The number of administrative employees at the University of Minnesota has grown at a faster rate than either faculty or student enrollment.

This growth is a sign of a nationwide trend some researchers call “administrative bloat,” and what others term the rise of fake email jobs.

Universities have used excess revenue to hire full-time administrators and other professionals at far higher rates than faculty, Forbes reported. But higher education institutions nationwide are facing an “enrollment cliff” over the next few years as undergraduate student enrollment declines by around 15%.

At the University, the number of administrative employees increased by 20% since 2016, with nearly half of those hired in the last three years. Enrollment and faculty hiring increased at less than half that rate.

Student enrollment and research funding have both grown in the last decade, requiring more staff to support research and student services, said Mary Rohman Kuhl, senior director of total rewards. Both the increase in research and enrollment are good news, she added.

The University spent $609 million on research in 2006 to $1.37 billion in 2023, due in part to inflation, and it requires faculty to manage and conduct the research, Rohman Kuhl said. Increased enrollment has pushed the University to dedicate more time to student advising or supporting students’ mental health.

There has been a shift away from paper forms and toward digital documents and accessibility screenings, Rohman Kuhl said. This requires staff to handle processing and form development.

“Greater administration is needed when there’s more demands put on institutions, when there’s additional research work, that requires people to be in all different areas to support that work,” Rohman Kuhl said. 

How long can universities keep this up?

One factor behind the impending enrollment cliff is the country’s declining fertility rate, which economists and policy experts have been calling attention to for decades, said Paul Weinstein Jr., the author of the Forbes article and teacher at Johns Hopkins University.

Weinstein said international student enrollment is declining because of increased competition from stronger colleges in their home countries and in Europe and Australia.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on international students for minor criminal offenses is pushing international students away from U.S. colleges and universities, Weinstein said.

“This has been a growth industry for a long time,” Weinstein said. “They’re about to face a very different period coming.”

Universities in the U.S. offer amenities that are uncommon in other countries, such as athletic facilities, tutoring and writing centers, Weinstein said. Schools continue to offer these administrator-run services to keep up with the competition.

“Most of what career services does is work with people on their interviewing skills and how to build a resume,” Weinstein said. “That’s nice and all, but that’s the kind of thing you could probably do on the internet without having to pay for all these services.”

Deciding where to cut costs is a decision unique to each university, Weinstein said. Every school has its own list of priorities, whether that be subsidizing student clubs, keeping class sizes small or prioritizing wellness.

“We’re going to have to figure out ways to cut those costs. Honestly, universities have never really had to tighten their belts,” Weinstein said.

A push for accreditation standards in the last few decades has led to universities hiring individuals to assess departments and programs. Many of these individuals “aren’t really doing much of anything useful,” Weinstein said, except making faculty spend hours on paperwork self-assessments.

Some growth in administrative roles is in response to government demands, such as research administrators who help faculty apply for grants with intensive application processes, Weinstein said.

“Those are the kinds of questions you need to ask, and schools just haven’t done that,” Weinstein said.

The number of administrators and other academic professionals increased at many private and public universities between 1976 and 2018, from doubling to increasing fivefold, a 2021 study found. This rate of hiring outpaced student enrollment, which rose by 78%.

Many of these positions serve to support and justify the existence of leadership administrative positions, said Michael Delucchi, an independent researcher and retired professor who led the report.

Delucchi said he encountered an example of wasteful work at his previous university when he was required to submit his course syllabi for someone in the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Office to analyze for legal holes, such as protecting students’ right to privacy.

Delucchi declined to submit the materials and was never contacted, a sign that “nobody’s reading it.”

The cost of losing international students

Tuition at the University for students from Minnesota or a state or territory with reciprocity is $7,574 per semester. For out-of-state students, the rate is $18,148. International students pay $19,259 per semester.

International students contributed $52 billion in income to universities last year, almost a third of the U.S.’ agricultural exports for comparison, said Ed Gresser, vice president and director for trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute.

“We’re by far the biggest supplier of education services in the country,” Gresser said.

Accepting international students into the U.S. also sets up relationships with the future leaders in other countries. If a student’s experience is paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend university and being kicked out of the country for a minor traffic violation, it will leave a lasting negative impression of the U.S., Gresser said.

Gresser said the tuition that international students pay helps reduce the cost for American students.

“The Trump administration is not really a friend of international students,” Gresser said. “There is a lot of alarm and nervousness among international students.”

The Chinese government advised its students against studying in the U.S. and to consider universities in other countries like the U.K. or Australia.

Some universities have made investments in buildings or have hired administrative staff based on the revenue they receive from international students, Gresser said. The Trump administration’s visa revocations are raising serious questions about how much money universities can expect in the next few years and what might need to be cut.

“And who’s going to take the hit? Is it going to be the low-income students, the administrative staff, research and scholarships?” Gresser said.

Preparing for a smaller budget

The University is planning for a possible loss in federal funding and the impacts on its employees, students and research, Rohman Kuhl said. The University received $628 million in research funding from federal sources, such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

In February, the Trump administration announced it would cut $4 billion in federal funding for research at universities. University officials are also anticipating less funding from the state in the next fiscal year.

Rohman Kuhl said the University may have “really tough choices” to make regarding what research to continue funding. Discontinuing some projects could mean losing decades of research data.

During the pandemic, Rohman Kuhl said some higher paid employees and senior leaders proposed taking a pay cut if it meant the University could “keep more people on the boat.”

Though circumstances are different now, Rohman Kuhl said she thinks there will be a very big interest in protecting people.

Higher salary increases for top leaders

The University president’s salary has increased by 80.5% since 2006, while the median-earning employee has seen an increase of 56%. Rohman Kuhl said this gap is likely due to different salary standards for different types of positions.

The University is just below the 50th percentile in compensation for senior leaders compared to other R1 universities that are high in research activity, according to data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

The University had a poor infrastructure for deciding job titles for many years, Rohman Kuhl said. Groups could pick titles for roles without a system, whereas other major institutions have strict rules for how jobs are named and sorted.

