Latest news with #DarryllPines
Washington Post
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
At his introduction, Maryland's new AD shares goals, spares details
Change was the buzzword Thursday inside the Terrapin Ballroom of The Hotel at the University of Maryland, where new athletic director Jim Smith was introduced amid pomp and pageantry. Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti mentioned 'uncharted waters' and the need to focus on the academic mission 'despite all the changes.' Maryland President Darryll Pines said the school was looking for someone who could navigate the 'quickly changing world of college athletics.''
CBS News
24-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
$12 million in research grants, contracts at University of Maryland impacted by Trump DEI cuts
More than 40 research grants and contracts at the University of Maryland College Park have been canceled due to cuts by the Trump administration, according to The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper associated with the university. The grants and contracts total about $12 million. UMD's president, Darryll Pines, said that the Trump administration was "using a filter of DEI as a lens to cancel, pause or delay the funding of a proposed research topic for one of our faculty or a group of our faculty." According to Pines, the grants and contracts canceled or paused at UMD include funding from the National Institute of Health, the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense. UMD is not the only Maryland university that has lost funding due to recent federal cuts. In March, the Trump administration said it was investigating 45 universities, including Towson University, for alleged racial discrimination over the schools' ties to The PhD Project, a non-profit that helps minority students get degrees in doctoral programs. Also last month, Johns Hopkins University said it was laying off more than 2000 employees after it lost funding from USAID. Some employees were in Baltimore, but others worked across 44 countries to support JHU's Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school, and its affiliated non-profit. Trump administration continues anti-DEI crackdown President Trump's executive order on Jan. 21 titled "Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity" ended DEI programs within the federal government. In February, the Trump administration ordered U.S. colleges and universities to end diversity programs or have their federal funding pulled. DEI, which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, was a term adopted to describe practices aimed at increasing diversity across professional spaces. Age-old policies like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, professional groups based on shared identities, and the now revoked Equal Employment Opportunity rule that was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 have all been considered DEI initiatives. Since existing laws do not provide a strict definition of what a DEI program is, the federal government has discretion over determining which programs it believes fall under the DEI umbrella. What is the debate surrounding DEI? Opponents of DEI have argued that it undermines merit-based opportunities, while DEI proponents say it prevents discrimination and creates fair and healthy environments within professional spaces. While Mr. Trump's executive power allows the administration to cancel DEI programs at the federal level, individual states, institutions, and organizations still have autonomy over their respective policies and programs. Those establishments, however, like Towson, and the University of Maryland, can still face scrutiny if they rely on federal funding. In February, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown joined 16 state attorneys general in issuing guidance on how employers should approach DEI programs in the workplace.
CBS News
26-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Congress requests info on Chinese students at the University of Maryland over potential security concerns
A U.S. congressional committee sent a letter to Dr. Darryll Pines, President of the University of Maryland, College Park, requesting information on Chinese students at the institution due to "national security risks." In the letter , Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on the CCP said there are national security concerns over the growing presence of Chinese nationals in U.S. university STEM programs, particularly in federally funded research. Moolenaar said financial incentives have led universities to prioritize foreign enrollment—especially from China—over domestic students, potentially enabling espionage and intellectual property theft that benefits the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The letter also says that the "large influx of Chinese national students into the United States presents a growing national security challenge." "Too many U.S. universities continue to prioritize financial incentives over the education of American students, domestic workforce development, and national security. They do so by admitting large numbers of Chinese nationals into advanced STEM programs, potentially at the expense of qualified Americans," the letter reads. The committee also says American campuses are "soft targets" for espionage and intellectual property theft, and that the U.S. Justice Department is concerned that "international students' motives aren't just to learn, but to share that intelligence with foreign superpowers to see a competitive advantage." According to the committee, a Harvard University study found that only 25% of Chinese graduate students intend to immigrate to the U.S. or another Western country after completing their graduate programs, and that "nearly half" of Chinese graduate students remain in the United States only temporarily for post-graduate employment. That same study also found that 25% of Chinese graduate students intend to return to China immediately after graduation, according to the committee. The specific study in question was not attributed in the letter, however. To investigate the national security concerns, the committee requested that the University of Maryland provide information regarding Chinese national students by April 1. In the letter, the committee asked UMD to provide a list of all university programs that include Chinese national participants, what percentage of the university's total graduate student body consists of Chinese nationals, if Chinese nationals are "disproportionately concentrated" in tech fields, along with a range of other questions. Trump administration officials have expressed concerns about Chinese technology posing a risk to U.S. National security . The Chinese A.I. application DeepSeek , which has been said to rival the capabilities of ChatGPT, has been a topic of discussion for lawmakers who say the app could allow personal data from U.S. users to be given to the Chinese Communist Party. Congress also sought to ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform, over security concerns before President Trump signed an executive order ordering the Justice Department not to enforce the ban . The two cases are slightly different, however, as DeepSeek's servers are based in mainland China, while TikTok moved all of its U.S. data to infrastructure owned by American software maker Oracle in 2022.
