Colleges generally expect their students not to plagiarize. Colleges expect their students not to do many things, ranging from vandalizing the campus to betting on the school’s sports games to invading other students’ privacy. These expectations that colleges place on their students are usually found in some sort of student code of conduct — Davidson’s are found in the Honor Code and Code of Responsibility, which are located together with the Code of Disciplinary Procedures in the Student Handbook. How ironic would it be then, for a school to plagiarize portions of its student handbook, the very document where it sets out how it expects students not to do the same?

What Is Plagiarism?

Merriam-Webster defines the term plagiarize as “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own” or to “use (another’s production) without crediting the source.” Davidson College defines it as “representing another’s ideas or words as one’s own.” And Lafayette College defines it as “[i]ncorporating someone else’s ideas, writings, or other intellectual products into your work without proper attribution.” I like all of these definitions. How much of someone else’s work is appropriate to take, and what proper attribution means will vary based on community, medium of expression, and circumstances. But regardless of the exact circumstances, one maxim shines through: if you take someone else’s words, you must credit them appropriately.

The Matter At Hand

If you couldn’t tell based on this article’s cover photo (or the inclusion of their definition in the preceding section), this story is about Lafayette College. Lafayette is a small liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania, founded in 1826 with around 2,700 undergraduates, according to its website. Lafayette also appears to have plagiarized from Davidson’s student handbook for its own.

Since student handbooks are not endeavors of academic scholarship, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that they will borrow language from each other, and that they won’t individually credit each time they do so. However, it is also perfectly reasonable to expect some form of credit, whatever the “proper attribution” for this medium is. To take Davidson’s Student Handbook as a guide, its first page credits ten other institutions, including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, from which it borrowed many definitions.

At the time of writing, Lafayette’s student handbook (the handbook as of September 14, 2026) does not credit any other institutions in any way. It does not even allude to having taken inspiration or language from any other source. And yet, by my count, it has taken at least 2,000 words from Davidson College alone. The copying appears to be confined to its third part, “The Conduct Process.” Not all of this is purely verbatim copying — Lafayette has typically adjusted certain Davidson terms to ones from its own lexicon. For example, many mentions of the “student accountability process” in Davidson materials are changed to discuss the “student conduct process” when transplanted into Lafayette materials. But make no mistake, this was not paraphrasing or adaptation of small phrases. This was widespread word for word copying. There are too many examples to list them all here, but I will provide one.

“Accountability plans are developmental tools that enable the College to respond to student’s documented misconduct in appropriate and restorative ways. They may be educational or disciplinary in nature.”

The above paragraph appears word for word in both the Lafayette and Davidson Student Handbooks. And based on my searching, it is not some stock phrase that every college uses. It appears only in those two places. To check this, I ran sentences or text fragments through Google in quotes. Even a simple fragment, “They may be educational or disciplinary in nature,” when searched, appears only in the Davidson and Lafayette Student Handbooks.

How Plagiarism Gets Caught

At this point, it would be fair to ask: “Zach, how on earth did you discover this?” I think the answer to that question can tell us a lot about how plagiarism in general gets caught.

On one Thursday afternoon in late August, I was engaging in the extremely normal activity of comparing student conduct codes. Specifically, I was curious how other institutions similar to Davidson handled their appeals processes. As I was thinking of schools to check, Lafayette came to mind. I remembered I had toured its campus around two years ago and it was a small liberal arts school slightly bigger than Davidson. I pulled up its student handbook, navigated to the section on process, and started to scroll down to the Appeals section. Before I got there however, I began to read through the “Rights and Responsibilities” section:

“Any student (a “Respondent”) alleged to have violated the Code of Responsibility subject to student conduct proceedings before the case administrator, conduct board, or hearing officer, will be afforded the following rights:”

“Huh, that sounds familiar,” I thought. As I continued to read, it kept sounding familiar. It then began to enter my mind: “Did Lafayette plagiarize part of the Code of Disciplinary Procedures?” Shortly thereafter, I was convinced that it did. I pulled up the Davidson handbook and verified the extreme similarity between the statements. But how could I be sure Lafayette had taken from Davidson and not the other way around? Later research would show that Lafayette seemingly adopted the first version of their handbook containing its plagiarism in the summer of 2025, and that much of the appropriated language appeared in a Davidson handbook from 2024. But I was confident even before I did this research, because of three words from the above paragraph: “Code of Responsibility.”

Sloppy Copying

A lot of the time, catching plagiarism requires someone with knowledge of the original source to read the copy and think: “Huh, that sounds familiar.” But on occasion, through sloppy copying, clues can be left that don’t require intimate knowledge of the source material to find. The sloppiness in this case was not quite as bad as a student leaving a line like “Sure! Here’s a 500-word human-sounding essay on this book.” in their hastily copied-and-pasted AI-written essay, but it still provides glaringly obvious evidence of the plagiarism.

Lafayette College, as it happens, does not have a Code of Responsibility. Now, Davidson is not the only school to call its conduct code by that name. Presbyterian College and UNC Asheville both use that phrasing, along with several secondary schools. Lafayette College however, does not fall into that company. When copying Davidson’s statement, Lafayette changed the discussed hearing bodies to its own and removed a reference to the Honor Code (how ironic), but failed to change “Code of Responsibility” to its institutional term: “Student Code of Conduct.” This Davidsonism appears thrice in Lafayette’s document. I fail to see any possible explanation for this other than Lafayette copying from Davidson.

The Path Forward

Lafayette could brush this under the rug, if desired. I doubt this story will plaster the front pages, and all things considered, this is not a very severe form of plagiarism. Like I said, these are not works of scholarship. There is nothing wrong with copying language for student handbooks; it is common and expected. I only see this as an issue because Lafayette failed to give credit.

And yet, this issue has great symbolic importance. Others have written in this publication about the precarious state Davidson’s Honor Code is in. That situation is not unique to Davidson. All across academia, integrity is imperiled like never before. Will Lafayette rise to the occasion? I hope it will, just as I hope and believe Davidson will.

A college can hardly expect its students to follow rules that it flouts itself.

In my view, Lafayette should properly credit Davidson and any other institutions it took language from. Ultimately, it is in the hands of the Lafayette community to decide how seriously it wants to take this, what the path forward is, what values it wants to have, and whether the school should be an exemplar of those values.

Lafayette College did not respond to a request for comment. Additionally, a Davidson College official speaking on-background confirmed that there was no coordination between the schools regarding the handbooks and that the school bears no ill-will towards Lafayette regarding this situation.

This July, the FDA approved a new cholesterol drug called Lipfendra. “What’s Lipfendra?” you may ask. Simply put, it is a pill taken once a day that blocks a protein called PCSK9, and in doing so lowers low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by more than half.

In 2026, this approval might not seem remarkable. However, drugs in this class have existed only as injections, and creating a pill took more than a decade. What is more, in May, a separate research team published data on a gene-editing therapy that targets the same protein, needs to be given only once by intravenous (IV) infusion, and may work for a lifetime.

How PCSK9 Works, and How We Found It

A drug class, in this context, means a group of medicines that all act on the same target, in this case PCSK9, regardless of how they are built or how they get into the body. The reason this drug class was limited to injections for so long comes down to physical shape. Most pills work by fitting into a groove on the surface of their target protein, the way a key fits a lock. PCSK9 has no groove. It works across a wide, flat patch. A molecule small enough to survive digestion is far too small to cover a patch that size and anything large enough gets torn apart by stomach acid before it ever reaches the bloodstream. So for years, the only way around this problem was to skip digestion entirely: through injection.

Liver cells pull LDL cholesterol out of your blood using LDL receptors. The receptor grabs an LDL particle, drags it inside the cell, drops it off, and then goes back to the surface to do it again. This recycling is the important takeaway here. A single receptor usually handles many particles over its lifetime. PCSK9 breaks this recycling in a process called PCSK9-mediated lysosomal degradation. In this process, your liver secretes PCSK9 into the bloodstream, where it latches onto a specific region of the LDL receptor called the Epidermal Growth Factor-A (EGF-A) domain. That binding means that, instead of heading back to the cell surface, the receptor is sent to the lysosome and degraded. Every receptor PCSK9 touches is essentially lost, so higher PCSK9 levels mean your liver runs short on receptors, and your LDL climbs. Lower the amount of PCSK9 and the opposite happens.

Jonathan Cohen and Helen Hobbs, two geneticists at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reasoned that if too much PCSK9 caused disease, too little might protect against it. They went looking for people with broken copies of the PCSK9 gene in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities cohort, a long-running federal study tracking cardiovascular health in thousands of Americans, and found them in roughly 2.6% of Black participants. Those carriers had 28% lower LDL. Over 15 years, they had 88% lower risk of coronary heart disease. A different, milder variant of this gene in white participants produced a 15% LDL reduction and 47% lower risk.

We should stop at that 88% for a second, because it doesn’t match what drugs do. Hand a 55-year-old a statin (a widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug) that cuts LDL by 28% and you will not cut their heart disease risk by anything close to 88%. The difference is timing. Arterial damage results from cumulative exposure that starts in childhood. Think of it as a bathtub that has been filling slowly since birth: what determines whether it overflows is not how fast the tap is running today, but how much water has collected over an entire lifetime. A statin started in middle age deals with the last stretch of that, whereas being born with a broken PCSK9 gene deals with all of it. Same reduction in flow, vastly different totals.

Then came a more extreme version of the same experiment. Two people in the medical literature turned out to have lost both copies of the gene rather than one, meaning they produced essentially no functional PCSK9 at all. Their LDL levels sat under 20 mg/dL, less than a quarter of what is considered normal, and they were fine. This mattered because the obvious worry about blocking any protein is that it might be doing something important nobody has thought of yet. Yet, nature had essentially already run the knockout study and showed no safety concerns.

There is also a second benefit, but whether it translates into fewer heart attacks is not yet established. Lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), is an LDL particle with an extra protein stuck to it, and an individual’s level is genetically predetermined, meaning diet and exercise barely move it. Elevated Lp(a) raises the risk of both clogged arteries and a stiffened aortic valve. Statins do not lower Lp(a) and, if anything, they raise it slightly. PCSK9 antibodies lower it by about 27% in clinical trials.

But that still leaves the question, does moving the LDL level keep people alive?

The first answer came in 2017, when researchers found that PCSK9-inhibiting drugs prevent second heart attacks in people who already had one. However, those patients were already sick and being watched. The harder question is whether we should be treating people before anything goes wrong.

That answer arrived last November from a publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study enrolled 12,257 high-risk adults with atherosclerosis or diabetes who had never had a heart attack or stroke and followed them for about four and a half years. The patients on evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor, had fewer cardiovascular events. It was the first time a drug in this class was shown to prevent a first heart attack rather than a second.

These findings shifted the cholesterol guidelines. The major American cholesterol guideline was rewritten this year, and it promoted these drugs from a fallback to a first choice for certain high-risk patients. It also now advises doctors to measure Lp(a) at least once in every adult, a practice that was not common just five years ago.

The Delivery Problem

The next step was figuring out the route of administration, and the results of the past few years have been intriguing. Three approaches have emerged, each stranger than the last.

Inclisiran, the first of the three, is a piece of RNA that intercepts the liver’s instructions for building PCSK9, stopping the protein before it is produced. Second came enlicitide, sold as Lipfendra, the newly approved pill and the answer to the flat-surface problem described earlier. Merck, the pharmaceutical company that developed it, built a ring-shaped molecule large enough to blanket that whole surface and chemically reinforced it to survive stomach acid. In its main trial it cut LDL by about 56% and outperformed existing oral options.

There is also VERVE-102, which some researchers do not even consider a drug, at least in the traditional sense. It is a single IV infusion that delivers a gene-editing tool into liver cells and rewrites one letter of the PCSK9 gene so that it no longer produces working protein. In early results from 35 patients, published in May, the highest dose lowered PCSK9 by an average of 88% and LDL by an average of 62%. The effects held up to 18 months of follow-up.

Why Any of This Matters

Most Davidson students will never be prescribed any of this, and that is rather the point. The cumulative exposure finding is the part that matters, because it means the buildup has already started. Plaque does not wait for a diagnosis or for anyone to turn 40. Whatever your LDL is during college is already being added to a lifetime total, and that total is what this research consistently shows matters most.

That does not mean acting on it now, at least not with medication. It does mean knowing two things. The first is that a lipid panel is a routine blood test, available through the Student Health Center or at any physician back home over break, and for most people in their twenties, LDL is a number worth knowing. The second is more specific. Lp(a) is genetic, does not respond to how you eat or train, and current guidelines now recommend testing it once in every adult. If anyone in your family had a heart attack or stroke unusually young, particularly before 50, that is worth raising with a physician, since familial hypercholesterolemia affects roughly one in 250 people and most of them have no idea they have it.

Gene editing is permanent, which is both the appeal and the risk. Lipfendra, meanwhile, was approved on the strength of cholesterol numbers rather than proof that it prevents heart attacks, and that data is still years away. Cost has kept this entire class out of reach for many people since 2015, and a pill does not automatically fix that.

Even so, PCSK9 went from an almost unheard-of gene in 2002 to an injection in 2015, a pill just this summer, and it is now being switched off in people’s livers with a single infusion. Cardiology has spent a century treating cholesterol as a chore that needs to be managed forever. The families this all started with never had to manage anything; they were simply born with the protection. Twenty years later, the field has finally worked out how to hand it to everyone else.

Works Cited

1. Merck & Co. “Merck’s LIPFENDRA (enlicitide) is the First and Only Once-Daily Oral PCSK9 Inhibitor Approved by the U.S. FDA to Reduce LDL-C in Adults with Hypercholesterolemia.” Press release, 16 July 2026. https://www.merck.com/news/mercks-lipfendra-enlicitide-is-the-first-and-only-once-daily-oral-pcsk9-inhibitor-approved-by-the-u-s-fda-to-reduce-ldl-c-in-adults-with-hypercholesterolemia/

2. Vafai, Scott B., et al. “In Vivo Base Editing of PCSK9 with VERVE-102 for Hypercholesterolemia.” New England Journal of Medicine, published online 25 May 2026. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2601283

3. Seidah, Nabil G., and Annik Prat. “The Multifaceted Biology of PCSK9.” Endocrine Reviews, vol. 43, no. 3, 2022, pp. 558-582. doi:10.1210/endrev/bnab035

4. Cohen, Jonathan C., Eric Boerwinkle, Thomas H. Mosley Jr., and Helen H. Hobbs. “Sequence Variations in PCSK9, Low LDL, and Protection against Coronary Heart Disease.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 354, no. 12, 23 Mar. 2006, pp. 1264-1272. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa054013

5. Zhao, Zhenze, et al. “Molecular Characterization of Loss-of-Function Mutations in PCSK9 and Identification of a Compound Heterozygote.” American Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 79, no. 3, 2006, pp. 514-523. doi:10.1086/507488

6. Blumenthal, Roger S., Pamela B. Morris, Mario Gaudino, et al. “2026 ACC/AHA/AACVPR/ABC/ACPM/ADA/AGS/APhA/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, vol. 87, no. 19, 19 May 2026, pp. 2624-2757. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2025.11.016

7. Jaffe, Ilana Z., et al. “Impact of Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin/Kexin Type 9 Inhibitors on Lipoprotein(a): A Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression of Randomized Controlled Trials.” JACC: Advances, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.jacadv.2024.101549

8. Sabatine, Marc S., Robert P. Giugliano, Anthony C. Keech, et al. “Evolocumab and Clinical Outcomes in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 376, no. 18, 4 May 2017, pp. 1713-1722. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1615664

9. Bohula, Erin A., Nicholas A. Marston, Ajay K. Bhatia, et al. “Evolocumab in Patients without a Previous Myocardial Infarction or Stroke.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 394, no. 2, 8 Jan. 2026, pp. 117-127. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2514428

10. Ray, Kausik K., R. Scott Wright, David Kallend, et al. “Two Phase 3 Trials of Inclisiran in Patients with Elevated LDL Cholesterol.” New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 382, no. 16, 2020, pp. 1507-1519. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1912387

11. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Familial Hypercholesterolemia.” CDC, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease-family-history/about/about-familial-hypercholesterolemia.html

There is a certain kind of energy you feel around some professors: it’s not loud or showy, but steady. Dr. Paradise has that steady energy, and an undeniable passion for his field that I felt when I spoke to him. After nearly thirty years of teaching biology at Davidson, Dr. Chris Paradise still seems to be moving towards something new: a new question, a new project, a new place to learn from.

