End of an Era

For now, we have suspended our three decade long run of citizen journalism and will let you know where we go from here.  Two of our other publications, American Injustice and street sociologist are also closed, but remain online for now on Blogger. 

Our Anti-SLAPP lawsuit (Chip Paucek and Pro Athlete Community v Dahn Shaulis) is pending. While the legal bill is enormous, we expect to win. In the meantime, please support independent voices like Democracy Now!, Richard Wolff, Robert A. Pape, Julie K. Brown, Roger Sollenberger, and Troy Barile. 

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   Higher Education and Class Sorting. Image by Glen McGhee

On our last full day of operation, we extend our deepest gratitude to the many courageous voices who have contributed to the Higher Education Inquirer over the years. Through research, reporting, whistleblowing, analysis, and public service, you have exposed inequities, challenged powerful interests, and helped the public understand the realities of higher education. Together, you form a resilient network of knowledge, courage, and public service, showing that collective insight can illuminate even the most entrenched systems. Your dedication has been, and continues to be, invaluable.

Special thanks to:
Bryan Alexander (Future Trends Forum), J. J. Anselmi (author), Devarian Baldwin (Trinity College),  Lisa Bannon (Wall Street Journal), Joe Berry (Higher Education Labor United), Kate Bronfenbrenner (Cornell), Stephen Burd (New America), Ann Bowers (Debt Collective), James Michael Brodie (Black and Gold Project Foundation), Patrick Campbell (Vets Ed Brief), Richard Cannon (activist), Kirk Carapezza (WGBH), Kevin L. Clay (Rutgers), Randall Collins (UPenn), Marianne Dissard (activist), Cory Doctorow, William Domhoff (UC Santa Cruz), Ruxandra Dumitriu, Keil Dumsch, Garrett Fitzgerald (College Recon), Glen Ford (with the ancestors), Richard Fossey (Condemned to Debt), Erica Gallagher (2U Whistleblower), Cliff Gibson III (Gibson & Keith), Henry Giroux (McMaster University), Terri Givens (University of British Columbia), Aaron Glantz, Luke Goldstein (The Lever),  Nathan Grawe (Carleton College), Michael Green (UNLV), Michael Hainline (Restore the GI Bill for Veterans), Debra Hale Shelton (Arkansas Times), Stephanie M. Hall (Protect Borrowers),  David Halperin (Republic Report), Bill Harrington (Croatan Institute), Phil Hill (On EdTech), Investor X (business insider), Robert Jensen (UT Austin), Seth Kahn (WCUP), Hank Kalet (Rutgers), Ben Kaufman (Protect Borrowers), Robert Kelchen (University of Tennessee), Karen Kelsky (The Professor Is In), Neil Kraus (UWRF), LACCD Whistleblower, Michelle Lee (whistleblower), Wendy Lynne Lee (Bloomsburg University of PA), Emmanuel Legeard (whistleblower), Adam Looney (University of Utah), Alec MacGillis (ProPublica), Jon Marcus (Hechinger Report), Steven Mintz (University of Texas), John D. Murphy (Mission Forsaken), Annelise Orleck (Dartmouth), Margaret Kimberly (Black Agenda Report), Austin Longhorn (UT student loan debt whistleblower), Richard Pollock (journalist), Debbi Potts (whistleblower), Jack Metzger (Roosevelt University), Derek Newton (The Cheat Sheet), Jeff Pooley (Annenberg Center), Fahmi Quadir (Safkhet Capital), Chris Quintana (USA Today), Jennifer Reed (University of Akron), Kevin Richert (Idaho Education News), Gary Roth (Rutgers-Newark), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Stephanie Saul (NY Times), Christopher Serbagi (Serbagi Law), Alex Shebanow  (Fail State), Bob Shireman (TCF), Bill Skimmyhorn (William & Mary), Peter Simi (Chapman University), Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (Yale), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Strelnikov (Wikipedia Sucks), Taylor Swaak (Chronicle of Higher Education), Theresa Sweet (Sweet v Cardona), Harry Targ (Purdue University), Moe Tkacik (American Prospect),  Kim Tran (activist), Mark Twain Jr. (business insider), Michael Vasquez (The Tributary), Marina Vujnovic (Monmouth), Richard Wolff (Economic Update), David Whitman, Todd Wolfson (Rutgers, AFT), Helena Worthen (Higher Ed Labor United), DW (South American Correspondent), Heidi Weber (Whistleblower Revolution), Michael Yates (Monthly Review), government officials who have supported transparency and accountability, and the countless other educators, researchers, whistleblowers, advocates, and public servants whose work strengthens our understanding of higher education.

Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee

From Lie to Myth: How January 6, 2021, Is Being Rewritten

Five years after the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021, is already being reframed. Once documented as an unprecedented attack on American democracy—captured in real-time video, congressional testimony, and thousands of contemporaneous reports—it is increasingly portrayed not as a factual event but as a malleable symbol in the service of ideology. Through selective memory, amplification of distortions, and the cultivation of doubt, some narratives depict the day as a “patriotic protest” or a “routine political demonstration gone awry,” erasing violence, shootings, and clear attempts to overturn a certified election.

This phenomenon mirrors a long-standing pattern in U.S. history education. Scholars such as James Loewen have documented how American history textbooks frequently sanitize or mythologize the past. In works like Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, Loewen demonstrated that slavery, genocide, systemic oppression, and the struggles of marginalized peoples are often minimized, distorted, or omitted entirely. Textbooks present events in palatable, ideologically convenient ways, softening uncomfortable truths and creating myths that can shape generations’ understanding of history.

