Category Archives: US universities

US girl who graduated from college at 15: ‘We are the invisible Black scholars’

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Shania Muhammad earned bachelor of arts degree from Langston University in Oklahoma and plans career in public speaking

Among the millions who are celebrating having received their university diplomas in the US this spring is a 15-year-old girl from Oklahoma, one of the youngest ever American college graduates.

Shania Muhammad graduated from Oklahoma’s Langston University with a bachelor of arts degree as well as a 4.0 grade-point average that was the highest in her class, according to a recent report from the local news media outlet KOCO-TV. She said she plans to pursue a career in public speaking and publish a book about her experience in school titled Read, Write, Listen: 13 in College.

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High schooler who won record $10m in scholarship offers heads to Ivy League

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Dennis Maliq Barnes of New Orleans announces he will attend Cornell University this fall to study computer science

The 16-year-old American high schooler who set what is believed to be a US record after collecting more than $10m in college scholarship offers is bound for the Ivy League.

Dennis Maliq Barnes announced on Friday that he plans to enroll at Cornell University for the fall semester to study computer science after his 24 May graduation from New Orleans’s International high school. The Ithaca, New York, university only accepts 9% of applicants, and just 7% of its 15,000 or so students are Black like Barnes, according to the US News & World Report.

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Harvard professor’s fossil fuel links under scrutiny over climate grant

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Colleagues and students query role of Jody Freeman, who won prestigious research grant despite sitting on ConocoPhillips board

An eminent Harvard environmental law professor’s links to the fossil fuel industry are under scrutiny from colleagues and students after she was awarded a prestigious research grant to investigate corporate climate pledges.

Jody Freeman, founding director of Harvard’s environmental and energy law program and former Obama-era White House advisor, is a paid board member of ConocoPhillips – a Fortune 500 American multinational oil and gas company that was ranked the 13th most polluting in the world by a Guardian investigation in 2019. The firm’s controversial Willow drilling project in Alaska was recently approved by the Biden administration.

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Wellesley College students vote to admit trans men and non-binary people

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Proposal also calls for gender neutral language at women’s college whose alumni include Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright

Students at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.

In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper.

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‘We can’t keep living like this’: Michigan governor denounces campus shooting

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Gretchen Whitmer calls for action on ‘uniquely American problem’ after gunman kills three Michigan State students and wounds five

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, denounced the “uniquely American problem” of gun violence on Tuesday, after a gunman murdered three students in a mass shooting at Michigan State University the night before.

Whitmer spoke at a press conference in East Lansing at which authorities identified the shooter, who died by suicide, and revealed other details about the attack that left five students critically wounded.

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George Washington University accused of ‘colluding’ with rightwing pro-Israel group

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StadWithUs filed charge with US education department accusing Lara Sheehi of hate speech and discrimination against students

An Arab professor and lecturer in diversity has accused George Washington University of “colluding” with a rightwing pro-Israel group over a federal complaint accusing her of antisemitism.

The group, StandWithUs (SWU), filed a complaint with the US education department’s civil rights office claiming that Lara Sheehi, an assistant professor of clinical psychology, discriminated against Jewish students by refusing to accept their definitions of antisemitism.

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George Washington University installs emergency contraception vending machine

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Students led effort over concern for reproductive rights after supreme court struck down constitutional right to abortion

A vending machine that provides emergency contraception has been installed at a Washington DC university, as colleges contend with how to protect reproductive rights on campus.

Students at George Washington University successfully obtained the vending machine dispensing morning-after pills following concerns in the wake of the supreme court’s ruling last summer to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had ushered in the constitutional right to an abortion.

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Harvard Kennedy School condemned for denying fellowship to Israel critic

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ACLU and Pen America back former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth and say decision ‘raises serious questions’

Leading civil rights organisations have condemned Harvard Kennedy School’s denial of a position to the former head of Human Rights Watch over the organisation’s criticism of Israel.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the refusal of a fellowship to Kenneth Roth “profoundly troubling”. PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression, said the move “raises serous questions” about one of the US’s leading schools of government. Roth also received backing from other human rights activists.

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Hillary Clinton to join Columbia University as global affairs professor

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Ex-secretary of state will assume position on 1 February, working alongside the School of International and Public Affairs dean

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will join Columbia University as a global affairs professor at its School of International and Public Affairs (Sipa), it was announced on Thursday.

The university president’s Lee Bollinger announced the new position for Clinton, who was secretary of state for Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013.

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Largest-ever US higher education strike ends after ‘landmark’ deal

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Agreement hailed as a new national standard, boosting wages and working conditions for students employed at public universities

Academic workers in California have ended a nearly six-week strike, described as the largest ever to hit US higher education, after approving a “landmark” agreement for higher wages on Friday.

The strikes across the University of California (UC) system ground campus life to a halt, disrupting classes and exams as thousands formed picket lines and staged noisy protests to demand better pay.

