May 14, 2008
Scholar of Asian Art Is Found Dead in U.S. Detention Center
A university museum director and prominent scholar of Asian antiquities, who had traveled to the United States to attend a conference, was found dead of an apparent heart attack today in a federal detention center, the Associated Press reported.
Roxanna Brown, director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University, in Thailand, was arrested on Friday in Seattle, where she was scheduled to speak at the University of Washington. Ms. Brown, a U.S. citizen, was accused of wire fraud in connection with an antiquities smuggling case and had been awaiting transfer to Los Angeles to face charges there. During her detention she complained of being ill and missed a court date.
The charges against Ms. Brown stemmed from a federal investigation of two Los Angeles art dealers who were suspected of looting Southeast Asian artifacts. Authorities said they had found her electronic signature on appraisal forms listing inflated values for antiquities.
Bangkok University officials denied that they or Ms. Brown had any involvement in looting antiquities, according to the Bangkok Post. “To us, she has always been a dedicated scholar with a passion for ancient ceramics,” said Mathana Santiwat, the university’s president. —Martha Ann Overland
Posted on Wednesday May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]May 13, 2008
Pakistan Announces Big Increase in Education Budget
Pakistan’s prime minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, announced on Monday that the government would increase its education budget to 4 percent of the gross national product over the next three years, with about 30 percent of the money going toward higher education, according to a local news report.
In recent years, Pakistan has put a lot of money and effort into improving its higher-education system, although even now higher education accounts for less than 1 percent of the gross national product.
The reforms have been controversial, however, with critics saying that they have led to corruption, plagiarism, and favoritism. At the heart of the criticism has been the national Higher Education Commission, formed by President Pervez Musharraf in 2002 to regulate public universities.
In a separate news report, another local newspaper quoted an unnamed Ministry of Education official as saying that control of the commission would be handed over to the education ministry, rather than report directly to the president.
Ahsan Iqbal, the education minister, has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Musharraf and believes that putting the commission directly under the education ministry would deal with some of those problems. —Shailaja Neelakantan
Posted on Tuesday May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]May 12, 2008
University Classes Remain Canceled Across Lebanon
Classes will remain canceled at most Lebanese universities on Tuesday, as fighting between pro- and anti-government forces continued sporadically outside Beirut today and the country’s future, disrupted by days of violence last week, remained mired in uncertainty.
On the Web site of the Lebanese American University, President Joseph G. Jabbra announced that the campus would be open on Tuesday although there would be no classes. Faculty and staff members were encouraged to “use their judgment before coming to work, taking into consideration road conditions and their personal safety,” Mr. Jabbra wrote.
Although most of the fighting ended in Beirut proper on Saturday, when Hezbollah and its anti-government allies pulled their gunmen off the streets, the occasional firefight has continued in the neighborhood directly adjacent to the Lebanese American University, as recently as Sunday night.
The university reassured parents and students that, even though the deteriorating security situation meant most students had been unable to attend classes since last Wednesday, students would be able to make up classes and complete the semester.
“Those students who will fulfill the requirements for graduation can graduate on time, and the others can complete successfully the semester’s coursework and move on to the next year in their advancement toward graduation,” Mr. Jabbra wrote.
The American University of Beirut posted a notice on its Web site this afternoon announcing that most classes would be canceled on Tuesday, but faculty and staff members were expected to report to work.
“As on previous similar occasions,” the message stated, “any day of absence will be charged towards days of regular vacation to be deducted from the employee’s earned annual leave.” —Andrew Mills
Posted on Monday May 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [1]UMass Under Renewed Pressure to Revoke Mugabe's Honorary Degree
Robert G. Mugabe’s honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is under renewed threat. Mr. Mugabe, the autocrat clinging to power in Zimbabwe, received the honor in 1986, when he was still fairly well regarded as a leader of the country’s struggle for independence and black-majority rule.
A generation later, Mr. Mugabe is an international pariah, his country is in economic ruins, human-rights abuses by his government are legion, and his regime is trying by various means to thwart the apparent victory, in elections this spring, of the opposition party.