The parallels are striking. Episodes of slavery, genocide, and the oppression of indigenous peoples have long faced pressures to be simplified, sanitized, or celebrated as part of a “progressive” or patriotic narrative. These distortions often appear in children’s textbooks, turning lived suffering into background context or moral lessons rather than acknowledging systemic cruelty and resistance. The pattern establishes a precedent for reframing contemporary events, like January 6, in ways that normalize myth over fact.

This process is already visible in Texas and Florida. In Texas, the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) standards were revised for 2024–2025, requiring students to study slavery and sectionalism. Critics, however, note that Texas textbooks historically minimized slavery as a cause of the Civil War and that initiatives like the 1836 Project promote celebratory narratives of state history, often downplaying oppression and Indigenous dispossession. In Florida, recent social-studies standards have described enslaved people as developing “skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” a characterization widely criticized for sanitizing the brutality and systemic oppression of slavery. Florida has also rejected textbooks containing material deemed inconsistent with state standards on “social justice” or critical race theory. As a result, textbooks may present sanitized, recontextualized versions of history that obscure systemic injustice and human suffering.

The consequences are profound. When textbooks mythologize slavery, genocide, or oppression, they normalize the selective telling of history. Students may internalize incomplete or sanitized narratives, making it easier for future events to be reframed or mythologized. Once historical facts are treated as optional or negotiable, myth replaces reality; ideology displaces context; collective memory becomes selective. The rewriting of January 6 is only the latest iteration of a long-standing educational trend documented by Loewen and others: the molding of history to comfort, persuade, or conceal rather than to illuminate.

For educators, historians, journalists, and concerned citizens, the challenge is urgent. Preserving factual records, teaching critical thinking, and highlighting the mechanics of mythmaking are essential to resisting the erasure and distortion of history. January 6, like slavery, genocide, and other atrocities, demonstrates that when truth is optional, democracy itself is at risk. Recognizing the difference between lie, myth, and historical reality is not merely academic—it is central to defending memory, civic understanding, and the integrity of public discourse.

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Sources

1. Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press, 1995.

2. Loewen, James. Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. New York: The New Press, 1999.

3. Texas State Board of Education. 2024–2025 TEKS Social Studies Crosswalk (Kindergarten–Grade 8).

4. “How some Texas parents and historians say a new state curriculum glosses over slavery and racism,” Texas Tribune, Nov. 18, 2024.

5. Thomas B. Fordham Institute critique of 2010–2014 Texas history standards.

6. “Florida’s new social‑studies standards on Black history stir outrage over embrace of ‘benefits,’” TIME, July 2023.

7. Reporting on textbook rejections and curriculum restrictions in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis.

8. Wikipedia: The 1836 Project — background and aims.

9. Studies and critiques of bias in curricula and textbooks — how history can be whitewashed, sanitized, or mythologized in official education materials.

$8 Billion in Liberty University Debt: Engaging a Faith-Driven Constituency

More than 290,000 Liberty University borrowers owe over $8 billion in federal student loans, yet most remain politically disengaged. Many are veterans or enrolled in accelerated master’s programs often criticized as “robocolleges.” What sets this population apart is not just the size of their debt, but their faith and social conservatism—a demographic frequently overlooked by traditional student debt advocacy.

For unions and nonprofit organizations committed to civic engagement and economic justice, this represents a unique opportunity: mobilize borrowers in ways that align with their values, rather than against them. Messaging that highlights fairness, personal responsibility, and stewardship—core Christian principles—can resonate deeply while framing student debt as a challenge to both economic and moral accountability.

These borrowers are approaching peak voting age, meaning that engagement now could influence local and national politics in the coming election cycles. Institutions like the University of Phoenix show the scale of the opportunity: over one million borrowers owe more than $21 billion nationwide, suggesting that faith-aligned organizing strategies could have broad impact.

The strategy is clear: educate borrowers about their rights, expose predatory practices, and organize them into civic action, all while respecting their values and beliefs. Done thoughtfully, this approach can build trust and spur meaningful participation in democracy, turning a population long overlooked into an informed, motivated constituency.

The coming years will test whether unions and nonprofits seize this moment. Hundreds of thousands of conservative, Christian borrowers could become a powerful force for accountability and change—but only if engagement is value-driven, strategic, and timely.

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Sources:

• Higher Education Inquirer, More than 290,000 Liberty University student loan debtors owe more than $8 Billion

• Higher Education Inquirer, Liberty University Targeting Vets for Robocollege Master's Degrees

• Higher Education Inquirer, New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion Dollars

• Higher Education Inquirer, Fraud Claims Against University of Phoenix Continue to Grow

• U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Data Center

• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)

Special Report on Venezuela: U.S. Abducts Maduro, Trump Says "We Are Going to Run" Oil-Rich Nation (Democracy Now!)

 

The Panama Deception: A Critical Tool for Understanding U.S. Intervention in Latin America

Barbara Trent’s 1992 documentary The Panama Deception remains an essential work for comprehending the nature and impact of U.S. military interventions in Latin America. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the film offers a critical examination of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama—Operation Just Cause—and challenges official narratives about that intervention.

Reframing the Official Narrative

The Panama Deception scrutinizes the publicly stated justifications for the 1989 invasion, including protecting U.S. citizens, defending democracy, and combating drug trafficking. In doing so, it highlights stark discrepancies between government claims and on‑the‑ground realities, arguing that the invasion served broader strategic interests rather than solely humanitarian or legal objectives.

The film foregrounds how the U.S. government and mainstream media shaped public perceptions, often downplaying civilian casualties and simplifying complex political dynamics to justify military action. By exposing this media bias, the documentary encourages viewers to question official accounts and consider how information is framed in service of policy goals. 

