March 31, 2008
Judge Dismisses Constitutional Challenge to U. of California's Course-Evaluation Policies
A federal judge has dismissed claims by the Association of Christian Schools International that the University of California’s policies for evaluating whether high-school courses meet academic-preparation requirements are unconstitutional and discriminate against applicants from Christian high schools. But in his ruling, issued on Friday, Judge S. James Otero of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles allowed the group to continuing pressing challenges to specific course-approval decisions.
The association, known as ASCI, and several students from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., sued the university system in 2005, arguing that it had violated their rights to free speech and religious freedom by refusing to allow the students to use some of the school’s courses to meet admissions requirements.
In a written statement summarizing the ruling, the university said that Judge Otero had found that the university had a legitimate interest in setting academic requirements for admission and that its high-school course-evaluation policies were reasonable. —Paula Wasley
President of Alabama A&M U. Is Fired Over Assistant's Paid Leave
Alabama A&M University’s governing board voted today to fire the institution’s president, Robert R. Jennings, according to a news release from the Huntsville, Ala., university. The board had investigated Mr. Jennings over a job perk received by his former executive assistant, Marco McMillian. According to the board, Mr. Jennings had erred in hiring Mr. McMillian, who it said was underqualified, and had also improperly granted him a paid leave. The Huntsville Times reported that Mr. Jennings may have altered documentation concerning Mr. McMillian’s leave, an allegation that Mr. Jennings has denied. —Paul Fain
San Francisco Art Institute Closes Show That Enraged Animal-Rights Groups
The San Francisco Art Institute shuttered a Paris artist’s one-man show Saturday after receiving a series of threats related to videos in the exhibition that showed animals being bludgeoned to death. The institute also canceled a public forum about the show that it had scheduled after complaints began pouring in.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, animal-rights groups compared the show to “a snuff film about animals,” as a spokesman for one of the groups put it. Officials of the art institute said that the video footage showed animals being slaughtered for food in Mexico, and that the videos were part of a social critique by the artist, Adel Abdessemed. But the newspaper said the exhibition itself did not give any context for the videos. The institute received more than 8,000 e-mail messages protesting the show.
Chris Bratton, the art institute’s president, said in a news release that an “orchestrated campaign” by animal-rights groups had led to a “parallel onslaught of explicit death threats and threats of sexual violence — as well as racial, religious, and homophobic slurs — against SFAI staff members and their families,” forcing the institute to close the show. —Lawrence Biemiller
Hampshire College Students Stage Walkout to Demand More Diversity
Students at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass., walked out of class this morning to protest what they saw as administrators’ insufficient commitment to fighting racism, the Associated Press reported.
As part of a series of events called Action Awareness Week — featuring a teach-in, a speak-out, and a writing workshop on oppression — a group of students had presented a list of 17 diversity-related demands (also posted on Facebook) to Hampshire’s president, Ralph J. Hexter.
Among other things, the students were calling for additional faculty and staff positions in multicultural affairs, mandatory “anti-oppression training” for all employees, and residence halls exclusively for students of color and for “queer-identified” students. A few hundred students staged the walkout, an organizer told the AP, when the college’s president did not immediately agree to their demands.
But Mr. Hexter, who is one of academe’s few openly gay presidents, has had several lengthy meetings with the student activists, and he plans to sit down with them again this afternoon, said Nancy Kelly, senior adviser to the president. —Sara Lipka
State Revenues Weakest in Nearly 5 Years, Report Says
There’s more bad news for colleges already bracing for potential state-budget cuts in an economic report being released today by the State University of New York’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.
The report found that state tax revenues continued to weaken during the fourth quarter of 2007 while costs facing states and their local governments rose sharply. When the effects of inflation and changes in tax policies are factored in, state tax revenues across the nation dropped by 4.3 percent during the quarter, which runs from October to December, according to the institute.
“Both by that measure and in nominal terms, state tax revenues were the weakest in almost five years,” according to a press release that accompanied the report’s release.
The strongest growth among state revenues was reported in the Rocky Mountains region, while the weakest growth generally was found in Southeastern states, the report said. —Sara Hebel
Ohio Proposal Would Offer College Credit for Courses in Adult Literacy and Work Skills
A dozen technical colleges and adult learning centers in Ohio will offer college credit for basic academic and technical courses under a pilot program that is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The proposal, which would take effect this summer, is part of a 10-year plan unveiled by state higher-education officials today. Officials hope the plan will increase college enrollment in Ohio and raise the state’s sagging number of college graduates.
A recent study found that many adult students start in noncredit, skills-related courses and do not make much progress toward earning associate or bachelor’s degrees. The Ohio pilot program would try to fix that problem by allowing adult students to “stack” academic and technical certificates to count toward an associate or bachelor’s degree. —Libby Sander
A Plagiarized Honor Code? Oops.
Students trying to set up an honor code at the University of Texas at San Antonio may have unintentionally done what they set out to prevent: They lifted whole passages from other documents without credit.
Even the draft document’s definition of plagiarism was plagiarized, tracking nearly identically a section of the honor code at Brigham Young University.
For example, the draft honor code at San Antonio defines:
Inadvertent Plagiarism. Inadvertent plagiarism involves the inappropriate, but nondeliberate, use of another’s words, ideas, or data without appropriate attribution, failure to follow established rules for documenting sources or from being insufficiently careful in research and writing.
Brigham Young’s honor code includes a similar definition:
Inadvertent Plagiarism: Inadvertent plagiarism involves the inappropriate, but nondeliberate, use of another’s words, ideas, or data without proper attribution. Inadvertent plagiarism usually results from an ignorant failure to follow established rules for documenting sources or from simply being insufficiently careful in research and writing.