When I asked Dr. Paradise to describe himself in a word, he had a difficult time choosing one, but eventually landed on: “Driven.” It felt both honest and earned; it was his drive that has gotten him so far. He worked hard, took chances, and always went through the doors that opened.

The Outdoors

Dr. Paradise’s love for nature began early. Growing up in the Albany-Saratoga area of upstate New York, some of his most meaningful young memories took place in his grandparents’ little cabin in the Adirondack Mountains.

He described how he spent many of his summers “hiking and fishing and swimming in the lake.” He added, “I think that’s really where I fell in love with the outdoors.”

Those good memories led to what came next. Ever since his childhood, he was fascinated by animals and their behavior. “I knew when I went to college that I wanted to be a biology major,” he said.

Yet, he was less sure what he wanted to do with that degree. His parents, who had not gone to college themselves, tried to guide him as best they could.

“They didn’t really know how to help me,” he remarked. “So they said, ‘Well, you’re interested in biology, you should become a doctor.’”

So he began college on the pre-med track.

A “Light Bulb” Moment

Dr. Paradise’s path was never a paved straight line. Even though he was confident in his choice of biology from early on, his direction changed as he took various classes.

He described having a “pretty dismal experience” in organic chemistry—something most Davidson STEM majors might relate to—which made him question whether medicine was the right path.

“I decided, well, ‘I don’t think I’m even going to get into med school,’” he remembers saying to himself.

Then, in the spring of his junior year, everything shifted.

“I happened to take a course in ecology, and it was like a light bulb went on in my head… I decided, this is what I want to do. This is what I love.”

He still remembers that ecology class and reminisces about how “that professor… really had an impact” on him.

After that, he pursued field biology and independent research, learning about squirrels one semester and birds another. He also found himself drawn into a field he had never expected: insects.

Finding a Niche (And Sticking With It)

In graduate school at Binghamton University, he was introduced to a mentor who changed the direction of his research for good.

“I wasn’t even interested in insects until I got to graduate school, but my professor was doing research on insect-plant interactions,” he told me.

She convinced him to try an insect-focused project, specifically predator-prey interactions.

“That’s what I did,” he said, “and it worked out so well… it was a completely new area… and I was stuck with it.”

From there, his academic and professional path grew. He continued to work with insects while earning both his master’s and PhD, and his research focus and questions evolved within that over time.

Becoming a Professor … Without Planning To

One of the most honest parts of Dr. Paradise’s story is that he never pretended he had a perfect master plan.

“When I went to grad school, I never intended to become a professor,” he said. “That wasn’t the end goal.”

At the time, what he loved most was research. His original vision was to work for the government, perhaps the EPA or the Forest Service, or even go into environmental consulting.

However, after earning his master’s, he applied for those jobs and didn’t land one. Instead, he took a position at Penn State that involved “setting up labs for Introductory Biology and teaching.” To his surprise, he discovered something new about himself: “I just enjoyed the teaching so much,” he said. He had taught labs before as a TA, but it wasn’t until Penn State that he realized how much teaching actually meant to him.

“I thought, ‘Oh, well, I’m pretty good at this, and I like doing it.’” So he stayed at Penn State, shifting from teaching there to studying for his doctorate because he knew that if he “wanted to teach at the university level, [he] needed to get a PhD.”

Research Close to Home

Today, Dr. Paradise’s research centers on aquatic insects. One of his projects studies aquatic insects in a local river and examines the effects of stream restoration.

“They’re trying to restore the stream and the riparian zone… but to do that, they have to disturb the stream pretty heavily,” he said. “I’m interested in what the impacts are on the insects that are living in the stream.”

The project is meaningful not only scientifically, but also because it connects students to real land and stakeholders. He works with the county, the town of Davidson, and the Davidson Lands Conservancy since the stream runs through parks managed by them.

Dr. Paradise’s students are “interested in the data that [they’re] collecting,” partly because the project is so accessible for them. “It’s a great project for students because it’s fairly easy to do… It’s fairly easy to identify them [the insects]… so it’s really amenable to undergraduate research,” he said.

His other ongoing project shifts from water to land: monitoring insects and spiders in a field where the native prairie is being restored. He tracks biodiversity over time and analyzes what changes happen to the community living there.

And yes, he kept the scientific boundaries firm (as he does in his class).

“Spiders are not insects,” he reminded me, smiling but serious.

India: Life-Changing Experience

Dr. Paradise never studied abroad as an undergraduate. But much later in life, Davidson gave him a chance to—as a professor.

He became friends with Job Thomas, a former history professor who ran the Davidson in India program, which no longer exists. Thomas invited him on the trip and later asked him to run the program, something Dr. Paradise ended up doing twice.

“That was really life-changing for me,” he remarked as he described the experience of spending three months in India on two different occasions, traveling with students, his wife, and his young daughter.

For him, this experience was another example of how meeting the right people and being in the right place changed the shape of his life.

“I would never have gone to India if I weren’t here at Davidson.”

What “Driven” Looks Like

The word “driven” didn’t come from a flashy speech. It came from the way he described his life: step by step, decision by decision.

“Every decision I made along the way led me down this path,” he said. “I’ve been lucky, but I’ve also worked really hard.”

He imagined how his wife might describe him, too, before putting it in his own words: “I’m very driven and work really hard at whatever it is that I’m doing, and I try to do a good job even when I dislike the task.”

He follows that same hardworking conviction in his hobbies as well: not as a list of “fun facts,” but as a philosophy of living.

“I try to enjoy whatever it is that I’m doing… in the moment,” he explained, emphasizing how he tries not to treat things like chores.

Even cooking becomes creative for Dr. Paradise—music on, experimenting, learning from cooking shows with his daughter, and making things up rather than strictly following recipes.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said, a true scientist in the kitchen.

And outside? He still loves being outdoors: hiking, gardening, and yard projects. He also takes insect and spider photos and uploads them to iNaturalist. He generally doesn’t kill insects or spiders, but he said sometimes he has to collect some, like the Joro spider, because it’s an invasive species in North Carolina.

“It’s okay to kill them,” he said, “but things that are native… I try not to… and just take pictures instead.”

Davidson, Community, and Open Doors

When I asked his favorite thing about Davidson, he couldn’t choose just one thing.

“I like the community,” he said. “It’s very easy to walk across campus and run into three or four people that you know… that you can say hi to.”

But he also returned to a theme that has remained omnipresent throughout his life: opportunity.

“We have so many opportunities here to do things,” he said. Opportunities for students and faculty to collaborate, do research, travel, write, and discover paths they never predicted. And as he put it simply: some of the best things in his life happened because he was there to say yes when the chance appeared.

Take That Chance

Dr. Paradise’s final advice to students matched his own story perfectly: keep your eyes open for the unexpected, and don’t be afraid to take the leap.

“Look for those unexpected opportunities,” he said, “and be willing to take a chance.” He offered an example many students will recognize: taking a class outside your comfort zone.

“That’s the beauty of the liberal arts experience,” he said: trying something you didn’t expect to love, and being surprised by what you find.

He sees that in his own classroom, too. Students don’t always take his insects course because they already love insects.

“But once they take the course, some find out that insects are pretty cool, right?” And that’s the point: the unexpected can become the turning point, if you let it.

After listening to him, Dr. Paradise’s life felt like a steady, intentional motion. Not because he knew everything at the start, but because he kept moving forward: working hard, staying open to change, and taking opportunities seriously when they appeared.

To learn more about Dr. Paradise, you can visit his Davidson profile page: https://www.davidson.edu/people/chris-paradise

September 19, 2026 marked one year since Senate Democrats demanded that any bill to fund the government include an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. Republicans refused to compromise, triggering the longest full government shutdown in American history. The shutdown finally ended on November 12 after eight Senate Democrats broke ranks in exchange for a non-binding promise of a future vote on ACA tax credit extensions. While political commentators — who frequently treat bipartisanship as the ultimate aspiration of American governance — hailed these senators for breaking the gridlock, recent history demonstrates that Republicans routinely leverage the Democratic Party’s desire for unity to undermine their agenda.

Entering office in 2009 with a mandate for change, President Barack Obama sought to usher in a “post-partisan” era. Rather than take advantage of the filibuster-proof Democratic majorities in Congress to pass the estimated $1.2 trillion in stimulus needed to fill the output gap left by the Great Recession, Obama preemptively limited the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to under $800 billion and filled over one-third of it with tax cuts specifically designed to attract Republican support. These concessions yielded zero House Republican votes and just three in the Senate.

As for his signature policy of healthcare reform, Obama sought to win over Republican votes by structuring the ACA around an individual mandate and private insurance exchanges. This market-based model was originally designed by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank responsible for Project 2025 (though Heritage has since opposed the ACA, the intellectual lineage from its 1989 proposal to Romneycare to the ACA is well-documented). Democrats spent months negotiating details, only for the bill to pass without a single Republican vote in either chamber.

Proponents of compromise argue that bipartisan policies are more popular and less likely to be repealed. In practice, the opposite is true. The ARRA’s scaled-down stimulus proved insufficient to produce a rapid recovery. By 2010, 56% of the public opposed the stimulus and 63% thought the projects in the plan were for “purely political reasons” according to CNN polls. Meanwhile, Republican leaders and conservative media commentators ignored the ACA’s private-market origins and branded the bill as “socialism” and “government takeover of healthcare,” which PolitiFact named their 2010 “lie of the year.” This rhetoric fueled the Tea Party movement, allowing Republicans to gain 63 House seats in the 2010 midterms after which they would vote over 54 times to repeal or defund the law over the next four years.

In contrast, President Joe Biden entered office in 2021 with a razor-thin 50-50 Democratic majority in the Senate (with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties) and faced the possibility of a double-dip recession in the absence of a stimulus package. Instead of accepting the $618 billion counteroffer from moderate Republicans, Biden pushed through a $1.9 trillion package using the budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster. The American Rescue Plan Act intentionally erred on the side of overshooting to avoid a sluggish recovery akin to 2009, and in doing so, created 4 million jobs, reduced unemployment 2 percentage points, and slashed child poverty nearly in half. Despite receiving no Republican votes, 70% of the public favored the legislation in 2021 according to the Pew Research Center. In 2022, Democrats used the same approach to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the largest federal investment in climate change and clean energy in U.S. history and is projected to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 35-43% below 2005 levels by 2030.

However, since budget reconciliation is practically limited to one major package per year, Democrats could not rely on strict party-line votes for other priorities. Instead, the Biden administration successfully negotiated with moderate Republicans for their votes on the long-awaited Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (SCA), which was the first major gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. The IIJA spent $1.2 trillion to repair aging infrastructure and expand high-speed broadband to rural communities, while the SCA enhanced background checks for buyers under 21, closed the “boyfriend loophole” for domestic abusers, and funded state red flag laws, contributing to the post-2022 decline in violent crime. In both cases, bipartisanship was treated as a strategic means to an end, not a virtue in and of itself.

Biden succeeded where Obama faltered by seeking cross-aisle consensus only when Republicans were genuinely willing to negotiate, and proceeding with partisan votes when it was necessary to deliver results. As Democrats prepare for the midterms, the lesson of the last two decades is clear: voters reward tangible improvements to their lives, not procedural civility.

Compromise is only as valuable as the policy it produces.

If there is one thing that I learned from working in Washington, D.C., it was the importance of the pursuit of truth, or at least as much of the truth as one can find. I spent the summer interning at one of D.C.’s oldest and most prestigious policy think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. Working on national security strategy and Pentagon budgeting, I found myself asking each day, “Is this true?”

On most days, I was tasked with tracking the ever-developing war in Iran, yet I never knew if statements on various news sites were accurate or verifiable. There is a specific discomfort in not knowing what to trust, especially when the information comes from purportedly reputable news sources. When I tried to cross-reference a strike or damage report, I often uncovered a conflicting story. These discoveries reminded me that facts and “truth” are few and far between, and that you must practice a healthy skepticism toward authoritative claims.

Now, you’re probably wondering, “What does this have to do with Davidson or running a student magazine?”

Well, I’ve realized that my instinct to interrogate a claim did not start at my desk in D.C., but in classrooms and at seminar tables at Davidson. As Lux’s mission statement aptly puts it: “Davidson has been our intellectual nursery, where living, arguing, failing, and trying again have shaped us toward a fuller mind, body, and spirit.” I have spent most of my time at Davidson in political theory courses, where the first lesson (aside from the differences in the signification of the word “truth”) is that no one’s word is good enough on authority alone. You do the verification yourself, through critical analysis. Playing devil’s advocate is my favorite thing in the classroom and my advisor Dr. Shaw’s hallmark: even then, “truth” proves exceptionally hard to pin down.

This is all to say that, for a publication that “holds one faith: that the pursuit of truth is an arduous path,” I take on the role of Editor-in-Chief of The Davidson Lux with strong opinions about what that pursuit demands. Ethan Tran, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, put it more bluntly than I would. He called me a “glutton for punishment,” another of Dr. Shaw’s familiar asides for those of us who sign up for multiple theory courses. Yet the statement isn’t far off, and the office-hour siphoning Ethan wrote about in “Onwards, Lux” is, admittedly, a common occurrence. Those office hours have been invaluable to me in my conviction to pursue truth and may well be the reason I’m the one writing this letter. Had I not taken up so much of Ethan’s office hours, he would not have seen my commitment to truth in action and entrusted me with this publication.

This commitment is one that our mission statement makes for itself, though: to uphold the liberal arts tradition as a pursuit of truth across all disciplines. We students are, as our mission statement outlines, “still young enough to resist rigid prejudice and old enough to think independently.” These words describe me arguing in Dr. Shaw’s office hours, before I ever thought about running this magazine, and they describe anyone who sits down to write for us now.

In Lux, no field is off-limits. Lux does not treat politics as more serious than economics, economics more serious than a lab report, or a lab report more serious than a campus-wide situationship epidemic. The instinct that I’ve spoken about, the refusal to take a claim on authority alone, exists in every Davidson student and belongs in any field where someone is trying to discover the truth. That’s why the magazine has never limited itself to one subject and why this year it won’t either. It is also the reason we are committed to rigorous noncensorship, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression. Without those commitments, truth is unattainable.