Human Cost and Civilian Impact

A central contribution of the documentary is its focus on the human toll of the invasion. Using firsthand testimonies, footage of destruction, and accounts of displacement, the film documents the suffering of Panamanian civilians—particularly in impoverished neighborhoods such as El Chorrillo—which received limited attention in U.S. media coverage. 

These portrayals deepen our understanding of how military interventions affect everyday lives beyond abstract geopolitical objectives. For students and scholars of international relations, human rights, and media studies, this emphasis provides a critical counterpoint to sanitized official histories.

Historical and Geopolitical Context

The Panama Deception situates the Panama invasion within a longer history of U.S. influence in the region. It suggests that long‑standing strategic interests—including control over the Panama Canal and hemispheric dominance—shaped U.S. policy long before the invasion’s official rationales were publicly articulated.

While the Torrijos‑Carter Treaties mandated transfer of canal control to Panama by 1999, the film and many independent observers argue that U.S. policymakers were intent on maintaining influence and minimizing threats to American strategic goals. 

Media Critique and Public Perception

One of the documentary’s most enduring contributions lies in its examination of media complicity. The Panama Deception demonstrates how mainstream outlets often uncritically echoed government talking points, marginalizing dissenting voices from Panamanian civilians, independent journalists, and human rights advocates. 

This critique remains relevant for students exploring how propaganda, framing, and selective reporting can influence public support for foreign policy decisions. The film thus serves as a case study for media literacy alongside political critique.

Conclusion: Educational and Analytical Value

The Panama Deception offers a multifaceted analysis of U.S. interventionism that transcends a single historical event. By combining archival evidence, eyewitness accounts, and critical commentary, it provides learners with a structured means to examine the intersections of power, narrative, and human consequence. For educators and researchers in Latin American studies, political science, and media studies, the film underscores the importance of questioning official narratives and exploring the lived effects of foreign policy decisions.

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Selected Sources

• The Panama Deception (1992 documentary overview and details). 

• Analysis of the film’s critique of U.S. media and government narratives. 

• Historical context on media bias and human impact. 

• Wider context on the invasion and implications related to Panama Canal treaty issues. 

Nonprofits and Nothingness: Follow the Money

In the world of higher education and its orbiting industries—veteran-serving nonprofits, student-debt advocacy groups, educational charities, “policy” organizations, and campus-focused foundations—there is a great deal of motion but not always much movement. Press releases bloom, awards are distributed, partnerships are announced, and donors beam from stages and annual reports. Yet too often, the people who most need substantive support—servicemembers, student-loan borrowers, contingent faculty, low-income students, and other working-class communities—receive only fragments of what the glossy brochures promise.

To understand why, you need only follow the money.

  

The Neoliberal Philanthropy Trap

Over the last four decades, American nonprofit culture has been reshaped and disciplined by neoliberal capital. So-called “impact philanthropy” and “venture philanthropy” introduced a corporate mindset: donors expect brand alignment, flattering metrics, and ideological safety. The result is a nonprofit sector that frequently mimics the institutions it claims to critique.

Organizations become risk-averse. They avoid structural analysis. They sidestep direct confrontation with the powerful. They produce white papers instead of organizing. They praise the very elite funders who limit their scope.

The most severe problems facing servicemembers and veterans—predatory for-profit schools, Pentagon-to-college corruption pipelines, GI Bill waste, chronic under-support—rarely get the oxygen they deserve. Advocacy groups that rely on neoliberal donors often focus on “financial literacy” workshops rather than taking on the multi-billion-dollar scams that actually trap servicemembers in debt.

Student-debt nonprofits, similarly, lean into “awareness campaigns” and technocratic fixes that avoid challenging lenders, profiteering institutions, or federal policy failures. Many will deliver testimonials and infographics, but few will call out the philanthropic class whose own investments are entangled in servicing and securitizing student debt.

And when it comes to helping working-class people more broadly—those navigating food insecurity, unstable housing, wage stagnation, and the crushing costs of education—the nonprofit sector too often does what neoliberal donors prefer: it performs compassion rather than redistributing power. It focuses on individual resilience rather than collective remedy.
Appearance Over Impact

This creates a strange ecosystem in which organizations are rewarded for looking productive rather than for being productive.

• Events over empowerment.
• Reports over results.
• Branding over coalition-building.
• Strategy sessions over structural change.

The donor’s name gets its plaque, its press release, its tax receipt. The nonprofit gets to survive another cycle. But the problems—deep, persistent, systemic—remain unchallenged.

Nonprofits that speak too directly about exploitation in higher education risk alienating the very people who write the checks. Some are nudged away from naming predatory universities. Others are steered toward “innovation,” “entrepreneurship,” or “student success” frameworks that sanitize the underlying issues. Many are encouraged to “partner” with the same institutions harming the people they were formed to help.

In the end, we get a sector filled with earnest staff but hollowed-out missions—organizations doing just enough to appear active but rarely enough to threaten the arrangement that keeps donors comfortable and inequality intact.

 
What Could Be—If Nonprofits Were Free

Imagine a nonprofit sector liberated from neoliberal constraints:
Organizations could openly challenge predatory colleges instead of courting them as sponsors.
Veteran-serving groups could expose fraud rather than “collaborate” with federal contractors.
Debt-advocacy groups could organize mass borrower actions rather than hold polite policy forums.
Working-class students could find allies who fight for public investment, not piecemeal philanthropy.

We could have watchdogs instead of window dressing.
We could have mobilization instead of marketing.
We could have justice instead of jargon.

