Liliana M. Garces: Thinking a lot about especially for your listeners, how, student affairs professionals are so much at the front lines of what we’re facing at this moment. Balancing a lot of legal uncertainty. Student needs, personal values, and. All of that while doing really what is very deeply re relational and emotionally demanding work. And so it really troubles. I just think a lot about the impact that all of this is having on everyone. And that kind of erosion of confidence and trust that can build up when you see your leaders acting in very contrary ways to what you think, the values of higher education should be.

Keith Edwards: Hello and welcome to Student Affairs. Now I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about a new coalition advocating for higher education. The Alliance for Higher Education seeks tonight to unite all of higher education, to defend and improve the field as a foundation or pillar of democracy with principles around freedom.

Self-governance and fair opportunity. I’m excited to be joined by two of the key leaders launching this exciting new initiative. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs.

We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browse our archives@studentaffairsnow.com. This episode is sponsored by evolve. Evolve is a series of leadership coaching journeys designed to bring clarity, capacity, confidence, and empower courageous leadership to reimagine the future of higher education.

As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards. My pronouns are he, him, his, I’m a speaker, author, and coach, empowering higher ed leadership for better tomorrows for us all through leadership, learning, and equity. You can find more about me@keithedwards.com and I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is at the intersection of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples.

Let’s get to our conversation Liliana and Mike, I’m so glad to have you here to talk about the Alliance for Higher Education. Let’s begin with a little bit of introductions of each of you and your broader work in higher education, and then your connection to the alliance. And Liliana, we’re gonna start with you.

Liliana M. Garces: Thank you so much Keith for the invitation to join you. It really is a pleasure. So Liliana Garcia, I use she her EJA pronouns. I suppose you could think of me as a repurposed lawyer. I was trained as an attorney. I clerked for a federal district court judge afterwards. I worked as a lawyer for the A CLU before going back to grad school for my training as a social scientist and then my path into academia.

But my connection to higher ed and really to this moment really goes much earlier. When you think about my educational journey and I have a. Immigrant background. I was almost 12 when my mom made a very courageous decision to immigrate to the United States from Columbia in search of educational opportunities.

And she sacrificed a lot. She left everything behind, and we made the journey without documents in search of that educational opportunity for my future. And we eventually became lawful permanent residence. And then citizens and just I obtained my lawful permanent residence just as I was applying to college.

And that was a change in legal status that really opened doors for me. It made me eligible for financial aid and had the time, the timing been different. That was, that would’ve been a very different journey for me. And I went on to undergrad law school and really had the opportunity to end up litigating cases before the Supreme Court in really trying to defend the constitutional rights of other immigrants in our country.

So that’s, that’s the kind of journey where you think about. What education can offer someone, like opening opportunity, allowing someone like me who, immigrant low income, first generation college student to realize like the highest aspirations that my mom had for me, that I had for myself.

And, at the time it really was to become a lawyer and contribute to our society here in, in the United States, having come from. A country like Columbia, where at the time things were so corrupt, politics, the law and you had such also divided economic society with very few, with a lot, many, with very, very low resources and in a very small middle class and.

And so I really, when we came to United States, I viewed the legal system as this really foundational pillar for our democracy. And I wanted to contribute to that and do it as a public interest lawyer where you are representing those who can’t represent themselves. I think that was a balance that I really felt I wanted to contribute to our society.

And so my connection to the alliance for higher ed. Really comes from that lived experience, that professional trajectory of seeing what education and experiencing what education can make possible. Understanding that, it’s a story that’s too often the exception. That education really serves so much more to.

Exacerbate inequities instead of really opening doors and understanding how fragile those possibilities are particularly in the last few years. And so I feel really incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to use that experience and my my skills as a formerly trained lawyer and also as a social scientist to apply all of that to to practice and to our work.

Keith Edwards: Wow. That’s a great, that’s a great sort of intro to you into this work, and it reinforces the sort of aspirations and the gap between the aspirations of higher education and some of the realities. So thanks for sharing all of that. Mike, tell us a little bit about you.

Michael Gavin: Thanks Keith and Liliana.

Thanks for sharing all that. I, it’s interesting having worked with Liliana for a number of years. I knew all that history, but not in that narrative form. So it was really good to inspirational to hear that. And thematically obviously lived experiences are quite different. But thematically they’re very similar to what Liliana said in terms of the work that I, my upbringing, but also how it fits in with the alliance in this way.

I grew up on the north side of Chicago. And went to, through the public school system, which I loved there. And I would not ask people to actually check the data here, but, I, it’s around this in terms of the demographic makeup of my classrooms or around a third white, a third African American, a third Hispanic, with some other demographics represented.

