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☆ Taking Cues From Students, U.C.L.A. Faculty Members Join the Protests
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It was one of the clearest instances of a little-noted fact of the student demonstrations against the war in Gaza — that a small fraction of faculty members at U.C.L.A., Columbia and other universities have provided logistical and emotional support to the protesters. Some faculty members have formal ties to Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, the counterpart of Students for Justice in Palestine, a decentralized national network of pro-Palestinian groups. “It’s a breach of trust that they would call the police on our students,” said Stephanie McCurry, a history professor at Columbia University, who watched over the perimeter of the encampment before the last police sweep on Wednesday. The issue has torn apart the faculties at these universities. More than a few say the activist professors are romanticizing the demonstrations, which have thrown campuses into chaos.

Persons: ”, Stephanie McCurry Organizations: Faculty, Staff, Justice, Students, Columbia University Locations: Gaza, U.C.L.A, Columbia, Palestine

☆ Harvard’s Response to Subpoenas Is Called ‘Useless’ by House Committee
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Representative Virginia Foxx, who is leading a House investigation of campus antisemitism, blasted Harvard University on Tuesday for handing over “useless” documents in response to subpoenas. “I don’t know if it’s arrogance, ineptness, or indifference that’s guiding Harvard,” Representative Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said in a statement. “Regardless, its actions to date are shameful.”Many of the 2,500 pages were duplicates of already submitted documents, she said, and heavy redactions made some documents worthless. Harvard said it has been acting in good faith and since January has turned over nearly 4,900 pages of material to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, not including any duplicate material.

Persons: Virginia Foxx, “, Foxx, Harvard Organizations: Harvard University, Harvard, ”, North Carolina Republican, Education, Workforce

☆ Harvard Defends Its Plagiarism Investigation of Its Former President
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-20 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In a report to a congressional committee, released on Friday, Harvard gave its most detailed account yet of its handling of the plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, who resigned this month as the university’s president. The basic outlines of the saga were known, but Harvard had not disclosed many details, which had led to questions about the impartiality and rigor of its investigation. In its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. But its account also shows a university governing board that was slow to do a full accounting of her work. Instead, over several weeks, Harvard scrambled to investigate a steady drip of plagiarism accusations, unable to give an immediate, authoritative response to questions about Dr. Gay’s scholarship.

Persons: Claudine Gay, Harvard Organizations: Harvard

☆ The Next Battle in Higher Ed May Strike at Its Soul: Scholarship
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-14 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford, resigned in August after an investigation found serious flaws in studies he had supervised going back decades. Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, resigned as the new year dawned, under mounting accusations of plagiarism going back to her graduate student days. Then Neri Oxman, a former star professor at M.I.T., was accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia, among other sources, in her dissertation. The attacks on the integrity of higher education have come fast and furious over the last few years. The affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard exposed how Asian American students must perform at a higher standard to win entry.

Persons: Marc Tessier, Lavigne, Claudine Gay, Neri Oxman, Bill Ackman, Gay’s, ’, Sally Kornbluth Organizations: Stanford, Harvard, federal Varsity Blues Locations: résumé, Israel

☆ Federal Civil Rights Investigation Opened Into Antisemitism at Harvard
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department has opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism at Harvard University, where the campus, like many others, has been roiled by demonstrations and confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students in the weeks since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The complaint against Harvard, filed on Tuesday, joins a growing list of federal civil rights investigations into complaints of discrimination based on “shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics,” including at Columbia, Cornell, Wellesley College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Tampa and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. The list includes a handful of school districts as well, including New York City public schools, Clark County School District in Las Vegas and Hillsborough County Schools in Tampa. The Office for Civil Rights announced on Nov. 16 that it was investigating such complaints as part of its efforts to “take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide rise in reports of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and other forms of discrimination and harassment on college campuses and in K-12 schools since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict.”

Persons: “, ” Organizations: Civil Rights, U.S . Education Department, Harvard University, Israel, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Wellesley College, University of Pennsylvania, University of Tampa, Cooper Union for, Advancement of Science, New, Clark County School District, Hillsborough County Schools Locations: Israel, New York City, Las Vegas, Hillsborough, Tampa

And all three universities formed task forces to address antisemitism on campus. “Let me reiterate what I and other Harvard leaders have said previously: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard,” Dr. In addition, many pro-Palestinian students point out that they have faced doxxing and harassment — and they are asking on social media for similar efforts against Islamophobia. The groups have been at the center of weeks of intense demonstrations that have sharply divided students and shaken Columbia’s Manhattan campus. The university’s decision will bar the group from holding events on campus or receiving university funding through the end of the fall semester.

