Heather Shea
Welcome back to current campus context, a limited series from student affairs now the online learning community for those of us working in alongside and adjacent to higher education and student affairs, I’m your host, Heather Shea, and we are recording this episode today at 4:23pm eastern time on Thursday, April 10. As always, things might have changed by the time you listen. Each week, we have been breaking down the shifting landscape of higher education, what’s happening, why it matters, and how we can respond. Dr Nolan Cabrera raised a crucial question, what does it mean to navigate this moment with both awareness and action this week, that moment feels particularly urgent. I feel like it felt urgent the entire time, but we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about more urgency today, from rising political interference in governance, to escalating federal actions targeting students and institutions, to a fraying relationship between higher ed and the federal government. These are, as we know, not isolated stories. They are connected to a broader shift in how power politics and higher education intersect. And so we will be breaking this all down today with two expert correspondents. I’m super excited to welcome back again. Dr Demitri Morgan, welcome back. Hello. Good to be back. You are an expert in institutional governance, campus climate, student activism and STEM education in higher education and is and Dr Morgan is an associate professor of education down the road for me at the University

Demetri L. Morgan
of Michigan, I’m grouchy. Snow today. Snow today.

Heather Shea
Yeah, it was, there was snow. Said that

Felecia Commodore
this way. Keep it up there. I just got out of the it’s snowing again, yeah, disposition, so you all keep that up there. Yeah,

Heather Shea
it’s, it’s, it’s the false spring, I think, is what they call it. And then we’re back to winter. So, um, welcome back, Dr Commodore. Dr Felicia Commodore, it’s great to

Felecia Commodore
have you same. Glad to be back.

Heather Shea
Dr. Commodore is an expert in leadership, governance and administrative practices in higher ed with a focus on HBCUs MSIs and black women in leadership. She is an associate professor in educational policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois. Urbana Champaign, so great to have you both here with me today. We are going to break down three big news stories really quickly and then get into the conversation. So we have been tracking several different major stories, and it’s always, every week, a little bit difficult to figure out which ones we want to highlight. But today, we’re going to start with a piece that was inspired, actually by a opinion piece that Dr Morgan published in Inside Higher Ed. So you know, we’re we’re really interested in who is speaking up, how they’re speaking up. And you noted in your piece that boards of trustees or governing boards are often the sleeping giants of higher education governance, but we know that in the face of rising political interference and threats to institutional independence, boards should be playing potentially a bigger role in defending academic freedom, institutional mission and autonomy. Dr Morgan wrote that we are seeing a shift from shared governance to scared governance. I thought that was pretty that was a that was a good lot, that was a good line, and the consequences are really profound. So as of today, or maybe this was actually yesterday, more than $3 billion in federal funding has been threatened or cut from higher education, and so I My question is, When will trustees step up and fulfill their fiduciary duties to protect their institutions? So that’s the first topic. The second, just wanted

Speaker 1
to shout out, Dr Raquell Rall, yes, well, yeah, doctor,

Heather Shea
Dr. Raquel Rall also co authored that piece. So thank you to you both, and we’re linking that in the show notes for today so people can access that directly. The other thing I noted this week is that national media coverage, including NPR politics podcast and the daily from the New York Times has increased attention to the long standing but increasingly fragile relationship between higher ed and the federal government. In the piece on the daily, they talked about a once 70 year partnership rooted in research education and the public good. It has turned adversarial and even hostile. So in recent weeks, we know there have been threats to cut federal funding. There has been actual cuts, not just threats. There have also been attempts to limit speech, revoke student visas, and politicize accreditation processes. The Chronicle reported that federal pressure on accreditors may be the next powerful level lever of political control. And I think that is scary beyond belief, right? I think if

Felecia Commodore
you go back like two episodes, this was the thing that was keeping me up. And

Heather Shea
here it is that chronicle naming it. And then I, you know, personally, am thinking a lot about our international students Inside Higher Ed. Reported as of April 8. Today, it’s more than 100 colleges and over 450 international students and recent graduates whose visas have been changed or revoked with little or no explanation. And you know, if we worked in higher ed for a little while, you know that student visas were pretty routine, but they now seem to be caught up in a larger political battle, raising, for me. Urgent questions about how institutions are supporting their international students in this moment. All right, so let’s, let’s get into it. We have some big shifts to discuss. So Dimitri, I’m going to start with you. Can you talk a little bit about the framing of your piece, but what responsibilities you see boards and trustees really have in defending institutional autonomy right now?

