- After collapse of Rolling Stone article on alleged University of Virginia gang rape, who might prevail in a libel suit against whom? [Volokh] Someone with much to answer for: UVa president Teresa Sullivan [Glenn Reynolds]
- Much-discussed Judith Shulevitz piece on campus climate [New York Times] John McWhorter challenges the White Privilege 101 curriculum [The Daily Beast]
- Ithaca College gets in the swing of the federal guidance with its own anonymous microaggression snitchline [Greg Lukianoff]
- Lawyer for University of Rochester “Demands Yik Yak Take Down Posts, Turn Over User Info” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
- Academic-purity group backed by Greenpeace and AFT urges activists to “expose and undermine” professors and campus research centers that work against “progressive values.” [Kim Strassel, WSJ; related earlier] (& welcome Instapundit readers)
- NLRB decision in Pacific Lutheran University case could menace private colleges by herding more faculty into unions [Charles Baird, Pope Center]
- University of Texas still covertly doing race preferences, and SCOTUS should step in, argues Cato brief [Ilya Shapiro] Related: “U. of Texas’ Chief Might Have Exposed Its Admissions Policy to New Supreme Court Challenge” [Chronicle of Higher Education] University of Texas and legislature “Just Keep Digging That Wallace Hall Hole Deeper for Themselves” [Dallas Observer]
Posts Tagged ‘colleges and universities’
Serial complainants at the Department of Education
“Complaints of discrimination to the [Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights] have soared from 6,364 in fiscal 2009 to a record of 9,989 in the most recent fiscal year.” [Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post] Most notable sentence concerning that surging caseload: “Two individuals were responsible for filing more than 1,700 of those allegations of [education] sex discrimination.”
Related: how OCR acquires and uses financial leverage over academia [Hans Bader, CEI via Amy Alkon (“a bigger threat to innocent students is the massive financial risk colleges face if they do not swiftly expel accused students … Moreover, even when no court would award damages, OCR will. It has recently given itself the power to award monetary damages against colleges, even in situations where the Supreme Court’s Davis decision says damages would be inappropriate under the Constitution’s spending clause.”)]
Schools roundup
- Has it gotten too easy to breach the ordinary protections of academic freedom by charging that research is unethical? [Alice Dreger, Retraction Watch; The Guardian with more on complaints against University of Queensland economist over Brisbane, Australia bus study]
- “Good reformist energy in NYC to decriminalize student misbehavior. Big, unreported obstacle? School security guards are all NYPD personnel.” [Chase Madar on Twitter]
- “What is Obama’s big idea regarding day care? Well, to make it even more expensive” [Nick Gillespie citing Abby Schachter]
- “Why no one, but no one, trusts a campus sexual assault proceeding.” [Judith Shulevitz; Volokh (16 Penn Law profs)] Remarkable story of student investigated because he reminded woman of man who had attacked her thousands of miles away [Janet Halley/Harvard Law Review, see text between footnotes 23 and 24 near end, but interesting throughout] Two views of new advocacy film The Hunting Ground [David Edelstein, New York; Lizzie Crocker, Daily Beast]
- We never followed up at the time on what happened in the 2008 Billy Wolfe bullying story out of Fayetteville, Ark., but suffice it to say it’s not flattering to New York Times coverage [Eighth Circuit 2011 opinion; earlier here, here, and here]
- Quaker schools in United Kingdom resist mandate that all schools teach “fundamental British values” [Guardian] Non-Oxbridge universities to be brought into line rather sharply on teach-against-terror agenda [Chris Bertram, Crooked Timber]
- How does your pension compare? “Nearly 5,000 [New York] teachers cashing in on six-figure pensions” [New York Post]
Free speech roundup
- “Victory for ‘Caveman’ Blogger in Free Speech Fight – the right to give advice about what to eat” [Institute for Justice, earlier]
- “Is an academic discussion of free speech potentially traumatic?” Given campus trends, it might soon be [Wendy Kaminer]
- Logic of rejecting heckler’s veto points likewise to rejecting its savage cousin, terrorists’ veto [Ronald Collins]
- Someone tried to yank a Minnesota urbanist’s engineering license because of things he wrote on his blog. It didn’t work [Strong Towns; compare first roundup item]
- Departing NPR ombudsman would take free speech law back to ’50s, and that means 1850s not 1950s [Volokh, earlier]
- The last time I saw Paris, it was making a fool of itself in litigation [Mediaite, Huffington Post, earlier on city’s threats to sue Fox]
- Argentina: state uses control over soccer broadcasts to beam propaganda denouncing opposition [David Kopel] “Dissenting voices silenced in Pakistan’s war of the web” [Jon Boone, Guardian]
Schools roundup
- “Teacher keeps job despite ‘unsatisfactory’ rating 6 years in a row” [New York Post; and one reaction that speaks volumes about attitudes at Media Matters for America]
- Cathy Young interviewed the accused (cleared by university and police) in Columbia “mattress” case and reports on the message traffic between him and accuser [The Daily Beast; Daniel Garisto, Columbia Daily Spectator (“we, the members of the campus media, failed specifically with Sulkowicz’s story by not being thorough and impartial” in part because of social pressure against pro-due-process viewpoints)]
- Redouble whippings till morale improves: Obama seeks big hike in Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) budget [Robby Soave, Chronicle of Higher Education, Hans Bader] Theory assigns big role to OCR: “the resurgence of P.C. has actually been orchestrated from the top down.” [Jason Willick, Stanford Political Journal]
- Faculties have resigned governance questions to “University Life” bureaus, which often place less value on academic freedom [Todd Zywicki, Pope Center] “Graduate school eliminates use of titles like ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’ in salutations and correspondence” [Alexandra Zimmern, The College Fix on CUNY Graduate Center]
- NLRB ropes religious institutions’ faculty into federal labor law regime [Joseph Knippenberg, Law and Liberty, parts one, two]
- “Students of ‘predatory’ school to get loan forgiveness” [Miami Herald, Everest U.]
