Jonathan Feingold

@jpygold.bsky.social

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critical race theory should be on your syllabus. https://www.raceclasspodcast.com/

In a meeting with a Texas Tech administrator, Member #11 was also asked to remove the word "systemic" from the "Pedagogy" class syllabus. Specifically, member 11 was asked if they were "able to say the same thing without saying 'systemic barriers.' The adminstrator clarified, "That word, that one is going to be a trigger word for them [referring to the board of regents]."
Finally, Dr. Herrnstein and Mr. Murray may have feared that, even if they were to convince a reluctant America of blacks' superior intelligence and ability—much of which has been smothered by racial discrimination—that reality may have opened the question for many whites as to whether they had not been similarly disadvantaged on the basis of class. Such a long-overdue revelation could well spark serious political unrest and perhaps a rebellion.
When William Edward burghardt de bois testified before the us house committee on foreign relations on August 8, 1949 in opposition to the military assistance bill, the historian and vice chairman of the council on African affairs presented an invaluable assessment of the connection between capitalism, racism, imperialism and war. “Why in gods name do we want to control the earth? Is it because of our success in ruling men? We want to rule Russia and we cannot rule Alabama.”
FOREWORD THE UNIVERSITIES WILL NOT SAVE US In the spring of 2024, thousands of university students joined campus protests advocating for Palestinian human rights and calling on their institutions to divest from Israel’s military assault on Gaza.1 The student action echoed historical protest movements that universities routinely celebrate in their brochures, monuments, and signage.2 Yet rather than embrace their students’ principled activism, universities across the country deployed militarized force against their own communities.3 From elite Ivies in the northeast, to large privates in the Midwest, to state schools in Texas and California, administrators greeted peaceful protest with discipline, smears, and physical violence.4
Implicit Bias and Racism Recent Social Science Finds Little or No Anti-Black Discrimination Some studies find small anti-Black biases, some find no bias at all, and some find pro-Black biases Lee Jussim Jul 02, 2026 ∙ Paid
That is not to say that universities, and even sometimes state governments, cannot exercise ordinary employee management, make ordinary curriculum decisions (like which majors or courses to offer), or otherwise ensure competent academic instruction. But there is nothing ordinary about the authority Florida seeks here. The level of control that Florida demands—total—would be inconsistent not only with our Nation’s traditional constitutional protections for academic freedom, but also with the doctrines Florida cobbles together to support its suppression of disfavored viewpoints.
image of map from CRT Forward tracking project. https://crtforward.law.ucla.edu/map/
Ambivalent Advocates: Why Elite Universities Compromised the Case for Affirmative Action Jonathan P. Feingold* ABSTRACT “The end of affirmative action.” The headline is coming. When it arrives, scholars will explain that a controversial set of policies could not withstand unfriendly doctrine and less friendly Justices. This story is not wrong. But it is incomplete. This account masks an underappreciated source of affirmative action’s enduring instability: elite universities, affirmative action’s formal defenders, have long been ambivalent advocates. Elite universities are uniquely positioned to shape legal and lay opinions about affirmative action. They are named parties in affirmative action litigation and objects of public obsession. Yet schools like Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—embroiled in litigation now before the Supreme Court—avoid the facts and theories that would buttress their own race-conscious programs against predictable lines of attack. As a result, affirmative action’s formal advocates enable the case against affirmative action. In this Article, I examine how common institutional dynamics disincentivize elite universities from marshaling the most compelling case for their own policies. The consequences transcend discrete legal disputes. Affirmative action debates have long comprised sites of contestation over what, if anything, is necessary to overcome America’s legacy of white supremacy. When universities understate the case for affirmative action, they do more than compromise their own modest interventions. They also enable a resurgent right-wing campaign to discredit antiracism as the new racism and antiracists as the new racists.
