Jack Grove for Times Higher Education; Academic Publishers Braced for Slowdown as Trump DEI Purge Bites
"Academic presses may face a slump in sales as U.S. university librarians become more cautious about buying books related to gender, politics or race in light of Donald Trump’s attack on “woke” research, publishers have warned."
Chris Williams, Above The Law; ABA’s Diversity Requirement Suspension Not Enough For Pam Bondi
"My money is on this being enough for the ABA to give up the pretense of still thinking about diversity and dropping the requirement. That said, it would be nice to see who the Trump administration would vest with accreditation authority should the ABA hold to its diversity guns. They’ve already tapped the WWE for their education expertise, maybe they’ll move on to some other conservative platform — Joe Rogan, perhaps? You might not even have to bother with law school with him in charge; just go on the podcast and hobnob about how great of a writer Scalia was and you’ll be greenlit to practice if the episode ratings are high enough! If Big Balls can get a coveted position in government with little to no real work experience, why can’t you go transactional after sharing some SCOTUS trivia on radio?
Playing the long game, the consequences of getting DEI out of law school will ruffle a few feathers. As much as the media likes to spin Dontravious and Jamal as proof that law schools are full of DEI, the actual culprits are Donna and Jessica. Just look at the numbers; it’s hard to talk about law school diversity without mentioning that women made up ~56% of the entering student body in 2024, which trends with them being the majority for the last few years now. The initial lawsuit phases will target law schools for having too many Black students, but the suits alleging sex discrimination for admitting too many women will be soon to follow.
See you in a couple of days when the ABA finally caves in."
Jared Mitovich, WHYY ; Gov. Shapiro meets with Penn Med leader amid ‘existential’ threat posed by Trump
"Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has met with the leader of the University of Pennsylvania’s Health System multiple times as Philadelphia’s largest private employer faces an “existential threat” from a loss of federal funding.
The meetings were described by the dean of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, Jon Epstein, in a live-streamed message to the Penn Medicine community on Feb. 18 that was obtained by WHYY News. It remains unclear when exactly the meetings were held and whether Shapiro discussed with Epstein a statewide response to the challenges facing Penn and other state universities — including a precipitous decline in the National Institutes of Health’s support for research that has prompted schools to curtail graduate admissions and lay off employees.
In his message, Epstein — who was appointed to his position in a permanent capacity Feb. 11 — painted a dire portrait of Penn Med’s future amid a “chaotic pace of government regulations and executive orders,” many of which have placed the university directly in their crosshairs...
Caught in the middle of the political upheaval are graduate students, researchers and 49,000 employees of Penn’s health system — which the university says supports 79,990 jobs in the region and generates a $15.1 billion economic impact.
Penn’s graduate admission cuts are the difference between studying pharmacology and working at Costco for Keely Barton, a first-generation student whose research appointment at Georgetown University ends in the next month. She was rejected from Penn’s prestigious Biomedical Graduate Studies program Friday, even though she said she was told when she interviewed in early February not to worry about changes at NIH impacting admissions.
On Feb. 7, the NIH slashed the rate it pays universities to support indirect costs to 15%. The weekend she expected to be offered admission came and went...
“I think there’s an entire generation of scientists that could be lost to this,” she said. “We can’t survive as a society without an investment in science.”...
Earlier this week, state lawmakers held an at-times contentious meeting with Jameson in opposition to the school’s scrubbing of web pages related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — with two officials walking out in protest of one top administrator’s referral to diversity as a “lightning rod."
In the message obtained by WHYY News, Epstein acknowledged that scrutiny of DEI has caused “considerable anger and pain” in the Penn Medicine community.
“For now, it’s clear that we need to modify some of our programs and websites in response to explicit government directives indicating that such diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts violate the law,” Epstein said, while cautioning that the school was not departing from its “core values.”"
Rachel del Guidice , Fox News; Actress Julianne Moore shares ‘great shock,’ claims her children’s book was banned by Trump Administration
"Actress Julianne Moore said in an Instagram post Sunday that she is in "great shock" over her children’s book being allegedly banned by President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense.
"It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run by the Department of Defense," Moore said in an Instagram post.
Moore, who won an Oscar in 2015 for her film, "Still Alice," published a children’s book in 2007 called, "Freckleface Strawberry," about a young girl who has freckles and learns to accept differences in herself and others."
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink ; ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really? Who will stand up for democracy?
"As I write this, there are scattered and inspiring examples of bravery all around us — prosecutors, judges, even the occasional lawmaker. But in the main, we are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are not the home of the brave. We are a country full of people smilingly capitulating to a tyrant...
Collaborating. Exactly that. It is fashionable now. Bravery, less so.
It’s the media owners who are rejecting advertisements from the pro-democracy movement and letting go of cartoonists who challenge power and settling bogus lawsuits to protect their wider commercial interests, and trying to position themselves in the Dear Leader’s good graces. Why do they even own newspapers? Maybe they would be better off owning banks. Do they know what newspapers are for?...
Then there are the CEOs, who, five years ago, proudly positioned themselves as avatars of a new future of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now purge those programs from their own companies. They have more power with the resources at their command than most people who have ever lived, but it is not enough to give them courage. They would sell out their own colleagues, make them feel less part of the team, in order to please a Dear Leader who would sell them out in a Wall Street second...