Demetri L. Morgan
So you know, one of the things that Dr Rawl and you know, along with Dr Commodore, we’ve been saying over the last few years is that, you know, if boards are involved, particularly in justice and equity efforts, that the level of sustainability of those efforts is always in jeopardy. And you know, we’ve been yelling and screaming and, you know, trying to get out there with that message, but it’s hard because, you know, boards are sort of out of sight, out of mind for many students, faculty and staff, and that sort of neglecting them in our consciousness has been allowed for when boards want to assort their authority for the types of dynamics that we’ve seen both in terms of them being The arbiters of some of the challenging dynamics on campus, like we see in some of the Southern institutions, are also just kind of standing pat and not doing much and not knowing how to defend Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives as an example. So in this piece, and one of the things we’ve been trying to do is just consciousness raise to say, hey, boards have a role to play. We see faculty activated. We see students. Student Organizations activated. We see staff. You know, Natalie was one of the first the chief diversity officers was one of the first associations to be a part of lawsuits. Kind of everybody is playing their roles in trying to resist or push back or kind of influence what’s going on in boards, and the associations that typically represent boards, Association of Governing Boards, AGB, have been relatively silent in comparison to the activity that we’ve seen in other domains. And so, you know, this piece had been in the works for a few weeks now, but to really say, like, Hey, where are the boards? And both as a call into boards, but also as a way for other actors in this space to also ask that question and to really get into it, I think. And you know, I would love Dr Commodores perspective. I still think, even as I’ve been trying to share with different groups and different people, that people have a skepticism and this sort of disdain for whether boards should actually be involved, and I think sometimes that puts me in opposition to faculty senates or other groups that I’m talking with, but I’m not sure how we navigate successfully This particular moment if boards aren’t involved. And so really it’s just trying to start that conversation for student affairs professionals, for student groups, to say, hey, part of your request, part of your engagement, has to include you engaging the board. And it’s not as straightforward as kind of going to protest at the Chancellor’s house. Like the board is not always present. They’re actually very rarely present on campus. So you have to have different strategies and different ways of communicating. And I don’t think that part of the consciousness in some of these efforts is there. Yeah,

Heather Shea
Dr Commodore, what would you like to add to this?

Felecia Commodore
Yeah, other than I just want to say once again, that we. I’ve been screaming this from the mountain top for maybe like seven, eight years now, um, and I just hate when we’re right. So yeah, but um, yeah, I think to Dimitris point, we often, um, we often let boards be hidden, and we often don’t even think about boards until we’re in crisis. And we’re in crisis, right, like as a as a field, or as an industry, if you want to look at it that way, it’s so interesting. I just did a presentation, a workshop yesterday, where part of the framing of that talk about higher education and being in a social contract with us society, and one of the things that I mentioned in that framing is that there’s three major entities, from my vantage point, that make up this social contract. You have government, you have industry, and you have higher education institutions, right? And so if we think about those three entities making up the social contract, then we understand that what fractures the contract is, is when, when one or more of those parties decides they don’t want to hold up the contract anymore, right? And I think that’s what we’re starting to see. But some of these actions, and when that happens, all kinds of things get impacted, economy, society, health, all these things. Because part of the reason, or the motivation for that social contract is that we believe that all three of these entities support and work with each other to create the society that we want, right? So when, when it starts to fracture, the society we thought we wanted falls apart. I like I wanted to use that framing, because one of the things that I posit and I know we pause in our work too. We’ve done some work around boards, particularly system level boards as or state level boards as intermediaries. But really thinking about who are the levers? If we think about levers, who are the levers that sit in between these three entities within this contract, and I argue that that’s the Board of Trustees. Your your trustees are often people who fall at those intersections. They have a foot or interest in between government, industry and institutions. So if we’re seeing a fracture, fracturing of that contract that’s having that we know having, and we know it’s going to continue to have an effect, a dire effect, on a society we’re trying to build and uphold. Then it’s those levers that we need to pull and activate in order to keep the bottom from falling out. And so as much as, and I agree, you know, I say stuff like, we should probably have better relationship with boards and faculty. Want to throw me out the window, but, but I do think we have to understand the where they sit in power. And I think in addition to us as higher education stakeholders, understanding that, I think boards need to understand that, which is why I really enjoyed Dimitri and raquels piece because I think also board members don’t always, or aren’t always able to identify how they can be levers in making sure things move where they should move, or don’t move in ways that they should move. But I think that board members, because of their unique positioning betwixt and between those three entities within that social contract, really can play a role in making things shift in a particular type of way, whether that is through being vocal, but also through resources, how they can impact Resource Flow, their networks, how they can leverage network and social capital and the power behind that. You know, I think it is not lost on me that a number of the institutions that are being that we’re seeing at least reported with such kind of the big billions of dollars being lost, are institutions that, if we look at their boards, has some of the most powerful people sitting on them, wealthy people sitting on them, representation from some of our most major corporations across The country that is a lot of social network power, right? So the question is, one, do these board members know what to say or or know what to do? Two, how do they leverage that power for the betterment? Then I. Think also in this, you know, the cynic in me shows up once more. Are the board members in cahoots with the contract falling out? Right? Because that’s, I think that’s also a very honest conversation that we have to have, is that maybe some of the things we’re seeing we’re already were things that some of our boards already, board members already wanted to go in motion, and this gives them an opportunity to move that way. And that is something we need to also be aware of. And this is something that I, you know, I’ve been passionate about for many years, and the work that we’ve done on me and Demetrius, like board composition matters, and who’s on these boards, the values they bring, the things they’re connected to, matter. And I think now is the time. And you know, board members aren’t gonna like me for this, but we need to start doing some interrogation of where people stand, what their values are, and so so that we have information as advocates for higher education of how we may need to move but I absolutely think they are important, important levers in this, and we do need to be more intentional as higher education stakeholders of understanding how to build relationships With those levers, and how we can use those levers. Really well. Said,

