Transcript of 867: College Disorientation

Hey, there, everybody. It's Ira with a message for our life partners and our potential life partners, which hopefully is you. We're going to make another Ask Me Anything bonus episode where we will answer your questions about the show or really just about anything at all that you want to ask. Email your questions to lifepartners@thislife. Org. Seriously, ask anything. Like all our bonus episodes, this one is only going to be available to our lifepartners. If you are not a lifepartner yet, sign up. What you get is ad-free listening, a library of greatest hits right in your podcast feed, and you get all these bonus episodes. We've made a bunch of them that we are so proud of. Try this out for a few weeks. See what you think. You can cancel anytime. Go to thisamericanlife. Org /lifepartners.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.

If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife. Org.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Emmanuel Berry filling in for Ira Glass. Okay, school's back. Come with me now. We're going to Tempe, Arizona. Hello, guys. Can I have your attention?

Guys, guys, guys.

Arizona State University has set up everything you can think of. Karaoke, scavenger hunts, ax throwing, a mechanical bull to help new students meet each other and make friends. Are you guys ready to rumble? This is international student orientation. There are almost 400 new students here from India, China, and lots of other countries who arrived here alone, looking for any excuse to make a connection. Like these two uncomfortable-looking guys, Niall and Saoud. One wears an ASU cap, the other has stylish black glasses. They both have braces. They talk to my coworker, Meeky Meek. We just met right now. You guys just met out.

Yeah, we just met right now.

We clicked. What made you guys click? He was standing there alone.

I was standing alone.

So I was thinking, I'm like, Should I go?

Should I not?

Is it hard to make yourself go up and say hi? Yeah, a bit.

But then I decided to, yeah.

So I just went up there. I just said hi.

Asked him what his major was.

Did you feel any relief when he came up and said hi? Yeah, of course. There's a thing that I really don't like about myself that I don't really greet people or approach people.

I need people to approach me.

But at the same time, I really want to meet new people, but I don't know how to do that. Over 1 million students from all around the world study in the United States. Asu has over 14,000. Standing near the Mechanical Bull is Anushka and her newly made friend, Krisha, both from India, both computer science majors. How many friends do you think you've made today?

Probably my Instagram has increased for 100 followers or something today.

How about you? How many friends have you made today, do you feel like?

I believe 10, 15, 20. I'm giving a rough idea, bro. You guys are saying 100. At least I'm giving a reasonable number.

Anushka is having a great time, but there is someone she was hoping to meet here who is not here. Her roommate, whose visa was rejected just two weeks before school started. They made a bunch of plans.

Making friends together and figuring out which clubs to join. I think that was our initial plan. Probably hiking and some sports stuff. I'm a hockey player, so yeah.

Does she know why her visa got rejected?

I honestly don't know. People are not that comfortable sharing why their visa got rejected because it could be a very personal reason, something as Instagram, something foolish being found out. Because they're screening everything. So if you have your Instagram four years back, you're just joining high school, you must have put something foolish on it that they did not like. So it could be that.

Krisha also had a friend whose visa was rejected. In fact, it was a person she went to for advice on her own student visa interview. She met him on an online ASU forum.

My friend got rejected, so I was bummed because I knew him and we had talked for a very long time, so we got along. So him not coming, I was bummed. And his visa getting rejected was a shocking thing for me.

I was already in US, in my mind.

This is her friend, Karthic. That's not his real name. He talked to me from India.

Everything was done. I had my flight books, I had my offer letter, I had my scholarship, I had my fund sorted. I was already in US, in my Karthic had really planned out his life at ASU.

He chose the school because they had one of the few programs specifically for fintech in the country. He'd picked out his dorm room, he knew which clubs he wanted to join, what road trips he wanted to take, he wanted to go to LA. He'd even researched where he was going to eat, picked out an Indian restaurant called Chaba that he decided would be his go-to. What he didn't account for was a shift in policy by the Trump administration, which wants fewer foreign students coming to the United States. So this year, there are stricter screenings, more visa rejections. Estimates are 150,000 fewer student visas will be approved. When Karthic went to the US Embassy for his visa interview, he saw this play out. He waited in a long line for hours, dressed in a light blue button-down shirt, suit jacket, and trousers. His research showed that you were supposed to dress up. Finally, he almost reached the interview window.

I had five guys in front of me. I can hear everyone. I can hear them. The visa officer was a lady, and she rejected all five of them. Under two minutes. She did five- Wait, under two minutes.

Under two minutes, five people. She's like, Rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. Of course, when he got to the window, she rejected him, handed him a slip of paper, sent him on his way. Karthic had to scramble to try and enroll quickly in a school in India. He really didn't understand why he was rejected. He knew lots of kids got rejected each year, but he thought he was the perfect candidate. He had good grades. He had bank statements that show that he had money to cover his expenses for all four years. And he planned to return to India to run his dad's business. They want proof that you're likely to return home after study. His rejection, it just didn't make sense. He's not alone. Things are different on college campuses this year. And it's not just for international students. So many things about college have been upended by a wave of executive orders and lawsuits by the Trump administration. The rules have changed. In a matter of months, there have been grant suspensions, frozen research projects and funding, DEI bans, accreditation overhaul, hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements with Ivy League schools, and personal battles that have ousted university presidents.

