Heather Shea
Heather. Hello. Welcome back to current campus context brought to you by Student Affairs. Now the online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside and adjacent to higher education and student affairs, I’m your host, Heather Shea, and this episode was recorded at 5:11pm, Eastern Time on Thursday, March 13. As always, things might have changed by the time you listen, as I shared last week, this limited series is all about making sense of the moment. We’re in higher ed is facing rapid changes, and each week we will bring in two experts to help us break down what’s happening, why it matters, and what we can do within our spheres of influence. Our goal to provide not just news, but context, perspective and strategies for action. I also want to mention we have a rotating group of five experts contributing to this series, so you’ll see some familiar faces over the next several weeks, and you can learn more about all of our correspondents on our website, Student Affairs now.com I’m excited today to introduce our two correspondents who will help us unpack the latest developments. First, Dr Felecia Commodore, an expert in leadership, governance and administrative practices in higher education, 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, welcome Felecia.

Felecia Commodore
Thank you. Excited to be here talking through this time. To be alive

Heather Shea
a lot. It’s a time and joining us again this week. Thanks so much for coming back. Dr Brendan Cantwell, Brendan is an expert in higher education and Policy Governance and political economy of higher ed. He is a professor of higher adult and lifelong education at Michigan State University. Thanks for coming back and joining us for another day, for another episode. Brendan,

Brendan Cantwell
hey, great to be here. It feels like a year in between the week,

Heather Shea
right? Yeah, there this week is a lot of things have have happened, so I’m going to give a quick synopsis of three things that have kind of risen to the top of my list, and then we’re going to unpack and discuss. So first of all, last week, we reported on Linda McMahon issuing a statement about the final mission. Now, earlier this week, the US Department of Education laid off over 1300 employees, really gutting the department, one of the largest cuts in history. I’m left with many questions, right? So what functions of the department remain? What responsibilities will shift to other agencies? What does this mean for federal financial aid, for education policy, for the office of civil rights enforcement, of the policies that the Dear Colleague letter laid out, which we discussed a little bit last week as well. That’s issue number one. Second, I’m thinking about the detainment of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, in other words, a permanent resident with due process rights. I’m deeply concerned about the chilling effect that this could have on free speech, but also on international students. Will they continue to see the US as a viable place to study, and what will be the long term effects on student activism, campus response and government intervention? These forces seem to be colliding in my mind in unsettling ways. So finally, In related news, funding cuts are occurring across higher ed, but two campuses have been specifically targeted. The White House canceled nearly $400 million in federal grants for Columbia University due to the above mentioned story, and the USDA has withdrawn funding from the University of Maine system due to the governor of Maine support for transgender athletes. While these actions may seem kind of outside the immediate scope of Student Affairs, funding cuts, budget shortfalls all have massive ripple effects, potentially in impacting hiring student fees and the broader future of higher education. So all right, so let’s get into it. Felecia, given what I’ve just shared, what do you see as the broader implications of these news stories on colleges, universities and the field of student affairs? Yeah,

Felecia Commodore
so I think broadly, I think across all the stories we are going to have institutional leaders, and not when I say that, I don’t just mean presidents. I mean people who are usually at the VP level, Director levels, who have to keep the campus running, to some extent, have to have to do some quick turn. Turning around of things and reorganization of things in ways that I don’t higher ed is not normally as nimble to be able to do, and so I think it’s really for a number of institutions who have not had to regularly do that. And I think that’s important because our regional publics, our HBCUs, our TCU, they’re used to being having to operate at a high level in a strained resource situation, but our Johns Hopkins, our columbias, I don’t know that they’ve had to do that in a very long time. And what’s happening now is forcing a lot of institutions who normally don’t have to react to policy so quickly, are going to have to do that. And so I said, I I spoke to someone in December when they were like, What does your head look like for higher ed? And I said, then hire is about to go to through one of its biggest stress tests. And I think that’s what we’re seeing now, is we’re seeing we’re hitting the beginning of a really big stress test, and we’re going to see how well we built these institutions and how well we really fortified our system to be able to serve as students well. And I think for Student Affairs particularly, it’s concerning, because we know Student Affairs work is a really important piece of student support and students being successful, and with these kind of stressors, we can expect cuts to be made. We already seen hiring freezes. And Student Affairs is an area that can often get hit first or seen as expendable first, and that really will have a direct impact on the success of our students.

