January 2025 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

In step with Joe Biden’s failed presidency, a federal judge on January 9 struck down the administration’s attempt to redefine “sex” in Title IX to mean “gender identity.” The administration’s 1,500-page rewrite was designed to allow, among other things, a full-fledged invasion of men and boys into girls’ and women’s sports, including the use of women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. From the beginning, the proposed new Title IX rule faced stiff opposition from advocates of women’s rights, conservatives, and supporters of the original purpose of Title IX.

While the Biden rule became effective in 24 of 50 states last August 1st, the U.S. Supreme Court that same month allowed lower court injunctions against it to stand, in an abbreviated opinion known as Department of Education v. Louisiana and Cardona v. Tennessee. These injunctions stemmed from lawsuits filed against the proposed Title IX rewrite by the 26 states that either took legal action themselves or joined in the action of others, and were thus exempted from being forced to implement the new law. (See Education Reporter, May 2024.)

Nearly all the midwestern and southern states joined the legal action, as did the western states of Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. In addition, as Education Week reported last July, “one school district, two students, and five conservative advocacy organizations” also took part in the legal challenges.

Now, the January 9 ruling in Tennessee v. Cordona has effectively blocked Biden’s Title IX revision in all 50 states. As reported by USA Today, “U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, chief jurist for the Eastern District of Kentucky, ruled that the administration’s rewrite of Title IX violated the Constitution. The 1972 law prohibits sex-based discrimination in K-12 schools and colleges that receive federal funding.” Judge Reeves also presided over the issuance of the temporary injunctions last June in six states.

USA Today observed that the ruling came with “just over a week left in Joe Biden’s presidency,” and that the revision of Title IX was one of his “signature education policies.” Virginia’s attorney general Jason Miyares expressed delight at the decision on X, posting that “at the urging of Virginia and [five] other States, a federal court has vacated the Biden Administration’s unlawful Title IX rewrite on a NATIONWIDE basis. [Emphasis in original.] All of America is now safe from Biden’s attempt to undermine half a century of landmark protections for women.”

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, also a key player in the litigation, was predictably gratified at the outcome. “Another massive win for TN and the country!” he enthused. “The court’s order is a resounding victory for the protection of girls’ privacy in locker rooms and showers, and for the freedom to speak biologically accurate pronouns.”

Early on in its tenure, the Biden Administration began tinkering with Title IX to enshrine “gender identity” in the law, allegedly to prevent discrimination against boys and men who believe or pretend to believe they are females. For many, the overhaul was an obvious attempt to undo the first Trump Administration’s due process protections, which liberals spun as “giving more rights” to perpetrators of sexual harassment and/or assault.

Perhaps in an attempt to ward off the very court decision that Judge Reeves handed down on January 9, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) just last month withdrew a portion of the Title IX rewrite. A document published in the Federal Register the day after Christmas explained that the DOE “is withdrawing the notice of proposed rulemaking [NPRM] entitled ‘Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance: Sex-Related Eligibility Criteria for Male and Female Athletic Teams.’” The rule in question was added to the Federal Register on April 13, 2023, and “would have [further] amended the regulations implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX).”

Public pushback

The DOE’s withdrawal notice, and the ultimate defeat of the sweeping Title IX revision in total may have been aided by the “more than 150,000 public comments,” received during the 30-day comment period following the Department’s publication of the new regulation. The notice explained that “numerous commenters expressed concern,” and continued:

• The Department recognizes that there are multiple pending lawsuits related to the application of Title IX in the context of gender identity, including lawsuits related to Title IX’s application to athletic eligibility criteria in a variety of factual contexts. In light of the comments received and those various pending court cases, the Department has determined not to regulate on this issue at this time. Therefore, the Department hereby withdraws the Athletics NPRM and terminates this rulemaking proceeding. We do not intend for a final rule to be issued on this NPRM.

The Christian legal ministry, Liberty Counsel, accused the Biden Administration of overstepping its authority “by redefining ‘sex’ and extending discrimination protections to gender-confused individuals — actions that both impede state sovereignty and usurp the role of Congress to define terms.” The organization’s founder and chairman, Mat Staver, said: “The radical rewrite of Title IX regulations contradicts everything the law was enacted to do — protect opportunities for women and girls. This withdrawal reflects the views of most Americans who believe that women’s sports should remain reserved for female athletes.”