Today in our show, we'll hear from people all trying to find their footing right now, puzzling out what's okay and what's not. Stay with us. It's This American Life, Today's Show, College Disorientation. But before we get started with our first act, there is one thing that want to note. Today's episode is about college campuses, and this week there were some big news from a college campus. Charlie Kirk, a founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed. Kirk was a key voice in pushing for a lot of policies and directives rolling out at colleges and universities right now. We've been working on this episode for months. It's not about Turning Point USA or anything related to what happened this week. Okay, so for the first act of our show, we're going to follow one student into college, a girl named Nivea Parker in Utah. This story takes place at the University of Utah, not to be confused with Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. This story predates all that. I started following Nivea a year ago. This is Act One of our show, Act One, My Black President. I want to tell you about what happened when Nivea went to college because I think it shows what this new college landscape might look like.

But first, a little bit about who she was before. From a young age, Nivea has been the type of person to see a problem and say, We can fix that. Not just we can fix that, but I can fix that. I'll take that on. When she was 14 years old, she went to her first protest. George Floyd had just been killed, and she didn't just march. She got on stage and she read a poem about senseless hate and speaking up. She's like, I, a 14-year-old Black girl in Utah, have the power to combat this thing. In high school, Nivea created Black Student Union. She wanted to BSU because she and the 10 other Black students, Utah is pretty white, were constantly dealing with racist BS from other students and teachers. She'd promote the club's meetings on the morning announcements, part of her duties as student body president. Of course, she was student body president.

I would say it with a lot of passion, Come and join. Because I feel like their teachers weren't really telling them about it, and so I wanted them to know. Do you have an announcement voice? Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me see. Let me see. Good morning, royals. Welcome back to a beautiful sunny Monday. This week is filled with lots of fun activities for all of us to be a part of. The Black Student Union is going to have a meeting up in room 302. Make sure to stop by and meet friends. That's how I started it.

Neva went to the University of Utah. She became the President of the Black Student Union, of course, and she continued to do what she done in high school, eagerly trying to bring in new students, create a community. Here she is talking to some freshmen while tabling outside the Union. Hi, you guys.

How are you? Good. What are your names? Seina. Seina? That's beautiful. And what's your name? Quieda. Quieda? Quieda. That's so beautiful. I love that. Have you guys heard of the Black Student Union here? Yes, period. Have you been to any of our events? Okay, T. All right. So you don't need the whole spiel. But do you guys want a tote bag?

The University of Utah is a big school with over 35,000 students, but only a small number of those are Black students, barely over 1%. Black students at the University of Utah do seem to have one thing in common, which is they didn't want to go to the University of Utah. I heard this from all of the Black students I talked to, including Nivea. They wanted to go to Howard or somewhere more diverse or just get out of Utah, but they came around on the university, in part because of the Black Student Union. Nivea had met some of her best friends at the BSU. They had a real community on campus. It's hard to feel welcome on a predominantly white campus. I know. I went from an extremely diverse high school to a small, mostly white college to play basketball, and I struggled. I remember literally scanning the teeny campus as I walked to class looking for any other Black face, and often finding none. I left that school. I never found a place where I felt like myself. When Aveya and the other students at the university talk about what the Black Union meant to them.

I felt a little jealous. At Utah, they had bi-weekly kickbacks and movie nights, study sessions, and through big parties. And they had the Black Cultural Center, the BSU's home on campus, a literal two-story brick house. After a day of often being the only Black person in classes.

I could literally just walk around through the back door, and I felt like I was wanted there. I feel like having Black friends at the U was really just like, Okay, this is what you hold on to. I feel like everyone there wanted you to be as comfortable.

You could just be a Black person on a college campus is what you're saying?

Yeah, literally. Pretty much. Yeah.

And then last year, all that changed. The state of Utah passed an anti-DEI law, meaning no more diversity, equity, and inclusion at any state institutions. The law bans devoting any resources, money, scholarships, mentoring to any specific identity group, like, say, a Black student organization. If public universities didn't comply, they would risk losing their funding. Nivea was President of the Black Student Union that was funded by the university. She has to figure out what does this mean for them? Can a Black student union still exist under this law? These kinds of anti-DEI laws are reshaping college campuses across the country. Utah was ahead of most of the country. They passed their anti-DEI law a year So they were figuring out how this worked before it went nationwide. And what happened with Nivea and the BSU is a preview of how this could play out elsewhere. So far, 28 other states have these laws on the books. Earlier this year, the Trump administration sent an NDEI memo to all colleges and universities, saying that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts violate civil rights laws. Specifically, it says DEI discriminates against white people and Asian people, and that, Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and structural racism.