All the way. K through eight, K through 12. I was playing sports and my sports teams were just as diverse all the way through. The differentiator was that by the time I got to freshman year in high school, my classrooms for the honors and AP classes that I was in were almost monolithically white.

And. That same racial sorting was present in the zip codes that my friends and I all lived in. And at the same time we did not have language for the following. But now, obviously, and I’ve learned it, which is so we could see the way that education was reproducing the social oppressions that existed outside of the walls of high school.

We also had the insight, in the conversations we had, outside of school, that it didn’t have to be that way, that the borders that Liliana was talking about from one country to another, or between classes, et cetera, that we saw in high school, in the zip codes and in the classrooms were all really artificially created.

But were maintaining themselves and higher ed could have been, or excuse me at this point, high school, my higher ed experience was there are liberatory elements to education that need to be reconsidered and reimagined. And I became, I did the graduate school work I did, had a doctorate in American Studies that applied critical race theory through all of the work and became ultimately a president of a community college, Delta College for a number of years.

But the work was always the same, whether I was teaching literature my focus was African American literature or whether it was as an administrator, it was all about that. That one insight that I discussed earlier about my high school and K through eight experience, and really thinking about the ways in which that educational systems are actually tools to potentially disrupt that kind of social and racial oppressions and lack of equity.

And I would say that Liliana and the work that we’ve been doing together for a number of years, and the rest of our team as well, I think it’s more of a calling that we feel and have that sort of is a through line for our work. It’s not necessarily the positionality that we have and all that is not necessarily of meaning.

It’s more about the grand grander outcome and laying the foundation for a better outcome for the country that we’re. Living in today and hopefully reform over the time that we are doing our work.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Awesome. Let’s get to the alliance. Mike, how did this what’s the sort of the origin story?

How was this initiated and how did this come into being?

Michael Gavin: That’s a, sometimes I ask Mike myself that same question, Keith. But how did we get

Liliana M. Garces: here?

Michael Gavin: That’s what what am I doing right? Yeah. And how do we get it exactly Lily? From, this is the story from my lens on it, which is that you, like I mentioned, I was the president of Delta College and I had written and had scholarship on what I perceive to be the forthcoming assault on higher ed that we’re, is clearly we’re in the middle of right now.

The last major thing I wrote was called The New White Nationalism in Politics and Higher Education. That was. I think it was published in 2020 ish or so. It was quite a long time ago in terms of, it seems like that’s two decades ago, but it’s not. Yeah. But also, and then when DeSantis became the governor of Florida, I had a lot of friends literally that were scared, disheartened, et cetera, in Florida because of the anti woke agenda that what he was facilitating.

Because of the work. The weird, I would call it unique, maybe experience that I had in terms of my academic discipline as well as being a president where many presidents, they professionally grow up through a different play. Like they’re chemists. They came up through financial aid, like whatever.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I just had this unique look on this anti woke campaign and how to navigate through it. And I created this group called Education for All at the Time, which was really meant to help leaders maintain as much mission as possible as they were being, as their missions were being attacked through concrete tools.

And I’ll just give you a concrete example of that. In the time it Florida was experiencing the assault from the DeSantis administration, one posture that could have been taken, could have been, institutions saying they were already in compliance with a lot of the regulatory demands of the DeSantis administration because it was divisive concepts, legislation, which basically said the following a great, one of the major lines from divisive concepts, legislation and the DeSantis administration was, you can’t teach that one.

Race is superior than another. And the response to that could have been okay. We don’t, and we never did. But it was a lot of, we all know this, but a lot of that was actually trying to make curriculum institutions have different shapes over time based on fear rather than what was required.

And I know Liliana can talk about this forever ’cause I actually just let you, I have leaned on Liliana’s brain for quite a number of years on this, so she’s a better expert than I am at this. But, from that. From that, over time, the group education for all became a lot more big than I ever intended it to be, and that work just translated over to this new entity called the Alliance for Higher Education in January, for which I stepped down as president of Delta College too.

Run this organization and I could talk further about the concrete stuff we’re gonna do, but I don’t want to dominate the time. I think it’s much more interesting to listen to Liliana than me anyway,

Keith Edwards: I think you’re right. And I also think Liliana, that Mike probably skipped over some parts in his humility, so maybe you can fill us in what else is part of the origin story here?

Liliana M. Garces: Yeah. Just to add another layer, I guess to to the origin story for in, in my entry point Mike and I met about three years ago.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Liliana M. Garces: I was facilitating a training that university of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement had, put together for individuals who are facing a lot of the anti D environment state laws.

