The New York Times: Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling
Thiany Dior usually rises before dawn, tiptoeing carefully among thin foam mats laid out on the floor as she leaves the cramped dormitory room she shares with half a dozen other women. It was built for two.
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Posted in International
Inside Higher Ed: A Scholar Detained
When news broke that Iran had incarcerated Haleh Esfandiari in a notoriously brutal prison in northern Tehran on May 8, politicians, including the presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, spoke out for the Iranian-American scholar’s release. So did a coalition of faculty members, with a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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Posted in International
Jerusalem Post: Student strike talks end with no result
The student strike entered its 36th day on Monday morning, after late night negotiations between student leaders and protesters prevented the former from voting on a Prime Minister’s Office proposal that could end the strike.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students
Jerusalem Post: Group: Palestinians ‘academically boycotted’
Academics and university presidents should protest the government’s restrictions on Palestinian university students while Israel fights against a proposed academic boycott by British universities, a human rights organization said Sunday.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Dismissal of Islamist Professors in Jordan Alarms Government Opponents
A Jordanian university dismissed 14 Islamist professors last week, many of them affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that has harshly criticized the Jordanian government.
The institution, Al-Zarqa Private University, one of the top private universities in the country, declined to renew the scholars’ contracts at the end of the academic year. Many faculty members at the university, which is located in Az Zarqa, an industrial city northeast of Amman, the capital, operate under such contracts.
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Posted in International
Haaretz.com: Israeli, U.K. academics meet to discuss proposed academic boycott
Two very different groups of academics met at the University of Brighton on Wednesday. On one side of the table were five local representatives of Britain’s University and College Union, the sponsors of a resolution proposing an academic boycott of Israel. On the other were four Israeli academics who came to Britain to fight the proposal. They only managed to agree on one issue: Their argument should be conducted politely.
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Posted in International, Protests
International Herald Tribune: Iran holding American-Iranian academic for “security” crimes
As Iran’s judiciary acknowledged that the country’s intelligence is investigating an American-Iranian academic for security crimes, U.S. Secretary of State blasted the detention and called on Tehran on Tuesday to immediately release Haleh Esfandiari.
Detained by Iranian authorities during a visit to see her 93-year-old mother in Iran, Esfandiari is under investigation for “security” crimes, the Iranian judiciary said Tuesday.
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Posted in Government, International
Haaretz.com: Seventh to twelfth grade teachers to strike in north on Sunday
The Secondary Schools Teachers Union announced on Friday that 7th to 12th grades in the Haifa district will be closed on Sunday due to a teachers strike.
The Haifa district encompasses Hadera from the south and Kiryat Yam to the north. Classes will stop at 11 a.m. and the teachers will head to a protest rally in the north.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Independent Online: Go-slow start of strike build-up
Monday sees the beginning of a nationwide public servants go-slow action which is a build-up to the national strike action set to start in two weeks’ time. The go-slow will last until May 22.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
The Himalayan Times: Teachers’ Union Threatens Indefinite Strike
The Institutional School Teachers’ Union (ISTU) on Sunday staged a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) for four hours from 10.30 am demanding the government meet their various demands that include salary and facilities on a par with government schools’ teachers.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Prensa Latina: Guatemalan Teachers End Long Strike
Guatemala, May 14 (Prensa Latina) Guatemalan educators ended their three-week strike and roadblocks on Monday, and resumed classes after the government pledged to meet their demands.
The government estimated 40 percent of public schools were involved in the strike, but the National Teachers’ Assembly says 95 percent supported demands for snacks and education material for the nation s 17,400 schools.
President Oscar Berger will issue a resolution this week to end reprisals against the protesters, including dismissals.
The accords, achieved with mediation of the Archbishopric and the Ombudsman Office, include setting up three working commissions to negotiate the list of demands.
The National Teachers’ Assembly and the Education Ministry will continue to discuss work contracts for regular pay increases and leaves for union activity.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Reuters: Anti-Sarkozy protests in Paris, students strike
French police arrested more than 100 demonstrators and hundreds of students went on strike at a Paris university as left-wing protests against president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy continued for a fourth night on Wednesday.
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Posted in International, Strikes, Students
The Washington Post: Tehran Jails Iranian American Scholar After Long House Arrest
Iran yesterday detained prominent American academic Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, according to center president and director Lee H. Hamilton and Esfandiari’s husband.
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Posted in Government, International
The Chronicle: Israeli Higher Education Shuts Down as Student Strike Stretches Into 4th Week
University campuses across Israel were chained shut on Monday as students intensified their protest, now in its fourth week, against proposed reforms in who pays for higher educationStudents held demonstrations in Beersheba, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.
In advertisements published in newspapers on Friday, the leaders of Israel’s universities urged students to end their strike, which entered its 24th day on Monday, and threatened to cancel academic credit for the semester for anyone not showing up for class. The Committee of University Presidents extended that deadline until today as government representatives, university presidents, and students continued negotiations in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement.
But student leaders on Monday rejected a draft agreement offered by the government. Itay Barda, leader of the National Student Organization, described the proposal as “media spin.”
“The draft is still very far from the demands which we have presented,” he said.
The country’s 250,000 students are protesting plans by the Shochat Committee — a government-appointed panel led by a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat — to raise student fees from their current level of about $2,150 per year. The Shochat Committee says student fees should be restructured, with wealthier students paying more. But its proposals, to be presented in June, ignore findings by a previous government-appointed commission and the education committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, both of which recommended lowering student fees.
The students are also demanding that the government reinstate some $300-million that has been slashed from the education budget in recent years. The Shochat Committee has agreed to recommend restoring the funds, but only if students accept future increases in fees.
Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Knesset’s education committee, said a government offer to freeze tuition for students already enrolled while raising fees for new students was “immoral.”
The government and the Knesset agreed to carry out the previous commission’s recommendations to gradually reduce fees, Rabbi Melchior said.
The students’ protest is backed by the two major university-faculty unions, but Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University and chairman of the Committee of University Presidents, said the students were in danger of losing sufficient class time to complete the semester. He offered to extend the current semester by two weeks if the students returned to class by today.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students
Jerusalem Post: Student strike goes on despite warning
The strike that has shut down public universities and colleges for more than three weeks will continue despite the threats of university presidents to punish students who do not return to their classes, a National Union of Israeli Students spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post Saturday night.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students
Haaretz.com: University heads postpone ultimatum to end student strike
The Committee of University Heads (CUH) announced Friday that classes in universities state-wide would resume on Monday, with or without the striking students, and not on Sunday, as they had threatened earlier.
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Posted in International, Strikes, Students
Haaretz: University heads: Semester may be canceled if student strike continues
University heads released Tuesday a statement saying that the continuation of the student strike puts the “existence of the [current] semester in danger.”
In the statement, the university heads’ committee wrote that they decided to lengthen the semester in order to compensate for lost time during the strike.
The students have been striking for two weeks.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes, Students
Daily Telegraph: Universities ‘targeted’ by Islamic extremists
British universities will be warned this week that they are being targeted by Islamic extremist groups looking for recruits.
A conference of chief security officers will hear that religious radicals remain active on campuses and have infiltrated at least 20 institutions.
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Posted in International
BBC: Mass protest over Argentina death
Argentina was brought to a near standstill on Monday amid protests over the killing of a teacher in the south-west of the country last week.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Indian Court Overrules Effort to Prosecute American Scholar Whose Book Sparked a Riot
India’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the western Indian state of Maharashtra to stop the criminal prosecution of an American scholar, James W. Laine, who had been charged with deliberately stirring sectarian strife in an academic book published four years ago.
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Posted in International, Legal issues
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