Case in Point

Jul 21: AI: Research papers from 14 academic institutions in eight countries -- including Japan, South Korea and China -- contained hidden prompts directing artificial intelligence tools to give them good reviews, Nikkei has found. Nikkei looked at English-language preprints -- manuscripts that have yet to undergo formal peer review -- on the academic research platform arXiv. It discovered such prompts in 17 articles, whose lead authors are affiliated with 14 institutions including Japan's Waseda University, South Korea's KAIST, China's Peking University and the National University of Singapore, as well as the University of Washington and Columbia University in the U.S. Most of the papers involve the field of computer science. (link)

Jul 18: Data Breach: Students at the College of New Caledonia (CNC) in Prince George may have had their personal information compromised in a months-long data breach. Cybersecurity experts say it is emblematic of wider cybersecurity problems within educational institutions that can pose serious risks to students' personal information. In a letter sent to students in July, the college says that on March 5, 2025, they learned an unauthorized individual gained access to their online systems, but the individual may have had access to this information on or before Oct. 31, 2024. (link)

Jul 16: AI: The advent of generative AI has elicited waves of frustration and worry across academia for all the reasons one might expect: Early studies are showing that artificial intelligence tools can dilute critical thinking and undermine problem-solving skills. And there are many reports that students are using chatbots to cheat on assignments. But how do students feel about AI? And how is it affecting their relationships with peers, instructors and their coursework? (link)

Jul 02: Cyberattack: A politically motivated hacker breached Columbia University’s data systems last week, stealing troves of student documents while briefly shutting down the school’s computer systems, a university official said Wednesday. The June 24 cyberattack prompted widespread network outages on campus, locking students and staff out of their email accounts, coursework and video conference software for several hours. On the same day, images of President Donald Trump’s smiling face appeared on several public monitors across the Manhattan campus. (link)

Jul 01: Cyberattack: ACPHS started sending out breach notification letters to tens of thousands of individuals impacted by the September 2024 data breach. According to information the college submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office, 28,600 were impacted by the attack. After ACPHS discovered a breach of its systems, an investigation into the incident was launched. The postmortem, led by a third-party cybersecurity firm, revealed that attackers roamed the college’s systems for roughly two weeks from the end of August until the discovery of the breach in mid-September. (link)

Jul 18: Foreign Ties: The University of Chicago has received information requests from the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security concerning admissions practices and international students. The university disclosed that "there may be prospective investigations or inquiries" and that these developments "may, directly or indirectly, have a material adverse effect" on its financial profile and operating performance. (link)

Jul 18: Research Integrity: Scientists hoping to obtain some of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) dwindling research funds face a new challenge: They will be limited to submitting six applications per calendar year, according to a notice the agency released this week. The policy, which also prohibits applications written with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence, is ostensibly designed to prevent researchers from overwhelming the NIH grant-review system with large numbers of proposals, especially low-quality ones produced with AI. (link)

Jul 18: Research Security: The University of Tennessee, just after receiving a letter from the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has terminated a program that allowed Chinese graduate students to study at the university. The move came two days after the university system received the letter from Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar and will affect three students, a university representative confirmed. The letter raised questions about the program, but did not specifically ask UT to end it. (link)

Jul 15: Foreign Ties: The U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan while alleging it found "inaccurate and incomplete disclosures" in a review of the university's foreign reports. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants, and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to the university. (link)

Jul 07: Academic Integrity: Scientists know it is happening, even if they don’t do it themselves. Some of their peers are using chatbots, like ChatGPT, to write all or part of their papers. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, Dmitry Kobak of the University of Tübingen and his colleagues report that they found a way to track how often researchers are using artificial intelligence chatbots to write the abstracts of their papers. The A.I. tools, they say, tend to use certain words -- like "delves," "crucial," "potential," "significant" and "important" -- far more often than human authors do. (link)

Jul 01: Intellectual Property Rights: Dinkar Jain was hired at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management in 2023 to teach "Management in the Age of AI" -- a course he had developed to give current and aspiring management executives the insights on artificial intelligence they needed to lead their companies. Jain was a technology executive with a front-row seat to how AI was changing business, but he believed AI proficiency was trapped in Silicon Valley. The business world -- and the broader world -- badly needed "awareness, education, an understanding of the technology for what it is, and a demystification of myths or misinformation about the technology in terms of what it isn’t," he said. (link)