And at the time, my, my research team and I had been documenting those experiences of faculty at the beginning of that of that sustained coordinated assault that we’re seeing. And that had started with the divisive concepts and then it, started, shifted into this. Sort of second wave of diversity, equity, and inclusion in prohibiting those initiatives.

And that was a project that was funded by the Spencer Foundation and we’re looking at how faculty were especially FA faculty who were researching issues of race or racism were responding in states that had that legislation that had just been proposed. It hadn’t even been enacted yet. And.

And here I have to give a shout out to my incredible research team lead author in, in that study Jackie pda, who’s gonna be an incoming faculty member at University of Massachusetts, Boston. Other members, Eliza Epstein and Nicole n and in North. And that, from that study.

We learned which just got an award for outstanding publication from Division J of a RA very proud of that. And what we learned there was that, faculty were changing content of their syllabi. They’re removing readings, they’re changing how they went about their teaching on particular topics.

They changed their research dissemination strategies and a lot of ’em ended up also leaving their institutions and. This was before the legislation had even been enacted legislation that was targeted at programs and initiatives. We don’t think about it as connected to knowledge, but in fact, it is.

And and a lot of those responses were really coming from faculty feeling very alone who felt the need to protect themselves from becoming a target. And and those feelings of isolation are really prevalent at especially in places where the leaders were very silent. And, or they were like, oh, let’s just see.

Let’s just wait and see what happens. And they weren’t actively really, attentive to the concerns, or they’re downplaying the concerns that faculty have, which, is also understandable given the challenging sociopolitical environment that we’re in. But but those are responses that made it so much harder for faculty to stay the course.

And. They were left on their own to navigate those pressures. And so I was presenting on these findings and also highlighting the fact that not all faculty ended up responding this way. That when they had their deans or their chairs like, verbalized, like in a course when you’re told like your rights are protected under the rights and responsibilities of academic freedom.

Or they were connecting what faculty were doing to the very mission of the program or the college that they didn’t shift course that they stayed focused under under research, even though they were feeling these pressures. And those were lessons that really from that, from those findings emerge that when you have a coalition and you have like faculty, tho those are faculty that in fact they didn’t change course because they were.

Supported by these external organizations that were telling them these messages, or the internal actors that were telling them these messages. And so that really disrupted that sense of isolation that faculty were feeling that were, that was creating that climate of fear. And so I was presenting these findings when I met Mike.

And after that he and then with it, with that, research. I was really emphasizing the importance of coalition and the importance of thinking of higher ed as an ecosystem that is not just the actors inside the, colleges and universities. It’s also all these other intermediary organizations that are part of that ecosystem that can really shape the actions of actors inside.

And Mike invited me after that to, to attend the education for all meetings that, that he was hosting. And, it was really a privilege for me as a researcher to be in the room with these, really incredible leaders to learn from them to get to talk about my research.

And and then as those meetings continued. I was like, oh my God, Mike is literally, you are creating the very thing that this research was asking for. And so it was just a really fortunate like beautiful effort that he was engaged in and that I felt called to continue to do with him as it became the Alliance for Higher Education.

It’s, it’s incredible like privilege to be able to like. Use your research and findings to influence policy and practice in this way. And I was very ready for it, given the time of my career where I was and the challenges that we’re facing as a field.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. And I think it’s great to, to be leading an industry that often prefers to not so much lead, but follow.

And I think to really be leading in that space, I think is really great. I wanna go back to something that, that Mike alluded to and you built on, which was this, fear driving a lot of these decisions rather than requirements and legislation. And I was just at a CPA and heard from several folks that folks at their institution who had been fired were told directly by institution leadership, we can fire you and lose the lawsuit, or we can lose all of our state funding.

That’s the situation we’re in. And so we’re gonna fire you and you can sue and we think you’re gonna win. But the option is. All of our state funding being removed. And so that’s a, that’s just the very tangible example, and you pointed to this, these very difficult position that leaders are in.

And what do you do and how do you navigate and do all of that. Mike, I wanna, I’m sure you, I can see you have something to say about that, but so go ahead. And I also so go ahead, Mike. Let’s do that and we’ll come back to Liliana.

Michael Gavin: I was just gonna say, a number of things actually really quickly, but I the most primary one is that a lot of leaders really don’t know what they’re allowed to do or not, or should not be doing because they’re relying on risk averse legal counsel and they’re not having in the room people like Liliana or somebody who has some sort of understanding of how to read these, this legislation.

And the gap that exists between the rhetoric of the legislation and what’s actually happening in classrooms or in this case, we got a whole bunch of student services, people listening in offices like, your multicultural center, your diversity equity inclusion center, your African American affinity group, whatever it is, right.