In addition, young Americans have grown up in an age of rising illiberalism on the political right and left. They have witnessed leaders on the right who have resisted the peaceful transfer of power, and articulated a disturbing vision of an America defined mostly by blood and soil. Meanwhile, on the left, many suggest it is acceptable to shout down speakers; that racial and ethnic identities are more important than a shared American identity; that America is defined less by the vision enunciated in 1776 than by white supremacy and the importation of enslaved people in 1619; and that America is more often a force for evil than good in the world. Finally, America’s education system has become so focused on particular identities, “global citizenship,” and careerism that it has failed to convey to young people the extraordinary nature of their civic inheritance. Young people of privilege, facing intense pressure to attend certain schools, secure plum jobs, and adopt certain opinions, lose sight of how fortunate they are to live in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. Our schools and colleges dwell so heavily on negative aspects of the American story that an astonishing four in 10 Gen Z respondents are more likely to describe the Founders as “villains” than as “heroes.”
Leiter suggests that the AAUP supports DEI Statements because “diversity” aligns with the organization’s values, and that the AAUP is willing to sacrifice academic freedom to further that goal. To press this point, Leiter imagines a fictional university that adopts a MAGA “pro-American” policy that rewards “teaching, research, and service that respond to the needs of Trump’s America and its allies.” Surely the MAGA policy would undercut academic freedom, and since DEI statements and pro-America statements both advance “extramural social goals,” the two policies must stand or fall together.
In the list of required readings for the course, there are only two that could plausibly be considered “founding documents”: the U.S. Constitution (which appears in only one section of the course) and the Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. Almost every other reading comes from specialized anthropological studies, including “‘I’m American, not Japanese!: The Struggle for Racial Citizenship among Later-Generation Japanese Americans” and “Replicate, Facilitate, Disseminate: The Micropolitics of U.S. Democracy Promotion in Bolivia.” Revealing the course’s leftist orientation, one module covers “anthropology’s role in American Empire Building,” requiring students to read excerpts from Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.
DOJ finds that uc davis medical school considers race in admissions.
The Mellon Foundation Is Funding a Resistance Against Civics Schools Meeting minutes show the American Association of University Professors is trying to undermine civic leadership schools.
The “end of affirmative action” is the beginning of this story. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Supreme Court struck a near fatal blow to race-consciousness. Many institutions have since pivoted to “race neutral alternatives.” This is a natural turn. But one that faces immediate headwinds. The same entities that demanded Harvard pursue racial diversity through colorblind means have sued public high schools for doing just that. These litigants assert a “right to inequality”—a theory that would pit the Equal Protection Clause against equality itself. Even if normatively jarring, a right to inequality might seem a natural extension of SFFA and decades of conservative caselaw hostile to remedial reform. That sentiment is understandable. But it misreads the caselaw and overlooks a striking irony. The Supreme Court’s fifty-year war on affirmative action culminated in SFFA. But the same caselaw that precipitated affirmative action’s demise fortifies the constitutional case for colorblind remedies—the precise conduct a right to inequality would preclude. To enshrine such a right, sitting conservative Justices would have to abandon their own principles and precedent. This includes longstanding disregard for theories of equality that center groups and outcomes--both of which animate the right to inequality lawsuits. This means that conservative litigants, should they prevail, would benefit from concerns long associated with progressive causes. One corresponding question is whether a right to inequality--because it attends to group-based impacts—could re-empower racial justice advocates to challenge colorblind policies that conservative Justices have long shielded from legal scrutiny.
MAGA’S BLUE STATE STRATEGY: HOW DEMOCRATS AND UNIVERSITY LEADERS HELPED THE REACTIONARY RIGHT WEAPONIZE ANTISEMITISM AGAINST HIGHER EDUCATION JONATHAN FEINGOLD* & ISAAC KAMOLA** CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 102 I. THE BLM BACKLASH .......................................................................... 108 II. FROM “CRT IS RACIST” TO “DEI IS ANTISEMITIC” ............................. 111 III. THE DEMOCRATS OBLIGED ................................................................. 116 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 130
Basically, these professors say, anything deemed offensive to the Trump administration, which could thereby put federal funding to the university at risk, can elicit unwanted attention from Penn’s Office of General Counsel. Faculty in the School of Medicine even told me that efforts to urge Congress to preserve science funding were suppressed by Penn administrators. The pursuit of science, they were effectively told, is now categorized as partisan politics. (Penn’s Office of General Counsel declined my requests for an interview.)