After the withdrawal notice became public, some observers warned that the battle was far from over, and described the removal of the “transgender sports proposal” as a smokescreen. The Washington Times cautioned that, although Biden “has withdrawn his proposed rule protecting transgender athletes, that doesn’t mean the game is up for biological males in female scholastic sports.”

The Times pointed out that “the sports issue cannot be carved out from the administration’s previous reworking of Title IX, which took effect August 1.” May Mailman, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, told the Times: “Biden’s omnibus Title IX regulation redefines sex to mean gender identity, threatening all women’s opportunities in school, including athletics. We’re not done protecting women from the humiliation of being treated as though they are a state of mind.”

Kara Dansky, a spokesperson for the U.S. Chapter of the Women’s Declaration International, concluded after pursuing what she called “a deep dive into the Title IX rewrite” that the DOE is “deliberately obscuring its actual intention in order to confuse everyone.” Dansky and others said the June 2022 rule, which was finalized in April 2024, “already redefined sex to include ‘gender identity’ for all Title IX purposes,” without exempting sports.

After years of positive indoctrination about communism in K-12 schools and institutions of higher learning, many members of Generation Z have favorable opinions of the ideology. But on December 6, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5349, the “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” (CCT), which requires the development and dissemination of “a civic education curriculum and oral history resources regarding certain political ideologies, and for other purposes.”

Florida Congresswoman and former award-winning journalist, Maria Salazar, introduced the CCT, which her fellow House members approved by an impressive vote of 327-62. Rep. Salazar stated in a press release: “By passing my Crucial Communism Teaching Act, the House of Representatives will ensure future generations will remember the pain and suffering caused by the brutal communist ideology…. Over 100 million people have died due to the tragic legacy of communism. However, due to a lack of accurate education materials, almost one-third of Generation-Z members have a favorable view of communism.”

Salazar represents Florida’s 27th district, which includes the greater Miami area. As the U.S. born daughter of Cuban exiles, she is no stranger to the detrimental effects of communism. Her official U.S. House website notes that in her career as a journalist, she interviewed Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, and even the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro. She attests that she is “the only U.S. Spanish-language journalist to ever interview the tyrant [Castro] one-on-one.”

The inspiration for the CCT Act was the Never Again Education Act that passed the U.S. Congress in 2020 and required American students to be taught about the Holocaust through educational programming developed and disseminated by the U.S. Holocaust Museum. That act also authorizes related education programs and activities for “prospective and current teachers and education leaders.”

Support for CCT

There was no lack of support for the CCT Act and no shortage of posturing by those voting in favor, which conservatives hope will influence members of the U.S. Senate. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the Committee on Education & the Workforce stated the obvious in a press release:

• It’s not a radical idea to say that American values should be taught in American schools … [but] it’s clear that we’re falling short when it comes to educating young people about the history and dangers of [communist] ideology. The Crucial Communism Teaching Act is an important step in making sure that the future leaders of our great nation have the tools and knowledge to protect capitalism and freedom for the next generation. I’m grateful to Congresswoman Salazar for lending her first-hand experience and leadership to this vital effort.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson decried what he called “the long, dark history of political suppression, persecution, and violence” associated with the realities of communism that “are often overlooked or downplayed in our education system, allowing malign foreign actors to push their agendas and influence American institutions.”

The bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS), expressed his pleasure at the overwhelming approval of the legislation and called it “an important step towards educating the next generation and keeping communism out of our country.”

Congressman Burgess Owens (R-Utah) lamented that the 28 percent of Generation Z who have a positive view communism “is not just troubling; it’s a wake-up call.” Owens said the CCT Act “gives America’s students the hard truths about communism’s atrocities, exposing how the promises of equity under totalitarian regimes always end in oppression and misery. If we want to preserve America as the last, best hope of liberty, we must equip the next generation with the courage and knowledge to defend it.”

Dr. Eric Patterson, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), pointed out that, while the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, “the evil ideology behind it did not. Today, one-fifth of humanity still lives under communist tyranny. Sadly, American students are increasingly unaware of the history and legacy of communism. It’s time to right this wrong.”

Last month, VOC launched its 4th Edition Curriculum on Communism, which its website says expands the organization’s “resources for rising generations of teachers and students to study the criminal past and enduring legacy of communism.” A video explains that this curriculum was “written by teachers for teachers” to be used in middle schools and high schools. These materials will likely play a role in implementing the CCT Act, should it pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Trump.