All of these things are actually. Mo most of the time in most states, absolutely legal, they’re absolutely legal for by federal law. I give legal, I say I give legal advice, but I’m not a lawyer. That’s the opposite of most legal counsels out there. But I also was gonna say that the true enemy here in my PO in my, in is the one who puts these leaders in a paradoxical position of the sort that they’re.

So it’s, it’s real easy to blame a president or a board. I do think that one thing I would, for people who are listening, the alliance has tools that are concrete to manage up also. So say you’re still at the institution. I think it’s absolutely legitimate for people to point to what we call, we have a tool called the framework for autonomy in difficult contexts, for instance, which really means.

Framework for understanding the assault on higher education and the ways in which to advocate for yourself and your institution, especially with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And ask leaders for what are the clear lines and make be loud about them to the point that Liliana was making like people self-police, ’cause they don’t know what the rules are.

It’s okay to ask for what the rules are and it’s also okay to ask that. Are you really sure that’s what the law said? Also, I think the last part is, some of these institutions and some of these areas could easily reallocate people into different positions that are still mission centric. Those are questions that are operational and obviously the of the, within the decision making authority of an, of a president or something to that effect. But I’m just throwing these things out there. The last part is what I’d say is I wouldn’t, I would absolutely emphasize some of the things that Liliana was saying in the context of a lot of what’s happening right now is about feelings, right?

It’s about fear or lack of it. Actually the theoretical premise for most of my work, including the alliance is. Stems from Audre Lorde who tells us that feelings were not meant to survive in patriarchal and patriarchal and capitalist institutions that have always privileged white and heterosexual people.

And so really thinking through how feelings matter and not in the euphemistic belonging kind of rhetoric that’s often thrown around. People have never felt like they belong on campuses. A radical reimagination needs to occur for us to deliver on. Democracy in higher ed. So I’ll be quiet. That one.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Thanks.

Michael Gavin: Yeah,

Keith Edwards: thanks for No, thanks for that. That’s super helpful. I wanna go back to Liliana. I think people hear about the Alliance for Higher Education. We have a proliferation of acronyms using a lot of the same words. And so Alliance is a little different, but we have all these associations.

We have Spencer you mentioned a bunch of them and I love that you’re including all of that in this broader ecosystem. I, it’s very empowering for me to think about not just colleges and universities, not just large publics and community colleges, but also all these other entities around being together, but help folks understand what the alliance is and isn’t.

Liliana M. Garces: Yeah. Going back to your example when you’re talking about the president and needing to make this decision right. What’s been happening there, it’s been very fragmented, right? These are like fragmented responses. They’re being seen as these individual decisions by campuses and leaders.

And and I think part of where the alliance, really emerged is from a shared recognition that fragmentation really benefits those that are weak, that are looking to weaken. Higher education and that what we needed was a broad coalition that brings together all the different organizations as well as faculty and members within colleges and universities and across institutional types to to defend higher ed as a public good and as a cornerstone of our democracy.

And so it’s really trying to shift from that posture of reaction. And we say fear, but I think of it as like it’s a strategic use of fear. Pe there’s a very strategic use of the law and of threats to get people to react in that particular way. And it’s the law and threats and that broader environment that we really need to attend to as opposed to thinking about the very individual responses that that folks are engaged in.

Which when we, there this term of the chilling effect get gets used a lot, right? And that keeps us very focused. On that individual response as opposed to the broader environment that’s creating those feelings. And that’s the environment that we need to address. And so it’s, it’s a coalition.

It’s I know Mike I love how, talks about it as we’re not just an organization, we’re really trying to to start a movement. And in a big tent effort to unite higher ed around a shared set of foundational commitments that we all share. Freedom of inquiry, institutional self-governance.

Meaning you can make decisions without fear of political interference or coercion or intimidation or censorship. Equitable access and opportunity and. In higher Ed’s role in, in really sustaining our democracy and connecting it as, lee Bollinger talks about it as a fifth pillar of democracy, and I know there’ll be, and Mike you can say more about this with our event happening next week.

It’s the, I would say another part before I turn it to Mike, ’cause he really is our visionary and our leader of what the alliance is and it’s not is with my kind of legal social legal hat on, it’s very grounded in the fact that. All these laws, they don’t just implement themselves.

They’re, they gain their meaning through like how we give them meaning, through how we interpret and put them into practice. And the, from my past research. I’ve come come up with this concept with my colleagues on what I call repressive legalism, which is really trying to shift that sense of the chilling effect, the individual action from something to like the broader environment.