Akshay Thusu, the student who inherited the effort to draft an honor code, told the San Antonio Express-News that the draft was probably adapted from materials at a 2003 conference organized by the Center for Academic Integrity, and that the online draft may be missing its citation page.
Mr. Thusu assured the Express-News, which first reported the ironic copy-and-paste job, that the final document would be properly cited: “We don’t want to have an honor code that is stolen,” he said. —JJ Hermes
NCAA Clashes With Promoters of Spring Football Festivities
Sixteen major concerts that were scheduled to take place next month around spring football games on many campuses have been postponed, after the concert promoter backed out of the events and laid the blame on the NCAA.
MSL Sports and Entertainment, a sports-marketing company based in New York, had guaranteed participating athletics departments, including the University of Tennessee and Texas A&M University, at least $300,000 for promoting a Friday-night concert and Saturday football game.
Major-college football programs already play annual spring football games, many of which draw lots of fans. MSL dreamed up the concerts, as part of a weekend of festivities it called “Gridiron Bash,” to draw even more fans.
The company said it had decided to postpone the events until next fall or spring after learning last week that the NCAA objected to players’ participating in some of the promotions. The NCAA shot back on Sunday night, saying the company had postponed the concerts on its own.
“We never expressed any concern with the actual event being conducted as scheduled,” the NCAA said in a written statement, “but only with the participation of student-athletes as part of the for-profit event.”
According to the NCAA, MSL wanted to use the appearance of football players as part of the event, and did not want to require athletes to pay admission. Both would have violated NCAA rules. —Brad Wolverton
March 30, 2008
Amid Basketball Euphoria, Davidson's Admissions Officials Fret About Yield
Christopher Gruber, Davidson College’s vice president for admissions and financial aid, spent the weekend worrying. Interviewed Saturday by NPR—after Davidson’s 73-to-56 romp over Wisconsin, but before Sunday afternoon’s 59-to-57 loss to top-seeded Kansas—Mr. Gruber was trying to guess how the sudden flood of basketball-generated publicity would affect the 1,700-student college’s all-important yield figure.
For those who may know more about basketball statistics than admissions equations, yield is the proportion of high-school seniors who, having been offered admission to a college, go ahead and accept the offer. Even the most savvy admissions professionals can see yield fluctuate from year to year. If yield is too low, an institution may need to accept students off its waiting list—assuming it’s fortunate enough to have a waiting list. But if yield is too high, the college can end up converting double rooms to triples, or putting students up in motels.
Mr. Gruber said the Wildcats’ basketball success was already bringing Davidson unsolicited applications, some from students eager to join the team. “Right now,” he said, “instead of having an incoming class of 470, I think there’s great concern that we may have an incoming class of 570 or 670, which we would not have great ease in accommodating.” But since the college had already made its admissions offers, which were posted to a password-protected Web site last Thursday afternoon, there was not much Mr. Gruber could do but keep his fingers crossed.
Also interviewed was Robert Baker, director of sports management at George Mason University, which reached the Final Four in 2006. He said the university “conservatively” estimated the value of the related publicity at $677-million. —Lawrence Biemiller
Date Your Roommate? Oregon Colleges Allow Couples in Dorm Rooms
At some Oregon universities, roommates are dating one another.
Actually, they started out dating and then became roommates, thanks to new policies that permit opposite-sex roommates in college dorms, The Oregonian reported.
Lewis and Clark University, Oregon State University, and Portland State University now allow opposite-sex roommates, and Willamette University and Reed College will try out the arrangement this fall, the Portland, Ore., newspaper said.
Colleges across the country, such as Wesleyan University and Haverford College, began experimenting with “gender neutral” dorm rooms several years ago.
In Oregon, couples, naturally, have been eager to take advantage of the few rooms that colleges set aside for such arrangements.
At Willamette, co-ed rooms are not intended for romantic relationships. Instead, they are supposed to be occupied by people who are uncomfortable with same-sex roommates because of their own gender identity. For example, a gay person might not want a roommate of the same sex.
But dating roommates is a bad idea, Robert E. Hawkinson, dean of campus life at Willamette, told the newspaper: “People of this age simply do break up a lot. This is just asking for more trouble than we want to take on.” —Josh Fischman
State Takes Control of Finances at Cheyney U. of Pennsylvania
State officials have taken financial control at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, after the university’s controller was fired and its finance director took time off following his wife’s death.
The university, part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, is now running all financial matters past James Dillon, vice chancellor for administration and finance of the state system, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The university’s controller, Sheila Eames, was fired for undisclosed reasons about two weeks ago. That was about the same time that the finance director, Charles Colbert, lost his wife and needed to take time off, a university spokesman told the newspaper.
Mr. Dillon has taken several steps to centralize spending control. He has canceled all purchasing cards held by university employees, stopped issuing checks to employees to buy goods and services, and has sent all checks to the state system’s headquarters in Harrisburg to be processed
These are not the first money-related woes for Cheyney University, nor is it the first time Mr. Dillon has been brought in for oversight. In 2006 the university overspent its budget, and Mr. Dillon was assigned to monitor the situation.
The university has also been plagued by a recent series of scandals, including violations of National Collegiate Athletic Association rules by the football program, which resulted in a three-year probation, and reports in 2007 that a prostitute was working in university dormitories.
Cheyney’s president, Michelle Howard-Vital, did not respond to news-media requests for comment.
Eric R. Almonte, executive associate to the president, told the newspaper that the university had requested help from the state system because the business office was understaffed because of the departures of Ms. Eames and Mr. Colbert. The latter is expected to return in a few weeks. —Josh Fischman
March 29, 2008
Let the Frenzy Begin -- Stanford Sets an Admissions Record
Let the typical spring media frenzy over admissions begin. Stanford University has announced that its acceptance rate for the fall has hit a record low: 9.5 percent. More than 25,000 students applied for a spot in the fall’s incoming class and only 2,400 were accepted. Stanford’s acceptance rate last year was 10.3 percent.
