The Shifting Landscape Of Higher Education

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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Columbia University has become the first institution to reach a negotiated settlement over claims of anti-Semitism brought by the Trump administration.

The university will pay a $200 million fine for allegedly failing to stop the harassment of Jewish students and an additional $21 million to settle investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

According to a university statement, this settlement will include the restoration of more than $400 million in previously frozen federal research grants.

The deal marks a pivotal moment in a broader campaign that has swept through higher education in recent months.

Several university presidents have resigned or been forced out amid a wave of federal investigations, and the government has frozen billions in research grants and accused schools like Harvard and NYU of failing to address anti-Semitism while simultaneously challenging their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

But what began a scrutiny of elite institutions is now expanding across the academic landscape.

My guest today, journalist Catherine Magan, has been reporting on how this pressure is reaching far beyond elite universities.

In her latest investigation for ProPublica, co-published with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mangan looks at George Mason, Virginia's largest public university, one of the most racially diverse in the country, and a school that accepts nearly 90% of its applicants.

The school's president, Gregory Washington, is now facing several federal probes, escalating calls for his ouster, and what many see as a politically coordinated campaign to reshape the university's university's leadership and priorities.

Catherine Mangan is a senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and she spent four decades covering campus activism, student life, free speech, and the shifting landscape of higher education.

We recorded our interview yesterday.

Catherine Mangan, welcome to Fresh Air.

It's great to be here.

Thank you.

So Catherine, much of the national attention has really been focused on these elite institutions, Ivy Leagues.

What do these colleges all have in common as you've looked at each of the cases?

Well, what we're seeing really is an unprecedented attack on colleges and universities that the Trump administration has deemed to be out of line with its priorities.

In this case, the president of George Mason, Gregory Washington, has been an unapologetic supporter of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on his campuses.

The campus is extremely diverse, and he sees DEI efforts not necessarily as the Trump administration sees them as somehow discriminating against students, but rather as making sure that students feel welcome and supported.

So I think one of the common denominators we're seeing in the case of George Mason, UVA, and some of the other campuses is that these are campuses where DEI has been in some ways celebrated and advanced and the Trump administration sees them as out of line with its priorities.

Can you describe George Mason University, what the campus is like, where it's located in Virginia?

George Mason is in Fairfax.

It's relatively close to the nation's capital, which is another reason some people thought it might have been a particularly easy target for the Trump administration.

But unlike some of the other universities that the Trump administration has been targeting, it is a very diverse, a very large public university, accepts 90% of its applicants.

It is not by any means what many people would consider a sort of what they refer to as a woke university.

It has some very conservative scholars there.

It receives a lot of money, particularly in the

Scalia Law School from the Koch Foundation.

So again, it just seems like in many ways an unlikely target of the Trump administration, but a very convenient one geographically.

Gregory Washington is also the school's first black president.

How long has he been there?

He's been there since 2020.

And yes, he's the first black president.

And there are some people who question whether that has made him any more vulnerable.

In the case of George Mason, a former Virginia governor, Governor Wilder, pointed out that Gregory Washington was not the first college administrator of color to be subjected to what he sees as very unfair attacks.

That year of 2020 is kind of pivotal because that was right around the time where we were seeing lots of institutions that were making change in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder.

Yes, that's right.

In 2020, which is when President Washington took over at George Mason, that was a time, it was sort of the height in many ways of the sort of racial justice movement.

Colleges around the country were taking the kinds of steps that George Mason was taking to try to make sure that their campuses were welcoming and supportive of students from diverse backgrounds, and also taking steps to address historic racial inequities on their campuses.

So, what was happening at George Mason was actually quite common.

It was also in line with what the state was demanding.

There was state law requiring agencies to have DEI efforts and to make sure that they were being inclusive.

Okay, let's talk about this issue, the letter that George Mason received on July 1st from the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

The letter indicated that the office was opening an investigation into anti-Semitism at the school.

First off, how is the administration defining anti-Semitism?

What did they point to specifically on that campus?

The administration has accused the university of not doing enough to sort of rein in what they see as anti-Semitic activity on campus.

And this is something that the president told me he was very surprised to hear because compared to other campuses like Harvard and Columbia where there had been some very high profile protests, there hadn't been a lot of activity on his campus.

And so he didn't see the evidence that the Trump administration was pointing to that there was in fact anti-Semitism going on on his campus.