The University conducted a Job Family study and a pay comparison study to rename job roles to better reflect the work an employee is doing. Before that system, it was difficult to accurately track changes prior to 2016 at the University, Rohman Kuhl said.

She added it was also hard to compare salary data to other institutions and determine if University salaries are fair and competitive.

“You’re trying to chase the market and get people hired at competitive rates,” Rohman Kuhl said, and salaries for current employees rise to keep them at the same level as new hires.

The University increased its total spending on payroll almost doubled in the last two decades, from $920 million to $1.75 billion. Much of this is due to inflation, but Rohman Kuhl said it does not take a lot of new roles to start making up $310 million. She said it happens quickly.

One goal for the University now that it has accurate employee data is making sure all employees are paid a market-competitive salary, Rohman Kuhl said.

The U.S. government is reversing course and reinstating the legal status of thousands of international students nationwide, a government lawyer said in federal court on Friday.

At least 11 University of Minnesota students had lost their legal status or had their visas revoked as of mid-April, alongside dozens of other students in Minnesota and more than 1,200 students across the nation.

Four out of the 11 students have had their legal status restored, according to an email from University spokesperson Andria Waclawski.

For some, such as University graduate students Doğukan Günaydin and Ziliang Jin, the change in legal status was attributed to misdemeanor offenses like drunk driving or traffic violations. 

Both Günaydin and Jin are among more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government, with many judges ordering the administration to temporarily undo the actions, Politico reported.

These come after other student visas were revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year for connections to pro-Palestinian protests.

The loss of legal status and visa revocations have left students at risk for deportation. Some students have avoided going to classes while others have left the country.

A rumor that Department of Homeland Security officers were present on the University of Minnesota campus several weeks ago caused fear and uncertainty for University students, but Waclawski said these reports are unsubstantiated. 

A lawyer for the federal government read a statement in federal court Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is restoring the legal student status of people whose Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) records were terminated, the Associated Press reported. 

SEVIS is a database that tracks international students studying in the U. S. and identifies their visa status.

The lawyer’s statement said ICE is developing a framework for terminating SEVIS records, Politico reported. Students’ SEVIS records will remain active or will be reinstated regardless of if they had filed a lawsuit. 

The University of Minnesota international student detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers (ICE) last Thursday was targeted for a DUI, according to a lawsuit filed by the student.

Doğukan Günaydin, an MBA student in the Carlson School of Management and Turkish citizen, pleaded guilty in March 2024 to driving under the influence in Minneapolis the previous year, according to court records. 

Günaydin had not participated in protests on campus or been vocal about political issues, the New York Times reported Monday. He was booked into Sherburne County jail in Elk River, 30 miles from campus.

The lawsuit alleges that Günaydin’s visa was unlawfully terminated and his right to due process was violated by detaining him without being charged with an immigration violation, Sahan Journal reported. He also reportedly “feared he was being kidnapped” by the plain-clothes ICE officers.

In an email statement to the Minnesota Daily, the Department of Homeland Security said Günaydin’s visa was revoked by the State Department for the DUI and “is not related to student protests.” 

The lawsuit lists President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and several other federal officials as defendants.

Hannah Brown, Günaydin’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.

A Minnesota State University student was detained by ICE on Friday, Sahan Journal reported. This also occurred at an off-campus residence, according to an email sent by the school’s president to students and employees.

“Snatching up students who come here legally to work hard and get an education does not make you tough on immigration,” Gov. Tim Walz said on X Monday evening. “We need answers.”

“My office and I are doing all we can to get information about this concerning case,” Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote on X after the news broke on Friday.

In a statement on Friday, the University of Minnesota’s Graduate Labor Union said ICE’s actions are “an affront to our civil liberties and the tenants of academic freedom.” 

The union organized a protest for Monday at noon outside of Johnston Hall in solidarity with international workers. Further protests are scheduled for this week, as well as a Know Your Rights virtual training on April 4 hosted by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee and Educators for Justice in Palestine.

The Graduate Labor Union and AFSCME, the union for clerical, technical and healthcare workers, addressed a list of demands for University President Rebecca Cunningham on Monday. Among the demands are a clear commitment to defending immigrant workers expanding Know Your Rights training for students and workers.

“We urge the University and its partners to do everything possible to defend all students, faculty, and staff, regardless of their nation of origin,” the Council of Graduate Students wrote in a statement Friday.

A University of Minnesota graduate student was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers Thursday night, according to a statement from University leadership.

The international graduate student, who is enrolled in the Carlson School, was detained at an off-campus residence. The University is not sharing the student’s name or where they are being held due to student privacy laws, but it is providing support to the student, University spokesperson Andria Waclawski said. 

There are more than 5,200 international students at the University, roughly 11% of the total student body.

ICE has arrested more than 32,000 people since Donald Trump took office in January, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Last year, ICE made just over 33,000 arrests.

Other international students across the country have been arrested ICE in recent weeks, including Columbia University, Tufts University, and the University of Alabama. 

A spokesperson said in January the University will comply with federal court orders related to deportations, but it does not track students’ immigration status.

The University did not have prior knowledge of the student being detained and was not in contact with federal authorities, the email said. 

The University provides some general information about immigration policy and student rights on its website. 

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents approved a resolution Friday allowing the University president to limit statements from groups of faculty on “matters of public concern.”

This means units — departments, centers or institutes — within the University can only publish statements on political matters at the University president’s discretion. It does not limit individuals from expressing their opinions.

The decision caused concern over academic freedom from University faculty, some of whom participated in a protest with students at the Friday meeting. One protester was arrested for trespassing shortly after the resolution passed. 

The resolution also comes as the University is the subject of a Title VI investigation over complaints of antisemitism and scrutiny on University administration for rescinding a directorship offer for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“(The resolution is) very, very concerning, that sort of very narrowly defines our academic freedom as a right of individuals rather than as a right of collectives of individuals,” said Claire Halpert, a linguistics professor and director of the University’s Institute of Linguistics.

