What is the value of dialogue in a polarized world? In episode four of Collage, Dr. F. Willis Johnson and guest Dr. Kenann F. McKenzie, Director Generous Listening and Dialogue Center (GLADC), reflect on that question as well as curating of space and innovative practices where dialogue becomes a way of redress to the inequitable dimensions that tarnish the work of bridging and deliberative discourse.
The Trump administration's shift of K-12 programs to the Department of Labor raises major concerns about the wellbeing of economically disadvantaged students.
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President Donald Trump has taken his most decisive step yet toward dismantling the Department of Education, a move that will have widespread ramifications for vulnerable students and has raised concerns among education leaders and lawmakers who contend that it will create chaos and confusion for families instead of giving them the help they actually need.
His administration announced on Tuesday that it will transfer core agency functions to four other federal offices — news met with fierce criticism by education advocates who questioned its legality and said it is an abandonment of the nation’s students.“
Donald Trump and his administration chose American Education Week, a time when our nation is celebrating students, public schools, and educators, to announce their illegal plan to further abandon students by dismantling the Department of Education,” said National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle in a statement. “It’s cruel. It’s shameful. And our students deserve so much better.”
The Trump administration will reassign the department’s key programs involving K-12 education, higher education, Indian education and international studies through so-called interagency agreements with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State.
The reorganization marks one of the most significant overhauls to the department since its establishment during former President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1979. Only Congress can create a federal agency and has the sole authority to approve its restructuring or elimination.
The move to restructure the agency, Trump officials argue, will lead to more efficiency by reducing administrative burdens and making it easier to pursue objectives like aligning education with workforce readiness.
Vulnerable students stand to be uniquely affected by the reorganization with the shift of K-12 programs to the Department of Labor raising major concerns about the wellbeing of economically disadvantaged students. The Labor Department will manage programs such as Title I, which provides additional resources to K-12 schools serving such students. Labor will also administer postsecondary education grant programs authorized under the Higher Education Act with the goal of ending an estimated labor shortage of over 700,000 skilled jobs nationally.
“Moving Title I, the largest federal funding stream providing important resources to the schools serving the lowest-income students in America, to the Department of Labor makes no sense,” said Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in the nation’s schools.
“The Trump administration began the process of selling off the Department of Education for parts,” Forte said in a statement. “Further diminishing these offices… and sending them off to be run by agencies that work on public health and short-term training, which lack the skills, expertise, or capacity in education, isn’t about improving student outcomes. It’s about implementing a business model that transforms students into widgets instead of human beings who need support.”
Leaders of the nation’s two largest teacher unions, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), characterized the restructuring as a betrayal of students and families.
“This move is neither streamlining nor reform — it’s an abdication and abandonment of America’s future,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “Rather than show leadership in helping all students seize their potential, it walks away from that responsibility.”
Similarly, Weingarten pushed back against the idea that the restructuring was about efficiency.
“What’s happening now isn’t about slashing red tape,” she said. “If that were the goal, teachers could help them do it …Instead, spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more mistakes and more barriers for people who are just trying to access the support they need.”
Other changes affect groups of students who have traditionally needed extra support: The Department of the Interior will be the primary administrator for Indian Education programs, functioning as the point of contact for tribes and students. The Department of Health and Human Services will manage a program for student-parents in college called Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) and another related to foreign medical school accreditation standards. Finally, the Department of State will administer the Fulbright-Hays Program which awards grants to students, teachers, administrators and institutions.
It’s unclear how Native American students will fare with Indian Education programs moved to the Interior Department, an agency that manages natural resources and not the education of children. The future of the thousands of student-parents in college who rely on campus-based childcare grants is also uncertain, since moving the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools program to the Health and Human Services Department could lead to disruptions in support for them that sidetrack their journey to a degree. Transferring responsibilities from the Department of Education to the Department of Labor undermines public education’s purpose, according to National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues.
“At a time when the public demands transparency regarding the Epstein files, the Administration has instead launched a chaotic assault on education,” she said in a statement. “Families see this clearly: a political diversion, not a vision for better schools. Public education has never been about turning children into factory workers, it has always been about preparing creators, innovators, and dreamers who will shape the future of our nation.”
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who serves as vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, questioned the constitutionality of the interagency agreements.
“Donald Trump and Linda McMahon are lawlessly trying to fulfill Project 2025’s goal to abolish the Department of Education and pull the rug out from students in every part of the country,” stated the Washington lawmaker, a former preschool teacher.
