A Statement from The Higher Education Inquirer

This month, The Higher Education Inquirer has surpassed 300,000 views, the highest in our history. That milestone is not just a number — it represents the growing community of readers who care about uncovering the truth behind higher education’s power structures.

And yet, we must also be candid: we are considering ceasing operations at the very moment our popularity is peaking. Some may find this paradox hard to understand. Why step back now, when the audience has never been larger?

The reality is that investigative journalism is most vulnerable when it is most effective. Our work has never been about clicks or page views; it has been about holding powerful institutions and the bad actors behind them accountable. With that mission has come heightened scrutiny and retaliation. The lawsuit we currently face is just one example of the legal and financial pressures designed to silence independent voices. Even when such cases are ultimately thrown out or defeated, the process is exhausting and expensive, diverting energy away from reporting and into survival.

Beyond the lawsuit, the sustainability of this project has always been tenuous. Unlike large media corporations, we have no shield of corporate lawyers, no deep-pocketed donors, and no guarantee of steady funding. Every article is the product of labor that is often invisible — research, fact-checking, and the personal toll of constant resistance to disinformation and intimidation.

In this environment, popularity does not equate to stability. If anything, it makes us more of a target. The more people read, the more those exposed by our work have an incentive to retaliate.

If The Higher Education Inquirer does close, it will not be because the audience wasn’t there. It will be because the system in which independent journalism struggles to survive has failed to protect those doing the work.

We remain deeply grateful to our readers. Whether this is a pause, a transition, or an end, we want you to understand why we are considering this step. The paradox of our situation speaks volumes about the fragility of truth-telling in America — and the lengths to which power will go to keep it contained.

Remembering Bill Moyers (1934-2025)

In a media landscape often dominated by soundbites, spin, and sensationalism, Bill Moyers was a rare voice of clarity, compassion, and conscience. With his passing, America has lost not only a gifted journalist and public intellectual but also one of its most courageous truth-tellers.

For more than half a century, Moyers stood at the intersection of journalism, politics, and public education—unyielding in his pursuit of justice and understanding. From his early days as White House Press Secretary under President Lyndon Johnson to his groundbreaking work with PBS, Moyers embodied the spirit of democratic inquiry: probing deeply, listening intently, and speaking boldly. He held the powerful to account, but always with the dignity and decency that defined his Texan roots and Baptist upbringing.

Bill Moyers never saw journalism as a career; he saw it as a calling. His programs—Now with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, and Moyers & Company—were sanctuaries for critical thought and inconvenient truths. He gave voice to the voiceless: whistleblowers, teachers, laborers, poets, and prophets. In a time when the corporate capture of media narrowed the spectrum of acceptable opinion, Moyers stretched it wide—amplifying progressive theologians, investigative reporters, civil rights leaders, and scholars ignored by commercial networks.

His love of learning, and his belief in public education as a democratic cornerstone, made him a champion of educators and lifelong learners. He understood that education is not merely about credentials or career preparation, but about cultivating the moral imagination. That insight animated his long relationship with public broadcasting, where he insisted that television could—and should—educate, illuminate, and elevate.

Bill Moyers also saw through the fog of power. He knew how elite institutions—government, media, universities, and corporations—could align to manufacture consent and mystify the public. And yet he maintained hope. Not a naive optimism, but a deep belief in people’s capacity to awaken, organize, and transform society. As he once said, “Democracy is not a lie, it is a leap of faith. But you need to keep leaping.”

In a moment when American higher education faces crises of affordability, access, and meaning—when trust in journalism is frayed, and when truth itself feels embattled—Bill Moyers’ legacy reminds us that integrity matters. So does context, complexity, and compassion.

His loss is personal for those of us at the Higher Education Inquirer. Many of us were shaped by his work, inspired by his commitment to investigative rigor and human dignity. His interviews with thinkers like Howard Zinn, Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Joseph Campbell helped expand the public's moral and intellectual horizons—precisely what higher education should strive to do.

In remembering Bill Moyers, we are called to do more than mourn. We are called to follow his example: to ask harder questions, to listen more deeply, to speak more clearly, and to stand, always, with the people who are too often ignored or maligned.

Rest in power, Bill Moyers. Your words lit candles in the darkness. May we carry that light forward.