U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Issues National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards; U.S. Department of Education, August 3, 2026

U.S. Department of Education; U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Issues National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards

"Today, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a national call to action to university presidents and governing boards, urging them to reaffirm higher education’s foundational commitments to academic excellence, pathbreaking research, and national service. Secretary McMahon called on every postsecondary institution to publish, by the end of 2026, a clear public statement outlining its commitment to implementing reforms that will help restore public trust in higher education. 

For nearly four centuries, American higher education has shaped the leaders, institutions, and ideas that fortified the nation’s civic life, powered scientific advancement, and cultivated immense economic opportunity. Yet, as many institutions have drifted from these principles, confidence in higher education has eroded. Recent polling demonstrates that public trust in higher education has reached historic lows across political parties and demographic groups.  

In her letter, Secretary McMahon expressed confidence that bold university leadership will help usher in a renewed era of academic excellence, economic opportunity, scientific discovery, and American leadership. To this end, she urged universities to begin a “forthright conversation with the American people” guided by seven central questions:  

1. Transparency and Merit in Admissions: How will your institution ensure that admissions criteria are transparent and wholly described to prospective applicants? And how will your institution ensure admissions decisions are based on merit, achievement, and your university’s educational purpose?
2. Free Speech and Open Inquiry: How will your institution protect the free exchange of ideas, wide-ranging debate, and openminded campus discourse? And how will you guarantee that unruly and violent protestors do not harass students or disrupt classes, research, public lectures, and campus operations? 
3. Intellectual Pluralism and Academic Vitality: How will your institution encourage intellectual pluralism in all its academic units? How will your faculty hiring and evaluation practices support academic vitality and ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken seriously? And how will your institution ensure the research enterprise is dedicated to advancing knowledge, deepening understanding, and serving the American people who fund it?
4. Affordability, Value, and Student Outcomes: How will your institution ensure that families can access affordable, high-return, degrees? And what will your institution do to contain costs, improve pricing transparency, and ensure that every academic program equips students to repay their loans? 
5. Academic Standards and Rigor in the Age of AI: How will your institution incentivize rigor in the age of AI, combat grade inflation, and prioritize excellence in teaching and learning? 
6. Safeguarding Research Integrity from Malign Foreign Influence: How will your institutions protect academic programs from foreign influence, and safeguard the integrity of the research enterprise? 
7. Prioritizing American Interests: How will your institution answer this national call to action? How can your campus and faculty advance American security interests, deliver academic programs that meet urgent workforce needs, and contribute materially to the Nation’s prosperity? 

Click here to read the full letter."

Carlow, Duquesne leaders to meet Pope Leo during Catholic higher education seminar in Rome; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 24, 2026

MADDIE AIKEN , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Carlow, Duquesne leaders to meet Pope Leo during Catholic higher education seminar in Rome

"In addition to meeting the pope, the university leaders are scheduled to attend a session on ethics and artificial intelligence; visit the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, where Pope Francis is buried; and discuss immigration, Catholic identity and lifestyle with Vatican dicastery officials.

Humphrey expects the AI session to be enlightening. She thinks AI can transform education and the workforce in a positive way, but also believes it’s important to have conversations surrounding responsibility and environmental concerns.

“AI is changing the enterprise. It is changing how we teach, and it is creating, I believe, an opportunity to provide a higher level of learning,” she said."

ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really? Who will stand up for democracy?; The Ink, February 18, 2025

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."