With a record number of applicants, other colleges are likely to announce similar low acceptance rates in the coming weeks. The news media will report the numbers, leading high-school students and their parents to think it’s impossible to get into college. Not so, according to a recent article in The Chronicle, which reported that 80 percent of current first-year students were admitted to their top-choice college. —Jeffrey Selingo
March 28, 2008
Who Makes the Most? College President, Surgeon, or Senator?
Presidential pay is again causing a ruckus with the hiring of Mark G. Yudof, the University of California’s new president, who will earn $828,000 in a job that is among the most difficult in higher education. But how do college presidents stack up to other hotshots when it comes to compensation?
The Chronicle conducted a decidedly unscientific survey, the results of which appear below. The most recent available median compensation is listed after each job. —Paul Fain
CEO of S&P 500 company—$8.5-million
NBA player—$4-million
College football coach (NCAA Division I)—$1-million
Neurosurgeon—$530,000
President of public research university—$397,000
U.S. Senator—$162,500
NASA astronaut (top pay grade)—$130,000
Reporter—$42,000
Defense Department Finalizes Rule Barring Restricted Campus Recruiting
The U.S. Department of Defense today issued a final rule in the Federal Register outlining steps the department can take to withhold federal funds from colleges and universities that place restrictions on military recruiters and the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. The rule arises from a defense authorization bill passed in 2004, which was upheld by the Supreme Court two years ago.
The final rule does outline an exception that allows students to continue receiving federal financial aid if their college happens to be one that the Defense Department deems restrictive to military recruiting. Federal money that goes to students — including Pell grants, FFEL-program loans, federal direct loans, and federal work-study funds — would not be jeopardized. —JJ Hermes
You’re Not the Biggest Loser. Or Maybe You Are.
As a contestant on the reality-television show The Biggest Loser, Roger Shultz is still going strong—as of last week he had shed 127 pounds in the weight-loss competition. Unfortunately reality is far different at home in Alabama, where he has lost his job as an associate athletics director at Jacksonville State University.
Mr. Shultz was hired last May to help beef up the fund-raising and marketing efforts of the athletics department, but because he was gone for several months to tape the show, officials decided to fire him, according to The Birmingham News.
“In this day and time, fund raising and marketing are critical in athletics and we just felt it was time to move forward since we had lost almost one-half of a year in this area,” said Jim Fuller, athletics director.
Mr. Shultz, who was a member of the University of Alabama’s football team 20 years ago, said he has no hard feelings about the decision. Although he was not allowed to comment on the outcome of the competition, he told the newspaper that he appears on the episode airing on April 8. The finale is scheduled for April 15, when the “biggest loser” will win $250,000.
There’s no word on whether Mr. Shultz’s replacement will ask him to donate any potential winnings to Jacksonville State. —Erin Strout
Facing a Doctor Shortage, India Will Recognize Foreign Medical Degrees
To combat a severe shortage of doctors and in a move to attract back Indian doctors settled abroad, the Indian government has decided to recognize graduate medical degrees from Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, provided they are recognized in the respective countries.
Until now, doctors with an undergraduate degree from India but a graduate degree from another country were not allowed to practice in India. Indian doctors with graduate degrees from the approved countries will now be allowed to practice in India at any public or private hospital. They can also be recruited to teach undergraduates in any medical college, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
The doctor-per-person ratio (including practitioners of Western medicine, homeopathy, and Indian systems of medicine) is 1 to 870, according to the Indian government. Not including practitioners of non-Western medicine, that ratio increases to 1 to 1,634. In rural India 67 percent of enrolled doctors do not report for duty, according to the government.
“It is clear from the above statistics that the country is in dire need of medical specialists to cater to the increasing demands of public health care in rural and urban areas,” the health ministry said in its statement. “Vast stretches of the countryside are not well equipped with health facilities, doctors and para-medical staff, creating serious imbalances in the health sector.”
Increasing Indian medical-school enrollments and the number of medical specialists cannot be achieved immediately, the ministry said, adding there are many Indian citizens with foreign medical degrees living abroad who are willing to return to India. —Shailaja Neelakantan
'U.S. News' Releases 2009 Rankings of Graduate Schools
U.S. News & World Report released another of its ever-contentious rankings at midnight, this time picking what it says are the top graduate schools in various disciplines. Among the magazine’s listings:
- In business, Harvard and Stanford Universities tied for the No. 1 spot, followed by the University of Pennsylvania at No. 3. Sharing fourth place were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.
- In law, Yale University took the top spot, with Harvard and Stanford sharing second place. Columbia University came in fourth and New York University fifth.
- In medicine, Harvard was ranked No. 1 in research, followed by the Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California at San Francisco. (The magazine also ranks medical schools according to the quality of their primary care.)
- In engineering, MIT was first, with Stanford second and the University of California at Berkeley third. At No. 4 was the Georgia Institute of Technology, and at No. 5 was the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- In fine arts, the Rhode Island School of Design beat out Yale for the top ranking. In third place was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by the Cranbrook Academy of Art and, at No.5, the Maryland Institute College of Art. —Lawrence Biemiller
March 27, 2008
In California, Yudof Gets the Nod -- and an $828,000 Compensation Package
As expected, the University of California’s Board of Regents today voted unanimously to appoint Mark G. Yudof as the system’s next president. Mr. Yudof’s total annual compensation will be $828,000 in his first year on the job, including a $591,084 base salary, supplemental pension payments, and a car allowance, according to a university news release.