Heather Shea
Yeah, I mean, I think the piece that I’m hopeful about, and before we started recording, I mentioned that, you know, my colleague, Keith Edwards, keeps talking about the positive, like, I see this happening. I see this happening. Like, if we can start repairing some of those cracks or address some of the lovers, as you call it, like and and that’s illuminated through the larger media, right? So this, this NPR and New York Times pieces, I think are interesting. There’s interesting implications for the public discourse about how we are spotlighting institutions and the threats that are facing them. And the piece particularly I’m thinking about is the one with President Eisgruber from Princeton. So I don’t know if either of you have thoughts about like, is this a hopeful movement, or is this less helpful? Dr Commodores, start with you. I’m

Felecia Commodore
gonna jump in first, because I tend to be the least hopeful of the two of us. But I want to leave the people on a high note. Think it. I am encouraged that we are having more of the discussion in a in visible, larger platforms than just within our own community. However, I I’m a person that lurks about on the Facebook streets, because I like to see how people, like the people of the world, are talking about these things. And one of my one of my concerns, though, with the way the conversation is happening, and it’s there’s a tension here, and I’ll explain that in a minute. Is who we’re talking about. Yeah, and not that I want us to start, you know, bringing any spotlight to the regional, comprehensive, the folks, I kind of want them to stay in the shadows. But I think the challenge that I’m seeing with the public discourse is that the regular everyday person who we need to be motivated to support our institutions. When they see a Columbia lose billions of dollars, it means nothing to them, because most of them do not have any connection to a Columbia, to a pen to a Harvard, right, and also, we have not done a good job of explaining how endowments work. So when they see that Columbia has lost $9 billion or whatever it was, they’re like, well, they have 150 billion in their endowment. And so what, right? And I literally was, and I need to really stop lurking around the Facebook streets, but I literally found myself in this conversation where this is quite how endowments work, right? But the person was literally like, if they have multi billion dollar endowments, what do they need our tax money for, right? And so when I saw that, I was like, hmm, that’s, you know, these are things we need to know, because what we don’t make the connection to is what’s happening to Columbia will happen to your regional comprehensive institution down the road, where most of the kids from your high school that went to college go to college, where most of your nurses are getting their nursing degrees so that they can staff your hospitals and your nursing homes and and feed their. Families, right, where you know people, your teachers are getting the connection isn’t made because what we though we’re talking about it, we’re talking about it from these institutions that we see as a society, the same way as we see wealthy people, and the same way you saw people when the tragedy the fires was happening in California, and there was these, this cognitive people like they’re rich, yeah, not worried about their house burning down. I think we’re seeing similar kind of reactions from the general public. So I want us to talk. I’m encouraged that we’re talking about it, but I think we need to bring it closer to home and into people’s neighborhoods, because right now, we’re talking about very wealthy institutions losing money, and I don’t know that it’s making the connection that we want it To make that we need it to be,