The University’s policies on academic freedom are “only as good as the institution’s willingness to defend people who are coming under attack” for their academic speech, Halpert said. This could be from inside the University or outside perspectives in the community.

“You don’t just solve academic freedom, you have to constantly be enforcing and monitoring and also making sure that the messaging that comes from leadership at the university is 100% rock solid,” Halpert said.

Why did the Board propose this?

Let’s go back to November 2022. 

University Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Croson visited the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee of the University’s Faculty Senate with questions about academic freedom, Eric Van Wyk, current committee chair and computer science professor, said. The committee’s non-urgent task was to examine the Board of Regents policy on academic freedom that had not yet been implemented as administrative policy.

Until the decision to restrict unit statements, Board of Regents policy defined academic freedom as “the freedom, without institutional discipline or restraint, to discuss all relevant matters in the classroom, to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to speak or write on matters of public concern as well as on matters related to professional duties and the functioning of the University.” 

It did not list specific restrictions on when and how faculty cannot speak about an issue.

The issue of academic freedom became much more urgent following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on an Israeli music festival and Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza when multiple University departments issued statements in support of the Palestinian people, Van Wyk said.

Croson visited the committee again in December 2023 with a draft policy that concerned committee members, Van Wyk said. Croson proposed three options — either the University implements an auditing process for departmental statements, pre-approves all departmental statements before publication or completely prohibits departmental statements.

At its January 2024 meeting, the committee requested the Faculty Senate to allow it to investigate this issue in depth.

“It seemed to be moving very quickly, and it’s an important thing,” Van Wyk said. “We wanted more time.”

In May 2024, former interim University President Jeff Ettinger and Croson established the President’s Task Force on Institutional Speech to develop a policy related to “institutional statements on matters of public concern,” prompted by departmental statements after Oct. 7, 2023.

Van Wyk said there was a lot of good consultation back and forth between that task force and the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee between the task force’s formation and its final recommendations in January 2025. The final report passed a vote in the University Senate 122-8.

The policy put forward by the task force was hailed as a triumph of shared governance during the University Senate meeting, Van Wyk said. 

But at its February meeting, the Board responded to the task force’s report with a resolution proposing the University president be the sole authority on institutional statements.

The policy passed by the Board, proposed by Regents Janie Mayeron, Douglas Huebsch and Mike Kenyanya, “flagrantly disregards the consensus of the University Senate,” Nathaniel Mills, an English professor and a member of the executive committee of the University’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter, wrote in an email.

How does tenure tie into it?

The disagreements over academic freedom are underscored by the issue of tenure, Van Wyk said.

“The whole idea (of shared governance) is the faculty are involved in the governance of the institution. If you don’t have tenure, how freely can you speak about how the institution should be run?” Van Wyk said.

The task force started with the question of what protections exist for the academic freedom of non-tenured faculty, he said. 

The answer? “Not much,” Van Wyk said.

The fight over academic freedom started at Stanford University in 1896 when Edward Ross, an economics professor, criticized the railroad industry the Stanford family profited from and later called for the removal of Japanese immigrants from the U.S. 

Ross received criticism for expressing political opinions and eventually agreed to resign, including pressure from Jane Stanford, the university president at the time, to fire Ross.

Then, there was no tenure system in place at American universities.

This changed in 1915 when professors from across the country came to form the AAUP. The organization’s 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure lays out an early tenure system and principles of academic freedom for universities to follow.

“The general thought was that, both in teaching and in research, universities were supposed to serve the public good, and the public good sometimes had to transcend what individual administrations, or people who ran the university, had to say,” computer science professor Gopalan Nadathur said.

The AAUP later clarified and expanded these standards in a 1940 declaration stating that faculty need freedom to research and teach in a classroom, though they should limit discussing controversial matters unrelated to their subject. In making public statements, faculty should be accurate and indicate they do not speak for their institution.

The 1940 statement also states after a probationary period, teachers should have permanent tenure and only be fired “for adequate cause” or “under extraordinary circumstances because of financial exigencies.”

The University’s detailed faculty tenure policy is what gives teeth to academic freedom, said Nadathur, who has tenure and has worked at the University since 2000. 

“You can talk about it in the abstract, but unless there is a process that makes sure the loopholes aren’t exploited, it is meaningless,” Nadathur said.

The University is increasingly depending on instructors who are not tenure-track, Nadathur said. A report from a subcommittee he chairs found roughly 40% of all faculty are not eligible for tenure, with the number dropping closer to 30% excluding the Medical School.

One result is that non-tenure track instructors are shying away from new ways of introducing topics to not risk low scores from the end-of-semester Student Rating of Teaching, Nadathur said.

“Those faculty members really felt challenged in carrying out their work in the way they would like to do it,” Nadathur said.

One explanation behind comparatively low rates of non-tenured instructors in the University’s medical school is that the majority are clinicians and are less interested in publishing and applying for federal grants, Clifford Steer, a professor in the Medical School and non-voting member of the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee, said. 

For the medical faculty at the University, there is more concern about the federal government cutting grant funding than academic freedom at the institutional level, Steer said.

“People are concerned about whether they’re going to have a job tomorrow,” Steer said. “It’s a little bit spooky out there.”’

Erika López Prater, a former art history instructor at Hamline University in St. Paul, showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a fall 2022 class, and school officials decided against renewing her contract after hearing complaints from Muslim students who considered depictions of the Prophet to be blasphemous, Sahan Journal reported.

“Had (the Hamline professor) been in a tenured position, the administrator would have had to engage in a more careful analysis,” Nadathur said.

The Regents policy directing the president to disallow unit statements is an example of someone being influenced by external political pressure and using that to abrogate academic freedom within the University, Nadathur said.

“Some people think of (tenure) as recognition, as some medal,” Nadathur said. “It was never devised to be that medal. It was devised to be a mechanism for protecting academic freedom.”

Israel-Palestine and the Title VI investigation

Pediatrics professor Michael Kyba said the statements published by departments following Oct. 7, 2023 were one-sided and caused concern for some of the Jewish community on campus.