Heather Shea
Thank you. Brendan, what would you add or what? What story you want to dig into? Well, highlight,

Brendan Cantwell
I’ll just reiterate that I think felicia’s attention to the rippling effects of the financial strain is going to be very important, and agree that institutions that have not really faced any financial difficulties now are faced with big, big challenges. And you know that’s going to create a lot of fear in the whole sector, because when you see a very rich, a very well established institution act that way, then you might think, Gosh, I really need to check my budget. Maybe I ought to be clamping down as well. But what I see across these three stories are examples of dismantling the administrative state, and that is something that the Trump administration, that Trump supporters have talked about as being a big goal for, you know, since his first presidential run, and now we’re seeing it realized So, dismantling the Department of Education, firing half The staff, ending some programs, getting rid of civil rights offices, some of the regional offices having or more this, the staff in financial aid support really hitting the capacity for the department to collect data and to do research, and that means that campuses are going to have students who won’t be able to get answers about their aid. It means that their aid may be interrupted. It means that so in the short run, campuses and those who are supporting students, particularly students with who rely on federal financial aid are really going to have to build strategies how you know, and in a sense, rebuild the administrative state inside the university at a time when they don’t have any resources. So it’s going to be very, very challenging, and there are also long term effects. So if we think about making it much harder to collect high quality data about higher education, evaluating our programs, tracking how we’re doing in terms of supporting students, graduation rates, persistence, disaggregating that by groups of students, by race and other characteristics that we know are important For the way that students experience higher education is going to be very it’s going to be more difficult. These data are going to be less reliable, and so it’s going to be harder for people who support students to do long term planning. And then the other thing, the second thing, beyond dismantling the administrative state, is this kind of targeted harassment of individuals and institutions. And even if you’re not thinking about USDA funding on your campus, maybe there’s not much on your campus, or maybe that has nothing to do with your job, and you’ve never thought about it before in your life, maybe you are thinking about supporting queer students, and all of a sudden, the framework that your leader. Ship that your senior administration, the legal framework that your general counsel is thinking about in terms of how you support trans and queer students has changed, because there’s this there’s this tangible thing, this could happen to us, and it would be devastating. So I just think that it makes it so much harder for people to do the job of supporting students, and that’s really worrying.