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University of California workers continue strike amid threat of arrests

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Strike of 48,000 is largest in history of US higher education as some workers protest at offices of high-level university administrators

Tens of thousands of academic workers throughout the University of California are currently on their fourth week of striking for a new union contract and the situation is intensifying amid the threat of arrests after direct actions by some strikers.

The strike of 48,000 academic workers, including graduate workers, academic researchers, postdoctoral scholars and teaching assistants, began on 14 November and is the largest in the history of higher education in the US.

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Family of Katie Meyer sues Stanford over soccer star’s death

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Suit alleges university caused ‘acute stress reaction’ that led to goalie’s suicide

The family of Katie Meyer, a star soccer goalie for Stanford University who died by suicide in March, has sued the university for wrongful death.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday and reviewed by CNN, alleges that the university administrators’ actions caused her to “suffer an acute stress reaction that impulsively led to her suicide”.

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Graduate workers across University of California system to strike for better pay

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Students, researchers and scholars are negotiating contracts in what could be the largest strike in US’s higher education history

Graduate workers including teaching assistants and student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have voted to authorize a strike which could be the largest in higher education history in the US.

Their unions – UAW 5810, UAW 2865 and SRU-UAW – representing 48,000 workers are currently negotiating union contracts for four separate bargaining units. They are coordinating to push increased compensation, childcare reimbursements, job security protections, sustainable transit incentives, eliminating fees for international scholars and stronger disability accommodations.

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Affirmative action appears in jeopardy after US supreme court hearing

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Race-conscious admission programs, twice upheld by highest court, now under scrutiny by skeptical conservative supermajority

The survival of affirmative action in higher education appeared to be in serious trouble on Monday at a conservative-dominated US supreme court after hours of debate over difficult questions of race.

The court is weighing challenges to admissions programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University that use race among many factors in seeking a diverse student body.

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Ivy League university set to rebury skulls of Black people kept for centuries

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University of Pennsylvania houses remains at Penn Museum, where they form collection once used to justify white supremacy

The University of Pennsylvania is moving ahead with the reburial of the cranial remains of at least 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls have been kept for almost two centuries in a notorious anthropological collection used to justify white supremacy in the run-up to the US civil war.

The Ivy League university is petitioning the Philadelphia orphans’ court for permission to rebury the skulls in the city’s historic African American Eden cemetery. Should the ceremony go ahead, it would amount to one of the most significant restorative processes for Black remains in America in the wake of the racial reckoning following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

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Covid cases rise in north-eastern US, driven by the BA.2 subvariant

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The subvariant of omicron that’s more transmissible than BA.1 was responsible for an estimated 86% of new US cases last week

Covid cases are on the rise in the north-eastern part of the US, as many Americans travel and gather together for spring break and religious holidays.

The rise is being driven by BA.2, a subvariant of Omicron which is more transmissible than its sibling BA.1, and was responsible for an estimated 86% of new Covid-19 cases nationwide last week, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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The new anti-woke academics say the universities are ‘broken’. But they aren’t giving up their tenured day jobs | Julia Carrie Wong

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The anti-woke institution has no campus, no course catalog, no students, no accreditation. It does have a website

When the brand-new president of the “University of Austin” announced the establishment of a brand-new institution “dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth” last week, he painted a bleak picture of American academia.

“So much is broken in America,” wrote Pano Kanelos, the former president of a small liberal arts college in Maryland in a post on the Substack of the noted New York Times self-canceller Bari Weiss. “But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.”

Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago scientist who has objected to aspects of affirmative action, was recently disinvited from delivering a prominent public lecture on planetary climate at MIT. Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University, finally quit in September after years of harassment by faculty and administrators. Kathleen Stock, a professor at University of Sussex, just resigned after mobs threatened her over her research on sex and gender.

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Three Alabama professors on leave over racially insensitive Halloween pictures

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  • Students demand terminations over photos from 2014
  • USA president announces independent investigation

Three professors at the University of South Alabama have been placed on leave over racially insensitive Halloween photos, the university said.

Related: Rochester police officer off streets after pepper-spraying woman with toddler

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Does Generation Z know how to email properly? An investigation

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A professor caused an internet storm when she asked if young people were capable of writing a formal message

This week, Prof Brittney Cooper from Rutgers University caused a small internet storm when she asked a simple question: “Why don’t modern college kids know how to send a formal letter/email?” She added that her students frequently email her simply saying “Hello.”

Why don’t modern college kids know how to send a formal letter/email? I thought everyone knew to begin Dear Prof. X or Dear Dr. X. Instead these kids stay emailing me Hello There! Or Hello (no name): Why are they like this?

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Johns Hopkins was a slave owner, university reveals

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University, which has been at forefront of Covid-19 response, took pride in founder purportedly being an abolitionist

Johns Hopkins University, whose researchers have been at the forefront of the global response to Covid-19, announced on Wednesday that its founder owned slaves during the 19th century, a revelation for the Baltimore-based school that had taken pride in the man purportedly being a staunch abolitionist.

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