In a brief statement to regents, Mr. Yudof said he took the job because the university system is the “premier public university in the world.” But it also faces many challenges, he said, noting that budget, morale, and other problems are inevitable at such a large system.
“There are always crises,” said Mr. Yudof, currently chancellor of the University of Texas system, but “it will all work out.” —Paul Fain
U. of Notre Dame Starts New Research Center in Nanocomputing
A consortium of semiconductor manufacturers will help finance a new research center on nanotechnology being established by the University of Notre Dame. The university will finance about two-thirds of the $61-million start-up cost, with $5-million expected from the Semiconductor Research Corp. and IBM.
The new center—called the Midwest Academy for Nanoelectronics and Architectures, or MANA—will be a joint effort with Purdue University and other research universities outside of Indiana. Researchers want to use nanotechnology, the manipulation of atoms, to develop faster, more powerful computers.
The consortium, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, described the Notre Dame project as the fourth it has sponsored on a university campus. The most recent project before this one was at the State University of New York at Albany, which made a big splash in 2002 when Sematech, an affiliate of the consortium, pledged $193-million over five years for the university’s fledgling center. But that payday came after New York State had provided seed money in 2001 to start the center.
Notre Dame and state officials in Indiana are eager to try to replicate the Albany model, as well as to generate the kinds of new jobs and businesses that Albany’s project has helped to create. The State of Indiana will provide the Indiana center with up to $15-million.
The semiconductor consortium had solicited proposals for the center last fall and received about 30 applications, the Associated Press reported.
Notre Dame started a Center for Nano Science and Technology in 1999 and is completing a new engineering building, where the new research effort will be based. Purdue is expected to carry out about a third of the center’s research. The center will initially involve a total of 20 faculty members from all participating universities. —Jeffrey Brainard
Harvard Hires New Endowment Chief
Jane Mendillo has been chosen as the new president and chief executive officer of the Harvard Management Company, which runs the university’s $35-billion endowment, Harvard officials announced today.
Ms. Mendillo, the chief investment officer at Wellesley College since 2002, will be Harvard’s first woman endowment manager when she takes office July 1. She’s no stranger to the Harvard management group, however, having served as a senior investment officer under Jack R. Meyer, who increased the fund to $26-billion from $5-billion in his 15 years as manager.
The top endowment chiefs in higher education are rock stars on Wall Street, which pays close attention to their investment strategies. As a result, some of the wealthiest universities have struggled to retain their fund managers, who can command giant salaries in private industry. Ms. Mendillo’s predecessor at Harvard, Mohamed A. El-Erian, left after less than two years on the job.
Ms. Mendillo has been successful at Wellesley, where the endowment grew to $1.7-billion last year, from $1-billion in 2002. And with 15 years of experience working with Harvard’s endowment, she knows that the university has come under fire for the high compensation it awards to fund managers. Mr. Meyer’s annual pay crested at about $7-million before he left to run a hedge fund. —Paul Fain
Students No Longer Long for NYU, Survey Finds -- Now They Hope for Harvard
The Princeton Review isn’t known for its research methodology, but it does know how to capture the popular imagination.
Today the test-preparation company released its annual “College Hopes & Worries” report, based on survey responses from about 10,000 high-school students and their parents.
The students’ “dream college”: Harvard. The parents’: Princeton.
For the previous three years, though, the same survey found that students dreamed of getting in to New York University. What happened?
“Harvard has been in the news in regards to financial aid,” said Robert Franek, lead author of the company’s Best Colleges guide. Students’ and parents’ biggest worry, he pointed out in today’s report, is that they won’t be able to afford their first-choice college. Harvard’s recent plans to lower costs for middle- and upper-middle-income families, he said, are answering their “needs and fears.”
Most students and parents aren’t picking a college for its academics, according to the Princeton Review—just 9 percent said that’s how they would make their decision. Half said they were looking for “the best overall fit,” and a third were most concerned with “career interests.” Almost two-thirds of students said they would consider, at least somewhat, a college’s commitment to the environment.
Meanwhile, stress about the application process has soared, with more than six in 10 students and parents reporting high levels. But a few offered words of wisdom.
“Take lots of bubble baths,” said a student from California. “Try to win the lottery before you apply,” said one from Colorado.
“There are many good colleges out there,” said a parent from New Jersey, “not just the 10 that everyone is applying to.” —Sara Lipka
Community Colleges in New Jersey Are Newest Focus for State Scrutiny
State investigators in New Jersey have apparently now turned their sights to the state’s 19 community colleges.
As first reported by the Asbury Park Press, the State Commission of Investigation is seeking records of the colleges for an investigation whose scope was not disclosed.
The state agency is the same one that had previously found financial wrongdoing in the operations of a number of the state’s 4-year public colleges and its school of medicine and dentistry.
A spokesman for the New Jersey Council of County Colleges said the advocacy organization was aware that officials at all 19 community colleges had received letters of inquiry from the commission, but had no further details. —Goldie Blumenstyk
Israeli College in West Bank, Stripped of University Status, Cries Foul
Jerusalem — An Israeli college in the occupied West Bank that began upgrading to university status last year is being stripped of its university title, and the head of the fledgling institution is criticizing the move as mistaken and “politically motivated.”
The University Center of Samaria, in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, has more than 10,000 undergraduate students, 38 doctoral students, and 220 senior faculty members, in 24 departments across five disciplines. Until last year, it was known as the College of Judea and Samaria. An official change in title was approved by the Israeli Justice Ministry in July 2007, on the suggestion of a government committee that recommended that the college be upgraded to a “university center” in preparation for becoming Israel’s eighth recognized research university.
But despite the ministry’s approval, the Council of Higher Education, which oversees financing for higher education, opposed granting university status to the college. And some Israeli academics and others opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank appealed to the Supreme Court to stop the upgrade. Their petition was rejected in February 2007.
