Category Archives: US universities

Meet the retiree who realized his dream of joining the LSU marching band as a 66-year-old freshman

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Kent Broussard joined Louisiana State University’s famed Golden Band from Tigerland after retiring as an accountant

Some dreams live on in time forever, says the summer Olympics anthem considered by many to be the greatest – and living proof of that is a retired accountant who recently enrolled as a freshman at Louisiana State University in his mid-60s to fulfill his lifelong ambition of playing for the school’s famed marching band.

Kent Broussard drew nationwide media attention after being shown on ESPN’s broadcast of the LSU football team’s victory at home against in-state rival Louisiana Tech on 6 September.

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‘Extortion’: Columbia University’s deal with White House met with mixed reactions

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Some slammed the agreement with the Trump administration to reinstate $400m in federal funds while others praised it as an ‘excellent outcome’

Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.

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Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication

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As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

In March 2024, six months into Israel’s war in Gaza, education in the territory was decimated. Schools were closed – most had been turned into shelters – and all 12 of the strip’s universities were partially or fully destroyed.

Against that backdrop, a prestigious American education journal decided to dedicate a special issue to “education and Palestine”. The Harvard Educational Review (HER) put out a call for submissions, asking academics around the world for ideas for articles grappling with the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US.

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Harvard heads to court to argue Trump administration’s $2.6bn in cuts were illegal

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Ruling in the university’s favor would reverse funding freezes that became cuts as Trump administration escalated fight

Harvard University will appear in federal court Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn from the storied college – a pivotal moment in its battle against the federal government.

If US district Judge Allison Burroughs decides in the university’s favor, the ruling would reverse a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Such a ruling, if it stands, would revive Harvard’s sprawling scientific and medical research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.

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Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says

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Mark Warner says school would face slashes to jobs and financial aid if its president did not resign over DEI practices

The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.

During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.

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University of Toronto agrees to host Harvard students facing Trump visa restrictions

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Pact will help international students finish their studies amid Harvard’s legal battle with Trump administration

Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the United States.

The pact between the two schools reflects the tumultuous and “exceptional” politics of the postsecondary world during the second term of Donald Trump.

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Australian deported from US says he was ‘targeted’ due to writing on pro-Palestine student protests

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Alistair Kitchen says he was detained and questioned about views on Israel and Palestine before being deported from LA to Melbourne

An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.

Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.

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Trump signs proclamation to restrict foreign student visas at Harvard

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US president says it would jeopardize national security to allow university to keep hosting international students

Donald Trump signed a proclamation to restrict foreign student visas at Harvard University, the White House said on Wednesday.

The order would suspend for an initial six months the entry into the US of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard. Trump declared that it would jeopardize national security to allow Harvard to continue hosting foreign students.

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Mohsen Mahdawi, released from Ice custody, graduates from Columbia

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Palestinian activist, freed just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crosses graduation stage to cheers

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, released just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crossed the graduation stage on Monday to cheers from his fellow graduates.

The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He was detained and ordered to be deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.

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NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel in graduation speech

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University says it ‘strongly denounces’ commencement speech by Logan Rozos, who called out ‘atrocities’ in Gaza

New York University is withholding a student’s diploma after he condemned Israel’s deadly war on Gaza during his graduation ceremony speech.

On Wednesday, Logan Rozos, an undergraduate student speaker from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, delivered his commencement speech in which he said: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

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Daughter of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard arrested at Columbia University protests

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Ramona Sarsgaard, 18, given ticket for criminal trespassing after Wednesday’s actions against Israel’s war in Gaza

The daughter of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard was among those arrested at the latest Columbia University protests, marking the latest development in the anti-war demonstrations that also led to the temporary suspension of student journalists.

On Friday, the New York Post reported that 18-year-old Ramona Sarsgaard, a Columbia freshman, was arrested during Wednesday’s campus protests where students demonstrated against Israel’s deadly war in Gaza.

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‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

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As universities begin to push back on Trump’s policies, those in Republican-led states face multiple threats

Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.

As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.

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Court orders detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk returned to Vermont

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Lawyers say the Turkish national, who has been held in a Louisiana Ice center for two weeks, was illegally detained

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a judge’s order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated.

A judicial panel of the New York-based US second circuit court of appeals ruled in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk after lawyers representing her and the US justice department presented arguments at a hearing on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Police disband pro-Palestinian camp at Swarthmore College and arrest nine activists

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Some students were also temporarily suspended as other colleges respond with disciplinary action to protests

On the morning of 3 May, the Swarthmore borough police department disbanded a four-day pro-Palestinian encampment on Swarthmore College’s campus and arrested nine activists.

The demonstration calling on the college to divest from the tech company Cisco due to its ties to the Israeli government was a rare uprising in an academic year where higher-education institutions have been quick to quash them. One current and one former Swarthmore College student were among those arrested, while the rest were from outside the college community, the college’s president, Valerie Smith, said in a statement.

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Trump v 60 Minutes is a stunning battle for the soul of US media

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President’s tensions with CBS show barely scratch surface of crusade against media he calls ‘enemy of the people’

Donald Trump’s battle with a US media he considers an “enemy of the people” has been a signature fight of his second term in office, sparking warnings of an erosion of press freedoms in America and fears over the independence of key publications owned by billionaires seeking to become close to the president.

But one struggle has now taken center stage that puts one of the most prestigious brands in US journalism in a direct legal fight with the White House, which has also dragged in a gigantic multibillion-dollar Wall Street deal by the corporate owners of one of America’s main broadcast networks.

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.

The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.

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Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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DoE investigation revives reports that UC Berkeley failed to disclose Chinese funding for a now severed partnership

The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.

The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.

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‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails

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Delegation visits jails where Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk are being held and denounce ‘authoritarian’ Trump

Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.

“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”

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Detained Turkish student must be transferred from Louisiana for hearing, judge rules

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Rumeysa Ozturk was taken by immigration officials over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for op-ed

A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana to be brought to Vermont by 1 May for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.

US district judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.

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IRS reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status

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Probably illegal move against US’s richest university is latest in Trump’s attack on independence of higher education

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education.

Trump on Tuesday called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.

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