Latest news with #AmericanUniversities
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Universities abandon Jewish students amid dangerous tide of social media disinformation
Disinformation isn't just an online nuisance anymore - it's a direct threat to truth, democracy, and safety on American University campuses. Today's students get most of their news from TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Spaces where accuracy often takes a backseat to clicks and engagement. Users are often rewarded the more provocative they are. Making matters worse, major platforms like Meta and X (formerly Twitter) are rolling back their fact-checking and content moderation policies. Since January 2025, Meta has scrapped its fact-checking system in favor of so-called "community framing." Similar to moves already seen on X. According to the Institute for National Security Studies, nearly 60% of people rely on social media for their information, and that number is even higher among students. Resulting in a generation increasingly unable to separate fact from fiction. And that's no accident. Bad actors - from hostile foreign governments to radical social activists - are flooding these platforms with propaganda, conspiracy theories, and hate. Nowhere is this more visible than in the spike of antisemitic disinformation circulating online and at universities. The consequences are deeply troubling: an increasing number of Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, while many others struggle with confusion and lack the tools to navigate an overwhelming flood of false information. Universities should be a beacon of open debate, but this is being twisted into a toxic environment where Jewish students are harassed, vilified, and made to feel unsafe. My own research demonstrated that more than half of students admit to believing something later proven false. Many could not tell the difference between a real news story and a fake one. More than half struggled to distinguish between legitimate news and deliberately fabricated stories when presented with fake social media posts during workshops. Leading to a staggering 87% to 94% of students across different groups expressing strong support for mandatory training to help them recognize and combat disinformation. In three separate U.K. surveys, students reported a dramatic surge in antisemitic disinformation following the October 7th attacks - at rates of 88%, 84%, and 72%, respectively. This problem does not stop at U.K. institutions. Similar scenes have erupted on U.S. campuses. That's a wake-up call. Universities can't afford to ignore this crisis any longer. While they can't control TikTok or Meta, they can ensure their own house is in order. It starts with preparing students with media literacy and disinformation. Not another lecture - real, practical courses taught by experts in tech, journalism, and cybersecurity. These programs should be non-negotiable. Because as today's students become tomorrow's professors this won't be enough. Universities will also need clear rules against knowingly spreading lies, especially when those lies are used to spread hate or incite hostility - and these rules should apply to Professors too. This isn't about stifling debate - it's about protecting students and upholding basic standards of truth. The United States is on the front line of this crisis. American universities, once champions of rigorous debate and intellectual freedom, are now grappling with a tidal wave of disinformation that is undermining both education and student safety. Antisemitic conspiracy theories, fake videos, and distorted narratives are spreading like wildfire across campuses, often with little to no pushback from administrators. Jewish students report being harassed, doxxed, and isolated for speaking out. In some cases, they're targeted by peers who have consumed so much disinformation online including narratives that paint Jewish people as global conspirators. These aren't just fringe opinions anymore; they're becoming normalized in lecture halls and student unions. The response from many institutions has been tepid at best. Some university leaders hide behind vague commitments to free expression while refusing to confront the coordinated spread of disinformation. This isn't a free speech issue. It's a failure of leadership. America's higher education system must wake up to the reality that unchecked disinformation is not just corrosive; it's dangerous and fragmenting cohesion on campus. Too many schools are failing to respond when Jewish students are targeted by disinformation-fueled hate. My research found in some cases; students rate their university's response to antisemitic incidents as low as 1.7 out of 5. That's shameful. The consequences won't stop at campus gates. Disinformation tears the fabric of democracy. It fuels division, extremism, and violence. And once it takes root in our education system, it's much harder to undo.
Forbes
05-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Great Education Earthquake: Building On New Ground
Napier before the earthquake. At 10:47 AM on February 3, 1931, the earth shook violently beneath Napier, New Zealand. Two and a half minutes later, most of the town lay in ruins, consumed first by earthquake and then by fire. Earthquakes don't always create new land. But this one did. By the next morning, as the aftershocks abated and the sea receded, the Napier coastline had gained about 50 square miles of new land. When I visited Napier earlier this year, I saw a thriving city and one of the world's finest examples of Art Deco architecture---a testament to what can rise from rubble when a community comes together to rebuild with vision instead of nostalgia. American higher education is having a Napier moment. The ground beneath our universities has been shaken by an administration that views universities not as engines of progress but as bastions of liberal indoctrination to be dissed, defunded, and discredited. The chaotic rush to eliminate the Department of Education, slash federal research funding, terrorize immigrants and international students, cut Pell grants, and weaponize accreditation represents an existential threat to every college and university. We're already seeing the first signs of academic brain drain, as American researchers depart for universities in Europe, Asia, and Canada, taking their expertise and graduate students with them. History offers sobering parallels: when authoritarian regimes attack intellectual freedom, scientific leadership migrates to more welcoming shores. The temptation is to blame Trump and only Trump. But public trust in higher education has been declining for decades. This is no media myth but a tale of institutional failure to innovate. Just 36% of Americans now express confidence in universities, down from 57% two decades ago. Except in the most competitive colleges -- which reject almost everybody's children --- graduation rates have been stagnant. Of the students who complete their degrees, too many leave college with crushing debt and questionable job prospects. And now we are beginning to feel the pre-shocks of artificial intelligence on jobs, especially for new college graduates ---another powerful force that will reshape how we create, validate, and transmit knowledge. "If only the federal government would leave us alone...." is an all too common refrain on college campuses. But that's precisely the wrong response. This isn't a temporary crisis to be managed, but one that calls for a fundamental restructuring of higher education. The old model of four years on campus, large lecture halls, and credentialing monopolies was already in decline. We can either cling to the wreckage or start building. Finding Opportunity in Crisis The earthquake in higher education isn't over. Political pressures will continue to intensify. Demographics will shift. AI will disrupt traditional instruction and the workforce. However, the new land is fertile. The climate for innovation has never been better or more important. The question is whether we have the vision and courage to plant something worthy in the ground that has been created by the earthquake. Napier's citizens didn't rebuild their town exactly as it was---they created something beautiful and enduring that honored their past while preparing for their future. We can do the same. But only if we stop cowering in the rubble.