He also pointed out that the university has taken great pains to work closely with the Jewish community and also to tighten restrictions around protests.

The university has made it much harder for students to protest and some people

will even say that the university has gone too far in that direction in trying to please the administration and prevent this kind of investigation.

Well, your article actually points out from 2023 to 2024, the university received 31 bias incident reports of anti-Semitism.

Last year, that number dropped to 12.

Can you put that number in perspective, in relation maybe to other universities?

I'm just trying to get a sense if that is a high number, if that is an average number of these types of complaints.

I would say that's a fairly small number.

And of course, people who...

are questioning the motives of the Trump administration will say this is evidence that in fact there really hasn't been this sort of groundswell of anti-Semitism that the administration is accusing the university of allowing.

It's a relatively small number and in fact several Jewish advocacy groups have praised the university for the steps it's taken to tamp down on any anti-Semitic activity on campus.

So compared to other campuses, it's been relatively quiet and there have been relatively few complaints in recent years.

A few days after that first investigation notification,

George Mason received another letter, this time about its DEI initiatives.

And I'm curious, what were some of the accusations the administration is making against their approach to DEI?

Yes, so far there have been four investigations launched into George Mason for a combination of complaints about anti-Semitism and also about DEI.

And in the case of of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, the administration in two separate investigations has accused the university of unfairly considering race in tenure and promotion decisions.

So essentially being guilty of reverse discrimination against white male applicants by giving favoritism to people of color and women.

Then in a separate investigation, it also said that the university has unfairly discriminated against white students by favoring students of color in both admissions and in scholarships.

So, this is what we're seeing very characteristic of Trump's approach is to hit universities with a succession within days or weeks of separate investigations going after a combination of complaints of anti-Semitism and DEI.

One of the things I think President Washington mentioned that you wrote about in your article is

it's very hard to untangle what DEI means for a university like George Mason because it is so diverse.

It also has a very diverse faculty and staff.

And so when there's this push to break things apart, he was actually saying it's actually foundational to who they are.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.

And so what he said to was that

diversity is so much a part of their DNA.

It's something he said we don't run away from, we run toward.

We have to embrace diversity and not see it as something bad, sort of the way that Trump is characterizing it as something illegal.

And he just very much resents the way that their efforts to

support diversity are being, in his mind, sort of

unfairly characterized as racial discrimination.

He would say it's anything but discrimination.

Something that stood out to me, Catherine, is that you make a point to say that DEI expenditures at George Mason

represent less than 0.1% of the university's budget.

If that number is accurate, it really does raise the question, what is this really about?

No, I think that's true.

I think critics of DEI will refer to these massive DEI bureaucracies and sort of give the impression that there are dozens of administrators that are all earning big salaries in these DEI roles, and that's really just not the case.

And so, yes, I think there are a lot of people who feel that this attack on DEI is really a much broader attack on what the Trump administration sees as progressive tendencies of universities.

They accuse universities of indoctrinating students with liberal ideas and not being adequately supportive of conservative scholars and students.

Washington and many of the other people that you talked to for your article feel this is also a larger coordinated effort to get Washington ousted.

And one indication of that is that there was this media blitz almost immediately after they received these notifications of an investigation, and the university hadn't sent out notification that they were under investigation.

So it seemed like that there was something happening behind the scenes.

Can you kind of talk about that a little bit?

I think one of the reasons that many people see this as part of an orchestrated attack is that conservative media groups were reporting on these investigations sometimes within hours of the university learning of them, even when the Trump administration had not announced them.

And the concern is that the Trump administration may be sort of leaking word of these investigations to conservative media outlets, one of which published a very, very critical piece referring to President Washington as a disastrous president who needed to step down.

And this seems to be part of a playbook that we're seeing on other campuses, including the University of Virginia, where conservative media groups will publish blogs and articles and editorials calling for a president's ouster, and then in quick succession, having the government announce investigations and penalties against these universities.

Catherine, I want to go back to DEI for a moment, because over the last

really few decades, there has been a slow push to make many of these universities more diverse.

So how complicated is it for a university to kind of dial back all of that work?

I think it's very complicated.

And I think one of the challenges is, again, the Trump administration is not really defining what it means by DEI.

So when colleges are feeling pressure to dial back DEI work, what does that really mean?