“We have a population of students and faculty who say that these statements are impinging on not just their academic freedom, but their ability to function,” Kyba said.

Kyba, a member of the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee, said the AAUP’s 1915 declaration outlined that the principles of academic freedom should only apply to speech that is academically responsible. 

And while the 1915 declaration is not clear on the limits of academic speech, Kyba said ideally peers should judge academic responsibility, sometimes University leadership must step in to regulate — such as with department statements published in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Academic freedom is being used as a defense for academically irresponsible, antisemitic statements published on University websites, Kyba said.

The Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies department released a statement on Oct. 16, 2023, criticizing the University’s investments in businesses with Israeli ties and said Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack was “not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination and life.”

“Palestine is a feminist issue,” the statement reads.

The statement was cited in a Dec. 9, 2023, formal request by former Regents Michael Hsu and University law professor Richard Painter that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the University for allowing “entire departments to post antisemitic faculty statements condemning Israel, and justifying the terrorist attack by Hamas, on official department websites.”

The U.S. Department of Education first announced in January 2024 that it would launch an investigation into complaints of antisemitism at the University. At the time, the University was one of 99 schools under investigation for discrimination based on shared ancestry, which was made illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Education Department announced March 14 that it opened investigations into 45 schools under Title VI, including the University.

In an email on March 10, University President Rebecca Cunningham said the University’s leadership team is “strongly committed to enhancing support for members of our community who are Jewish.” The email stated the University recently joined the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative to counter antisemitism. 

The University received a failing grade from the Anti-Defamation League’s campus antisemitism report card, last updated on March 3.

Cunningham wrote in the email, “The University will fully cooperate with any reviews or investigations involving these important matters.”

“Instances of mass violence, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes always present the greatest test to academic freedom,” said Michael Gallope, chair of the cultural studies and comparative literature department. “The stakes are existential for the university to maintain and support academic freedom, particularly in times of war.”

University leaders need to voice strong support for the principles of academic freedom to uphold it, Gallope said. He added in instances when academic freedom is violated, administrators need to be held accountable, such as the vote of no confidence in Ettinger and Croson.

Ettinger withdrew a job offer for director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Israeli scholar Raz Segal, who had received criticism for calling Israel’s actions in Palestine a genocide. Ettinger decided in June, only a few weeks before Cunningham would take over as President. 

Halpert said the move was criticized by faculty as an overreach in hiring policy, but the choice to limit what a center director can or cannot say is a threat to academic freedom.

The AAUP released a statement on Oct. 14 condemning the revocation of Segal’s directorship, calling it a violation of academic freedom.

The University’s Faculty Senate approved a vote of no confidence in Ettinger and Provost Croson in June following the decision.

“Academic freedom is upheld when leaders in positions of power voice strong support for its principles,” Gallope said. “We can also support it by raising awareness of academic freedom and its importance to the institution. In unfortunate circumstances when it’s violated, we have to hold people accountable — that’s why we had a no confidence vote.”

A vote of no confidence is a call for leadership change, Gallope said. But that decision is ultimately up to the Regents, he added. Provost Croson did not lose her position due tothe no confidence vote, but Croson announced in early December she would be stepping down from her position after this academic year.

Academic speech and the First Amendment

The University requested around $500 million from the state legislature in 2024 but received only a fraction. 

“I think that tends to make the University somewhat risk averse, in the sense of not wanting speech that some legislators don’t like to emanate from the University,” media law professor Jane Kirtley said.

But there are limits on what speech the University can control, Kirtley said.

Under the First Amendment, all speech is protected barring a few exceptions, including incitements to violence, defamatory speech and true threats, Kirtley said. 

Embracing a robust idea of academic freedom would help protect the University as an institution from potential liability because individual faculty or groups would be responsible for their speech, Kirtley said.

However, Kirtley said that would not address the emotional or political concerns of taxpayers and legislators offended by certain viewpoints expressed by people employed by the University.

Kirtley runs the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law within the University. Centers and institutes are intended to engage with the public on matters of public interest and concern, she said.

“(The Silha Center) deals with issues of media law, free expression, freedom of information, those are all matters of public interest,” Kirtley said. “I’m not allowed to talk about them anymore. That means I can’t do my job, and the Silha Center can’t do its job. From a First Amendment perspective, it’s unconstitutional.”

Units are a more difficult topic, Kirtley said. Some units engage in public-facing research with a priority for public education and engagement while others do not.

“To say that we can’t do that anymore is basically cutting us off at the knees and making it impossible to fulfill a mission that the University has recognized that we have,” Kirtley said.

The limitations on unit statements are “driven largely by, I’ll just say it, cowardice on the part of the University administration,” Kirtley said. “And whether that’s fear of funding, fear of unhappiness by potential donors … you have to ask them.”

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents approved a resolution Friday allowing the University president to limit statements from groups of faculty on “matters of public concern.”

This means units — departments, centers or institutes — within the University can only publish statements on political matters at the University president’s discretion. It does not limit individuals from expressing their opinions.

The decision caused concern over academic freedom from University faculty, some of whom participated in a protest with students at the Friday meeting. One protester was arrested for trespassing shortly after the resolution passed. 

The resolution also comes as the University is the subject of a Title VI investigation over complaints of antisemitism and scrutiny on University administration for rescinding a directorship offer for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“(The resolution is) very, very concerning, that sort of very narrowly defines our academic freedom as a right of individuals rather than as a right of collectives of individuals,” said Claire Halpert, a linguistics professor and director of the University’s Institute of Linguistics.

The University’s policies on academic freedom are “only as good as the institution’s willingness to defend people who are coming under attack” for their academic speech, Halpert said. This could be from inside the University or outside perspectives in the community.

“You don’t just solve academic freedom, you have to constantly be enforcing and monitoring and also making sure that the messaging that comes from leadership at the university is 100% rock solid,” Halpert said.

Why did the Board propose this?

Let’s go back to November 2022. 

University Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Croson visited the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee of the University’s Faculty Senate with questions about academic freedom, Eric Van Wyk, current committee chair and computer science professor, said. The committee’s non-urgent task was to examine the Board of Regents policy on academic freedom that had not yet been implemented as administrative policy.

Until the decision to restrict unit statements, Board of Regents policy defined academic freedom as “the freedom, without institutional discipline or restraint, to discuss all relevant matters in the classroom, to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to speak or write on matters of public concern as well as on matters related to professional duties and the functioning of the University.” 

It did not list specific restrictions on when and how faculty cannot speak about an issue.

The issue of academic freedom became much more urgent following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on an Israeli music festival and Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza when multiple University departments issued statements in support of the Palestinian people, Van Wyk said.

Croson visited the committee again in December 2023 with a draft policy that concerned committee members, Van Wyk said. Croson proposed three options — either the University implements an auditing process for departmental statements, pre-approves all departmental statements before publication or completely prohibits departmental statements.

At its January 2024 meeting, the committee requested the Faculty Senate to allow it to investigate this issue in depth.

“It seemed to be moving very quickly, and it’s an important thing,” Van Wyk said. “We wanted more time.”

In May 2024, former interim University President Jeff Ettinger and Croson established the President’s Task Force on Institutional Speech to develop a policy related to “institutional statements on matters of public concern,” prompted by departmental statements after Oct. 7, 2023.

Van Wyk said there was a lot of good consultation back and forth between that task force and the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee between the task force’s formation and its final recommendations in January 2025. The final report passed a vote in the University Senate 122-8.

The policy put forward by the task force was hailed as a triumph of shared governance during the University Senate meeting, Van Wyk said. 

But at its February meeting, the Board responded to the task force’s report with a resolution proposing the University president be the sole authority on institutional statements.

The policy passed by the Board, proposed by Regents Janie Mayeron, Douglas Huebsch and Mike Kenyanya, “flagrantly disregards the consensus of the University Senate,” Nathaniel Mills, an English professor and a member of the executive committee of the University’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter, wrote in an email.

How does tenure tie into it?

The disagreements over academic freedom are underscored by the issue of tenure, Van Wyk said.

“The whole idea (of shared governance) is the faculty are involved in the governance of the institution. If you don’t have tenure, how freely can you speak about how the institution should be run?” Van Wyk said.

The task force started with the question of what protections exist for the academic freedom of non-tenured faculty, he said. 

The answer? “Not much,” Van Wyk said.

The fight over academic freedom started at Stanford University in 1896 when Edward Ross, an economics professor, criticized the railroad industry the Stanford family profited from and later called for the removal of Japanese immigrants from the U.S. 

Ross received criticism for expressing political opinions and eventually agreed to resign, including pressure from Jane Stanford, the university president at the time, to fire Ross.

Then, there was no tenure system in place at American universities.

This changed in 1915 when professors from across the country came to form the AAUP. The organization’s 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure lays out an early tenure system and principles of academic freedom for universities to follow.

“The general thought was that, both in teaching and in research, universities were supposed to serve the public good, and the public good sometimes had to transcend what individual administrations, or people who ran the university, had to say,” computer science professor Gopalan Nadathur said.

The AAUP later clarified and expanded these standards in a 1940 declaration stating that faculty need freedom to research and teach in a classroom, though they should limit discussing controversial matters unrelated to their subject. In making public statements, faculty should be accurate and indicate they do not speak for their institution.

The 1940 statement also states after a probationary period, teachers should have permanent tenure and only be fired “for adequate cause” or “under extraordinary circumstances because of financial exigencies.”

The University’s detailed faculty tenure policy is what gives teeth to academic freedom, said Nadathur, who has tenure and has worked at the University since 2000. 

“You can talk about it in the abstract, but unless there is a process that makes sure the loopholes aren’t exploited, it is meaningless,” Nadathur said.

The University is increasingly depending on instructors who are not tenure-track, Nadathur said. A report from a subcommittee he chairs found roughly 40% of all faculty are not eligible for tenure, with the number dropping closer to 30% excluding the Medical School.

One result is that non-tenure track instructors are shying away from new ways of introducing topics to not risk low scores from the end-of-semester Student Rating of Teaching, Nadathur said.

“Those faculty members really felt challenged in carrying out their work in the way they would like to do it,” Nadathur said.

One explanation behind comparatively low rates of non-tenured instructors in the University’s medical school is that the majority are clinicians and are less interested in publishing and applying for federal grants, Clifford Steer, a professor in the Medical School and non-voting member of the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee, said. 

For the medical faculty at the University, there is more concern about the federal government cutting grant funding than academic freedom at the institutional level, Steer said.

“People are concerned about whether they’re going to have a job tomorrow,” Steer said. “It’s a little bit spooky out there.”’

Erika López Prater, a former art history instructor at Hamline University in St. Paul, showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a fall 2022 class, and school officials decided against renewing her contract after hearing complaints from Muslim students who considered depictions of the Prophet to be blasphemous, Sahan Journal reported.

“Had (the Hamline professor) been in a tenured position, the administrator would have had to engage in a more careful analysis,” Nadathur said.

The Regents policy directing the president to disallow unit statements is an example of someone being influenced by external political pressure and using that to abrogate academic freedom within the University, Nadathur said.

“Some people think of (tenure) as recognition, as some medal,” Nadathur said. “It was never devised to be that medal. It was devised to be a mechanism for protecting academic freedom.”

Israel-Palestine and the Title VI investigation

Pediatrics professor Michael Kyba said the statements published by departments following Oct. 7, 2023 were one-sided and caused concern for some of the Jewish community on campus.

“We have a population of students and faculty who say that these statements are impinging on not just their academic freedom, but their ability to function,” Kyba said.

Kyba, a member of the Academic Freedom and Tenure committee, said the AAUP’s 1915 declaration outlined that the principles of academic freedom should only apply to speech that is academically responsible. 