Demetri L. Morgan
yeah, yeah. Really, really similar. And I’ll sort of keep it Michigan for a second. But for those that follow politics, political junkies, our governor in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, kind of caused some a stir, we’ll say because she went to the White House and in for me, this connects to the question, because, you know, I think for a long time, we’ve said, you know, higher education’s relationship with the community, kind of to the social contract and how we message and talk about the outcomes of Higher Education, the public, the public benefit have not resonated. And I think, you know, one of the things that you know, I think Governor, Governor Whitmer was, was trying out, is we have to figure out what messages are going to land and bring people along. And part of that means putting the sort of discourse out there. And some people loved it, some people, you know, hated it, but you know, at least in the sort of Democrats, it’s like what messages are going to resonate. And I think that is the same thing in higher ed, where I’m glad to see this discourse start to move, because I think we have to message test. I mean, you have to understand which things are going to break through the noise, which things are going to, you know, resonate and be compelling to people in the way for us to talk about, you know, what we what we do in society, what we, you know, I think a lot of people were like, Oh, well, NIH is being cut. We’re just gonna go out and say, oh, you know, we’re this is gonna stop cancer. And, you know, I lost my mom to cancer, and so that’s compelling for me. But like police. She said it’s like, well, you know, my local places may be doing, maybe doing cancer research. Why does Columbia need all of those billions of dollars like it? I think people were shocked that it wasn’t a more resonant message that all these clinical trials were going to stop. And I think we need to keep the message testing. So I think, you know, I was saying, you know, President, former President Obama, you know, in one of our graduation speech, you know, was talking about higher ed. I think we need more messengers talking about it, and it being because eventually something’s gonna break through, and people will be like, okay, like, yeah, maybe we should frame it like this. Maybe we should talk about this, but we’re still very early in that. And so those people who are putting out there, kind of like, Governor Wil, you’re a lightning rod. You’re gonna get, you know, your head chopped off a little bit, because she’s one of the first, you know, sort of Democrats to try to, you know, try to out this new message of, kind of walking with Trump and not too close, and drawing a line, but keeping it state focused. It’s really tough needle of thread. And I think higher ed is trying it to do a similar thing. But you know also to the to the board point, we don’t, we’re, we’re trying to operate muscles we haven’t used. We’re asking board Yeah, that we asked them to do, nor train them for, no, prepare them for. And to Dr COVID point like not in, not thought about as we constructed these boards compositionally. And so now we’re like, hey, defend us. And it’s like, you just told me to write a check and show up for, you know, cocktail hour, and now you want me to, like, be doing more than that, like, that’s not, that’s not what I was told. This was, this was, and so I think we also have to, by no means am I running interference or being, you know, apologetic for boys, but there, there has to be sort of training and development, message testing, those things to make sure that what we’re sharing and how we’re sharing, it is actually doing the type of bidding for higher education that we think is going to be productive. Yeah,

Felecia Commodore
and I want to add to this, because I like this idea of message testing, and I think we also have to do a better job of message testing outside of our bubbles, right? We message test to each other. It’s like I already know how you’re going to respond for the most part to my message, right? And the. Is this is why I like her bowed on the Facebook streets, because I think we have to see how folks who already don’t have a strong value in or trust in higher education, what is the message that’s going to resonate with them. And I think often we come from a place assuming people already see the value in higher education. And I make the I talk about this with my class often is that I think it’s higher ed has a harder sell than K through 12, because K through 12, it’s easier to make the connection to the neighborhood. And you know, as the saying goes, all politics are local, right? And so I think I see the kids in my neighborhood, I see the schools in my neighborhood. This directly impacts, even if I don’t have children, it impacts my life. But I think the way higher ed has been positioned in our society, particularly in the last 30 or 40 years, it seems more like a private good than a public good, right? And so if I don’t participate in it, if no one connected to me, participates in it, or if they participate in it, and it seems like they’re doing worse than I am, right? That didn’t participate in it. There is a distrust, and there is a lack, I think, of motivation to get behind putting money in and investing in getting enthralled in these conversations about a space that I feel like that was your decision to get involved in that that has nothing to do with me and My you know your eggs, right? The infamous eggs. And so I think we have to with this message testing. We have to get back to that mantra of all politics are local, whether that’s your state level, whether that’s your community and and, you know, I talk about this often, like we saw with COVID, what would happen if we had let institutions completely close and bottom fall out? I mean, whole state economies could were on their way to tanking, right? We look at, you know, I think about a University of Pennsylvania, which is very wealthy institution, and I think when we just talk about it, generally it’s like, oh, they’re rich, right? Like they have this big endowment. Who cares? They lose money. But we also forget to say University of Pennsylvania is the largest employer of the city of Philadelphia, which is a majority black city, majority black working class city, so when University of Pennsylvania goes down, the neighborhood loses jobs. People loses lose jobs that that causes all kinds of challenges, from childhood, hunger, access to health care, all these things because this one university, which is a major economic driver in the city, did not get the support it needed to do or had to move in fiscally conservative ways because of the way in which the government has pulled money from them, right? We have to jump to that message as well as the research that’s happening right? Because I can’t I can’t see research, and I can’t eat it, right? And so I really want us to rethink that. And I think, do think there are some, some states that are doing some really good work with that, some state leadership who are like messaging at the state level, like we know we need these institutions to keep our state afloat. And I just want us to, when we’re message testing, just remember what we’re testing too.

