The American Association of University Professors has announced that it will investigate Louisiana State University over its refusal to renew the contract of Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of a university center that studies hurricanes. Mr. van Heerden has argued in a lawsuit challenging the university's actions that his position was eliminated in retaliation for his criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—a major source of grant money for the university—in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The AAUP said in a letter to the university that its investigation would focus on alleged violations of academic freedom, tenure, and due process.

Breaking ranks with several other federal judges who have recently considered the question, a U.S. magistrate judge held last week that the First Amendment protects job-related statements made by faculty members of public colleges. The case at hand involved a physician, Elton R. Kerr, who has accused his former boss at Wright State School of Medicine, William R. Hurd, of wrongly moving to discipline him in his capacity as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology for teaching certain techniques and procedures against Dr. Hurd's wishes. In asking the judge to dismiss Dr. Kerr's claim that his First Amendment rights had been violated, lawyers for Dr. Hurd argued that the Supreme Court's 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos decision left Dr. Kerr accountable to his employers for speech made in connection with his job. U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Mertz rejected the idea that the Garcetti ruling,...

Fourteen national higher-education associations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to uphold the use of race-conscious admission policies by the University of Texas at Austin. A lawsuit challenging the university's decision to go back to considering race after several years without doing so argues that the university had achieved sufficient diversity in its enrollments through other, race-neutral means, such as a state law guaranteeing admission to students in the top 10th of their high-school class. The associations' brief argues that Supreme Court precedents concerning academic freedom give colleges a First Amendment right to determine for themselves which admissions policies best meet their needs. Among the groups that signed on to the brief are the American Council on Education, the American Association of Community Colleges,...

The Faculty Senate of Texas Woman's University has overwhelmingly voted no confidence in the institution's chancellor and president, Ann Stuart. The no-confidence resolution passed last week argues that Ms. Stuart has fallen short when it comes to budget planning, maintaining a cohesive leadership structure, developing a long-term vision for the university, and working with the faculty and other employees. The chairman of the university's Board of Regents, Harry Crumpacker, responded with a statement expressing his full support for Ms. Stuart and calling the Faculty Senate's vote "an unwarranted embarrassment to Dr. Stuart at the latter stage of what has been a distinguished career." Tensions between the chancellor and the faculty have heightened as the administration has grappled with high turnover in the provost's position and predicted cuts in state support, and recently opted not to ...

Towson University issued a statement today in which its provost, Marcia G. Welsh, defended the institution's decision to fire an adjunct art professor for characterizing himself as "a nigger on the corporate plantation" in discussing his employment rights during a class. Ms. Walsh's statement contradicts assertions by the adjunct professor, Allen Zaruba, that he had used the racist term as part of an academic discussion. The statement says: "Towson University strongly supports and upholds academic freedom in the classroom and across our learning community; however, such patently offensive language on the part of university employees will not be tolerated and does not reflect our value system."

Anthony (Van) Jones, who resigned as an environmental policy adviser to the Obama administration after coming under fire from conservatives for past statements and political activities, has been named as a visiting fellow at Princeton University for the coming academic year. A statement being released by the university today says that Mr. Jones will be a distinguished visiting fellow at both its Center for African American Studies and its Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, and that he will teach a course on race, ecology, and the environment during the spring 2011 semester. Mr. Jones, a 1993 graduate of Yale Law School and co-founder of three advocacy organizations, served as a special adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality from March to September of 2009. He left the position after being attacked for publicly using a crude insult in reference ...

The American Association of University Professors is urging a state appeals court to order the University of Colorado to reinstate Ward Churchill, the ethnic-studies professor fired in 2007 following an uproar over an essay in which he argued that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had been provoked by America's conduct abroad. A state-court jury last year concluded that the university had violated Mr. Churchill's free-speech rights in dismissing him, but the judge handling the case vacated the jury's decision and refused to reinstate the professor, holding that the state officials named in his lawsuit were immune from litigation. In a supporting brief submitted on Thursday, the AAUP joined the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship in arguing that the state judge had erred in refusing to offer Mr. Churchill a remedy for the violation of his...

A new study based on a survey of male students at Duke University has found that a substantial share -- about one in 13 -- probably would have chosen a different major if not for incorrect estimates of how much money they stood to earn in various fields. The study asked students to assess their ability and estimate their future earnings in their major and others. It found that both considerations appeared to influence students' selection of major, and incorrect earnings predictions probably had led at least 7.5 percent of the students to make choices they otherwise would not have made. The authors of the study, all in Duke's economics department, are Peter Arcidiacono, an associate professor; V. Joseph Hotz, a professor; and Songman Kang, a graduate student.

A federal district-court jury has found that a former assistant professor in the University of Oregon's department of East Asian languages and literatures was discriminated against for being only half-Japanese, reports The Register-Guard, in Eugene. The professor, Paula Rogers, who left her university job in 2005 after being denied a contract renewal, filed her discrimination lawsuit when the university extended the contract of a fully Japanese colleague she regarded as less qualified. While not accepting all of her lawsuit's claims, the jury agreed that she had suffered adverse treatment from a fully Japanese supervisor and retaliation within her department for her grievance, and that the university had subjected her to a hostile work environment.

The Faculty Senate of La Sierra University, a Seventh Day Adventist institution in Riverside, Calif., has overwhelmingly approved a resolution supporting the university's biology department in the face of criticism of its teaching of evolution. The resolution characterizes the department's teaching as a matter of academic freedom, according to Adventist Today, a church publication. The Board of Trustees of La Sierra, which has come under fire from alumni for contradicting the church's creationist beliefs, plans to discuss this month how evolution is taught there. It has asked the Association of Adventist Colleges and Universities to establish a panel of Adventist college presidents and science faculty members to develop a curriculum that affirms creationism in a "scientifically rigorous" manner.