But as long as donor-driven nonprofits prioritize appearance over impact, we’re left with what might be called “nonprofits and nothingness”: organizations whose glossy public-facing work obscures the emptiness underneath.

 
The Way Forward: Independent, Ground-Up Power

Real change in higher education—on affordability, accountability, labor rights, and fairness—will not come from donor-managed nonprofits. It will come from independent journalism, grassroots organizing, debt-resistance movements, student-worker coalitions, and communities willing to challenge elite decision-makers directly.

Those efforts don’t fit neatly into annual reports. They don’t flatter philanthropists. They don’t offer easy wins. But they build the kind of power that higher education, and the country, desperately needs.

Until more nonprofits break free from the neoliberal donor leash, we should continue to follow the money—and then look beyond it, to the people whose work actually changes lives.

Sources
— Eikenberry, Angela. The Nonprofit Sector in an Age of Marketization.
— Giridharadas, Anand. Winners Take All.
— Reich, Rob. Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy.

Kleptocracy, Militarism, Colonialism: A Counterrecruiting Call for Students and Families

The United States has long framed itself as a beacon of democracy and upward mobility, yet students stepping onto college campuses in 2025 are inheriting a system that looks less like a healthy republic and more like a sophisticated kleptocracy entwined with militarism, colonial extraction, and digital exploitation. The entanglement of higher education with these forces has deep roots, but its modern shape is especially alarming for those considering military enlistment or ROTC programs as pathways to opportunity. 

The decision to publish on December 7th is deliberate. In 1941, Americans were engaged in a clearly defined struggle against fascism, a moral fight that demanded national sacrifice. The world in 2025 is far murkier. U.S. militarism now often serves corporate profit, global influence, and the security of allied autocracies rather than clear moral or defensive imperatives.

This is an article for students, future students, and the parents who want something better for their children. It is also a call to pause and critically examine the systems asking for young people’s allegiance and labor.

Higher education has become a lucrative extraction point for political and financial elites. Universities now operate as hybrid corporations, prioritizing endowment growth, real-estate expansion, donor influence, and federal cash flows over public service or student welfare. Tuition continues to rise as administrative bloat accelerates. Private equity quietly moves into student housing, online program management, education technology, and even institutional governance. The result is a funnel: taxpayers support institutions; institutions support billionaires; students carry the debt. Meanwhile, federal and state funds flow through universities with minimal oversight, especially through research partnerships with defense contractors and weapons manufacturers. What looks like innovation is often simply public money being laundered into private hands.

For decades, the U.S. military has relied on higher education to supply officers and legitimacy. ROTC programs sit comfortably on campuses while recruiters visit high schools and community colleges with promises of financial aid, job training, and escape from economic insecurity. But the military’s pitch obscures the broader structure. The United States spends more on its military than the next several nations combined, maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and intervening across the globe. American forces are involved, directly or indirectly, in conflicts ranging from Palestine to Venezuela to Ukraine, and through support of allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, often supplying weapons used in devastating campaigns. This is not national defense. It is a permanent war economy, one that treats young Americans as fuel.

At the same time, Russian cybercriminal networks have infiltrated U.S. institutions, targeting critical infrastructure, education networks, and private industry. Reports show that the U.S. government has frequently failed to hold these actors accountable and, in some cases, appears to prioritize intelligence or geopolitical advantage over domestic security, allowing cybercrime to flourish while ordinary Americans bear the consequences. This environment adds another layer of risk for students and families, showing how interconnected digital vulnerabilities are with global power games and domestic exploitation.

For those who enlist hoping to fund an education, the GI Bill frequently underdelivers. For-profit colleges disproportionately target veterans, consuming their benefits with low-quality, high-cost programs. Even public institutions have learned to treat veterans as revenue streams. U.S. universities have always been entwined with colonial projects, from land-grant colleges built on seized Indigenous land to research that supported Cold War interventions and overseas resource extraction. Today these legacies persist in subtler forms. Study-abroad programs and global campuses often mirror corporate imperialism. Research partnerships with authoritarian regimes proceed when profitable. University police departments are increasingly stocked with military-grade equipment, and curricula frequently erase Indigenous, Black, and Global South perspectives unless students actively seek them out. The university presents itself as a space of liberation while quietly reaffirming colonial hierarchies, militarized enforcement of U.S. interests worldwide, and even complicity in digital threats.

For many young people, enlistment is not a choice—it is an economic survival strategy in a country that refuses to guarantee healthcare, housing, or affordable education. Yet the military’s promise of stability is fragile and often deceptive. Students and parents should understand that young Americans are being recruited for geopolitics, not opportunity. Wars in Ukraine, Palestine, and Venezuela, along with arms support to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rarely protect ordinary citizens—they protect corporations, elites, and global influence. A person’s body and future become government property. ROTC contracts and enlistments are binding in ways that most eighteen-year-olds do not fully understand, and penalties for leaving are severe. Trauma is a predictable outcome, not an anomaly. The military’s mental health crisis, suicide rates, and disability system failures are well documented. Education benefits are conditional and often disappointing. The idea that enlistment is a reliable pathway to college has long been more marketing than truth, especially in a higher-education landscape dominated by predatory schools. Young people deserve more than being used as leverage in someone else’s empire.

A non-militarized route to opportunity requires acknowledging how much talent, energy, and potential is lost to endless war, endless debt, and the growing digital threats that go unaddressed at the highest levels. It requires demanding that federal and state governments invest in free or affordable public higher education, universal healthcare, and stronger civilian service programs rather than military pipelines. Students can resist by refusing enlistment and ROTC recruitment pitches, advocating for demilitarized campuses, supporting labor unions, student governments, and anti-war coalitions, and demanding transparency about university ties to weapons manufacturers, foreign governments, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Parents can resist by rejecting the false choice presented to their children between military service and crippling debt, and by supporting movements pushing for tuition reform, debt cancellation, and public investment in youth.