Even at universities like the University of Michigan, which has been criticized for having one of the largest bureaucracies involving DEI,

even there, it was just a fraction of a percent of total spending.

So I think there's this perception that there's a huge bureaucracy that is not necessarily borne out by the data.

But there are a lot of people who are working in jobs that the Trump administration might lump into this category of illegal DEI, but which many would see as very essential to student success efforts, efforts to make sure that students have the support they need to graduate.

So I think one of the first steps that colleges are taking is to,

in many cases, shut down DEI offices or repurpose them and

take some of the people who are working in DEI offices and assign them to new roles.

But there's also a big question about what you do with many of these student support programs, which which in some ways might have had a component,

you know, if it had a component where it was

offering tutoring services to underrepresented students, is that considered DEI?

Is that something you need to get rid of?

Well, if you're being very cautious, very conservative, yes, you're just going to get rid of that.

And that's where I think a lot of people are concerned about what they see as sort of overcompliance with these anti-DEI directives.

Anything that could be possibly seen as being a vestige of DEI is going to be, again, eliminated.

And, you know, a lot of people will say that that's going to make it more difficult for students to succeed and graduate.

When these universities like George Mason, like UVA, they receive these notifications, they're being investigated, What types of materials do they have to send to the government?

What proof do they have to show?

It sounds like they're really in a scramble.

Yeah, they're definitely in a scramble.

Among the things that the university is being asked to turn over are a lot of records of how students have been disciplined.

In some cases, this raises really challenging privacy issues.

Universities might be reluctant to hand over student records because they're protected by privacy laws, but the administration is demanding, in some cases, within days or weeks, voluminous information that universities are expected to turn over.

And what's happening, I think, when you see cases like at George Mason and at the University of Virginia, when conservative media groups have come out front and portrayed these investigations in a certain light, what I'm hearing from the administration is that it's very difficult to have to be in response mode, responding to what they see as unfair portrayals of the work that they're doing at the same time that they're scrambling to gather all of these documents, some of which are protected, and turn them all over within a very, very short timeframe to the federal government.

There was something pretty significant that happened at the University of Virginia last month.

So the president there, James Ryan, he abruptly resigned.

And

reporting suggests that his departure came after this direct pressure from the DOJ

investigating their DEI programs.

They reportedly made his resignation a condition of settling that civil rights probe.

What more can you tell us about what happened there and maybe

why is it being seen as such a pivotal moment in this broader campaign?

Yes, I think a lot of people were really shocked when President Ryan stepped down in order to resolve the complaints against the university.

This was another case, as with George Mason, where many higher education officials feel there was an orchestrated attack to get him to step down.

It came after a conservative alumni group called the Jefferson Council had been publishing op-eds and blog posts calling for him to step down, lambasting him, complaining about his record on DEI and other issues.

And also, this was very much in coordination with a couple of lawyers in the Department of Justice who were leading the investigation, both of whom were alums of UVA,

who were also putting pressure on the president to step down.

all of this is really a big question about the right for universities to self-govern.

I'm curious what you're seeing in regards to like the Board of Trustees as well as faculty pushing back or speaking out.

Faculty were definitely pushing back and feeling that this kind of attack threatened their autonomy as an institution, that the government doesn't have a right to come in and tell them who their president president should be.

They were also disappointed, though, that the board didn't better defend the president when he stepped down.

This is at UVA, but also at George Mason.

Faculty have been very critical of the board for not really coming to the defense of the president and insisting on universities being able to determine who their presidents are and being able to resist this kind of orchestrated political pressure.

Faculty have been very critical of boards for what they see as not adequately defending their presidents and their institutions' autonomy.

Our guest today is journalist Catherine Magan with the Chronicle of Higher Education.

We're talking about her recent article for ProPublica, investigating how George Mason University became the latest target in what appears to be a coordinated political campaign.

After we recorded our interview yesterday, Columbia University agreed to pay a $200 million fine for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students on campus.

More of our conversation after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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The people that you spoke with believe, as you stated, it's a larger political effort, not just federal pressure, but also a state-level effort driven by political forces from inside of Virginia.

So they describe this kind of as an inside job, a coordinated push not just to investigate, but to replace the president.

And specifically, replace the president with someone who is more ideologically aligned with the governor, Governor Glenn Youngkin.