And while the 1915 declaration is not clear on the limits of academic speech, Kyba said ideally peers should judge academic responsibility, sometimes University leadership must step in to regulate — such as with department statements published in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Academic freedom is being used as a defense for academically irresponsible, antisemitic statements published on University websites, Kyba said.

The Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies department released a statement on Oct. 16, 2023, criticizing the University’s investments in businesses with Israeli ties and said Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack was “not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination and life.”

“Palestine is a feminist issue,” the statement reads.

The statement was cited in a Dec. 9, 2023, formal request by former Regents Michael Hsu and University law professor Richard Painter that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the University for allowing “entire departments to post antisemitic faculty statements condemning Israel, and justifying the terrorist attack by Hamas, on official department websites.”

The U.S. Department of Education first announced in January 2024 that it would launch an investigation into complaints of antisemitism at the University. At the time, the University was one of 99 schools under investigation for discrimination based on shared ancestry, which was made illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Education Department announced March 14 that it opened investigations into 45 schools under Title VI, including the University.

In an email on March 10, University President Rebecca Cunningham said the University’s leadership team is “strongly committed to enhancing support for members of our community who are Jewish.” The email stated the University recently joined the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative to counter antisemitism. 

The University received a failing grade from the Anti-Defamation League’s campus antisemitism report card, last updated on March 3.

Cunningham wrote in the email, “The University will fully cooperate with any reviews or investigations involving these important matters.”

“Instances of mass violence, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes always present the greatest test to academic freedom,” said Michael Gallope, chair of the cultural studies and comparative literature department. “The stakes are existential for the university to maintain and support academic freedom, particularly in times of war.”

University leaders need to voice strong support for the principles of academic freedom to uphold it, Gallope said. He added in instances when academic freedom is violated, administrators need to be held accountable, such as the vote of no confidence in Ettinger and Croson.

Ettinger withdrew a job offer for director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Israeli scholar Raz Segal, who had received criticism for calling Israel’s actions in Palestine a genocide. Ettinger decided in June, only a few weeks before Cunningham would take over as President. 

Halpert said the move was criticized by faculty as an overreach in hiring policy, but the choice to limit what a center director can or cannot say is a threat to academic freedom.

The AAUP released a statement on Oct. 14 condemning the revocation of Segal’s directorship, calling it a violation of academic freedom.

The University’s Faculty Senate approved a vote of no confidence in Ettinger and Provost Croson in June following the decision.

“Academic freedom is upheld when leaders in positions of power voice strong support for its principles,” Gallope said. “We can also support it by raising awareness of academic freedom and its importance to the institution. In unfortunate circumstances when it’s violated, we have to hold people accountable — that’s why we had a no confidence vote.”

A vote of no confidence is a call for leadership change, Gallope said. But that decision is ultimately up to the Regents, he added. Provost Croson did not lose her position due tothe no confidence vote, but Croson announced in early December she would be stepping down from her position after this academic year.

Academic speech and the First Amendment

The University requested around $500 million from the state legislature in 2024 but received only a fraction. 

“I think that tends to make the University somewhat risk averse, in the sense of not wanting speech that some legislators don’t like to emanate from the University,” media law professor Jane Kirtley said.

But there are limits on what speech the University can control, Kirtley said.

Under the First Amendment, all speech is protected barring a few exceptions, including incitements to violence, defamatory speech and true threats, Kirtley said. 

Embracing a robust idea of academic freedom would help protect the University as an institution from potential liability because individual faculty or groups would be responsible for their speech, Kirtley said.

However, Kirtley said that would not address the emotional or political concerns of taxpayers and legislators offended by certain viewpoints expressed by people employed by the University.

Kirtley runs the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law within the University. Centers and institutes are intended to engage with the public on matters of public interest and concern, she said.

“(The Silha Center) deals with issues of media law, free expression, freedom of information, those are all matters of public interest,” Kirtley said. “I’m not allowed to talk about them anymore. That means I can’t do my job, and the Silha Center can’t do its job. From a First Amendment perspective, it’s unconstitutional.”

Units are a more difficult topic, Kirtley said. Some units engage in public-facing research with a priority for public education and engagement while others do not.

“To say that we can’t do that anymore is basically cutting us off at the knees and making it impossible to fulfill a mission that the University has recognized that we have,” Kirtley said.

The limitations on unit statements are “driven largely by, I’ll just say it, cowardice on the part of the University administration,” Kirtley said. “And whether that’s fear of funding, fear of unhappiness by potential donors … you have to ask them.”

The University of Minnesota expelled a third-year Ph.D. student in January after he was accused of using generative artificial intelligence (AI) on an exam. He appears to be the first student expelled from the University over AI.

MPR News was the first to report on Haishan Yang’s expulsion. Yang’s lawsuit against the University claims he was wrongfully accused of breaking the University’s scholastic dishonesty rules by using AI on his preliminary exam last August.

Yang also filed a complaint with Minnesota’s Department of Human Rights in February for discriminatory treatment based on his national origin.

Yang came to the University to pursue a Ph.D. in health economics after earning his first doctorate in economics from Utah State University. He said he hoped to pursue research as a professor in the U.S.

Growing up in Quanzhou, a southern Chinese city with a population of more than 8.7 million, Yang’s first language was Southern Min, a Chinese dialect.

Yang said he used AI like ChatGPT to check his grammar as a non-native English speaker but decided against using it for his preliminary exam.

University documents Yang shared with the Minnesota Daily show four faculty graders were doubtful that one section of Yang’s exam was written without assistance from AI. The professors pointed out an acronym not used in preparatory reading for the exam and other details that were included in one of Yang’s essay responses as signs of ChatGPT use.

The faculty graders input exam prompts to ChatGPT, compared its answers to Yang’s and shared the results at the hearing.

“I was struck by the similarities between the two that seemed extremely unlikely to be coincidental,” professor Peter Huckfeldt wrote in a letter for the hearing. 

Yang alleges one professor, Hannah Neprash, modified parts of the ChatGPT-generated response by removing a summary paragraph, excluding a header and changing bolded text to plain text. 