- When researchers interview jihadis, should they get a “project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense” disclaimer/warning under human-subjects-protection rules? [IRB Blog]
Schools roundup
- Illinois school district warns parents that in doing investigations under new cyber-bullying law it may require students to hand over their Facebook passwords [Vice Motherboard; earlier on “cyber-bullying”]
- Powerful, from Christina Hoff Sommers: how a shoddy NPR / Center for Public Integrity campus-rape study fueled legal fury of Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division [The Daily Beast; more, Bader] Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge and prominent progressive voice, on due process for college accused [American Prospect] Questions for New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus]
- Smith College: “the word crazy was censored from the transcript, replaced with the term ‘ableist slur.'” [Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe]
- “Community College Courtesy of the Federal Taxpayer? No Thanks” [Neal McCluskey, Arnold Kling]
- “Families Of Two Newtown Victims Sue Town And School Board” [CBS Connecticut via Skenazy; recently on suits against gun businesses]
- More coverage of open records requests as way to go after ideologically disliked professors [Inside Higher Ed, our take last month]
- Washington Post piece went viral, but it’s dead wrong: “No, A Majority of US Public School Students are Not In Poverty” [Alex Tabarrok] Look, a not-yet-published paper that claims to confirm something many of us want dearly to believe about school finance. But will it have the staying power of Prof. Hanushek’s? [WaPo “WonkBlog”]
College trademark dispute ends peacefully
Both Oklahoma State University and New Mexico State University use a version of “Pistol Pete” as a mascot. OSU found that although NMSU had agreed to use a variant, some items sold in connection with its school continued to use the version infringing on OSU’s. Suit was filed, but rather than expensively shooting it out in court, the two have now agreed to let a token fee cover a small leeway for infringement, and leave it at that. [Trademarkologist]
When the family is the last to know
The doctor legally couldn’t tell him his son was in drug trouble. Nor could the college. Maybe time to rethink federal privacy laws? [Tony Christ, DelmarvaNow]
“The data also shows 6 of every 1,000 students are victims.”
That’s National Public Radio, summarizing a new report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics that tells a very different story from the “1 in 5” campus sexual assault slogan heard from the White House on down. Earlier here, etc.
P.S. Cato has now posted my Commentary article from last year on federal pressure for universities to reduce the procedural rights of accused students and faculty.
Does the AAUP approve of FOIA-ing professors’ emails?
Should we cheer or boo when outspoken professors at state universities become the target of public records demands filed by antagonists seeking their emails and correspondence? As we had occasion to note during the Douglas Laycock controversy in May and June, there’s plenty of inconsistency on this question on both left and right. Some who cheer FOIA requests when aimed at scholars supportive of the environmental and labor movements, for example, later deplore them as harassment when the tables are turned, and vice versa.
If there’s any group you might expect to take a consistent position on these questions, it’s the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), its members being prospective targets of such requests and thus at the very center of the issue. So what’s their opinion?
In 2011, when politically liberal University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon was the target of a FOIA request by state Republicans, AAUP sent a strongly worded letter on its letterhead denouncing the move as a threat to academic freedom. The group likewise came to the defense of environmentalists targeted by conservatives.
This spring, an AAUP document on “Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications” (see pp. 12-14) was moderately critical of FOIA requests targeting University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus and his journal editor over a much-criticized study providing social conservatives with ammunition against changes in family law favorable toward gays. Since no one suspects the AAUP’s leadership of sympathy with the content of Regnerus’s work, this suggested that the skepticism toward FOIA might be founded on principle.
Not long afterward, however, when prominent (and politically unclassifiable) University of Virginia law professor Doug Laycock came under FOIA attack from gay rights activists who disapproved of his courtroom work on religious liberties, the AAUP was quoted in the press talking in a more vague and reticent way of “balance” and saying it weighs in on particular controversies rather than taking general stands.
Now turn to the University of Kansas, where Art Hall, executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at Kansas University’s business school is under FOIA attack, accused of being too close to the free-market economics favored by donors from the Koch family of Wichita (who have also given much support over the years to the Cato Institute, which publishes this site). So what do you know? The state AAUP chapter is actually leading the charge against Hall, its members have raised funds to support the public records demand, and its state president vocally insists that there’s no danger whatsoever to academic freedom in allowing, as a group once put it, “fleeting, often casual e-mail exchanges among scholars to be opened to inspection by groups bent on political attack.”
You might start to wonder whether the AAUP is going to hold to any consistent position at all beyond the convenience of the moment. (& George Leef, Phi Beta Cons; reprinted at Minding the Campus) Update: Judge halts process to review proposed email release [Will Creeley, FIRE]