The department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this nation's educational institutions. The new guiding principle on campuses across the country is now open to all. That phrase, open to all. It's at the core of anti-DEI legislation. From that perspective, the problem with a Black student union is it doesn't seem like it's open to all. The laws argue that by serving Black students, it's not serving other students. It's discriminating against everyone else. What that means for universities across the country is programs are quietly disappearing. The University of Alabama at Birmingham got rid of its scholarships for Black medical students. The University of Wyoming closed down its Black social Justice Summer Institute. Ohio University canceled its Black Alumni Reunion. Indiana State University dissolved its Black Cultural Center. So did Wright State, and Texas Tech, and Weber State, and the University of Cincinnati, and many more. Appalachian State University eliminated positions in the admissions office that were dedicated to Black student recruitment. Tuskegee University no longer has a program dedicated to training Black women to enter the computer science field. And in Utah, last fall, Nivea started to see the new law play out on campus.

The first big thing the University of Utah did was dissolve its Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Office. Then, no more annual conference for Black high school students, no more scholarships or mentoring programs specifically for Black students. The university didn't cancel the Black Student Union, but they did start to restrict what a Black Student Union could be.

They basically just said that every single thing would have to be ran by them. And what that meant would be that if we wanted to make any Instagram post, we would have to send it into them. I was like, well, can we say that we don't support this bill publicly? No, you couldn't do any of that. You can't go against the bill at all. You can't talk about anything having to do with racism. And so we were like, okay, but if we can't talk about racism or Black history, can we keep our name still? Can we still say Black Student Union?

They were like, change it to what?

No, literally. We were like, How would you change the name? And their response was basically like, We're going to have to run that by people, but we're really going to fight for you to be able to say that. And so it's like, You can maybe just do whatever you want once they just don't hear the word black.

Every time Nivea wanted to host an event, she now had to run it by the university. When the word black came up to advertise those events.

They would just be like, Let's think of other ways to say this so that people We just don't get upset and so we don't get flagged by the university. Say what?

What's an example?

Radical. They would like to say radical joy, radical love.

Radical love, radical joy instead of Black love, Black joy.

Yeah. They would just be like, Yeah, just do that. That's the one term I can hear her saying it, one of the staff.

What does radical joy even mean? I don't really know. Honestly, Honestly, I don't even know.

And I don't know.

Nivea kept hearing that anything they did needed to be open to all, which was confusing for Nivea because everything the BSU did was already open to everyone. Nivea was like, This law is coming for us. She needed a way to save the BSU. So she made a choice. She thought the only way they could survive as the BSU she loved would be to become an independent organization, to separate from the university, not to be a university-sponsored club. They were going to go it alone. This meant losing all their funding, their advisor, the status they had as the official club for Black students at the University of Utah. How did it feel to finally make that choice?

Terrifying, genuinely, because I was like, If I'm making the wrong decision, it felt like it would all fall on me.

To run the BSU independently, they needed money. Nivea has to set up a GoFundMe so the BSU can do basic things. She has to figure out where they meet. Before the law, one of the places they met regularly was the Black Cultural Center. But after the law, it was unstaffed and didn't have any funding. Nivea was told she'd have to make a reservation to book the space.

We didn't really know how to book the space with the Black Cultural Center because for a couple of months there, they were telling us, We're not sure if it would be free to students. So they were just basically saying, We might have to pay for it. We were like, We can't pay for it. We don't want to pay for it. That's crazy.

And that is crazy. To ask students to pay so they can gather on a campus they are already paying thousands to go to. They have their first kickback of the year in a classroom they can use for free at the Student Union. Nivea tries to organize events that are fun and will bring out students but won't cost any money. She emails a Utah Jazz to see if she can get free tickets for a BSU event. It works. They go to a game against the heat. It's a chaotic start to the semester. The club is happening. Nivea's life is full of tasks, some of which she expected and some of which she really didn't. For instance, now that the club was no longer part of the university, she was fundraising to keep the BSU alive. Random people from the Salt Lake community saw that and wanted to share their ideas for how she should run things. So now she was also a private fundraiser, taking calls before, between, and after classes. She didn't want to miss a possible opportunity. One time, she got a message from a man who said he was retired and had a background in strategic planning.

So she got up early before class get on Zoom with him.

He was in his home office, I remember, and he was this old white guy. And he was like, I just hate to see that this is happening. And he was like, Our government has gotten really off the rails, and they're not understanding that DEI is a good thing. And I was like, Okay. We were jiving, right? It was great to see someone like him speak the way that he was and support us in the way that he was. And so he was like, this is what you need to do. You You need to rebrand. You need to talk to this person. You need to go to the LDS Church because they have a big stake in the decisions that are made within the government. And he was like, A lot of people hated this bill. And he was like, You just need to get the LDS Church on your side because they love this, this, and this. And he's a member as well. And he was like, You can talk to them. They'll listen to you. You need to go and tell them.

He's like, You got to get out there and start lobbying.

No, genuinely. He was like, March up to the gates.

And he mentioned to Nivea that he had money.

He was like, Eventually, a donation would be in the future, but we need these things to happen first so that more donations can come. And I remember calling my mom and being like, I don't really know why this white guy just wanted to talk with me for an hour about BSU. I'm not really sure what's going on? And she was like, Is he giving you money? And I was like, I think eventually, if we do what he wants us to do, I don't know.