It is possible to build a higher-education system that serves learning rather than empire, but it will not happen unless students and families refuse to feed the machinery that exploits them. America’s kleptocracy, militarism, colonial legacies, and complicity in global digital crime are deeply embedded in universities and the workforce pipelines that flow through them. Yet young people—and the people who care about them—still hold power in their decisions. Choosing not to enlist, not to sign an ROTC contract, and not to hand over your future to systems that see you as expendable is one form of reclaiming that power. Hope is limited but not lost.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Defense. Defense Budget Overview Fiscal Year 2025. 2024.

2. Amnesty International. “Saudi Arabia and UAE Arms Transfers and Human Rights Violations.” 2024.

3. Human Rights Watch. “Conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Palestine.” 2024.

4. FBI and CISA reports on Russian cybercrime and critical infrastructure infiltration. 2023–2025.

5. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). National Cybersecurity Annual Review. 2024.

Pete Hegseth, Authoritarian Drift, and the Shrinking Democratic World: What His Latest Rhetoric Means for Ukraine, Taiwan, Latin America—and for the Manufacturing of a New U.S. War

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s latest comments on US military strategy signal a willingness to concede strategic ground, democratic alignment, and even moral authority to China and Russia. His rhetoric is not isolationism so much as resignation, a public abdication of democratic commitments that authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing have been hoping to hear for years.

In Hegseth’s telling, defending democracy abroad is optional, alliances are burdens rather than assets, and the global contest between democratic and authoritarian systems is someone else’s problem. This shift, echoed by others within his political orbit, effectively clears a path for China and Russia to expand their influence unchecked. It is the kind of rhetorical retreat that changes geopolitical behavior long before any formal policy is announced.

For Ukraine, Hegseth’s posture is devastating. Ukraine is not only fighting for its own survival but also anchoring the principle that borders cannot be erased by force. Every time prominent American voices depict Ukraine as a “distraction” or a “European problem,” the Kremlin hears permission. It emboldens Russia’s belief that with enough pressure and enough delay, Western unity will fracture. When U.S. resolve appears uncertain, Russian aggression becomes more likely, not less.

The implications for Taiwan are even more dire. Taiwan’s security rests partly on deterrence—the sense in Beijing that an attempted invasion would trigger an unpredictable coalition response. Hegseth’s rhetoric eats away at that uncertainty. When influential figures suggest Taiwan is too distant, too complicated, or too costly to defend, they send a clear message to Beijing: Taiwan stands alone. That perception, even if strategic theater, is dangerous enough to destabilize the region. It emboldens Chinese hardliners who believe the U.S. is tired, divided, and ready to cede the Western Pacific. For Taiwanese citizens, the erosion of deterrence threatens to collapse the delicate equilibrium that has preserved their democracy for decades.

The damage is not confined to Eurasia. Latin America—long an arena of soft-power competition—is already shifting toward Chinese and Russian influence. As U.S. leaders telegraph indifference or geopolitical fatigue, Beijing and Moscow expand their economic, security, and technological footprint. Surveillance systems, infrastructure deals with opaque terms, paramilitary cooperation, and coordinated disinformation campaigns fill the vacuum Washington helped create. Countries grappling with inequality and political instability increasingly view China and Russia as stable partners—precisely because the United States appears to be backing away. Hegseth’s rhetoric accelerates this hemispheric reorientation.

China and Russia are also advancing what experts call a “4G war,” leveraging cyber operations to strike at critical infrastructure globally. Power grids, financial networks, transportation systems, and communication backbones are increasingly vulnerable to state-sponsored cyberattacks, which can be executed remotely, anonymously, and at strategic scale. These digital assaults amplify physical geopolitical pressure without conventional troop movements. In a world where the U.S. retreats rhetorically and hesitates militarily, authoritarian cyber campaigns gain a force-multiplying effect: they destabilize economies, undermine public confidence, and signal that authoritarian states can achieve strategic objectives without firing a single shot—while democracies debate whether to respond.

All of this unfolds alongside an unnerving domestic trend: the increasing normalization of deploying the U.S. military inside the United States for political and symbolic ends. The occupation of Washington, D.C., following periods of unrest—an unprecedented show of military force in the nation’s capital—has now become a reference point rather than an aberration. Calls for troops at the southern border have grown louder, more casual, and more openly political. The idea of using active-duty forces for immigration enforcement—long considered a violation of democratic norms—has seeped into mainstream discourse. These domestic deployments do not exist in isolation; they reflect a broader comfort with authoritarian tools at home, even as some political figures argue that defending democracy abroad is unnecessary. It is a worldview that diminishes democracy both outwardly and inwardly.

Compounding these geopolitical and domestic retreats is a disturbing pattern: the willingness of U.S. leaders to manufacture conflict abroad for political gain. In an era when corporate media outlets increasingly avoid stories that challenge concentrated power, The American Prospect continues to do the work journalism was meant to do. Few embody that mission more consistently than David Dayen. His Dayen on TAP newsletters have become essential reading for anyone trying to understand how political decisions intertwine with economic power and democratic fragility.

Dayen’s December 1st dispatch is a masterclass in clarity. While many newsrooms chase horse-race narratives and meme-ready outrage, Dayen focuses on something far more consequential: the construction of a new U.S. war. And disturbingly, it bears the unmistakable imprint of the media-manufactured Spanish-American War—false premises, theatrical moralizing, and elite financial interests waiting eagerly behind the curtain.