Persons: ” Dr, Gay, Gerald Rosberg, ” Organizations: Harvard, Palestinian, Columbia, Justice, Jewish, Peace Locations: Gaza, Israel, Egypt, Palestine, Manhattan

Pro-Palestinian students like Ms. Babboni see their movement as connected to others that have stood up for an oppressed people. And they have adopted a potent vocabulary, rooted in the hothouse jargon of academia, that grafts the history of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples onto the more familiar terms of social justice movements at home. They also argue that charges of racism betray a misunderstanding of the region, because it is estimated that half of Israelis are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. Since the crisis began, statements and counterstatements have volleyed back and forth among college administrators, students, faculty and alumni. Each takes issue with the language used by the others, and helps explain why the gyre of recriminations only widens with every new statement offered up by students or faculty.

Persons: Babboni, “, ” Organizations: Israel, “ Palestine Solidarity Groups, Columbia University, U.S . Locations: Palestinian, South Africa, Israel, Gaza, Eastern

☆ Can Humanities Survive the Budget Cuts?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The state auditor of Mississippi recently released an eight-page report suggesting that the state should invest more in college degree programs that could “improve the value they provide to both taxpayers and graduates.”That means state appropriations should focus more on engineering and business programs, said Shad White, the auditor, and less on liberal arts majors like anthropology, women’s studies and German language and literature. Those graduates not only learn less, Mr. White said, but they are also less likely to stay in Mississippi. More than 60 percent of anthropology graduates leave to find work, he said. “If I were advising my kids, I would say first and foremost, you have to find a degree program that combines your passion with some sort of practical skill that the world actually needs,” Mr. White said in an interview. (He has three small children, far from college age.)

Persons: Shad White, White, Mr Locations: Mississippi

☆ After Writing an Anti-Israel Letter, Harvard Students Feel the Repercussions
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a campus already bitterly divided, the statement poured acid all over Harvard Yard. The letter, posted on social media before the extent of the killings was known, did not include the names of individual students. But within days, students affiliated with those groups were being doxxed, their personal information posted online. Wall Street executives demanded a list of student names to ban their hiring. But the war between Israel and Hamas has heightened emotions, threatening to tear apart already fragile campus cultures.

Persons: Israel, “ Organizations: Harvard, Wall Street, Hamas Locations: ”, Israel

☆ Anti-Affirmative Action Group Sues West Point Over Admissions Policy
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The group that won a major Supreme Court victory against affirmative action in June sued the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday, arguing that the court’s ruling barring race-conscious college admissions should extend to the nation’s military academies as well. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, was the driving force behind the lawsuit that led the Supreme Court to strike down race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, a decision that has roiled admissions programs at colleges and universities across the country. But the court specifically excluded the military academies, including West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy, from its decision that affirmative action in college admissions could not be reconciled with the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees. In a footnote to the majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the court was not ruling one way or the other on the academies, because of “the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”That footnote created an opening for a new round of litigation, and Students for Fair Admissions took it.

Persons: John G, Roberts Organizations: U.S . Military Academy, West, Fair, Harvard University, University of North, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy Locations: University of North Carolina, West

The same month, Elis for Rachael filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the university of discriminating against students with disabilities. Yale is not the only elite university to face legal challenges over its mental health policies. By offering part-time study as an accommodation, Yale has provided relief beyond what Stanford did, said Monica Porter Gilbert, an attorney at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law who represented plaintiffs in both cases. “It’s the students and the plaintiffs in this case making their voices heard and bringing Yale to the table to have difficult conversations,” she said. “As a nation, we talk about mental health differently now.”

Persons: ”, Pericles Lewis, Dean Lewis, Elis, Rachael, Brown, Monica Porter Gilbert, “ Organizations: Yale College, Yale, Washington Post, of Justice, Princeton, Stanford, Bazelon, Mental Health Law

☆ Slashing Its Budget, West Virginia University Asks, What Is Essential?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-18 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Over the last decade, the university has invested in projects like new buildings for agriculture, engineering, student health, student housing and recreation, conferences and labs, and it has renovated its athletic facilities. Faculty member say that capital spending was imprudent when West Virginia’s population was declining. The athletic department must raise money and “is expected to carry its own weight,” according to April Kaull, a university spokeswoman. Dr. Gee said that pandemic aid had provided a false sense of security. “We were given a lot of relief during the pandemic, and some of that free money sometimes doesn’t bring about the best results,” Dr. Gee said.

Persons: ”, Scott Crichlow, Gee, Kaull, ” Dr Organizations: Faculty, State Legislature Locations: West

“Tell us about an aspect of your identity or a life experience that has shaped you.”— Johns Hopkins UniversityFor college applicants, this is the year of the identity-driven essay, the one part of the admissions process in which it is still explicitly legal to discuss race after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in June. A review of the essay prompts used this year by more than two dozen highly selective colleges reveals that schools are using words and phrases like “identity” and “life experience,” and are probing aspects of a student’s upbringing and background that have, in the words of a Harvard prompt, “shaped who you are.”That’s a big change from last year, when the questions were a little dutiful, a little humdrum — asking about books read, summers spent, volunteering done. But even if candidates can — or feel compelled to — open up, colleges face potential legal challenges. The Supreme Court warned that a candidate’s race may be invoked only in the context of the applicant’s life story, and colleges have consulted with lawyers to determine the line between an acceptable essay prompt and an unconstitutional one.

