI adoption isn't inevitable at all. It's manufactured. Tech companies have successfully convinced higher education that resistance is futile, so institutions scramble to integrate rather than question. Sound familiar? Kraynak draws a direct line to social media's campus invasion a decade ago.

"We are witnessing the spectacular failure of the university to heed the hard lessons of social media."

Universities, she argues, should be the institutions asking the hard questions: What does AI dependence do to critical thinking? What happens when students outsource judgment to algorithms? Instead, they're racing to become "AI-ready" without defining what that means or who it serves.

The essay won't make administrators comfortable. That's precisely the point. If universities won't serve as skeptics of technological determinism, who will? Certainly not the companies selling the tools.

After four decades at Harvard, historian James Hankins is leaving for the University of Florida's new Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. It's the highest-profile example yet of what might be called ideological sorting in American academia.

Hankins, interviewed by Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin, frames his departure around curricular decay—the "eclipse of Western history by global history" has left students in "moral and intellectual disorientation," he argues. But there's more: he cites what he perceives as systematic discrimination against white men in hiring and admissions.

Whether you find this analysis compelling or misguided, the phenomenon it represents is real. Florida's aggressive moves to reshape higher education—eliminating DEI offices, creating new "classical" programs—are successfully attracting scholars who feel marginalized at elite private universities. A parallel academic ecosystem is emerging.

The implications are profound. If conservative scholars increasingly cluster in certain states while liberal scholars dominate others, what happens to the intellectual diversity that universities claim to value? We may be watching the balkanization of American higher education in real time.

Morris Brown College fired President Kevin James. Then, one week later, they reinstated him. The reversal happened so fast it gave observers whiplash—and raised hard questions about governance at historically Black colleges.

Context matters here: James is widely credited with Morris Brown's miraculous turnaround. The Atlanta HBCU had lost accreditation for twenty years—two decades in the wilderness. James led them back in 2022, a feat many thought impossible.

So why the firing? The board hasn't been fully transparent, but the reinstatement came with a notable caveat: a statement warning that "retaliation against whistleblowers would not be tolerated." That suggests internal conflicts the public hasn't fully seen.

The rapid reversal likely reflects the power of alumni and public outcry. HBCUs operate under enormous pressure—financial, political, cultural—and James had built real goodwill. His removal sparked immediate backlash. The question now: can he actually govern with a board that just tried to fire him?

If Kraynak's essay is the philosophical critique of AI adoption, Beth McMurtrie's survey data is the empirical confirmation. The numbers are stark:

95% of faculty worry students will become overly dependent on AI tools. 90% believe it will erode critical thinking skills. 60% say their institutions have failed to prepare them or their students for an AI-integrated future. And one-third report dealing with significant academic integrity violations related to AI.

That last number deserves attention. A third of instructors saying they've dealt with "a lot" of AI-related integrity violations suggests the cheating problem isn't a fringe concern—it's pervasive. Yet most institutions have been slow to develop clear policies, leaving individual faculty to improvise.

What's remarkable is that faculty anxiety persists despite—or perhaps because of—AI's genuine usefulness. Most professors recognize the technology has legitimate applications. They just don't trust students to use it appropriately, and they don't trust their institutions to help them navigate the complexity.

The University of Pennsylvania is fighting a subpoena from the Trump administration's EEOC demanding a list of all Jewish employees. The university's response was unequivocal: compiling such lists sets "a dangerous historical precedent."

The administration frames this as an antisemitism investigation—using civil rights tools to probe potential discrimination against Jewish faculty and staff. Penn calls it overreach that "infringes on privacy and First Amendment rights."

Both sides have chosen their rhetorical ground carefully. The administration can claim it's fighting antisemitism. Penn can invoke historical memory of what happens when governments compile religious identity lists. Neither characterization is entirely wrong, which is what makes this legally and politically explosive.

The case matters beyond Penn. If the administration prevails, it establishes a template for demanding demographic data from universities under civil rights authority—data that could be used in ways the original request doesn't specify. Elite institutions have already faced intense pressure over campus protests and DEI programs. This opens a new front.

Watch this one. The legal battle will likely take months, but the precedent it sets could reshape the federal government's relationship with higher education for years.