Hi, everyone. Welcome. Just going to give everyone just a second here to get into the room, and then we'll go ahead and kick off. All right. So welcome everyone to Now What? Assessing the U.S. Post-Election Environment for Education. We're delighted to have you here today. Before we kick off, I just wanted to cover a couple of very brief housekeeping notes. This webinar is being recorded, and you will all receive access to that recording after the event. We will also be taking questions as we're able throughout the webinar, so please use the Q&A box to submit those as they occur to you. At the end of the webinar, we do have an evaluation, which we would be really grateful if you took the time to complete. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and hand it right over to Brian Flavin to kick us off. Great. Thanks, Christy. And welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everybody who's joined us. Greetings from Washington, D.C. I'm Brian Flavin, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for CASE. We're so thrilled to be able to join us to talk about kind of the aftermath of the U.S. presidential and congressional elections, kind of what it means for education. And we have a lot to cover over the next 75 minutes or so. And I have to say, I want to ask, first of all, before I introduce our featured guest, just ask that in the chat, if you want to share your name and your school, college, or university or organization name, feel free to do that. It just helps us get a sense of who's in the audience. And as Christy said, we would love to see your questions. So please throw those into the Q&A tab as you think of them. And we'll have certainly an extended time for questions at the end, but we may also pause a little bit in our conversation and take a few as they come in throughout the session. So thank you again for joining us. And I'm really, really, really pleased to have Mike Schoenfeld join us. Mike is a longtime friend, volunteer leader of CASE. He's currently the partner at Brunswick Group, where he heads the Education Foundations and Nonprofit Practice. And in this role, he works with presidents, boards, senior leaders on issues in crisis management, strategic communications, leadership transitions, governance, media relations, and government relations. So really well positioned to kind of share his insights and thoughts with all of us today. Before Mike joined Brunswick back in 2022, he was on campus for over a couple of decades. He was between 2008, 2022, was the chief communications officer and vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke University. He also spent 12 years as vice chancellor for public affairs at Vanderbilt University. Earlier in his career, he was senior vice president for policy and public affairs of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and he held news reporting and executive public diplomacy roles at the Voice of America and U.S. Information Agency. So quite an extensive career, both in government relations, public affairs, across education, higher education, as well as other government as well. He obviously has been a longtime leader. He served on the boards of CASE. He chaired our CASE Summit for Leaders for Advancement back in 2008. He's also served on the boards of COFI, of the NACUBO, the National Association of College University Business Officers, and the Association of American Universities Public Affairs Committee. He's currently a trustee of the Mary Baldwin University in Virginia, as well as an adjunct faculty member at Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy. And I should also just mention, for those of you joining us from independent schools, he's also served as a trustee and board chair at the University School of Nashville. So he brings that perspective as an independent school volunteer leader as well. Mike, we're so grateful for your time. Thank you for joining us. Oh, Brian, thank you for the invitation. Delighted to be here and really excited to see so many names, familiar names and places in the chat. This will be an interesting conversation, and I'm sure not the last, not the first that you all have had about it, and certainly not the last. Well, thank you again, Mike. And as I said, please do ask questions as we go. But we're going to start with some big picture questions, as I like to call them, which is, I guess, Mike, let me just ask you first, what was your reaction to the results of the November 5th election? And did anything surprise you about the results? So a couple of things. First, recognizing that we have a winner-take-all system, this was a very close election. In fact, it was the third closest election since, I think, 1888. Only the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960 and the Nixon-Humphrey election in 1968 had a closer margin. So from what I gather, by the time all the votes are counted, this will be like a 1.4%, 1.5% margin in the popular vote. Again, we have a winner-take-all system, and that's very clear. But it is important, at least for perspective, I think, to understand that as evenly divided as the population is, or was reputed to be before the election, that was very clear in the election results. Second thing, I have a colleague, Doug Sosnick, who's a very accurate political analyst and strategist, and he has pointed out that change is the new normal. I think 11 of the last 13 elections have seen a change in at least the White House or one body of Congress. So the notion of stability in terms of leadership is one that sounds good, but is not really reflected at all in the outcome. And then the third thing is, I was struck by a lot of the commentary about demographics and how in different voting ages, different demographic groups have moved around. We can do a whole, you know, multiple webinars and cable TV shows on that. But one thing that I found particularly useful to keep in mind, if you are, and I'll probably mangle this a little bit, but if you are, I think, 30 years old or younger, you have never voted in a presidential election that did not have Donald Trump on the ballot. So 2016, 2020, 2022, there is a resetting of expectations and understanding, I think, particularly among younger voters that will be probably be studied for a very, very long time. So, you know, was I surprised? I think, yeah, at some level you're surprised because you believe, you know, you, you believe the pundits and the pollsters that this was a jump ball. And, you know, when the ball goes up, it can go in either direction. But I don't think, I don't think we should have been surprised that there was a, that in a close election, there was a tipping point towards change. Yeah. Well, I appreciate, Mike, that you talked about the, really how close the election is, because I think that's kind of gotten lost a little bit in the, in the aftermath and talking about it. And part of it, I think, relates to the fact that President-elect Trump, the last time, of course, he was elected, he didn't win the popular vote. And there was a little bit of an expectation that, that was set that if he won again, that winning the popular vote wouldn't be likely, that it would only be an electoral college win. So the fact that I think the President-elect won the popular vote, I think really kind of has a lot of his supporters and others leaning into the fact that this was a big victory, and an unexpectedly large victory. But as you said, it's a very tight victory, if you actually look at the popular vote, as you said, about one and a half percent or so difference in the popular votes. And also, if you look at Congress, and I just want to share, you know, the other aspect of this election, of course, is you have the presidency and that was up, but also you have the Senate and the House. The Senate is certainly has the biggest change in this election going from a Democratic majority to Republican majority. The majority is going to be 53-47. So Republicans really can lose three votes, but I honestly, it's really four. Because if you lose three votes on anything, then the Vice President, in this case, Vice President-elect Vance would break the tie, most likely in favor of the Republican side. So really, it's going to be a four vote margin, roughly, for all practical purposes that Republicans will have in the Senate, which is a big margin for the Senate. It's certainly one of the larger margins we've had in a while. The House is almost, I was just looking at the numbers. So