AP: Protesters call for closing of Ga. military school
COLUMBUS, Ga. – Demonstrators renewed their call Sunday to shutter a school on a Georgia Army base for Latin American military and government officials and say they’re optimistic the new president or a more sympathetic Congress will act within the next year.
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Posted in Protests
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Fire Va. Tech’s president, some shooting victims’ families say
Virginia Tech’s leaders need to be held accountable for their actions during last year’s massacre, survivors and families told Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday.
Some said that probably means Tech President Charles W. Steger should be fired.
In two days of meetings with the governor during the weekend, families said the pay increases and praise Tech officials received after the April 16, 2007, shootings in which 32 students and faculty members were killed has sent the wrong signal to Tech leaders and is stalling needed change. The gunman, student Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.
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Posted in Crime, Uncategorized, Violence
Inside Higher Ed: Academics Struggle for Civil Society in Iraq
WASHINGTON – Two of the three scholars invited from Iraq to share analysis of academic conditions there could not get visas to attend this week’s meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. Those gathered at the annual meeting for a panel on “the role of academics in building civil society in Iraq” had to settle for having the papers paraphrased to them by a colleague. This twist of fate, however, prompted the remaining panelists to reflect on the challenges that still exist for students and scholars in a post-Saddam Iraq.
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Posted in International
Inside Higher Ed: Exceptions to the Rule
Cash-strapped colleges are freezing faculty hires, but the exceptions reveal institutions’ highest priorities in increasingly desperate times.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Job market
The Chronicle: Middle-East Scholars Hear of Academic Repression in Iraq and Iran
Faculty members and students in Iraq and Iran continue to face a severely repressive climate, two exiled scholars said Saturday during a panel discussion held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association. The scholars called on faculty associations around the world to do more to promote academic freedom in the Middle East.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Washington Post: Top Scientist Rails Against Hirings
Bush Appointees Land Career Jobs Without Technical Backgrounds
The president of the nation’s largest general science organization yesterday sharply criticized recent cases of Bush administration political appointees gaining permanent federal jobs with responsibility for making or administering scientific policies, saying the result would be “to leave wreckage behind.”
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Posted in Government
Inside Higher Ed:
Bob Jones University has issued a formal apology for its past racist policies, such as refusing to admit black students until 1971 and banning interracial dating until 2000. While the university’s statement noted that segregation was “sadly was a common practice of both public and private universities” in the years up until the civil rights movement, it went on to say that the university “conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it.” The university added: “In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful.” Some alumni and students — organized into a group called Please Reconcile — have been encouraging the university to make such a statement.
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Posted in Equity
Inside Higher Ed: Power Grab at DuPage
Periodically, colleges debate such questions as the future of the curriculum, the role of the student newspaper, how outside speakers should be selected, and so forth. At the College of DuPage, a community college outside of Chicago, the board recently proposed major overhauls on all these issues with a common theme — power that currently rests elsewhere would be moved to the trustees.
Not only did the board set out to change the power structure at the college, but it moved to adopt as official college policy a version of David Horowitz’s controversial “Academic Bill of Rights.”
Last week, faculty members and students — the latter with tape over their mouths to symbolize what they say the trustees are doing to their freedoms — flocked to a board meeting to protest the plans that appear to be dividing the college. Not only do the critics say that academic freedom is in danger, but they charge that the board’s policies in some instances would violate state law.
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Posted in Academic freedom
The Malaysian Star: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/11/23/nation/2625336&sec=nation
PASIR GUDANG: Local universities should take the opportunity to hire Malaysian academics retrenched by foreign universities.
Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin said many Malaysian academics currently serving in foreign universities were expecting to be retrenched due to the recession in several developed countries.
He said local universities could benefit from this by employing these academics.
Comments Off on Malaysia: Get laid-off academics back PASIR GUDANG: Local universities should take the opportunity to hire Malaysian academics retrenched by foreign universities. Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Khaled Nordin said many Malaysian academics currently
Posted in Uncategorized
Courier-Journal: Schroeder pleads not guilty, released on bond
Thomas Schroeder, the Illinois man indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring with former University of Louisville dean Robert Felner to commit money laundering, mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the IRS, was arraigned this morning in federal court.
Schroeder, 58, of Fort Byron, Ill., turned himself into federal authorities at about 9 this morning.
David Mejia, Schroeder’s Louisville attorney, entered a not guilty plea on behalf of his client during the arraignment. Following the hearing, Mejia said Schroeder and his legal team “look forward to the day when his case will be presented to the jury.”