Moving forward, our purpose will continue to be “not to rival the institution that raised us, but to extend its mission … Because we love Davidson, we aim to carry forward its liberal arts tradition: to cross artificial boundaries between disciplines, to bind thought to experience, and to keep the public good in view.”

That’s the whole point of this letter. Lux exists to encourage and hone that same instinct in whoever writes for it next.

So I ask you to read this letter the way I’d ask you to read anything else in these pages: skeptically. Don’t take my word for what Lux is becoming. Read what Davidson students have to say now, or come write for us and find out for yourself.

And please know that this invitation isn’t limited to political science majors or people headed for a policy career. If you study biology, if you spend your nights in the studio creating art, if you’ve never written for a magazine before, we want your ideas, too.

Here’s to truth, transparency, and a commitment to the public good.

Welcome to the first light of Lux 2026–2027.

In case this is the first Davidson Lux article about CPT you have opened, let us start by explaining why all your international friends keep bringing it up. Curricular Practical Training (CPT) is what allows international students to pursue professional experiences relevant to their major while studying at Davidson or any other U.S. college. Optional Practical Training (OPT) lets international students work in the U.S. after graduation for 12 months, or up to 36 months for STEM majors. Understanding these terms is essential, both to follow this article and for your own academic, economic, and professional future as a domestic student.

Since January 2025, international students have faced a steady run of proposals that threaten the futures they have imagined for themselves, futures that their parents have invested in and their siblings have probably cursed them for. These proposals range from changes to CPT and OPT, to the length of time students can study in the U.S., to whether they can change their majors or transfer schools. Three policies stand out, one of which a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts recently blocked:

CPT Suspension: On August 12, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) issued updated guidance on CPT. This guidance underlined that a college could only grant CPT if “the experience is a mandatory requirement for all students pursuing that degree.”[1] To protect the legal status of current Davidson international students, the college suspended CPT authorizations for the foreseeable future.[2]

Duration of Status: Although this rule has been put on hold by the courts, it has not been eliminated. “Additional litigation or an appeal” could still decide the rule’s fate.[3] It outlines several restrictions on academic and professional mobility, including extended paperwork for many OPT applicants, limits on an incoming student’s ability to transfer schools or majors, and obstacles for students who need longer than their program’s stated length to finish their degree.

OPT Restrictions: There have been discussions of regulations that could “restrict or terminate” OPT.[4] A Wall Street Journal article in late July reported that the “administration is considering” adding a $100,000 fee to OPT authorizations, which would increase the cost of working in the United States for international students.[5] The fee proposal cleared White House regulatory review September 11, 2026.[6]

Regardless of whether these rules continue to stand, their potential to deprive students of what they have built, and to render useless the hundreds of applications and the hours spent networking and hunting for an empty room in Union or Wall (a true story), weighs heavily on people who have trusted Davidson with their academic and professional careers.

So, why should you care?

Impact on Higher-Ed Affordability

International students who seek employment in the United States make up a significant portion of those approved for temporary work visas (H-1B). About 40% of initial temporary worker approvals each year go to people formerly on student visas.[7] Since student visas are a stepping stone to the U.S. labor market, a college’s ability to support its students’ professional futures is a major factor in whether a student enrolls. Potential policy changes and additional costs, such as the $100,000 OPT fee, affect whether students choose to study in the U.S. at all.[8] Even discussion of these changes creates uncertainty that risks “fewer international students coming to the U.S.”[9]

Why does that matter for domestic students? Beyond the many ways in which international students enrich campus intellectual life, and the fact that Davidson has professors from around the world who were once international students themselves, international students also affect the cost of your education. According to Brookings, international students subsidize American students because they pay higher tuition and receive less financial aid, a dynamic Brookings says is true “particularly at public universities.”[10] If fewer international students enroll, the result could be “higher tuition prices and economic struggles at colleges and universities across the country.”[11]

Impact on Professional Futures

Among U.S. workers in STEM, more OPT approvals are linked with lower unemployment. Although this correlation does not necessarily imply causation, employers, particularly in STEM, look to international student workers to fill specialized roles when U.S. applicants are scarce.[12] This in turn helps companies expand and create space for more workers. According to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, there were 122,000 fewer foreign-born workers in the United States in January 2026 than in January 2025, accompanied by a 0.4 percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers.[13]

Foreign workers spend money on housing, food, and services that sustain jobs in local economies. Over time, cutting back OPT could therefore cost jobs. International students at Davidson also build international connections, exposing domestic students to opportunities, housing, and perspectives that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Impact on Economic Environment and Community

OPT assists with roughly “$60 billion in annual economic output” in the United States.[14] Restrictions on OPT would undermine innovation and the pipeline of skilled workers, particularly in states like Ohio where international students contribute heavily to research universities and healthcare systems.[15]

In an economic analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna, and Sarah Turner found that by 2019, higher education had grown into a significant export industry for the U.S.[16] The money that foreign students spend on their education in the U.S. is classified as an educational export, and it helps narrow the trade deficit. In 2023-24, international students added close to $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 378,800 jobs.[17]

The loss in international student attendance not only has a direct impact on the economy but also affects the pipeline that brings skilled talent from across the world to the United States.[18] Disrupting this pipeline means “American universities lose students, employers lose workers, and the country risks ceding innovation and investment to global competitors.”[19]

Even within North Carolina, according to the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise, a decrease in net migration is affecting labor-intensive sectors such as “construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and elder care.”[20] The impact would likely be felt by businesses and consumers in the form of a restricted labor market and increased costs.

Beyond their contributions to on-campus jobs and research, international students at Davidson contribute to local community and nonprofit organizations in the Town and the greater Charlotte area, whether through the Bonner Scholarship Program, Alternative Breaks, Eating Houses, or the many other service-oriented clubs on campus. Davidson alumni who were once international students participate in the host family program, giving back to the community that once helped them thrive.

So What is being done and what can you do?

At Davidson, campus organizations, especially the Davidson International Association, have helped keep this issue on everybody’s radar. The college administration is engaging students, faculty, and staff in conversations about what potential solutions could look like moving forward. According to DIA Collab Chair and SGA Housing Committee Chair Samiksha Pyndi ‘29, the Student Government Association has also been meeting with administrators to find ways to support students and propose a resolution.

Despite the efforts already in motion, holding your campus leaders, political representatives, and fellow students accountable is still essential to the success of the measures being discussed. Here are three tasks for you:

1. Efficient introduction and implementation of solutions will require consistent campus-wide conversations. Awareness is the first step to being part of the discourse. So keep yourself informed.

2. This issue is immediate. International students are weighing the costs and benefits of applying to and attending colleges like Davidson in the wake of these policies. Students are losing time and opportunities as policy gets confirmed. Especially as the midterms approach, stay involved with how your senators and congressional district representatives support or oppose these policies. Vote. Send comments and messages opposing restrictive rules.

3. Encourage the College’s administrators and staff to share communications about international students with the wider campus. Making announcements about policy changes public will provide another layer of awareness and establish the importance of the issue for more than just international students.

Through this article, we do not mean to suggest that the value of an international student should be measured by what you gain from their presence. Regardless of what an international student contributes, every student deserves the opportunity to pursue their aspirations. That is how an international student should be seen: through the lens of their passion, ambition, and dedication. However, as is often true in life, we tend to care less about what we do not think concerns us immediately, which is why it matters for everyone’s future that you understand how this affects you.

Notes

1. ISE

2. https://www.business-standard.com/immigration/us-tightens-checks-on-foreign-student-jobs-warns-colleges-of-action-126082800911_1.html

3. https://day1cpt.org/news/court-blocks-d/s-final-rule-just-before-september-15

4. https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/trump-opt-elimination-threatens-international-students/

5. Exclusive | U.S. Weighs $100,000 Fee for Foreign Students Wanting to Work After Graduation - WSJ

6. White House Clears Fee Proposal for Foreign Grad Work Program

7. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-trump-administration-is-eroding-the-immigrant-talent-pipeline/

8. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/us-opt-programme-explained-how-trumps-100000-fee-could-hit-international-students/articleshow/132756005.cms

9. https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/trump-opt-elimination-threatens-international-students/

10. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-trump-administration-is-eroding-the-immigrant-talent-pipeline/

11. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/biggest-changes-student-visas-in-generations-what-you-need-to-know/

12. International-Students-STEM-OPT-And-The-US-STEM-Workforce.NFAP-Policy-Brief.March-2019.pdf

13. National-Foundation-for-American-Policy-Labor-Force-Analysis.February-2026-1.pdf

14. https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/trump-opt-elimination-threatens-international-students/

15. https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com/trump-opt-elimination-threatens-international-students/

16. Bound, J., Braga, B., Khanna, G., & Turner, S. (2021). The globalization of postsecondary education: The role of international students in the U.S. higher education system. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 35(1), 163–184.

17. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/journal/spotlight/international-students-united-states

18. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-trump-administration-is-eroding-the-immigrant-talent-pipeline/

19. Ibid.

20. https://commongoodnews.org/economy/immigrant-labor-shortage-hits-north-carolinas-urban-economy-hard/

In August 2020, Davidson voluntarily committed to paying all full-time staff a living wage for Mecklenburg County as calculated by MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. Since then, the commitment has disappeared from public view, and the college has not addressed why. The living wage commitment was part of Davidson’s reconciliation efforts in response to the Commission on Race and Slavery’s report, which documented Davidson’s history with slavery and its practice of hiring Black residents into low-paid campus jobs while keeping them largely out of the classroom.

Since a 2021 update to the commission’s web pages, the college has posted no new wage figure, stopped using the MIT calculator, retired the pages that traced the commitment, and put no wage numbers in the “Reconciliation and Education” pages that replaced them. It did not announce any of these changes. Davidson made a measurable promise, of its own volition, since the commission’s report did not call for a living wage, then quietly dropped the measure. The college confirmed the change only when asked for this story.

Promises

The commission, chaired by alumnus and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, made five sets of recommendations: a formal apology and public commemoration of enslaved people’s contributions; continued research into the college’s founding and its earliest donors; a standing committee “empowered to act” on new historical findings, paired with hiring a full-time public historian or archivist to oversee that work; continued investment in campus culture; and sustained, direct outreach to Black residents of Davidson. In response, Davidson posted “Towards Equity and Racial Justice: Davidson College Initial Actions,” in which the college went further than the report itself, committing to a specific standard for employee compensation: “We will ensure that all regular Davidson employees make at least a living wage for Mecklenburg County as determined by the MIT living wage calculator (currently $13.15/hr).” At 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, that wage comes out to $26,300. In 2021, the page was revised, citing the calculator again and raising the minimum wage to $15.50 an hour, or $31,000 annually.

The pages were supposed to get an “annual update,” yet the next update was not posted until March 2023 in which new Africana Studies hires and diversity training for faculty and staff were covered. It did not mention wages, and no further wage figure was ever posted.

The two pages documenting the report and the ensuing campus changes, “Commission Report and Initial Actions” and “Post-Commission Initiatives and Progress,” are no longer live on davidson.edu. Both were retired this past spring and replaced by a new “Reconciliation and Education” section of the website, which does not include a wage figure or any numeric tracking of the commitment the earlier pages described. Asked why a page meant to receive an “annual update” went nearly three years without one before being retired, the communications office wrote only, “We should have updated them sooner.”

The pages are not entirely gone. They remain accessible as archived PDFs in a Google Drive folder linked from the new “Reconciliation and Education” page.

Where the Number Stands Today

Davidson, in response to this reporting, confirmed to the Lux that the wage floor for all full-time staff still sits at $15.50 an hour, unchanged from 2021. As of October 2026, the MIT calculator places the living wage in Mecklenburg County for a single adult with no children at $25.53 an hour, about $51,060 a year. Davidson’s floor falls $10.03 an hour short of that, or about $20,000 a year. For comparison, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator, $15.50 in 2021 has the same buying power as $19.85 does today. Even without the MIT comparison, the floor has lost about a fifth of its value, seeming to indicate that the minimum wage for the college should have risen at least with inflation.

Further, not only is this information unavailable to the public, but it is also unavailable to potential hires, because Davidson’s job postings do not list pay. While the postings do say the college offers, “a competitive salary package,” a 9.5% retirement contribution, tuition assistance, and professional development, they leave out the wage itself.

Davidson is not the only institution in Mecklenburg County that has used the MIT Living Wage Calculator to set pay. The county government has too, and its number is public. In fact, the county government raised its own minimum wage specifically to meet the MIT standard this September.

What Davidson Says

When asked what Davidson’s minimum wage is, whether it is still tied to MIT, and when it was last changed, Mark Johnson, Davidson’s Chief Communications and Marketing Officer answered in writing that, “The college’s minimum starting hourly wage is $15.50 … We have not updated the MIT calculation, because it quickly became clear that the formula was out of line with our market. We instead benchmark against multiple salary surveys that look at higher education peers or similar-sized industries in our region, depending on the job and recruitment pool.”

That answer has a kernel of truth, but it also points to a larger issue. A living wage asks what an employer must pay for a worker to cover basic costs; a market survey asks what an employer can pay and still hire and keep workers. This is not to say that the MIT calculator is beyond criticism, though. Economist Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute argued in a critique last year that its totals run high because they add up average household spending rather than true minimums, assume center-based child care, price housing at an arbitrary rent percentile, and in some categories double-count costs. His own, more conservative estimate for a family came in roughly a third below MIT’s figure for the county he examined. Winship’s critique is mostly about family budgets. The $25.53 figure is for a single adult with no children, where childcare is not factored in, so much of the double-counting does not apply.

Davidson has not offered a methodological argument like Winship’s, however. The only rebuttal to using the calculator the college has shared is that it is “out of line with our market.” When the Calculator called for higher pay than Davidson judged the market required, the college chose the market.

Whatever the calculator’s flaws, a living wage standard was never supposed to track the market. It was meant to pay above it. The college chose that standard itself and publicized it, tying it to its own history of underpaying Black labor. Finding out later that the standard paid more than the market should not have been a surprise. Mecklenburg County, in the same labor market, adopted the same calculator and has not treated that outcome as disqualifying.

When pressed for specifics, Davidson eventually named six sources it says it benchmarks against: CUPA-HR (the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources), used for staff and faculty roles broadly; the Oberlin Group of Libraries, for library professionals; CLAC, the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges, for IT roles; the Catapult Employers Association, for positions not specific to higher education; Payscale, which the college says it uses across all positions because it allows different geographic and industry cuts; and Marsh, for executive and director-level compensation. Davidson did not describe any of the six as a benchmark built around entry-level service work such as dining, physical plant, and grounds staff, where the $15.50 floor is most likely to apply.

Compensation Growth Numbers

While initially reluctant to share detailed salary information, the college said total salary and benefits grew 7.7% in FY2023, 8.0% in FY2024, 6.1% in FY2025, and 7.1% in FY2026, or a compounded 32.17% over four years. The college called last year’s increase “double or triple” the higher education average CUPA-HR cites. CUPA-HR’s most recent data does show that higher ed staff (clerical, custodial, and food service) positions received a median salary increase of 3.0% this year, the highest of any employee category. Yet, Davidson’s 7.1% is total salary and benefits; CUPA-HR’s 3.0% is a median salary raise.