Photo of Marco Rubio, Secretary of State next to photo of Marco Rubio, Acting Archivist of the United States on America 250 website.
Trump’s ed secretary again cancels visit to a Mass. school, this time ahead of protest Updated: Jun. 02, 2026, 10:37 a.m.|Published: Jun. 02, 2026, 9:31 a.m.
In this litigation, the government has not attempted to defend or provide any factual basis for these disparaging characterizations of American citizens. Indeed, the government has not contested that the Plaintiff-Appellees who are currently serving (and who have collectively earned more than 80 commendations) have served honorably and pose no threat to national security, even though they happen to be transgender and have suffered from gender dysphoria. Instead, the government contends that this case is solely about whether, pursuant to the Hegseth Policy, the military can disqualify persons from military service because they have gender dysphoria, a mental health condition. But the record shows that the purpose of the Hegseth Policy is to target applicants and servicemembers who express what the Administration believes is a “false gender identity,” and the
Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List The defense secretary’s decision to block the officers’ promotions appears driven by his anti-diversity stance rather than based on merit.
It is a fiction to think that a legal landscape organized around the principle of concentrating power and profit can operate to the benefit of our democracy. It is a fiction to think that a few well-intentioned pro bono hours can compensate for the rest of the work that we do. It is a fiction to think that individual actors can compensate for the drift of a system that works tirelessly to entrench those in power. And it is a fiction to think that lawyers can still be carrying out, as Samuel Adams observed, “one rule of justice for rich and poor” when the real-world impact of the legal industry is anything but.
The panel affirmed the preliminary injunction with respect to the DEI Termination Class. The panel held that the DEI Termination Class is likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim, where the agencies selected particular grants for termination regardless of the programs through which they were funded, and made decisions to terminate based only on the recipients’ perceived expression of DEI, DEIA, or environmental justice viewpoints. Because the agencies’ termination of grants was aimed at the suppression of viewpoints with which the government disagrees, it likely violates the First Amendment.
“It needs to be emphasized again and again: What is happening is an assault on democracy, and they’re using the easiest vector, which is anti-Black racism, because it’s the easiest thing you could do, the laziest thing you can do,” Nelson said. “They are cementing absolute minority control because they do not represent a majority of this country. And when they — if they — get away with the heist, we will be locked out of multiracial democracy for at least a generation.”
Recent campus controversies have resurrected an old set of faculty and student demands. In response to crackdowns on protests and attacks by the Trump Administration and allied state politicians, a chorus of critics has called on institutions of higher education to “democratize.”1 Echoing the arguments of student activists in the 1960s, these critics insist that more “shared governance” is needed for universities to protect free speech and academic freedom, rebuild trust within their communities, and fend off threats to their mission.2 “At a time when autocracy is rising nationwide,” a representative student editorial contends, it is all the more important for universities to “respond with democracy.”3
FIU suspends former campus Republican leaders for 2 years over racist group chat
US Sanctions Hamas Support Network
Heterodox academy The podium belongs to the graduates: a defense of commencement neutrality A virtual pop up conversation
Cover of The Diversity Principle by David Oppenheimer
This analysis reveals an underappreciated trend. Even as the Left champions affirmative action, the Right sets the terms of debate. This includes the Left’s pervasive reflex to defend affirmative action as a “racial preference.” This framing is neither inevitable nor strategic. The Left could, for example, defend race-consciousness as essential antidiscrimination—that is, a modest tool to mitigate existing racial (dis)advantage and, thereby, yield a more individualized, objective, and race-neutral process. But as the cases before for
But consistent with Trump’s segregationist agenda, federal officials can no longer employ disparate impact to challenge policies, practices, and pollutants that harm Black communities. The upshot is legal protection for the municipal leaders and petrochemical companies that profit off of “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch of land in Louisiana that local Black residents have called “death row.” The same applies to the public officials who should be cleaning up the “illegal dumping in [Houston’s] Black and Latino neighborhoods” and providing basic sanitation services to a “majority-Black community . . . long . . . exposed to raw sewage” following decades of municipal inaction and neglect.
