Mass Firings & Campus Crackdowns: U.S. Academia Under Fire

We’re rounding up and analyzing education news headlines this week on 16:1:

• The U.S. Department of Education is now half its former self—with 1,300 staffers gone and lawsuits brewing over what critics call a systematic gutting of civil rights protections. We’re sorting through the challenges and exploring the fallout on public education.
• Arrests of Palestinian student activists at Columbia have raised fresh questions about academic freedom and the future of the United States’ role in international scholarship. With visa crackdowns and a shaken reputation among U.S. universities, the stakes are higher than ever. Some European universities (like Aix Marseille) are offering safe haven to researchers leaving the U.S. due to concerns over academic freedom.
• We also take a look at Title VI investigations targeting diversity programs and the pushback by parents, students, disability advocates, and more.
• We’re revisiting the Science of Reading with updates on how the literacy movement continues to reshape classrooms nationwide.

For a full list of episode sources and resources, visit our website at sixteentoone.com/archives.