AKA Review - 10.17.2025

From The New York Times

Trump’s ‘Compact’ with Universities is Just Extortion

By Erwin Chemerinsky

As four of the nine universities offered Trump’s compact decline in no uncertain terms, it’s worth revisiting this take by the Dean of UC Berkeley Law School. He reviews relevant precedents and the basics of constitutional law to make a powerful case for the compact’s illegality—“extortion, plain and simple”—and argue for collective resistance. With the “offer” now being extended to all universities, “the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it. If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold.” Read this article

From Science

NSF Held Captive

By Jeffrey Mervis

In revising funding criteria to respond to the White House’s political agenda, the National Science Foundation is backing off its 75-year mission to fund the best academic research while staying above the political fray. The author highlights four programs to show how the NSF walks a tightrope between carrying out the President’s priorities and not violating its core principles. Even as it toes this line, however, Trump’s proposed 50% cut in NSF’s budget and a forced reorganization will reduce the agency’s scientific expertise and lower the quality of NSF-funded research.
Read this article

From The Atlantic

The Myth of the Campus Snowflake

By Christopher L. Eisgruber

Claims that students are “steeped in cancel culture and reluctant to confront opposing ideas” don’t jibe with on-campus reality, argues Princeton’s President. The perceived gap stems from confusion of actual disruption and legitimate protest, as well as free-speech rankings that miscast controversy as censorship. Even the self-censorship under peer pressure that students cite is not unique to them but reflects instead a broader national decline in the ability and desire of Americans “to speak constructively to those with whom they disagree.” Read this article

From The New Yorker

Should College Get Harder?

By Joshua Rothman

After reviewing the haphazard evolution of teaching, the author considers its future in light of several forces. A.I. is reshaping jobs in ways that diminish the value of popular college majors and is used by students to “mime” learning rather than embrace it. Student evaluations of faculty incentivize grade inflation and reduced writing and reading requirements. As A.I. leads many to question “the labor of learning,” colleges that haven’t had to persuade kids about the validity of what they do now have no choice but to demonstrate their value. Read this article

From WIRED

How to Get Your Kids Into STEM Even When Its Future Is Uncertain

By Rhett Allain

This physics professor makes an unusual case for STEM. With increasing career uncertainty, students must be compelled by the fields themselves—building models, discovering their failures, and using these to build the skills of an explorer—rather than seeking ROI. In an argument usually reserved for the humanities, he shows how the study of science is good training for many jobs, even non-STEM careers. “STEM is just like all the other majors. You should go into these fields because you think they're awesome.”Read this article