Ian Oxnevad, senior fellow for foreign affairs and security studies for the National Association of Scholars (NAS), applauded the CCT Act in its online newsletter, CounterCurrent. Oxnevad astutely observed:

• Some ideas should be entertained and then shown the door. Not every idea that is entertained as a guest should stay for dinner, let alone become a roommate. When it comes to Marxism and its various aliases in education, the idea has not only overstayed its welcome but has gone on to become a landlord of intellectual life in American education.

The article pointed out the incompatibility of communism with the “core philosophy of the American founding,” as well as the irony of the fact that, “as Communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe in 1989, the New York Times published an article titled ‘The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges.’ The article documented the strength of Marxism in higher education and its adaptation—especially in light of the ideology’s economic failures in Europe,” a point Education Reporter has repeatedly made in its articles and book reviews.

Children in K-12 classrooms are also being taught “Soviet-style propaganda in curricula such as California’s ‘Ethnic Studies’” programs, which “place students into matrices of ‘oppressor and oppressed,’ demonize capitalism, portray Zionism as racist, and discuss apocalyptic ‘class struggle’ as if teaching from an old Soviet education playbook.”

But as Oxnevad correctly asserts and many parents know, this teaching is not limited to students in blue states, but it also thrives in red ones. He writes that while “it is apparent that policymakers and society alike have abandoned America’s classrooms,” there is a “small change on the way” with the passage of Rep. Salazar’s CCT Act.

He continued: “Policymakers may be waking up to the fact that America’s biggest threats are not just abroad but within our classrooms.” Concerned observers hope this form of “wokeism” extends to a majority of the U.S. Senate.

At a time when many companies and organizations are walking back their commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), with some even closing their DEI offices and/or cutting back on DEI personnel, the Biden Administration’s has doubled down. Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) funneled more than $1 billion in DEI grants over four years to approximately 300 K-12 school districts in at least 42 states, impacting nearly 6,800,000 students.

The grassroots organization, Parents Defending Education (PDE), exposed in December the data it collected after an investigation and analysis of DOE grant funding, which PDE charges has solidified “far-left ideologies in education.”

PDE’s president and founder, Nicole Neily, told the Washington Examiner: “To say that the Biden Administration spent money on DEI programs like drunken sailors is an insult to sailors.” She added that, as a result of the DOE’s fiscal irresponsibility, “the American people are now dealing with the after-effects of out-of-control inflation — and to add insult to injury, these programs completely failed to improve student outcomes … Any federal bureaucrat who approved these grants should be frog-marched out of the Department on Day One” [of the new Trump Administration].”

PDE released its report, titled GrantED, which highlights the following DOE expenditures:

• $490 million in grant money for “DEI or race-based recruiting, training, and hiring practices.”
• More than $343 million spent on “DEI programming and trainings, discipline including restorative practices, and youth activism.”
• In excess of $169 million allocated for “DEI-based mental health/Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs,” including mental health training programs.

GrantEd includes breakdowns of specific spending examples. In Montgomery County, NC, district schools received $21,508,841 “for a program called Teacher and Principal Effectiveness Acceleration in Montgomery (TEAM).” This program consists of monthly teacher instruction “designed to build teachers’ and school leaders’ ability to support diverse students through equitable instructional and disciplinary practices to increase student achievement and decrease incidences of inequitable disciplinary practices.”

Montgomery County’s “Diversity and Inclusion Plan” established race-based Teacher Affinity Groups (TAG) for “Black and Hispanic teachers who meet monthly to discuss mutual concerns and provide support for one another.” For many, this program sounds more divisive than “inclusive,” to use a favorite buzzword of the Left.

In another example, the Ypsilante, MI, Community Schools received grant funding totaling $15,524,948 from the Biden DOE “for its SEEK: Supporting Educator Excellence & Knowledge program,” which in sum is intended to “reduce equity gaps through effectiveness-based Human Capital Management System,” and “assess educator effectiveness using validated tools to ensure objectivity.” Another goal was to “boost equity and raise student achievement.”

The Regents of the University of California, U.C. San Diego, received funding of $4 million for a program called “The LISTEN (Listen and Inquiring with Students Through Engagement Networks) LAB, another effort guaranteed to create animus and division. This program “uses Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) strategies to tackle the question of how to best increase student engagement.