Heather Shea
Yeah, yeah. I’ve been thinking about this a lot for a while because, partially because of the cost of higher ed, right? And the fact that it’s not subsidized to the extent that it is in other countries, is a fascinating demonstration of it being an individual benefit versus us collectively, believing that an educated populace is a common good or it’s a public good. And I think about so, I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna shift us to the international student piece, because, you know, when I think about students who are coming to the US primarily, maybe because of the reputation of the institutions and because of the opportunities to do research alongside faculty who are, you know, receiving grants from the federal government to sustain long term research and and now these student visas being just like wholesale. Feel revoked. It feels, it feels that we talked about due process last week, you know, in terms of one person supposedly doing something right that then warranted their deportation. Like, what? What are we doing when we revoke 450 student visas across the US and and, and how, how do we? How do we as Student Affairs, as higher ed start speaking about that in a way that might help address this larger concern of us as global citizens? Yeah,

Demetri L. Morgan
yeah. I mean, I think the first thing is the the human side, right, like these are our students that you know are in our classrooms that partake in the services, the centers that we, that we provide, and their sort of safety, mental health and well being is has already, you know, been stretched, and is now sort of in this hyper like, Am I next, you know, is my roommate? Next is, you know, and so I think, just like pausing to honor that is really important, because it’s like one thing to sort of think about the system and these numbers. But like, you know, these are, like, peers, you know, these are colleagues of, you know, people and that we’re working with, and in telling that story as part of it, I think is really hard to do, but it’s really important. I think that the second layer that I have been thinking a lot about is the, you know, to facili point about people not understanding endowments, the other thing that is is really tricky part of this conversation that I don’t think we’re ready to have yet as as a as a larger community and a campus community, is that when we under Understand how to how tuition, it comes into institutions, and especially for institutions like, like ours, you have out of state students, and you have international students. Make up a big bulk of you know, what we would say is, you know, full pay students, especially at the master’s level for many institutions, but also at the at the undergraduate level. And so the sort of economics of this, of of, you know, wallet, wallet 450, is too many for me, for institutions, it’s like, okay, but if it is, if it is ramped up, and as we’re seeing, you know, as a pattern with this administration, if you let them take a little, they’re just gonna keep taking until and so at what point? And by the point that they take enough, it, things will be so drastically out of order for institutions that I can’t even fathom. You know, it’s up there with accreditation. So I need us to also honor that the sort of economic as states have divested and as it’s become more of a private good, one of the ways that institutions have made that up have been relying on full pay students, which come in two variety, one being out of state, and one being international. And if we don’t honor like what that then means to just sort of stand by while the federal, federal government, you know, sort of willy nilly revokes visas, if I would hope the human side of it is enough to activate you to want to. But if the human side of you know, you know, putting your, your yourself in somebody’s shoes, you know, and and thinking about what we mean to have your visa revoked in the middle of your course of study, not knowing if you can finish, like, if those narratives don’t get you going, then at least think about the economic impact of this. And be will be willing to be really honest about how we’ve, you know, sort of stabilized higher ed on the backs of, you know, full pay students, and that this, this plays into that. And I think what to your question of what we can do one thing, as you know, student affairs professionals, is to talk about that as sensitively as I’m trying to do here, of what this means economically. It because I don’t always know, even unfortunately, I don’t always know if senior leaders always understand the sort of economic realities of how this plays out. Obviously, CFOs and certain individuals do, but I don’t always know if people understand some of the trade offs that are made to kind of produce this, this higher ed experience, and so layering that into this conversation of like, hey, if we don’t figure out a way to push back or engage this one will be enough, and at what point, especially for smaller programs that have, you know, half international students, half. That domestic students, or whatever the ratio is, at what point, you know, if so many of our students are now no longer enrolled, and also, what is the chilling effect like? What is, oh, yeah, yes. Want to come here. And we’ve already seen, you know that with with rhetoric about certain countries, you know, China obviously being one of them where we’ve seen declines. But you know, what does that then mean for recruitment, you know, of different things. And so layering in that at seats that people are at, I think, is really, really important, but tough to do without coming across as callous to the human impact that this has. Yeah, yeah,