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged Robert Felner
The Guardian: History’s missing pages: Iranian academic sliced out sections of priceless collection
• British Library to sue after 150 books are vandalised
• Wealthy scholar pleads guilty and may face prison
To the untrained eye the damage is barely visible. Yet within the handbound pages of books charting how Europeans travelled to Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire from the 16th century onwards, the damage caused by one Iranian academic to a priceless British Library collection is irreversible.
Jensen: ‘One selfish person was not caring about the rest of us’ Link to this audio
Leading scholars at the library are at a loss to explain why Farhad Hakimzadeh, a Harvard-educated businessman, publisher and intellectual, took a scalpel to the leaves of 150 books that have been in the nation’s collection for centuries. The monetary damage he caused over seven years is in the region of £400,000 but Dr Kristian Jensen, head of the British and early printed collections at the library, said no price could be placed upon the books and maps that he had defaced and stolen.
The Olympian: WSU president takes $100,000 pay cut
The university says Floyd told the board of regents Friday he would lead by example with the voluntary cut.
The board accepted his request and lowered his pay to $625,000 a year, effective Jan. 1.
In Seattle, University of Washington president Mark Emmert decided to forgo a pay raise this year.
Regents completed their annual review Thursday and said Emmert has done and exceptional job, but they did not consider a pay increase, at his request.
He earns $905,000 a year. The Seattle Times reports Emmert also sits on the boards of two companies that pay him $340,000 a year in cash and stock.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
AP: Bob Jones Univ. apologizes for racist policies
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Bob Jones University is apologizing for racist policies that included a one-time ban on interracial dating and its unwillingness to admit black students until 1971.
In a statement posted Thursday on its Web site, the fundamentalist Christian school founded in 1927 in northwestern South Carolina says its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible.
The university says president Stephen Jones decided to issue the apology because he still receives questions about the school’s views on race.
The school, which has about 5,000 students, banned interracial dating until 2000.
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Posted in Equity
Globe and Mail: Conversation cops step in to school students
Your friend’s new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don’t call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops.
Students at Queen’s University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of “homo” or “retarded” could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable.
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Posted in Free speech
The Tennessean: TSU bans racy, college-themed Web site
On JuicyCampus.com, students anonymously and often obscenely write anything they want about their colleges, professors and classmates.
One post claims a Middle Tennessee State University fraternity member is gay. Another reveals supposed details of a secret sex society at Vanderbilt. A third claims a Tennessee State University student doesn’t bathe, identifying her by name.
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Posted in Free speech
Phoenix Business Journal: Grand Canyon University IPO hits the market
Grand Canyon University took the plunge into the publicly traded world Wednesday — ending a 15-month drought for Arizona IPOs.
Its holding company, Grand Canyon Education Inc., sold 10.5 million shares at $12 each Wednesday, and will begin trading under the symbol LOPE on the Nasdaq Global Market Thursday, Reuters reported. Company officials were not immediately available for comment.
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Posted in Corporate University
The Chronicle News Blog: Architect of Kaplan’s Higher-Education Ventures Is Stepping Down
Jonathan Grayer, who as chairman and chief executive officer of Kaplan Inc. helped turn a small test-preparation company into a $2-billion enterprise that operates dozens of colleges and the all-online Concord Law School, announced on Wednesday that he was planning to resign. He said he would pursue entrepreneurial ventures and philanthropy.
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Posted in Corporate University
Cnet News: RIAA win: Tennessee to police campus networks
Tennessee has agreed to filter computer networks for unauthorized music downloads at the state’s colleges and universities.
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law a bill designed to thwart music piracy at the state’s campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America said on its Web site.
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Posted in Open access
The Chronicle News Blog: Privacy Worries Cancel New Mexico State U.’s Presidential Search
With no finalists left in the hopper, New Mexico State University’s governing board voted on Monday to terminate the search for a new president, the Associated Press reports.
A search committee had settled on five finalists. But state law requires that their identities be made public 21 days before a hiring decision. Four of the candidates pulled out because they did not want their names disclosed. The fifth was hired elsewhere.
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Posted in Administration
An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom
New York Times: An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom
More than a few times in these columns I have tried to deflate the balloon of academic freedom by arguing that it was not an absolute right or a hallowed principle, but a practical and limited response to the particular nature of intellectual work.
Now, in a new book — “For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom,” to be published in 2009 — two distinguished scholars of constitutional law, Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post, study the history and present shape of the concept and come to conclusions that support and deepen what I have been saying in these columns and elsewhere.
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Posted in Academic freedom, Commentary