This goes nowhere. It does not lead to any donation. Nivea and the man never talk again. Calls like these took a lot of time. Time that she didn't have. For the first time, Nivea's grades, which had always been perfect, started slipping. Nivea started anxiety medication. She was making calculations like, Do I do this thing for BSU or do I do this thing for school? If I skip this assignment, I'll still pass this class, so it's okay, right? Before the DEI law, the work of making the BSU exist was handled by adults with full-time jobs. Last year, that adult became 19-year-old Nivea. Of course, Nivea had the support of other BSU members. They told me they really appreciated Nivea and that the BSU wouldn't have continued without her. But Nivea says people would also text her and say they were too busy or stressed to help out. Nivea would always respond kindly.

Please let me know if I can do anything for you. I appreciate what you've been able to do. I know this has been a hard year. That would be my response. And I just felt like I couldn't say anything else. I didn't really know what else to say because I wanted to beg them to stay, and I wanted to tell them that we really needed help, but it just felt like, I don't know. I felt like I couldn't do that.

Were there moments where you were like, I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this anymore.

This is so hard to answer because, yes, there were many, many, many moments where I would just be going to sleep at night and being very, very overwhelmed with the week ahead or the day, the next day, honestly. And I didn't know how to communicate how bad I was struggling mentally. And so it was just this thing where I had to deal with it on my own and just keep pushing through, I guess, because that just felt like my only option.

The University of Utah has had a BSU since the 1960s. Students created it during the fight for civil rights. This new law had wiped out so much of what the BSU had created over seven decades. Nivea felt like it couldn't end with her. She felt like she was President of the only organization left to specifically support Black students at the University of Utah, and it had to keep existing. Nivea and the BSU made it to February, Black History Month, which meant Skate Night. Skate Night was always one of the biggest events of the year. This year, Nevea had thrown a ton of money they'd fundraise into the event. She bought 70 tickets at the local roller rink, and that's how many people she needed to show up for it to be a success. If they could pull this off on their own, it would feel like the BSU was still thriving on campus. So it's a Saturday night, and the event starts at midnight. Hey, guys, it's me and Nivea here. We're almost at full capacity. So if you're coming with your friends, then come soon. Nivea and her VP, Sandrine, are posting on Instagram.

Neon purple lights glow in the background as they talk. The two are dressed up. College night dressed up, that is. Cute tops and jeans. Nivea has straightened her usually curly hair. Sandrine's has picked out. They seem gitty.

Please, please, please, especially you of you students. We have a limited amount of tickets, but It's so much fun, so please come.

Immediately, it's packed. There's a line out the door. And now, Nivea's biggest worry is that they won't have enough tickets.

I was sitting out the front, whatever, and I was basically like, Oh, my goodness. I knew the check coming back was going to be thousands of dollars. I knew it because they were like the office, too. The people who were the workers at the Classic Fund Center were being like, So you're running out of the wristbands you paid for. We're going to have to either you're going to have to cut people off at the door or we're going to have to keep charging you for more people. And I was basically just like, Well, I can't turn anyone away. Somehow we're going to have to just make this work, right? We just got to do it because people just This is our big thing, and everyone was so excited about it, too. And so people would say maybe a pusher in that sense, and I don't regret it.

The night cost them thousands of dollars, money Nivea had to scramble to raise. But over 300 people showed up.

I definitely felt like a big sense of, I guess, pride, you could say. This is a huge event. So many people are having a great time and enjoying themselves. Yeah, everyone's just happy and together, and that's what we wanted it to be.

She pulled it off. She'd protected the thing that she cared about most, a place where Black students could feel welcome. By the end of the spring semester, she tripled BSU membership. There's something insidious about the anti-DEI laws. They present themselves as civil rights laws while eliminating so many of the things that the civil rights movement demanded on university campuses. They present themselves as laws to promote inclusion, open to all, while disappearing all the programs and money and support that actually made Black kids feel welcome. Nivea is constantly trying to create space for Black students. The university is literally taking space away. I watched the university do this in real-time one day. The Black Student Union used to have a home on campus, the Black Cultural Center. It had been one of Nivea's favorite places on campus. The house was still there, but the university wouldn't tell them what was going to happen with it. They just kept saying they were working on it, and they'd try and reopen it. It just sat there the whole year, often locked. The old Black Cultural Center staff, gone. And then at the end of the school year, the university quietly renamed it.

It was no longer the Black Cultural Center. It was now the Center for Community and Cultural Engagement. N'avea and I drove by.

Right to the left, right here. Right, right here. So you can see that sign outside of it. Oh, the doors are open. Should we go in? Let's park.

It's a two-story brick house. When we pulled up, the door was actually propped open. Okay, so I guess first just tell Oh, it still says Black Cultural Center on the door.