Jul 30: DEI: The U.S. Justice Department issued a memo, opens new tab on Wednesday that asked recipients of federal funds to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which President Donald Trump has aimed to dismantle since taking office in January. Trump has passed executive orders aimed at restricting DEI but Wednesday's memo laid out specific examples of actions that it said federal fund recipients should restrict - such as some training sessions and policies aimed at protected groups. It also said federal funds should not be used to support third parties that engage in DEI. (link)

Jul 30: Title VI: The Department of Justice said Tuesday that UCLA violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who reported harassment and intimidation during a spring 2024 pro-Palestinian campus encampment, heightening the political tensions between the University of California and the Trump administration. In a letter addressed to UC President Michael V. Drake, DOJ officials said, "Jewish and Israeli students at UCLA were subjected to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment that created a hostile environment by members of the encampment." In a separate action, UCLA will pay $6.45 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from pro-Palestinian protests in spring 2024. (link)

Jul 29: Title VI: The Trump administration announced Monday it is investigating Duke University and the Duke Law Journal for allegedly using race-based discrimination to pick law journal members. The Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to the university also detailing concerns regarding race discrimination in hiring, admissions and scholarships at the university. (link)

Jul 28: Title VI: When the Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into George Mason University over accusations that the university’s diversity programs were discriminatory, many members of the faculty were outraged. Professors quickly published a resolution supporting their president and the university’s efforts around diversity. Now, Justice Department officials say they will investigate the faculty, too. (link)

Jul 24: Federal Compliance: White House officials have reached deals with two Ivy League universities and are now armed with a proven strategy to pressure other schools to rewrite their policies and reorient campus politics. First, they strip away hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding, based on vague accusations that a university abets antisemitism or unlawfully supports transgender rights. Then they make demands, wearing down school administrators until making concessions to the White House appears to be the only way forward. The strategy worked twice in the last month, with Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. That leaves at least five more embattled schools -- Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern and Princeton -- with decisions to make about whether to fight or to bargain. (link)

Jul 24: Athletics Compliance: President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that is intended to bring order and stability to college sports, though NCAA and conference leaders still stressed that federal legislation is needed to address myriad issues schools and athletes are facing. The order was announced by the White House a day after it became apparent Congress was still a ways away from passing a bill to help regulate college sports and the way athletes can be compensated. (link)

Jul 24: Title VI: Columbia University said Wednesday it had reached a settlement with the Trump administration to end federal investigations into civil rights violations stemming from the divisive protests at the New York City campus over the Israel-Hamas war. As part of the agreement, the university said it agreed to pay $200 million over three years to the federal government to settle investigations launched by the administration ostensibly in response to allegations of antisemitism by students and faculty during the protests. The administration agreed to reinstate the vast majority of federal grants that were terminated or paused in March 2025 and posed a significant threat to university operations, Columbia said. (link)

Jul 23: State Law: The University of Kansas staff is now required to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures to comply with a new Board of Regents directive, the school announced Tuesday. All staff must remove "gender-identifying pronouns and personal pronoun series from their KU email signature blocks, webpages, Zoom/Teams screen IDs and any other form of university communications," the announcement from KU Chancellor Douglas Girod states. The announcement cites the Kansas Board of Regents’ recently issued directive to state universities, which comes in the wake of a state legislative budget provision targeting "diversity, equity, and inclusion" initiatives across state agencies. (link)

Jul 23: Title VI: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has opened national origin discrimination investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, and Western Michigan University. The investigations will determine whether these universities are granting scholarships only for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or "undocumented" students, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s (Title VI) prohibition against national origin discrimination. These investigations are based on complaints submitted to OCR by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, which seeks to ensure equal protection under the law and non-discrimination by the government in any form. (link)

Jul 21: Civil Rights: The Trump administration insists it hasn’t wavered in its duty to protect the civil rights of America’s children even as it dismantles the Education Department. Yet its own data shows the agency has resolved far fewer civil rights cases than in past years despite families filing more complaints. The Education Department’s civil rights branch lost nearly half its staff amid mass layoffs in March, raising questions about its ability to address a deep backlog of complaints from students alleging discrimination based on disability, sex or race. Pressed on the issue in June, Education Secretary Linda McMahon denied a slowdown. (link)

