When Diné College, the higher education institution of the Navajo Nation, opened its doors for students this year, it did so with a strengthened partnership with Northern Arizona University (NAU) that both institutions hope will boost the prospects for more Native Americans in the region to earn four-year baccalaureate degrees.

In a special arrangement, Northern Arizona and Diné have established a joint admissions policy that, from Day One, recognizes students enrolled in either institution.

To boot, NAU established a similar partnership recently with the much smaller Tohono O’odham Community College to offer the same joint admissions policy for students of the Tohono Nation community in Arizona.

The enhanced partnership also allows students at Diné, the first and oldest tribal-controlled college in the United States, and Tohono to transfer to Northern Arizona at any time they feel they are academically ready, eliminating the historic requirement of most major four-year institutions in the United States that transferees earn a minimum number of credit hours before being admitted as a transferee.

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n the past few weeks, Xavier Maciel, a first-year transfer student at Pomona College, has on more than one occasion woken up to over a dozen emails from college professors across the country.

After the presidential election, he created a spreadsheet to track which colleges were circulating petitions to become “sanctuary campuses” — an idea similar to sanctuary cities, where officials will not cooperate with the deportation efforts of federal immigration authorities. Each morning, he fields emails from faculty or students wanting to add their college’s petition to his list; it now has over 150 institutions on it.

Petitions and protests in support of undocumented immigrant studentssprang up at colleges nationwide in the weeks following the election, spurred by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s promise to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy that the Obama administration put in place through executive action. That policy, often called DACA, granted some young people who are in the country without proper legal authorization the ability to live and work in the United States for renewable two-year increments without fear of deportation.

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Academics (and journalists) have been accused in the aftermath of the presidential election of being “out of touch” with the American electorate. At the same time, academics have played important leadership roles in eras and places in which free expression has come under threat — as some believe it is now in the U.S.

What is the role of the academic in such an era, or, at the very least, what are the academic’s obligations to his or her profession, campus and government? Rachel Barney, a professor of classics and philosophy at the University of Toronto (and a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen), this week proposed what she’s calling the Anti-Authoritarian Academic Code of Conduct.

Here’s the 10-point code in full:

• I will not aid in the registering, rounding up or internment of students and colleagues on the basis of their religious beliefs.
• I will not aid in the marginalization, exclusion or deportation of my undocumented students and colleagues.

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spent a large part of my 30s suffering — largely in silence — because I couldn’t seem to get pregnant. And whenever I did, I had a miscarriage. Those were also my years on the tenure track, when I was working madly to publish, perfect my teaching, and do academic service in order to achieve a decent salary, job stability, and a successful career.

My body didn’t cooperate with the need to do well in my job, stay sane, and get pregnant. Mostly I didn’t talk about it, though. Because in academe, you don’t.

In recent years, we’ve had plenty of discussions about “Academia’s ‘Baby Penalty’” — i.e., that men with young children are 35 percent more likely to get tenure-track jobs and 20 percent more likely to earn tenure than women in the same boat. Even male professors have published op-eds about how “family-friendly” policies in higher education — such as paternal leave — could actually result in career advancement for men and career decline for women.

But in that public conversation, there is a glaring absence of discussion about the private reality of miscarriage. About 15 to 25 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. Yet in the United States, as anthropologist Linda L. Layne has shown, pregnancy loss is our “taboo.” The culture of silence surrounding miscarriage adds a further strain to the ability of female faculty members to succeed in academe.

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From a “critique” of my work on the latest Professor Watchlist, I learned that I’m a threat to my students for contending that we won’t end men’s violence against women “if we do not address the toxic notions about masculinity in patriarchy … rooted in control, conquest, aggression.”

That quote is supposedly “evidence” for why I am one of those college professors who, according to the watchlist’s mission statement, “discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Perhaps such a claim could be taken more seriously were it not coming from a project of conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, which has its own political agenda — namely educating students “about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government.”

This rather thin accusation appears to flow from my published work instead of an evaluation of my teaching, which confuses a teacher’s role in public with the classroom. So, I’ll help out the watchlist and describe how I address these issues at the University of Texas at Austin, where I’m finishing my 25^th year of teaching. Readers can judge the threat level for themselves.

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Two colleges — one a public university and one a private arts institution — are taking very different approaches to art exhibits that feature works displaying the Ku Klux Klan.