Felecia Commodore
Yeah, and can I jump in? Just add a couple of things there? Because I think Brendan makes up a really good point about the targeting of institutions, and I’ve been really thinking about this all as someone who has done HBCU scholarship and the way that HBCUs have been targeted for years, decades, even through discriminatory funding practices, through kinds of weaponizing of data and things of that nature. And I’ve been thinking about like, you know, we’ve been kind of in this community talking about it for decades, and now everyone else gets to join in, right? And like what, what it feels like to have to navigate that. And so to some extent, I think we have some models out there, if we are to look closely at history of how can you navigate these moments? And so I think that’s something about and then the second thing I wanted to lift up, because we’ve been thinking about department, and a lot of the conversation I’ve seen has really been around the financial aid piece and the shrinking of the staff, and how that’s going to cause a lot of challenges for students. But I think I wanted to highlight kind of two things we really I think need to pay attention to one is the Office of Civil Rights, and not just in because I’ve seen conversation around Title Nine and kind of those things, but also thinking about that part of the Office of Civil Rights role was also ensuring that for this, decisions were upheld in states and that does your segregation was not upheld by states because we that’s part of how it came to be, is that we have had a four states to desegregate education, and so OCR played a really big role in that for HBCUs and K through 12 level, and that office has shrink significantly, and there’s been conversation even moving into the Justice Department. And so what is what does that mean in states that we already know have hostile are hostile towards institutions that service a large number of racially marginalized identities on their campuses, if OCR is shrunk and cannot operate as full capacity to ensure that that de jure segregation is not held up in the court of decisions respected, what does that open the door for states to do? And I think that’s something we really need to think about. And then second is that the Department of Ed also is the one who tells us which accrediting agencies are legit or not. And if you look at Project 2025, one of the ways in which they’re approaching on kind of controlling things like curriculum and what what institutions do and provide programs. They provide majors. They provide it, it. Their plan was through accrediting agencies. And so we look at this kind of dismantling, or this attempt to dismantle or shrink Department of Ed, what is that going to do for the process? What happens to their role in legitimizing and accrediting agencies, and who gets in and that whole process, and then how does that trickle down also into to Brendan’s point, like the missions and like what institutions will have to do in order to keep their accreditation, and what kind of pressure and what kind of accrediting agencies will now be legitimized, and what we do legitimize and I think that’s a piece that’s been getting Lost, I think, in this conversation, and something that I have been keenly concerned about, yes,

Heather Shea
yeah, if the institution loses accreditation, I mean, the implications of that were, were huge before. Does that matter? No, I you know there’s now, there’s kind of feels like all the rules are no longer like, what’s true, what’s not. So I think what I do want to shift to kind of what we can do right? Because I feel like this is part of the the overwhelm, right is like there’s so much happening at once. And you know, we’ve, we’ve spoken about building coalitions, communicating with upper administration. Brendan, you talked a bit about that last week. What do you see as some things that individuals or or groups or maybe student affairs professional associations might be able to do within their spheres of influence to navigate and address some of these issues? And I’m particularly interested. Said, we haven’t talked about it too much yet, about the student activism piece and free speech.

Brendan Cantwell
The student activism piece raises a really important set of considerations for folks who are able to work with and have trusted relationships with students. Yeah, on the one hand, we do not we you know, people who work with students, student affairs professionals are tasked with empowering students to find their voice, to be agentic, to develop themselves as capable actors who can advocate for themselves and for others, and that’s, I believe, central to something that higher education ought to do. But the matmul case is extremely concerning on this ground, the thing that’s there are things that are especially concerning about this. He’s a green card holder, which means that revoking his legal status is legally arduous, and he should not have been detained and like it’s, I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. It seems outlandish. And so you have international students who whose visas can be revoked much more easily, who are at risk. But it seems like any student, particularly any student, who comes from a community for which the the administration holds little regard or or antipathy, is potentially, potentially, and I don’t want to sound alarmist, it would be clearly illegal, but is potentially subject to surveillance, and, who knows, perhaps, arrest, detention by the the the by the federal Government. So I think trying to find that balance of providing students with real information about how to protect themselves and what their rights are and what the real risks are, without being alarmist and without crushing speech is really hard. So you asked what to do, and I don’t know what to do, but one thing to do is to really think about how to communicate with students on those grounds.