Persons: ” — Organizations: ” — Johns Hopkins University

☆ Administration Urges Colleges to Pursue Diversity Despite Affirmative Action Ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-14 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Biden administration, in its first guidance on how to handle the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, offered colleges and universities on Monday something of a road map for how to achieve diverse classes while abiding by the court decision. The administration said schools still had broad latitude when it comes to expanding its pool of applicants, through recruitment, and retaining underrepresented students through diversity and inclusion programs, like affinity clubs. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, in a news briefing, made it clear that the administration faced the task of enforcing a court ruling that it strongly disagreed with. “This is a moment of great urgency in higher education,” Dr. Cardona said. Alluding to how the enrollment of students of color had initially plunged in states that have banned affirmative action, he said, “We cannot afford that kind of backsliding on a national scale.”

Persons: Miguel Cardona, Dr, Cardona, “ Organizations: Biden, Education

☆ The Next Affirmative Action Battle May Be at West Point
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Students for Fair Admissions, fresh off its Supreme Court victory gutting affirmative action in college admissions, is preparing for another potential lawsuit. The group is soliciting possible plaintiffs — applicants rejected from the U.S. Military Academy, known as West Point; the Naval Academy; and the Air Force Academy — for an effort to challenge race-conscious admissions at the three major American service academies, which are responsible for educating and training many of the country’s future military leaders. “Were you rejected from West Point?” asks a new webpage, WestPointNotFair.org, set up on Thursday and apparently aimed at white and Asian applicants. “It may be because you’re the wrong race.” It goes on to urge, “Tell us your story,” and provides a form requesting detailed contact information. Affirmative action at U.S. military academies was not addressed by the Supreme Court ruling in June, because Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in a footnote, that they had “potentially distinct interests.”

Persons: “, John Roberts, ” Organizations: Fair, U.S . Military Academy, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy Locations: West

About the role familial connections played in the success of many alumni. About whether the practice of legacy admissions, which has long favored white families, should be eliminated just as a more diverse generation of graduates is getting ready to send its own children to college. About how to reconcile the belief that privileges for the privileged are wrong with the parental impulse to do whatever they can for their own children. A new analysis of data from elite colleges published last week underscored how legacy admissions have effectively served as affirmative action for the privileged. Children of alumni, who are more likely to come from rich families, were nearly four times as likely to be admitted as other applicants with the same test scores.

Persons: James, Chakraborty

The Supreme Court’s decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions in higher education last month was historic in its own right, removing a tool that the nation’s colleges have used for decades to increase racial diversity on their campuses. But what started with affirmative action has morphed into a far broader reconsideration of fairness and privilege in college admissions and what it means for American higher education. On Tuesday, the Education Department announced that it had opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s admissions preferences for the relatives of alumni and wealthy donors. And at what the department billed as a “National Summit on Equal Opportunity in Higher Education” in Washington on Wednesday, more than 100 academics, government officials and education administrators focused on how much is now up for grabs well beyond affirmative action. “We come together today at a turning point in higher education — perhaps in all of education,” the education secretary, Miguel Cardona, said in his keynote address.

Persons: Miguel Cardona, ” Organizations: Education Department, Harvard, Higher Locations: Washington

With the Supreme Court decision banning race-conscious affirmative action, the college admissions process is about to change for everyone. Hundreds of colleges have stopped requiring standardized tests, essays are likely to be much more important, and admissions decisions could become much more subjective. We asked readers to send us their questions about college admissions, and answered a few of them below. I’ve won prizes in an extracurricular activity. But we ran your question by Terry Mady-Grove, a college admissions consultant based in Port Washington, N.Y. She said it was highly unlikely that one extracurricular activity alone would propel you into a Top 20 college.

Persons: I’ve, I’m, — Jackson Urrutia, Terry Mady Locations: Columbia, Andrews, Folsom, Calif, That’s, Grove, Port Washington, N.Y

☆ After the Affirmative Action Ruling, Asian Americans Ask What Happens Next
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-08 | by ( Anemona Hartocollis | More About Anemona Hartocollis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Even so, she said she believed the court’s ruling was wrong. “Why would you shut the entire thing down?” she asked. Students already feel pressure to write about hardship, said Rushil Umaretiya, who will go to the University of North Carolina in the fall. Even before the decision, he had seen anxious classmates at his selective high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, in Alexandria, Va., making up stories about facing racial injustice. “I think college admissions has really dipped into this fad of trauma dumping,” he said.

Persons: ”, “, John G, Roberts, Rushil Umaretiya, Roy Rogers, Thomas Organizations: ”, University of North, Thomas Jefferson High School Locations: University of North Carolina, Alexandria, Va

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