- What’s wrong with the NLRB attack on McDonald’s franchising, cont’d [On Labor, earlier here, here, etc.]
- Postal union calls in American Federation of Teachers, other public employee unions to kill Staples postal partnership plan [Huffington Post]
- U.S. Department of Labor uses coercive hot-goods orders to arm-twist blueberry farmers, judges say no [Jared Meyer, Econ21 and Salem Statesman-Journal]
- “Watch Closely Obama’s Treatment of Unions” [Diana Furchtgott-Roth] “Obama ‘Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces’ Executive Order Will Punish Firms in Pro-Worker States” [Hans Bader, CEI]
- Judge: massive document request signals NLRB’s emergence as litigation arm, and co-organizer, of unions [Sean Higgins, Examiner] Wobblies on top: NLRB sides with IWW workers over poster claiming eatery’s food was unsafe [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, earlier]
- Academic debate on union issues already wildly lopsided, union-backed labor history curriculum unlikely to help [Alex Bolt, Workplace Choice]
- Turning unionism into a protected-class category in parallel with discrimination law is one of the worst ideas ever [Jon Hyman, earlier here, etc.]
Posts Tagged ‘colleges and universities’
Back to school roundup
- Pending California bill would impose “affirmative consent” requirement on sex between students at colleges that receive state funding [Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Dish] “New Startup Connects Students With a Lawyer the Minute They Get In Trouble” [The College Fix] Yale vs. wrongly accused males [KC Johnson/Minding the Campus, related on due process] Provision in proposed “Campus Accountability and Safety Act” (CASA) would incentivize fining colleges by letting Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights keep the proceeds [Hans Bader; more on CASA] Idea that campuses are gripped by “rape culture” having wide-ranging effects, even off campus [Bader, Examiner]
- Not only that, but the body was missing: “HS student says he was arrested for killing dinosaur in class assignment” [Summerville, S.C.; WCSC]
- Is Mayor de Blasio really willing to sacrifice NYC select schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant in the name of equality? [Dennis Saffran, City Journal]
- Administration trying to hold for-profit colleges to standard few public colleges could meet [WaPo editorial]
- Progress of a sort: UC San Diego “has determined that most projects by historians and journalists need not be submitted to the IRB [institutional review board].” [Zachary Schrag; related speech]
- “At Appomattox County [Va.] High School, the staff spent the summer changing its block-letter ‘A’ logo on everything from sticky notes to uniforms after the licensing agency representing the University of Arizona sent the school a cease-and-desist letter claiming potential confusion among consumers.” [Washington Post Magazine]
- “Fifth Circuit Disobeyed Supreme Court in Allowing Racial Preferences at UT-Austin” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Note that the pile-up of parking signs at a Culver City school is still “towering and confusing” even in the “after” photo following response to complaints [L.A. Times via Virginia Postrel]
Corinthian Colleges meets its downfall
Through the actions of multiple federal agencies — the Department of Education, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the Obama Administration has succeeded in wiping out a major for-profit education provider with thousands of employees and 72,000 students, all without bringing a legal charge. Imagine what they could have done if they’d filed charges [WSJ editorial]
Goodbye, Durham-in-Wonderland
KC Johnson is closing his definitive blog on the Duke lacrosse case and its aftermath, and reflects on it all in this final essay.