Yes, on the door. But I think they're in the works of redecorating and reassigning things. So on the door, you can see it's like a... What would it be? Like a vinyl? Like a vinyl, vinyl words on the screen door, but then outside of it, the actual sign now says Center for Community and Cultural Engagement instead of Black Cultural Center. And so I guess for right now, it's a good thing that the door still says it with the vinyl lettering.

Do When did you hear that the sign was going to change, that that was going to go down?

We never heard anything about that. And still no one has said that. Are they renaming it now? And that's the questions I have, because if they're changing that sign and saying that, then what does it mean for everything else inside of it? I mean, it's just like there's no communication or transparency once again. It's not like there was any public notice. We're so sorry to this community. We're taking away the sign and we're replacing it. We are sorry and we wish we didn't have to do this. That would go a long way. But okay, let's see.

We open the door and walk into the house. Nivea seems annoyed but ready to show me around.

How are you? Doing well. How are you? I'm good. Thank There's a white woman sitting behind a desk inside.

She's one of the employees of the new center. Nivea brightly says hello to her and begins my tour. There's a little seating area and a library of books, Black History books, a a signed copy of Langston Hughes. She shows me a meeting room, a kitchen filled with snacks, a bunch of closets all over the house. Like in every room, there is a closet filled with BSU supplies, things like notebooks, pencils, postcards, tables, buckets of candy.

You can see the graduation stoles right there.

The graduation stoles are African colors.

Yeah. Then we have this sign is used for tabling.

So it just has- Nivea was excited and to show me around. But I have to admit, it was also eerie. So much of it is exactly as Nivea remembered it. Even the former director of the BCC's name is still painted above his office door. Because that's the most public- This feels like a tour of the house you moved out of or the house you grew up in where you still know where the stuff is.

Yeah, but it's also somehow not in your full... It's not fully in your hands. I don't know. It's weird, but it is a part of our stuff.

We end the tour at a beautiful mural by the entrance. It's a big white Sancofa bird with an African tribal pattern behind it. Then in big block letters next to it, it says, The University of Utah's Black Cultural Center.

But I mean, yeah, it's interesting. Actually, not that I'm just pointing out to you. Like, yeah, the signs are still there.

It was because we did not know what was going to happen. The staff at the desk interrupts Nabeya's tour to explain the sign change. With all of the bills and stuff.

We were hoping that we could still keep this name, the Black Cultural Center, but we're going to have to change it. So it is confirmed. Yeah, I saw the sign outside, and I was like, huh? So when was that decided?

Like, recent? Kind of, yeah. It was a few months ago, but it was decided that we do need to change it. And then we just I haven't gotten around to it because there's still even more changes. And so the CCE will be taking over this building fully. So this will be for BSU to use a lot, too, and just everything else. But we're still going We're not going to keep a lot of what's on the inside, but we do have to change the name.

Officially, in Google Maps and stuff. I don't know how all of that is going to play out. But it'll change. It will change. Do you know about the decoration on the inside? Is that going to have to be covered up?

Nivea points in the mural with the bird and the words, Black Cultural Center. This might have to go. We're not quite sure about- No, that's okay.

Thank you. No, yeah. I just have, is it because it says black? That's what? Okay. That's what I thought.

Because we can't even use the word inclusive. We can't say that this is just for Black students. Because we have to be inclusive without saying inclusive.

Okay. Yeah. No, it's very sad. It's very sad to me.

N'avaya thanks the woman for her honesty, and we start to head out.

I appreciate it. You take care of N'Avaya. You too.

Oh, man. How are you feeling?

I'm going to cry. This is horrible. This is actually actually horrible.

What about that pushed you over the edge?

They're officially changing the name, which I didn't think was going to happen. Officially, I don't know. That's crazy.

You're really upset, are you?

Yeah. No, I am really upset. I don't want to take it out on her because clearly, it's not her fault, but what is going on? Actually, what's going on? Wouldn't they think to tell us? Then she said it would be for the Black Student Union to use, If we don't even know your plans, sorry. If we don't even know your future plans for it, how are we supposed to know that we're welcome there? How are we supposed to think, Oh, yeah, we're going to be fine, when they don't even communicate any of that to us? It's not like they don't have my They do. They can ask me to do other things. They can let us know about this. It's just very frustrating and sad to me.

It's like the sign out, out front, you're like, Okay, it seems like they're changing it, but now it just feels like it's official, official.

Yeah, it does feel official now. It's that she just confirmed that they for sure are changing it. It just comes back to the exact thing I was talking about, the word black being so weaponized. It is so incredibly weaponized and not just... It blows my mind how... I don't know. I just wish that maybe their team or something would have just said no. What if they just said no? What if they just said no, we're not changing the name? What would happen then? Would they fire everyone? I don't know. I just feel like now, what do we have to lose? Because now we're losing this. Officially. It's not just a talk. It's not just a fear. It's actually happening. If they're changing this stuff on the inside, too, then it's like, absolutely, you're erasing. Absolutely, you're erasing the center. I don't know. I'm actually in shock. Is it real? Is this real life right now? Because it just feels very dystopian to me.