Democratic Rep. Summer Lee, who serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Education and Workforce, called the shakeup “a direct assault on the students, families, and educators who depend on its essential protections.”
In her statement, the Pennsylvania lawmaker emphasized that even the education secretary has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to eliminate the department.
“Our children deserve better than political stunts that jeopardize their futures,” she said. “And let’s be clear: an uneducated electorate isn’t a by-product of authoritarianism — it’s a prerequisite for it. We will fight back.”
Critics of the department’s makeover also said they feared that its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services would be the next to be reassigned to other federal agencies. The Trump administration has diminished their power and effectiveness through staff cuts and — in the case of OCR in particular — regional office closures that have led to civil rights cases not being investigated.
“Transferring OCR’s authority to another department that is ill-equipped to carry out its critical functions would all but guarantee that civil rights complaints will continue to be dismissed en masse without resolution,” Forte said. Such a development would disproportionately affect students of color, students with disabilities and English learners.
Education leaders, including the AFT, and lawmakers are already preparing to challenge the reorganization in court.
‘Selling off the Department of Education for parts’: The agency’s major overhaul faces fierce backlash was first published on The 19th and was republished with permission.
U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a television screen as traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on April 07, 2025 in New York City.
Leaders of universities have expressed shock when actions by Donald Trump and his 2.0 administration officials have gone directly counter to what he and his appointees supposedly learned during their business-related college education. But what do professors know?
I’ve been privileged to teach and serve as a Marketing department head at an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited institution; only 6% of business schools worldwide have achieved AACSB recognition. As such, one gets to know the multi-year process that third-party evaluators, including corporate executives, use to rigorously examine the curriculum offerings of accounting, economics, finance, marketing, and management—and, subsequently—what principles well-trained business students should exemplify.
However, when business leaders of Fortune 500 companies are alarmed when Mr. Trump and his 2.0 administration ignore basic business principles, it then becomes an even more salient, noticeable, and damaging judgment on our 47th president and his allegedly business education-trained appointees.
Let’s explore some of the business principles taught at all AACSB-accredited institutions and revered by executives but ignored or abused by Mr. Trump and his acolytes.
Executives’ perspective of Trump 2.0
Recently, dozens of top Fortune 500 executives, primarily Republicans, met at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s CEO forum and expressed … “worry that Trump is undermining an economic system that took decades to build … all for short-term gains … a hollowing out of U.S. economic foundations and institutions …” (Fortune, Sept. 21).
CNBC reports that many of Trump’s appointees regularly disregard expert business advice and have abandoned evidence-based business principles, harming, in just 325 days of Trump 2.0, the following industries: agriculture, automotive, construction, consumer goods, manufacturing, mining, and retailing. This begs the question: what industries have not been harmed by Trump 2.0?
Econ. 101
Concepts such as stable markets, free competition, and long-term business investment are taught in a freshman-caliber macroeconomics class. Yet evidence is replete that Trump’s policies are undermining these core concepts. CEO’s have described the administration’s approach as politically driven and disruptive to the most basic of business fundamentals (Fortune, July 10)
CNN reports that a lack of strategic planning and erratic policies under Trump 2.0 have resulted in economic instability, market volatility, and an environment akin to “zero-trust,” which goes counter to the cardinal premise of maintaining a steady domestic and international business environment.
Econ. 102
The topic of tariffs is taught in a freshman-level microeconomics class and reinforced multiple times in other sophomore, junior, and senior-year business classes.
It’s a sad commentary that Mr. Trump, et al, doesn’t recognize that imposing tariffs disrupts business supply chains, increases input costs, reduces gross margins, stockpiles unnecessary inventory, increases cash-flow risks and reduces profitability, let alone dramatically increases the cost of products, goods and services that consumers are forced to pay (American Economic Liberties Project, Aug. 1).
Philip Kotler, known as the “father of modern marketing,” noted that the broad use of protective tariffs appears to favor short-term political gains rather than sound economic and business fundamentals of competitive advantage (ActivistsBrands.com, Feb. 13).
Given the result of Mr. Trump’s 2017-2021 tariffs and current tariff debacle, it’s safe to say he and appointed leaders were absent when the tariff subject matter was taught, and most likely failed tariff-related examinations.
Marketing
The Trump 2.0 administration’s deregulatory stance on digital advertising and privacy regulations risks reducing consumer protections, which contradicts modern marketing principles that emphasize ethical data use and respect for customer privacy (Basis, Feb. 26). The marketing concept of “caveat emptor”—buyer beware—is more alive under Trump 2.0 than at any other time in history.
