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The Giuliani defamation trial is one of the first tests of the many prongs pro-democracy groups are using in the courts to try to hold purveyors of election lies accountable.
Several lawsuits use anti-defamation laws in civil lawsuits against big names who joined with Trump to deny the results of the 2020 election, including Giuliani, Mike Lindell and Dinesh D’Souza.
Continue reading...Claudine Gay and presidents of UPenn and MIT faced backlash over responses on campus policy at congressional hearing
The Harvard Corporation, the highest governing body at the university, has backed the university’s president, Claudine Gay, to remain in post after calls for her removal following controversial testimony over antisemitism on campus.
Gay and the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and MIT faced backlash for their remarks at a congressional hearing into antisemitism on college campuses. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik demanded a “yes” or “no” response to her question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their university’s code of conduct. The presidents’ various responses were criticized for not being unequivocal enough in their condemnation of calls for genocide.
Continue reading...Academics at Columbia College in Chicago are in a fierce dispute over cuts to courses and poor working conditions
The longest strike of adjuncts in US labor history is still ongoing, with academics at Columbia College in Chicago remaining in a fierce dispute over cuts to college courses and a host of complaints over poor working conditions.
The fierce dispute began when Columbia College leadership suddenly announced plans to implement significant cuts to courses and course sections, and consolidating classes which have ballooned class sizes, citing a $20m budget shortfall.
Continue reading...Leaders of three universities continue navigating calls to resign following ‘evasive’ answers in House hearing
Leaders of three prestigious US universities remained under pressure on Friday as a controversy about antisemitism on campus, inflamed by their appearance at a congressional hearing earlier in the week, showed little sign of abating, with free speech advocates and billionaire college donors wading into the fray.
Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), survived an emergency meeting of its board of trustees on Thursday amid backlash to her “disastrous” comments to the hearing investigating rising campus antisemitism since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war.
Continue reading...Congressional testimony on campus policies by heads of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT draws criticism
The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.
In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.
Continue reading...Anthony Polito, 67, who died at scene of shooting that left three dead and one critically wounded, had unsuccessfully sought job
The four people shot at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, campus on Thursday were all faculty members, the university has said.
Three people died and one person was critically wounded in the shooting. The suspect in the attack, which took place at approximately 11.45am, has been named as a college professor who had failed to win a job there, according to police officials.
Continue reading...About 29,000 workers of the California Faculty Association are on strike as disparity between admin and professor pay increases
California State University faculty at four campuses went on strike on Monday to demand higher pay and expanded parental leave for thousands of workers at the largest public university system in the US.
The California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 workers, is staging one-day work stoppages at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; San Francisco State University; California State University, Los Angeles and California State University, Sacramento.
Continue reading...Heads of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be questioned
The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three of the country’s most prestigious universities, are set to testify before a congressional committee next week on claims that antisemitic protests have taken place on their campuses, marking the latest window into ongoing tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.
Next Tuesday, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth will stand before the House education and workforce committee, a body chaired by Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.
“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses. Meanwhile, college administrators have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow,” said Foxx in a statement introducing the hearing, which is titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.
Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine say order by Republican governor violates their free speech rights
A pro-Palestinian student group in Florida is suing the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and the university system for trying to “deactivate” it in a manner that violates the students’ free speech rights.
The University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UF SJP) filed the suit on Thursday in a federal court in Gainesville. It calls on the court to block what amounts to one of the first attempts in the US to silence a pro-Palestinian student group amid the roiling fallout of the Israel-Hamas war on American campuses.
Continue reading...Consul Yuval Donio-Gideon objected to course at Bard College but president says institution ‘stood up for academic freedom’
An Israeli diplomat tried to persuade a leading New York college to cancel a course about the growing debate over whether the Jewish state practices a form of apartheid in the Palestine.
The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
Continue reading...University says incident being investigated as possible hate crime after Abdulwahab Omira suffered non-life-threatening injuries
An Arab Muslim student at Stanford University was hospitalized after being struck in a hit-and-run that authorities are investigating as a hate crime, amid rising threats against Arab and Muslim people across the US.
The student, Abdulwahab Omira, was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after being struck by an SUV. “The driver is reported to have made eye contact with the victim, accelerated and struck the victim and then driven away while shouting ‘fuck you and your people’ out the lowered window of the vehicle,” according to the university’s department of public safety.
Continue reading...The GOP’s fight to seize control of American colleges is leading to resignations by higher education faculty
During his 18-year tenure at Louisiana’s largest public university, journalism professor Robert Mann courted backlash for speaking out against the state’s top political leaders.
Republicans called for Mann’s firing after he criticized former governor Bobby Jindal amid the state’s 2016 budget crisis. In 2021, Mann drew the ire of Jeff Landry, then state attorney general, for a tweet lambasting Landry’s effort to block a Covid-19 vaccine mandate at Louisiana State University.
