The Faculty Herald — Temple University

Interview with President John Fry This interview was conducted in person on January 9, and then via email for follow-up questions. _______________________________ The Faculty Herald: You’ve spent many years working in this pocket of Pennsylvania. You served as the President of Drexel University and Franklin & Marshall College. Before those positions, you served in a high-level administrative role at the University of Pennsylvania. Many of our readers would be interested to know why you’ve made the transition to Temple?

Check out our interview with President Fry. We discuss his drive to work at Temple and his ideas about shared governance.

Trump Revoked Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students. Now the University Is Suing. Foreign students make up almost 28 percent of its total student body. The unprecedented move would also force existing students to transfer or lose their legal status.

In an unprecedented move, the Trump administration has terminated Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, which affects more than a quarter of the Ivy League college’s student body. chroni.cl/3Zr18kM

Fighting Back Against Student Use of AI: A Satire As a long-serving instructor in Temple’s First Year Writing program, I find myself on the front lines of teaching writing in the age of AI. I have been asked to share …

Is this the Herald’s first time publishing satire? I don’t know but here you go:

HHS plans to cut the national suicide hotline’s program for LGBTQ youth In February, the program received an average of 2,100 contacts per day.

The federal government plans to eliminate services for LGBTQ youth who call 988, the national suicide and crisis hotline, according to a Health and Human Services budget draft leaked last week.

With CDC injury prevention team gutted, 'we will not know what is killing us' Workers who track data on car crashes, drownings, traumatic brain injury, falls in the elderly, and other perils lost their jobs. Advocates worry life-saving work will stop.

Workers who track data on car crashes, drownings, traumatic brain injury, falls in the elderly, and other perils lost their jobs. Advocates worry life-saving work will stop.

How Would Cuts to NIH Funding Impact Temple? When the federal funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health were first announced in February, Swati Nagar, a professor in the School of Pharmacy at Temple University, felt it as “a gut punch to the research enterprise of universities in America.” For now, these cuts are on hold after Federal Judge Angel Kelly extended the initial injunction issued on February 10.

How Would Cuts to NIH Funding Impact Temple?

When the federal funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health were first announced in February, Swati Nagar, a professor in the School of Pharmacy at Temple University, felt it as “a gut punch to the research enterprise of universities in America.”…

Opinion | This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, if They Dare It’s been tried in other countries facing authoritarian crackdowns. It works.

M. Gessen: “[Universities] must abandon all the concerns — rankings, donors, campus amenities — that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination knowledge.”

Opinion | The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education This is a moment to trumpet the strengths of higher education and address its weaknesses.

Worth a read if you are concerned about the future of higher ed

How the Red Scare Reshaped American Politics At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded—and from how it came to an end?

The Red Scare reshaped every institution in American life: Hollywood, labor unions, churches, universities, elementary schools—and, above all, the national-security state.

University of Minnesota, Under Federal Scrutiny, Limits Its Political Speech A vote by regents put the university among roughly 140 colleges that have adopted similar policies since the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.

How widespread will these actions be?

We Must Defend Our Educational Mission The mission of the Temple University faculty is to educate working people. Our 1888 charter declares: “The purpose for which the Corporation is formed is the Support of an Educational Institution i…

Finbarr McCarthy of the Beasley School of Law contributed an opinion piece urging colleagues to stand together: tufacultyherald.org/2025/03/01/w...

The Faculty Herald The Faculty Herald is the voice of the faculty and librarians at Temple University. Sponsored by the Faculty Senate, we are committed to shared governance.

We’ve posted some new articles on the Herald’s site. Check them out here: tufacultyherald.org

Massive Layoffs at the Department of Education Erode Its Civil Rights Division — ProPublica Only five of the agency’s civil rights offices remain nationwide. Those who are still with the department say it will now be “virtually impossible” to resolve discrimination complaints.

No need to read between the lines on these moves

Opinion | The Trump Administration Is Out for Blood And it won’t stop at Columbia.

Opinion: Trump's attack on Columbia is about punishment, not antisemitism. chroni.cl/3FjFlo7

The Education Dept. Survives for Now, but Program and Staffing Cuts Cause Upheaval Many in higher ed have expressed concern that the department doesn’t have to be eliminated to be weakened substantially.

President Trump continues to threaten an executive order to shutter the Education Department. Higher education experts say the department doesn’t have to be eliminated to be weakened substantially. chroni.cl/4iurMQG

Universities Need to Defend Themselves, Not Remain Neutral Silence is not an option.

Opinion: To focus on the soft power of campus orthodoxies and ignore the hard power of state censorship seems more than a little perverse. chroni.cl/41yilce

This isn’t really about fighting antisemitism, is it? It’s really another blow to higher ed in disguise

Opinion | Now Is Not the Time to Be Neutral The AAUP’s new statement recognizes that academic freedom is in peril.

Opinion: In this moment of real danger for academic freedom, "neutrality" is not likely to help much — and may hurt. chroni.cl/43enTLz

Wondering what the Temple community thinks of this command issued by Trump

Opinion | The MAGA War on Speech If only the powerful are free to speak their minds, it’s not free speech.

Will we be able to maintain a free press?

Looks like you’re in Pharmacy, right? Some of the faculty I’m referring to are in your field. Are you hearing similar things from colleagues across higher ed?

Some NIH-funded researchers expressed concerns to me about whether they should stay in the US or pursue a research career elsewhere. Not good, but understandable

Opinion | Higher Ed’s Ruinous Resistance to Change The academy excels at preserving the status quo. It’s time to evolve.

Opinion: Higher ed is determined to ignore the challenges closing in on it. Why? chroni.cl/3QDw9Nz

Vietnamese Journalist Gets 2 ½ Years in Prison for Facebook Posts The sentence for Truong Huy San, an influential reporter, was the latest crackdown on speech by Vietnam, a rising regional power.

A court in Vietnam sentenced one of the country’s most influential journalists to two and a half years in prison Thursday for “abusing democratic freedoms” with about a dozen posts on Facebook that criticized or questioned the government.

University of Minnesota must not muzzle its scholars Yet that’s what a resolution being considered by the Board of Regents would do.

If this is the route universities take, that’s gonna spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E

Let's hope they will also express some alarm over cuts to the NIH and the dismantling of the Dept. of Ed.

The Faculty Herald The Faculty Herald is the voice of the faculty and librarians at Temple University. Sponsored by the Faculty Senate, we are committed to shared governance.

Here's a new batch of articles from us. Upcoming articles will include an interview with President Fry and one on the impact of the NIH cuts on Temple researchers
tufacultyherald.org

The White House says it 'will determine' which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones The decision departs from a century of tradition in which a pool of independent news organizations go where the chief executive does and holds him accountable on behalf of regular Americans.

@tufacultyherald.bsky.social is available to join the press pool at any time. There’s def a lot going on that’s impacting @temple.edu and higher ed. We’d be happy to hold your administration accountable, but you probably don’t want us. Am I right?