The Boston Globe: MIT neuroscience center head quits
Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa has announced that he will resign as head of the MIT neuroscience center he established, two weeks after a university investigation found that he acted inappropriately when he discouraged a young neuroscientist from accepting a job at MIT because she would be competing with him.
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Posted in Faculty
Sacramento Bee: UCLA sets Taser probe
An independent investigation by a well-known police monitor will be conducted into UCLA police use of a Taser gun on a student from Sacramento.
Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams announced Friday that attorney Merrick Bobb would investigate the use of the stun gun on Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a 23-year-old Eastern studies student.
Police said they used the weapon after Tabatabainejad refused to show his identification card to campus authorities at a UCLA library and refused to cooperate with campus police.
UCLA officials said they require students to show ID cards to use the campus library after 11 p.m. to ensure students’ safety.
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Posted in Students
Austin American-Statesman: Racist past lingers at UT
On a recent Thursday morning, University of Texas senior Mitchell McCradic was perusing the college networking Web site Facebook.com when he saw something that put him on edge.
In a picture highlighted on a friend’s profile, he saw a white student wearing brown costume paint, foil on his teeth, a sideways hat and an oversized T-shirt. He was posed next to a black student with a caption that read, “Can you tell which one is real?”
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Posted in Diversity
Palm Beach Post: Higher ed pay soars in Florida
Florida’s university presidents were standouts in national salary rankings made public today, including recently retired Lynn University President Donald E. Ross, whose compensation package equaled about $1.3 million.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s executive compensation report for the 2004-05 school year highlights Ross, University of Central Florida President John C. Hitt, Florida State University President T.K. Wetherell and University of Florida President J. Bernard Machen.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Wall Street Journal: Preferences Forever?
Preferences Forever?
The University of Michigan’s president does her best George Wallace impersonation.
Michigan voters struck a blow for equality this month, when 58% of them approved an amendment to the state constitution banning racial discrimination in public universities and contracting. Almost identical measures have previously passed by similar majorities in California and Washington state. That means the original meaning of the 1964 Civil Rights Act–that racial discrimination of any kind is illegal–has won reaffirmation in three liberal states, none of which have voted for a Republican for president since 1988. Supporters now plan to carry the fight to other states.
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Posted in Equity
The Lantern: Bitter faculty
It has long been a common slur for Michigan fans to knock Ohio State for its poor academic rankings. Sure, it was easy, after all, OSU had an open enrollment policy, so it was many people’s safety school. The University of Michigan, however, has been renowned for their high enrollment standards. For the past 10 years, however, OSU has turned things around. OSU’s current freshmen class can boast an average ACT score of 26.4. This criticism of OSU students no longer rings true.
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Posted in Faculty
The Boston Globe: Pay packages rise for college presidents
More college presidents are earning annual compensation of $500,000 or more, fueled in part by stiff competition by schools for the best candidates, according to a study.
Some 112 of the 853 public and private university presidents surveyed said they had pay and benefits packages of more than half a million dollars, according to an annual report being published Monday in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The jump was more prominent among public university presidents, rising from 23 last year to 42. The median pay package for those leaders is now $374,846, about 4 percent higher than last year’s median of $360,000.
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Posted in Administration, Salary/Economic Benefits
The Guardian: Universities focal points for radical Islamists, says minister
Universities have become focal points of Islamist extremism and are potential recruiting grounds for radicals of all kinds, the higher education minister, Bill Rammell, said as he published new campus guidance on tackling Muslim extremism.
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Posted in International
Des Moines Register: U of I president search starts over
After paying a consultant $110,000 to find qualified candidates to become president of the University of Iowa, the Iowa Board of Regents voted Friday to start over because the finalists for the job did not have the background and experience the regents believe is necessary.
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Posted in Administration
Inside Higher Ed: “What ever happened to the faculty?”
Mary Burgan, former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, is not happy about the trends she sees with regard to faculty rights. Traditional governance models are being replaced with strict hierarchies, and too many faculty members have too little influence in crucial decisions, she writes, in What Ever Happened to the Faculty? Drift and Decision in Higher Education, just published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Burgan recently responded to questions about the themes of her book.
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Posted in Faculty
YouTube.com: UCLA Student Tasered by Police in Library
Daily Bruin: Community responds to Taser use in Powell
An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers’ use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.
Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
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Posted in Students
The Boston Globe: Gates: U.S. education system needs work
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said Monday that the U.S. higher education system is the envy of the world but primary and secondary schools are failing to adequately prepare students for college.
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Posted in Accountability
USA Today: Should government take a yardstick to colleges?
Ever since Education Secretary Margaret Spellings unveiled plans seven weeks ago to overhaul the nation’s higher education system, she and her staff have been trying to relieve anxieties. No, she says, she’s not suggesting extending into universities President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which she helped design. It relies heavily on standardized tests.
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Posted in Accountability, Government
Front Page Mag: MSU Settles Academic Freedom Lawsuit
Missouri State University has settled a lawsuit brought by a former student who accused a faculty member and the school of violating her First Amendment rights.
Emily Brooker, who graduated from MSU last spring, will have her academic record cleared, be paid cash for her attorneys’ fees and have her tuition fees waived for graduate school as part of the settlement.
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Posted in Uncategorized
Mail Tribune: SOU faces budget crisis
In the face of “a significant financial challenge,” Southern Oregon University President Mary Cullinan has started a process that could end in cuts in campus programs and faculty.
She made her case for the budget crisis in a campus speech Monday and opened a comment period to determine whether a financial emergency requiring cuts exists
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Posted in Faculty
News Sentinel: UT Press halts sales of book charged with plagiarism
The University of Tennessee Press suspended sales of a book by a UT Chattanooga adjunct history professor after allegations of plagiarism by another author. New Hampshire author William Marvel complained to UT Press that Dr. R. Fred Ruhlman’s book, “Captain Henry Wirz and Andersonville Prison: A Reappraisal,” borrows heavily from his own work on the subject as well as from other authors.
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Posted in Academics
The Chronicle: Striking Professors Close Uganda’s Makerere U. in Pay Dispute
Makerere University, in Uganda, was shut indefinitely on Sunday and its 30,000 students were sent home after the faculty union rejected calls by the government to end a strike that had entered its second week.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Globe and Mail: Academics seized in daring Baghdad raid
Gunmen barged into a research institute in central Baghdad yesterday and seized dozens of staff and visitors in what appears to be one of the biggest mass abductions since the start of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
The Chronicle: Gunmen in Iraq Abduct Scores of Men in Daytime Raid on a Higher-Education Agency’s Offices
In a grim escalation of violence against Iraqi higher education, gunmen raided a government education agency in Baghdad on Tuesday and abducted scores of male employees and visitors. Some of the men were released within hours of the attack. The rest were freed in police raids shortly before midnight, a security adviser in the Iraqi president’s office told the BBC.
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Posted in International
The Chronicle: Pennsylvania Panel Urges Colleges to Protect Students’ Academic Freedom but Says Campus Bias Is Rare
A special committee of the Pennsylvania legislature that investigated complaints that liberal professors had treated conservative students unfairly has issued a draft report that stops short of calling for a statewide policy guaranteeing students’ rights to academic freedom.
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Posted in Academic freedom
Indymedia.org: Greece: Sellout of teachers’ strike paves way for massive government attacks
On October 30, the unions ordered back to work high school and primary school teachers who started their six-week-long strike on September 18, disrupting the start of the new academic year. As part of winding down the campaign, two one-day strikes were held on November 3 and 9, and general meetings are to be held to “assess” the next stage.
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Posted in International, K-12 issues, Strikes & Labor Disputes