The core problem is that these figures encapsulate the entire payroll, so they are skewed by the highest-paying jobs. Administrators and faculty making 100-300k (or more) getting 4% increases, can easily tip the overall compensation increase across the entire college to over 7%. So, lower level hourly-paid employees could get much smaller raises and it would be completely obfuscated. For example a 4% raise on a $300,000 salary is $12,000; a 3% raise on a $31,000 salary is $930.

To extend this example, we can turn to Davidson’s FY2025 Form 990 filed in May 2026- and available on ProPublica. It reports “executive compensation” of $3,504,120, or the pay of about 113 workers at $31,000. The Part VII total including coaches and “highly compensated employees” amounts to $5,009,888, or 162 workers. Each $100,000 administrator equals about three wage-floor workers. President Doug Hicks alone received $597,223 in reportable compensation, the equivalent of 19 floor workers. He also received $245,563 in “other” compensation, for a total of $842,786, or about 27 floor workers in all.

Other things that can inflate a total-pay figure include benefits costs (health insurance premiums), new positions, and one-time benefits, and the college has not broken out any of them. All of this makes it incredibly difficult to decipher whether compensation is doing what the college says it is.

So, who is actually paid at the floor? Davidson did not say how many staff are at or near $15.50 per hour. Johnson simply said that “At any given time the number of employees at that rate depends on the position and the candidate’s level of experience.” Dining hall staff interviewed for this piece described raises as “almost yearly” and “pretty consistent,” which suggests 15.50 is a true starting rate, and not a rate at which many workers stay. The size of those raises, and how far they close the gap to $25.53 is unknown.

Same Yardstick, Different Results

In its FY2027 budget, adopted this summer, Mecklenburg County raised the minimum wage for its full-time employees from $20 an hour to $25.53 an hour. The budget office describes the figure as based on the MIT Living Wage Calculator for Mecklenburg County. Commissioner Mark Jerrell, addressing the vote, said the county did not consider the new rate the end of the effort. “No one is saying that $25.53 is something that we should take a victory lap with,” he said. The county and Davidson started from the same benchmark. The county’s figure moved with it; Davidson’s did not.

UNC Charlotte, which is also in Mecklenburg County, raised its minimum starting wage for regular staff at $17.00 an hour, effective Sept. 1, 2026, up from $16.12 set in January 2025. Jason Vaughan, associate director of media relations at UNC Charlotte, credited the increase to “UNC Charlotte senior leadership’s ongoing commitment to raising employee salaries.” UNC Charlotte’s floor has risen in recent years, and Davidson’s has not.

Duke University, North Carolina’s other prominent private school, tells a similar story. Duke raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour this year, up from $18 in 2024 and $12 in 2015. Duke is not in the same county as Davidson and has not cited the MIT Living Wage Calculator, but the trend line is the point. Duke’s base pay has continued climbing; Davidson’s has not moved since 2021.

Why Does This Matter?

What this amounts to is a change in standard that was never announced. Davidson moved from a living wage metric to a cost-comparison metric, a number tied to what other employers choose to pay. Only the college’s response to this reporting is what reveals the change happened at all. A market standard measures what competitors have decided they can pay and still fill a position. It does not measure whether that pay covers a worker’s basic costs.

Davidson may well be paying competitively within higher education, as it says, but that claim is largely unverifiable. The college has named the surveys it uses but not which of them, if any, price the positions at the $15.50 floor. It has not said what share of staff is paid near that floor, or what full compensation packages those employees receive. Without that information, neither the old promise to meet a living wage nor the new standard of matching the market can be verified. The wage commitment was offered as a repair for underpaid Black labor at Davidson, and the measure that could show, without a doubt, whether the repair is working is the one the college has stopped using.

On August 15, Davidson’s International Student Engagement Office notified students that the College would be pausing all future Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorizations and cancelling those approved.

Chambers Building, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Without CPT authorization, international (F-1 visa-holding) students are legally barred from engaging in any off-campus internship or research in the United States. As The Lux previously reported:

“The policy change follows an August 12th broadcast message from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP, which oversees institutions enrolling F-1 students. The message did not rewrite the federal regulation governing CPT, which requires it to be ‘an integral part of an established curriculum.’ Instead, SEVP announced increased scrutiny of CPT authorizations and specified that CPT only be authorized when it is a requirement of the degree for all students in the degree program.”

Now, Davidson’s administration, faculty, and international student body are trying to cooperate and find possible solutions.

International Students Respond

Davidson’s decision has left some in the international body frustrated: “They’re thinking of this in the long term, which sacrifices those here,” a student remarked.

Another bluntly stated, “We’re highkey f***ed.”

Frustration was common among those interviewed, though most ultimately said they understood Davidson’s response.

“Initially, we thought Davidson was one of the only five colleges that paused the authorizations, but it turns out that a lot of schools have done that now. I think it is a conclusion across the board [that] Davidson just acted faster, because their class year starts earlier,” Davidson International Association (DIA) Vice President Amber Simnani said.

On the question of whether Davidson is coordinating its response with other colleges, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer Mark Johnson wrote to The Lux that member institutions of the Association of International Educators and Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) were discussing approaches. He also stated that the College works with lobbyists and consultants in Washington who examined the topic on the week of September 6th and continue to share information and ideas.

The reality remains grim, however. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2026 Internship & Co-op Report, 63.1% of interns were converted into full-time hires. For international students, the reality is quite different: DIA President Murtaza Nikzad shared results from an international student survey in which 84% of respondents reported they had been dissuaded from seeking an internship or off-campus research opportunity, while 26% had an offer or were in an interview process that the CPT change prevented them from pursuing. As Murtaza explained, “This impact data was gathered from a whole lot of people from different majors: math, biology, economics, PPE, data science, chemistry, and more.” The regulations appear to have reached international students across a wide range of fields of study.

This Isn’t Isolated, But it is Different

The current federal US administration has a record of restricting international students. It has placed travel bans for students from over 20 countries, put a $100,000 price on the H-1B visa, and enforced strict social media monitoring for students seeking or maintaining a visa.

The international students that The Lux had spoken to unanimously agreed that the new CPT regulations were just another step in isolating them.

“It was obviously a shock, but at the same time it was like an anticipated shock, you know? Because I think this new CPT guidance is just one of the many acts that the federal agency has put in place to restrict international students,” says one member of the community.

Another student characterized the broadcasts and memos as a strategy borrowed from the idea of deterrence as put by the economist Thomas Schelling: the government isn’t taking a decisive step, but laying the groundwork and leaving the outcome to chance, a strategy that also shields the administration from lawsuits it couldn’t otherwise avoid. “This is no longer rule of law; this is rule by law,” the student said, arguing officials now hold a stack of regulations they can apply selectively, whenever it serves them, “and as a consequence, schools are deterred.”

Simply put, the federal administration has threatened to decertify schools that fail to comply, but it is unclear which schools might actually face that risk. For institutions such as Davidson, the risk of being dragged into a fight with the government or having students’ visas revoked outright is the critical decision-making factor. Therefore, such institutions have largely complied.

This seems to have been the exact rationale for Davidson’s immediate compliance. As Director of International Student Engagement Angie Edwards, wrote to The Lux in an email, “We recognize that this is disappointing and disruptive, but our immediate concern is ensuring that students remain in compliance with their immigration status.”

Working on Solutions

Although some have assumed that there is little being done about the issue, The Lux’s investigations have found the opposite to be true. As Dr. Shelly Rigger, the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, wrote in an email response to The Lux, “Everyone in administration is working together to get the best outcome for students. There is robust collaboration and cooperation across the different divisions of the college.”

Representatives from DIA met with President Douglas Hicks on September 8th to discuss the response. Simnani wrote after the meeting, “It actually contradicted the initial assumption that little is being done. In fact, it has become clear that the faculty actually cares a lot (and inadvertently the administration) beyond just a utilitarian cost-benefit perspective!”

So what are some possible solutions to help navigate the new regulations? One solution being floated is a Student Government Association bill recommending the addition of one required experiential learning experience to Davidson’s graduation requirements. While the bill itself would be non-binding, the faculty and administration might use it to debate an actual requirement. This would affect all students on campus, regardless of citizenship.

Another solution would be the creation of interdisciplinary majors or minors that could be designed by students in a way such that an experiential learning opportunity becomes required for graduation. “So far Dr. [Britta] Crandall seems to be very positive, but I think the CIS [Center for Interdisciplinary Studies] is also very cautious because they don’t want to do something that makes it seem like they’re trying to break the rules,” Simnani said.

Other efforts have focused on making on-campus opportunities more accessible. “We are just starting these conversations [regarding on-campus opportunities], but I know faculty will create as many on-campus opportunities as they are able to support – as they do every year! I am confident of that because Davidson has a good record of attending to students’ need for summer experiences,” Dr. Rigger wrote to The Lux. DIA is also working with the newly created Martin Institute for Public Good to take advantage of opportunities created by the initiative. Moreover, in a September 13th meeting with the general international student body, DIA representatives stated that they are also looking at expanding opportunities through the Jay Hurt Hub.

Even so, there is a sentiment that these are as Simnani described: “like putting bandages on the students that are currently here.” Additionally, these proposals are presently speculative and being considered by the various bodies of the college administration.

Moving Forward While Facing the Consequences

The larger implications of the CPT policy have not been lost on students and faculty at Davidson. A faculty member described the current administration’s general policies as “anomalous” and said that the policy results in a “lose-lose” scenario. A student first-hand describes the effects: “I’ve already spoken to folks where I’m from, and they’re much more discouraged from studying here [the US]. I think that might be the point, the ideological result the administration is aiming for.”

There is also the important question of what those international students already here should do. As Simnani explained, “It’s a very difficult thing to process, just because students envision themselves doing that competitive investment banking internship or some engineering work for so long and now they can’t do it anymore. It has taken a toll on people’s mental health.”

Dr. Shelly Rigger wrote a message she wished to be included in full specifically regarding this question:

“I would recommend that all students — international and domestic — sit down with their advisors and mentors, including mentors in the Matthews Center, and have a deep conversation about their aspirations and life goals. What kind of person do you want to be? What problems are you hoping to solve? What kind of work environments appeal to you?

With those big questions in mind, students can talk to their advisors and mentors about the myriad opportunities Davidson offers for personal growth and learning, and how the full range of experiences can help students both build a resume and come to a better understanding of what they want out of life. Sometimes students get stuck on a relatively narrow path, thinking that’s the only thing that will get them where they want to go. I’m here to tell you: the world is bigger than you realize, and the narrow path is never the only one, and rarely the best one.”

Finally, there is increasing concern about how these policies affect free speech on campus. “There is a reason why I’m giving this interview anonymously. International students are scared out of their wits as of this moment to speak out in public. We need to be careful about our social media, what we speak, and who we speak it in front of” a student said.

Interviewees stated the need for unanimity: “Stay close to the international students, I suppose…this is a time for solidarity.” They also stated a need to be informed. “Honestly, the best thing I think any American student could do would be to remain informed and also just support international students.” Another emphasized, “Get to know the issue and speak up. We don’t have the First Amendment protecting us. You do. I understand the rational disincentive to not do anything about it. But this reflects a broader trend of crackdowns on the freedom of speech and expression across this country.”

Cooperation between the Davidson administration and the international student body is ongoing, but slow. The larger solutions, which are still only “bandages”, will have to go through the administrative process and could take semesters or even years. As the situation stands, Davidson international students are forced to sit with their hands tied as internship deadlines and their career prospects pass by.

It is our concerted opinion that the situationship is certifiably the worst social interaction to be engaged in.

Is this a bold claim that would not garner support from either the whole of the American population or the 2,000-strong student body at Davidson College? We do not think so. Half the country’s young adult population has admitted to entering situationships, with few of these actually converting into long-term affairs. We believe that long-term relationships are the most preferred for any human that rationally seeks to maximise their happiness, and thus opine that situationships are a bad way of optimising this.

Illustration from "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. With one hundred and twenty original illustrations by Walter Paget." London: Cassell & Co 1896. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Are statistics, our method of argument, and our underlying assumptions contestable? Sure they are. People don’t want to get into relationships due to a bevy of reasons, and they are the happier for it. But this article isn’t necessarily about — or for — such an uninteresting class of people. Instead, we are determined in determining why situationships are a nightmare for individuals who hope to see themselves in some semblance of a stable relationship, keeping personal experiences aside.

Specifically, we hope to apply formal frameworks to explain why the situationship is a harrowing experience that leads to the worst result possible for the unfortunate duo of individuals caught up in it. Significant interpersonal conflict, emotional distress, and social costs inflicted on the parties involved in this dyad characterise the dissolution of this equation due to structural reasons. By structural reasons, we imply that the situationship as a model is inherently incapable of resolving the incongruences that ultimately lead to the demise of the quasi-romantic dynamic between the involved parties.

To prove this argument, we — two romantically-pessimistic individuals — will draw upon two models from our respective fields of study, these being political science and physics. For the former, we introduce James Fearon’s bargaining theory of war; for the latter, we exercise the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

See below our respective arguments:

1. A.P. — Situationships and the Bargaining Theory of War

2. N.C. — Situationships and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Stanford professor James Fearon would have never imagined his theory being used for this. Fearon’s bargaining theory of war envisions a model that (a) involves two actors in an isolated equation; (b) treats war as the most disruptive outcome to said actors; and (c) understands war as the consequence of a failure to successfully reach an agreement. He attributes this outcome to three challenges:

1. Indivisibility — some things you just can’t bargain over.

2. Information asymmetry — or as we know and hate, different expectations.

3. Commitment issues — it’s literally termed “commitment issues” by Fearon.¹

From Fearon, James D. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 387. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706903.

We will now explain these challenges step-by-step to contend why situationships are structurally problematic relationships that suffer from a high chance of going up in flames.

Indivisibility and Situationships

This issue really doesn’t require a lot of explanation, does it? Disagreements over unbargainable issues that are “core” to your person, your existence, are the most definitive way of killing a social equation. If the person I am engaged in a situationship with does not appreciate essential aspects of my personality, (for example, my sarcasm) then we are going to have a problem.

It is, of course, important to note that this issue is the death of any social interaction, be it a situationship, a relationship, or a marriage. I will, however, use this to support the general applicability of this theory.

Information Asymmetry, Different Expectations

This is the oldest tale in the sorrowful ballad of the death of romance. Bargaining breaks down and results in conflict due to incomplete information available to the parties involved. This incomplete information is understood by Fearon as capabilities and resolve. Sounds familiar?

The problem with the situationship is that there is fog with respect to the emotional capacity and degree of resolve persons have when it comes to engaging in the social equation, with no mechanism to regulate it. There is no foundation to the bargaining process itself, which triggers an “unbounded conflict”, something that attacks the very sense of existence of the social interaction itself. If one were to combine this absence of a framework with a difference in expected outcomes (commitment versus fling) or capacity (generous versus parsimonious), what we have is not dialogue, but destruction.

This is the point that distinguishes this sort of an arrangement from an established one. The situationship, unlike a more settled relationship, does not even have clear agreement on the foundational concept of what the engagement between the parties actually is. While the settled relationship would undergo the same bargaining process entailing both fog and the social conflict, there would be no asymmetry as to what this arrangement actually is. This makes it easier for the parties involved to establish the terms and conditions of coexistence within the framework and also helps them regulate and even mitigate the fog that surrounds the challenges of resolve and emotional capabilities. The relationship, unlike its counterpart, does not flail around like a detached twig in the slightest of breeze as a result of “bounded conflict.”