Now it has emerged that at a meeting at the Justice Ministry on January 3, government officials decided that the college’s upgrade and change of name had not been properly approved by the relevant Israeli military commander in the West Bank. On March 19, the Council of Higher Education wrote to the Justice Ministry, requesting that it reverse an earlier decision to approve the name change.
Yigal Cohen-Orgad, chairman of the executive committee of the University Center of Samaria, said the college had followed the government-approved procedures to the letter. He said he had still not been officially informed of the January meeting or of the decision made there.
“It’s a mistaken decision for sure,” Mr. Cohen-Orgad said. “We will continue our work. … If they want, they can take legal action. There was no negotiation, but we are always ready to sit down and discuss things in a rational way.” —Matthew Kalman
Indonesian Scholarship Foundation, Set Up by the Former President, Ordered to Repay Government $110-Million
An Indonesian court has cleared the late dictator Suharto of stealing $440-million from a charitable foundation that was set up to provide scholarships to needy students, but the charity itself was ordered to repay the government $110-million.
The Supersemar Foundation was set up in 1974 by Mr. Suharto, the country’s then-president, to help poor students attend high school and college. During Mr. Suharto’s rule, state-owned businesses as well as international companies were essentially required to donate large sums to the charity.
Prosecutors allege that most of the money never went to students but was instead diverted into Mr. Suharto’s pockets.
“Indonesian students lost opportunities to gain better education because of the misuse of the funds,” prosecutors said when they were arguing the case in October.
The panel of judges said Mr. Suharto, who like many Indonesians only uses one name, was not accountable for the missing $440-million since he did not oversee the day-to-day operation of the charity.
Transparency International has named Mr. Suharto the most corrupt leader in history. During his 32 years in power, it is estimated that he and his family members stole as much as $36-billion from government coffers.
During testimony heard during the civil trial, the court was told that Supersemar funneled scholarship funds to a bank and an airline controlled by one of Mr. Suharto’s sons. Money was also diverted to Golkar, Mr. Suharto’s political party. The six Suharto children own the largest conglomerates in Indonesia.
Prosecutors have been trying to bring Mr. Suharto and his children to trial for more than a decade. Previous lawsuits were tossed out of court because of Mr. Suharto’s poor health. The former dictator died in January at the age of 86.—Martha Ann Overland
Pardoned Felon and Former Regent Gets Another Look at Texas A&M U.
The Board of Visitors at Texas A&M University at Galveston may soon be joined by a fund raiser with a felonious past — one earned while he was serving on the university system’s Board of Regents.
Ross Margraves Jr., a Houston-based lawyer, was convicted in 1996 on a charge of official misconduct. The felony charge stemmed from his use of a state-owned plane for a round-trip flight with his wife to Baton Rouge, La., at the time of his son’s graduation from Louisiana State University. He billed the state $1,435 for the trip.
Mr. Margraves, who has been involved in several fund-raising roles for the university, told a local newspaper at the College Station campus that he would use his contacts to bring in more money. “It gives me a chance to give back to my university,” he said.
The regents are scheduled to vote on his appointment to the Galveston campus’s Board of Visitors later today. —Paul Fain
American and French Mathematicians Share $1.2-Million Abel Prize
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced today that it would award the 2008 Abel Prize to John G. Thompson, a professor of mathematics at the University of Florida, and Jacques Tits, an emeritus professor at the Collège de France. The two will share $1.2-million when the prize, known by some as mathematics’ equivalent of the Nobel, is awarded in May.
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Tits are being honored for “shaping modern group theory,” in the words of the Norwegian Academy’s citation.
Each has won other high honors in mathematics, including the Fields Medal for Mr. Thompson, and the Wolf Prize for both mathematicians. —Lila Guterman
Former President of Texas Southern U. Avoids Prison With Plea Deal
Priscilla D. Slade, the former president of Texas Southern University who was fired in 2006 after an internal audit found she had misspent more than $600,000 of university money, will avoid prison time under a settlement reached with prosecutors on Wednesday, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Ms. Slade pleaded “no contest” to felony charges that could have landed her in prison for life, and agreed to repay $127,672.18 and perform 400 hours of community service. A jury had deadlocked last fall over whether to convict her. She could still face prison if she fails to make the restitution required under her deal with prosecutors.
During the eight-week trial last year, prosecutors described lavish spending by Ms. Slade over her seven years as president of the financially troubled university. Those expenditures, they said, included a $100,000 bar tab, a $40,000 set of china from Neiman Marcus, a $20,000 golf-club membership, and $10,000 for tickets to Houston Rockets professional basketball games. Her lawyer said her spending was reasonable and necessary to woo donors and improve the university’s image. —Charles Huckabee
March 26, 2008
Korean University Sues Yale U. for $50-Million in Case of Forged Ph.D.
A South Korean university is suing Yale University for $50-million, alleging that Yale erroneously confirmed a fake Ph.D. in art history as authentic, then falsely denied having done so.
According to the Associated Press, officials at Dongguk University believe that Yale’s denial of its initial error “publicly humiliated and deeply shamed” Dongguk by giving the Korean public the impression that Dongguk had hired a professor for an art-history post improperly and then forged documents to cover up its mistake. The professor, Shin Jeong-ah, has become the object of intense scrutiny in the Korean news media.
Dongguk hired her in 2005, but questions soon arose about her degree. The university sent Yale a query, and received a faxed reply saying the degree was authentic. In 2007, new questions arose, this time about her dissertation, but Yale said it had no record of any such document. Yale officials then insisted that the 2005 fax confirming Ms. Shin’s degree’s authenticity had been forged. The university later admitted that a Yale associate dean had mistakenly sent the fax in “the rush of business.”