Felecia Commodore
Yeah, I’ll jump into again, really been thinking about this, um, and, and I won’t say that. I’m not trying to sound alarmist, but I do want us to be grounded in reality of what we’re living in. And I think, I think as institutional actors working with students, I think that is our responsibility to be real with them about what they’re facing and the challenges, and to encourage them to make the choices that are true to them, but but also knowing what all the possible outcomes of those choices could be. And I think, I do think it is alarming what’s happening with the student at Columbia. Because, um, just legalities of it all. If this is allowed to happen, it, and I always say this, things that are that happen in higher ed are the canary in the coal mine for larger society. So if this happens with one of our students, and it just goes under the radar. All of us, college connected or not, need to be concerned as citizens about what kind of reach this administration has in ways they are able to evade what we have known as due process and constitutionality. But and I don’t, and, and I’d hope not to sound overly optimistic, because that is not my nature. I’m a cynic by nature. Actually, I think, and I keep saying this, I think history, this is why history is important. Yeah, I don’t think anything we see, it’s a new iteration of it a little more intense than we’ve ever seen it before, and it’s happening to again. I think groups that we have not are not used to seeing it happen to but if you look at 60s, if we look at 40s and 50s, we see, you know, Jewish students, black students, they were going through. I mean, we look at McCarthyism, we look at the civil rights movement. We see students getting expelled from school for pushing for desegregation. We see, you know, faculty not being able to get jobs because they’re Jewish or considered communist. And so there’s some lessons there that I think we can learn about, how do we navigate this moment? It’s a little different, but I but, but there’s some elements that are the same. And I think about as far as student activism. I think about, you know, you know, I think about the women at Howard. Heard the women of delta, sigma, theta, who participated in the suffrage mark. It was not a popular thing for black women. Those were college students, and they were engaged in activism. It just wasn’t on campus, right? I think about the Greensboro four who were NCA and T students. I think about the young women at Bennett who pushed for different civil rights, um, protesting. A lot of that stuff just didn’t happen on campus. Yeah, and, and, and there were repercussions for those students on their campuses for stuff they didn’t even do on campus. But I say that to say I think there are ways we can encourage our students to be activists, um, and, and think about it outside of just the confines of their college and their university and because and reminding them that there’s a whole larger society out there. Now, do I think we as institutions need to figure out how to provide safe spaces on their camp our campus for them to do that? Yes, but I think as we see chilling effects happening, to just remind and encourage our students and our faculty and folks that a lot of the movements we saw students that turn into bigger societal movements were headed by students, were spearheaded by students, and they did not happen on campuses, and so not thinking that if for some reason their campus fails them and does not give them the space or the protection to to act, to engage in activism that that is not the end of the road for their activism, if they’re committed to it, and hopefully what we can do as allies is help create more connections with communities outside of our Colleges, networks outside of our colleges to provide space and safety and resources in ways that SNCC did, SCLC did. These groups did freedom to to help protect these students out, even outside of our campus laws. And I think this is a really great time for colleges to think about how they’re going to be part of a larger community outside of their campus grounds, because this is affecting everyone, not just the people within our ivory towers, correct? Yeah,

Heather Shea
absolutely. Yeah. I think that history pieces is going to be a really vital and important reminder for for everyone, right? And we live in this current moment, but you know, for for folks who have been in these, in these experiences before, you know what? What is the you know and who, who are now here in this moment, right? Like there’s lessons to be learned and wisdom to be shared. So we are, of course, always running out of time. On this episode, we try to keep them short. So I want to move towards kind of final thoughts, what’s on the horizon, what’s keeping you up at night, and then what’s breaking you joy in your life. I know, I know you know, trying to find those pockets myself and Brendan, I’m going to start with you this this week, I’ve got to

Brendan Cantwell
come up with joy two weeks in a row. This is unfair. Having the chance to chat with Felicia and with you and other great colleagues is what brings me joy and brings me a lot of hope. And so I’m really trying to make as many connections and have conversations with smart and good people looking out on the horizon, I would look to see if there is more of the more of these blanket freezes. The Department of Education list released a list of 60 institutions that were under investigation for anti semitism while they’re also firing all the investigators, I don’t know, and we’ll see if any one of those institutions experiences one of these blanket, blanket bands, funding bands. That’s

Heather Shea
it. That’s definitely something to watch for the news for next week, yeah, or the future? Yeah. Felicia, what about you? What’s on the rise and what’s keeping you up. What’s joy? Okay,