The justification being sold to the public is fentanyl trafficking, despite U.S. agencies confirming that fentanyl production in Venezuela is essentially nonexistent. The real audience is a narrow faction of right-wing Venezuelan exiles in South Florida whose political demands have long shaped Senator Marco Rubio’s foreign policy. With an administration drawn to action-based optics and largely unbothered by legality, the machinery of pretextual warfare is already in motion: lethal maritime strikes of dubious legality, deployed carrier groups, unilaterally “closed” airspace, covert operations greenlit, and the political runway being cleared for a possible land invasion.

Hovering over all of this is the unmistakable scent of patronage. The judicial approval of selling Citgo to Elliott Investment Management—Paul Singer’s hedge fund, tightly linked to Rubio’s political ecosystem—raises troubling questions about whose interests are truly being served. Dayen’s reporting suggests a war effort crafted not around national strategy, human rights, or hemispheric stability, but around satisfying a small, wealthy, politically potent constituency.

Yet perhaps the most troubling part of this moment is not only the drift toward authoritarian powers, the normalization of using the military inside the United States, or the manufacturing of new conflicts—but the near-total silence of American universities. Institutions that once prided themselves on fostering democratic discourse, civic literacy, and dissent now largely avoid discussions of foreign policy—particularly when such discussions might anger donors, trustees, or state legislatures. Faculty navigate precarious employment. Administrators fear political retribution. Students, drowning in debt and economic insecurity, have little time or institutional support to engage deeply with global issues. At the very moment when democratic norms are eroding at home and authoritarian influence is expanding abroad, the institutions charged with educating citizens have retreated.

If this trend continues, China and Russia will not simply gain ground. They will redraw the global map. The democratic world will shrink. The consequences will be felt long after the speeches, the staged outrage, and the fundraising cycles have passed. And as U.S. universities remain timid, unwilling or unable to confront collapsing democratic commitments, the vacuum deepens. In a world where silence is interpreted as acquiescence, higher education’s retreat becomes more than a missed opportunity—it becomes complicity.

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Sources

– David Dayen, Dayen on TAP, The American Prospect, December 1, 2025.
– Public statements and broadcasts by Pete Hegseth (2024–2025).
– U.S. Department of State and DoD briefings on Ukraine, Taiwan, and Venezuela.
– DEA and State Department assessments on fentanyl production in Venezuela.
– Court filings relating to the Citgo sale and Elliott Investment Management.
– Reports on PRC and Russian influence in Latin America (CSIS, Wilson Center, academic research).
– Analysis of PRC and Russian cyber operations (“4G war”) on global infrastructure (power grids, transportation, financial systems).
– Congressional statements and policy proposals on U.S. military border enforcement.
– Documentation and analysis of military deployments in Washington, D.C., 2020–2025.

Cybercrime, Hypocrisy, and the Geopolitics of Blame: Why Russia Isn’t Always the Enemy

In the summer of 2025, the CLOP hacking group—operating from Russia—exploited weaknesses at the University of Phoenix, exposing sensitive data on thousands of students and staff. The breach was devastating, yet Russia was not officially condemned as an adversary.

The contrast with U.S. policy toward countries like Venezuela is striking. Venezuela faces crippling sanctions, economic isolation, and constant political pressure under the banner of protecting democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, Russian-based cybercriminals are allowed to inflict real harm on U.S. institutions with little official pushback. The reason, officials say, is a lack of direct evidence tying these attacks to the Russian state. But the discrepancy reveals a deeper hypocrisy: punitive measures are applied selectively, often based on geopolitical convenience rather than consistent principles.

CLOP-style attacks exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. institutions. Universities, especially those operating on outdated IT systems and under private equity pressures, are frequent targets. Students—many already burdened by debt and systemic inequities—bear the brunt when personal data is exposed. Yet the broader conversation rarely extends to foreign actors who take advantage of these weaknesses or to the structural failures within U.S. education.

Venezuela’s citizens suffer sanctions and economic hardship, while Russian cybercriminals operate from the safety of a country that tolerates them, so long as domestic interests remain untouched. This double standard undermines the credibility of U.S. claims to principled leadership and exposes the uneven moral framework guiding foreign policy.

Higher education becomes a battleground in this selective application of power. Cyberattacks, fraud, and systemic negligence converge to threaten students and faculty, revealing the real victims of international hypocrisy. Protecting U.S. institutions requires acknowledging both the foreign actors who exploit weaknesses and the domestic policies and practices that leave them vulnerable.

The CLOP breach is more than a single incident—it is a reflection of a system that punishes some nations for internal crises while tolerating damage inflicted by others on critical domestic infrastructure. Until U.S. policy addresses both sides of this equation, the cost will continue to fall on the most vulnerable: the students, staff, and faculty caught in the crossfire.

Sources: U.S. Department of Education reports; investigative journalism on CLOP and Russian cybercrime; analyses of U.S.-Venezuela sanctions and policy. 

A Century of American Exploitation: Oil, Crypto, and the Struggle for Latin America’s Universities

Latin America—a region of thirty-three countries stretching from Mexico through Central and South America and across the Caribbean—has spent more than a century fighting against foreign exploitation. Its universities, which should anchor local prosperity, cultural autonomy, and democratic life, have instead been repeatedly reshaped by foreign corporations, U.S. government interests, global lenders, and now crypto speculators. Yet the region’s history is also defined by persistent, courageous resistance, led overwhelmingly by students, faculty, and Indigenous communities.

Understanding today’s educational crisis in Latin America requires tracing this long arc of exploitation—and the struggle to build systems rooted in equity rather than extraction.