Ms. Shin is in jail awaiting trial on charges of having forged the degree. Yale said it had apologized to the Korean institution “for the administrative error that delayed the discovery of her fraud.” But Dongguk officials say Yale’s negligence not only sparked a criminal investigation but also tarnished its reputation, leading to declines in donations and applications. —Lawrence Biemiller
Canadian University Treated Professor Unfairly, Review Team Finds
An external review says a medical professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland was subjected to years of harassment and bullying. According to a report released today, the review committee concluded that Cathy Popadiuk, a gynecological oncologist, “experienced a pattern of harassment that extended over a period of years.” The report says that Dr. Popadiuk “was placed in an intimidating, hostile environment, has been discouraged by her superiors in carrying out acceptable treatment options she deemed best for her patients,” and “has had her clinical work assessed in a manner that denied her natural justice.”
Her case was taken up by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which commissioned the independent review. That investigation was carried out by Albert Katz, a professor and chair of the department of psychology at the University of Western Ontario; Lori J. West, a professor of pediatrics, surgery and immunology at the University of Alberta; and Philippe DeWals, director of the department of social and preventative medicine at the University of Laval. The reviewers noted that Dr. Popadiuk’s experience apparently was not unique, other members of the medical faculty at Newfoundland had also provided evidence of being treated without respect.
Dr. Popadiuk complained five years ago that her reputation was unfairly damaged after a visiting colleague told her superiors that her research was poor and her treatment of patients was inappropriate. The report says the dispute began over a different approach to cancer treatment. Dr. Popadiuk preferred to use chemotherapy before surgery, but her colleagues, according to the report, did not consider that to be “the preferred mode of treatment.”
She was removed as associate dean of students and her office was relocated away from the clinic where she saw patients. An internal review at Memorial University has determined that her work is sound, according to a report by CBC News.
The external reviewers suggest both Memorial University and the Eastern Health authority apologize to Dr. Popadiuk. The recommendations also include setting up a dispute resolution process and develop a harassment policy. —Karen Birchard
Study Finds Parental Income Helps Determine Payoff From a Bachelor's Degree
New York— The short-term economic benefits that people derive from earning a bachelor’s degree vary according to their own parents’ economic situation, according to a study presented here this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
The study, by Marvin A. Titus, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Maryland at College Park, notes that many studies have concluded that people with bachelor’s degrees earn substantially more than people without them, but none of the previous studies have looked at the influence of students’ family wealth on how much such degrees pay off.
Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Students survey — examining a cohort that entered college in the fall of 1995 — Mr. Titus looked at the incomes earned in 2001 by more than 3,000 study subjects who were employed full-time at that point. He framed such data in the context of family income, while seeking to control for factors such as the selectivity of the college they attended.
The good news his paper offers for low-income students is that people from families in society’s bottom socioeconomic quartile appear to reap slightly bigger economic gains from earning a bachelor’s degree than students from the top quartile.
The bad news is that people from families in the wealthiest fourth of society earned higher incomes regardless of whether they completed college. People from families in the bottom quartile earned an average of $31,059 if they had a bachelor’s degree, $27,126 if they didn’t. People from families in the top quartile earned an average of $35,913 with a bachelor’s degree, and $31,814 without one.
Mr. Titus’s paper suggests that efforts to improve college retention should take into account the payoff of degree completion for different subsets of the population to better understand the decisions students make. The paper says more research is needed on how college students from different subsets of the population acquire social capital that will influence their earnings. —Peter Schmidt
Teaching Assistants at U. of Michigan End Walkout a Day Early
Unionized graduate-student teaching assistants at the University of Michigan are returning to class today after reaching a tentative agreement with university administrators, The Detroit News reported.
Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but Kiara Vigil, vice president of the union representing the graduate students, said it included a salary increase and dealt with the students’ concerns over wage parity and mental-health care. Union members will vote on whether to ratify the agreement on Monday, she said.
The graduate students had begun what was scheduled to be a two-day strike on Tuesday after contract talks bogged down. Their previous contract with the university expired at midnight Monday. —Charles Huckabee
March 25, 2008
Former Georgia Tech Employee Is Accused of Charging $173,000 in Personal Expenses to State
Prosecutors in Atlanta have filed charges against a second former Georgia Tech employee in a credit-card-abuse case that has so far ended the careers of 17 university employees.
According to the Associated Press and a statement on the Web site of Georgia’s attorney general, a state grand jury has indicted the employee, Michelle Harris, on one count of felony racketeering. The indictment accuses her of charging $173,000 in personal expenses on a state-issued “procurement card,” also called a “p-card.” Earlier this month, federal prosecutors accused another former employee, Donna Renee Gamble, of misusing her p-card to buy $316,000 worth of personal items.
A state audit report blamed the university for its lax supervision of the cards. —Lawrence Biemiller
More Endowment Scrutiny Likely, Former Senate Aide Says
Unless wealthy colleges start spending more of their endowment assets on student aid, they can expect more scrutiny from the federal government, a former Senate staff member said today.
Dean A. Zerbe, who recently resigned as senior counsel to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, said in an online discussion with The Chronicle of Philanthropy that members of Congress remain interested in discussing a mandatory payout requirement for college endowments that have more than $500-million in assets.
But whether lawmakers pursue legislation to enact such a change will “depend to a certain extent on the voluntary response by the colleges,” said Mr. Zerbe, who is now national managing director of Alliantgroup, a Houston-based tax-consulting company.
Senator Grassley, of Iowa, is the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. In January he and Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the committee’s top Democrat, sent letters to 136 wealthy colleges requesting information about their endowment spending, financial-aid policies, and tuition increases over the past decade.