He also said she did not present a shareable link to the ChatGPT answer and instead exported a PDF shared with the other professors reviewing Yang’s exam. Yang filed a defamation lawsuit against Neprash in January.

Neprash declined to comment based on student privacy laws. A Feb. 21 filing said that changing the boldness of text and removing a summary paragraph are “trivial differences, even if intentionally made.”

Roxanne Krietzman, assistant director of student advocacy for the University’s Student Advocate Services, said during the hearing the question under suspicion of plagiarism represented only 6.6% of Yang’s total exam. Krietzman said AI detection on other questions within Yang’s exam reported percentages below 30% likelihood of using AI, compared to the section given an 89% likelihood.

Yang also said methods for detecting AI use are not as reliable for analyzing the work of scholars who are not native English speakers.

The concept of AI detection is based on how words are used and how often, said Louie Giray, an assistant professor of communication at Mapúa University in the Philippines. Non-native English speakers commonly write in simple words and simple sentences that flag an AI detection program looking for abnormal writing patterns, he said.

Non-native English speakers may also use more basic transitions, such as “In conclusion” and “However,” Giray added.

Giray has written about the limitations of detecting AI plagiarism and found that detection programs lack context, such as with non-native English speakers.

A study from the University of Washington found that Turnitin’s AI detector found 25% false positives when analyzing work that did not use AI.

But many scholars advocate for human-AI collaboration in detecting plagiarism, Giray said.

“I don’t think that in the future there’s going to be a fool-proof AI detector,” Giray said. “AI hyperactively advances, and detection cannot keep pace with it.”

The University of Minnesota declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing federal and state privacy laws. University spokesperson Jake Ricker also declined interviews on behalf of the faculty members named in Yang’s lawsuit.

The University’s Student Conduct Code definition for scholastic dishonesty includes “the unauthorized use of online learning support and testing platforms.”

If the lawsuit settles in his favor, Yang said he would finish his program at the University but shift to a separate track. 

Now, Yang has been traveling in Africa and said he has been interviewing for faculty positions in economics around the world.

“I’m still going to try to survive, try to find a new opportunity,” Yang said.

Former president Donald Trump’s reelection is igniting fears of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and federal restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans people of all ages.

At an event in August, Trump promised to sign an executive order “instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.”

He also frequently said that public schools will not receive federal funding if they promote gender transitioning, NPR reported. 

Roughly half of the states in the country passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care last year. Some states went further — like an Odessa, Texas ban on transgender people using bathrooms that do not match the sex assigned to them at birth. 

Following the presidential election, trans and queer people from across the country are looking to Minnesota for safety.

Minnesota’s LGBTQ+ protections, both in the Minnesota Human Rights Act and “trans refuge” legislation, will remain in place regardless of what happens at a federal level, said Kat Rohn, executive director of OutFront Minnesota, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

“Immediately following the election, we had a renewed outreach from folks outside of the state,” Rohn said.

Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 26 states has pushed several hundred households to relocate to Minnesota since becoming a “trans refuge” state last year, Rohn said. Legislation passed last year protects the privacy of patients accessing gender-affirming care and shields medical providers from out-of-state subpoenas. 

Many seeking access to gender-affirming care come from neighboring states with bans — North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa, Rohn said. 

“This is a unique scenario where folks are thinking about insulation from potential federal policies and continued access to care,” Rohn said.

OutFront has worked with people from 20 states, including states like Texas and Missouri, along the Interstate 35 corridor and southeast states Florida, Tennessee and Georgia, Rohn said.

Minnesota’s relatively strong job market and economy are a draw for those seeking access to care, and the high cost of living for “shield states” on the east or west coasts deters people from states with lower median incomes, Rohn said.

The number of families migrating is “hard to predict at this point,” Rohn said. She added those with the resources to move immediately will do so, but many more need time to think about relocating their families.

Looking for a way out

In the two days following the presidential election, Charley, a Texas native who moved to Minnesota, watched 60 people flood into the Twin Cities Transplant Discord server — the highest spike he had seen in such a short period. Many were speeding up existing escape plans while others realized they needed to leave home, urgently.

Charley, who requested his last name not be used to avoid workplace repercussions, created a Discord group in February to support fellow transplants after his move from Texas a few months earlier. He planned for the group to be a “social safety net” to provide people with community that is hard to find without family or friends in the neighborhood.

Approaching the election, Charley realized he would have to push forward on goals for the following year, such as introducing mutual aid through volunteer ride-sharing and virtual tour guides, as well as coordinating donations of mattresses, warm socks and hats, which many transplants from states like Texas and Florida do not bring.

Many transplants the group has attracted come from Texas and Florida, Charley said, which are home to some of the most restrictive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the country. 

And for someone coming from a state with the federal minimum wage of $7.25, the cost of housing in Minnesota is considerably more accessible than in coastal states, Charley said.

Missouri banned hormone replacement therapy for some adults in June 2023, sparking concern for many trans people, including Charley, that their rights could be taken away overnight. 

Worried that Texas would introduce legislation banning adult hormone replacement therapy, Charley and his partner started planning their move as soon as possible.

Beyond the legislation, Charley said it felt “unsafe just to exist.” A cisgender friend of Charley’s in Austin was heckled for walking through a Target wearing pink Converse shoes, he said. 

“Anything that signals that you are queer, it puts a little target on your back,” Charley said.

A November attack on two trans women at a light rail station in downtown Minneapolis, with cheers from onlookers, deterred a few people Charley spoke with who had been considering a move to Minnesota. He said it was hard on many members of the Twin Cities Transplant group. 

“To me, (bystanders cheering) was the most devastating part,” Charley said.

A place to call home

Housing is a considerable obstacle for many transplants — the housing crisis in the Twin Cities affects everybody, but the absence of a dedicated LGBTQ+ shelter is a risk for anyone relocating without guaranteed access to housing, Charley said. 

“And you can’t sleep in your car,” Charley said. “I talked to a transplant last year who was talking about doing anything to get out of Texas and mentioned in February living in a car.”

