Harvard Law School students voted to demand the university’s $53 billion endowment divest from “weapons, surveillance technology” and other companies tied to Israel, a symbolic vote that brings renewed attention to a protest movement that has drawn the Trump administration’s ire.

Harvard’s administration said last year it won’t divest and the student vote carries no enforcement, but the move puts anti-Israel protests back in the spotlight at a time when President Alan Garber is trying to reassure Republicans they’re taking seriously criticisms of the school, which includes its handling of antisemitism.

The move comes days after the administration pulled $400 million from Columbia University and immigration officials arrested an organizer of anti-Israel protests. Harvard said last week it would temporarily freeze faculty and staff hiring amid concerns over federal funding. 

“The Trump administration’s threats are meant to scare us into submission, but this referendum shows that those efforts only strengthen our solidarity with Palestine,” Irene Ameena, an organizer with Law Students for a Free Palestine, said in a statement. The note said that 73% of the 842 students that voted chose divestment. The law school has almost 2,000 students.

Pro-Palestinian students have long called for universities to cut ties with Israel, moves that have almost entirely been ignored by administrators, even after protests on campus intensified in the wake of Hamas’s October 2023 attack on the Jewish state and Israel’s retaliation. 

Schools and lawmakers have rejected the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement against Israel, viewing it as antisemitic because it calls into question the legitimacy of the Jewish state and singles out the policies of one country.

Harvard Law School said in a statement that it strongly supports students’ free speech rights. It added that the administration had no role in the referendum conducted by student government. 

“As explained in a message to students, the administration expressed deep disappointment with student government’s leadership’s decision to proceed with a needlessly divisive referendum which runs contrary to student government’s stated objectives of “fostering community” and “enhancing inclusion,” Harvard Law said. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff posted an open letter on LinkedIn admitting his company’s dating apps are falling short and don’t feel like places “to build real connections.” He’s now calling on Match employees to offer feedback on how to best improve their apps like Hinge and Tinder.

Finding love on dating apps has felt so bleak one user told Fortune that Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble feel like a “wasteland.” 

“I think the user pool on a lot of these apps has declined,” Max Gomez, a Gen Z communications professional, previously told Fortune. “Gen Z is just simply not using these [apps] as much anymore.”

Match Group’s new CEO admitted as much in a letter posted Thursday on LinkedIn, saying the company’s dating apps like Hinge and Tinder haven’t been up to snuff. 

“Too often, our apps have felt like a numbers game rather than a place to build real connections, leaving people with the false impression that we prioritize metrics over experience,” wrote Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s former CEO who took the top job at Match Group in February. “That needs to change.”

In his letter, Rascoff called on employees to confidentially share their “unvarnished feedback” on products to help improve the apps. 

“We know that listening to users isn’t enough—we need to move with urgency and increased accountability,” Rascoff wrote, adding Match Group would be “increasing expectations around in-office collaboration” to make changes happen faster. Rascoff has been revered for the company culture he created during his time at Zillow.

Match Group declined to provide further comment on Rascoff’s letter.

Analysts have been warning about the downfalls of dating app companies like Match Group and Bumble for a while. Although Bank of America analysts said in a Feb. 5 note Rascoff’s appointment could be a positive for the company, “the online dating industry faces continued headwinds to user growth.” 

Global users for dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge declined 6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to Bank of America research. During the past five years, Match Group stock has tanked nearly 70%, plus the “overall sentiment on dating apps largely remains negative,” according to a Jan. 28 analyst note from Citi. However, Match Group total revenue grew 3% year-over-year to $3.5 billion, according to the company’s earnings report on Feb. 4. 

Some younger people have also ditched dating apps entirely, yearning for real-life meet-ups instead. 

“I don’t want to just be chatting people online,” Louise Mason, a millennial marketing specialist from Doncaster, U.K., previously told Fortune. “I don’t want a penpal.”

Rascoff feels users’ pain.

“I’ve heard incredible stories of love,” he wrote. “But I’ve also heard frustration—from users searching for real, meaningful matches and expecting more from the experience.”

Better product offerings could help Match Group climb out of its slump. Citi analysts noted they’re watching for new products and updates that could improve Match Group’s performance and outlook.

“Improved product development is critical in our view to improve underlying user trends long-term,” Citi analysts said. 

Rascoff said Match Group is on top of product updates and developments in his letter shared on LinkedIn.

“Transformation is already underway,” Rascoff wrote, adding Hinge, Tinder, and other brands in its portfolio are finding new ways to implement AI into product development.

“But it’s not about technology alone,” he added. “Our people, our culture, and our deep commitment to our mission will be the driving force behind this transformation.” 

Analysts from Wolfe Research also appear optimistic about changes Rascoff could usher in as the new CEO of Match Group.

“We believe investors will welcome his communication style and cadence favorably,” Wolfe Research analysts wrote in a Feb. 5 note. “A lot depends on successful execution this year, and the company now has another chance to prove out its strategy.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

America’s postmaster general knew that sooner or later, DOGE would come calling at the US Postal Service.