Colleges have been responding to the committee’s request over the past few weeks. Some lobbyists expect the Finance Committee to hold a hearing on endowment spending practices this spring. —Brad Wolverton
Former Michigan Vice President Heads to Saudi Arabia
The booming higher education sector in the oil-rich Middle East has just claimed one more American academic — Fawwaz Ulaby, a professor of engineering and former vice president for research at the University of Michigan — in its epic search for talent.
What’s more, as provost of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Mr. Ulaby will be responsible for drawing about three hundred more academics to Saudi Arabia. His main task is to assemble the new university’s first faculty from the ground up, a job he will tackle while on a leave of absence from Michigan.
The $10-billion new institution, still under construction at a site overlooking the Red Sea about 50 miles north of Jeddah, is scheduled to open its doors in September of 2009.
Mr. Ulaby says the university, known as Kaust, aims to have 300 professors and 2,000 students within five years. But it will start out with about 100 faculty members and an enrollment from 500 to 600 — all graduate students.
“Kaust is a graduate-only university,” Mr. Ulaby explains. And none of those graduate students will pay tuition or need to earn their keep with assistantships, he says. Admission to the university comes with a full fellowship for either master’s or doctoral study — plus a fellowship that covers the student’s senior year of undergraduate work.
Those inducements, like the several-dozen handsomely financed research centers that Kaust is setting up at universities across the globe, are part of an effort to fashion one of the world’s major research institutions from scratch, says Mr. Ulaby.
“There are many fine universities in the region, but none of them, to be honest, are world-class research universities,” says Mr. Ulaby. “The intent is to make Kaust the first such university in the entire Middle East.”—John Gravois
Education Dept. Releases Roundup of Data on College Enrollment, Expenditures, and Faculty
The U.S. Department of Education today released its “Digest of Education Statistics: 2007” — an annual roundup of data on colleges and public schools made public over the past year.
For example, the digest includes projections released in December that show college enrollment nationwide will continue to climb between now and 2016 — even as the number of new high-school graduates is expected to dip.
The roundup also includes information on the workload of faculty members, expenditures on education, and the educational attainment of the overall population. – Elyse Ashburn
Elite Colleges' Scramble to Enroll High SAT Scorers May Undermine Diversity
New York—Elite colleges have been undermining their own efforts to diversify by giving much more weight to high SAT scores than they did before, according to an analysis of College Board data presented this morning at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.
Over the past two or three decades, the share of freshman-class seats that elite colleges award to students with high SAT scores has risen significantly—and risen more quickly than the number of high scores, according to an analysis by Catherine L. Horn, an assistant professor of educational leadership and cultural studies at the University of Houston, and John T. Yun, an assistant professor of education at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
The researchers examined the freshman classes entering the 30 highest-ranked institutions in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report annual college guide. SAT scores of entrants were available for 19 of the institutions. Of those, all but four enrolled classes in which more than 30 percent of the students had SAT verbal scores above 700, and more than half enrolled classes in which more than 50 percent of students had verbal scores over 700. In 1979, by contrast, just one of the 30 institutions enrolled a freshman class in which more than 30 percent of the students had verbal scores above 700.
From 1989 to 2007, the researchers found, the share of entering freshmen with SAT verbal scores above 700 rose from 33 percent to 78 percent at Yale University, from 24 to 67 percent at Stanford University, from 9 to 54 percent at the University of Pennsylvania, and from 18 to 68 percent at the University of Chicago.
Of the 74,000 students nationwide who earned SAT verbal scores above 700 in 2006, roughly 25,000 enrolled in one of the 30 institutions. The most prestigious of the 30 institutions, such as the members of the Ivy League, have always had large pools of high-scoring applicants, but the institutions now appear to be placing more emphasis on entrants’ SAT scores—a trend the researchers see as linked to the weight that U.S. News and other publications give to students’ SAT scores in judging selectivity for the publications’ college rankings.
Other institutions—such as the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Wake Forest University—have experienced surges in the number of high scorers applying but also appear to be giving high scores more weight.
The researchers say that, by focusing so heavily on high scorers, the elite colleges they examined are ignoring promising minority students with lesser scores, increasing the competition for high-scoring minority students, and potentially “simply ‘pricing’ themselves out of the ‘market’ for a more diverse learning environment.” Especially among the most prestigious of the 30 institutions, it is hard to believe that putting less emphasis on high SAT scores would cause the institutions’ quality to suffer.
The two researchers’ findings are included in a forthcoming book, Realizing Bakke’s Legacy, being published in June in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. —Peter Schmidt
Japanese Academics Decry Government Decision That Blocked Italian Philosopher's Visit
Japanese academics have criticized a government decision that they say effectively refused to allow the Italian scholar and political activist Antonio Negri to enter the country.
Mr. Negri, a Marxist philosopher who served a prison sentence in Italy on controversial charges of “insurrection against the state,” had been scheduled to give a series of lectures at the Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto and other venues in late March and early April, but was forced to abruptly cancel his trip last week after being told he would need a permit to entry the country. Italian nationals can normally travel to Japan without visas, but a Foreign Office spokesman said “political criminals” needed “special landing permits.”
The academics, led by a Kobe University professor, Yoshihiko Ichida, say they were led to believe that Mr. Negri could travel freely and assert that the visa decision was politically motivated. “We were deprived of the opportunities to philosophical, academic, and cultural exchanges that transcend borders and the freedom of movement, as well as freedom of belief, thought, and academic knowledge of all persons involved was violated,” they said in a written statement.
