Higher Education Faces Attacks Under Cover Of Pandemic

Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with Mara Einstein about the challenges of higher education dealing with the current pandemic.

President Donald Trump on Friday tweeted that he would be instructing the Treasury Department to examine the tax-exempt status of universities saying, “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education.”

The news came on the same day that the Catholic Church was revealed to have successfully lobbied for $1.3 billion in Covid-19 related relief funding.

The move is just the latest in attacks facing institutions of higher education in the US.

Just as K-12 schools are facing massive budget shortfalls, colleges and universities are threatening to lay off faculty, reduce salaries of already-underpaid adjunct instructors and more.

Add to that is the recent announcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that international students may be deported to their home countries, or not even let into the US if they are incoming freshmen, if their universities switch to online-only courses during the pandemic.

Mara Einstein, Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, City University of New York, and an independent marketing consultant.

She has been working in, or writing about, media and marketing for more than 25 years, and been an executive at NBC, MTV Networks, and at major advertising agencies.

She is the author of a number of books, including Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World Of the Digital Sell.

Rising Up with Sonali is a radio and television show that brings progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience.

Rising Up With Sonali was built on the foundation of Sonali Kolhatkar's earlier show, Uprising, which became the longest-running drive-time radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles hosted by a woman.

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