Continue reading...University of Kentucky challenged computer scientists to reveal contents of carbonised papyrus, a ‘potential treasure trove for historians’
When the blast from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius reached Herculaneum in AD79, it burned hundreds of ancient scrolls to a crisp in the library of a luxury villa and buried the Roman town in ash and pumice.
The disaster appeared to have destroyed the scrolls for good, but nearly 2,000 years later researchers have extracted the first word from one of the texts, using artificial intelligence to peer deep inside the delicate, charred remains.
Continue reading...George Tyndall, 76, was awaiting trial on more than two dozen criminal counts of misconduct at University of Southern California
The former University of Southern California campus gynecologist at the center of more than $1bn worth of university payouts stemming from sexual abuse allegations by hundreds of women was found dead inside his home Wednesday, his lawyer said.
George Tyndall, 76, was awaiting trial on more than two dozen criminal counts of sexual misconduct between 2009 and 2016 at the university’s student health center. He pleaded not guilty in 2019 and was free on bond ahead of a trial that had not yet been scheduled. His lawyer, Leonard Levine, confirmed his death Thursday.
Continue reading...Universities may have divested from fossil fuels – but board members still have industry ties, new analysis finds
At least 20 board members at California public universities have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry, a new analysis has found, sparking criticism from climate advocates on and off campus.
Of the state’s 32 public universities, board members at one-third of them either work or have worked for oil and gas companies, as do two board members at the California State University’s foundation.
John S Watson, former Chevron CEO, sits on the University of California Davis chancellor’s board of advisers.
Stephen Strachan, who until this past December headed the oil and gas production firm Strachan Exploration Corporation, is a member of the UC San Diego Foundation’s foundation board of trustees.
Henry Perea, a government affairs manager for oil and gas giant Chevron, sits on the board of governors at the California State University foundation, as does Gillian A Wright, senior vice-president at gas distribution utility SoCalGas.
Megan Lopez, who is Chevron’s policy, government and public affairs representative, sits on the board of California State University, Bakersfield, as do higher-ups at oil company Kern Oil and Refining, fossil fuel exploration company California Resources Corporation, and oil and gas exploration company Aera Energy.
Continue reading...Tulane university researchers accused of ‘serious’ violations that breached international protocol over animal deaths
An animal rights group is demanding the firing of researchers at a Louisiana university who killed laboratory rats with scissors and a blunt blade – and used out-of-date anesthetics for pain relief.
The episodes are detailed in separate, self-reported notices of violation to the federal Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (Olaw), which were sent by Tulane University in New Orleans and obtained by the Stop Animal Exploitation Now advocacy group.
Continue reading...PragerU is not accredited but has become a key tool in pushing false claims to youngsters – and raked in $200m from 2018 to 2022
A rightwing media outlet promoting climate-change denialism and other “anti-woke” staples to young students and adults via social media has become a fundraising Goliath, raking in close to $200m from 2018 to 2022 with big checks from top conservative donors, tax records reveal.
Founded in 2009 by the conservative talkshow host Dennis Prager, the eponymous Prager University Foundation is not an accredited education organization. But via online media its PragerU Kids division has become a key tool in spreading false claims to young people with short videos aimed at undercutting widely accepted science that climate crisis disasters are accelerating due, largely, to fossil-fuel usage.
Continue reading...Advocates say proposals that cut debt to zero for some borrowers and reduce monthly interest payments are good news
Joe Biden’s new student-loan plan is an important and large step forward on student debt forgiveness in the US even after a previous debt reduction program was controversially struck down by the supreme court, advocates say.
When the justices ruled against Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans per borrower in June, 40 million debt-burdened Americans were left with questions – especially as monthly payments would resume in October after being paused for over three years because of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Andrea Smith, an ethnic studies scholar at a California university, had faced decades of criticism for claiming Cherokee heritage
An ethnic studies professor at the University of California, Riverside, will resign next year following more than a decade of outrage over accusations that she falsely claimed Indigenous American heritage.
Andrea Smith, once a heralded scholar of Native American studies, faced criticism since at least 2008 for claiming she was Cherokee but had remained employed at the southern California university. Last year, 13 of her colleagues at UC Riverside alleged that she made fraudulent claims to Indigenous American identity and violated academic integrity.
Continue reading...Students trying to attend university in the US tell of their frustration after being rejected over the ‘immigrant intent’ test
Yalda Azamee blinked back tears as she stared down at the American consular officer.
“He did not even give me a chance to explain myself; he rejected me right away. He didn’t even look at my documents,” she said, rushing out of the US embassy building on to the streets of Islamabad to cry.
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