“Taking CASEL’s (the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) ‘transformative SEL’ seriously, the LISTEN LAB aims to directly engage high school youth from low-income, racial minoritized groups in YPAR to study and innovate on increasing school engagement.” In other words, the program teaches students how to participate in far-left activism. Grantnet adds that YPAR “is often found in K-12 ethnic studies curriculums as a culminating unit where students apply information learned throughout the course in the form of community activism….”

In Missouri, the curators of the University of Missouri St. Louis campus were awarded $306,289 in DOE grants to provide 64 mental health services interns at 13 “high needs schools to provide Trauma-Informed, Antiracist Social-Emotional Learning (TIAR-SEL) to address the mental health needs of 5,617 students in the RGSD (Riverview Gardens School District).” The RGSD is a St. Louis area district with a high concentration of minority students.

GrantEd reports that an August 2024 Welcome Back Letter to RGSD parents and district personnel discloses that the program is to receive an “$800,000 grant each year for the next 3 years” to “provide counseling interns who will provide therapeutic services to scholars who fall in an at-risk category (substance abuse, SIT [Student Intervention Team], LGBTQIA+, and traumatic community events).”

DOGE to shake up?

An article covering the PDE’s GrantEd report in the Tampa Free Press predicted that with the incoming Trump Administration, “the debate over federal education funding and the future of DEI programs is likely to intensify.” The PDE report has already caught the attention of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, who posted some of the data on X.

As President Trump indicated during his election campaign, his aim is to dismantle “woke” curricula in the education system, including DEI and CRT (Critical Race Theory), and other divisive initiatives that take the place of core academics. And as The Epoch Times recently reminded readers, “the fate of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) itself hangs in the balance—though dismantling it would require an act of Congress.”

Regardless of whether or not the DOE remains active, it will almost certainly be scaled back, as Trump has repeatedly indicated his desire to send the responsibility for education back to the states. The Epoch Times wrote that under President Trump, the DOE is likely to “cut redundant administrative costs, emphasize academic improvement, promote universal school choice nationwide, and empower state and local education administrators to provide better leadership.”

Many parents are looking forward to the new administration to make serious reform happen.

Reports have proliferated in conservative circles and online for years about useless, goofy, and worse, destructive college courses that indoctrinate and propagandize students without providing a shred of academic value. As 2025 begins, the situation has only gotten worse, although there is hope that the new Trump Administration will reel in the radical progressive education agenda, as the president has vowed he will do.

While it’s well documented that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is solidly entrenched in higher education, including medical schools, there are courses now offered in colleges and universities that incorporate CRT with other far-left ideological notions that many view as not only divisive but ridiculous.

A recent Newsweek article describes a new course at the University of Maryland called “Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness, and Their Intersections,” which promises to examine “fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination.” The course defines “fat liberation” as a social justice issue, and promises to challenge “fatmisia,” a term invented to describe “prejudice against fat individuals.” But the fact that the course description asserts that it will “particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness” shows that it’s really about the persistent progressive crusade to create division and conflict based on race.

This class is being offered by “Dr. Sydney F. Lewis, a senior lecturer at the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,” which should in and of itself warn parents of an impending waste of their money and their children’s time. The university characterizes Lewis’s work as striving “to blur the boundaries between the academy, art, and activism.”

Newsweek reports: “Lewis is the author of Love in the time of Trump, a 2020 essay which opens with the line, “the night of the 2016 election I sat in a bathtub and cried.” Observers assume she is similarly afflicted in January 2025.

The University of Maryland charges $420 per credit hour for in-state students and a hefty $1,645 per credit hour for out-of-state students, which means this three-credit hour course “would cost either $1,260 or $4,935.” University Professor Emeritus Dr. Richard Vatz told The National News Desk that the course’s relevance to preparing students for the job market “is probably pretty questionable” and called the subject matter “ludicrous.” He added: “I have to be honest with you, this is kind of a laughable, laughable subject.” Parents might argue that such imprudent propaganda is no laughing matter.

Useless in Utah

Not to be outdone, the University of Utah offers a course through its Gender Studies program entitled “Feminist Cannabis Studies.” Parents might logically wonder how this topic could be associated with feminism to the extent that it merits a college course. But as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

An article in the Washington Examiner explained that the course investigates “the history of the cannabis prohibition, legalization movement, and its political, social, cultural and practical intricacies.” The course description then cuts to the chase:

• Feminist Cannabis Studies also covers “Queer/Trans Activism and Racialized Histories.” It poses the question: “What does history tell us about the ways gender, race, sexuality, immigration and class have shaped our understanding of cannabis?” … How has the image of cannabis functioned to maintain inequality based on such socially constructed categories? How have Communities of Color, LGBTQ+ and marginalized groups used and imagined cannabis in cultural, medicinal, and spiritual practices over time?