What did you learn about those dynamics and how credible is this concern that is part of kind of this larger political play?

There's a lot of concern that the state's Republican governor who has appointed all of the board members to George Mason

is largely behind this, that he's certainly part of what many people see as an orchestrated effort to encourage President Washington to step down.

There are those who feel that he would like to see someone installed as president who would be more supportive of his goals and certainly more in line with the goals of President Trump.

The fact that the board members are all appointed by the governor and many of them have ties to the Conservative Heritage Foundation, that has a lot of people concerned because Heritage, of course, is the author of a blueprint that came out in 2023 called Project 2025 and that was an effort to completely remake the federal government for a second Trump presidency, a blueprint that was seen by many as very authoritarian and a big section on education, in addition to eliminating the Education Department, would take aim at all DEI efforts around the country and try to eliminate any vestiges of DEI on college campuses.

So the fact that so many of the board members at George Mason have ties to the Heritage Foundation make people think that they're just not going to be supportive of Washington as this battle goes forward.

Can you put this in context to the larger effort from Governor Yunken?

I'm reading here that he's been able to take control of the state's 14 four-year public universities and colleges with his own appointees.

Is that accurate?

Yes, I think that's right.

And so that, you know, again, has caused a lot of concern about his broader motives and the fact that public universities in Virginia are really very much under this sort of political control and there's a question of whether they will have any kind of institutional autonomy going forward.

This is similar to what happened in Florida with New College, right?

Yes, and some faculty members I spoke to at George Mason were specifically calling out that example, saying that they worry that Governor Youngkin is going to sort of follow the playbook of Florida Governor DeSantis and appoint conservative scholars to universities to sort of remake them the way he essentially remade New College.

New College was a progressive college, which changed quite a bit after the Florida governor appointed a lot of conservative members to its board.

So they don't want George Mason to become the next new college.

Well, on the other side of this, is there an argument argument that there's not a fair representation of conservative scholars and students on these campuses?

What do you make of that argument that many colleges have become far left, more liberal in that regard?

I think that's definitely a legitimate criticism and one that I think most colleges are taking into consideration.

If you look at a campus like George Mason,

even though it's sort of portrayed in this investigation as being this sort of woke university, if you look at the law school, the Scalia Law School, the name says a lot.

It has a lot of very conservative scholars, gets a lot of money from the Koch Foundation.

So many of these campuses that are being dismissed as these sort of bastions of liberal orthodoxy really are more diverse than they're given credit for.

But at the same time, I think most universities are really trying to make an effort to broaden the discussion and encourage viewpoint diversity.

I think this fall we're going to see a lot of focus on campuses to try to encourage students from all different political beliefs and backgrounds to feel comfortable opening up in classrooms in a way that I know conservative students have said that they just haven't felt comfortable in in the past.

Delve a little deeper into that because I've been thinking quite a bit about this.

Students will be returning to school in the fall and what will these changes possibly look like if universities are feeling the pressure to be quote-unquote more diverse in regards to allowing there to be a larger voice of conservative voices?

I think a lot of universities are going to be making an effort to broaden their discussions.

There's just been so much focus on viewpoint diversity just in terms of the kinds of speakers who are invited and the kinds of discussions that take place in classrooms.

I think that's in part because colleges, I think, are trying to show that they are taking the concerns of the Trump administration seriously.

I think there's so much fear about being the next university to be investigated that some of this is probably going to come from a point of trying to protect themselves from being investigated.

There are a number of states that have passed anti-DEI laws that specifically target what is said in the classroom.

So again, you know, I think that the Trump administration makes a point of saying that what they're trying to do is to encourage free speech and viewpoint diversity, and yet there has been sort of a backlash too.

There's a feeling that viewpoint diversity is important, but that in many cases scholars are going to be reluctant to talk about anything that could be seen in any way as connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Can we talk a little bit about how these kinds of federal investigations have traditionally worked under previous administrations?

Because from what I understand,

civil rights enforcement typically follows a process.

So there's an investigation, then opportunities for voluntary compliance from the university.

Sometimes there are public hearings, and then Congress is sometimes notified.

All of that usually happens before any funding is threatened or withdrawn, but that's not the playbook of the Trump administration.

Can you kind of talk about that a little bit?

That's right.

And a lot of this started in February when the Trump administration announced what it called the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

And this was a task force that was made up of top administrators from the Department of Education and Justice, Health and Human Services, General Services Administration.