Commitment Issues

The commitment issue in a situationship is a strange thing, for it is precisely here that these social arrangements are born and killed. The situationship, by design, is meant to leave things open, to avoid a case of commitment to something these parties would not want to be tied into for a long run for a host of reasons that I will not care to comment upon.

Given this, it is natural to expect situationship-ending dynamics to show up once there is enough conflict to drive an “exit” from the engagement. Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to expect the lack of commitment to the engagement as the reason behind the conflict itself. Of course, things would be different if there was a deliberate attempt by both parties to keep the engagement non-committed. But as the introduction to this discourse established, this article is not about such an unrealistically happy-go-lucky class of people. Instead, it is meant for realistic cases where at least one party in a situationship expects something different from the other or from the relationship itself, which becomes aggravated by its casual nature.

Conclusion

This assessment makes one case clear. Situationships suck. The social arrangement of romance hopes to maximise happiness and minimise pain. The situationship creates fertile grounds for the maximisation of pain and the minimisation of happiness and satisfaction in realistic circumstances.

This is, of course, not a deterministic approach, but one based in firm opinion, reasoned speculation, and a theory that is seminal to the approach of conflict in international relations. Nevertheless, if the readers of this work find that violence has been unjustly inflicted on the concept of non-committed romance or on their emotions, we offer two options. First, that you respond in comment or rebuttal. Second, you roll said discontent up and smoke it.

References:

1. From Fearon, James D. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379-414. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706903.

Illustration for Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” by Charles Edmund Brock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Indeterminate Feelings and Absolutely No Risk

When the term “situationship” was first introduced in 2009 by relationship and lifestyle blogger Demetria Lucas, the label was reserved for those who were in a “situation”, rather than a “relation”, where “casual sex led to confusion and emotional distress”. Since then, the term has come to serve as an iconic artifact of Gen Z’s struggle with long-accepted notions of dating standards and dating culture. Whether it’s the girl you keep making eye contact with in Libs, or that mysterious nerd in glasses who somehow always sits across you at Nummit, the situationship has widened its embrace to include nearly every relationship that would have previously been described as “it’s complicated.”

Given that Generation Z grew up with more social media access than any generation before, it is understandable that the “Anxious Generation” is also the most risk averse compared to any generation before. As studies and surveys show a reduction in risk taking — we drink less, drive less, and play less sports than our predecessors — it is no wonder that Gen Z are so enamored with the new label on the block. In a time where a failed pick-up line will crucify your Instagram handle through Close Friends stories and where asking “what are we” is like trying to defuse a bomb as a colorblind marine, it’s evidently hard to commit and just far easier to just stay in ambiguity.

As certified sexologist Myisha Battle wrote for TIME magazine, “Situationships aren’t for everyone, but they can be a way to give yourself more grace when searching for what you are looking for … While you both enjoy spending time together, learning more about each other, and continuing to define what you both want, you can experience intimacy that doesn’t need a reason.”

And yet, while there may indeed be plenty of utilitarian reasons to accept and even promote situationships — shared meals, shared occasions, and possibly even shared rent — it would be a harder leap of faith to assume that every participant in a situationship solely joins for the flexibility. To knowingly enter into a situationship with mere hopes of it magically growing into a relationship seems to ask of a situationship to provide both specificity and feelings — a proposition that my Relationship Postulate explains as being simply impossible in equally high amounts.

The Dynamics of Uncertainty: Physics’ Applications in Modeling Situationships

When German physicist Werver Heisenberg set out to publish his 1927 paper on quantum mechanics, he perhaps only sought to settle the “battle of opinions on the theory of continuums and discontinuums, corpuscles and waves.” In essence, Heisenberg was trying to bridge the gap between the work of James Maxwell and Albert Einstein. Little could he know, his groundbreaking work would be used nearly a century later to model something far more complex than quantum mechanics: the 21st century idea of the “situationship.” An impossible enigma, but with Heisenberg’s model, I may just be able to resolve the ‘battles of opinion’ surrounding “situationships” that have embroiled our generation’s dating discourse.

The Love Postulate to the Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle

What the love-blinded romantic misses, the jaded poet remembers. And where the glazy-eyed physics student has zoned out, the professor will continue on teaching. Mathematically, the Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle relates the confidence of a particle’s position and a the confidence of a particle’s momentum (that is, the velocity times its mass) to a reduced form of Planck’s constant (ħ = h/2π, or 1.05410-34 J s) such that the certainty of a particle’s position and momentum are inversely related. In other words, the more sure we are of a particle’s position, the less we are sure of its simultaneous velocity. Note that since a particle’s mass is constant, velocity and momentum are directly correlated and effectively interchangeable for the purposes of this article.

One may now see how this mathematical relation applies to a term as nebulous, as indeterminate as a situationship: just as position and velocity are properties of a particle, so too are specificity and feelings critical properties of any relationship. That inverse correlation — where an increase in specificity translates into a decrease in feelings, and vice versa — maps specifically onto situationships. With regards to particle physics, Heisenberg postulates that this basic uncertainty is more than simply a mathematical connection, but also an inescapable, intrinsic fact about particles and their existence. As I will later define, uncertainty also exists as a foundational part of what makes a situationship a situationship.

Conclusion: Intrinsically Uncertain, Certainly Inadvisable

In all the ways that romantic and sexual relationships offer security and comfort through consistency and predictability, situationships, definitionally and intrinsically, cannot offer the same. Any attempt to ascertain such predictability from a situation are therefore made in vain. If the fundamental machinery of the situationship is already biased towards uncertainty, then the whole ideology of the situationship is flawed. No matter how hard one tries, one cannot make a situationship certain when the situationship itself was founded on uncertainty as its originating ideal.

When viewed through the proposed physical model, situationships are a horrible deal, exchanging both clarity and maturity of feelings for short-term intimacy and little chance of escaping the dynamics of uncertainty. It is my opinion that situationships are never advisable to enter if one hopes to establish a defined relationship later on with the same person. While the heart may certainly argue that any intimacy is sufficient for the moment, it is the mind that must understand the terms and conditions of such cheapness.

While most students were away from campus on summer break, their polling place was quietly removed as part of a concerted effort to suppress student participation in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. Davidson is just one on a list of North Carolina schools facing similar treatment.

Just a half mile walk away, across campus and down Main Street, the Davidson Town Hall has served as a convenient voting site for as long as almost all students have been here. Though it remains available on Election Day, November 3rd, the closest early voting site for Davidson residents and students will be Cornelius Town Hall, entailing an unpleasant forty-five-minute walk down Main Street.

But it’s not just Davidson students: according to the College Democrats of North Carolina (CDNC), 21 of the 30 NC colleges and universities they track have early voting sites a mile or more away, with 13 of those being over 1.5 miles away, a distance which CDNC president Beck Whitehead described as simply an “unrealistic” walk for most. These include some of NC’s largest schools such as NC State, UNC Charlotte, and NC A&T, the nation’s largest historically black university.

Whitehead, an NC State student, describes his school’s voting site transition: “To see it get moved from our student union really to anywhere farther away is really upsetting [...] [I walked] to the new site to see how far it was, and it was about a 20-to-30-minute walk across a four-lane major highway.” He stressed that the old site garnered a campus culture of voting participation and that the new site would likely deter many student-voters.

Student action has not been fruitless, however, in fighting this suppression. Preceding the primary elections earlier this year, the Jackson County Board of Elections removed Western Carolina University’s early voting site. What remained was a 1.5-mile walk down a four-lane highway with no sidewalks or guardrails, and a site which according to WCU student and voting advocate Seth Digh, had “very limited parking” and couldn’t “handle the number of anticipated voters.”

Digh and other advocates raised awareness through social media posts and by organizing a march to the polls on February 13th. The march, including over eighty community members, showcased the dangerous walk and the ineffectiveness of the new voting site.

This past July, NC Local uncovered texts of Dallas Woodward, former Executive Director of the North Carolina Republican Party, texting the Jackson County Board of Elections (JCBOE) chair, “Don’t let them have a vote,” referring to WCU students. At the time, Woodward worked for Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek, who was given power in 2024 to control election boards in the state by NC’s Republican-controlled legislature.

What started as a more liberal movement in the form of the poll march turned into a bipartisan student initiative over the summer to restore voting access to WCU for the general election, with both partisan campus organizations issuing a joint statement to the State Board of Elections. With the help of Republican JCBOE member Jay Pavey, who broke with his party, WCU was given a new site which Digh described as “a compromise that I’m totally fine with.”

Whitehead commended Digh and WCU’s students: “It was much more openly bipartisan. And I think that’s why they got a voting site back. [...] They did a better job of being vocal, being visible, and being bipartisan. And that’s definitely a lesson [the CDNC] can learn.”

Early voting is convenient for the college student’s busy schedule, and, unlike normal Election Day, allows same-day voter registration. This means that it’s easier to vote for the first time, as many college students do, and that any problem with an existing registration can be solved by quickly re-registering. Without convenient early voting sites, many simply don’t bother, and those who do must choose between traveling further or risking their votes’ security.

As Davidson moves into early voting next month, campus political organizations and students should be careful to stay informed, plan ahead, and help each other get registered and get transportation. As Digh stated in a recent speech at a voters’ rally in Raleigh, “We will not walk on the side of the highway alone.”

In an article published by the Washington Forum on India some time ago, Raviya Suri argued for a shift in the Indian nuclear doctrine from a position of “No First Use” — which implies the non-employment of nuclear weapons for preempting a conflict, or the elimination of the opposing number’s nuclear arsenal in what has been termed as a “splendid first strike”¹ — to a doctrine of strategic ambiguity, where India makes no promises of no first use in the national interest. The author, in their argument, framed the national interest served through the strengthening of deterrence. In their submission, Suri highlighted what they called “flaws” in India’s bid of deterring Pakistani aggression through sub-conventional warfare techniques.²

Such a policy change, however, warrants scrutiny. I argue that the adoption of this proposal, with the objective of deterring Pakistan’s sponsorship of sub-conventional warfare in places like Jammu and Kashmir, is disproportionate and unlikely to be successful. I make this claim by giving cognisance to the incredibility of a nuclear threat issued by New Delhi to stop insurgent attacks in a localised region. Given the fragility that characterizes Indo-Pakistani crisis stability and the present posturing of both India and Pakistan’s nuclear forces, I also argue that an Indian shift of nuclear doctrine to a position of strategic ambiguity compounds the risk of a nuclear exchange between the two countries in the next crisis they engage in. I make this claim by drawing attention to Pakistan’s understanding of its security environment and its nuclear arsenal as the lynchpin of its defence. As a result, I will highlight in the conclusion of this article that a shift from the NFU is not just ineffective, but also morally irresponsible given the millions of lives it would put at risk.

This essay will thus proceed in the following manner. First, it will describe the Indian nuclear arsenal in order to highlight its purpose, which is the sole deterrence of the enemy employment of weapons of mass destruction. Second, it will distinguish between Indian nuclear doctrine and nuclear posture to claim that the country’s conventional forces do not seem to be as restrained as New Delhi claims them to be. Third, it will analyse Pakistan’s understanding of its security environment to highlight what it is trying to deter through its nuclear arsenal. In this vein, it will also describe the state of Pakistan’s nuclear forces and contend why an Indian shift to an ambiguous position risks making the case of either increased nuclear brinksmanship or that of “use it or lose it” for Pakistan through the mechanism of the security dilemma.

A Note on the Indian Nuclear Arsenal

Before making an argument on the subject of the Indian nuclear arsenal, I believe it important to establish the objective that underlies this body of weaponry. India’s nuclear doctrine, adopted in 2003, explicitly assigns no warfighting capability to the country’s nuclear capabilities, and instead deems them only deterrent value. As its first formulation in 1998 put it, “The fundamental purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to deter the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons by any State or entity against India and its forces. India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail.”³

There is a wealth of scholarship present on the subject of India’s doctrinal positioning on nuclear weapons, much of which is indicative of the country’s explicit refusal to employ nuclear weapons first in the event of an exchange with a Nuclear Weapons State (NWS).⁴ In a similar vein, its nuclear arsenal has never been prepared in a manner such that its weapons could have battlefield employability.⁵ As Gen. V.P. Malik, the Indian Chief of Army Staff, said after Operation Shakti in 1998, “Nuclear weapons are not military weapons. So the first thing I’d like you to notice is that these are political weapons and they must be viewed as such, they are today weapons to deter others from using this weapon—those who have it.”⁶

Indian Agni-V ICBM. Courtesy of Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Earlier examinations of India’s nuclear posture indicate that such an arrangement has been rejected by the Indian political class and its defence establishment out of three separate considerations. First, which Suri endorses, is that India would claim the higher ground of morality as opposed to Pakistan with its Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) doctrine out of sheer ideological exceptionalism.⁷ Second, because India’s civilian dominance over defence matters has precluded the military’s custodianship over pre-mated nuclear weaponry, meaning that the arsenal’s warheads are separated from their delivery mechanisms and can only be authorised under the express command of the Strategic Forces Command’s Political Council, which is chaired by the Prime Minister.⁸ Third, that India’s conventional military dominance over Pakistan, combined with its ability to conduct a “defence-in-depth” conventional strategy against China in the event of a conflict, makes a first-use doctrine to ensure Indian survival redundant.⁹ Consequently, the country’s security environment does not indicate the need for an asymmetric escalation posture that follows the “escalate-to-deescalate” doctrine adopted by the likes of Pakistan, France, or as Suri indicates, Russia.

Why Indian Offensive Nuclear Threats are Unlikely to Succeed

For the purposes of this essay, we now focus specifically on the third point here. India, with its conventional military forces, does not need an asymmetric escalation posture to offset conventional existential threats from its neighbours. Does it need one to compel the cessation of sub-conventional warfare in places like Jammu and Kashmir? The answer here is no, for the threat of a first nuclear strike to deter support for insurgent attacks is inherently incredible. As Schelling put it, the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons separate them from other classes of conventional weaponry, which can be extrapolated to consider their use for offensive purposes unique, and often without credibility.¹⁰ Backing this, work by Sechser and Fuhrmann on the incredibility of offensive nuclear weapons indicates that an offensive nuclear threat issued by India against Pakistan is unlikely to work seeing the balance of power between them. Specifically, we must consider the fact that India has superiority in terms of conventional military forces prepared under the Cold Start Doctrine to threaten Pakistan with a “penetrate-and-hold” attack, thus not necessitating nuclear weapons usage. Similarly, Downes and Glaser pin down the effectiveness of an offensive nuclear threat to six factors, the most important ones for us being the relative interests of the compeller; the conventional military balance between the compeller and the target state; and the strength of norms that constrain the compeller’s use of nuclear weapons.¹¹ India suffers on all three fronts: its relative interest with respect to Pakistan’s is not so extraordinary that it would constitute an existential threat, it has the conventional advantage against Pakistan (as was previously mentioned); and the consistent assertions on nuclear weapons only having political value by military officials, civilian policymakers, and political leaders makes it harder to believe a compellent nuclear threat. Consequently, a simple shift in doctrine towards indicating a nuclear response, or “leaving it to chance,” will probably have little chance at compelling anything whatsoever.