Jul 14: Title VI: Following the recent surge of complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses--and increased scrutiny from the federal government--more and more universities are creating new jobs to lead the institutions’ response to these complaints. Turning to a coordinator to handle all things Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is just the latest sign that colleges and universities are working to update processes, policies and procedures related to civil rights after finding themselves unprepared to handle complaints--a gap that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has called on institutions to address. The growth in positions also indicates that colleges don’t expect the scrutiny on Title VI to end any time soon. (link)

Jul 14: Discrimination Lawsuit: Their mother was Jane Wu, a Chinese American neuroscientist at Northwestern University whose lab was abruptly shut down in May 2024 following a government investigation into her research activities and ties to China. Wu was never charged, and she died by suicide at 60 years old just months later. Her family recently filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that Northwestern discriminated against Wu even though she was cleared by shutting down her lab, forcing her into a psychiatric facility against her will and ultimately leading her to take her own life. Wu’s court records do not show any related charges. (link)

Jul 10: Title VI: The Trump administration on Thursday opened a civil rights investigation into the hiring practices at George Mason University, expanding a national campaign against diversity policies to Virginia’s largest public university. The Education Department said it is responding to a complaint from multiple professors at George Mason who accuse the university of favoring those from underrepresented groups. The complaint takes aim at the university’s president, Gregory Washington, saying he issued guidance that favors faculty candidates based on diversity considerations rather than their credentials, according to the department. (link)

Jul 08: Title IX: An internal investigation into Cal Poly Athletics and questions over Title IX compliance as the saga surrounding the elimination of the university's swim and dive programs continues. Last week, Cal Poly received a letter from the non-profit legal advocacy organization Champion Women and the law firm Equity IX informing the university that, with the elimination of the Cal Poly Swim and Dive program, the university is not Title IX compliant. (link)

Jul 07: Title VI: Barnard College has settled a lawsuit brought by Jewish and Israeli students who said they had faced severe and pervasive antisemitism on campus, with administrators pledging that they will maintain a "zero tolerance" policy regarding discrimination and harassment, the college and lawyers representing the students announced Monday. Barnard, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, has been the site of several pro-Palestinian demonstrations during the past 21 months, including a sit-in at the student center this March that ended with arrests. Some Jewish and Israeli students have complained of harassment during demonstrations and in the dining hall and elsewhere on campus. They have also said they have been excluded from some student organizations. (link)

Jul 02: Title IX: The Trump administration has released $175 million in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, a White House official told CNN on Wednesday, following an agreement on how the university would handle transgender athletes. The funding release comes after the school reached an agreement with the federal government to block transgender athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas. (link)

Jul 02: State Law: Six of Indiana’s higher education institutions are moving to collectively cut or consolidate over 400 programs in the face of a state law taking effect Tuesday that aims to end academic offerings that award low numbers of degrees. The programs on the chopping block account for 19% of all degree offerings at the state’s public higher education institutions. The colleges opted to consolidate 232 programs, suspend 101 and eliminate 75. Under the new state law, public colleges must seek approval from the Indiana Higher Education Commission to continue degree programs that don’t graduate enough students to meet certain thresholds. If the commission doesn’t grant approval, colleges must eliminate those programs. (link)

Jul 01: Compliance: After a narrow party-line vote in the House Thursday, President Trump signed off on his signature legislation, a sprawling, expensive domestic-policy bill, by his self-imposed July 4 deadline. To fund the extension of roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts made during Trump’s first term, the bill will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade while making steep cuts to Medicaid and other social services. Low-income Americans will be especially hard-hit, analyses show. The bill contains some bitter pills for higher ed, too: an increased excise tax on the endowment income of wealthy colleges, penalties for institutions that fail to deliver an earnings bump to their graduates, and the elimination of Grad PLUS loans. (link)

Jul 01: Settlement: Columbia University agreed to pay $9 million to settle a proposed class action by students who claimed it submitted false data to boost its position in U.S. News & World Report's influential college rankings. A preliminary settlement, which requires a judge's approval, was filed on Monday in Manhattan federal court. Students said Columbia artificially inflated its U.S. News ranking for undergraduate schools, reaching No. 2 in 2022, by consistently reporting false data, including that 83% of its classes had fewer than 20 students. (link)