And the fact that the law is being leveraged in ways that create perceptions that you’re not allowed to do something when in fact you are. And it’s being leveraged to suppress equity in particular ways. And so as an alliance, we’re trying to disrupt that dynamic to provide the kind of the clarity, shared knowledge, collective support to shape those individual actions.

And recognize that all these intermediary organizations really play a very important role in mediating. How actors within higher education give, perceive what these laws mean and that it’s important to connect across the ecosystem. So there’s we really stopped this fragmented response and Yeah.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Go ahead, Mike.

Michael Gavin: I think Li Liliana did a great job. I could give, we have three pillars and Liliana explain them, but I’ll just make sure. One is that, the sector as a whole, from community colleges to medical schools, from the advising staff to the board member is united and thought about holistically in the context of democracy, right?

So that we serve the democracy, not the other way around. And then underneath that, the concept of, what academics we call academic freedom, but the ability to learn and teach and, produce knowledge without interruption from government control or reprisals. And the final one is that equity or fair opportunity and access and success are necessary.

But I’ll also just explain why that matters and why it’s different than some other institutions or organizations. And the easiest way to do it is through concrete data, right? So when Floor, the first two states that we have concrete data on with regard to legislation that has occurred.

With regard to those three pillars negatively on student success is the following. It’s in Florida and Texas. In Florida, one in eight students when asked whether they would attend a public school in Florida they say no. And the reason why they offer is because of the legislation that has come.

That is anti DEI. In Texas, we have seen nearly 90% of LGBTQ plus students say they feel unsafe on campus, and we have one in 10 students saying they want to leave the state because of the legislation. Now everybody’s doing some really excellent work in higher ed. I was, I am still a huge believer in like pathways and making sure that milestones are, met with students and advisors, et cetera.

If we keep pretending that the conditions outside of higher ed have not changed and we just do that work, you don’t solve that one in eight student issue, the L-G-B-T-Q issue that in Texas, nor the one in 10 who wanna leave the state of Texas and nobody’s really poised to do that work. So the alliance is meant to change those conditions.

Secure those conditions and let everybody continue do the work that they were doing. So we want to take that space so that the, all of that work that has been done, that has actually shown real promise can continues and still has the same impact over time. But on top of that, we have a project called Democracy’s Campus, which is also thinking about understanding we weren’t doing a great job.

In terms of delivering on higher ed for everybody in the first place. So 10 years out, 20 years out, what should we look like to deliver on those premises? So that’s pretty much us in a nutshell.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, that’s super helpful. And I think, we’re talking about the broader ecosystem influencing.

Legislation the president and board level choices and decisions. And I’m imagining many of our listeners who are not there, who are maybe the dean of students thinking, I can’t influence federal policy. I can’t influence the DeSantis administration, I can’t even influence my state legislature, legislators, what might be some of the things those folks can do, right? What’s beyond their sphere of control? And maybe you disagree with that. So I think these folks feel like these bigger things beyond the institution at the federal level and even the state level feel beyond their control. And I think there’s federal state, but then there’s also these other entities and actors instigating and things.

I was just at a CPA and hearing folks say. It’s interesting that a social media post can get you fired, but I got 20 death threats last week and no one’s doing anything about that. And I think that, I sent an email about supporting first gen students and I got 20 death threats, not from campus, from off campus.

And that’s okay. But this person posted something slightly controversial on social media and they no longer work here. How do I hold this? So I guess I’m asking. What’s in the sphere of influence, not of the board or the president which I think we’ve spoken to. But some of those other folks what sort of advice would you give to those folks, Mike?

Michael Gavin: Yeah and I know Lilian has some stuff to talk about this too, but I thank you for that question, Keith. I think that’s actually a really important question in terms of a lot of the tools that we have on our website, and I can give you like concrete examples of ’em.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, we’ll get all of that in the show notes for sure.

Michael Gavin: Are focused on finding spaces of agency for people in different seats, right? So we don’t create like rhetoric. We say this is we try to figure out the dean of students, for instance, that what is your sphere of influence and how can you, there is that managing up element that I mentioned. But there is also, the, there’s also the idea that, take it, which, depending on which example you want to use, but take the example of the person who’s fired for, a first gen student email, or the person who has gotten vitriol back is, what is your example?

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Michael Gavin: I actually think that the, to be really academic about it, the discursive frames that are put on the hallways, meaning that what’s not talked about in hallways is actually very impactful in a negative way.

The hallway and the culture of the institution. And so raising those issues, but in a way that I think could be framed, especially if you were in the deep student affairs area. By academics in a way that is producing, learning and how to talk about these issues in a way that candidly we haven’t really done a good job with in the last decade.

