In the avalanche of bad news about attacks on reason, science and education, one small item hit me in the gut. Julie Parks writes in Inside Higher Ed, “Earlier this month, the College Board announced its decision to kill Landscape, a race-neutral tool that allowed admissions readers to better understand a student’s context for opportunity.”
The College Board is a nonprofit membership organization founded 120 years ago to facilitate admissions at colleges and universities. The board oversees SAT and AP (Advanced Placement) testing, as well as other standardized exams, and, over the years, has grown in power and influence. The College Board used to be proud of Landscape. On September 2, they issued the following statement: “Since 2016, Landscape has provided consistent information about high schools and neighborhoods to help colleges understand more about where students live and learn. It was intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity.”
Before its disappearance, Landscape was widely used by selective universities including Haverford and Swarthmore. The College Board’s data collection helped admissions officers gain detailed information about the 25 percent of high schools largely unfamiliar to them. The information did much to level the playing field for qualified low-income students attending small-town, rural, and urban high schools that have traditionally been off the radar of elite schools.
Julie Parks reports, “No study to date found that Landscape had any effect on racial / ethnic diversity.” The tool was proven by numerous studies to be race neutral, while it provided necessary information on economic diversity. In fact, Landscape boosted the likelihood of admission for low-income students, a group that continues to be woefully underrepresented at selective colleges and universities. Landscape provided comparison of an applicant’s SAT scores and AP (Advanced Placement) course load to those of high school classmates.
The Trump administration has narrowly and erroneously demanded that SAT and AP standardized tests should be the definition of merit. And yet the College Board killed Landscape, which highlights test scores contextually.
The conservative Supreme Court has ruled in favor of race-neutral methods to pursue economic diversity in Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard.
So why did the College Board kill Landscape? Here’s what they said: “As federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information on admissions, we are making a change to ensure our work continues to effectively serve students and institutions.” Translation: We don’t want to take any chance of offending Trump.
The College Board chose fear, when it was possible for them to make the world a little better. They could have continued to expand the chances for low-income students to be educated at the best resourced colleges and universities, but they decided not to because of fear.
Clearly the trustees of the College Board (and all of us) are aware that the Trump administration uses litigation as a lash against perfectly legal actions. On September 19, the Department of Education placed Harvard on Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) status because of what DOE calls “growing concerns regarding the university’s financial position.”
Even with the Trump administration’s continued legal harassment and withdrawal of research funding, Harvard University is not going broke. The Department of Education seems to be saying, “Go ahead, Harvard, sue us again!” The federal government continues to dare Harvard to avoid litigation and toe the line. So far Harvard has withstood this program of tyranny by a thousand paper cuts.
But it’s a different story for the powerful College Board. Their ditching of Landscape indicates that their fear of litigation trumps (yes, pun intended!) the use of a tool they developed to bring more economic diversity to higher education. The College Board has no excuse. Unlike Harvard and other brave universities, they do not have the well-being of students to defend as they protect their corporate interests. Without even being asked, the College Board simply rolled over and eliminated something useful, something that actually contributes to necessary reform in higher education.
Tyranny depends on fear
As a university president, I’ve had experience in settling problematic legal cases with defendants who threatened years of costly litigation. University General Counsel would sometimes advise that even though the university was in the right, it wasn’t worth the cost of drawn out legal proceedings. On the other hand, there were cases we considered so important in terms of precedent that we went forward with our just and ethical arguments. These cases involved private citizens versus the university. Today, the situation is very different. It’s the full power of the federal government against universities and colleges.
The U.S. government did not have to spend a dime to bring the College Board to its knees. Fear of litigation was enough. If a giant like the College Board voluntarily gives unwarranted power to the federal government, what can more vulnerable institutions do? When playing it safe is the name of the game, tyranny wins.
How do we combat fear?
I found a viable approach on September 14, 2025, at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen in their acceptance speech for the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award said that the two most effective human motivators are fear and love. They said that fear has the edge right now. But love, defined as loving the world enough to try to make it better, can ultimately prevail. The College Board chose fear, when it was possible for them to make the world a little better. They could have continued to expand the chances for low-income students to be educated at the best resourced colleges and universities, but they decided not to because of fear.
Those who celebrate the Jewish High Holy Days this week know that the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (October 2) are Days of Awe, when we examine our individual contributions, large and small, to repairing the world. It’s a time when we must fight fear by avoiding the course of least resistance. We must speak out against unfairness everywhere and demand that our elected representatives oppose tyranny and defend reason, science, and education.
Elaine Maimon, Ph.D., is the author of Leading Academic Change: Vision, Strategy, Transformation. Her long career in higher education has encompassed top executive positions at public universities as well as distinction as a scholar in rhetoric/composition. Her co-authored book, Writing in the Arts and Sciences, has been designated as a landmark text. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum.
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