This group of top-level administrators were all created into this sort of task force that was going to take a much more aggressive, quick approach to investigating universities.

That critics would say it sort of completely disregards the safeguards that are normally set up to handle civil rights investigations.

Normally, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education are the two places where these civil rights investigations take place.

And they're protection set up to make sure that universities have due process.

They include the opportunity to sort of fix any violations through they might be able to have a resolution agreement with the government.

There would be a hearing where the university could appeal the government's findings.

There would be a notice to Congress, 30 days of notice.

I mean, there are all these safeguards that are sort of built into the process that have really been completely disregarded by this task force.

This started at Columbia.

Columbia was notified that it was under investigation, and four days later, it was told that the government was freezing $400 million in research grants.

These investigations normally take weeks or months, so clearly there was no real investigation.

The government had sort of gone into it with a predetermined outcome and imposed these penalties without giving the university really an opportunity to respond.

We're talking with the Chronicle of Higher Education senior writer Catherine Mangan.

We recorded our interview yesterday morning.

Later in the day, it was announced that Columbia University has agreed to pay a $200 million fine for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students on campus.

It's part of a deal with the Trump administration to restore the college's research funding.

We'll be back after a short break.

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You mentioned how Jewish organizations have kind of stood up in support of George Mason.

What have you heard from Jewish organizations on how they feel about these attacks on DEI and what they would like to see, especially as they're being told that the administration is taking a stand against anti-Semitism?

It's been really interesting to talk to people from different Jewish organizations.

I mean, there are some conservative groups who welcome this attack because they, you know, regardless of the motives and some may question the motives of the Trump presidency, but they just sort of feel like this is a long overdue focus on what they see as a real foundational problem on college campuses.

But then there are also a lot of moderate and progressive Jewish organizations who see this as a pretext for going after other issues like DEI.

And eliminating DEI, they say, is not going to make Jewish students feel or faculty members feel any safer.

In fact, it's just going to cause more division.

And so there's been a lot of concern about what they see as the Trump administration weaponizing anti-Semitism.

Right.

So now so much of this is being taken up in the courts.

Harvard specifically earlier this week, another federal judge out of Boston sort of signaled skepticism toward the Trump administration's efforts to penalize Harvard, which would strip them of billions in federal research funding.

The judge questioned the legality, how constitutional it is to link the withdrawal of cancer research specifically to these vague concerns about anti-Semitism and DEI.

How significant was that hearing?

to this overall conversation.

It's extremely significant, and it's being closely watched by higher education officials around the country.

Harvard, of course, is hoping to recoup $2.2 billion of research funding that was cut.

And the judge really appeared skeptical of the administration's rationale for cutting that money.

She hasn't issued an opinion, but she raised what she said were mind-boggling questions about whether the Trump administration really has the authority to do what it's doing, which is is cutting billions of dollars in research money without any evidence that it has any connection with anti-Semitism.

What have students told you about how they're managing all of this, how they're feeling, how it's impacting their college experiences?

We've talked to a number of students who

are concerned that some of the centers and programs that universities used to offer that offered sort of a sense of community for people from underrepresented groups.

I'm thinking of multicultural student unions that are being closed on campuses.

I think students who might have visited campuses a year or two ago when those were in place and saw those as welcoming communities and places that they could turn to are discouraged seeing them shut down.

In some cases, colleges have been allowed to continue support groups for particular demographics.

There might be a black student union, but instead of having a faculty supporter, it would be run now by students.

So we're seeing that students are having to pick up a lot of the burden of running these programs that offer a sense of community and support.

And that's just putting so much more pressure on students to do the work that universities used to be able to do, but which are frankly now afraid to step into.

Catherine, you've covered education for four decades.

How would you characterize this moment?

Well, I know the term unprecedented is overused, but we really haven't seen anything like this before.

I mean, I think when the vice president J.D.

Vance famously called higher education the enemy, I think a lot of people were, you know, just sort of shocked and didn't anticipate this level of chaos that would erupt that we're seeing this year.

year.

It's just really hard to keep up with and hard to make sense of how quickly things are changing and how quickly these attacks are happening.

And you know, we just have to really wonder when the dust settles, like what is going to be left, like how much damage is going to be done, how much universities can recover.