Jul 01: Title IX: The University of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the federal government that will limit how transgender people may participate in its athletic programs, bowing to the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the law that bans sex discrimination in education. The government also said the Ivy League school had pledged to "adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’" that comply with the Trump administration’s reading of Title IX and a pair of executive orders that the president issued this year. (link)

Jul 01: State Law: A new law banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Kentucky's higher education institutions is set to take effect June 30, prompting colleges and universities to make changes to comply with the new requirements. The law, House Bill 4, was passed by the Kentucky General Assembly during the 2025 legislative session. During the floor vote and debate in the House and Senate chambers, the legislation received wide support from Republicans and stark criticism from Democrats. (link)

Jul 01: Title VI: A Trump administration investigation has found that Harvard University violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students on campus. The finding puts the school at risk of losing additional federal funding. In a separate letter to the university summarizing the investigation's findings, a federal task force said, "Harvard has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff." (link)

Jul 26: Shooting: A 14-year-old is dead and another person is injured after an early morning shooting at a dormitory complex at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, authorities said Friday. The incident occurred at the school's Casas del Rio (Gila) student housing center, according to a statement by UNM President Garnett S. Stokes. The injured victim is currently hospitalized. Four people were playing video games in a dorm room when, "for reasons we're still investigating," the suspect began shooting a firearm at the other occupants in the room, New Mexico State Police Chief Troy Weisler said in a news conference Friday night. (link)

Jul 22: Campus Protests: Columbia University announced disciplinary action Tuesday against students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the Ivy League school’s main library before final exams in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year. A student activist group said nearly 80 students were told they have been suspended for one to three years or expelled. The sanctions issued by a university judicial board also include probation and degree revocations, Columbia said in a statement. (link)

Jul 19: Hazing: HBCU Southern University has expelled the Beta Sigma Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. following a hazing investigation tied to the death of 20-year-old student Caleb Wilson. This marks a significant disciplinary step for the HBCU, following months of scrutiny and legal fallout stemming from the February incident. The Division of Student Affairs launched the investigation in February. After holding a disciplinary hearing, officials found the Omega Psi Phi chapter responsible for violating the student code of conduct, particularly in relation to hazing. As a result, the university revoked all fraternity privileges and ordered the removal of physical markers, including monuments, benches, and the fraternity’s campus plot. (link)

Jul 18: Free Speech: A University of Kentucky employee has been removed from teaching and is under investigation for circulating an online petition calling for the destruction of Israel, university officials said Friday. UK law professor Ramsi Woodcock is running a website called the "Antizionist Legal Studies Movement." It includes a petition demanding "every country in the world make war on Israel immediately until such time as Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine," according to the website. (link)

Jul 16: Free Speech: A professor at Georgetown University has been removed as chair of his department and is on leave after he publicly hoped Iran would launch a "symbolic strike" on a U.S. military base, the university’s president said. "I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops. I’m surprised this is what these FDD/Hasbara people have been auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves for all these years," Dr. Jonathan Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, posted on X in June after the U.S. struck Iran's nuclear enrichment sites. (link)

Jul 11: Stalking: A Bozeman man accused of sending threatening emails to a student at Montana State University admitted to charges yesterday, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme. According to to the press release, MSU Police contacted the FBI in February 2023 because a student was receiving harassing and threatening communications. The emails were racially charged and included threats to kill the student and other members of the campus group she was affiliated with. (link)

Jul 07: Free Speech: A federal judge in Boston on Monday took in the opening salvos of a trial expected to cut to the heart of several of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics, including President Trump, Israel and free speech on college campuses. The case, filed by a pair of academic associations in March, has become the foremost challenge to the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views. It contends that the government’s targeting of prominent noncitizen academics who have criticized Israel -- such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi of Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts -- has already partially succeeded in chilling political speech across the country, and should be categorically stopped on First Amendment grounds. (link)

Jul 02: Campus Climate: A congressional committee investigating antisemitism on college campuses has released private text messages from Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, that show her expressing distrust and dislike of a Jewish member of the board of trustees who had been outspoken about the treatment of Jewish students. The text messages, which were excerpted in a letter to Ms. Shipman demanding that she provide an explanation and included texts on other subjects, were from 2023 and 2024. (link)