Thompson Coburn partners Tres Cleveland, Scott Goldschmidt, and Jayna Rust were interviewed as part of Inside Higher Ed's coverage of fast-moving changes in the sector, further establishing TC's team as a go-to resource for understanding developments affecting higher education.
In the article "Can Universities Still Diversify Faculty Hiring Under Trump?" Tres and Scott discussed the challenges universities currently face in diversifying faculty hiring. Tres noted most institutions are trying to stay in the good graces of regulators, "and it's a challenge at this point" with rules "changing almost daily."
"The devil is all in the details with this," Scott said. Institutions have to weigh the risks of litigation and administrative action, he said, especially when it comes to public job ads. He added there are other hiring considerations that job ads could include that might lead to diverse hires, such as socioeconomic status and experience working with diverse populations, but the Trump administration may argue that such factors can't be used as proxies for race. The hiring criteria should be narrowly tailored to the job, he said, and the search and hiring process must be conducted in a race-neutral manner.
In another recent article, Jayna discussed the administration's strategy for terminating college grants and contracts. Generally, the only people who have authority to take contract-based actions on behalf of the United States are contracting officers or agreements officers, she said, but under the Trump administration, it's often unclear if this is the case.
If communications to universities regarding contract/grant termination "are not coming from the agreements officers or contracting officers, that is unusual," she said.
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