Nivea is no longer the high school kid making chipper morning announcements. Nivea is only 20. She was three years old when Obama was elected President, came of age in the era of Black Squares and Black Lives Matter protest. In her mind, the country was shifting to a more accepting place. Where we are now, the world she's navigating, it's so different than the one she grew up believing in. I talked with the university about the sign change. They said, Black gives the impression that the center isn't open to all. So I asked, Can you say the word Black? They said, It depends. If it's cultural, educational, yes. If it's tied to resources, no. They said they had to be careful. They all their events like Pride Week, Women's Week, Black, anything by lawyers. I just want to say one more thing about the word Black. It's just a word. Who cares? But it's not. It's a word that was decided on by Black people. There's a long list of shitty and degrading words that White people have lodged at us, enslaved, and murdered us for. Black is the word we got to add to the list, the one that we got to choose.

Capital B, Black. We are Black. It's very call us by our name. Removing Black, taking that off the list of acceptable words, is a way of saying, You don't decide. We do. Nivea, though, she refuses to be erased. Even after that terrible year with the anti-DEI law, Nivea is still pushing forward, still determined to keep the Black Student Union alive. She just started her junior year. On the first day of school, she's outside tabling for the BSU. A young woman approaches. She's a transfer student from Oregon.

Hi, you guys. What is your name? I'm Deja. Deja, you're beautiful. It's so nice to meet you. My name is Nivea, and we're the Black Student Union here. Have you heard about us? Or have you like, no? Okay, we need to totally join. This is our Instagram right here. So if you just want to join our Instagram. Right now, we're just working on increasing our engagement and our presence on campus. After some things happened last year with the legislator, we got some of our funding taken away. But now we have a fully functioning E-board, and we're going to do a lot of events this year.

In this post-DEI era, I think on a lot of campuses, how welcome you are as a Black student, the difference between between feeling like you belong or don't belong will depend on if you have an AVEA or not. Miki Miek reported this story with me. Additional editing from Robin Simeon. You know how much I need you to have you, really feel you. You don't have to change a thing. No one knows the love you bring. Be real back for me. Be real back for me. Coming up, since he's away and I'm hosting, We're going to talk about Ira for 15 minutes. That's after the break from Chicago Public Radio, When Our Program Continues. It's this American Life. I'm Emmanuelle Berry sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, College Disorientation. In this hour, we're looking at some of the dramatic shifts in higher education, a flood of executive orders and memos from the Trump administration. Let me just run down a few of the new directives for America's colleges and universities. There was a January executive order called Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI programs in Preferencing, the Dear Colleague letter in February. March, a new task force starts to investigate DEI DEI and anti-Semitism.

In April, the NIH starts requiring researchers to certify that their colleges do not have any DEI programs. Then, in May, the Department of Justice launches a civil rights fraud initiative. One of the most dramatic and public interventions the Trump administration has taken on is with a few high-profile elite schools, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania. And that's Act Two. Act II, the art of the deal. Something we've never really seen before is a presidential administration withholding millions in federal research money from schools it claims are centers of indoctrination and anti-Semitism. Columbia University was the first school to have one of those showdowns with the administration. It withheld 400 million in federal funding until Columbia agreed to a settlement, one that came with a number of conditions. One of those conditions, the administration wanted Columbia to more formally incorporate a controversial government-approved definition of anti-Semitism. It's known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition, IHRA, or IHRA for short. The IHRA definition was already one of several definitions Columbia considered when it evaluated claims of anti-Semitism. But now, IHRA was officially incorporated alongside some new unprecedented government oversight. Professors at Columbia have been trying to figure out what does the IHRA definition mean for them and their classes this year?

Eike Srirish Kandarajah has been talking to ones who are worried and making plans.

The definition itself is pretty straightforward. It's about the length of a tweet. Basically, anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews. But it comes with 11 examples that expand on that definition. Most are pretty obvious. Calling for the killing of Jews, denying the Holocaust. Those are anti-Semitic. But where it gets tricky are a few examples that blur the line between anti-Semitism and criticism of the state of Israel. Professors told me that's the part they're worried about. They have to figure out how to teach under this new rule. I heard about three different strategies. First are the professors who say they can't teach. Mariana Hirsch canceled her class. She teaches comparative literature and gender studies at Columbia.

So the The course that I've taught before is called Imaging War, Imagining Peace. It's about images of war from the Armenia genocide and World War I to the present. Are these images really contesting war, or are they still in some ways, celebrating war and how the war of images is always part of war.

One of the Ira examples on her mind when thinking about her lecture on the first day of class, example 10, Comparing Contemporary Israeli Policies to That of the Nazis.

I didn't see how I could teach this course without teaching about the present day images of the war in Gaza. I thought about how I would structure my first class, and it would have been about what images of war become iconic. Little boy in the Warsaw Gadow, the so-called Napalm Girl during the Vietnam War. Putting those images of children in Gaza next to the little boy in the Warsaw Gadow with Nazi soldiers pointing guns at him is implicitly a comparison of IDF soldiers with Nazis.