Charley said the “Catch-22” of finding a job without a local address is another challenge because employers might eliminate out-of-state applicants. To secure an apartment, one needs a job and proof of income, he said. 

“The majority of people end up kind of frozen in place as they’re trying to figure out, ‘Where am I going to work, and where am I going to live, and I can’t do one without the other?’” Charley said.

As a realtor interacting mainly with prospective homeowners, realtor Sarah Rostance has noticed most transplants move from below the Mason-Dixon line.

“It’s another world down there,” Rostance said. “To tell people they can’t say a word that someone identifies as is so baffling to me.”

After the election, Rostance, president of Minnesota’s LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance chapter, has felt more urgency from people seeking to move to Minnesota.

The issue of housing is due to the “prices of everything going up,” without wage increases and the lack of new starter homes in the Twin Cities, Rostance said. New single-family homes have four bedrooms, multiple living rooms and a handful of bathrooms, but “nobody can afford it.”

There is also an inventory problem. Rebecca Wegscheid, government affairs director at the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors, said if realtors continue selling at the current rate, there are about two and a half months of supply. A balanced market would have around five to six months of supply.

This leaves families in homes that do not fit their needs, with no option to move into an affordable upgrade, Wegscheid said. 

But the market is also seeing a phenomenon called “golden handcuffs,” Wegscheid said, where a homeowner might be reluctant to let go of a low interest rate on their mortgage locked down during the pandemic when interest rates were below 4%.

Now, interest rates are between 6% and 10%, Wegscheid said. The increase feels steep, but it is a return to normal from before the pandemic.

Policies like the elimination of single-family zoning in St. Paul might lead to increased development — and therefore, inventory — that could lessen demand and bring down prices, Wegscheid said.

The rezoning in St. Paul last year allowed for multi-tenant units to be built in every part of the city, Bring Me The News reported. 

“A very long period of being extremely lucky”

In late spring of 2023, a staff member of a Louisiana middle school sorted through the library, writing down a list of books to take off the shelves to adhere to new legislation restricting access to “sexual content,” the law states. 

Middle school English teacher Estlin, who requested to not have his last name published due to not being out to his family, knew it was time to leave.

Estlin left his job and, for months, lived on his partner’s income as a remote employee for a tech company. They both saved around $6,000 for the move to Minnesota — a state neither had been to before. The couple packed whatever would fit into their Nissan Sentra and drove for two days. 

Estlin said they had known they would leave Louisiana since meeting at college in 2016, but the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ laws pushed them to act fast.

Finding housing that would allow a cat and dog was a challenge, Estlin said. To pinpoint the perfect spot, he navigated recommendations on Reddit to create a map of zones that would fit their needs.

Settling on the final unit came after more than 10 apartment tours across Minneapolis while staying in nearby Airbnbs, Estlin said.

Estlin was introduced to Twin Cities Transplants a few weeks after moving. He saw a notice for the first meeting in April and was one of about nine people in attendance. He has since volunteered to moderate the Discord community and help plan events.

Beyond the financial investment of relocating, Estlin said he spent months volunteering and introducing himself to the community before he could secure a position with a school in Minneapolis. He added applying to teaching jobs without connections was a difficult period, filled with rejections and sometimes no response at all.

“I got extremely lucky, but only after a very long period of being extremely unlucky,” Estlin said.

Eleven pro-Palestine protesters were released from Hennepin County jail Wednesday afternoon, according to the jail roster. 

The protesters were held without bail on probable cause for trespassing, rioting and damaging property for roughly 36 hours.

University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) officers arrested the protesters early Monday evening for occupying and barricading Morrill Hall, which houses administrative offices.

Three of the arrested protesters are former University students, and the remaining eight are current students.

A pro-Palestine group rallied outside of Morrill Hall Tuesday afternoon in solidarity with those arrested, protesting the University’s “use of excessive force. Further protests are scheduled for this weekend, according to Instagram posts by the University Divestment Coalition.

University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) officers arrested 11 protesters for property damage, trespassing and rioting, with one count of fourth-degree assault for occupying and barricading Morrill Hall on Monday.

Eight of the arrested protesters were students and three were alumni, according to a University spokesperson. All involved are being investigated for criminal charges and are being held without bail.

The protesters were brought to Hennepin County jail after about 20 locked entrances to the building, spray-painted security cameras, smashed interior windows and piled chairs, tables and waste bins in front of exits. A group gathered outside of the building in downtown Minneapolis to protest the arrests.

The University sent a SAFE-U alert shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday stating 12 east bank buildings are locked until further notice due to a rally hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) outside of Coffman Memorial Union protesting the University’s use of force.

Ali Abu, a member of SJP, said Cunningham lied about events inside the building, such as protesters preventing employees from leaving. SJP is a member group of the University Divestment Coalition but did not participate in the demonstrations and was not aware until shortly before protesters entered the building.

Abu said the demonstration was a success and a culmination of months of protests and attributed the cancellation of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s speaking visit, scheduled for 6 p.m. at Northrop, to Monday’s events. 

In a statement Tuesday morning, University President Rebecca Cunningham said the experience was “terrifying” for employees still inside the building who were unable to exit “for an extended period of time.” 

Three employees inside the building attempted to leave through locked exits, and protesters told the employees they could leave but only through one set of doors.

Monday’s occupation was not the first occupation Morrill Hall has seen — in January 1969, about 70 Black students peacefully occupied the bursar’s and records office in the building for 24 hours to protest institutional racism at the University and hostile treatment of Black students. The takeover led to the University establishing the Department of African American & African Studies.

The next step for the University Divestment Coalition is outreach and finding people “who were inspired by the brave actions that happened yesterday, get them to actually show up consistently and get involved,” said Isabel Eguizabal, a divestment coalition delegate for Young Democratic-Socialists of America.

“If we want to get the whole tomato, then we have to get a mass movement,” Eguizabal said.

Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley released a statement Tuesday urging “UMPD to drop all charges and remove the probable cause charge so that students can be released on bail immediately.”