the current House breakdown is 220-213. And there are two vacancies. One is for the late Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from New Jersey. And the other vacancy is actually a resignation that just happened with Representative Matt Gates from Florida, who's been nominated to be Attorney General in the new Trump administration. So those two vacancies are there. So we're short two. But if you add those two folks back in, it was 221-214. And we're almost looking at exactly the same majority, maybe 222, maybe 220, but almost the exact same breakdown of the last House of Representatives with Republicans in majority. So again, I think I want to reiterate that while certainly the President-elect is coming in with a significant, I should say, wind at his back in terms of the things that he wants to get done in the agenda, it's still from a congressional perspective, particularly on the House side, a very, very tight margin. And they can only afford to lose a few seats. And if you've been following the Cabinet nominations, and we'll talk about that in a second, so far, a number of those nominations and some of the nominations the President-elect has announced actually are House members. So there could be a point where it's a one or two vote margin for a little bit in the House before special elections are called in some of those districts. So again, a very, very tight margins. And certainly, you'd rather be Republicans and the President-elect than not. You'd rather have all three. But certainly, as we've come to learn, even when you have all three, you have majorities and the White House, it's still hard to get things done at times. So let's go right to the issue that all of us are interested in around the elections, which is, so what does a second Trump administration mean for higher education? And we'll talk about schools in a second. But let's start with colleges and universities. Yeah. So Brian, that is a great question. And also one that we could probably spend a fair amount of time on. I think where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you're sitting at a college or university, particularly if you're sitting in an elite college or university, you can expect more scrutiny and more attention. I mean, this election, certainly, as many are, but this one in particular, was as much about culture as it was about policy. And it's no secret that the culture of higher education and in higher education has been a very big target for a number of years in a lot of different ways. So the outrages and the real and perceived outrages on campuses, the statements and student protests and other kinds of activities, these are things that are very easy to weaponize. They are very dramatic. They may not necessarily represent the 20 million plus students in college, but they certainly, it is certainly a very good and easy and I would say very effective way to generate attention and outrage. So all that's to say, I think scrutiny, attention and criticism is going to be dialed up in a lot of respects. How that actually manifests itself, what are the policies, what is the ability of any individual or group of individuals to affect those policies, I think a lot still to be determined. You know, remember, we're still, I mean, yes, a lot, there's a lot moving quickly. We have a lot of signs and a lot of signals from all over the place. But we're still at the very beginning of what will likely be a marathon race of a lot of activity. So what can we expect? We can expect greater, nothing you haven't seen already. We can expect greater attention to things like accreditation, DEI, the cost of higher education, sort of buried in the culture wars activity of the last year has been the ongoing, very real, very intense attention to and anguish about the cost of college. So will there be policy related solutions around that? I think we can expect the empowering of states to, or greater empowerment of states to enact various kinds of rules and regulations. We can expect potentially changes in, or movement in some long hoped for and long lobbied for actions around college sports. So I think, again, there's a very, very long list of, there's a very long wishlist on the part of many constituents and stakeholders here that I think will start to be acted on. And my guess is it's not only going, it's not going to be limited to the Department of Education. In fact, that may be even become a bit of a distraction because of the target rich environment where with regard to taxes, immigration, national security, labor, DEI, I mean, a whole lot of things that don't necessarily come through the Department of Education, but can potentially be manipulated, affected, changed, acted on by the federal government. No, absolutely. I appreciate that you also, unfortunately, lawmakers kind of look at higher education, they think of it as a monolith. And the monolith piece of it is really those kind of selective institutions that you mentioned, which will certainly have already been facing a lot of scrutiny, but will continue to face that scrutiny, certainly in the new Congress. But there are, as we all know, the higher education sector institutions are very diverse types of institutions with different focus, different student bodies, different missions, a lot of different differences between them. And there could be types of institutions, I'm thinking community colleges, for example, that see some advantage in the new Congress potentially. Now, they may not, but there are certainly, if you look at the different types of higher education institutions, community colleges by far have the best perception out there in terms of public perception of higher education. So we'll have to watch those different pieces. That's the good news side, right? The bad news side is, because higher education is viewed as a monolith, you tend to see policy and legislation that's proposed and enacted that actually impact institutions, regardless of whether, of what they're, how they're organized, or what they look like, or who they're serving, but that just essentially are a one size fits all, everybody's got to, has to go abide by this requirement. So I think that we have to kind of watch that particular piece as well. Well, remember, you know, higher ed, and it's a very good point, Brian, higher education is not unlike Congress, in the sense that everybody hates Congress, everybody loves their member of Congress, their senator. So the sector, you know, the higher education sector, the phrase higher education is subject to the same really significant decline in trust in institutions that we've seen in healthcare, in, you know, just about, I mean, politics, media, just about every other, you know, major institution that, and major sector that had credibility and has declined. So, so I think, you know, one of the things to, you know, to think about as, as we all go forward in this is how to define, you know, higher education, again, very diverse, not, not monolithic, not even on a single campus monolithic enterprise entity, but will be, you know, the, the, the connotation of higher education is probably not going to be a positive one. Yep, absolutely. Well, let's, let's talk a minute about independent schools. And I mentioned that you have some experience working as a, both being a board chair and as volunteer leader on a independent school board. And I'm just curious, kind of, what do you think, are there some differences between what you think schools can expect from a new administration versus higher education? Yeah, I think, another, another great question. I think with schools, there will be, there's the culture component, which, which will, will, will continue to be there. But there's a much more direct financial implication. And that, you know, whether that's vouchers for private schools in, you know, at the state level, efforts to use funding, which is less relevant, obviously, for independent schools than public K-12, obviously, but efforts to use funding to nudge or directly affect curriculum in a way that's much more difficult within higher education at colleges and universities. And then, of course, anything related to philanthropy, to the, I know we'll talk a little bit later about tax issues and the things that are still out there. So I think that, I don't want to say that independent schools are somewhat more insulated because I think it's too early to make that call. But we all, everybody's going to live in the policy and information