In term, like a lot of it is cancel culture and it’s or I’m not gonna bring it up ’cause I’m scared. But those are the moments of growth and those are the moments that higher ed needs to situate itself in strongly. I have a couple pieces on that I’ll put in the chat too about Charlie Kirk and how we should actually be real about how we remember what he did.

Also use this as a moment in opportunity for real difficult conversations that should be had about national memories, cultural memories, history, what those things are for. And those are just some quick examples, but I also think it’s worth, in terms of policy with regard to people being fired for a social media post or something to that.

I think it’s if that has not visited your institution, that’s again, one of those, I think it’s worth unions having conversations with the administration about what that looks like. This is a moment where there’s more common ground, or should be, at least, there should be almost more common ground about those three pillars.

Autonomy, academic freedom, and equity. Then, if we can’t agree on those things, we have a problem at our institutions and some of ’em we do have a problem at our institutions. But I think these are moments where you could, through structures of governance, hallway conversations, et cetera, and we have tools for this, raise these issues in a way that could.

Ultimately provide clarity for people and hopefully some emotional safety as a result. And I really do think that is being brave enough to just raise the issue. And maybe you need some help finding out the safe person to raise it too. That’s fair. But I think those are, it’s a longer answer than you probably wanted, but

Keith Edwards: no, that’s great.

Liliana, what would

Liliana M. Garces: you add? I think about that, the response coming where you the firing versus the support. And that’s, what you are, we’re out balance when it comes to how we’re assessing risk. And the risk is very much about. What comes from that repressive legalism that, that perception and really attending to like what these outside actors are are threatening and needing to, responding from a place of needing to concede to those pressures versus thinking about the risk that your actions are going to present for your mission for.

The the students that you’re trying to support and through that educational journey. And so we need that kind, we just need to rebalance, I think that, those pressures for for our field.

Michael Gavin: Yeah, but can I add this? So Liliana, you make a really good point. I think one thing that’s implicit in what she and I are saying, but I’ll make it explicit, is that there are a lot of people on campuses who feel the same way, but they feel isolated.

And I do think, it is a heavy lift to take the risk to have a conversation. But I, my experience has been, especially those who are not in the cabinet level, have the opportunity to find people like them in more in, at a more scaled level than they may believe that people actually would agree with each other on these issues more than not.

And you might get some. Cold responses, but those are, and we remember like looking at social behavior and all this, right? We remember the worst things, not the best things. Yeah. So you’re gonna have one, one out of 10 people who’s gonna give you the cold shoulder. But I would actually say start having these conversations.

Build coalition within your institution.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Michael Gavin: And if you have to try to manage up in the ways that I’ve talked about before.

Keith Edwards: There’s a scalable thing here. The two of you and the Alliance are trying to have higher ed, be less fragmented by state, by institution, and build more of a coalition.

And your advice is within an institution, don’t you yourself, be fragmented, find other people to build that coalition with the institution for the support. What can folks expect to see coming from the alliance in the future? And if folks are really listening to this and really excited about it, how can they get connected?

Michael Gavin: You want me to take that first? Yeah,

Keith Edwards: go for it.

Liliana M. Garces: Yeah, go for it, Mike.

Michael Gavin: So easy connection. Follow us on LinkedIn. It’s Alliance for Higher Education website is Alliance for higher ed.org. We have a signup or newsletter there. Within that construct, we also have, we will have in the very probably by summer, a mechanism by which people can join subcommittees.

And or become members. We’re not gonna be a high dues paying organization. By meaning like we’re thinking about dues for individuals being like $5. And you would only have to do, and you’re not gonna have to pay for the newsletter or anything, it’s just if you wanna be part of the committee.

But more importantly, I’ll let Liliana talk about her arm. I’ll talk really quickly about Dr. Tia McNair’s arm, which is focused on that question of. What should higher ed look like in 10 years? We’re in the middle of a collaborative coalitional conversation among many associations to answer that question with a blueprint to be published by November, if not before.

Some easy, real quick things that people could do to though midterms will. And there’s no reason not to engage in,

Keith Edwards: you mean elections not finals, right?

Michael Gavin: Very good point, Keith. Yeah, both matter.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, both matter.

Michael Gavin: Student engagement towards voting and raising the consciousness about why voting matters that which many institutions already do.

But there, there is an active attempt by the federal administration to make people feel like engaging in student voting is illegal. That’s not the case. It’s actually required by law. That students engage in or institutions engage in voting or at least re voter registration. So those are some tiny things with big impact.

