The New York Times: An American University for Iraq but Not in Baghdad
It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science.
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Posted in International
Haaretz.com: University and college students strike over likely tuition hike
University students were intensifying their campaign against the Shochat Committee on Reform in Higher Education by shutting down ten institutions of higher learning on Wednesday.
The Jerusalem Post: Student strike shuts 10 university, college campuses
Frustration at recent Treasury decisions reached the boiling point on Wednesday as teachers decided to open schools late on Thursday in what unions are calling a “warning strike,” and student associations shut down university and college campuses across the country.
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Posted in International, Students
El Univeral: Teachers union forms new section
The national teachers union (SNTE) on Friday approved a new regional union to challenge the dominance of the Section 22 union that was at the center of this year´s unrest in Oaxaca
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Posted in International, K-12 issues
BBC: French teachers strike over hours
Up to half of France’s secondary school teachers have staged a one-day strike in protest at plans to scrap their right to shorter teaching hours.
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Posted in International, K-12 issues
Peoples’ Daily Online: Gunmen kill Iraqi professor in Baghdad
Unknown gunmen assassinated an Iraqi professor in southern Baghdad neighborhood on Thursday, police said.
Dr. al-Harith Abdul Hameed, head of the Psychological and Educational Research Center in Baghdad University, was gunned down by armed men near Babylon hotel in Jadriyah neighborhood while he was heading for the University of Baghdad, the source said on condition of anonymity.
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Posted in International
World Tribune: Al Qaida demands closing of all Baghdad universities
l Qaida announced plans to force the closure of universities in the Iraqi capital.
A video by an Al Qaida-aligned group said all institutions of higher education would be closed for the current academic year. Jaysh Ansar Al Sunni, or the Army of the Supporters of Al Sunna, said colleges in Baghdad would be shut for the 2006-2007 school year.
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Posted in International
Toronto Star: Boom lowered on higher ed
Canada is training too few workers — from plumbers to PhDs — for today’s smart economy and, unless we set a national plan for higher education, other countries are going to “eat our lunch,” warns a federal report released yesterday.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Iraq’s National Library and Archive, Caught on the Front Line of Sectarian Fighting, Is Closed
After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq’s deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country’s largest depository of books and documents, has closed.
Saad Bashir Eskander, the library’s director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.
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Posted in International
Wall Street Journal: It’s High Noon in Mexico
Felipe Calderón is scheduled to travel to the national legislative hall of San Lázaro in downtown Mexico City this morning, ascend the dais before Congress and take the presidential oath.
The current Mexican executive — Vicente Fox — will remove the tricolored presidential sash he is wearing and place it across the shoulder of the president-elect, ushering in a new six-year term for their country’s young and fragile democracy. President Calderón of the National Action Party (PAN) will then give his inauguration speech.
That’s how the script reads anyway. But it won’t happen if supporters of losing presidential candidate Andrés …
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Posted in International, Protests
Guardian: Christian unions warned against legal action
Court battles would not resolve underlying issues of religious identity on university campuses and would only create division, a report from an independent thinktank has warned.
The report from the Christian thinktank Ekklesia said “antagonistic legal action could lead to widening an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality on campuses”. It continued: “This does not help with friendly dialogue between the diverse cultures and views that can be found within the UK’s educational institutions.”
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Posted in International
BBC: Blair’s farewell to education?
Yet, 10 years after saying his three priorities were “education, education and education”, Tony Blair still does not see his education reforms as complete.
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Posted in International
The Independent: Oxford dons humiliate vice-chancellor and reject his reform plans
Oxford dons inflicted a humiliating defeat on their vice-chancellor last night when they rejected his plans to overturn 900 years of tradition and hand control of the university to outsiders from the worlds of business and politics.
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Posted in Administration, International
Guardian: Oxford dons reject plan to hand over power
Oxford dons rejected controversial plans yesterday that would have brought academic self-rule to an end and handed decision-making at the university to outside business leaders.
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Posted in International
Chongqing News: China’s education watchdog orders financial probe in colleges after scandal
China’s Ministry of Education has asked all colleges and universities to thoroughly account for their use and management of capital after a scandal involving a former president of one of China’s major universities was disclosed last week.
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Posted in International
Santa Cruz IMC: From Mexico: Police and death squads on a rampage, urgent call for solidarity
What follows is a joint declaration of the LTS-CC and the Mexican
Socialist Unity League, condemning yesterday’s savage attacks by the
government against the people of Oaxaca.
Stop the massacre and savage repression by the federal government, the PAN, and the PRI in Oaxaca
For a nationwide strike and mobilization in solidarity
Yesterday, after a massive megamarch condemning Ulises Ruiz [Ortiz, or URO, the governor of Oaxaca state in Mexico], thousands of federal
police (PFP) agents, supported by interior department agents and PRI
death squads, cruelly attacked the brave comrades of the APPO, in what was the most violent day in the last six months of this struggle. Our comrades in Oaxaca, besieged by the PFP, were attacked with shots fired from rifles, tear gas, rocks, and tanks, and the encampment of Santo Domingo was burned down. A paramilitary group attacked from two pickup trucks, firing more than one hundred shots and assassinating three comrades (taking away the bodies of two of them). Furthermore, as we write this there are more than one hundred arrested and dozens of disappeared. Throughout the night the police tanks fired at anything that moved in the streets, arresting people left and right while URO’s assassins ran through the streets with their sub-machine guns. The PFP gangs broke into the hospitals to take away the wounded comrades, but were prevented from doing so by the valiant defense actions of the health care workers. According to the government and the PFP, their objective is to “restore order” by carrying out all the arrest warrants on members of the APPO, which has become a veritable witch-hunt characteristic of the methods used by the old PRI governments of the 1960’s and 70’s. Nevertheless, our comrades are trying to regroup and resist the brutal attack.
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Posted in International, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Times Argus: UVM cites safety concerns in canceling Mexican study program
The University of Vermont has called off plans for a semester-long study program in Oaxaca, Mexico, citing safety concerns associated with civil unrest there, authorities said.
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Posted in Academics, International
Los Angeles Times: Golf course draws criticism in China
Chipping and putting have joined law and economics as required courses at China’s Xiamen University, sparking outrage in a country where golf is still frowned upon as a pastime of the rich.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Russian University Is on Alert After Bomb Damage and Discovery of Second Unexploded Device
The most highly regarded university in Russia was under tightened security on Sunday, a day after a rudimentary bomb damaged its main building and another bomb failed to detonate in what authorities say was an attempted arson.
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Posted in International
Asia Times: Iraq’s education under siege
BAGHDAD – The recent kidnapping of scores of academics in Baghdad highlights the desperate situation of the education system in occupied Iraq. Armed men wearing Iraqi police uniforms abducted as many as 150 academics from the Ministry of Higher Education.
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Posted in International
The Guardian: Iran’s fundamentalists push for segregation on campus
Religious fundamentalists in Iran are demanding separate university classes for men and women in a drive to impose puritanical Islamic values on the country’s campuses.
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Posted in Equity, International
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