environment that we have for the next four years. So that will no doubt have an impact on independent schools. Well, I want to jump really soon into policy issues directly, but in some of the areas that I already saw a couple of questions coming in on that front. But before we do that, I'm just curious, because we mentioned that in your background, your current role, you talk quite a bit to institutional leaders and presidents and others, and I'm sure you've had some of those conversations kind of post-election. Can you share a little bit about kind of what you're hearing, kind of about what those leaders are thinking and what the post-election environment on campus, kind of what they're seeing happening out there? Yeah. So I see we've got 216 attendees, and I'm sure there are 216 stories about what's going on on campus and how people are responding. I will say from personal experience, I remember very vividly the election of 2016 and the response on campus. And again, granted, N of one, and a small group and a small select group within that universe of higher education. But I have not heard, or at least people I've talked to, have not had the same, there hasn't been the same sort of shock and awe that you saw in 2016. A whole lot of reasons. My guess is everything from the exhaustion from the campaign, exhaustion from a year of very intense activity, the quick and decisive way in which the election was decided. It did not hang out there. I think some of the demographics that we talked about earlier may have played to that. So what I'm hearing from presidents, and again, I don't want to, this is not a scientific survey, but more of an interest in leaning into the mission as opposed to the activism. Yes, reducing their risk profile, which is something that a lot of institutions have learned over the last year. And a deep concern and care for their, particularly their constituents, students, faculty, employees. That is something that I think my guess is more institutions are over-indexing on, perhaps than in the past, in taking care of your community and in understanding, facilitating dialogue and conversation. And also, again, I'll go back to leaning into the mission. I think that's what we've seen a lot more of. Great. Thanks, Mike. I know, Christy, there's a couple of questions. I know I saw a couple come in. Maybe we could tackle a couple of those now. Yeah. So one of them is actually very related to what you just were sharing about, Mike. And I'm also going to ask that people sort of share their own opinions of this in the chat. So someone asked, with the GOP taking the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, how are educational leaders feeling about the possibility or probability of the Department of Education being radically changed or even dissolved? Well, eliminating the Department of Education has been a Republican platform talking point since 1980. So that doesn't mean something's not going to happen, but it's been a longstanding part of the Republican platform. I think the mechanics, and Brian, you'll know this better than me, but if you look at from a legislative and policy and legal standpoint, dismantling a cabinet department is a really, really difficult thing to do. And in Washington, you should always, you know, inertia is the strongest force in the universe. And that is certainly the case in Washington. It's almost always easier to stop something than to start something. So I got out of the prediction business a while ago because pretty much everything I'm predicted about from sports to politics, I was wrong. But I think dismantling the Department of Education would be a massive undertaking that would require a whole lot of levers to be pulled that probably will not be able to be pulled. That said, you know, some key appointments and changes in policy in the Office of Civil Rights. Certainly, we've seen a lot of ping-ponging about rules related to Title IX, related to Title VI. So I think we can expect to see a lot of that kind of policy-related, executive order policy-related activity. We might, you know, we might see some, the acceleration or changes in the way that student loans are handled, loan forgiveness. I mean, you know, there's a basket of policy issues that, and levers that can be pulled in the department that don't involve, you know, dismantling the Department of Education. But, you know, something will happen. What happens, you know, I'll be a great pundit, you know, on the one hand, something will happen. On the other hand, we don't know what exactly that will be. Yeah. And I'll just add to that. I think that's your spot on, Mike. I think that it's, everything you said about it's easy to say, it's hard to do. It certainly is, makes sense in this context as well with the department. I mean, the first thing you got to think about, if you're going to dissolve it, where do the functions of the department actually go to live? Like, where do you move them? I mean, where do you, where does student financial aid go? Where do all of those other functions that you necessarily, unless you literally want to eliminate those, which would be obviously very dramatic and radical beyond just eliminating the department, you know, that's a, those are big, big significant changes. They also would likely require some sort of approval of Congress in some sense. And again, we go back to those minimal, those, you know, those margins that they have in the House and the Senate. Republicans have control. The president may want certain things, but are there Republicans willing to go along with that? Particularly when you look at a house that's, you know, three or four, five seat margin. So I think that's an issue there too. The other thing I think is more likely to happen, and it really will also depend on who the president elects, selects as secretary of education, is you can select somebody to lead that agency and the administration will have an approach to that agency and you can, you can emphasize certain things over other things. And I think that's more likely. So they may not fund or do as many of the things that they disagree with in the department, but focus in on the areas that they're more interested in in the department and having the department do. So maybe there's more of a focus, a good example in K-12 education would be maybe there's more of a focus on how to support private education or vouchers or scholarship programs and have that being led by a secretary of education interested in that. On the higher education side, it's, you know, rolling back certain regulations, probably the Title IX regulations that the Biden administration have just worked through around campus sexual assault and working and focusing on some of those areas. But I think it is hard to imagine it would be dissolved, not saying anything's impossible, but there would have to be a lot of things and it would have to be a pretty concerted effort and you'd also have to figure out where all those functions go, that department's doing now. Yeah, let me just add, Brian, we don't, we don't live, and it's obvious, we don't live in a perfect world. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't necessarily assume or expect that, you know, any change is going to be, to be bad. If you, you know, if you talk to campus leaders, one of the, one of the things at any time of the day or night, one of the themes that comes up is a, you know, the burden of regulation in research, in education, in labor and other things. Because universities are, you know, significant businesses, they're major employers, they are, they are, have to deal with regulations across the board in a, in, in many, many ways. So a, you know, more rational approach to regulation, a, a more entrepreneurial approach to, to regulation will not necessarily be a bad thing for, for education, for, for students and, and for consumers. And then, you know, there are also, there are also things that simply didn't work. And I think it's, you know, you don't have to go too, too far out in, on a limb to look at the FAFSA, the FAFSA debacle of the last year to say, hmm, there's probably a better way to do that. And, and that's one thing that if, if something like that can be fixed, that would actually be a good thing. So I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to leave the impression, at least from my perspective that somehow, you know, that they're, that we're living in a perfect world and any change regard, you know, any