The course is taught by Dr. Magaly Ordoñez. a “Latinx Sexualities Postdoctoral Fellow” at the University of Utah. The Examiner reports that she “wrote a dissertation focused on ‘Chicanx and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities that have contributed to cannabis cultural and political histories.’” Ordoñez has also taken issue with what she called the exploitation of “immigrant women in California’s cannabis farming,” claiming that women in the industry are often “shunted into the role of trimming the cannabis flower bud and leaves.”

The University of Utah offers this absurd course through its “School for Cultural and Social Transformation,” or “Transform” for short, which consists of four “academic” fields: Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, Disability Studies, and Pacific Islands Studies. These degree programs “explore race and racism, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and sexual identity, disability, health, and global diasporas.” For many parents and observers, Transform covers all the woke areas whereby kids entering college can be brainwashed, manipulated, propagandized, and yes, “transformed” into Marxist activists.

Racist course at Yale

A new course at once-prestigious Yale University pits students against each other by forcing them to “interrogate with brutal honesty the stakes that underwrite Black women’s relationships with White women.” As reported by The College Fix, this course is titled “No Time for Tears: Friendships between Black Women and White Women,” and aims to “determine whether these friendships can develop on ‘equal footing’ and be ‘unfettered by the trappings of quid pro quo transactions.’”

The Fix writes that the list of readings for the course includes a report by TIME titled “How the Karen Meme Confronts History of White Womanhood.” As may be expected, this report paints white women in a negative and often racist light, using examples reported in the news about angry and combative white women creating havoc and propagating injustice for their victims, typically people of color.

The course is being taught by Professor Tasha Hawthorne, dean of Yale’s Pierson College. Hawthorne uses “contract grading,” a method that implies a “contract” between the professor and student whereby the student agrees to submit a certain number of assignments of a quality that would correspond to a letter grade, except that no letter grades are awarded. Fortunately, the course is only one credit hour, indicating a minimum amount of money invested and student time wasted.

The Fix author, Jenna Triplett, reported that African American political activist, Linda Lee Tarver, emailed to her comments criticizing the premise of the course as “absurd.” Tarver wrote: “The course makes presumptions that Black women and White women are not currently on equal emotional and social footing and may not, therefore, be able to develop sincere friendships. The push for diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia has perverted sane instruction.”

Tarver is a former Michigan civil rights commissioner, author, and a former board member of the group “Black Voices for Trump.” She is also an ambassador for Project 21, a “black leadership network” that promotes conservative values.

Declining college enrollment

Bizarre and useless courses have been a fixture in higher education for decades, as Phyllis Schlafly and the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles have long documented. But the leftward slant of the subject matter has grown more extreme, as exemplified by the courses described above. For many, there’s little wonder that college enrollment has fallen in recent years, a development bemoaned in a recent NPR article.

Not only is the population of graduating high school seniors in decline, but there is also “a decline in perception of the value of a college or university degree.” NPR reports that just “one in four Americans now says having a bachelor’s degree is extremely or very important to get a good job.” Just over 60 percent of high school seniors say they plan to go to college, as opposed to a high of 70 percent in 2016.

Falling enrollment has prompted many institutions of higher learning to shut their doors. The website Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed reports that while dozens of colleges have closed during the past decade, 30 have been shuttered in 2024, and the site projects that at least eight more will close in 2025. For most schools, financial difficulties are also to blame, and some have simply lost accreditation. Overall, the picture is not pretty, but a return to more robust curricula and less divisive, nonsensical courses could potentially help reverse the trend.