Felecia Commodore
all of that, and, and, you know, I do think we’re going to have to have some honest conversations about our financial models that we’ve built at our institutions. We are starting to see the cracks in them, um, and, and this is definitely going to, if it continues to escalate, have an impact economically. I do want to say, I feel like I say this every week, but we did this before, and I think we forgot. We forgot the first administration of the now president. Where this happened. It was much more compact time period, but I remember it so very clearly because I, at the time, was working with an international student who got notification that just out of nowhere, if they couldn’t prove that they had a job in which they were uniquely talented for right, they were going to be deported in 60 days. The doctoral student, I remember it very clearly, and I watched, you know, the student, go through mental distress. We had to get them counseling. I was concerned for their health, because imagine waking up one day and being told you have 60 days to prove you should stay in the country, that you’re doing your studies, that you’ve been in as a student for the last six or seven years. You don’t really have you have a home to go to, but not really, right? And I, I remember watching the student go through that and just feeling so helpless as a faculty member. Um, luckily, we had an institution that rallied behind them. Um, you know, we were able to do what needed to be done, but that student also had to drop out of the program and full time job at the institution in order to stay and so that happened in that first administration. And I think we don’t remember if you didn’t have direct impact, because it was very subtle, right? It wasn’t as such a big pronouncement as what we’re seeing now. So to some extent, I think it already had a test run, and we forgot about the test run, right and when? And this happens so much in our society, even in higher ed, where we focus so much on fixing the immediate crisis that we forget to go back and patch up what what we found the crack in when it first happened, and we really think about it when this happened back then, we should have started thinking about, how do we fortify processes to protect our international students if we end up in a situation where the federal government starts to just randomly do these procedures to revoke visas, and we did it, and now we’re paying for it, right? And our students are putting through stress, and it’s something I’m concerned about, like all the time, because a lot of us have, especially at the graduate level, have a number of international students who are good students and doing good work, and they’re just trying to be productive citizens here, right? So to the human side, you know, it is stressful and frustrating to have to watch a student try and navigate all this, and especially students with families. Because these aren’t kids. These aren’t all kids, right? These are people with with spouses and children. Some of their spouses are US citizens, right? And so these are just, I mean, from a humanistic standpoint, it’s, it’s heartbreaking. But I think the other, the other element here too, is we have to look at how they’re going about getting these students right, these the it’s not random. They’re they’re going after you. Students that they feel like they can make a case are engaging in anti semitic behavior, or, you know, things that we that we can frame as being enemies of the state, for lack of better words, right? And so again, understanding rhetoric, understanding the power of propaganda, right? The election season set us up for this by painting immigrants as enemies, right? And I think we thought as higher ed that wouldn’t necessarily affect students. We were thinking more like, you know, migrant workers and folks like that, but now they’ve turned that narrative on our students. And so I really think institutions have to stand up and defend the honor of our students, and not just like, oh, this is immoral, but also this is a leak. But like, it’s like we, we really, and I, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know how how to do that, but I think, I think we been with Demetri and some other conversations, been in. We have to have, we have to figure out, what is our, what is our anti propaganda, like, what is we don’t have? We’re like, trying to just use facts, and I just don’t know if that’s facts alone is going to get it, because we’re not fighting facts, we’re fighting propaganda. And so we have to figure out our messaging and what it looks like, and how do we sell our story, how do we invigorate and inspire our folks? You know, people have critiques about the Cory Booker. It wasn’t a filibuster. What was it a I forgot. What?

Heather Shea
Yeah, the longest speech. I mean, I think he just held the floor so not filibuing any kind of legislation, yeah,

Felecia Commodore
and I think some many of those critiques are valid, right formidivity, or whatever, however you feel, but it did get people going right. And think we got to start thinking about, what’s the message? How do we get the people going right and so in particular with this issue, because what is letting this issue fly is that propaganda has about immigrants and foreigners has been pushed for the last two years, and so now we’re popping up trying to fight something that we should have been fighting all along. So we really have to think about and I also think we need to tell, tell the story in compelling ways. I was talking with a friend of mine who was not connected to higher ed at all, and hadn’t even heard about like these students getting kicked up off the street by like, un you know, unidentified ICE agents. And they’re like, really happy. But I think again, we’re in our bubble, and we think everybody is seeing how this is happening, and it’s not, and they’re not, and so we really have to start sharing the stories. Why far and wide? If we are going to go after that human element, then we have to go after it hard, yeah, and not just with each other.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I totally agree, and I think that’s a great point to move towards our final thoughts, because I think messaging is all about where we where we are. And I think all three of these stories kind of come down to that, right, like, how are we messaging to boards? How are we messaging the broader public, and then, how are we messaging our support to international students? So, all right, final thoughts, what’s on the horizon, what’s keeping you up at night? For me, so feel like the same thing. And then what is bringing you joy right now? So, Dr, Morgan, do you want to kick us off in final thoughts today? So