change anywhere is going to negatively impact the sector. Cause I don't think that's true. Yeah, no, I think that's a, that's a fair point. And this also recognizes that, yeah, we're not living in a perfect world, but there are changes. There are things that could, that could happen. It's just a matter of what the scale of that change looks like. And I think again, that a lot of that will be determined by, you know, a new administration comes in, they have lots of things that they want to do, what gets prioritized and what do they focus on? So we'll have to see how that plays out when it comes to the department of education. Christy, I think there was another question that maybe we'll tackle that one, then transition to policy. Sure. So the next one that came in was what kind of scrutiny might these lead organizations face and what are the implications? So for example, loss of jobs, what tax and endowment might do, and how quickly can these things take place if that is what they decide to prioritize? Well, I'm wondering, it might be a good, maybe I can transition this question into a little bit of a tax reform talk, because that is going to be something we're going to see very quickly in 2025. And at least in terms of, there was a mention of an endowment tax and other things. The last time, of course, the current endowment tax, which really is a net investment income tax for certain private colleges, universities, really large private college universities, that was part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the last time that Congress took up tax reform. And interestingly, the last time they took up tax reform in 2017, it was the same situation, a Republican president, Republican House and a Republican Senate. So when Republicans passed tax reform, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act back in 2017, they were able to do so in a partisan manner. They did not have to rely on Democratic votes. They didn't get any Democratic votes for the TCJA. And they used a maneuver called budget reconciliation, which is really only something you can use in practically speaking, when you have control of all three, the presidency, the House and the Senate. And what it requires is as long as you follow certain budget rules, and I'm simplifying this here, as long as you follow certain budget rules, you can pass something with just a simple majority in the Senate, which is a huge, huge benefit. Most instances, you need to get 60 votes to move anything in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. So the Republicans used that back in 2017. But in order to use that, as I mentioned, they had to fit into some budget rules. And one of those rules meant that they had to keep the cost of the overall package down. And to do that, what they decided to do is they made the corporate rate reduction permanent back in 2017. But then all of the individual side tax cuts that they did, they made temporary. And they all just happened to expire as of December 31, 2025. So Mike and I are speculating and talk about a lot of uncertainty next year. But one thing we know is certain is that they're going to tackle taxes next year. Because if they don't, it will, as of when the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2026, it will be as if, on the individual side of the tax code, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act never happened. Standard deduction will go back down. Tax rates will go back up. In certain circumstances, there'll be no state and local tax deduction cap. All of the alternative minimum tax will return. A lot of things that were changed in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will snap back. And certainly Republicans, who were obviously very supportive of this bill, don't want that to happen. So they're going to want to extend it. That's why we know tax reform is on the table. And as I mentioned, as part of that big tax bill back in 2017, Republicans did put a tax on the net investment income at certain private colleges and universities. So there certainly is a chance and certainly an expectation that they may look to that again, either to broaden the definition of that tax, to bring in other institutions. It was only on private institutions back in 2017. Or to increase the rate. The rate right now is 1.4%. And they could look at a higher rate. The vice president-elect introduced a bill last year when he was in the Senate that essentially would have raised that to 35%. So there's a lot of variety of options and ways that Congress could tackle this. One of the... If they do decide to tackle that in tax reform, we'll obviously know as they start putting the drafts together. And we'll obviously be as case and many others will be out there saying why this is a terrible idea. But most likely any of the tax changes that they enact won't take effect until January 1st of 2026. And that really will... That would probably be the cleanest, easiest way for them to do things. Because that's when the current Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires. Those individual rates. It would also, assuming they can pass this in the first half of next year, which is certainly their goal, that would give time for people to transition and prepare. So that would be a January 1st effective date most likely for most of the provisions. There was one other piece of... I saw another question that I want to tackle in this around giving and what donors could do related to tax reform. And what we saw back in 2017 is even though the reality for a lot of high-income donors and many others was that their overall cost of giving didn't really go up a great deal when it came to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, anytime there's tax changes, anytime there's tax reform, there's a huge bump in giving because people don't want to lose out. They don't know exactly how the tax changes are going to impact them. And so there was a big spike in charitable giving right in that December of 2017, right before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect. And so we're likely to see that again in 2025. So one thing you certainly can start thinking about and preparing for is, are there conversations you're having as tax reform takes place? And you'll obviously want to watch how the debate goes, what changes they're talking about. But there could be some accelerated giving if there is a tax package that's passed next year as we get towards the end of the year, as people try to take advantage of the current regime versus the new regime coming in. And again, sometimes it's rational. There's a reason to do it. Sometimes it's irrational. People just don't know what the new regime is going to be like. And so they're like, let's just make my gift now. So we'll have to see how that plays out. Mike, I don't know if you want to add anything on tax reform or the potential. Brian, that was that was masterful, and I was taking notes on that as well. I don't want to add a but, I want to add an and. And my and is, I think in this area and in many others, we don't want to come to the next year, the following year, and be the victims of a failure of imagination. So one of the things that I would that I would just offer is that all everything that Brian described is the is the part of a is a very valuable and important policy process. But it is also possible that there are things out there that we just don't know about. One of the things I'll just put out there is endowments. You know, we know there is an endowment tax. It affects a relatively small number of institutions that have endowments that are unimaginable to the vast majority of colleges, universities and independent schools. It also represents hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth that's out there. So do I think something will happen with endowments? Yes. Do I am I certain that it would be an increase in the tax rate? I'm not so sure. I think that there are there's been a lot of time, you know, people have had a lot of time and and have tested and probed in a lot of ways to do something, something, something endowment, something, something. And, you know, there will be pressure to pay for tax cuts to some extent, although, as we as we've seen under multiple administrations, deficits are at least for the moment are out. So that may be less pressure on that. But endowments themselves represent a very tangible and very rich financial target for sure, but they also represent a cultural