It is the university leaders who, instead of defending their faculty — one of the only bastions of protected thinkers who can actually tell the truth without fear because of tenure — are bending over backwards to please the wannabe autocrat. Campuses are now full of fear of a new McCarthyism. How does it feel to work for leaders who do not have your back?
Collaborating.
We are learning about ourselves as a country. We are learning who among us and around us is brave."
Western New York Library Resources Council; Top Ten Risk Management Exercises For Governing Boards of Libraries & Cultural Institutions During the 2025 Federal Shift
"Question:
Early 2025 has brought changes to stability of certain federal programs, funding, and governance. This instability is creating concern about access to grants, federal programs, and legal frameworks. What can our board do to address this?
2025 has INDEED started off with a great deal of instability to federal programs, funding, and governance. In this answer, we’ll call this phenomenon the “2025 Federal Shift.”[1]
During such times as the 2025 Federal Shift, it is the role of a governing board to assess factors that could risk the achievement of an institution’s mission and develop plans to address them. This is a process called “enterprise risk management.”[2]
While confronting risk can be intimidating, it can also be empowering. And while not every risk can be avoided, it can often be mitigated.[3]
So, whether you’re on the board of a small public library or helping to lead a library within a large institution, now is a good time to inventory newly emerging risks and develop a response plan.
While the array of risks may seem infinite, below please find a chart of risks created by the 2025 Federal Shift. Following that is a chart of institution-specific risks.
Neither chart lists everything facing your institution, but these charts are provided to inspire the start of an orderly, meaningful, and impactful risk management strategy to assist governing boards in performing their fiduciary duties to their institutions.
Top Ten Risk Management Exercises
For Governing Boards of
Libraries and Cultural Institutions
During the 2025 Federal Shift"
Reuters via The Guardian; US Air Force resumes teaching videos on first Black and female pilots after DEI review
[Kip Currier: This is a positive development to see that the U.S. Air Force has reinstated the use of videos about the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Air Force Service Pilots (or WASPs) in its training courses at its San Antonio-Lackland base in Texas. Providing access to information and the historical record is a basic building block of informed citizenries and free and democratic societies.]
[Excerpt]
"The US air force on Sunday said it would resume instruction of trainees using a video about the first Black airmen in the nation’s military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, which has passed review to ensure compliance with the ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that Donald Trump imposed early in his second presidency.
Trump, who retook office on 20 January, has prohibited DEI throughout the US government and military. Pete Hegseth, the new defense secretary, who was sworn in on Friday, has made eliminating DEI from the military a top priority.
Reuters reported on Saturday that the video about the Tuskegee Airmen as well as another about civilian female pilots trained by the US military during the second world war, known as Women Air Force Service Pilots (or WASPs), were not being taught in basic training at the San Antonio-Lackland base in Texas pending a review.
The move was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
The Air Force on Sunday said both videos will be taught."
Daniel Trotta, Andrea Shalal and Bianca Flowers, Reuters ; Trump campaign against diversity urges government employees to turn informer
"The Trump administration on Wednesday urged government employees to inform on each other and their departments in order to root out any attempts to hide diversity programs.
The latest escalation in U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) comes a day after he pressured the private sector to join the initiative and told government employees in offices administering such programs they would be placed on paid leave."
Earle Kimel , Herald-Tribune; Sarasota County asked to end ties to library associations over 'ideology, explicit' books
"Citing policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, Michelle Pozzie called the ALA part of a “bigger umbrella of three-letter organizations that, believe it or not, push ideology over explicit material and not age appropriate material as well as DEI talking points – which is a pet peeve of our governor, so it should be, as a reflection, for you, too.”
Pozzie, who said she homeschooled two children, said libraries are not safe for children because of books that can found there, including the 2019 graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe.
“Let me be clear, no one wants to ban books or censor speech but filth and ideology should not be funded in the taxpayer’s expense,” Pozzie said."
Amanda Waltz, Pittsburgh City Paper ; Stories Like Me defies book bans with store full of LGBTQ narratives for kids and teens
[Kip Currier: I'm grateful to have been able to talk recently with Helen Campbell, the creator and owner of the groundbreaking independent bookstore Stories Like Me, located in Pittsburgh's Greenfield neighborhood, and to record a conversation with her for The Information Professional in Communities course I am finishing up for the Spring Term.
One of the questions I asked Helen was:
What are some ways that you work to connect with and listen to the communities that are reflected in the books that you carry?
Helen shared that while prepping for our chat she'd written -- in all caps -- the word LISTENING. Expanding on this, she emphasized that listening is key, learning from that listening, and then listening again, in an ongoing, iterative way, to better understand the needs of individuals, families, and communities.]
"Helen Campbell has strong feelings about the current effort to ban LGBTQ books from library shelves, as parenting groups and state legislatures have swept in to attack everything from youth-focused trans narratives to drag story times.
“When you remove the stories of our LGBTQIA+ individuals from the shelves of libraries and schools, you are making a statement to the queer community that your story doesn’t matter, you don’t exist here,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper...
Of the book bans, Campbell says, “This is unconscionable and we, along with many other indie bookstores, are committed to keeping books on our shelves that will act as mirrors and windows for the queer community. We are a safe space, we are queer owned, and will stand against any attempts to erase the stories of marginalized people.”