Demetri L. Morgan
one means I feel like I’ve been going around the University of Michigan, and kind of talking a lot about governance and kind of trying to explain, you know, different things. But one of the things that has come up, at least with Big 10 institutions, and I hope to see it at other across other associations, I guess, their athletic conferences. That’s the word I’m looking for. Is this mutual academic defense compact that Rutgers University started and has now sent to other faculty senates to consider adopting, and basically to kind of break it down really quickly. You know, think a. Of a compact amongst, you know, countries that you know have kind of mutual defense. If you know, attack on one is considered an attack on all, and therefore, you know, resources will be proffered to that particular institution to help them with what they’re doing. And so Rutgers, kind of, you know, adopted that kind of logic to say, hey, you know, as as Big 10 institutions, if there are. And you know, at the more local level, we call it like mutual aid and mutual support. And you know, and you know, around for the slack, just trying to help out your people, right? And so, you know, I think I’m encouraged by that something to watch, to see if other institutions are able to adopt it. I know at Michigan, we’re voting on it with a kind of University Faculty Senate, so that that’s something that is kind of on the horizon, and we’ll see what is that, you know, actually materialized as right now. It’s just kind of a formal resolution that started at one but that’s how social movements start, right like it starts one place, starts to work, and so that with bringing me joy my Florida Gators, anybody that knows me well knows that I am a huge so my Florida Gators won national championship in basketball on Monday, and it was lovely to just kind of fade away, although it’s really to our to this messaging point. And this last thing I’ll say, you know, I think it was a really big missed opportunity. You know, during the NCAA Tournament, men’s and women’s some of the highest ratings we’ve ever seen. You know, shout out UConn on the on the women’s side, that we weren’t pirate was not telling its story. I’m a miss this, and the NCAA was because the NCAA is going through their own PR crisis. And so we know that, you know, there are scholarships and healthcare and all these things that the FCA, but higher ed missed the moment to, you know, connect with the public and kind of talk about that. And so I was thinking about that a lot as I was watching games and thinking about, Oh, man, so all these commercials, and we’re not messaging about the sort of collective component. So even in the midst of me sort of selling, celebrating it was like as a missed opportunity and moving forward, we have to do a better job of thinking about how we’re messaging with that. With college football, starting in the fall, being one of those really big things where I would love to see a public campaign really being threaded in partnership with athletics and other, you know, entities to tell that story, not just the like, nice, like, you know, institution specific one or even the conference one, but what is the the higher ed story that we want to tell throughout the fall? And would love, you know, for people to be thinking about that. Yeah,