I’ve had a career covering war, genocide and atrocities including rape, sometimes in places where the scale of sexual violence is far greater than anything committed by either Hamas militants or Israeli guards or settlers. In the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia a few years ago, 100,000 women may have been raped. Mass rape is now unfolding in Sudan. Yet our American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit.
A rule that a statute designed to serve neutral ends is nevertheless invalid, absent compelling justification, if in practice it benefits or burdens one race more than another would be far reaching and would raise serious questions about, and perhaps invalidate, a whole range of tax, welfare, public service, regulatory, and licensing statutes that may be more burdensome to the poor and to the average black than to the more affluent white.
Massive Resistance SUMMARY Massive Resistance was a policy adopted in 1956 by Virginia’s state government to block the desegregation of public schools mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1954 ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
I genuinely do not blame my professors for not knowing what to do when everything they believed about their chosen profession proved, in a matter of months, to be a lie. It is a very extreme and upsetting situation. That being said, the legal profession, and especially the legal academy, simply cannot keep going like this. The contradictions have become too great. It is better for everyone if we dispense with them now, and have the courage to deal honestly with one another.
Were it to take seriously what it calls the “greater issue” confronting the rest of the sector, the report would need to look not just beyond Yale, but beyond factors that universities directly control. It would have to acknowledge, for example, the obstructionist Supreme Court, which blocked President Biden’s plan to forgive over $400 billion in student loans for 43 million debt holders, or the current administration’s loan caps and ideological limits on repayment for those doing public service. One of the report’s virtues — its unflinching self-examination — turns out to be a liability when it means that outside political forces get examined only in passing, if at all.
Th ere Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’ Declining male enrollment has led many colleges to adopt an unofficial policy: affirmative action for men.
TABLE 3. Calculated Private University Applicants and Admitted Students by Race Based on Espenshade & Radford Reported Selection Rates192 Applicants Selection Rate Admitted Total 52,051 23.8% 12,388 White 28,992 25.7%† 7,451 Asian American 16,084 18.4% 2,959
There Was Definitely a Thumb on the Scale to Get Boys’ Declining male enrollment has led many colleges to adopt an unofficial policy: affirmative action for men.
I am convinced that there is something real out there in America for black people. It is not, however, the romantic love of integration. It is surely not the long-sought goal of equality under law, though we must maintain the struggle against racism else the erosion of black rights will become even worse than it is now. The Racial Realism that we must seek is simply a hard-eyed view of racism as it is and our subordinate role in it. We must realize, as our slave forebears, that the struggle for freedom is, at bottom, a manifestation of our humanity that survives and grows stronger through resistance to oppression, even if that oppression is never overcome. A final remembrance may help make my point. The year was 1964. It was a quiet, heat-hushed evening in Harmony, a small, black community near the Mississippi Delta. Some Harmony residents, in the face of increasing white hostility, were organizing to ensure implemen- tation of a court order mandating desegregation of their schools the next September. Walking with Mrs. Biona MacDonald, one of the or- ganizers, up a dusty, unpaved road toward her modest home, I asked where she found the courage to continue working for civil rights in the face of intimidation that included her son losing his job in town, the local bank trying to foreclose on her mortgage, and shots fired through her living room window. "Derrick," she said slowly, seriously, "I am an old woman. I lives to harass white folks."
Tennessee lawmakers approve congressional map intended to favor GOP
Screenshots of voters protesting racially discriminatory redistricting efforts underway in Alabama and Tennessee.
We hold varied opinions on Israel. Whatever our differences, we oppose the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism. If imported into federal law, the IHRA definition will delegitimize and silence Jewish Americans–among others–who advocate for Palestinian human rights or otherwise criticize Israeli policies. By stifling criticism of Israel, the IHRA definition hardens the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to every decision of Israel’s government. Far from combating antisemitism, this dynamic promises to amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face.