Salem State University on Wednesday reopened an exhibit that it shuttered last week after minority students complained that the art was insensitive. The exhibit, “State of the Union,” featured art inspired by the election. Several paintings by artists critical of President-elect Donald Trump and his campaign depicted images related to bigotry and oppression — not to endorse Trump but to draw attention to bigotry. But many students questioned why some images — especially one of members of the Ku Klux Klan — should be shown at all.

The artist whose work was criticized, Garry D. Harley, tried at a meeting with students to explain the history of artworks that depict things the artists were horrified by, such as “Guernica,” by Pablo Picasso, which expressed anger over the Spanish Civil War. But students rejected Harley’s explanations.

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Questions about implicit bias are now part of most healthy, serious campus conversations — whether the topic is student admissions, campus policing, or faculty recruiting. These are critically important discussions to have, if only to cause every one of us to pause in our daily lives and consider the preconceptions and prejudices we may have.

One forum in which there is a need for continued exploration of bias is the leadership-search committee. In an effort to reduce bias and to ensure a diverse pool of candidates for leadership roles, institutions typically populate search committees with a mix of representatives — the idea being that diverse points of view and backgrounds will, among other things, bring implicit bias into the open and prevent it from coloring decisions.

The committees are inherently representative, but their members still bring with them hidden motives. With diversity of representation comes diversity of biases — about gender, race, age, body type, sexual orientation, dialect, accent, alma mater, hometown, degree worthiness, hairstyle, clothing. The list goes on.

What don’t we have biases about?

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With the birth of my second son earlier this semester, I’ve re-entered a season of intense parenting—well, intense life, to be honest. Writing the last chapter of my dissertation, parenting two boys under three, and looking for a post-PhD job all at the same time is not a task for the faint of heart. It’s not a mere logistical challenge, but an emotional one as well. At the same time that our family is adjusting to the arrival of its newest member, I’m experiencing the very significant and personal transition of finishing my graduate career. I’m also looking ahead to the future, though it’s still uncertain at this point what it will hold.

One unexpected benefit of this time, however, has been the opportunity to reflect upon how the past seven years of graduate school have shaped me. Indeed, entering the job market has required this kind of critical reflection, as writing cover letters has forced me to articulate my future research plans and how they inform my teaching (and vice versa). There’s something else that I’ve been thinking about, though—something that I can’t include in any cover letter, but that is equally significant, and that’s how my experience of classroom teaching has shaped me as an individual and more directly, as a parent.

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Graduate education is far from the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of for-profit education. This sector and the schools in it have largely built their reputations on short training programs tied to entry-level occupations in fields such as allied health or criminal justice. But make no mistake: Advanced degrees add up to a $5 billion business for the for-profit industry, which enrolls nearly half a million students per year.* And unlike the rest of the industry—which has been shrinking and reeling from scandal—the graduate for-profit sector is doing just fine.

Fifteen years ago, only 3 percent of graduate students attended a for-profit institution. Today, 11 percent attend these schools. Enrollment quintupled between the 2000–01 and 2014–15 school years.

Unfortunately, the area in which for-profit institutions seem to be thriving is also the area for which the greatest higher education blind spot exists: There is little public information about student outcomes in graduate school. On one hand, graduate degree holders earn higher lifetime wages, on average, than those without a graduate degree and flexible schedules and online program offerings may make for-profit education an appealing option. Yet these things are also true of bachelor’s degree programs, and there have been plenty of instances in which for-profit colleges engaged in aggressive recruiting or encouraged students to borrow loans that they struggled to repay later.

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Many colleges and four-year universities emphasize the fact that they are “equal opportunity” schools. However, students continue to voice the opinion that their colleges are not doing enough to address the needs of students from different ethnic, cultural, racial and religious backgrounds. During diversity-related protests, students may often point out bureaucratic flaws in higher education including statistical rates of admission for students of different ethnic backgrounds.

In addition, students may address the lack of campus diversity. Students complain that the college in question does not actively encourage certain clubs and activities. Complaints waged may include lack of diversity in campus groups, clubs, gatherings or community events. It is important for every campus to do more than simply represent the racial and cultural campus majority.

A well-rounded university represents the background of each student and allows students to better assimilate other cultures and feel at home. Campus diversity is about breaking down barriers and allowing students to develop a better-rounded worldview. At the same time, it is the job of faculty and special initiative programs to represent the needs of students.

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