target. So would I be surprised to see at least ideas enacted? Could they be enacted? Don't know, but would there be at least ideas about how to go after those endowments? Yeah, probably. Will it look like it did in 2017? I'm not so sure. No, I think that's a fair point. And actually, you know, of course, we're not gonna just sit back and wait to see what they're talking about. We're obviously gonna be very proactive and talking about, first of all, how bad the current policy is, which it is bad. It really is a tax on generosity. It redirects resources away from charitable purpose just back to the treasury, and from that perspective, we'll certainly be pushing back on that policy and also doing the best that we can, working with our partners across the Higher Ed Association world to talk about the importance of endowments, what they mean, what they do, and how they are helping to bring down the cost of college and bring more resources and bring access and opportunity to students. So that certainly will be a part of that. I also do want to, so that's the, there is certainly a side of tax reform that is we have to be watchful and be aware of ideas like endowment taxes or other ideas that could happen around endowments or frankly, other sorts of taxes or ways to raise revenue off the back of colleges and universities and schools. But there also is a positive thing that could happen out of tax reform that we're certainly also gonna be spending a lot of time on. And that is part of the work that we've done at CASE in helping lead a coalition of charitable organizations like United Way, American Red Cross, Independent Sector, Jewish Federation of North America, many others as part of the charitable giving coalition in our work to bring back and restore a charitable deduction for non-itemizers. So one of the things that Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did was that by virtue of doubling the standard deduction, which Republicans did in that bill, one of the unintended consequences of that was really done to help simplify taxes. But one of the unintended consequences was that we now live in a country where only 7 1⁄2% of Americans itemize. So that means that only 7 1⁄2% of Americans have the ability to deduct their charitable gifts. So it is a smaller and smaller percent of Americans and it's also some of the more high-income, wealthy Americans that have that opportunity to do that. What we've been pushing in the charitable giving coalition is that we think there should be a charitable deduction for non-itemizers, that there should be some way for those who are not itemizing taxpayers anymore or who never were itemizing taxpayers to have an ability to deduct some of their charitable giving. And we were fortunate back in during 2020 and 2021, we had a temporary charitable deduction for non-itemizers in the code for two years. It was $300 for individuals, $600 for joint filers. So it was very modest, but we did see an increase in smaller gifts those two years. And we also know over the long-term, we've seen a decline in the number of donors across the charitable sector, including giving to educational institutions. So we've been really, really focused as part of the charitable giving coalition on building bipartisan support for bringing the charitable deduction for non-itemizers back. And we have a great opportunity next year to do that with tax reform. We have, as I mentioned, we built bipartisan support, a quarter of the Senate either sponsor or co-sponsor the Charitable Act, which is the bill that we support that would do this. We have 64 members of the House equally divided between Republicans and Democrats with nine Republican members of the Ways and Means Committee supportive, including the lead sponsor, Representative Blake Moore from Utah. On the Senate side, Senate Finance Committee member, Senator James Lankford has been a huge champion for this, a Republican from Oklahoma. So we are well-positioned to actually see a charitable deduction for non-itemizers happen. It would be something that would essentially signal, bring back a signal to all Americans that they should be giving back to educational institutions and other charities, but would be a way to help incentivize some additional giving to our institutions and really help democratize giving generally. So while there are the threats and the pieces that we certainly have to watch in terms of some of the proposals that could have negative impacts on our institutions, I don't wanna lose sight of the fact that we actually have built up a lot of support and momentum behind something that can be really positive, not only for our institutions and for case members, but frankly, for the charitable sector overall. So that's another way. And I think Christy shared a sign-on letter that we have for the Charitable Giving Coalition that we're gonna send a letter up to the Hill on Giving Tuesday. Please do, and I'm sure Mike would appreciate this, make sure you check in with your government relations staff before you sign on to a letter like this at your institution. And I say that also as a government relations person myself, but we would love to have institutions represented as part of the, we have over 300 organizations across the country right now listed on that letter. We want to get back up to 1,000, which is where we were last year when we did a similar letter. So we'd love to have your support, but I want to make sure we don't, there's certainly things we have to watch, but there are also, as Mike said, opportunities in tax reform that we want to be watching for as well. Very good. Let's tackle a couple of other issues. And again, please do continue to ask questions. I want to ask about one of the big topics that got a lot of attention during the election, of course, was immigration. And I'm wondering if there was a lot of focus on immigration in the first Trump administration. I think it's pretty safe to say there'll be a lot of focus on it again in the second term, but Mike, do you wanna talk a little about what that could mean for our institutions and also maybe for, in a little bit more specifics, the Dreamers who have kind of been in limbo for a while. And those, of course, are those students who are here under no fault of their own getting college education, but technically don't have legal status. Yeah, so obviously immigration, I mean, aside from the education aspect of it, immigration was one of, immigration and border security, the most animating issues of this campaign, and both from a culture standpoint and also from a policy standpoint. So will there be an impact on potential, will there be something happening with immigration? Yes, I think that you don't have to be an insider to sort of make that guess. What is it gonna be? We're reading this and hearing the same things that you're hearing, that something will happen and it will, last I heard, there were, this was from somebody who was reasonably well-connected with the transition, that there were something like 175 and growing executive orders that are going to be unleashed on day one and a sizable percentage of those have to do with immigration in some form or another. So that shock and awe in January, I think is going to be significant. It's going to generate, no doubt, a huge political media and legal backlash in a lot of ways and we'll be right back into it. At the same time, you probably saw the same report, Brian, that I did, that international student enrollment is now back at record levels. So there are, after the first wave of, first wave of, in the first Trump administration of concerns about immigration and then COVID, we're actually back, at least in the US, to the numbers that we had seen before all of that in terms of international student enrollment. Is it as hard, would you bet your future on continued international student enrollment? Probably not. But there are, at the same time, ideas that have been floated about the old, we're going to staple a green card to every diploma so that the smart people who are coming here to get educated are going to stay here and contribute to the economy. So all that's to say, immigration is going to be a, is going to be a significant, I think, will continue to be a significant political policy and cultural matter. The impact on, again, like a lot of things, hard to tell right now what the immediate impact is going to be inbound, but also outbound because immigration policies and legislations tend to create a