Ryan A. Miller (he/him)
@drryanmiller.bsky.social
Higher education scholar - LGBTQ & disabled students; how colleges (un)do diversity. Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Views are my own.
Join us for our upcoming online session hosted by @ashecahep.bsky.social! 🙂 How Higher Education Programs are Navigating Policy Shifts 3/24/26, 10-11am PT Facilitator: Ryan Miller Panelists: Genie Bettencourt, Eric Felix, LJ Shelton, & Paul Bylsma Register at www.ashe.ws/events/cahep...
Sharing my new article in Journal of Women & Minorities in Science and Engineering w/Tynsley Gilchrist, Brandon Bakka, Tricia Clayton, Maura Borrego- Toward Transgressive Capital: LGBTQ+ Engineering Students Developing Queer Cultural Capital Through Reading Groups dl.begellhouse.com/journals/005...
Toward Transgressive Capital: LGBTQ+ Engineering Students Developing Queer Cultural Capital Through Reading Groups
LGBTQ+ students face hostile climates in engineering, yet few studies explore interventions that support queer student success. This interview study examines how participation in LGBTQ+ engineering reading groups helped 11 students develop queer cultural capital to navigate engineering. We demonstrate that through their development of queered forms of cultural capital including linguistic, familial, aspirational, navigational, and resistant capital, participants also developed emergent transgressive capital to move beyond boundaries and reject binaries. The reading group itself was created as a transgressive counterspace within a college of engineering and was structured to eliminate power differentials between undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. Participants rejected binaries in their use of pronouns and descriptions of their gender and sexual identities. Students credited the reading group for helping them realize there are other queer people succeeding in engineering. The reading group strengthened some participants’ queer identities, prompting them to be out to more people, including listing the group on their resume for potential employers to see. Participants were inspired by the nonbinary faculty member leading the group and the authors whose work they read. Overall, the reading group allowed students to reframe their daily realities in engineering and imagine how they might make change in the future.
dl.begellhouse.com
My department is searching for two tenure-line positions to start in August 2026. Come join our growing team and make a difference in building the future! Assistant professor of higher education: apply.interfolio.com/172680 Associate/full professor of education policy: apply.interfolio.com/172632
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Sharing my new article w/@crystalegarcia.bsky.social & @drantonioduran.bsky.social in the Journal of Higher Education (50 free at link). We conducted a critical discourse analysis of the arguments used in several states for/against anti-DEI legislation in '23-24. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XRP9D...
“Copy and Paste” Practices: A Multi-Site Critical Discourse Analysis of Arguments About Anti-DEI Legislation
This manuscript presents the results of a critical discourse analysis designed to investigate how legislators and other actors leverage discursive strategies to frame the need for/impacts of state-...
tandfonline.com
"Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself." balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...
Balkinization: Regulation by Deal Comes to Higher Ed
A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics
balkin.blogspot.com
My friend @cantb.bsky.social joins us for the penultimate pod of the season to talk about the state of American higher education 9% into the Trump Administration and how on earth Harvard got to be popular.
Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA)@hesa-highered.bsky.social · last yr.#Podcast | Join us on The World of Higher Education as @alexusherhesa.bsky.social returns with Brendan Cantwell from Michigan State University to dissect the impact of the Trump administration’s policies on higher ed. youtu.be/3SbzvC8yYlI Sponsored by KnowMeQ
Big news: The Trump administration has essentially proposed shutting down tribal colleges and universities, displacing more than 20,000 students. My latest for ProPublica:
ProPublica@propublica.org · last yr.NEW: A nearly 90% funding cut proposed by the Trump administration would likely shut down and devastate the 37 tribal colleges and universities created to serve the students disadvantaged by the nation’s historic mistreatment of Indigenous communities. By @mattkrupnick.bsky.social
I have a new article in Innovative Higher Education examining whether new college presidents improve institutions' financial health. There isn't much happening at publics, but new leaders at privates cut expenses in a meaningful way. Official link, prepub below. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
kelchenoneducation.wordpress.com
Let’s Remember Why There’s a System of Federal Research Grants to Universities talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lets-...
Let’s Remember Why There’s a System of Federal Research Grants to Universities
This is largely preaching to the choir. But it’s absent enough from...
talkingpointsmemo.com
5 Questions on Open Expression in the Era of Trump Michelle Deutchman, who leads UC’s free expression center, says institutions are grappling with how to promote student expression amid the government’s crackdown on protesters. #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/4drRCDF
Free Speech Expert Discusses Open Expression and Trump
Michelle Deutchman, who leads UC’s free expression center, says institutions are grappling with how to promote student expression amid the government’s crackdown on protesters.
bit.ly
New open access article w/Dr. Morgan Murray in the Journal of College and University Student Housing: "Isolation and Belonging: The Complex Reality of Black Resident Assistants." Thanks for your important research & letting me collaborate with you! Access p. 30: www.nxtbook.com/acuho-i/acuh...
journal_vol51no3
Experience our interactive, profoundly engaging digital publication!
nxtbook.com
I can unequivocally say that MANY of the rural, poor and working-class students in my research credit TRIO to their success and continued enrollment in college. These cuts would be devastating to communities like where I come from. Write your congresspeople. www.insidehighered.com/news/student...
