The intensely hostile letter that Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent to the leadership of Harvard yesterday has a lot going on. But the most notable thing about it is what it leaves out.
To hear McMahon tell it, Harvard is a university on the verge of ruin.
It makes for a most tempting “Help Wanted” ad: Earn $5 million a year to lead one of the nation’s most powerful and prestigious institutions. Enjoy fancy dinners, almost unlimited travel, and a complimentary mansion in Upper Manhattan.
This is an incomplete list of the perks that the president of Columbia University receives. And yet no one seems to want the job.
The richest university in the world has decided that some things are more important than money.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration threatened to revoke $9 billion in federal grants and contracts if Harvard did not agree to a long list of demands, including screening foreign applicants “hostile to the American values and institutions” and allowing an external body to audit university departments for viewpoint diversity.
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
An alarming phenomenon has sprung up over the past few years: Many students are arriving at college unprepared to read entire books. That’s a broad statement to make, but I spoke with 33 professors at some of the country’s top universities, and over and over, they told me the same story.
Photographs by Zack Wittman
On Tuesday, as Americans across the country headed to the polls, a few dozen members of the MAGA faithful flocked to the road outside Mar-a-Lago, where they spent the day tailgating, dancing, and praying for Donald Trump’s restoration to the White House.
This was a pilgrimage for some of Trump’s most loyal supporters.
Six years ago, the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, in Manhattan, announced that it would become tuition-free for all students. The change was made possible in part thanks to a $100 million donation from Kenneth Langone, a Home Depot co-founder, and his wife, Elaine.
America’s young voters are fired up about the war in Gaza—aren’t they? Campus protests and the controversies around them have dominated media attention for weeks. So has the possibility that youth anger about the war will cost President Joe Biden the election. “Joe Biden Is Losing Young Voters Over Israel,” a USA Today headline declared last month. The New York Times columnist Thomas B.
For years, Senator Lamar Alexander was known for theatrically unfurling a paper document so long that he could hold it above his head and still see it drag along the chamber floor. It was the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, a form that every college student and their family must complete to be eligible for federal grants and student loans. Detractors argued that its length (more than 100 questions) and complexity (experts joked that you needed a Ph.D.