Updates

Immigration and Healthcare

• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMs) agreed to share data with the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 20 states sued and a federal judge has halted the process (for now).

• CMS has announced investigations into at least six states’ (California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington) use of Medicaid services for undocumented immigrants: by law, only emergency Medicaid benefits can be reimbursed with federal funds. States have chosen to cover additional groups using only state funds.

Research

• A federal judge ruled that the administration’s termination of Harvard’s research funding violated the Constitution. There shall be appeals.

• The same judge ruled in favor of the Harvard faculty and the American Association of University Professors, mandating restitution of funds and prohibiting future retaliation, and that orders remain in place even if Harvard caves in its negotiations and continues to drop more DEI activities and relinquish control on education and admissions.

Higher Education

• The US Dept. of Education will no longer provide grants for Minority Serving Institutions: colleges serving large numbers of Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students, Asian American students, and Hispanic students, as well as cutting back programs for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and American Indian students.

• Ed Sociology researchers remind us that under prior major university budget cutbacks during the great recession, Asian American, Hispanic and Black faculty and researcher took the biggest hits in hiring and did not fully recover for 8 years.

• Although the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on College does not have diversity standards, UNC is leading and Florida is funding a new 6-state accreditor, Commission for Public Higher Education (CPHE) (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, south Carolina, Tennessee, Texas), which the draft standards will include new requirements for “viewpoint diversity.”

• Texas A&M fired the instructor, and removed the chair of the English department and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences because of the instructor included of content related to gender and sexuality.

• As always, you can track state and institutional policy DEI changes in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Immigration

• International students are stuck in the interview and review backlog and having trouble getting into US for the start of the school year. And some are unable to come due to new travel bans issued in June. The travel bans are not uniform- in some cases it’s student (and resident) visas (Cuba, Venezuela); others apply to the entire country (Afghanistan & Haiti).

• We’re seeing more stories of Asian detentions by ICE make it to the news, including:

  • Doctoral student and permanent resident Tae Heung “Will” Kim (conducting research on Lyme disease at Texas A&M)

  • Mass raid at LG-/Hyundai plant in Georgia swept up 475 workers, mostly South Korean nationals. South Korea is in negotiation for their return.