The ever-growing and dynamic Moms for Liberty has released its 2024 Impact Report and introduced Moms for Liberty University (M4LU), a new initiative for informing, equipping, and empowering families and citizens “to fight back on all fronts in the war for their children.” While the Impact Report tallies the organization’s milestones and accomplishments in 2024, M4LU is designed to show the way forward in 2025. After just four years, Moms for Liberty has amassed more than 130,000 members, with 320 chapters in 48 states. In 2024, the organization held dozens of town hall meetings, won 69 school board races, and helped pass 32 pro-parent state legislative bills. Moms helped with voter registration in key swing states leading up to the November election, grew the organization’s influence on social media, and played a key role in providing conservative leadership in the national conversation. One example shows that the organization increased its following on X more than 50 percent last year, attracting nearly 200,000 followers. The new M4LU is intended to increase knowledge and understanding of the many threats our children face in the schools and in the culture at large, and to put practical tools into the hands of parents, grandparents, and citizens while educating them on one key topic per month. For example, M4LU examined Social Emotional Learning (SEL 101), on January 8, showing how it “pervades every aspect of our children’s school day, and how it affects their minds.” Additional sessions covering other critical topics will follow on a monthly basis, and are listed on the current semester schedule. Interested parties should visit M4LU.org Current Semester for more information or to sign up.

The pro-family activist organization, MassResistance, is encouraging states to adopt a resolution to overturn the Obergefell Supreme Court ruling that legalized “gay” marriage. The organization has drafted text for state legislatures to adopt, urging the U.S. Supreme Court “to reverse its infamous and illegitimate ‘Obergefell’ ruling,” which in 2015 “forced the idea that the U.S. Constitution requires states to allow same-sex ‘marriage.’” MassResistance is working with six states that “are now poised to file” the resolutions, which have no force of law but which “send an important public message.” These states include Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota, with Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wyoming also showing interest. Legislators in Mississippi are reportedly “very close” to agreeing to adopt the resolution. MassResistance is hoping the current U.S. Supreme Court, which “has a majority of constitutionalists rather than ideologues,” will be willing to revisit other past bad rulings as they did the Dobbs decision. Dobbs, of course, overturned “the similarly illegitimate 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling” that created a “right” to abortion. MassResistance points out that the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges “was based on a fraudulent interpretation of the Constitution” via “a strategy concocted by LGBT lawyers.” The organization observes that the Left “is already erupting over these resolutions … They know this flawed ruling is vulnerable and they are livid that some conservatives are taking an aggressive approach.” Stay tuned for more on this topic.

The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are losing members each year, a decline which began in 2018. According to a recent Department of Labor disclosure report described by The 74’s Mike Antonucci, teachers’ union membership dropped by “more than 59,000 across the nation” during the 2021-22 school year. A decrease of 82,000 members occurred the previous peak pandemic year of 2020-21. The report shows that these decreases did not coincide with staffing losses; rather, local school districts “added 95,000 employees” during the same period. Antonucci included some examples of specific union membership declines: Florida lost 4,682 members, New York lost 4,384 members, Pennsylvania lost 1,458 members, Illinois membership was down 1,267, and Michigan lost 1,065. The article noted that, while most NEA affiliates are not required to file a disclosure report, a post-Covid look at the California Teachers Association showed significant losses, and that evidence “has not been forthcoming” on any states where teachers’ unions are bucking this downward membership trend. While The 74 did not offer reasons for teachers jumping ship, Education Reporter provided some clues in 2023, and former teacher, author, and activist Rebecca Friedrichs has shined a light on NEA and AFT corruption for years. This, and the increasingly radical politics of the unions has doubtless prompted teachers remaining in the public schools to withdraw their memberships, which they are allowed by law to do. With the new Trump Administration assuming power, many believe these membership declines are likely to continue.

Originally posted on The College Fix website, December 23, 2024. Reprinted by permission.

Reporting by The College Fix over the last 12 months has shown that higher education continues to be a hotbed of controversy.

In addition to covering examples of rampant antisemitism on colleges and universities, a string of campus hate-crime hoaxes, and a never-ending list of cancel culture examples, we also reported on issues of waste, fraud and abuse, administrative bloat, election integrity issues, various culture wars, and DEI and anti-racism controversies.

It’s never a dull moment at The College Fix. Here’s a monthly look at some of the most popular articles in 2024:

January

UMich now has more than 500 jobs dedicated to DEI, payroll costs exceed $30 million.

It’s difficult to calculate the massive amount of money universities spend on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts each year, but a major The College Fix investigation into the topic that looked at administrative bloat nationwide was able to put something of a price tag on it at dozens of universities — including the University of Michigan, which employs at least 241 people focused on DEI — with payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually.

February

UCLA prof suspended after refusing lenient grading for black students demands $19 million-plus in damages

Remember the UCLA professor suspended for refusing to grade black students leniently in the wake of George Floyd? His lawsuit was finally scheduled to go to trial, and he demanded $19 million-plus in damages, arguing [that] UCLA destroyed his premier expert witness practice for following the law (refusing to discriminate on the basis of race). This could be bigger than the Gibson’s Bakery verdict. The trial has been postponed until 2025 due to a busy court calendar in Los Angeles. We will continue to follow the story closely.

