Category Archives: Academics

Cybercast News Service: New Film Exposes Apparent Lack of Academic Freedom in US

Critics who question the need for race-based affirmative action programs, among other politically controversial issues, are prominently featured in a new documentary that looks at academia’s treatment of dissenting views.

Although most of America’s institutions of higher learning were designed to foster debate and mold students into critical thinkers, a two-and-a-half-year investigation shows that a repressive political climate has taken hold in recent years – a climate where dissent is silenced and free speech is jeopardized, according to Evan Coyne Maloney, who made the documentary “Indoctrinate U.”

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The Courier-News: Conservative group looking to aid U of I

URBANA — Conservative commentator Robert Novak said Thursday that his Washington colleagues were stunned to learn that a group of University of Illinois alumni was setting up an organization to encourage and finance conservative studies on campus.

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The Chronicle: Accreditor Endorses Programs That Prepare Nonbusiness Ph.D.’s to Teach in Business Schools

In an effort to avert a looming faculty shortage, the primary accreditor for business schools on Thursday endorsed programs at five universities to prepare faculty members from nonbusiness disciplines to teach in those schools.

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The Chronicle: When Research Criticizes an Industry

A professor says Idaho State U. gave too much deference to mining interests, at his expense; the administration says it did nothing wrong

When Robert W. Van Kirk released a study in January about selenium contamination in trout streams in southeastern Idaho, he expected some flak from the influential phosphate-mining industry. He didn’t expect to feel pressured by the administration of his own institution, Idaho State University, where he is an associate professor of mathematics.

His research, paid for by a local environmental group, indeed raised the hackles of mining interests. Executives of one major mine operator, the J.R. Simplot Company, called the university’s leaders about the study just days after it came out.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Petitioners Urge Anthropologists to Stop Working With Pentagon in Iraq War

“Anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the ‘war on terror.’” That is one of the central declarations of a Pledge of Non-Participation in Counterinsurgency that was circulated today by a loosely defined group that refers to itself as the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.

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Inside Higher Ed: Chemerinsky Gets Irvine Deanship

Erwin Chemerinsky, who was offered the job as the first law school dean at the University of California at Irvine and then saw the offer rescinded, has the offer back. Chemerinsky and Michael V. Drake, Irvine’s chancellor, issued a joint announcement Monday — after days of intense criticism of Drake for taking back the earlier offer. The second offer came after Drake flew to North Carolina (Chemerinsky teaches law at Duke) for a lengthy meeting over the weekend. Chererinsky said last week that the offer had been revoked because his liberal writing about legal issues apparently worried Drake and some conservative supporters of Irvine. Professors at Irvine and elsewhere were outraged that the job offer had been rescinded for political reasons, and some pushed for Drake’s ouster. In their joint statement, Chemerinsky and Drake said: “Our new law school will be founded on the bedrock principle of academic freedom. The chancellor reiterated his lifelong, unqualified commitment to academic freedom, which extends to every faculty member, including deans and other senior administrators.” During a telephone press conference Monday, Chemerinsky said that he would never have agreed to any position that made him feel “muzzled” and that he would continue to write op-eds (the apparent source of conservative opposition to his appointment) although he also was mindful of the role he would have as dean. In several comments during the press conference, Drake suggested that the main problem in the last week was publicity. He talked about how the revoked job led to “more noise” than he expected, and said that the “public nature” of the discussions has been difficult.

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San Diego Union Tribune: Legal scholar’s dismissal could delay UCI law school opening

The opening of the University of California, Irvine’s new law school in 2009 could be delayed now that the school has to begin a new search for a founding dean, said officials.

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Los Angeles Times: Michael Drake: Why I let Chemerinsky go

I made a management decision — not an ideological or political one — to rescind the job offer, says the UC Irvine chancellor.

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Contra Costa Times: Thirty-four charged in DVC grade scandal

Contra Costa County prosecutors have charged 34 current and former Diablo Valley College students suspected of paying to change grades with fraud and other felonies.

The complaints, filed this week in Contra Costa Superior Court, charge the bulk of the students with 51 crimes. Three other students were charged with 11 crimes, while one man was accused of three.

The earliest accusations date to 2001, when Ronald Nixon — a former student employee in the DVC records office — allegedly changed four of his own grades to A’s. Over the course of the next few months, prosecutors say, Nixon added classes he never took to his transcripts, giving himself A’s in each case.

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Christian Science Monitor: One college’s retreat from big-time sports

Birmingham-Southern College moved from Division I athletics to Division III to put more emphasis on academics. Birmingham, Ala. – It’s a tough crowd, this assembly of silver-haired Southern gentry. But David Pollick surveys his audience coolly, flashes a megawatt smile, and says something you might not expect to a room full of well-heeled college alums: “Anyone who would aspire to be a college president is a lunatic.”

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Los Angeles Times: A law targeting ‘diploma mills’ expires, leaving legislators grappling with how best to protect students.

Landmark California reforms enacted nearly 20 years ago to protect unwary students from “diploma mills” making false promises about how their training will lead to good-paying jobs, expired at midnight Saturday.

A stopgap measure to extend the protections — while debate continues on a long-range solution — could be passed in several weeks by legislators grappling with how best to protect students and improve the operations of the state agency that oversees trade schools.

There is intense debate about what to do next. Consumer advocates think that legislation to create a new regulatory scheme is not strong enough, while the trade association representing the schools maintains that it is too draconian.

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The Chronicle News Blog: Tarheels at a Distance

The University of North Carolina has announced the starting date of an online-education project that officials say could help the system become a national player in distance learning. UNC Online will open on July 1, allowing prospective students to enroll in distance courses on any of the system’s 16 campuses. Many colleges have begun similar online-education projects on their own, but North Carolina officials hope to eventually expand theirs to enroll students from all over the nation. The goal is to match the success of for-profit institutions, like the University of Phoenix, at distance education, but to remain a nonprofit program.

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“Hell – is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific publications”
Erik Ursin, fish biologist

Here’s a great resource for all you aspiring scientists out there that is sure you help you along your way to gaining tenure. “How to write consistently boring scientific literature” by Kaj Sand-Jensen, an academic at the University of Copenhagen.

Sand-Jensen says that “although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications.”

In his article, published last month in the journal Oikos: Synthesising Ecology, Sand-Jensen presents a top-10 list of recommendations for how to write consistently boring scientific publications. And then discusses how scientists could make these contributions more accessible and exciting.

Here’s how to turn a gifted writer into a dull scientist (works for natural and social scientists, by the way):

1. Avoid focus
2. Avoid originality and personality
3. Write long contributions
4. Remove most implications and every speculation
5. Leave out illustrations, particularly good ones
6. Omit necessary steps of reasoning
7. Use many abbreviations and technical terms
8. Supress humor and flowery language
9. Degrade species and biology to statistical elements
10. Quote numerous papers for self-evident statements

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