How Trump’s Proposed TRIO Cuts Could Hamper College Access
The Trump administration wants to eliminate the federally funded student support program. That could be devastating for low-income students and the institutions that serve them.
insidehighered.com
🧪FY26 Proposed Budget: The president’s proposal would be disastrous for Americans’ health & scientific capabilities. The administration seeks to slash $18B from NIH (~40%), $3.6B from CDC (~39%), $5.2B from NSF (~57%), & AHRQ by 35% & stops future grants. @aaas.org @researchamerica.bsky.social
Former Fellow Ryan Miller publishes new research examining bias response in higher education. Read the full article here: buff.ly/aDizjqJ #HigherEd #FreeSpeech
Bowing to External Pressures: How the Threat of Lawsuits Dilutes Bias Response in Higher Education - Ryan A. Miller, 2025
Bias response teams (BRTs) have proliferated in colleges and universities as administrative mechanisms to respond to hate and bias incidents on campuses. Advoca...
journals.sagepub.com
University leaders need to understand: they are holding INCREDIBLY good cards. It is so rare in today's polarized era to have the support of 70+ percent of the public against the Trump admiministration on anything. Universities have that—AND winning legal arguments.
Life update: As of August 1, I will be Professor of Higher Education & Ph.D. program director at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I am grateful for the past 9 years at UNC Charlotte & excited for what lies ahead!
“We’re all at risk of being a target, and we have two choices. We can either let that risk render us voiceless, or we can use our voices to speak out against these attacks on higher education,” Pasquerella said. www.chronicle.com/article/more...
More Than 200 Higher-Ed Leaders Decry Trump Administration’s ‘Unprecedented Government Overreach’
The statement marks college presidents’ largest collective rebuke of the White House’s actions to date.
chronicle.com
New open access article in @aeraedresearch.bsky.social AERA Open that extends my research on bias response in higher education and illustrates how institutions retreat from educationally and legally defensible practices purely to avoid the threat of lawsuits. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Bowing to External Pressures: How the Threat of Lawsuits Dilutes Bias Response in Higher Education - Ryan A. Miller, 2025
Bias response teams (BRTs) have proliferated in colleges and universities as administrative mechanisms to respond to hate and bias incidents on campuses. Advoca...
journals.sagepub.com
New publication with @drantonioduran.bsky.social & @jaudrazona.bsky.social reviewing the last 15 years of research about disabled queer & trans college students published in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Ed @apajournals.bsky.social psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...
(1/3) Publication Announcement! I am thrilled to share: "A systematic literature review on disabled queer and trans college student scholarship," co-authored with my mentors @drantonioduran.bsky.social and Dr. Ryan Miller, now available in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
New publication on rural adult transfer student choices- congratulations to my doc advisee Tynsley Gilchrist on the publication! 50 free e-prints at the link: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9WDKJ...
“I’m in a Different Place in Life”: A Qualitative Study of Rural Adult Transfer Student Choices
Rural adult students’ intersectional identities inform many of their decisions about college, including the choice to transfer from a community college to a university. This qualitative study sough...
tandfonline.com
The same Texas A&M University that allowed neo-Nazi Preston Wiginton to host White Nationalist Richard Spencer for speech on campus in the Memorial Student Center.
Adam Steinbaugh@adamsteinbaugh.bsky.social · last yr.Texas A&M University System bans student drag shows because they might offend someone. Utter disregard for basic First Amendment rights.
![[...] WHEREAS, the Board recognizes and supports the efforts of the Universities’ student, staff and faculty organizations, to foster a sense of community and belonging for the many students, staff and faculty of the Universities from varied backgrounds; and
WHEREAS, the Board is aware that each of the Universities operate and maintain meeting rooms, theaters, auditoriums, and other venues available to student, staff and faculty organizations in which the organizations periodically host events that are open to members of the public (Special Event Venues); and
WHEREAS, the Board recognizes a special interest in maintaining the Universities’ Special Event Venues as limited forums for the purpose of promoting the mission of the System to provide education, conduct research, commercialize technology, offer training and deliver services for the people of Texas and beyond; and
WHEREAS, the Board finds that it is inconsistent with the System’s mission and core values of its Universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow Special Event Venues of the Universities to be used for drag shows that involve biological males dressing in women’s clothing, wearing exaggerated female make up and/or exaggerated prosthetics meant to parody the female body type, and that are: open to the public; involve sexualized, vulgar or lewd conduct; and involve conduct that demeans women (Drag Show Events); and
WHEREAS, the Board finds that Drag Show Events are likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women contrary to System anti-discrimination policy and Title IX . . ., as these events often involve unwelcome and objectively offensive conduct based on sex for many members of the respective communities of the Universities, particularly when they involve the mockery or objectification of women; and](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7r477jd7q7p2mzmyqfm7jmp7/bafkreiam2cuuz55ed6mkkmnb67eihep65fve7lqniwbzttg27nv3n5yd5e)
The attack on DEI shows why liberals should stop arguing about "strategic" use of language forever. DEI stands for three uncontroversial virtues that most every American accepts, and the right still turned it into a vile slur. It doesn't matter what you say - they will poison it because YOU said it.
A thing I was explaining to a reporter this week is there is no singular definition of a "state dei ban" because each state decided to target different functions within higher education in such a way that the actual unifying thread across the policies is segregation and censorship
It is really hard to watch people willfully tear down an infrastructure that allowed us to double lifespans, drastically reduce poverty, and become one of the richest countries in the world.
Now more than ever, it is important to support Queer and Trans people. In this practice brief, we (@drantonioduran.bsky.social @drqhutchings.bsky.social) imagine the ways we can address the needs of Queer and Trans men of color, specifically in men of color programs. psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...