Heather Shea
that’s great. Doctor Commodore, yeah,

Felecia Commodore
I just Just to piggyback on that real quick before I get into my things. I also felt like it was a missed opportunity about international students, because athletics often have a number of international students, basketball, football, tennis, swim, lacrosse, baseball, soccer, like they they actually bring in a lot of international students. So if these students who help support our athletics aren’t there anymore, but what then happens? It was a missed opportunity there as well, but I too this, seeing this resolution that Rutgers put forward around the Big 10 really did make my my little heart, swell, and maybe Dimitri, because we’re both kind of Big 10 girlies now, but, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. I think, think one of the conversations I’ve been having with folks is the important we’ve been talking about, kind of individually, where we’re at. The importance of community, but I think on a more macro scale, within higher what that looks like is collaboration for institutions and and and because of what we’ve experienced for the last couple of decades or so around shrinking resources, around volatile funding practices, discriminatory funding practices. It had created an environment in the marketplace where I do think institutions felt that the way to survive was to compete with each other. We were all going we, you know, we all bought into the enrollment cliff. I’m trying not to roll my eyes, but and that made everyone be like, there’s only this little market share out there of money, students, partners, and so it’s every institution for itself. And what I’m hoping we’re seeing now is that that does not work for our our sector, right? If in in instances where we have to protect these things that we say we value academic freedom and institutional autonomy and um, you know, protecting and serving diverse communities of students and and diverse communities and constituencies. Well, those things are. A part of a community mindset. And so if, if we’re going to say these are important values within our sector, the way that we, I think, are able to best protect ourselves from an impact against the diminishing or destruction of it, is through collaboration. And I’ve always said this as I’ve become more in community with folks in athletics, I have learned so much more about the benefit of athletic associations and athletic what do they call conferences and yeah, things like, because, I think we are told that talk to that. They’re just like, about conference play and money like for tournaments and things like this. But you know, they’re things like library sharing, like that come out of you being part of the ACC or these there’s consortiums that are built. There are ways that academic resources are shared and available because of the way these athletic conferences and their agreements are constructed, right for these institutions. And so I’m glad we’re seeing now people being like, oh, there was this. There was this infrastructure here that we may not have been using to the best of our ability. And I think the only, the only time we’ve kind of seen that is the Ivy League, because we forgot that the Ivy League is actually an athletic conference. It’s right, it’s not, it’s not some secret society like it’s right, but they have done a good time job over the years of making it an identity, as opposed to an athletic conference, and that gave them some leverage to do some things as this quote, unquote elite group of institutions, right? And so I’m hoping other conferences and other conglomerates of institutions, start to see like we have these structures here that we may have not been using to the best of our ability, that can already put us in a place of collaboration, but I think collaboration is the only way we’re going to be able to protect ourselves and and resource sharing, as opposed to resource hoarding. And I think it’s, it is our nature, in times of crisis, to hoard, right? We want to say, which is why I think you’re seeing some of the movement of these boards and these institutions. They’re like, we can’t spend we can’t do these things. We can’t do these things with the hoard, and I think there’s some element of protection of resources that’s important. But hoarding, we need to share, and we need to to put use together wisely what we have. And I think that will put us in a stronger space as a sector, as far as what’s bringing me joy. That’s a real you know, right now, it is two things, and they’re both on Tiktok. And I never thought I’d be a Tiktok person, but here I am. One is, it is, actually, it’s three things. It is prom dress season, and I love a formal gown, so I am neck deep in prom tick tock, um, to see all the dresses, all the creativity, everyone who’s trying to recreate bridgerton and questioning, how are they dancing at prom with these bustles, but prom Tiktok has been great. It is also new initiate season for black Greek letter organizations. So seeing everybody’s presentations and everyone crossing into their organizations and becoming members of their organizations, you know it as a member of a Greek organization, it just brings you back to the day you joined and and it’s exciting, and I think it’s helpful to see with everything going on, college students still finding joy in their experience, right? And reminding us that there’s still joy here, there’s still resilience of these students, and there’s something for us to protect, yeah. And then lastly, there is a tick tocker. I can’t remember her name, but she started a tick tock series called the group chat, where she plays all these different characters in a group chat, and it has turned into a low key soap opera, and I am completely bought into all these characters and their shenanigans. And this one character who’s trying to bring her boyfriend to dinner, and everyone doesn’t want him to come to dinner. It’s, it’s, I can’t believe it, but I here, I am totally bought in to the group chat Tiktok. Back so that that’s where, that’s where we’re at.

Heather Shea
I love it. I love it. I just did escapism with the new Hunger Games book that brought me a lot of joy, Sunrise at the Reaping so if you haven’t, game’s quite

Felecia Commodore
relevant right now. Yeah, it

Heather Shea
had this like things are going on and, yeah, oh my gosh, it was fantastic. Shout out to my daughter who recommended I read that. Yes. Who is a Michigan student of all things,

Demetri L. Morgan
Go Blue.

Felecia Commodore
Oh my gosh.

Heather Shea
Actually, my my colleagues at Michigan State would be very upset with me right now, so I should definitely do a Go green in there. So I don’t

Felecia Commodore
know how to do the Illini thing? Yeah, I’m still always nervous someone’s going to do it, and I’m like, I’m not ready yet. Yeah, yeah.

Heather Shea
Oh my gosh. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate you both and your time. These conversations have come to be for me, at least, really important is I’m thinking about navigating the shifting landscape, and I look forward to the continuation next week. If you haven’t been watching and you want to catch up on all of our past episodes, you can go to Student Affairs now.com/current-campus-context, and I just want to give out a huge thanks to the Student Affairs now host team, especially Dr Keith Edwards, for shaping this series. We would love to hear from you if you have specific questions or topics that you would like to hear us cover on future episodes. I think we’ve got three more for the limited series. Please reach out to us at host@studentaffairsnow.com and thanks again for tuning in to current campus context brought to you by Student Affairs now we will see you next week.

Boards Must Fight for Institutional Independence (opinion) -Inside Higher Ed (April 8)

Opinion | A Playbook for Law Firms and Colleges to Stand Up to President Trump – The New York Times (April 8)

Trump threatens to cut federal funds for colleges and universities : The NPR Politics Podcast

The University President Willing to Fight Trump – The New York Times

How are college presidents handling funding threats? Preparing for the worst – NPR (April 4)

How an Accreditation War Could Start – Chronicle of Higher Education (March 24)

Where Students Have Had Their Visas Revoked – Inside Higher Ed (April 8)

What Is a Student Visa? The Rights and Risks Amid Trump’s Crackdown. – The New York Times (April 7)

https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Letter-State-Visa-Revocations-040425.pdf – ACE letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (April 4)

How Trump Is Wreaking Havoc on the Student Visa System – Inside Higher Ed (April 3)