1900s–1930s: Bananas, Oil, and the Rise of the “Banana Republics”

Early in the 20th century, American corporations established vast profit-making empires in Latin America. United Fruit Company—today’s Chiquita Banana—dominated land, labor, and politics across Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Standard Oil and Texaco secured petroleum concessions in Venezuela and Ecuador, laying foundations for decades of foreign control that extracted immense wealth while leaving behind environmental devastation, as seen in Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992.

Universities were bent toward these foreign interests. Agricultural programs were geared toward serving plantation economies, not local farmers. Engineering and geological research aligned with extractive industries, not community development.

Resistance did emerge. Student groups in Guatemala and Costa Rica formed part of early anti-oligarchic movements, linking national sovereignty to university reform. Their demands echoed global currents of democratization. Evidence of these early student-led struggles appears in archival materials and Latin American scholarship on university reform, and culminates in the influential 1918 Córdoba Manifesto in Argentina—a radical declaration that attacked oligarchic, colonial universities and demanded autonomy, co-governance, and public responsibility.

1940s–1980s: Coups, Cold War Interventions, and the Deepening of U.S. Oil Interests

During the Cold War, exploitation intensified. In Guatemala, the CIA-backed overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 protected United Fruit’s land holdings. Universities were purged or militarized, and critical scholars were exiled or killed.

In Chile, the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende—supported by American corporate giants such as ITT and Anaconda Copper—ushered in a brutal dictatorship. Under Augusto Pinochet, thousands were murdered, tortured, or disappeared, while the Chicago Boys imported radical neoliberal reforms that privatized everything, including the higher education system.

Throughout the region, oil deals disproportionately favored American companies. Mexico and Venezuela saw petroleum wealth siphoned off through arrangements that benefited foreign investors while leaving universities underfunded and politically surveilled. Scholarship critical of foreign intervention was marginalized, while programs feeding engineers and economists to multinational firms were expanded.

Student resistance reached historic proportions. Chilean students and faculty formed the core of the anti-dictatorship movement. Mexico’s students rose in 1968, demanding democracy and university autonomy before being massacred in Tlatelolco. CIA declassified documents reveal that student uprisings across Latin America in the early 1970s were so widespread that U.S. intelligence considered them a regional threat.

1990s–2000s: Neoliberalism, Privatization, and the Americanization of Higher Education

In the 1990s, neoliberalism swept the region under pressure from Washington, the IMF, and the World Bank. After NAFTA, Mexico’s universities became increasingly aligned with corporate labor pipelines. In Brazil, Petrobras’ partnerships with American firms helped reshape engineering curricula. Private universities and for-profit models proliferated across the region, echoing U.S. higher ed corporatization.

Hugo Chávez captured the broader sentiment of resistance when he declared that public services—including education—cannot be privatized without violating fundamental rights.

Students fought back across Latin America. In Argentina and Brazil they contested tuition hikes and privatization. In Venezuela, the debate shifted toward whether oil revenue should fund tuition-free universities.

Indigenous Exclusion, Racism, and the Colonial Foundations of Inequality

One of the greatest challenges in understanding Latin American education is acknowledging the deep racial and ethnic stratification that predates U.S. exploitation but has been exacerbated by it. Countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala have large Indigenous populations that, to this day, receive the worst education—much like Native American communities relegated to underfunded reservation schools in the United States.

Racism remains powerful. Whiter populations enjoy greater economic and educational access. University admission is shaped by class and color. These divisions are not accidental; they are a machinery of control.

There have been important exceptions. Under President Rafael Correa, Ecuador built hundreds of new schools, including Siglo XXI and Millennium Schools, and expanded public education access. In Mexico, the 2019 constitutional reform strengthened Indigenous rights, including commitments to culturally relevant education. Bolivia—whose population is majority Indigenous—has promoted Indigenous languages, judicial systems, and education structures.

But progress is fragile. Austerity, IMF conditionalities, and elite resistance have led to cutbacks, school closures, and renewed privatization across the region. The study you provided on Ecuador documents Indigenous ambivalence, even hostility, toward Correa’s universal education plan—revealing how colonial wounds, cultural erasure, and distrust of state power complicate reform and provide openings for divide-and-conquer strategies long exploited by ruling classes.

These contradictions deepen when Indigenous movements—rightfully demanding no mining, no oil extraction, and protection of ancestral lands—collide with leftist governments reliant on resource extraction to fund public services. This tension is especially acute in Ecuador and Bolivia.

2010s–Present: Crypto Colonialism and a New Frontier of Exploitation

Cryptocurrency has opened a new chapter in Latin America’s long history of foreign-driven experimentation. El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin in 2021, promoted by President Nayib Bukele, transformed the country into a speculative test lab. Bukele has now spent more than $660 million in U.S. dollars on crypto, according to investigative reporting from InSight Crime. Universities rushed to create blockchain programs that primarily serve international investors rather than Salvadoran students.

In Venezuela, crypto became a survival tool amid hyperinflation and economic collapse. Yet foreign speculators profited while universities starved. Student groups warned that crypto research was being weaponized to normalize economic chaos and distract from public-sector deterioration.

Resistance has grown. Salvadoran students have protested the Bitcoin law, demanding that public resources focus on infrastructure, health, and education. Venezuelan students call for rebuilding social programs rather than chasing speculative financial technologies.

Contemporary Student Resistance: 2010s–2020s

Across the region, student movements remain powerful. The Chilean Winter of 2011–2013 demanded free, quality public education and challenged Pinochet’s neoliberal legacy. The movement culminated in the 2019 uprising, where education reform was central.

