After the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, Eric J. Barron joined higher education leaders nationwide in pledging solidarity with protesters seeking racial justice. 

But like his peers elsewhere, the president of Pennsylvania State University faced intense pressure to take actions that would outlast the rhetoric. By the time Barron retired this past spring, Penn State had announced the formation of a Center for Racial Justice. Now, though, with a change in leadership, that project is off the table. 

When graduate students and researchers at the University of California launched the nation’s largest strike of academic workers in American history, they may have set an example for what California State University student employees might do at the state’s other massive university system.

CSU will start bargaining with the academic student employees and other staff unions this spring. And if negotiations don’t go well, some workers say they may follow in UC workers’ steps and go on strike.

A recent wave of Big Tech layoffs is raising concerns about whether corporations and funders will back away from their commitments to take on racial inequity amid fears of an economic slowdown.

Among those worries: What will the layoffs and hiring freezes mean for the nascent efforts by some companies to look beyond degrees in hiring? And how secure are the jobs held by Black and Latino workers hired through alternative paths such as apprenticeships or tech on-ramps? Michael Collins of Jobs for the Future weighs in.