I think it's going to be interesting to see too how universities that have been forced to close DEI offices, how they're going to be handling many of the responsibilities that used to fall into those offices, you know, to what extent they're going to continue to have programs that support students from diverse backgrounds, or whether those students are really just going to feel unsupported this fall.

Catherine Mengen, thank you so much for your reporting and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Enjoyed talking to you.

Katherine Mengen is a senior writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

After we recorded our conversation yesterday, Columbia University became the first college to reach a negotiated settlement over claims of anti-Semitism brought by the Trump administration, agreeing to pay a $200 million fine as part of a deal with the Trump administration to restore the college's research funding.

Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead reviews James Moody, 80 Years Young, live from the Blue Note.

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Jazz saxophonist, flautist, and singer James Moody mostly led his own groups, but also performed with friend Dizzy Gillespie and his bands.

Moody made an untold number of records during his 63 years of recording, but jazz historian Kevin Whitehead says, he really excelled as a live performer.

The centennial of James Moody's birth was in March, and now comes a new live album from his 80th birthday.

James Moody at New York's Blue Note, the day he turned 80 in 2005.

That club often stages guest star-studded celebrations, like the one they threw for Moody.

They've done the same when he turned 70.

80th birthday well-wishers sitting in with the band include brass men Jon Fattis, Randy Brecker, and Slyd Hampton, clarinetist Paquito Di Rivera, and pianist Cedar Walton, but we'll focus on the guest of honor.

Early in his career, James Moody played by ear, which helped foster an independent streak.

At 80, on Dizzy Gillespie's tune Bebop, he kicks off his solo with a hooting, declamatory figure, recalling John Coltrane or field-hollering Texas tenor saxophonist Booker Irvin.

Then Moody puts his own spin on that tradition.

In 1949, while living in Europe, James Moody recorded a take on I'm in the Mood for Love, which brought him wider attention, especially after singer Eddie Jefferson set words to his solo and made it the song Moody's Mood for Love.

Bebop vocalist King Pleasure then made it a jazz hit.

For a time, Moody hired Jefferson to sing it with his band before he started performing it himself, like every night.

The saxophonist's irrepressible good nature comes out in his rough and ready vocalizing.

Such a funny thing, but every time you need me, I never can behave.

You give me a man and then I'm wrapped up in your magic.

There's music all around me, crazy music, music that keeps calling me so very close to you.

Shin me your sleeve.

Come and do me anything you want to.

Anything baby to let me connect to you.

Too dopey doo-wee.

Am I insane, or do I really see

heaven in your eyes?

White as stars that shine

James Moody was born partially deaf, unable to hear high frequencies.

Of his singing, he'd say, I don't have a lisp, it's just that I can't hear S's.

Moody's flute work connects his saxophone and singing voice, combining sexistic finger facility with some of his vocal inflections and breathy tone.

Here he is on Cherokee, pushed by his regular rhythm trio, pianist David Hazeltine, drummer Adam Nussbaum, and longtime Moody bassist Todd Kuhlman.

This music's from James Moody's 80 Years Young, live at the Blue Note March 26, 2005 from Origin Records.

Was a time when an album's CD version got the bonus tracks, but this set's download edition is a half hour longer than the one-hour compact disc.

Download-only tracks include some evening highlights and a couple more guests.

On Every Day I Have the Blues, Moody trades off with friend and fellow scat singer Roberta gambarini

Those download bonus tracks also include Moody's take on Sonny Rollins's calypso St.

Thomas.

There he really goes to town, putting his own stamp on a fellow tenor saxophonist trademark tune.

That takes self-confidence and the creativity to justify it.

James Moody steams ahead like he could play it for half an hour.

James Moody kept recording in his 80s.

There's a very good album from 2006 with pianist Hank Jones and a few players heard here.

Moody died in 2010 at age 85.

At various junctures, he grappled with racism, alcohol, drugs, and depression and bounced back from all of that.

James Moody is fondly remembered with an annual New Jersey Jazz Festival named in his honor.

Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead is the author of New Dutch Swing, Why Jazz and Play the Way You Feel.

He reviewed James Moody, 80 Years Young, live at the Blue Note.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shirock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Crinzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan.

Our digital media producer is Mavi C.

V.

Nesper.

Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.

Teresa Madden directed today's show.

With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

Wonderful David Hazeltime, general.

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