backlash overseas as well. So will that, what will be the impact on American students and others that seek to go overseas? The Dreamers, Dream Act, I'm going to guess that that's going to be one of the very early flashpoints in all that. I can't predict which way it's going to go, but it has all of the pieces to, it has all of the components, all of the elements, all of the ingredients to be a very early flashpoint. Yeah, I would agree with you on that. And I, one interesting thing, you mentioned international students and we're kind of where we're at with international student enrollment, back to where we were and growing. It is interesting that we've seen, and this is where kind of CASE's global footprint can help inform kind of what we could potentially see. We have seen in a couple of places around the globe where there's been a real crackdown on international student enrollment. And it's really interestingly has been in instances. So in Australia, there actually was a cap proposed that at least as a breaking news has not made it through the Australian parliament, but it was really a center-left government preparing for an election that's put this international student cap in. Up in Canada, similarly, there's been international student cap that's been put in place. And it's another center-left government getting ready for an election. So it's interesting in the rationale behind it is an issue of international students putting pressure on housing and housing costs in those contexts. So you could see a rationale where some sort of narrative like that could take hold. You know, our institutions in the US, you know, and this varies by institution, of course, are not as dependent upon international students as they are in Canada and the UK or in Australia, for example. But you could see where that could create some tension points, depending on how the administration decides to tackle immigration. And frankly, international students is a part of that conversation. Yeah, I wonder too, if philanthropy is gonna be another flashpoint, you know, international philanthropy. And it is a very, it's very easy to weaponize, you know, the idea of philanthropy from countries and from individuals and individuals in countries that might be considered hostile to the US. So we've seen, yeah, we've seen that skepticism and in some cases, you know, proposed legislation around philanthropy from China. You know, there's certainly been a lot of attention around philanthropy from the Middle East, Russia. So I think that to the extent that there's a knock-on effect, there's probably a good chance that some of those kinds of restrictions and limitations might become more intense. Now, again, it doesn't affect maybe the vast majority of institutions in the sector, but it could. Oh, absolutely. And I agree with you. They're actually, in this Congress, there've been a couple of pieces of legislation. One is the Deterrent Act, which has been introduced that one of the things that it does a number of things, but one of the things it does is already US colleges and universities have to report any foreign donations that are over $250,000 to the Department of Education each year, twice a year. That bill, if it were enacted, would lower that reporting threshold to $50,000. So even if you're, you know, going from 250,000 to 50,000, you're gonna certainly capture more institutions who are getting foreign donations in that. And there also are some pretty clear disclosure requirements for gifts from particular countries as well that are part of that legislation. I would be shocked if that was not something that we see pretty early on. We, of course, at CASE and others have made the argument that the threshold as it exists works well, that actually lowering the threshold just captures a lot of gifts that if you're concerned about undue influence, there are ways that you can draft legislation that if your concern is people are just giving right below the threshold and finding ways to do that, there are ways to draft legislation that would get that versus just the hammer of just going down to a lower reporting threshold, because obviously smaller gifts, theoretically anyway, would have less of a, there'd be less of a chance of that influencing or having undue influence. But it's pretty clear that the politics of this issue, particularly the concerns about China and foreign influence make it highly likely we'll probably see some sort of reporting threshold for foreign gifts. So you're absolutely right. We'll need to be watching that very carefully. Brian, a question for you, because you've delved into this on funding and things like student aid. Obviously we follow, if you're at a research university, you're vitally concerned about what's happening with the NIH budget and the NSF budget. From a policy and from a fiscal standpoint, what are you hearing and seeing and thinking about the whole question of funding to institutions of higher education? It's a very good question. I guess I'd start by just talking about the funding picture generally for the federal government. So right now we're in a state of, we're in fiscal year 25, but we don't have a fiscal year 20, fiscal year 25 appropriations haven't been passed. We are under a continuing resolution. So the government is being funded and actually that continuing resolution winds down on December 20th. So Congress has to do something in this, what we call the lame duck session, either to extend that continuing resolution or to pass appropriations for the full year. And if they do appropriations, it would likely be a big, we like to call in the Beltway omnibus bill with all of the bills together with all of the funding priorities. It's looking very, very likely that they're going to punt on funding for FY25 into the new Congress. There is a split and this might be a story we see play out quite a bit over the next couple of years between what Senate Republicans would like to do and what House Republicans would like to do. It's pretty clear the speaker has been on record. And I also, I don't know if the president-elect has said this to the administration, but most people think they would like the spending decisions to be punted to whenever Republicans have control of Congress versus in this lame duck session where you still have obviously a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in the Senate. I think Senate Republicans are in a little different place. I think some of them would like to actually clear the deck, get spending out of the way so that they could focus on other priorities for what I always like to say, have a clean slate for the new administration to focus and not have to worry about spending past due things that they were supposed to do. But it looks like they'll likely pass a continued resolution. I think on the funding question at a very high level, I think we have to see how things play out. But interestingly, I think there was a lot of talk during the first Trump administration, a lot of doom and gloom about what would happen with spending and whether we would see massive cuts and massive declines in spending and significant cuts in NIH and NSF. And there certainly was a lot of talk of that, but ultimately it's interesting, it ended up not panning out to that extent, at least significant cuts not panning out. And in some instances there've been growth and obviously that growth has continued. Now, there's gonna be continued focus on the deficit, but what we also found during the first Trump administration, and this isn't surprising, I think it would be true of any parties when they're in power, that when you have all levers of power and you wanna enact policy, cost is still an issue, but it's less an issue when you wanna get your agenda across. If it's divided government, cost becomes a big issue because it's a way to differentiate, the parties differentiate themselves. So I think the jury's out on how funding will look. Now, there certainly may be other requirements tied to funding, and we can talk about that. That might be unpleasant or it might create burdens. They could put leadership at some of those agencies that will be challenging and would challenge higher ed or grant requirements in that would be challenging. But I think the funding question is still to be determined. Though obviously Republicans like to focus on the fact that they wanna tackle the deficit or at least the subset of them. So that certainly will, there'll be some pressure to cut spending. And I should also mention that obviously Elon Musk and other supporters have been talking about how much they wanna cut from the federal government. And that certainly, if that gains traction, the numbers they're talking about will be hard to imagine them not touching some of the funding that comes to colleges and universities. I don't know what you think about that, Mike. Yeah, I think just as a nation, we're a bit of multiple minds on this. You know, there will be, the desire to cut something is matched only by the desire to make sure that you're getting what you need. I think among the biggest vulnerabilities, and again, we've tied these sort of things together is focus on cost and the relationship to, particularly in higher education, the relationship between cost and debt and funding. That's a toxic brew that's just sort of been waiting for the right moment to blow up. It hasn't happened yet, and it might not happen, but it's certainly flammable to torture the metaphor. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And we're gonna go to questions here in a second, and Mike and I have a whole list of questions we were ready to ask, but we wanna answer your questions because we've seen a lot of great ones come in the Q&A, and a lot of them cover the same areas we were gonna cover. So we're gonna transition to that. Though I should mention on the funding front that there is one other funding issue that's happening in the lame duck, or at least there could potentially happen, and that is the President Biden and the administration put out a proposal yesterday about 100 billion in disaster relief funding for the states affected by hurricanes. So that could potentially get attached to a continuing resolution or funding in December. I think they're trying to figure out how big that will be and what it will look like. So there could be some relief coming to people in the states that were affected by the hurricanes. That's kind of been on hold for a while until the election happened, but certainly is something that they're trying to see if they can get some of that disaster relief funding together. And with that, Christy, let me turn it to you if you wanna read a couple of the questions that we've gotten in. Yeah, absolutely. And as I get to those first questions, I'm just gonna launch a quick poll. We are trying to find out from you guys, our attendees, what sort of topics you would be most interested in hearing about as we go forward and plan for more webinars talking to advancement leaders. So I'm gonna launch that if you can fill that out while we get to the audience questions, that would be fantastic. And so one of the questions was regarding DEI initiatives, specifically, do you foresee the next administration restricting colleges and universities moving forward with implementing DEI best practices? That's a great question. I'm gonna offer, I'm not sure that I would make a hard and fast prediction, but I'm gonna offer three potential tracks. One is the regulatory track, and I'm likely going to see some regulatory and policy changes that will affect DEI. What they are, hard to know at the moment, but that's likely. Second is legal, starting with the, I mean, not starting with, but certainly the SFFA decisions in the Supreme Court sort of opened the door. If you're at a college or university right now, you're scrubbing, you're looking at websites, you're looking at your scholarship programs, you're looking at your admissions practices. Many of the selective institutions have had a lawyer pretty much in residence in the admissions office to make sure that legal guidelines are being followed. Will the next administration join more lawsuits, encourage more lawsuits? So there's, I think there's definitely a legal component to this. And the third part will be cultural. Back to the cultural wars. You can expect to see this, I think, as a continuing source of attention in the media, in social media, in conversations and in political speech. So this is not gonna be just, I think, a one-track approach. I think there'll be multiple ways in which DEI is questioned, challenged, and perhaps moved around probably at a faster pace than we have seen over the last couple of years. Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. I think it's gonna be an issue. It certainly was an issue that was leaned into quite a bit and has been part of the larger culture war kind of framing that Mike was talking about. And we also seen some action at state level, of course, on that front, and particularly a few Republican-led states that have really taken some pretty significant action on DEI programs, DEIV programs. So it's likely that some of those models, it'll be different. They might have to take different ways of doing it at the federal versus state, but there could be certainly, I would imagine the new administration will make that an issue that they take some executive action on and some regulatory action, as Mike said. So we'll have to watch that one very carefully. Right, and sort of related to that, someone else asked, the administration of scholarship awards has significantly changed during the current administration with the drop of the SCOTUS rulings. Do you believe the incoming administration will continue a harder stance against awards based on gender or race identity? And I know we're not in the prediction game, but. That started and that continues. I think that that's a fact of life now for institutions. And again, if you haven't been contacted by or approached by or demanded by an organization or individual about race and gender and identity, scholarships and admissions and things, I think you probably will be. So that's, to me, that's not new. That's sort of ongoing. All right, someone else had commented, I think earlier when you guys were talking about how things didn't change as much as maybe was anticipated in the first administration, that this is a very different unrestrained and more informed administration when it comes to making changes. So should we expect bigger changes in federal funding than the first time around? Well, it certainly is a possibility, and I don't wanna discount that, but it's also something, we talked about a few kind of issues that we've heard over the years, like the good example, let's shut down the Department of Education, let's cut federal funding by a significant amount. It's a lot of things that are easier to say than do. And when the rubber meets the road and you have to make those decisions, that's where the system of government we have with the Congress and rules you have to follow to get things through Congress can have a bit of a check on some of those activities and those there. So it's funny, interestingly, funding, they're still gonna need some democratic support to get funding through. They can't use reconciliation to do appropriations. So they're gonna need 60 votes in the Senate. And so that always, I think, acts as a check against significant, significant cuts in funding. Again, that could change, and certainly there's rhetoric around that. And I mentioned Elon Musk and the focus on cutting 2 trillion of the federal government down, and that being a major talking point. But again, there's a talk about it and plans to do it, but then we have to see what the execution of plans will be and whether we'll actually see the significant cuts that we see. I do think we're not gonna see significant increases. I think we can be safe to say that. It's just a question of, what do we see on the, really on the non-defense discretionary side, what does that spending look like? And again, Democrats will have a say on that because of the 60 vote threshold you have in the Senate, assuming that stays around. Yeah, I- Common energy. Yeah, the only, the asterisk I would just, I would put on that is, is the premise correct that this is, that there's been a lot of planning going into this? Yeah. I also, I think it's not, it may not necessarily only be on the downside. There will be the potential for important, significant transformative changes in funding and support for things that perhaps have not been the subject of attention is possible. Yeah, I don't, with the one, I don't wanna leave having people say, oh, they predicted total catastrophe and the sector is going to get decimated. We, yeah, we don't know. I mean, this will be a challenging time for a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be some things that need to change or could be valued