Indian Nuclear Doctrine and Posture: a Dangerous Divergence

Suri’s description of Indian nuclear strategy does not give much consideration to its force posture.¹² Scholarship points towards divergence. India’s nuclear arsenal has been configured in such a way that its ability to attempt a “splendid first strike” becomes an inescapable issue. This we understand through four elements. First is the country’s implementation of Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) — a classic component of a counterforce doctrine given their efficiency at destroying multiple targets while simultaneously making it harder for Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) systems to track and defend against them¹³ — on both its land and sea-based ballistic missiles.¹⁴

Second is the fact that the revolution in reconnaissance technology has reached India, meaning that the country has meaningfully improved its Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in a way that has become evident to Pakistani observers. A counterforce strategy requires that the engaging state be able to target and kill most of its enemies’ strategic military assets in its attacks. India today possesses one of the largest remote sensing and communication satellite systems in the world, which can be easily modified for dual-use functions. Its RISAT and CARTOSAT systems, for example, become critical as they are able to produce high-quality images that are critical for identifying strategic assets.¹⁵

Third, we must note that India, with the development of the sea-based leg of its nuclear triad, can no longer keep all of its weapons in a strictly disassembled state under civilian custody. The development of “canesterised” weapons — pre-mated weapons sealed in the Vertical Launching Systems (VLS) of its Arihant-class submarines — and their active deployment in a bid to reach a Continuous-At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) stage not only raises new challenges for assertive civilian command-and-control over the weapons, but also raises questions of how consistent the country’s posturing is with its idea of “responsible” no-first use.¹⁶

Fourth, that the Indian military (specifically the Indian Air Force), by recognising the dual-use status of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear systems such as the Nas’r missile systems, does not intend to ask for pre-clearance from PMO before targeting them for destruction. As Vipin Narang wrote:

“In discussions with retired Indian Army and Air Force officers, it has become clear that in a conventional conflict with Pakistan or China, India’s conventional operators consider any fixed nuclear target or any mobile missile launcher, in the field or on a base, as legitimate targets which they could strike without prior political clearance. In both cases, India’s Air Force or Army may not be able to, or may not care to, determine whether the systems they are targeting are nuclear or conventional. Indeed, some have gone so far as to say that they intend to degrade the adversary’s nuclear systems at the outset of a conventional conflict, and that this strategy would not otherwise require political authorization, despite the enormous strategic consequences.”¹⁷

Consequently, potential future conflict between India and Pakistan — which is not unlikely seeing recent attempts by the former to carve space to wage conventional operations against the latter — could escalate to an extent such that dual-use assets such as low-yield Tactical Nuclear Weapon (TNW)-carrying Transporter-Erector-Launchers (TELs) are targeted through conventional military means, either unintentionally or intentionally to reduce its nuclear warfighting capabilities.¹⁸

What this description about India’s nuclear posture reveals is that there exists, or appears to exist, a divergence between India’s simplified nuclear doctrine of strict no first use and its actual operational posture, which is potentially aggressive, evolving, and risks triggering misperceptions in Rawalpindi that New Delhi possesses counterforce ambitions. This dynamic is deadly, and as the next section of this essay will argue, risks unleashing forces of nuclear brinksmanship that neither of these countries will be able to control, thus causing catastrophe.

Pakistani Nuclear Doctrine and Posture

Thinking about Pakistan’s perception of the divergence of Indian nuclear doctrine and posture warrants consideration of its own strategic and operational policies on the handling and employment of nuclear weapons. As Suri themselves identify, Pakistan’s Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) doctrine aims to explicitly offset India’s conventional superiority by producing nuclear systems with battlefield utility, releasing these to the military’s custody without civilian oversight, reserving the right to a nuclear first strike as and when it sees fit, and explicitly declaring their use to be legitimate in order to deter conventional aggression from India. As Lt. Gen. Kidwai, former commander of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, said:

“Nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India. In case that deterrence fails, they will be used if:

1. India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory (space threshold);

2. India destroys a large part either of its land or air forces (military threshold);

3. India proceeds to the economic strangling of Pakistan (economic strangling);

4. India pushes Pakistan into political destabilization or creates a large-scale internal subversion in Pakistan (domestic destabilization).”¹⁹

Pakistan’s nuclear posture, unlike India’s, maintains close symmetry with its declared strategy, and maintains credibility (at least on the first and second thresholds Kidwai lays out). As scholarship indicates, Pakistan possesses a multitude of battlefield nuclear weapons under military custody that can be deployed on TELs and launched in short order.²⁰ Analyses also show that Pakistan has also had a history of positioning TNW batteries on the Indo-Pakistani border during times of crisis in order to deter — or respond to should deterrence fail— an Indian conventional response.²¹ This essay will not comment at length on Pakistan’s present development of its own nuclear triad to increase the survivability of its arsenal, but will only argue that it sees its nuclear forces as the lynchpin of its defence against India and deems it paramount importance for its own survival, especially given its lack of geographical depth.²² Even in the event that deterrence does fail and India does deploy ground troops, some Pakistani military thinkers genuinely believe that they can get away with a TNW strike against India.²³ After all, can a country that has promised nuclear restraint credibly commit to killing millions of its neighbour’s civilians alongside risking the lives of its own citizens due to nuclear fallout in the event that a nuclear strike occurs against its forces as they are advancing into enemy territory, on the enemy’s own soil? These are considerations that were not addressed by Suri in their article and warrant some consideration.

A Deadly “Agree-to-Disagree” Dynamic

Our discussion brings us to another question. Is the Pakistani nuclear strategy an effective one? There is a difference in opinion here between the Indian and Pakistani defence establishments. Looking back at the war between the two countries in May last year, one could argue that Pakistani deterrence worked against India last year seeing how military operations were largely limited to aerial warfare and rocket bombardment and did not involve the deployment of land forces.²⁴ One could, however, also argue that deterrence did not hold given that Pakistan could not stop India from striking military infrastructure, including an air base that was only a mile away from Pakistan’s Strategic Plan Division headquarters (which manages its nuclear arsenal). India’s defence community, in the follow up of this aftermath, has argued consistently that the Pakistani nuclear deterrent is not a credible one.²⁵ This gives India an incentive to test and push the limits of the deterrent. Experts are thus concerned that the next confrontation between these countries may involve India engaging in a land incursion into Pakistani territory in accordance with the CSD’s “penetrate-and-hold” strategy.²⁶

Given this difference of understanding, I also propose a thought experiment. How would Pakistan react to a hostile NWS against which it has lost four wars, has only been recently engaged in a skirmish that did not turn out to be an existential crisis because of its nuclear arsenal, and currently sees preparing for what appears to be a “penetrate-and-hold” attack that can only be deterred by this strategic force?²⁷ Furthermore, what would it make of a situation wherein it sees the Indian nuclear force turning towards a preemptive counterforce tendency, with a doctrine that indicates otherwise? This is the groundwork of the aforementioned catastrophe.

Preparing for the Worse Makes for the Worse: a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Even in a scenario where India does not intend to launch a “splendid first strike” against Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to follow it up with a penetrative ground assault, the mere perception — or misperception — of this could drive Pakistan to take drastic steps to increase the survivability of its nuclear weapons and engage in nuclear brinksmanship in a bid to deter Indian aggression. Scholarship has argued in favour of this claim: militaries are more likely to assume the worst in a crisis, prefer aggressive strategies that retain the initiative, and underestimate the probability of nuclear accidents or unauthorised use.²⁸ Consequently, there is a probable risk for us to consider that Pakistan would delegate launch authority to local TNW commanders in the field in the event of a crisis where there is an apparent risk of a decapitation strike through the destruction of Nuclear Command, Control, and Coordination (NC3) structures.

Scholars such as Vipin Narang have also highlighted the fact that Pakistan has weak negative controls that prevent the use of nuclear weapons, alongside strong positive controls that permit the rapid deployment of its nuclear assets in the event of a crisis with India where the risk of a communications breakdown with NC3 structures is plausible.²⁹ Unlike India with its assertive civilian control over its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan’s civil-military arrangement negates any scenario where the civilian government could rein in the military’s temptations to act aggressively in a crisis. Consequently, the risk of either a local theatre commander or a battery commander taking the initiative to launch a nuclear strike on their own accord is significant and risks aggravation.

Worst Case Scenario: “use-it-or-lose-it”

Having established the risk of nuclear escalation by accident, it is also pertinent for us to consider the possibilities of a nuclear exchange even if the SPD maintained sufficient control over its nuclear arsenal in a crisis. In a scenario where India possesses its current nuclear posturing and the doctrine Suri recommends, Pakistan will find itself stuck in a dilemma where it faces a threat of an Indian preemptive counterforce attack that uses both conventional and nuclear capabilities to knock out its deterrent. What can Pakistan be expected to do here?

Under such a circumstance, scholars Vipin Narang and Christopher Clary argue that Pakistan will face a “use-it-or-lose-it” situation where it is forced to strike first by launching its assets at the risk of complete — or significant — disarmament.³⁰ Such a crisis scenario, as seen in Threlkeld’s modelling of an escalated Indo-Pakistani conflict following the war in May last year, is probable, thus making the next crisis not a question of “if” but of “when.”³¹ Implementing a policy like the one Suri recommends, or worse, maintaining the present course of divergence between Indian nuclear doctrine and posture is thus an invitation for a nuclear exchange in South Asia, thus resulting in the reduction of this region to a wasteland.

What does India Need?

As of this moment, what India needs is a serious assessment of the objective of the nuclear arsenal, and more specifically, the limits of the innovation of its nuclear deterrent in relation with Pakistan. India needs to realise that the only feasible option it has that will not trigger a nuclear exchange is a doctrine of No First Use that holds consistency with its posture. Given Pakistan’s sensitivity to the technological and doctrinal shifts of its adversary that may have a bearing on the survival of its nuclear deterrent, India also needs to practice a policy of restraint that does not involve the exercise of conventional violence against Pakistan due to the disproportionate damage it risks incurring as a result of this policy of cost imposition. Other avenues, economic and diplomatic, would have to be explored in order to impose compellence on Pakistan to shut down its support for proxies in the country. So far as the nuclear option is concerned, this needs to be abandoned for strategic and moral considerations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay has attempted to substantiate the claims it made in its introduction. It argues the futility of an Indian doctrinal shift towards an ambiguous doctrine; describes both Indian doctrine and posture to show that these diverge significantly; analyses Pakistan’s security environment to indicate the criticality of the nuclear arsenal to its defence and the figurative mountain of dynamite it sits on; and demonstrates how this is liable to go off even without a change in the nuclear doctrine due to existing dynamics and postures. It further determines that if left unchanged, Indo-Pakistani relations are bound to spiral into a conflict, which is more than likely to go nuclear. Consequently, a failure to act in favour of restraint is just as irresponsible as, if not more than, bullish action towards aggression due to the millions of human lives — regardless of nationality — it would put at stake.

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Citations

1. Clary, Christopher, and Vipin Narang. “India’s Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities.” International Security 43, no. 3 (February 2019): 7-52. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00340.

2. Suri, Raviya. “Doctrine of Diminishing Returns: Reevaluating India’s No First Use Nuclear Doctrine.” Patrika Journal of International Affairs Volume 1, Issue 1 (July 2026). https://heyzine.com/flip-book/a22ab9d9bc.html.

3. ‘India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine | Arms Control Association’. Accessed 30 August 2026. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1999-07/indias-draft-nuclear-doctrine.

4. See Narang, Vipin. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wq00j.8.; Narang, Vipin. ‘India’s Nuclear Strategy Twenty Years Later: From Reluctance to Maturation’. India Review 17, no. 1 (2018): 159–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2018.1415289; Tellis, Ashley J. India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal. 2001. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1127.html; Basrur, Rajesh. Indian Nuclear Policy: A Neoclassical Realist Analysis. Studies in Indian Politics, (2025) 13(1), 127-139. https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230251324720; Sagan, Scott D. 2009. Inside Nuclear South Asia. Stanford Security Studies. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804772419.

5. Narang, Vipin. “India.” In Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wq00j.8.

6. ‘Countdown Interviews- General V. P. Malik: 1 – Amitav Ghosh’. Accessed 30 August 2026. https://amitavghosh.com/countdown-interviews-general-v-p-malik-1/.

7. Sagan, Scott Douglas. 2009. Inside Nuclear South Asia. Stanford Security Studies. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804772419.

8. The country’s strong civilian control over military and nuclear resources has been termed as a “Super-PAL” by Ashley Tellis. See Tellis, Ashley J. India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal. 2001. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1127.html.

9. Narang, Vipin. “India.” In Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wq00j.8.

10. Here, we treat an ambiguous nuclear doctrine aimed towards Pakistan as “offensive” because of the desired effects of such. The idea is to posture such that an insurgent attack will trigger a nuclear response that would count as a first in what could potentially be responded to by Pakistan as a second-strike. Given that the Indian punch would be threatened as a first in a nuclear capacity, we treat the threat of such a strike as “compelling” and not “deterring” in a nuclear sense of speaking. As Schelling argues in Arms and Influence, the idea behind compellence is to assure automatic, unbearable punishment which cannot be voluntarily stopped but will autonomously restrain itself if the compeller’s demands are met by the target state. See Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence. Yale University Press, 1966. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vm52s.

11. For reference, the six factors thus identified by Downes and Glaser are the nuclear balance; the compeller’s nuclear vulnerability; the relative interests of the compeller and the target; the size of the compeller’s absolute interests; the extent to which the compeller is constrained by norms against the use of nuclear weapons; and the conventional military balance. See Downes, Alexander B., and Charles L. Glaser. ‘Revisiting the Effectiveness of Nuclear Compellent Threats’. Security Studies 35, no. 2 (2026): 409–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2026.2676118.

12. Force posture, as defined by the Department of Defence, is “the overall military disposition, strength, and condition of readiness of a military.” See Khan, Nasim Abbas. ‘Force Posturing and the Contemporary Security Environment: Options for Industrially Depend’. Air University (AU), 22 June 2020. https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Articles/Article-Display/Article/2226481/force-posturing-and-the-contemporary-security-environment-options-for-industria/.

13. ‘The Second Coming of MIRVs - Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’. Accessed 29 August 2026. https://armscontrolcenter.org/the-second-coming-of-mirvs/.

14. See work done on the study of India’s MIRVing of its land-based Agni-V ICBMs and sea-based K-15 SLBMs. See Diaz-Maurin, François. ‘What India’s MIRV Test Adds to the “Strategic Trilemma” in South Asia’. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 3 May 2024. https://thebulletin.org/2024/05/what-indias-mirv-test-adds-to-the-strategic-trilemma-in-south-asia/.

15. Shah, Akash. ‘Deterrence under Surveillance: Indian Space-Based ISR Capabilities and Pakistan’s Nuclear Deterrence’. Journal of Security & Strategic Analyses 8, no. 2 (2023): 07–26. https://doi.org/10.57169/jssa.008.02.0201.

16. Narang, Vipin. ‘India’s Nuclear Strategy Twenty Years Later: From Reluctance to Maturation’. India Review 17, no. 1 (2018): 159–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2018.1415289.

17. Narang, Vipin. ‘Five Myths about India’s Nuclear Posture’. The Washington Quarterly 36, no. 3 (2013): 143–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2013.825555.

18. For further work done on Indo-Pakistani crisis stability and the risk of the next conflict between these states escalating to the nuclear level, see Threlkeld, Elizabeth. ‘Why the Next India-Pakistan War Will Escalate’. Foreign Affairs, 4 May 2026. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/why-next-india-pakistan-war-will-escalate.

19. Lavoy, Peter. Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture: Security and Survivability – NPEC. 21 January 2007. https://npolicy.org/pakistans-nuclear-posture-security-and-survivability/.