We also, last thing I’ll say is that we have negotiated rulemaking happening with accreditation right now, which would have, I think is probably the most existential threat that higher ed is facing right now. And because it’s both invisible. And it is how institutions are able to disperse financial aid.

And we have a resource that will drop in the chat too. But we will have the ability of individuals to make public comment. Using templates that we create. And all you would have to do is add a sentence of your personal story to make it meaningful and have the ability to make sure that we have academic freedom and equity maintained even after this negotiated rules section that’ll be about Memorial Day.

That, that’s a huge issue that we would love some support in. And that’s our short slash long-term future there, with the exception of liliana’s. Important work.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Liliana M. Garces: We also have a series of webinars, which I’ve had the privilege to to help organize for the alliance. We’ve had three just concluded our third one.

And and really these are opportunities for us for those in the sector to make sense of ongoing developments and not just be hit with the, what can feel really overwhelming. To the point where you just feel paralyzed. But really try to develop a sense of agency even if it’s just around sensemaking and understanding it and seeing the places where there’s opportunity to, to respond with the tools that, that the Alliance provides in its resources page. I would encourage folks to to visit our website and all the webinars are there’s a summary of them and all the vid all the videos. There’s a link to all videos and to stay tuned for the monthly ones that will be forthcoming.

And yeah, I think, overall just. See us as a way to reclaim your sense of agency and our collective power that we have to shape the environment that we’re in and help create that that shared learning. I think another really important piece that I’m.

Involved in with a fellowship program. So we have a series of of fellows that we just admitted our first cohort of fellows who are gonna be really embedded in the work that we’re doing with organizations so that we can really bridge this divide that we have between policy practice and research expertise.

So very intentional in doing that. And yeah

Keith Edwards: that’s great.

Liliana M. Garces: Did I miss anything, Mike?

Michael Gavin: Nope. I love it. We should steal.

Keith Edwards: I love this movement from fragmented to coalition to find our agency and I think that’s quite powerful at both the macro and the micro scale. So I think that’s fantastic. We are running out of time and the podcast is called Student Affairs.

Now we always like to end with asking our guests, what are you thinking? Troubling or pondering now, and it might be related to this conversation or it might be unrelated but maybe related to this conversation since there’s so much happening day by day. And also if folks want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Liliana, let’s start with you. What are you thinking troubling or pondering now?

Liliana M. Garces: Thinking a lot about especially for your listeners, how, student affairs professionals are so much at the front lines of what we’re facing at this moment. Balancing a lot of legal uncertainty.

Student needs, personal values, and. All of that while doing really what is very deeply re relational and emotionally demanding work. And so it really troubles. I just think a lot about the impact that all of this is having on everyone. And that kind of erosion of confidence and trust that can build up when you see your leaders acting in very contrary ways to what you think, the values of higher education should be.

And so that, that’s, that, that gives me a lot of pause. And there’s just a lot also from like research that we’ve been doing that is. My team and I in the last couple years have also really examined how these laws are being implemented and unfolding and this idea of of compliance that continues to shift just when you think you’re compliant and all of a sudden it’s expanded and it’s expanded and it’s because of all these outside pressures that are like.

Creating this this shift of compliance in ways that is really eroding moral morale on campus and the trust. And we talk a lot about the trust of higher education, but we need to think about, the trust of the actors within and students and whether they feel that they really are being seen.

And supported. And at the same time, what gives me hope is seeing how how that can shift when leaders name their values out loud, when they can defend the values of higher education. And the more that we can do that collectively, I think the more that we’re gonna be able to disrupt this climate.

And I think as a faculty member, what I. Feel the most when I take off my hat as the alliance and I put on my hat as a, as a faculty member, one of the most rewarding things that I get to do is, be in the classroom with students who are coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, who are learning about themselves, about one another about the society that we’re in.

And when they think about what they wanna aspire to be, how we can get there and. Seeing that learning process and seeing students even become more whole when they get to learn about someone else is really beautiful. And and right now, we have laws that are really undermining that, that learning for students and the ability for faculty to, to deliver on that learning and that possibility.

And so when, we have, when we have those policies that don’t reflect our values, then. Let’s change them. It’s our responsibility to change them. At the end of the day, that’s what laws are. They just reflect the values of our society and right now they are not. And so I think about like my own educational journey, circling back to to that story for myself.

The fact that I was able to attend college depended on such a narrow window of of possibilities that made me eligible for financial aid, for example. The luck of caring educators the availability of scholarships, and it’s just a journey that really reminds me about how contingent all those things can be.