Professor Hirsch has dedicated her career to studying the effects of trauma. She's Jewish, and her parents survived the Holocaust. She's worried about Ira, partly because in 2023, a student formally accused her of anti-Semitism. It was in a class similar to the one she just described. She shared some recent articles related to war and gossip that she thought were important. But a student complained saying they weren't relevant to the class and that some of the reading rationalized acts of anti-Semitism. The charge against Professor Hirsch was eventually dropped, but she came out of it feeling like she can't run her class the way she wants to. And that was before Ira. So that's the first thing Columbia professors are doing, dropping their courses. One of the best known Palestinian scholars, Rachid Aladi, withdraw his course on modern Middle East history. The professor said in an open letter, It is impossible to teach this course, and much else, in light of Columbia's adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. The second thing professors are doing because of IHRA, tweaking what they teach. Professor Najma Haider teaches courses about Islam, including Islam in the post-colonial world. He talks about scholars like other people talk about celebs.

One of his favorites is someone he is now concerned about assigning.

Hannah Arendt was very ambivalent about the state of Israel, and she was very critical of Zionism and Zionist organizations during Nazi Germany and the run-up to the Holocaust.

I got to say, Hannah Arendt came up in nearly every call, eight times alone in my conversation with Professor Haider. If you haven't read her, don't worry. It's still early in the semester. The CliffNotes version is she's an influential Jewish journalist and scholar who fled Nazi Germany. She came to America and famously coined the phrase the banality of Evil to describe the mindset in Germany that led to the Holocaust. Like Professor Hirsch, Professor Heider is also worried about that IHRA example, the one about drawing comparisons to Nazis, Which Arendt does.

Now, how am I supposed to teach Hannah Arendt? Because her critique of the state of Israel and Zionism can then be spun as anti-Semitism. Instead of me teaching Hannah Arendt, I have to find a way of getting around Hannah Arendt, but making the same points. Then I go to Fanon, and then I'm talking about Iran. What I end up with is a whole class on how Iranian Shiaism has taken a religious tradition and made it into political ideology. If I make that critique of Iran, I can do that comfortably. But if I were to make a similar critique of Israel, it would be anti-Semitism. This is what the IHRA definition does. What it does is it creates an exception for Israel, where any critique of Israel is treated differently from a critique of any other modern state.

He's already dropped Hannah Arendt from his syllabus. Professor Hyder says his untenured colleagues are even further out of their way to avoid controversy.

I've had colleagues in Islamic studies who have said, They used to teach modern topics, and now they're going to go back and only teach classical Islam. Because they don't think that they're able to teach modern topics anymore. What that does is it reinscribes Orientalism.

Orientalism. Sounds like the ramen flavor, but it's a racism.

One of the premises of Orientalism was this idea that you don't teach Islam as a living tradition. You teach it as something in the past that is ossified. What happens when all your classes on Islamic studies now go back to that?

The third strategy professors are trying is to do nothing. These teachers are not canceling their classes. They're not changing their classes, even though they think the material they teach will be in violation IHRA. Like Professor Thea Abu Alhaj, she's an educational anthropologist who focuses on Palestinians in the diaspora. She's Palestinian, and she's concerned about the ambiguity of the IHRA examples. She wondered if her entire class might violate the IHRA example number seven, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor.

I mean, there no Palestinian scholarship that is not questioning the settler colonial nature of the state. How do I teach the 2018 Nationalities Law, which states that only Jews have the right to self-determination in the state of Israel. Can I teach that? Can I teach Amnesty's Apartheid Report?

Your answer is yes.

My answer is I have. If I'm to teach the things I know about and I'm an expert on, I have to be able to teach those things.

Her sister, Nadia Abu Alhaj, is also a professor at Columbia. She teaches an Anthropology of War class and directs the Center for Palestine Studies. She says she's not considering revising anything for Ira, not in her class, not in events at the center.

The choice we have is, do we dance around it or do we just take it head-on and This is my work, and there's nothing I can... I mean, we could either close the Center of Palestine Studies or we can just take it head-on and see what happens.

And your thought on this is the latter?

Oh, absolutely. This has been my work for over 20 years. So this is so central to what I do that I feel like, You want to fire me? Fire me. I mean, I'm not going to cave.

She's already gamed out in her head how the consequences will unfold.

There'll be a student in class, you'll sign a book, they'll say, This is discriminatory. Now, the accumulation of those charges of discrimination, ultimately, they can fire you. It's never been used that way before, but it's going to be used, and it's going to be the same thing with public events at the center. Someone will come to an event, they will launch a complaint against the center for anti-Semitism, and we'll be in this cycle.

She's a tenured professor who, theoretically, they can't fire except in the most extreme circumstances. Do you think you have a job this time next year?

I think it'd take a while to fire me, but I don't think it's off the table. I mean, honestly, I have no idea.