At today’s U-M spring commencement ceremony, our outgoing Faculty Senate Chair made remarks regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that were hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community. We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment. For this, the university apologizes. The Faculty Senate Chair deviated from the remarks he had shared before the ceremony. The Chair’s comments were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position.* Nor do they represent the diversity of views across our entire faculty.
person speaking at press conference.
Times Opinion gained access to a rare glimpse of ICE on patrol, reviewing 50 hours of body camera footage from a single night in Nashville. An investigation led by Lighthouse Reports first made the footage public. The footage reveals a pattern of overt racial profiling that’s been approved by an unusual source: the Supreme Court. The court has effectively banned the consideration of race in college admissions and many other parts of American life, but last year it gave ICE a green light to stop people based on their appearance or accent. This video shows the alarming results.
Live Updates: Supreme Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights Act
Reject the dangerous narrative that pro-Palestinian advocacy, in which many Jews have participated, is presumptively anti-Jewish; Terminate all collaboration with organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that smear our students and now applaud the lawless targeting of political opponents, and instead engage a variety of Jewish stakeholders to develop policies and programs that can meaningfully address antisemitism alongside all other forms of bigotry;
“It’s not as if all of the universities in more welcoming states are building out their women’s studies programs,” said Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware. “There are lots of quote-unquote ‘blue states’ making bananas cuts to their humanities programs.”
(b) At least once every five years, the governing board of each institution of higher education shall conduct a comprehensive review of the general education curriculum established by the institution. In reviewing an institution's general education curriculum, the governing board shall ensure courses in the curriculum: (1) are foundational and fundamental to a sound postsecondary education; (2) are necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life; (3) equip students for participation in the workforce and in the betterment of society; and (4) ensure a breadth of knowledge in compliance with applicable accreditation standards.
Stephen Pruitt, president of the association. He also said the accreditor hasn’t received any complaints about either university, including from faculty. Both institutions are in good standing—Texas Tech’s accreditation was renewed in 2025 for another 10 years. The higher education watchdog is limited in its ability to respond to the curricular policies because it cannot require its member institutions to adhere to a standard that would force them to violate state law or policy, Pruitt said. “We have always made it a practice that we don’t hold institutions accountable when there’s a state law that may [contradict] our standards,” he said. “At the end of the day, states rule the day.”
Jewish students, faculty, and staff found themselves isolated, facing hostility, and witnessing the normalization of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric,” the faculty wrote about the environment for Jews on campus after 7 October 2023. They pledged to offer a place for “open inquiry, intellectual rigor, and fearless debate”.
Other System Programs and Activities. No individual will, on the basis of any classification protected by state, federal, or local law, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefit of, or be subjected to discrimination under any system program or activity. No system academic course will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Upon prior written approval of the member CEO after review of the course and relevant course materials, specific non-core curriculum or graduate courses in some disciplines may teach race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Such approval may be granted in limited circumstances upon demonstration of a necessary educational purpose
Book Talk with Emmaia Gelman Tuesday, April 21, 2026 4-5:15pm ET register: https://tinyurl.com/ADL-Gelman
Most offensively, Harvard’s top brass has strongly implied, in a series of personnel decisions and in court, that a not insignificant number of its own professors are antisemites, with zero factual basis to support the smear. Consider a brief Harvard filed last week, which referred to the disciplining of the faculty who participated in a 2024 protest in Widener Library — one that made no mention of Israel, Palestine, or any issues other than free speech — as part of “actions it had taken to address antisemitism.” Influential actors aiming to reshape the university, likely including individuals who are being courted to pay the $10 million apiece to endow the “viewpoint diversity” professorships, are likewise leery of the academic experts who lead Harvard’s research and teaching. Sam Lessin, an alumnus and venture capitalist who founded the 1636 Forum after his failed 2023 campaign to join the Board of Overseers, told The New Yorker that he, in the words of the journalist Nathan Heller, “shares a widespread donor view that, at a moment when universities have become large and growth-oriented, more like companies, scholars are the wrong people to guide their trajectories.”