Accounting
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) requires publicly-held companies to maintain accurate records. Trump’s 2.0 executive order paused FCPA enforcement, which undermines the foundational accounting principle of internal controls, accurate record-keeping, transparency, ethical conduct, and—most importantly—increases the risk of financial misreporting and corruption (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Feb. 12).
Mr. Trump and his administration officials probably did not do well in sophomore-level cost accounting and managerial accounting college courses.
Overall Trump-era policies
Many business school faculty members have explicitly opposed Trump-era policies, noting the administration’s executive decisions reflect poor strategic and ethical judgment that contradict the basic tenets of business organization and critical thinking, as well as a multitude of other concepts taught in the business curricula (Harvard Business School).
Business leaders are convinced that principles such as accountability, conflict of interest, ethical governance, risk management, compliance, tariff trade practice, supply chain instability, and long-term strategic planning have been breached under Trump 2.0 leadership.
Throughout Yale’s top Fortune 500 executive forum, CEO’s expressed that the fundamental college-level business education principles Mr. Trump and his officials should have learned in college are being ignored.
The final resolution of the Fortune 500 CEO’s forum was a call—and plea—to make America, America again.
Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
A call to rethink AI governance argues that the real danger isn’t what AI might do—but what we’ll fail to do with it. Meet TFWM: The Future We’ll Miss.
We’re all familiar with the motivating cry of “YOLO” right before you do something on the edge of stupidity and exhilaration.
We’ve all seen the “TL;DR” section that shares the key takeaways from a long article.
And, we’ve all experienced “FOMO” when our friends make plans and we feel compelled to tag along just to make sure we’re not left on the sidelines of an epic experience.
Let’s give a name to our age’s most haunting anxiety: TFWM—The Future We’ll Miss. It’s the recognition that future generations may ask why, when faced with tools to cure, create, and connect, we chose to maintain the status quo. Let’s run through a few examples to make this a little clearer:
I could go on (and I will in future posts). The point is that in several domains, we’re making the affirmative choice to extend the status quo despite viable alternatives to further human flourishing. Barriers to spreading these AI tools across jurisdictions are eminently solvable. Whether it’s budgetary constraints, regulatory hurdles, or public skepticism, all of these hindrances can be removed with enough political will.
So, why am I trying to make #TFWM a “thing"? In other words, why is it important to increase awareness of this perspective? The AI debate is being framed by questions that have distracted us from the practical policy challenges we need to address to bring about a better future.
The first set of distracting questions is some variant of: "Will AI become a sentient overlord and end humanity?" This is a debate about a speculative, distant future that conveniently distracts us from the very real, immediate lives we could be saving today.
The second set of questions is along the lines of “How many jobs will AI destroy?” This is a valid, but defensive and incomplete, question. It frames innovation as a zero-sum threat rather than asking the more productive question: “How can we deploy these tools to make our work more meaningful, creative, and valuable?”
Finally, there’s a tranche of questions related to some of the technical aspects of AI, like “Can we even trust what it says?” This concern over AI "hallucinations," while a real technical challenge, is often used to dismiss the technology's proven, superhuman accuracy in specific, life-saving domains, such as in medical settings.
A common thread ties these inquiries together. These questions are passive. They ask, “What will AI do to us?”
TFWM flips the script. It demands we ask the active and urgent question: “What will we fail to do with AI?”
The real risk isn't just that AI might go wrong. The real, measurable risk is that we won't let it go right. The tragedy is not a robot uprising that makes for good sci-fi but bad public policy; it's the preventable cancer, the missed storm warning, the failed drug trial. The problem isn't the technology; it's our failure of political will and, more pointedly, our failure of legal and regulatory imagination.
This brings us to why TFWM needs to be a "thing."
FOMO, for all its triviality, is a powerful motivator. It’s a personal anxiety that causes action. It gets you off the couch, into the Lyft, and into the party.
TFWM must become our new civic anxiety. It’s not the fear of missing a party; it's the fear of being judged by posterity. It is the deep, haunting dread that our grandchildren will look back at this moment of historic opportunity and ask us, “You had the tools to solve this. Why didn't you?”