Last year UMass trustees rebuked Mr. Mugabe but declined to revoke his degree, saying that they had no procedure for rescinding such an honor. Now, according to today’s Boston Globe, a leading state lawmaker has reiterated a call for the degree to be revoked.
In a letter dated last Friday, the lawmaker, Rep. Kevin J. Murphy, said he planned to bring up the matter at the UMass board’s meeting in June. And the Globe quoted a UMass spokesman as saying that the lack of a precedent may no longer be an obstacle to board action.
The University of Edinburgh revoked its honorary degree to Mr. Mugabe last year. —Andrew Mytelka
Posted on Monday May 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [12]May 9, 2008
Universities in Lebanon Close Because of Fighting
All universities in Lebanon were ordered to cancel classes today by the Ministry of Higher Education, following an outbreak of fighting in Beirut on Thursday between Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Sunni government forces.
Among the institutions that suspended classes are the American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, Lebanese University, and Beirut Arab University.
LAU, which posted a brief statement on its Web site, also canceled entrance exams to be held on Saturday.
Ada Porter, AUB’s communications director in New York, said in an e-mail message that most people seemed to be staying home until the situation changes. But many people are leaving Beirut for safer cities around the country, and others are trying to leave Lebanon altogether, she said.
Beirut was paralyzed by strikes earlier this week. Tensions escalated after Hezbollah said that a government threat to shut down its private telephone network was an act of war. Fighting broke out on Thursday, but had calmed down by this morning, reported The New York Times. —Beth McMurtrie and Andrew Mills
Posted on Friday May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [2]May 8, 2008
South Asia's First Regional University Hires a Leader
New Delhi — India will shoulder the initial cost of at least 80 million rupees, or about $2-million, to build South Asia’s first regional university, said the newly appointed chief executive of the institution, which is likely to open in 2010.
“Two years is the bare minimum we need, so we are certainly being called upon to work at high speed,” said G.S. Chadha, of the South Asian University.
Mr. Chadha, a former vice chancellor of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, is a well-known economics scholar in Asia and is also a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.
In April 2007 leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s member countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka — agreed to set up the South Asian University in India.
Mr. Chadha, who received notice on Wednesday that his hiring had been officially approved by the participating countries, has a two-year appointment. He will oversee almost all aspects of the university’s development, including construction, the curriculum, and faculty hiring, and he will be assisted by experts from all member countries.
Mr. Chadha said the association expected a lot of money to come from sources outside the member countries.
“We will be approaching various development agencies,” he said, declining to say how much it will cost to build the institution.
The Indian government has yet to acquire land for the university, but it has identified 100 acres in south Delhi, close to some of the capital’s universities, that could serve as a campus.
“Everybody in the Indian government is behind it,” Mr. Chadha said of the project. “Usually there is some bureaucratic problem, or ifs and buts crop up, but this one has run smoothly.” —Shailaja Neelakantan
Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [3]May 7, 2008
A Major Anthropology Conference in China Faces Postponement
In what might be another sign of pre-Olympics tension in China, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences has warned its members that a major conference planned for July is likely to be postponed.
The association, which was formed in Brussels in 1948, meets every five years. This year’s meeting is scheduled for mid-July at Yunnan University, in Kunming, a city in southwestern China not far from Tibet. Kunming was the site last month of large demonstrations against the Tibetan independence movement and perceived anti-Chinese bias in the West.
On Tuesday the association’s Chinese affiliate wrote to the group’s international executive committee, saying that it had “encountered complex difficulties hard to resolve in its preparation work recently, which makes it impossible for us to hold the congress at the time originally planned.”
The executive committee has rejected the idea of a postponement, but it has not yet received a reply from its Chinese colleagues. “We still have no concrete information about the results of our plea not to postpone the congress,” wrote the association’s president, Luis Alberto Vargas, a professor of physical anthropology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in an e-mail message to The Chronicle today.
Mr. Vargas and other members of the executive committee declined to comment further, citing the delicacy of the situation.
The conference’s program includes a number of panels on potentially sensitive topics, including dozens of papers on ethnic and linguistic diversity and four papers specifically on Tibet.