Felecia Commodore
I’ll start with joy. I think what is giving me joy similar to what bernashe says, community i i have experienced more authentic, genuine community building in the last few months that I think I have seen in our field and outside of our field in a very long time, I It reminds me my mom was into kind of civics, very heavy when I was young. And it reminds me a lot of my growing up and watching people come together and take care of each other and and figure out ways to protect each other and people with more resources, helping people with less resources. And so there’s something about the way this constitutional crisis we’re in is pushing us together in a strange way that is in giving me some joy, reminding me. See that there’s still a human spirit out there that wants to stay connected and protect their communities, and that brings me hope. As far as what’s on the horizon, I think we just keep watching. I also, you know, this is probably going to sound a little weird. I am excited to see all the scholars we usually don’t talk to are now going to be really be able to share our higher law scholars, our governance folks, our org folks. I mean, this is, this is we’ve been training for this for a very long time in a weird way, and so I think we’re about to learn a lot about how this stuff works and is interconnected. And I and in though it may be tough, I think us as scholars who are able to really do some good knowledge translation, may really be able to bring some light into how important higher education is to the greater society and why it needs to be protected and upheld in ways that are even greater than like kind of our Student Success conversations that happen, and I think that is what we’re Going to see come start to happen here. And then I would say, what’s giving me, what’s keeping me up at night, is the judiciary. I’m really I tell people I would consider myself a constitutional enthusiast. I was one of those kids who walked around high school with a pocket constitution to get myself out of trouble, um, and so I’ve been really, you know, I think a lot of times we thought like, oh, Congress is our fail safe, but we’re finding out the judiciary is our fail safe, um, to uphold the Constitution. And I’m just curious how long they can keep that up. I But they’ve, they’ve been showing up in ways that I think even have shocked me. And I’m curious to see how strong this thing is built, and I think, and how fast it can work or can’t work. So So that’s been keeping me up at night. I feel like I’m like, always like, okay, which Circuit Court did it go to who’s filing lawsuits? And never been so tuned into the law in my life. But it’s been interesting to see the Constitution go through this crisis test, and I’m curious to see if we’re going to find out it’s a really, really weak system, or stronger than we thought it was. Yeah,

Heather Shea
yeah. That’s a great that’s a great point to end on, because I think that’s a lot to keep track of, right? There’s so many different lawsuits and where they’re at in the system, but there’s some good resources out there, so we’ll put some some thoughts into today’s show notes. Finally, I think, you know, I also I’ll add my own thought here, and that’s about how we’re talking with the about the Department of Education with students and helping, like the conversation, kind of understand what the Department of Education does, what it doesn’t do, and what are the repercussions. And so I’m going to put a resource in the show notes that that we developed here in my office to just here’s what it is. Here are the implications. Here are some of the things that we want to be able to kind of talk about, because I think there is some kind of confusion out there. So thank you both so much again. Brendan, great to have you back. Felicia, I think we get to see you again next week. Thank you for sharing your insights and space with us today on Student Affairs now, if you are not already subscribed, if you’re tuning in today, not already subscribed to our newsletter, please take a moment to enter your email on our website at studentaffairs now.com you can stay in the loop with all the latest episodes delivered straight to your inbox. And if you have any feedback, we would really appreciate email at post at studentaffairs now.com or you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, blue sky. You can DM us in any of those spaces. Thanks again for listening to current campus context, brought to you by Student Affairs now, and we will see you next week.

Inside Higher Ed: Education Department Lays Off Nearly Half of its Staff (March 11)

Chronicle of Higher Education: An ICE Arrest at Columbia U. Stokes Outrage and Raises Legal Questions (March 10)

USA Today: After Governor’s Clash with Trump, Millions Frozen for University of Maine (March 11)

UPDATE: Inside Higher Ed: University of Main Funding Freeze Lifted (March 14)

FAQ about the U.S. Department of Education: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-u-s-department-of-education

Inside Higher Ed: 7 Ways to Support Noncitizen Students and Employees: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/college-experience/2025/03/10/responding-exec-orders-against-immigration