But it doesn’t have to be. And we get to shape those thoughts and policies so that we can promote more access and expand more opportunity. And and that’s why I’m really clear-eyed at this time. For what? For what we need. That we can’t let the law be used to close doors. We need to really use it to open to open more doors and more opportunity.

And it’s really what, really defending who we are as Americans and who we wanna be. And that’s the spirit in which I approach everything in my work. And so in terms of connecting with me you can find me on LinkedIn through my university webpage or through the Alliance as well on our website.

Keith Edwards: That’s amazing. I just feel like I got a pet talk from the coach. I’m ready to run through a wall for you. That’s great. Thank you. That’s

Liliana M. Garces: how Mike makes me feel.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Alright, Mike, what are you thinking troubling or pondering now and where can folks connect with you?

Michael Gavin: Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn in Blue Sky and you can get my, get me through our website as well.

I guess what I’m thinking about, it’s interesting to me how Hungry just voted Victor Orban out of office, and I mentioned that because his first step was to assault higher education to create an authoritarian. And he won by a, he got ousted by a landslide. After 16 years. And so what that tells you is that there’s a lot of hope.

And I don’t mean that in terms of who’s currently in office at the, in the White House, I mean it in terms of what’s happening where, in Texas, Florida, Iowa, there people care about these issues. And it’s also what we, what troubles me is obviously whether or not I’m doing a good enough job in all this.

’cause it’s a lot. But then on top of it. That the themes that we des scribed here are being felt in the law, in medicine, in public health. Like we are not alone. We’re part of an ecosystem that is feeling the same and through the same exact tools, feeling those pressures. And so trying to like on my mind often is how do we make this clear that even to the people inside higher ed, but also outside of it, that it’s the democracy and what you’re feeling in your office.

On a higher ed space, somebody in a law office is also feeling because of the same exact pressures, the same exact weaponization of it basically. Often money, but it’s other things as well. But what also, the last thing I’ll just say is what I’ll elevate, what Liliana said is what’s giving me like a lot of.

Fills my cup is that I see a lot of really, I’ve met so many wonderful people in this journey the last five years. And that gives me so much hope about the country to know that, even people who you think might not be full of love, that there’s a lot of love out there, and it’s heartening to know that.

And I guess I feel very privileged ’cause I get to meet new people all the time in this job. And, I can tell you there’s a lot more people out there who believe in students, believe in the mission of higher ed. Believe in the work of every professional in the offices that you’re sitting in than you probably feel like because the media is saturating us with the opposite and that it’s really not true.

I’ll leave it there, but that’s what’s on my mind off.

Keith Edwards: Great. I see what you mean, Liliana. That’s great. Thank you both. Thank you for joining us today and thank you for your work with the Alliance. I think it’s really important in this moment in higher education as we go. This has been terrific and thanks for your leadership in this space.

I also wanna thank our sponsor of today’s episode, Evolve Higher Education is facing unprecedented challenges, as we’ve just talked about a few of them, and needs courageous leadership now more than ever, and poor leadership has never been more costly. At the Evolve Institute, we are empowering a new generation of leaders with the capacity to turn these challenges into possibilities and lead with and through them.

Evolve helps leaders develop the capacity to lead with clarity, confidence, courage, and compassion. We offer leadership coaching journeys for leadership teams and individual leaders focused on executive leaders, emerging executives, emerging leaders, and those leading for equity. As always, a huge shout out to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who does all the behind the scenes work to make us all look and sound good, and we love your support for these conversations.

As our audience, you help make everything go. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube and our weekly newsletter, and also our brand new Patreon where you can find tons of free resources. There are paid tiers and a free tier, and you can access so many great tools, toolkits and resources connected to these episodes.

And if you’d like to see something there that’s not, let us know and we’ll get it added. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest today and everyone who is watching and listening. Make it a great week. Thank you both.

Sign up for Alliance Newsletter and Linked-in: https://allianceforhighered.org/contact

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-alliance-for-higher-education/posts/?feedView=all

Mike Gavin’s comments on public trust in higher ed:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2026/04/09/presidents-puzzled-rebuilding-public-trust-higher

 Mike Gavin’s commentary referenced during conversation:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00091383.2026.2596567

Concerns over accreditation:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/accreditation/2026/04/13/experts-new-accreditation-rules-threaten-academic-freedom

Concerns over System Award Management requirements:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/diversity/2026/04/01/higher-ed-denounces-gsas-proposed-federal-funding-strings

Garces research on why a Coalition?

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/03/13/coalitions-we-need-defend-open-inquiry-opinion

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221546.2025.2461986

Garces research on Climate of Suppression/repressive legalim:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00091383.2025.2471242#d1e175