Compiled by SUSAN JONES

The biggest story in higher education over the past two weeks is, of course, the shooting on Dec. 13 at Brown University in Providence, R.I., that left two students dead and nine others injured.

The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, 48, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Dec. 18 in Salem, N.H. Police said that evidence also indicates Valente killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was found dead in his Brookline, Mass., home on Dec. 15.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled as a physics graduate student at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. So far, no motive has been revealed.

In response to the shootings, President Donald Trump ordered the suspension of the U.S. green-card lottery program that authorities said Valente used to gain entrance to the United States.

Find more information from the Associated Press, the Chronicle of Higher Education and several other news sources.

DEC. 19: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will close its area studies centers in 2026, faculty members within the centers told Inside Higher Ed. The six centers—the Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies—are all expected to close at some point next year.

DEC. 17:

• Coursera is acquiring fellow MOOC provider Udemy to create an online education and upskilling giant valued at $2.5 billion, the companies announced. The combined company is poised to generate $1.5 billion in annual revenue and eliminate some $115 million in costs, Coursera and Udemy said in a press release. 

• Through their senate and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter, faculty at the University of Oklahoma are pushing administrators for clarity on the suspension of Mel Curth, a graduate teaching assistant who was put on paid administrative leave last month after a student claimed Curth gave her an unfair grade because she cited the Bible. Faculty are also asking the university to strengthen its protection of instructors who are politically targeted or harassed.

DEC. 16: The Trump administration announced entry restrictions on 20 more countries, including Nigeria, a top source of international students for U.S. colleges and universities.The proclamation expands the number of countries under a full or partial ban from 19 announced in June to 39. Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria are the five new countries that are fully banned. Partial restrictions will now be applied to people from Nigeria as well as Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

DEC. 15: A group of faculty and students at Alabama public colleges appealed a ruling keeping in place the state’s law barring public colleges and K-12 schools from sponsoring diversity, equity and inclusion programs or having DEI offices. In their lawsuit against Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and the University of Alabama’s trustees, the plaintiffs argued the 2024 law violates their free speech rights and undermines due process because it is too ambiguous for them to know what is prohibited.

DEC. 12:

• Two major federal research funding agencies are altering their grant review processes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is scaling back its reviews of grant proposals, according to a Dec. 1 internal memo that Science obtained and published, while STAT reported that the National Institutes of Health distributed guidance ordering staff to use a “text analysis tool” to search for certain phrases. Read more at Inside Higher Education.

• DePaul University laid off 114 staff members, senior leaders of the Catholic nonprofit said. The reductions, representing just under 8% of the Chicago university’s staff, come as DePaul tries to resolve a $12.6 million shortfall in its fiscal 2026 budget, driven in part by declines in international enrollment, Higher Ed Dive reported.

• A coalition of 20 states has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block a Trump administration policy that imposes a $100,000 fee on certain H-1B visa petitions, arguing the move unlawfully upends decades of immigration policy and threatens staffing at public universities, schools, and healthcare systems. The lawsuit, State of California, et al. v. Kristi Noem, et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and names multiple federal agencies as defendants, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, Department of State, and Department of Justice. California and Massachusetts are leading the case. Pennsylvania is not included in the plaintiffs.

DEC. 11: The fundraising arm for a public media outlet says Pensacola State College is trying to seize control of its donations as part of an effort to eliminate PBS programming in Florida, and it's asking a federal judge to keep the nonprofit independent, according to the Pensacola News Journal. The class action lawsuit, filed Dec. 11 in Tallahassee federal court, argues that donations to the WSRE-TV Foundation constitutes "speech protected by the First Amendment." The lawsuit comes nearly three months after Pensacola State College sought to dissolve the WSRE-TV Foundation and absorb its assets.

DEC. 10: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened the claims process for current and former Columbia University employees who believe they experienced harassment due to their Jewish faith or ancestry, Israeli national origin, or due to objecting to or complaining about such harassment. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas reiterated the Trump administration’s commitment to fighting antisemitism, commended Columbia for providing a “robust” claims fund and encouraged employees who may have been affected to file a claim. 

DEC. 9:

• Canada is making an aggressive effort to attract highly skilled researchers from around the world, including H-1B visa holders in the United States who are coming under growing pressure because of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies and cuts to research funding, according to the New York Times. The Canadian government said it would spend more than $1 billion over the next few years to attract and retain scientists from around the world, including those at major hospitals and universities.

• In a first-of-its-kind deal, the University of Utah‘s board of trustees unanimously approved a measure to create a for-profit company in partnership with New York-based equity firm Otro Capital that could help infuse more than $500 million into the athletics department, according to KSL NewsRadio. The deal creates a new for-profit company called Utah Brands & Entertainment LLC that will operate as part of the university structure but be outside of the athletic department.

• University System of Maryland Chancellor Jay Perman warned a General Assembly committee that further budget cuts would bring irreparable harm to the state’s public universities, according to the Diamondback. The public university system’s budget has been cut by $222 million over the last three years, Perman said in his testimony to the budget and taxation Committee. These cuts leave many jobs at Maryland’s public institutions vulnerable, which is reflected in their surrounding communities.

DEC. 8:

• The legal battle over whether Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s university board appointees will take their seats is over after a judge set a trial for 2026, Virginia Business reported. Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger will assume office next month, rendering the lawsuit moot. The case will be dismissed, shutting down an effort to install the Republican governor’s board picks, many of whom had previously worked for or donated to the GOP and were rejected by Virginia Democrats. Now Spanberger, a Democrat, will be able to name 22 board members that otherwise would have been appointed by Youngkin, giving her the opportunity to shift the political balance of boards away from the right.

• The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new disclosure feature that warns students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid if they’re interested in colleges whose graduates have relatively low earnings. “Families deserve a clearer picture of how postsecondary education connects to real-world earnings, and this new indicator will provide that transparency,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. 

• The Education Department is calling Office for Civil Rights employees who were fired earlier this year back to work. The Trump administration tried to ax half of the Education Department’s OCR staff in March, but it has been paying them not to work since then while it continues to fight litigation contesting its plan. The department says it hasn’t given up on defending that move, but now says it’s “important to refocus OCR’s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.”

DEC. 5:

• Wisconsin’s public universities are set to use a new measure to evaluate and potentially eliminate undergraduate programs at a faster rate as the university system navigates enrollment and financial pressures. A committee of administrators and faculty from the Universities of Wisconsin developed the metric, which flags programs with an average of 15 or fewer juniors and seniors enrolled annually in a three-year span. The system’s policies are currently being revised to include the recommendation, Regent Joan Prince said at a board meeting.

• The Pell Grant program faces a 10-year shortfall of up to $97 billion, with the recent expansion to include short-term workforce programs adding to existing structural funding problems, according to a Friday analysis from the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The massive spending package Republicans passed this summer gave the Pell Grant program $10.5 billion in one-time funding to avoid a looming budget shortfall. However, this will only delay the shortfall, according to analysts.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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