20. See Tasleem, Sadia. Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine. 30 June 2016. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2016/06/pakistans-nuclear-use-doctrine; ‘Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons Are Downright Terrifying - The National Interest’. Accessed 3 September 2026. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/pakistans-tactical-nuclear-weapons-are-downright-terrifying-179247.

21. “Understanding Pakistan’s Zero-Range Nuclear Strategy.” CAPSS India, 18 August 2023. https://capssindia.org/understanding-pakistans-zero-range-nuclear-strategy/.

22. Ahmed, Mansoor. Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Their Impact on Stability. 30 June 2016. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2016/06/pakistans-tactical-nuclear-weapons-and-their-impact-on-stability.

23. Kidwai, Khalid, and Peter Lavoy. “A Conversation with General Khalid Kidwai”. n.d. https://carnegieendowment.org/files/03-230315carnegieKIDWAI.pdf

24. It can be argued here that land forces are a different class of deployment from the usage of airpower altogether seeing the threat of occupation they would impose on the target state and the amount of commitment they would require from the compeller, both of which are precluded through the sole use of airpower. For further reference, see Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence. Yale University Press, 1966. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vm52s.

25. India’s history of engaging in a “cost-imposition” strategy, which started with cross-border commando raids and the one-off bombardment of Balakot, has escalated to a much more drawn-out conflict which involved the usage of conventional force by both these states over a period of four days. One could consequently argue that India is engaging in what Schelling has termed “salami tactics” to test the Pakistani nuclear threshold and carve out some space to prosecute warfare by incrementally scaling the escalation ladder.

26. Kishore, Siddhant. ‘The Illusion of Deterrence: Why India Isn’t Buying Pakistan’s Nuclear Threats’. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 29 November 2025. https://thebulletin.org/2025/11/the-illusion-of-deterrence-why-india-isnt-buying-pakistans-nuclear-threats/.

27. The idea of India implementing the CSD is not an illusion. The country has, for example, only recently authorised the creation of Integrated Battle Groups which constitute a critical aspect of this doctrine. See Khan, Abdul M. and Usman Haider. “What India’s Operation­alization of Integrated Battle Groups Means for Pakistan.” The Diplomat. 17 July 2026 Accessed 4 September 2026. https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/what-indias-operationalization-of-integrated-battle-groups-means-for-pakistan/.

28. For reference, see Posen, Barry R. The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars. Cornell University Press, 1984; Sagan, Scott D. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Vol. 53. Princeton University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvzsmf8r. For a more narrative-based account on the risks of NC3 and the military’s prioritisation of effectiveness over safety, see Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013.

29. Narang, Vipin. “Pakistan.” In Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wq00j.8.

30. Even partial degradation of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent should be a pressing concern for the country, given India’s development of its Ballistic Missile Defence program. See Clary, Christopher, and Vipin Narang. “India’s Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities.” International Security 43, no. 3 (February 2019): 7-52. https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00340.

31. Threlkeld, Elizabeth. ‘Why the Next India-Pakistan War Will Escalate’. Foreign Affairs, 4 May 2026. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/why-next-india-pakistan-war-will-escalate.

A year ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its annual report, giving Davidson College a D- for campus freedom of speech. FIRE’s 2025 rankings included over 250 colleges and universities, building cases for each institution through student surveys, campus policies, and speech-related controversies.

While Davidson scored relatively well in preventing “disruptive conduct,” the school scored far lower in “comfort expressing ideas” – 198th out of 257. This was consistent with a campus-wide trend towards self-censorship: 41% of Davidson survey respondents said they had self-censored on campus at least once a month in the past year.

FIRE is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights, though it has received criticism in recent years for taking partial and biased stances on hot-button issues. The organization rebuts this, emphasizing that defending the First Amendment means protecting speech consistently across the entire political spectrum, regardless of the shifting political landscape.

On Wednesday morning, FIRE released its report for the 2026 academic year, and out of the 261 colleges and universities reviewed, Davidson ranked 63 – a 15-spot jump in the national rankings, and a 3.3-point increase that raised the college from a D- to a D in free speech.

In the report last year, Davidson’s administration was criticized for encroaching on students’ First Amendment rights, after the school charged its Young America’s Foundation (YAF) chapter – which supports conservative students’ projects through external funding – with harassment for handing out pro-Israel pamphlets. FIRE cited the incident as an example of the college overstepping on campus speech, contributing to a polarized environment.

This year, Davidson College improved in nearly every category on the FIRE report. The 3.3-point increase, along with the jump from a D to a D+ in the “Comfort Expressing Ideas” sub-category, indicates major growth in how the college actively protects students’ First Amendment rights.

President Doug Hicks ‘90 credited part of this increase to the recent establishment of the D.G. and Harriet Wall Martin Institute for Public Good, announced in February 2026. “Last month, Davidson hosted representatives from 24 schools in the first cohort of the Deliberative Citizenship Network, a new national initiative led by Davidson,” wrote Hicks in his statement to The Davidson Lux.

Hicks also pointed to Davidson’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression as a driving force in the school’s improved FIRE score. In its reports, FIRE considers whether the academic institution under review has adopted The Chicago Statement for Free Speech, a document which guarantees “all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.” Davidson College’s own commitment, modeled after the University of Chicago’s, asserts that the school’s “fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate, discussion and deliberation may not be suppressed.” While the statement itself is not a recent implementation, the administration’s recent push to actively uphold the statement’s values – through endorsing dialogue initiatives across campus – likely helped drive the improvement in both the national ranking and the Administrative Support category.

Still, FIRE’s report suggests Davidson’s progress is ongoing: the college has made clear improvements in the past year, but continues to struggle to protect its students’ First Amendment rights when case-by-case situations arise. Along with adopting an official policy of Institutional Neutrality, FIRE advises that “Davidson should respond clearly and forcefully whenever censorship occurs or is demanded” to demonstrate its commitment to free speech.

From the Waves III sculpture featuring a multitude of world languages near Chambers to the OLAS/PASA House on Patterson Court, international representation on Davidson College campus is apparent to the naked eye. Boasting over 15 culture and ethnic clubs on campus as well as providing study abroad opportunities through the Dean Rusk International Studies Program, Davidson clearly advertises and utilizes its international connections and student body to the benefit of itself and its students.

With all of these facts in mind, international applicants to Davidson might then readily conclude that the College would support them in any way possible. When push comes to shove, however, Davidson’s current administrative actions suggest the opposite.

One in ten Davidson students are international students, having arrived on an F-1 visa specifically designed to grant academic students temporary status in the United States. That visa carries with it strict restrictions, including not being able to work for any form of compensation outside of two specific authorizations: the Optional Practical Training authorization (OPT), and the Curricular Practical Training authorization (CPT). OPT authorizes F-1 visa holders to work in the United States for an additional 12 months after graduation, while CPT authorizes F-1 students to engage in work-adjacent experiences “that [are] an integral part of an established curriculum.”

At Davidson, CPT authorizations allowed international students to gain work experience through internships, fellowships, and summer jobs, experience that kept Davidson graduates competitive with students from other top universities. Davidson's website advertises that same competitiveness, boasting a 72% participation rate in research or internships. Now those opportunities have been curtailed for international students, and all previously authorized cases have been retroactively rescinded.

On August 12, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) released a broadcast message reminding school officials that they are personally liable when they approve I-20 documents for international students. Within 24 hours, Davidson College and the University of California, Berkeley were the first to pause all CPT authorizations. Two weeks and a second broadcast later, more than 100 universities and liberal arts colleges have followed by pausing or tightening CPT authorizations.

Beyond merely pausing CPT, however, Davidson went on to cancel existing CPT authorizations for the fall 2026 semester, a step few other institutions have taken. Given the second broadcast message, which clarified the regulatory definition of "integral to education" under CPT regulations, the timeline for formally updating College policy on experiential learning credits for experiences that require CPT is unclear.

Under previous administrations, the requirement that CPT be an "integral part of an established curriculum" was broadly interpreted to be satisfied when a work experience granted academic credit through an established part of the curriculum. Davidson's version of that was XPL199, a class described in its course description as "[enabling] students to engage in personal, professional, cultural and academically relevant experiences for academic credit."

These broadcasts may have achieved their intended purpose: pushing schools into a legal retreat from their previous positions on CPT authorizations. Read in the context of the Department of Homeland Security's earlier attempt to revoke Harvard's SEVP certification (the authorization that allows institutions to enroll international students), the move seems designed to give the Justice Department a new vector of attack against institutions of higher education. Given Project 2025's education reform goals, further restricting F-1 visas would also help stem the flow of H-1B workers, many of whom change status from F-1 visas.

So where, then, is the institutional outcry against this new restrictive interpretation? It appears that institutions of higher education, including Davidson, are more concerned with their legal well-being than with the academic and career prospects of their international students, choosing to stay out of this fight and keep their heads down rather than stand up for their international communities.

Sure, when Davidson College was under threat of seeing its endowment tax increase from 1.4% to 7%, we saw lobbyists jump into overtime to carve out an enrollment-size exception of 5,000 students, under which Davidson and other colleges wouldn't have to pay any additional tax. We even saw the College play its trump card: a message of support from President Doug Hicks.

And yet, for the student body on campus? Not a word, outside of privately circulated memos detailing how every international student's plans to gain work experience would be cut. In a time when words are cheap, not even a peep out of the administration says volumes about where its priorities lie. Where numerous other schools have released publicly available updates on their respective office websites, Davidson has stayed radio silent, risking uninformed decision-making by both current students and prospective applicants.

As it appears, one of President Hick’s favorite ways to praise the College is to compare it to its peers and conclude that we as an institution stand head and shoulders above the rest.

And yet where Skidmore College, Grinnell College, and Hamilton College — all comparable colleges in their own right — have each released public notices on their webpages, Davidson has not.

While there is neither question about the generosity of our alums, nor the strength of our academics, there are many as to the quality of Davidson’s so-called ‘leadership’ in the public space. Leadership is not silent, nor is it subtle. Where the international community has no recourse and no options, Davidson’s flavor of leadership must be loud, and it must be obvious.

Beyond Davidson’s apparent hypocrisy demonstrated through its lack of any public communication in the face of its Commitment to Freedom of Expression, perhaps the worst of its crimes are its hesitancy to inform international applicants in the Class of 2031 about these policy updates to internal CPT policy. While the Admissions Office has responded to individual queries regarding CPT policy, there has been no public announcement. This is not merely an operational inefficiency inherent to all administrations, but rather a deliberate wait-and-see strategy that protects Davidson's legal position at the expense of information international students deserve to know. As of this article's publication, no publicly available page on Davidson's website has been updated.

The omission is an administrative oversight at best and a calculated moral failing at worst. Davidson must make immediate amends so that the incoming class is not caught up in the political crossfire of the current federal administration’s war on higher education. Whether it comes in the form of updates to its website, a public memo to all applicants, or an open letter to the Davidson community, nothing less than full transparency on the College’s stance will suffice.

It is understandable that policy interpretations like this CPT update are much more vulnerable to litigation than the endowment tax change, so much so that the College’s preferred action is inaction. But as the optics stand, one could conclude that Davidson protects students’ interests only so far as the College’s financial interests are concerned.

In an era when Davidson has been so quick to pride itself on being a leader among its peers, it has backed that up by being among the first liberal arts colleges in the United States to communicate CPT policy changes to enrolled students. But simply altering policy to protect against legal attacks isn’t enough. Where clarity and truth have been so cheapened, Davidson College cannot afford to stay silent. Until Davidson speaks, its actions echo only its self-interest, with no mention of the noble ideals it claims to stand for.

And that is a damning indictment of Davidson’s values indeed.

When I founded Lux, I wanted a channel for that energy, a way for those disjointed ideas to leave the classroom and acquire a public life. Over the past year, that ideal did more than come to fruition; it came to have an impact. Articles broke news that sparked campus discourse. Columns tested and challenged campus conventions. One writer’s essay connecting game theory to the Honor Code prompted a professor to rethink his take-home exam policy entirely. Another writer was challenged directly by the College president in his commencement address to the graduating class.

The more important consequence, however, belongs to the writer. There is an undeniable exhilaration in having one’s work recognized by others:

I broke that story. I made them think differently. My ideas matter.

Egoistic, perhaps. But exhilarating nonetheless. Your name becomes public, and your ideas with it. Your ideas are challenged, assumptions questioned, and your mistakes made harder to hide. The writer learns not simply to express an idea, but to defend and refine it. No undergraduate leaves a seminar having arrived at certainty. To expose nascent ideas to criticism, at the peril of being unraveled, is the mark of intellectual bravery and the pursuit of excellence.

Such is the purpose of Lux. It exists to give individuals room to distinguish themselves. Hence the simplest rule of the publication: the column is yours. The byline is yours, the argument yours, and whatever praise or criticism you prompt will be coming your way.

That principle creates an obvious test for Lux itself. An institution dedicated to individuals cannot be dependent on one. The publication must proceed beyond its founding masthead. Fortunately the person taking its helm has never shown much interest in merely thinking like anyone else.

Several classes shared with Addison Constantinides, all under Professor Shaw, made one thing obvious. In Dr. Shaw’s words to his repeat students of political philosophy, “You must be a glutton for punishment.” One afternoon outside his office stuck with me. Addison was already fifteen minutes over her allotted time, creeping into mine, and arguing loudly enough that the disagreement carried through the door. She and Shaw were locked in a dispute over the interpretation of a French critical-theory text. By the end, more irritating than her siphoning my office hours was the growing realization that she was winning. The thought was equal parts admiration and annoyance: Why hadn’t that occurred to me? Why couldn’t I see that, too?

By summer, serendipity had placed us at the same Washington think tank. One evening after work, in a crowded corner of a happy hour, the conversation turned to Davidson and the strange amount of talent concentrated on such a small campus. D.C. interns, especially those who choose to work somewhere literally called a think tank, are naturally inclined to argue about the meaning of a college education. Addison was adamant that Davidson offered a rare combination: a rigorous education that demands much from its students and a student body ambitious enough to meet it. That conviction made the succession at Lux rather easy, and luckily she bought my pitch.

Under her leadership, Lux will become formalized as an institution without sacrificing the dynamism that has made it an extension of our liberal arts education. There will be more structure, more writers, and greater ambitions, but never so many rules that students lose the ability to experiment. The next year will progress beyond the first, not reprise it.

That, too, is part of a liberal arts education. Future writers will learn by testing their ideas; future editors will continue to build an institution. Both cultivate excellence.

—Ethan T. Tran, Founding Editor-in-Chief. Now on a happy sabbatical in Washington, D.C.

Davidson College has paused new Curricular Practical Training authorizations for international students and canceled those already approved for the fall semester. International students learned of the change just over a week before classes were set to begin, in an August 15 email from the International Student Engagement office (ISE).

CPT is a form of work authorization that allows eligible F-1 students to participate in off-campus internships, research and other practical training that is part of an established curriculum and directly related to the student’s major area of study. At Davidson, international students have historically used CPT for opportunities connected to courses such as XPL 199 and XPL 099, which pair internships with academic coursework, as well as Davidson in Washington, which combines a Washington, D.C.-based internship with a political science seminar for course credit.