So Louis DeJoy decided to have DOGE work with him.

The nation’s top mailman this week signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to collaborate on reforms to the sprawling service, which delivers letters and packages from tropical Guam to the Alaskan wilderness. Rather than wait for the DOGE crew to dictate changes, DeJoy is seeking to shape them. 

“This was a short and healthy conversation” that stated a few days ago, DeJoy said in an interview. “We’re off to the races.”

Read More: Postal Service Head Signs DOGE Agreement to Spur Reforms

He also wants to cement in place a series of reforms he’s been pursuing for the last four years. Unnoticed by most Americans, the venerable Post Office has been trying to reinvent itself, cutting expenses while shifting to a modern hub-and-spoke distribution system similar to competitors United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.

For customers at least, DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” reform plan has produced limited results, with many Americans now waiting longer to get their mail. But in a letter to Congressional leaders Thursday disclosing the DOGE deal, DeJoy touted the costs — and staff — already cut and said the service is headed for better days.

“The Postal Service once faced the immediate threat of insolvency, which would have required a taxpayer bailout,” he wrote. “Now, the Postal Service is instead finally experiencing an unprecedented period of growth and innovation.”

DeJoy already announced he intends to step down from his office, even though the 10-year Delivering for America plan isn’t yet halfway through. President Donald Trump has mused about taking the service private or folding it into the Department of Commerce, while Musk also called for privatization. In contrast, DeJoy’s letter called for ensuring that some version of his own reforms continues after his departure. 

At least two DOGE and GSA employees will work under DeJoy’s supervision, searching for potential savings and efficiencies, according to a person familiar with the details of the plan. “It’s not an army,” DeJoy said. “I still run the organization.”

Reforming the nearly 250-year-old Postal Service, which employs 635,000 people, is a complex task — in part because of its mandate. Unlike its private competitors, the USPS is required to reach Americans even in the most remote places, no matter how sparsely populated. Indeed, UPS and FedEx alike pay the service to cover “last-mile” deliveries in many rural areas where they would otherwise struggle to operate profitably. And while it’s an independent government agency, not directly under White House control, it faces regulations and legal requirements its private competitors don’t.

“The level of transformation needed at the US Post Office to basically be a profitable network in 2025, versus what DeJoy’s actually been able to move the dial on, there’s a huge disconnect between those two,” said Derek Lossing, founder of Cirrus Global Advisors, a logistics consulting firm.

Big Losses

In his letter, DeJoy, a former private-sector logistics executive and Trump donor who took office in 2020, said he inherited an organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was on track to lose another $200 billion. 

“When I got there, I didn’t take into account how broken we were,” DeJoy told Bloomberg in December. 

He never envisioned staying at the agency for this long. “I originally came here for three years, fell in love with the people,” DeJoy said on Thursday. “It’s very, very important work.”

Some of the changes he implemented were relatively straightforward, such as making sure trucks were full before going out on a route rather than sending out a driver with a half-empty trailer. Others were bigger, including consolidating facilities and shifting volume away from expensive air transport to ground trucks. The service also is establishing a series of 60 regional distribution centers. 

He increased revenue by focusing more on packages and raising rates, with the cost of a stamp rising 33% between January 2019 and July 2024. The service is largely self-funded through its revenue from operations.

DeJoy has also trimmed the service’s immense payroll, cutting its labor workforce by 30,000 people from fiscal 2021, with another 10,000 expected to depart in a voluntary early retirement program. And yet, for all the changes, the service posted a $9.5 billion loss last year, while on-time delivery of first-class mail declined. 

DeJoy sees slower deliveries as temporary growing pains. He’s pushing employees “to step up and act like FedEx and UPS.” Those are “formidable organizations, and we had a lot of transition, a lot of heavy baggage,” he said. Come summer, “we’re gonna be rocking.”

In his letter, DeJoy asked Congress to fix some issues the service itself cannot. In particular, he said unfunded federal legislative mandates saddle the agency with $6 billion to $11 billion in annual costs. And he took particular aim at the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the service’s rates and performance. He called it an “unnecessary agency” too attached to “defective pricing models and decades old bureaucratic processes.”

‘Failed Miserably’

The commission promptly fired back, issuing a statement Thursday that DeJoy’s Delivering for America program had made the service less efficient and degraded its performance, particularly in rural areas. Commissioners also slammed his focus on the highly competitive package market, calling it “a strategy which has failed miserably to this point.”

In February, DeJoy asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his replacement, a process he hopes will take months rather than years. Even some critics of his plan praise him with taking on a difficult task. 

“His successor has a mess, in short,” said Paul Steidler, a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, a center-right think tank in Virginia. “His plan hasn’t worked, but give the guy some credit. At least he took a shot.”

DeJoy himself feels more confident stepping away now. “They know what they need to do, and that’s why I feel comfortable in giving the leave,” he said. “And if I get this help that I just laid out with these issues, the Postal Service will be in great shape for a long time.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com