This perspective creates the political will we desperately need. It reframes our entire approach to governance. It shifts the burden of proof from innovators to the status quo. The question is no longer, "Can you prove this new tool is 100% perfect and carries zero risk?" The question becomes, "Can you prove that our current system—with all its human error, bias, cost, and delay—is better than the alternative?"
YOLO, FOMO, and TL;DR are shorthand for navigating our personal lives. TFWM is the shorthand for our collective responsibility. The status quo is not a safe, neutral position. It is an active choice, and it has a body count. The future we'll miss isn't inevitable. It's a decision. And right now, we are deciding to miss it every single day we fail to act.
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and author of the Appleseed AI substack.
Almost immediately after being sworn in again, President Trump fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a Black man.
Chairman Brown, a F-16 pilot, is the same General who in 2021 spoke directly into the camera for a recruitment commercial and said: “When I’m flying, I put my helmet on, my visor down, my mask up. You don’t know who I am—whether I’m African American, Asian American, Hispanic, White, male, or female. You just know I’m an American Airman, kicking your butt.” He got kicked off his post. The first-ever female Chief of Naval Operations was fired, too.
These were the warning shots. Now, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has fired or blocked the promotions of at least two dozen military leaders at the highest level. It is unprecedented and highly troubling.
Of course, these actions undermine the military’s credibility as an apolitical force for good. But critically, they also come at a time when our military already faces recruitment challenges and a declining public trust. The Army fell short of its recruitment goal by 10,000 soldiers in 2023, while the Navy and Air Force also missed their targets. The public’s confidence in the military is at its lowest level in two decades, and only about 10% of young people express any interest in enlisting. The vast majority of Americans want the military to remain apolitical, and deploying troops to American cities can’t have helped that image. Meanwhile, at great cost to the taxpayer, Hegseth recently rallied hundreds of generals and admirals to assemble for a speech where he made it clear they could get on board or get out.
Unless you’re a straight white male with an anti-woke agenda, good luck. A new memo on shaving standards is a thinly veiled attempt to disqualify Black men, about 60% of whom face a medical condition that can lead to painful irritation from shaving. Despite past efforts to improve recruitment and retention of women, the likelihood of separation for women is 28% higher than for men, largely attributed to sexual assault, family planning, and childcare, which are inherently DEI issues. And because one sailor performed on an aircraft carrier in drag once, Hegseth stripped the commander of that carrier of his nomination to be vice admiral and commander of Seventh Fleet. Therefore, since June, at a time when our Pacific presence is more important than ever, no commander has been designated next for the largest overseas force in the Navy.
For the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are increasingly seen as essential values in the workplace. According to Forbes, “brands that make inclusivity part of their core mission…will win the hearts and minds of a new generation of citizens.” The flip side of the coin is that 76% of millennial workers would leave a job if DEI initiatives were not offered, and 75% of Gen Z workers might not even apply to a company lacking sufficient DEI efforts.
For all those kids who are the least bit different, turning 18, observing military leadership, and wondering if there might be a future for them among the ranks, this Administration is hitting them with a resounding no. When the next class of recruits generationally are pro-DEI, it’s a miscalculation for the Department of War to be at war with DEI.
On a personal level, meeting people from so many backgrounds was one of my favorite parts of being in the Navy. I do believe diversity is a force multiplier and a “critical component of being successful on a global scale.” That being said, as a queer, Jewish, female Naval aviator who got a law degree in my free time while active duty, I got out of the military after ten years this June because I didn’t think my other-ness would last much longer with this new leadership.
Even if it wasn’t proven that diverse teams perform better, it still might actually be useful to embrace diversity for the sake of keeping numbers up. The year General Brown released the “helmet” video, it was one of the most-viewed videos on the Air Force and Space Force recruiting channel, and the Air Force’s top recruiter called it a slam dunk. Instead, current anti-DEI actions threaten to affect recruitment, retention, and overall readiness negatively. Hegseth and Trump are playing fast and loose with our country’s defense in the “fight” against “woke.” We must fight back.
The American people can push for accountability and transparency. We can pressure Congress to hold oversight hearings, establish an independent oversight committee, call for a review of promotion and removal criteria, and vote for representatives who support these ideas. We can also speak out against a press policy that serves to exclude investigative journalism from properly covering the military. If anti-DEI animus is what’s really driving decision-making, we can expose it. Then we can steer the military back toward standards that actually keep this country safe and strong.Julie Roland has deployed to the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating from the Navy in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She graduated law school from the University of San Diego, is currently pursuing a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is the director of the San Diego chapter of the Truman National Security Project.