The policy change follows an August 12th broadcast message from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP, which oversees institutions enrolling F-1 students. The message did not rewrite the federal regulation governing CPT, which requires it to be, “an integral part of an established curriculum.” Instead, SEVP announced increased scrutiny of CPT authorizations and specified that CPT only be authorized when it is a requirement of the degree for all students in the degree program. This new guidance comes after SEVP purportedly “observed a rise in CPT authorizations that do not meet regulatory requirements.”

Although Davidson has allowed students to receive academic credit for off-campus internships and research, those experiences are not required for a student to complete a Davidson degree.

In its message to students, Davidson said that after consulting college and immigration legal counsel, it determined its current curriculum could no longer safely support CPT authorization under SEVP’s stricter interpretation. “We do not want to do anything that puts students at risk of losing their legal F-1 visa status or facing future U.S. visa denials, nor will we do anything that jeopardizes the institution’s certification to host international students,” the International Student Engagement Office said in the email.

What this Changes

The change does not affect international students’ ability to work on campus, including on-campus research, nor does it apply to internships or research conducted outside the United States. Optional Practical Training, or OPT, a separate form of employment authorization requiring USCIS approval, remains unaffected.

Notably, Davidson is canceling CPT authorizations that had already been approved for the fall semester. That approach differs from UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and Santa Clara University, which also paused or suspended CPT processing in response to the federal guidance but allowed previously issued fall authorizations to remain in effect. The ISE wrote that “institutions have different curricula and policies so this shift will not impact all colleges and universities in the same way” and that “each institution has unique circumstances that make simple comparisons difficult.”

“I had an internship lined up for the fall, and Davidson had already approved it. Now, just days before the semester begins, I’m being told I can’t do it,” said one international student who asked to remain anonymous. The student was among those whose fall plans were disrupted when Davidson canceled previously approved CPT authorizations.

“The news about the CPT policy change came as a deeply demotivating and disturbing shock to the members of the DIA community,” said Amber Simnani ’29, vice president of the Davidson International Association. “Against the backdrop of an increasingly uncertain job market and travel bans, the new restrictions have further heightened anxieties.”

The International Association has been working with offices across Davidson to explore possible alternatives for affected students. “We’ve been in communication with the Hurt Hub, the Dean of Students Office, the International Student Engagement Office and other department heads to figure out ways to incorporate credit-bearing internship courses into major requirements or other solutions that’ll help students navigate this situation,” Simnani said.

DIA has also been coordinating with international student organizations at other campuses to compare how schools are responding to the CPT guidance. Students have connected through Instagram and created group chats to share university announcements, compare policy changes and discuss how the new guidance is affecting international students.

Davidson has yet to announce whether the suspension will remain in place beyond the fall semester or what longer-term changes, if any, the college will pursue.

How can something be both extraordinary and rare if it’s being done in institutions across the country, and at a better rate than ours?

Of course it is important to acknowledge that a fair policy that gets more low- and middle-income students into Davidson without loans is great, full stop. What is worth questioning, is that the students and the public have been left with more questions than answers in the wake of the announcement. The announcement does answer some important questions, but leaves others to speculation, including how the policy will be funded, why it applies only to future classes, and what it changes relative to Davidson’s existing aid model. If Davidson can pull this off without costing current students anything, in aid, in quality of life, in the things that make the school so exceptional, then Davidson deserves every bit of praise it’s giving itself.

Late, Not Leader

Davidson’s historical policy, meeting full demonstrated need with grants instead of loans, dates back to 2007. This announcement doesn’t change that policy, as Jay Pfeifer, Director of Media Relations, noted when asked for comment. The change we see then, is a delineation of incomes being marketed as a step forward.

In fact, Davidson isn’t leading in this charge as they wish to think: Harvard went free for families earning under $100,000, and tuition free for families earning up to $200,000 beginning with the 2025–26 academic year. MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UT Austin, Penn, UMass, and Michigan all expanded need-based financial aid in 2024–25, with different income thresholds and benefits. Yale announced that it will make tuition free for families earning up to $200,000 beginning in 2026–27; under its current policy, families earning under about $150,000 generally pay no tuition. Princeton covers the full cost of attendance for families earning up to $150,000, and most families under $250,000 pay no tuition. Caltech is tuition free for families earning under $200,000. In fact, Washington and Lee, one of Davidson’s named peer institutions, has been free for families making under $75,000 since fall 2014, and expanded to tuition-free for families making $150,000 or less in 2017. By the time Davidson made this announcement, in July 2026, it was simply following a trend that seems to come close to standard practice at this point, at a threshold lower than almost everyone else on that list.

The Grandfather Clause

The new pricing only applies to students entering in fall 2027. Current students, including the Class of 2030 entering this fall, are not covered by the new pricing model. I asked Jay Pfeifer why the school raises the cost of attendance on students already enrolled in real time but is waiting two years to extend a cost decrease. His answer failed to address the question: “Current students’ aid packages will not look significantly different than those students entering in the fall of 2027 and beyond. The pricing has been simplified, not changed.” Davidson doesn’t wait to apply price increases only to new classes as they arrive on campus, it only waits when the number is moving the other way.

There are north of 2,000 students paying Davidson’s bills right now. The announcement reads like it was written for families deciding where to apply next year, not for them, and they’re left watching a new wave of students arrive paying nothing while their own bills stay the same.

Where the Money Comes From

When posed the question, “How is this policy funded: increased endowment draw, tuition increases for families above $175,000, changes to how need is calculated for that band, or some combination?” Pfeifer told me Davidson spent about $80 million on financial aid last year and expects to spend $85 million this year, a roughly 6% increase, and said the policy, “does not shift the burden of financial aid to other populations nor will it lead to exceptional increases in other expenses.” Davidson hasn’t said how many additional students it expects to newly qualify for full tuition under the wider $85-175k band, which is the number we would need to see if their projected increase in aid expenditure will follow, or whether the gap eventually shows up somewhere else: in tuition for families above the line, or perhaps in a meal plan that already gets more complaints about cost than it gets credit for quality.

At least we can rest assured that Davidson is exempt from the new federal endowment tax because it enrolls fewer than 3,000 students, so the pressure that’s pushing larger endowments like Emory’s toward tuition hikes isn’t really in play here. The simpler question is whether the money the college is willing to pay will cover what is promised.

The Selling Point?

Chris Marsicano, the Chair of Education Studies and Director of the newly created Institute for Public Good, shared in a LinkedIn post the day of the announcement that the policy “isn’t much different from what Davidson has done since 2007.” He also reported, based on external studies, that roughly half of American households would qualify for free tuition and fees under the new threshold, and about 80% would qualify for free tuition alone.

Davidson admits domestic students without regard to their ability to pay. It has now guaranteed full aid to an income band that, by Marsicano’s own numbers, covers the majority of American households. So the question is: with a fixed class size and need-blind admission, is there any internal planning for what happens if an unusually large share of qualified applicants in a given year come in under $85,000? Pfeifer’s full answer to that question: “Davidson’s deep commitment to access and affordability dates back to 2007, when the college eliminated loans for aid packages. We are unwavering in our commitment to making an education accessible and affordable to all qualified students.” That response reiterates Davidson’s longstanding commitment to aid but does not directly address the question. Without a more detailed answer, it remains unclear how Davidson plans for fluctuations in student financial need while maintaining a need-blind admissions policy. The worry is that the school will have to cap the number of students at different rates of need, or that tuition for students that can “pay” based on their calculated output will soar even more.

In the end, Davidson’s financial aid is real, and it matters enormously to the students who get it, and to the culture it brings to the school. This announcement could be completely positive, and an unambiguously good story. Whether it stays one depends on whether Davidson can actually show its work. Will this aid cost students in other ways? An announcement built on words like “leader” and “extraordinary” deserves to be checked against what it actually changes, who it reaches, and what needs further clarification. So far, every direct question in this piece has gotten the same answer: a reminder that Davidson has been generous since 2007, and that’s a history lesson, not an explanation.

For more than sixty years, Davidson College has held its commencement ceremony without inviting an outside speaker to address the graduating class. The absence dates back to 1962, when Harllee Branch Jr., president of the energy utility giant The Southern Company, stepped to the podium and became, unbeknownst to him, the last guest to ever address a Davidson graduating class. His speech ran over an hour. The solution for most colleges would have been a fifteen or twenty-minute speaking limit going forward. Instead, Davidson decided to stop inviting speakers at all.

The conventional wisdom on campus ever since has been that a keynote speaker only prolongs an already lengthy ceremony and distracts from the graduates. In 2017, then-president Carol Quillen made that case in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that a shorter address from the college’s own president is more meaningful to students than a set-piece speech from an outside figure.

This is an understandable justification. But it rests on a custom born out of Mr. Branch’s speech alone, and it asks the college’s own president to fill a role that could be better served by a new voice and a fresh perspective.

Dean of Faculty Shelley Rigger, when asked about the current lack of guest speaker, cautioned that inviting a speaker means bringing in someone who will “either make the event about themself, or address themself to a generic student audience.” She noted that Davidson’s presidents, by contrast, have been with each class “through success and failure, joy and sorrow,” and that keeping commencement within the community “feels authentic and meaningful.”

She is not wrong that the focus of graduation should be on the Davidson community. The president speaks with an intimacy that an outside speaker cannot replicate, and that intimacy should be a distinguishing feature of Davidson’s commencement.

However, the problem with that reasoning is that the president has been speaking to us all for all of our four years at Davidson. They have welcomed us at orientation, spoken at several major campus events, written to us in many campus-wide emails, and, as Quillen herself acknowledged in her op-ed, many students often feel they have heard enough advice from her by the time commencement arrives.

A college president also speaks from inside the institution. Their job is to represent Davidson, which means their remarks are almost necessarily a celebration of the place and its values. While this serves a purpose in some part of the commencement ceremony, it misses out on what an outside speaker can offer. A president cannot easily tell graduates that parts of their education were incomplete, that the world they are entering will not reward many things they were told to value, or that they must stay wary of their instincts. An outside speaker, unbound from any institutional restraint, can do all of this and more.

Before 1962, Davidson proudly hosted several notable guest speakers at commencement, including James McCord, president of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1959; Luther Hodges, then governor of North Carolina, in 1960; and William Friday, president of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, in 1961. The following year, Branch, a Davidson alumnus, parent, and member of the college’s board of visitors and trustees, delivered a speech that stretched past an hour and into dinnertime.

In a 2002 email exchange between D.G. Martin ‘62, namesake of Davidson’s Martin Institute for Public Good, and Leland Park ‘63, Martin recalled that Branch’s address went on and on. Martin attributed the length to Branch trying to “pack too much” into his speech, compounded by a hot and humid afternoon that slowed him down.

“Of course, this all led to the wonderful tradition of NO SPEECHES at Davidson graduation,” Martin wrote.

The following year’s ceremony featured only remarks from Davidson President David Grier Martin, and every commencement since has followed the same pattern of the sitting president speaking in lieu of an invited guest.

Branch’s 1962 address, preserved in his book The Crowd and the Commonplace, is more provocative than sentimental, a rousing sequence of questions about religion and spirituality, politics, freedom, and the limits of knowledge. As a business executive, Branch spoke from a career-long opposition to communism and socialism, but also pressed the audience on whether the West’s commitment to freedom and free-market values was as steady as it claimed to be.

One of his many questions posed to the group of 200 graduates was whether the West truly wanted freedom, and “whether we really want it sufficiently to forego the easy, and sometimes enticing, compromises which make [freedom’s] maintenance impossible.”

This was also not the speech of a man trying to flatter his audience. Branch warned of a society drifting toward “mediocrity, monotony, and vulgarity,” and closed with a call to those graduates possessing “vision, courage, and hope” to venture forward and challenge the systems of their time. Colleagues described him as possessing an “amazing intellect” and an “extraordinary historical perspective.”

According to his son, Harllee Branch III, his father was deeply dedicated to the craft of commencement speaking, spending weeks or months carefully selecting and researching a topic that mattered to him. The Davidson address, in particular, was personal and, as his son described it, was “his love letter to the college that he loved so deeply all his life.” And love letters, he added, are “awfully easy to write far more pages than you should.”

The speech may have landed poorly for reasons beyond its length, though. The address itself contained none of the things a Davidson audience might have expected: no mention of the college, no warm recollections of his time on campus, no tidy piece of advice for graduates to internalize and carry forward.

But a speech like Branch’s is the kind of speech most worth giving. To leave a graduation with more questions than answers is one of the more honest endings a liberal arts education can offer. Four years of lectures and seminars are meant to teach students that curiosity should be an integral part of who they are, and that being a lifelong learner sometimes requires being made uncomfortable by people who have already lived with the questions longer than the graduates have.

Currently, Davidson’s commencement ceremony is pleasant and short, trading what could be a fascinating, longer ceremony for a safe, predictable one.

Davidson, like most small residential liberal arts colleges, is a bubble community by design. Students live within a roughly one-square-mile campus, eat in shared dining halls, take seminars of twelve students, know their professors’ spouses and children and dogs, and build a four-year social world dense enough that leaving it feels like a kind of emigration. This is, in most respects, a tremendous strength of a Davidson education. But it is a strength with a specific weakness: the bubble can make the world outside it feel simpler, or farther away, than it is. A graduation ceremony that sends students back into that outside world using only the community’s own voices is, in its own way, a final act of insulation.

Among peer liberal arts colleges, Davidson’s self-contained graduation is unusual. Williams, Wellesley, Amherst, and Pomona all regularly host keynote commencement speakers, each with a strong record. David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” address at Kenyon in 2005 has become one of the most-read commencement speeches in American history. In 2024, Lonnie Bunch, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, addressed the Williams graduating class to speak about how graduates can take their place in public life. And this year, the graduating class of Claremont McKenna will be hearing from Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty.

Yet, a graduation speaker, by no means, must be of celebrity status. A Davidson alumna or alumnus with a distinguished career could return to campus and remind a graduating class what the next four decades might ask of them. A Charlotte or North Carolina leader, in business, government, medicine, or the arts, could speak to how Davidson fits into the life of the region, and why graduates might consider staying in the community that has given much to them.

There is a real opportunity in the fact that Davidson’s new Martin Institute for Public Good takes its name from D.G. Martin, a member of the class of 1962, the last class at Davidson to hear from an outside speaker at commencement. The institute exists to prepare students for lives of civic engagement, leadership, and public service, and is premised on the idea that democratic life depends on citizens willing to disagree in good faith. The Martin Institute cannot credibly tell its students that public life demands engagement with unfamiliar perspectives while the college’s most visible ceremony offers only the familiar ones they have already spent four years hearing.

Inviting a guest speaker, such as a judge, an organizer, a journalist, a foreign policy practitioner, a founder, or an alumnus whose career has taken them somewhere Davidson did not predict, would align the ceremony with the institute’s stated purpose of creating those who lead lives of leadership and service. It would also model, in front of parents, trustees, and graduates, exactly the kind of civic encounter the institute wants its students to seek out for the rest of their lives.

“A most pressing challenge of our times,” Branch told the class of 1962, “is to save mankind from the conceits and delusions generated by his vastly increased knowledge.” He said this to graduates stepping off campus and into the Cold War, the space race, and the early computer age. Yet he could have said it this spring, too.

Davidson’s students are leaving that bubble and entering a world that rewards certainty over reflection and speed over sitting with a hard question. Now more than ever, they need to hear, on the morning they leave, from someone outside the institution who can provide them this perspective. It is long past time we give Davidson its speaker back.