Mexico’s UNAM students continue to resist corruption, tuition hikes, gender violence, and the encroachment of corporate and foreign interests. The 1999–2000 UNAM strike remains one of the longest in modern higher education.

Colombian students have forced governments to negotiate and invest billions in public universities, framing their struggle as resistance to neoliberal austerity shaped by U.S. policy.

Argentina continues to face massive austerity-driven cuts, sparking protests in 2024–2025 reminiscent of earlier waves of resistance. Uruguay’s Tupamaros movement—largely student-led—remains a historical touchstone.

Every country in Latin America has experienced student uprisings. They reflect a truth that Paulo Freire, exiled from Brazil for teaching critical pedagogy, understood deeply: education can either liberate or oppress. Authoritarians, privatizers, and foreign capital prefer the latter, and they act accordingly.

Today’s Regional Education Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the system into further crisis. Children in Latin America and the Caribbean lost one out of every two in-person school days between 2020 and 2022. Learning poverty now exceeds 50 percent. Entire generations risk permanent economic loss and civic disenfranchisement.

Infrastructure is collapsing. Rural and Indigenous communities suffer the worst conditions. Public investment is chronically insufficient because governments are trapped in cycles of debt repayment to international lenders. Ecuador has not seen a major public-investment program in a decade, as austerity and IMF repayments dominate national budgets.

The result is a system starved of resources and increasingly vulnerable to privatization schemes—including U.S.-style online coursework, ideological “instruction kits,” and for-profit degree mills.

Latin American Universities as Battlegrounds for Sovereignty

Latin America’s universities are shaped by the same forces that have dominated the region’s history: oil extraction, agribusiness, foreign capital, neoliberalism, structural racism, debt, and now crypto speculation. Yet universities have also been homes to transformation, rebellion, cultural resurgence, and hope.

Across more than a century, students—Indigenous, Afro-descendant, mestizo, working-class—have been the region’s fiercest defenders of public education and national sovereignty. Their resistance continues today, from Quito to Buenos Aires, from Mexico City to Santiago.

For readers of the Higher Education Inquirer, the lesson is clear: the struggle for higher education in Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for democracy, racial justice, Indigenous autonomy, and freedom from foreign domination. The region’s ruling elites and international lenders understand that an educated public is dangerous, which is why they starve, privatize, and discipline public schools. Students understand the opposite: that education is power, and that power must be reclaimed.

The next chapter—especially in countries like Ecuador—will depend on whether students, teachers, and communities can defend public education against the dual forces that have undermined it for more than a century: privatizers and fascists.

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Sources (Selection)

National Security Archive, CIA Declassified Documents (1971)
InSight Crime reporting on El Salvador Bitcoin expenditures
Luciani, Laura. “Latin American Student Movements in the 1960s.” Historia y Memoria (2019)
The Córdoba Manifesto (1918)
UNESCO, World Bank data on learning poverty (2024)
Latin American studies on United Fruit, Standard Oil, Texaco/Chevron in Ecuador
LASA Forum: Analysis of Indigenous responses to Correa’s education reforms
Periodico UNAL: “The Student Rebellion: Córdoba and Latin America”
Multiple regional news sources on Argentina’s 2024–2025 education protests

Trump's new housing policies could push another 170,000 people into homelessness (National Low Income Housing Coalition)

 

NLIHC President & CEO Renee M. Willis Statement - Litigation on HUD's 2025 CoC NOFO December 1, 2025 NLIHC partners, members, and friends,         This afternoon, the National Low Income Housing Coalition formally joined a federal lawsuit as a co-plaintiff, alongside Crossroads Rhode Island, Youth Pride, Inc., as well as the County of Santa Clara, California, San Francisco, California, King County, Washington, Boston, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Nashville, Tennessee, and Tucson, Arizona, challenging harmful changes in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Continuum of Care (CoC) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). We have also joined this suit alongside one of our closest national partners, the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Democracy Forward serves as lead legal counsel for the case, and we are working closely with the National Homelessness Law Center for strategic legal partnership and alignment. Public Rights Project represents the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Nashville and Tucson. Santa Clara County and San Francisco represent themselves, and the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island represents all plaintiffs. Why NLIHC is taking action: The Continuum of Care Program exists to house people experiencing homelessness using proven, evidence-based solutions and strong local leadership. Yet, this NOFO introduces structural restrictions that contradict its stated purpose — capping permanent housing resources, weakening local decision-making, and threatening the stability of community response systems nationwide. As many as 170,000 more people could be pushed into homelessness if these changes stand — not as an abstract number, but as real individuals, families, veterans, seniors, youth, and neighbors in every state who depend on CoC-funded housing and services to remain stably housed. What this lawsuit means for our field and partners: We are fighting to: Prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their homes Protect proven permanent housing interventions within CoC funding Defend the ability of local communities to lead response strategies using data and evidence Stand with municipalities and providers working to keep people housed, stabilized, and supported We are especially grateful to our partners in the field — including the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless — who have generously offered their expertise and perspective over the past several days. Their insights have helped us understand more clearly the community-level impact this NOFO would have on CoC partners and local housing systems. Their experience reinforces why this action matters, and we are sincerely grateful for their partnership. Federal policy should be a source of housing stability — not a force that restricts it. We are stepping into this lawsuit because the people we serve cannot afford federal policies that weaken their communities’ ability to keep them housed. NLIHC will continue to move forward responsibly, with care for our mission, our members, and the systems that protect households nationwide. Thank you for your partnership in this critical moment.   With gratitude and resolve, Renee M. Willis President & CEO National Low Income Housing Coalition

The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated to achieving racially and socially equitable public policy that ensures people with the lowest incomes have quality homes that are accessible and affordable in communities of their choice.