The association’s newsletter published last month a May 2007 memorandum that outlined 20 points of agreement between the association and its Chinese affiliate, including an understanding that Chinese scholars would organize a conference panel titled “The Achievement of China’s Policy Toward Ethnic Minority Groups and Ethnic Administration.” —David Glenn
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [5]Canadians Shocked by Britain's Decision on Prestigious Scholarship Program
Canadian supporters of Commonwealth scholarships for graduate students say the British government’s recent decision to bar applicants from developed countries like Canada is “short-sighted” and “a slap in the face,” according to today’s Globe and Mail, a Toronto-based newspaper.
The scholarship program, now in its 50th year, will remain open to students from developing countries, particularly those seen as most closely aligned with Britain’s foreign-policy interests, such as China and India.
The shift was announced quietly in a written ministerial statement presented in Parliament in March by David Miliband, Britain’s secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs.
“We will maintain a global scheme, but we will focus scholarships particularly on those countries, such as China and India, which are going to be most important to our foreign-policy success over coming years,” the statement said.
The changes, which were opposed by Britain’s university association, are expected to save the British government nearly $20-million a year.
Current Canadian recipients of the scholarships will be allowed to finish their degree programs. About 30 Canadians each year have received the scholarships — some 1,500 in all since 1960. —Karen Birchard
Posted on Wednesday May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [12]May 6, 2008
New Report Highlights Challenges Facing Business Schools Worldwide
As businesses and management education extend their global reach, educators worldwide will face serious challenges maintaining high quality, hiring enough professors, and keeping up with a host of issues from changing demographics to a growing emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility, according to a new report by the Global Foundation for Management Education.
The report identifies key economic and business trends, as well as developments in management education in various regions of the world. It then recommends steps business schools, businesses, and government can take to deal with those challenges.
“It is essential that we recognize and build upon the mutual dependencies of businesses, governments, and business schools,” said Howard Thomas, chairman of the foundation and dean of the Warwick Business School, in Britain. “This report helps each of us to rise above our regional interests and invest in management education for success in this rapidly changing and integrating global environment.”The foundation is a joint effort of the world’s two largest business-school associations: AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and EFMD (the European Foundation for Management Development).
Among the global trends the report examines are advances in information technology and an emerging emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility. Education issues include the shortage of business-school faculty members with doctorates and the increasing diversity of degree programs.
The foundation’s Web site also includes profiles of management education in more than 50 countries. —Katherine Mangan
Posted on Tuesday May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [6]May 5, 2008
India's Higher-Education Minister Warns Off '3rd-Grade' Western Universities
New Delhi — India doesn’t want “third-grade” Western universities or other foreign universities that aren’t interested in complying with the country’s higher-education regulations, Arjun Singh, the minister in charge of higher education, told a local newspaper.
He added that inferior Western universities want to come to India because it is a “virgin area” and because they cannot compete in their own countries. “I am not opposed to it [foreign institutions], but the real universities should come,” he said.
The normally media-shy minister has lately been granting interviews to the press, after the country’s Supreme Court upheld a law imposing additional admissions quotas on public universities, a development that many see as a personal victory for Mr. Singh.
The higher-education minister opposes the unrestricted entry of foreign higher-education providers, is against large tuition increases at India’s public universities, and is in favor of government controls on admissions and tuition rates at the country’s private higher-education institutions.
Asked whether foreign universities interested in setting up shop in India did not want to be bound by regulations, Mr. Singh told the newspaper, “they certainly were not very favorable to complying with our regulations.” He also said that the government planned to impose quotas for disadvantaged classes on local, privately financed higher-education institutions as well.
“That is absolutely on the agenda,” he said. “The bill is ready.” He added that not imposing quotas on those institutions, which have greatly increased in number, would lead a huge share of the country’s disadvantaged people to be left out.
Mr. Singh said that the increase in quotas was no less than a social revolution. “Education,” he said, “is the only equalizer,” and the country will ultimately gain from the quotas. “We don’t want to have an elitist society.” —Shailaja Neelakantan
Posted on Monday May 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comment [15]
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