Wall Street Journal
27-05-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
U.S. Pauses New Student-Visa Interviews as It Prepares to Ramp Up Screening
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration isn't scheduling any new student-visa interviews while it prepares new measures to vet applicants' social-media accounts, according to a State Department cable dated Tuesday. The move comes during the busy season for international students looking to come to the U.S., who have generally received acceptances from American universities in the spring and must obtain visas before the new school year begins in the autumn.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal Reserve's Jay Powell urges US university students to protect democracy
Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell called on students to protect democracy while praising American universities as 'a crucial national
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Let the colleges fail
The U.S. is known for having both exceptional private business enterprises. It is the prime mover in creating the most powerful and bountiful economy in history and also for having great colleges and universities. Its schools dominate world college rankings and draw students from throughout the world. Yet American universities are facing a dramatic decline in public support. This is manifested in lower enrollments today than a dozen years ago and widespread threats to their funding, as both the Trump administration (via threats to revoke tax exemptions, reduced research support, etc.) and Congress pose what some college leaders deem existential threats to their very existence. Additionally, some state governments are beginning to sharply increase their intervention into the affairs of public universities that have historically exercised a great deal of independence. A major reason corporations are faring far better than universities in today's public policy milieu can be explained by one word: ownership. Everyone knows who owns and controls the operations of American companies, but who 'owns' or controls our universities? We all know that Elon Musk makes the key decisions at SpaceX and Tesla, but who does so at elite universities like Harvard or Stanford, or even at distinctly less selective and prestigious schools, such as Ball State University in Indiana or the University of District Columbia? Who owns or 'runs' Harvard? Is its president, Alan Garber, truly the 'CEO?' Is the controlling authority the governing board — or in Harvard's case, one of the two governing boards? Is it the faculty, whose presence is absolutely essential to carrying out the dominantly important institutional functions of discovering and disseminating knowledge? Is it a vast and ever-growing bureaucracy that constitutes the administrative bloat raising university costs and diluting the emphasis on the primary academic functions? Is it the students whose presence, like the faculty, is the whole point of higher learning? Is it rich alumni, like Johns Hopkins' Michael Bloomberg or the University of Oregon's Phil Knight, whose multi-billion dollar contributions are critically important to the future of those institutions? Are any of these the 'owners' in any sense? Or, are universities often better viewed as confederations of various largely autonomous fiefdoms that pay allegiance and some funds to a central administration, very much like feudal lords in the Middle Ages nominally recognized a distant king to whom they paid some feudal dues? Using Harvard as an example, does the Harvard Business School pay a tax out of its tuition and endowment revenues to President Garber across the Charles River, mainly so that it can continue to use the prestigious name 'Harvard?' And what of others using the Harvard moniker — Harvard Law School, Harvard College (undergraduate school), the Kennedy School of Government, etc.? This brings us to another term explaining the difference between the relative efficiency of colleges and American business: incentives. In American business, major errors in decision-making can literally be either a death sentence or being put on life support, but success provides owners and CEOs with vast wealth. In contrast, a successful college president might get a bonus of $100,000, although his or her head football coach, effectively running a business in a highly competitive market environment, might get a salary vastly dwarfing that of his nominal university president boss. The great Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter said that capitalism thrives on 'creative destruction,' whereby failing company resources are ultimately absorbed by newer successful enterprises better serving changing consumer tastes or more adroitly responding to new technology. In higher education, if you make a big mistake, you might not get an annual raise; in business, a big mistake very likely will cost you your job. In my new book, I argue that the dulling of incentives and ambiguity of ownership have contributed to the recent decline in support for our universities. Fortunately, the incentive system of markets, while heavily diluted by governmental and philanthropic subsidies, are still somewhat present in higher education, and the threat of severe retrenchment or even closure hopefully will lead to needed reforms as more colleges realize their very existence is imperiled. Richard Vedder is the author of 'Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education.' He is also a distinguished professor emeritus in economics at Ohio University and a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