Schools roundup
- Harris v. Quinn aftermath: California teacher’s suit might tee up renewed challenge to Abood [Rebecca Friedrichs, earlier here, here, etc.] Recalling when CTA spent its members money trying to convince them their voting preferences were wrong [Mike Antonucci]
- Calcasieu parish school board in Louisiana votes to stop paying insurance on student athletics [AP/EdWeek]
- “Maryland Tested Kids on Material It No Longer Teaches, Guess What Happened?” [Robby Soave, Common Core transition]
- Sexual harassment training of college faculty: a professor talks back [Mark Graber, Balkinization]
- Eighth Circuit orders new trial in Teresa Wagner’s lawsuit charging Iowa Law discriminated against her because of her conservative views [Paul Caron/TaxProf, earlier]
- “The 4 NYC teachers banned from classrooms who rake in millions” [Susan Edelman, New York Post] Adventures in Bronx teacher tenure [New York Daily News]
- New Jersey: “Expensive New School Security System Traps Teacher in Bathroom” [Lenore Skenazy, Reason]
Duking it out
Duke University and the heirs of the late actor John Wayne have been fighting in court for nearly a decade over trademark/licensing rights to the word “Duke” [Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter]
“Former law student sues over D grade”
Martin Odemena, formerly a student at the Massachusetts School of Law, says he couldn’t transfer to another school because of the unfair grade in the Contracts course and “is seeking more than $100,000 in damages for the lost legal career.” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal]
Schools roundup
- Put off by constant urine tests, eighth grader skips honor society [Duncannon, Pa.; my Cato post, PennLive]
- Wouldn’t you know when Mike Bloomberg does come out and say something excellent — about intellectual freedom in the university, as part of a Harvard commencement address — New York Times ignores him [John Leo/Minding the Campus, Dennis Saffran/City Journal]
- “Verbal or Written Permission Could be Required For College Sex” [L. A. Weekly]
- Hope for Camden students has come not from New Jersey’s massive Abbott school funding litigation, but from charters [Jim Epstein, Reason]
- “Schools have been getting less violent over the last 20 years,” much less violent in fact [Timothy Lee, Vox, Jesse Walker, Reason, Josh Blackman and Shelby Baird, SSRN, on the “shooting cycle”]
- Arnold Kling writes a commencement speech: “I am going to talk about community service … and why I am against it.”
- “Walking to School? Yeah, There’s a Federal Program for That” [David Boaz, Cato]
“A presumption of guilt in sexual assault cases”
Civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer, writing at WBUR, says the new White House task force report on campus sexual assault
reflects a presumption of guilt in sexual assault cases that practically obliterates the due process rights of the accused. Students leveling accusations of assault are automatically described as “survivors” or “victims” (not alleged victims or complaining witnesses), implying that their accusations are true….
Thus the task force effectively prohibits cross-examination of complaining witnesses. … But by barring cross-examination, you also protect students who are mistaken or lying, and you victimize (even traumatize) students being falsely accused…. School officials are also encouraged to substitute a “single investigator” model for a hearing process, which seems a prescription for injustice.
More links on the current controversy:
- In the Brown University rape-charge scandal, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has declared that the complaining student was “nearly choked to death” and that her former boyfriend “should be in jail.” His side, as told to Cathy Young, is at the Daily Beast here;
- There are no ambiguities. Or are there? [Sandy Hingston, Philly magazine]
- My Commentary piece last summer on related issues: “Sentence First, Verdict Afterward”
- The feds’ Title IX complaint against Tufts [Terry Hartle, Inside Higher Ed]
- KC Johnson coverage, Minding the Campus: OCR will investigate 55 schools; early reaction to White House report; Occidental has assured students and their parents that the process is committed to fairness; suits by male students at Columbia and Drew; taking issue with a Chronicle of Higher Ed investigation;
- More on the feds’ recent crackdown from Megan McArdle: “Rape on Campus Belongs in the Courts” [Bloomberg View]; the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)’s response; Hans Bader; Chronicle of Higher Education.
(& welcome Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit readers)
Stephen Carter on the Laycock affair
Yale Law’s Stephen Carter lacks patience for the start-a-conversation-by-FOIAing-someone’s-emails approach to academic controversy:
Laycock’s approach to the constitutional issue [underlying Hobby Lobby and the Arizona version of RFRA] may be right or wrong, but it’s well within the mainstream conversation of legal scholarship. The late Ronald Dworkin, often tagged as the greatest defender of liberal theory in the legal academy, argued last year in his final book that Catholic adoption agencies with religious objections to adoption by same-sex couples should have a constitutional right to disobey laws requiring them to violate their convictions.
But even when a professor holds opinions off at the far margin, to target him or her for intimidation is an affront to the freedom that makes the academy worth cherishing.