March

Marriage promotes ‘white supremacy’: George Mason professor

“I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy.” That according to George Mason University Professor Bethany Letiecq in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The scholar argued that the government has coerced “its citizens to enter into an institution built upon White heteropatriarchal supremacy” and marriage as an institution has allowed white heterosexual couples “to gain access to benefits, rights, and protections.”

April

Mayo Clinic argues it has legal right to punish professors for voicing unpopular opinions

Often stories that highlight the courage of scholars who refuse to kowtow to the powers that be resonate with the masses. One such story is that of Dr. Michael Joyner, who sued the Mayo Clinic for violating his academic freedom and freedom of speech. Its administrators had suspended him and told him to stop talking to the press after he shared contrarian views on controversial topics such as COVID-19 treatments and testosterone’s effects on athletic performance. Unfortunately, in July, a judge sided with the clinic.

May

Truman Scholarships overwhelmingly awarded to progressive students for tenth year in row

In 2015, The College Fix began an ambitious annual project to determine the political and ideological bent of the winners of prestigious, $30,000 federal grants using a combination of the winners’ official biographies, self-reported work histories on LinkedIn, and social media profiles and posts. Nearly a decade spent tracking the political makeup of Truman Scholarship award winners yields similar results year after year — liberal activism is awarded while conservatives are blackballed. This year’s results continued to validate those findings. The problem is so bad that a congressional probe was launched into the matter.

June

Gen Z goes to work instead of college — ‘you can make really good money’

One trend in 2024 was higher education alternatives, which is why this article from June was so popular among the masses. It focused on how Iowa young people found better opportunities in manufacturing and decided to forego college. More high school grads and twenty-somethings are embracing the idea of learning a skill and avoiding a mountain of debt.

July

MIT grew staff size by 1,200 while enrollment barely budged

Colleges and universities continue to hire administrators and staff despite the looming higher education bubble, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is no exception. As part of its investigation into administrative bloat, The College Fix determined that over the last decade MIT grew its staff size by 1,200 — including six “diversity, equity, and inclusion” assistant deans — while enrollment barely budged.

August

TRENDING: Evolutionary biologists reject ‘white, male’ framework, embrace ‘queer’ DEI research

The troubling embrace of DEI by STEM scientists is in full swing in most fields. The College Fix highlighted one such growing trend within evolutionary biology, where many scholars now argue more needs to be done to infuse “justice” and “belonging” into the field and presenting research to that end. Some professors are calling for the prioritization of DEI events at conferences, “mandatory LGBTQIA+ DEI education trainings,” and dismantling “heteronormative evolutionary concepts in research/teaching,” such as the conflation of sex and gender and material that invalidates queer identities.

September

Yale divinity students forced to read from witch’s ‘spell’ at orientation

When Yale was founded in 1701, it was dedicated to training for the Christian ministry. Times have changed. As The College Fix exclusively reported, this year Yale’s Divinity School coerced students to read from a “spell” written by a “witch” as part of its Before the Fall Orientation. Students were led to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from a “Radical Gratitude Spell.”

October

Teacher fired for refusing to use student’s preferred pronouns gets $575K settlement

A win for the good guys: a Virginia educator who was fired six years ago for refusing to refer to a biologically female student as “he/him” became the recipient of an almost $600,000 settlement. What’s more, the school board changed its policies to “respect fundamental free speech and parental rights.”

November

‘Devastated’: Classes at Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Swarthmore and others canceled over Trump win

Donald Trump surprised the world with his overwhelming decisive victory in this year’s presidential election, taking back the White House with a major red wave of support that galvanized voters from a wide swath of demographics, including black and Latino voters. No one was more shocked than the liberal elites tucked away in their ivory towers, many of whom responded by canceling classes to grieve.

December

Cornell pole dancing club hosts trainings for ‘trans’ and ‘plus-size’ students

Ah, the Ivy League. What will they come up with next? Here’s one for you. A pole dancing club at Cornell University funded partially by student fees is working to break barriers and address what its leaders describe as misconceptions and stereotypes about the activity by hosting training workshops for overweight students and men who identify as women.

Jennifer Kabbany is editor-in-chief of The College Fix.