She has no idea. And all these professors, they're just guessing. Because Columbia did not just agree to the IHRA definition. Columbia agreed to have a monitor, a person who'd watch over everything that Columbia said it would do under its settlement with the government. But what will the monitor do? What's his budget? How many people can he hire? It's unclear. Columbia says the monitor does not have oversight over academic content or curriculum. But when I read the terms of the agreement, it says the monitor will have access to, all agreement-related individuals, facilities, disciplinary hearings, and the scene of any occurrence that the monitor deems necessary. Also, quote, all documents and data related to the agreement. That seems like a lot of stuff. The monitor, Bart Schwartz, declined to answer our questions. Najma Haider, the Religion Professor, told me he's been asking his bosses, Is this monitor going to be reviewing what I teach?

When this was brought up with Columbia administration, they said, Oh, don't worry about it. But they always just say, Don't worry about it. They don't tell you, Well, they are not going to be able to do that. If you ask them a question and you say, Can this person sit in on my part? Can they just walk in? They're going to be like, We don't think that's going to happen. They're not going to say, No, they can't. There are no limits that have been set to the degree to which they have access to teaching at Columbia.

Were there limits before?

There would be no monitor. There's no monitors before. There's no one doing this work.

I did talk to one faculty member who falls into this to none of these three categories when it comes to the IHRA definition. She's in a category that I call no big deal. She comes to that conclusion based on the job that she's had on campus the last two years as co-chair of Columbia's Task Force on anti-Semitism, Professor Esther Fuchs. She didn't think the school should formally use IHRA. The task force had a different definition of anti-Semitism that they recommended. She doesn't like how the government is using anti-Semitism as a weapon to bully college campuses into all sorts of changes. But unlike her colleagues, she doesn't think IHRA is that big a deal.

I certainly don't want to give the impression that I believe this is simple. Of course, it's difficult, and I understand why people are frustrated, and I understand why there's differences of opinions. But I don't believe the Trump administration is going to be coming in and monitoring this level of detail at all. It was very clear in the original agreement, there is no involvement of the federal government in curriculum, in admissions, or in faculty hiring.

The agreement does explicitly say the government won't, quote, dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech. But the agreement also gives the government broad oversight over academic departments, complaints of anti-Semitism, and admissions. And the agreement requires a review of educational programs to ensure they are, comprehensive and balanced. You can read it Professor Fuchs way, or you can read it the way the other professors I talked to read it. But let me just say this. For Professor Fuchs, the conclusion is unambiguous. There's nothing to be scared of.

I mean, people Well, do your job for God's sake. Instead of making students nervous, getting everybody upset, do your job, figure it out. That's what we're supposed to be doing. Everybody turned themselves into martyrs here. What a bad joke.

So what is going to happen this year? Which way is this going to go? I read the agreement between the government and Columbia again last night. It's sprawling. For a battle that started over anti-Semitism, the document also covers trans students in locker rooms, and international students, and admissions, and DEI. And what the agreement does is it lets the Trump administration crack down on any of that if it decides the university is out of line. Maybe it'll choose Ira. Maybe it'll choose something else. Between the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars, Ira, the Monitor, this administration has given themselves a new set of tools to transform higher Ed.

Ike Sreech Khanda Rajah is a producer on our show.

Out in the dark under the money tree.

There's no spark beyond belief.

And there is no point Our program was produced by Meeky Meek and Emmanuel Jochi.

It was edited by Hannah Joffy-Walt. People who put together today's show include Fia Benin, Zoe Chase, Michael Comette, Suzanne Gabber, Sophie Gill, Valarie Kippness, Katherine Raymando, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rumri, Francis Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson-Texter, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor, Sara Abdu-Ramen, and our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks to Melija Garfield, Sandrine Mimsch, Sadie Werner, Katherine Bon Stockton, Alex Takeda, Karen Kwan, Balal Kuchet, Maria Karimji, Mike Gavin, Asmat Khan, Mariam Alwan, Cameron Jones, Yanni Kurtz, Allie Rzees, Melanie Story, Tennessee Watson, Madalyn Beck, Kenneth Stern, Noah Letterman, Xavier Westergaard, Crystal Bell, and Maya Perkins. Special thanks as well to the Office of International Student Services and the Office of International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University, and Arnaud Rosenfeld, who writes a newsletter, Antisemitism Decoded at the Forward. Thanks also to our This American Life partners. Sign up as a life partner and you'll get ad-free listening, a greatest hits archive right in your podcast feed, plus regular exclusive bonus episodes, including dozens that we've already released. Join us at thisamericanlife. Org/lifepartners. This American Life Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks as always to my boss, Ira Glass, who is off this week doing his side hustle as a personal assistant for Harry and Megan. One of his most important duties is the wake-up call. For Old Timer's sake, he likes to do it this way.

Good morning, royals.

I'm Emmanuelle Berry. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of this American life. Out in the dark.

Next week on the podcast of This American Life. Immigration judges usually don't talk to reporters, but a bunch agreed to go on the record with us to describe what it has been like to do their jobs under the current Trump administration. Pressure to decide cases in the government's favor, firings.

It was an assault.

It was like an old medieval castle that was under siege. They were slowly cutting off our food supply. Now they're cutting off our air supply. That's next week in the podcast on your local public radio station.