Jaweed Kaleem
Jaweed Kaleem reports on how legal, political and cultural fights over race, speech and justice are reshaping public universities and schools, with a particular emphasis on the University of California and other major California campuses. He is an education reporter at the Los Angeles Times, covering the University of California system and higher education more broadly, with regular forays into K-12 issues. His coverage stands out for combining detailed scrutiny of court records, policy documents and budgets with on-the-ground reporting from campuses and classrooms. He brings more than a decade of experience on national civil rights, religion and foreign correspondence to stories that follow how broader battles over equity, safety and free speech are felt in everyday academic life.
University of California under legal and political pressure
A central strand of Kaleem’s recent work follows the University of California as it faces intense scrutiny from the Justice Department and other federal agencies. He has reported in depth on the Justice Department’s lawsuit accusing UCLA of tolerating antisemitic harassment and seeking repayment of billions of dollars in research grants, detailing UC’s argument that the case amounts to “political coercion” and its claims of campus changes since 2024. His coverage of the Trump administration’s proposed settlement over UCLA lays out sweeping federal demands touching numerous aspects of campus life, showing how negotiated legal terms can reshape speech rules, protest allowances and discipline systems for students and faculty. He tracks investigations into UC’s medical and law schools, including allegations that UCSF and UCLA’s law school unlawfully favored Black and Latino applicants in admissions in violation of federal law and the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action ruling, breaking down how those findings connect to admissions practices and diversity goals. His reporting on UC’s internal debate over whether to restore the SAT to admissions situates standardized testing within the same contested space of faculty pressure, changing views on merit and the system’s promises around access.
Race, admissions and civil rights in education
Kaleem’s education coverage is shaped by a long record of reporting on race, civil rights and religion. Before focusing on education, he worked as a national correspondent at the Los Angeles Times covering presidential elections, civil rights, race, policing, religion, the environment and health, and later as a foreign correspondent anchoring coverage of the Ukraine war and writing about European politics, economics, tourism and culture. Earlier in his career he reported on religion for HuffPost and the Miami Herald and was part of a Pulitzer Prize finalist team recognized for coverage of Haiti, adding experience in how institutions respond to crisis and inequality.
That background now informs his detailed accounts of how race and admissions policy collide in higher education, including stories on federal findings that UC medical and law schools gave unlawful preference to certain racial groups in recent classes. His professional profiles describe him as an education correspondent covering national, state and regional issues in K-12 and higher education and, previously, as a reporter on race and justice across the United States, underscoring how he threads civil rights themes through campus stories.
In his social media bio he states that he covers the University of California and more in higher and K-12 education and calls himself a “big fan of the religion beat,” mirroring his focus on how questions of faith, identity and discrimination emerge in academic settings.
Campus life, rituals and classroom debates
Alongside legal and policy battles, Kaleem regularly reports on the culture of campus life and the way educators teach contested histories. He co-wrote a feature on how schools and universities now teach the Sept. 11 attacks to students who were born after 2001, documenting classroom practices, commemorations and shifting narratives as 9/11 moves from lived experience to distant history.
His story on a UCLA law school 9/11 symposium, which promoted a panel featuring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s defense attorney and drew a rare public rebuke from the university’s chancellor, examines where academic freedom meets political and public pressure. At USC, his reporting ranges from a profile of the new provost pledging to rebuild trust in higher education to scene-rich coverage of freshman convocation that captures the emotional weight for parents and students at the start of college. He also follows how universities are adapting to technological change, with coverage of new AI and digital humanities majors at UCLA, USC and other campuses that explains how departments are using artificial intelligence tools in disciplines ranging from history to languages and arts.
Across these pieces, he pairs institutional voices with student and faculty perspectives to show how policy decisions filter down to everyday rituals and classroom debates.
Budgets, governance and public safety across the education landscape
Kaleem’s beat extends beyond individual campuses to the finances and governance of large school systems. He has reported on Los Angeles Unified School District facing “severe” signs of insolvency, including county projections of a significant cash shortfall within a defined timeframe, and he breaks down how oversight bodies read budget documents and what potential state intervention could mean for classrooms.
His archive also includes breaking news coverage such as a police shooting of an armed person in a Santa Monica park, showing his ability to move quickly on public safety stories even when they fall slightly outside his core education focus.
He contributed to reporting on the Monterey Park Lunar New Year shooting that was named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist, reflecting his role in high-stakes coverage of violence affecting local communities. His earlier foreign and national correspondence on the Ukraine war, European politics and U.S. race and policing gives him a wide frame for connecting campus governance problems and safety concerns to larger political and social trends.
Taken together, his work presents education not as a siloed beat but as a front line where disputes over budgets, rights and security play out in real time.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Abril Preciado
Abril Preciado is an Emmy award-winning bilingual television journalist at FOX6 News Milwaukee who focuses on education, school crises and policy decisions affecting students, families and staff. She follows school communities over months, from emergency response through investigations, relocation plans and the first day back in class. Her reporting on the Lincoln Avenue School fire covers displacement, safety changes, rebuilding and the move to temporary space. She also uses public records to examine local officials, test official claims and connect government conduct to public trust. Before joining FOX6, she reported for Univision in Sacramento, covering the Farm Workers March, wildfires, politics and the Latino community, and contributed border reporting for a national radio network. She centers families, explains complex decisions clearly and focuses on the human effects of policy.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.