in, where change or different kinds of funding or different approaches could be valued as well. So I just, I think it's important just to have that, to at least have that, counterweight in there a little bit. Great, thank you. Someone else asked, how can college leaders and those working on government affairs best support our colleagues and students of marginalized identities going into this next administration? Yeah, I go back to what I said earlier. Let's be sure to lean into our mission and lean into the fact that, well, a couple of things. First, education is, we should not lose sight of the fact that education is good. Education is a good. It is the most transformative force, I think, for human nature. So, when you're coming from a position of what we do is good, what we do is important, what we do changes lives, there's a certain sort of level of, of, I don't know, peace that comes from that. So, it will be important to continue, again, leaning into that mission of changing lives and creating opportunities for individuals. And the data is, I would say, incontrovertible. Better education leads to better outcomes in health, in happiness, and in all kinds of things. It's why education, it's why what we do, what you do, has been so valued, not just for the last 10 years, but for a thousand years. Second, I would say it's important to take the long, and sort of moving beyond, maybe a little bit beyond the question, it is important to take the long view. You know, educational institutions do not have a stock price. They're not, you know, they're not looking at, they're not trying to, you know, you're not trying to win the day every day. You have the ability to take a longer view because of the embeddedness of education in society. And that will be, I think, really important. I think it will be really important for, particularly for those who are, that will be going through undoubtedly challenging and difficult times in certain areas. Sorry, let me stop there. Brian, I'm sure has much greater wisdom on this than I do. No, I think that's right, Mike. And I'm certainly one that makes, you know, like I like to emphasize a reminder, you know, particularly, you know, it's obviously been some particularly challenging times for our institutions and challenging in terms of how we're perceived and the value of institutions. But I always remind myself, there's a reason why I work at CASE. There's a reason why I lobby for education, why I advocate for educational institutions because of the important role they play of the transformational nature of what we do. And I think sometimes when you're out and about or you're hearing negative things that are being said about institutions or perspectives, I think it's important to remember the why you're a part of it. What motivated you to become a part of this world? Why are you giving your career and your skills and your expertise to this, to the mission of our institutions? And I think it's important to remember that in a time of challenge. So I totally agree. It's time to lean into mission and to focus on that, obviously to provide support to all students, to provide opportunities for dialogue, for listening, for understanding, and also in the great tradition of what our institutions do, encouraging students to be involved and engaged in community, involved in voting, involved in all of the ways that make their voice so critical and important to society moving forward. So I think that's what we have to lean into. Of course, we go through ups and downs in terms of how institutions are viewed, but we certainly, our work is too important. Our institutions are too important to not lean into our mission and continue to do the work that we're doing. Great, thank you. I think we might be hitting about time. So I'm gonna ask one last question here. What are you hearing about campus speech restrictions and other first amendment issues that may arise, including restrictions on teaching particular content? A lot of smoke, a lot of, and maybe some fire. I mean, clearly that has been a very effective political point. It's been a very effective, it's been a very effective organizing and fundraising point. So I think we can expect it to continue to, if something works like that, we can expect it to continue to be a subject of attention. I would say, if I could just maybe give one point to the colleagues here who are dealing with the media, I do think it is important to understand, for everybody, for all of us that are working with nonprofits, with foundations, with universities, with school, with independent schools and others, that the media environment is really, calling it a media environment, maybe it may even be a little quaint. It is an information environment. And a poll that was released just last week, just last week by the Civic Health and Institutions Project, which is a group of universities that was looking at primary sources of election information in 2024. And by far, the single most important source of information for young people in particular about the election was not TikTok, and it was not Instagram, it was discussions with friends and family. So the information environment that we live in is very, very different. And I'm sure if there are 164 people here, if any of them are communications people, I'm sure they have heard the question, we just need to do a better job of telling our story, which in the minds of many of our stakeholders is, we need one more op-ed in the New York Times, or we need one more story on NPR. I think it's important to understand the totality of the information environment and recognize that things that might have been new media are not new. This is the way that people consume information. Again, we saw it with great effect in the campaign. We're seeing it in a lot of other parts of culture. I think colleges and universities may be a touch behind in recognizing that, using that, and educating their stakeholders on how that works. So I hope that this will be an accelerant for that environment. Absolutely, Mike. And again, I just wanna say that, I just wanna thank everybody for joining us for all the great questions that we received. This is, there's a lot happening right now. And one of the things I'm happy Christy shared with you, we have a few resources at CASE. We're gonna be watching everything that's happening, thinking about what that means for advancement offices, both at schools and at colleges and universities, and figuring out where we can best use our voice. We've already shared a couple of ways, whether it's around the charitable deduction for non-itemizers issue, whether it's also looking at the other issues that could potentially impact our institutions, where you can be helpful and share, and we can keep, and also use your voice and be helpful as we work to support all of you. One other way that you can certainly stay informed is through our CASE Advocacy Network, which is an online community where we provide weekly, we do a quick recap of what happened on Capitol Hill and share with you what that means for education, but also share any other resources or opportunities for you as well. So please do sign up for that to keep informed. And I can't say enough, please, please keep track, stay informed, follow us, make sure that you're staying alert to what's happening so that you know what's happening as you work with your constituents and with your colleagues, and again, we can best represent you on Capitol Hill and beyond. But let me just stop there and just say, Mike, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and expertise. We could have gone another couple hours, but we'll spare people that conversation, but just really, really am grateful for your time and for being with us. Brian, thank you, Christy, thank you. I put my email address in the chat. Feel free to call or give me a holler. I'd say like, share, or follow, but I've got nothing to like, share, or follow. So, yeah, but if you do wanna do that, happy to do it. And good luck. Yeah, I'll just end by, I think where I started. What you do is vital and you're the connective tissue, you're the link, you're the membrane to so many different and diverse and passionate stakeholders. And that is a huge, huge value in a time of great disruption. Great, thank you, Mike. And thank you, Christy. Thank you, everyone. Have a great rest of your day.

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tax reform

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