In a note to the organizers of the event, published (in French and Japanese) on the Web site of the International House of Japan, one of the venues where he was scheduled to speak, Mr. Negri apologized for the cancellation and expressed surprise at the visa requirement, which he called “contrary to all expectations.” —David McNeill
Teaching Assistants at U. of Michigan Begin 2-Day Walkout
Unionized graduate-student instructors at the University of Michigan walked away from their teaching assignments today in an attempt to pressure the university to make concessions at the bargaining table. The walkout, which has sent graduate students to picket lines across the Ann Arbor campus, is scheduled to last through Wednesday.
The union’s old contract with the university expired at midnight Monday, with administrators and union leaders still at loggerheads over salary increases and mental-health-care provisions in the new three-year contract they are negotiating, according to The Detroit News.
The union, called the Graduate Employees Organization, represents 1,700 graduate students at Michigan. University officials said they expected classes to continue during the walkout. —Charles Huckabee
State Offers $100,000 Settlements to Families of Victims at Virginia Tech
A proposed state settlement would offer the families of the 32 people killed last April at Virginia Tech about $100,000 each, The Virginian-Pilot reported. The newspaper said that the proposal, which is intended to head off lawsuits and is still being negotiated, would also pay medical and counseling expenses for the families and surviving victims of the tragedy, in which a gunman killed two students in a dormitory and 30 students and professors in a classroom building.
The families have until Monday to decide whether to accept the settlement, the newspaper reported. In exchange, they would give up the right to sue the state, the university, the City of Blacksburg, Va., and other entities. —Charles Huckabee
March 24, 2008
At One Major University, Not Much Evidence of Salary Compression
For at least two decades, older faculty members have fretted about a shrinking gap between junior and senior professors’ salaries on the tenure track – a phenomenon known as salary compression.
But at at least one major university, there is not much evidence of such compression across the last two decades, according to a paper presented here Monday during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
The study was presented by Sharon L. Weinberg, a professor of educational statistics and psychology at New York University. Ms. Weinberg previously served there as vice provost for faculty affairs. Her study does not name the university under analysis, but during the conference panel, she strongly hinted that it is NYU.
Ms. Weinberg looked at 20 cohorts of newly hired and promoted faculty members at the university, from those hired or promoted in 1986 to those hired or promoted in 2005. In each case, she compared the salaries of assistant professors in their first year to the salaries of professors during the first year of promotion to full professor.
(Like most other scholars who have looked at salary compression, Ms. Weinberg excluded lateral senior-faculty hires because such people are usually stars who can command impressive paychecks. Instead, she looked only at scholars promoted to full-professor status from within the institution.)
Across the 20 years of the study, Ms. Weinberg found, there was no reduction in the ratio between full-professor and assistant-professor salaries. On average, newly hired assistant professors earned roughly two-thirds of newly promoted full professors’ salaries throughout the period. If anything, the gap between the two groups’ salaries increased slightly over time, but that change was not statistically significant.
Nonetheless, Ms. Weinberg did cite possible evidence of an increase in salary compression in recent years. Early in this decade, she said, the university tried to improve the quality of its newly hired junior faculty by increasing its opening salaries. The 2003 and 2005 cohorts of new junior faculty came to the university with higher salaries but earned lower-than-average raises in subsequent years.
Ms. Weinberg said that her method – which looks at senior faculty members only in their first year at full-professor status – is an improvement on previous studies of salary compression. Studies that try to aggregate the salaries of all senior-faculty members can generate “very noisy data,” she said.—David Glenn
Researchers Bemoan Budget Cut That Could Shut Down 1 of 2 Mars Rovers
Planetary scientists who have been using two extraordinary rovers to tour the surface of Mars for more than three years are deeply dismayed by a $4-million budget cut that they say would force them to shut down one of the robotic explorers and curtail the activities of the other.
“It’s very demoralizing for the team,” said Steve W. Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University who is principal investigator for the rover program, in an interview with the Associated Press.
The twin rovers, which were designed for three-month missions, have been exploring Mars since January 2004. They cost NASA about $20-million a year to operate. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees the rovers, said it would appeal the order to trim the rover budget. And CNN reported late Monday evening that a spokesman for the NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, had said that “shutting down one of the rovers is not an option.”
If the cut is not rescinded, it will require the rover Spirit to be put in hibernation and limit Spirit’s twin, Opportunity, to receiving orders every other day, instead of daily. —Lawrence Biemiller
Eastern Michigan U. Student Is Charged With Theft of Gems from U. of Michigan
University of Michigan police have arrested an Eastern Michigan University student and charged him with stealing more than 70 semiprecious gems from a University of Michigan geology collection during two robberies earlier this month.
The student, Michael Edward-Lopez Sherer, 27, was arrested while seeking to have some of the stones appraised at a jewelry store in Ann Arbor, according to The Ann Arbor News. A store employee recognized the gems because a University of Michigan graduate student had come by earlier with photos of the stolen items. The employee delayed Mr. Sherer until police arrived.
Police searched Mr. Sherer’s apartment and said they believed they had recovered all of the missing gems. —Lawrence Biemiller
University Television Ads Depict White Dominance, Study Finds
New York — The television advertisements produced by most major universities depict their campuses as overwhelmingly white, privileged environments, likely deterring many minority students from applying, according to a paper being presented here this week as part of the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association.
The study that the paper summarizes closely examined videotapes of the 30-second television spots that 43 colleges aired during the 2006-7 Bowl Championship Series. The researchers — Brian Bourke and Michael S. Harris, both assistant professors of higher education at the University of Alabama — analyzed the images, narration, characters, scenes, and music in the ads, applying key concepts from the field of critical race theory.
The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups. The common image of a group of students strolling the campus, for example, typically depicted three or four white students and a single student of color.
(A feature story about a few colleges’ 30-second spots, which may or may not have been part of the study, appears in The Chronicle this week.)
In trying to convey the message that their graduates are successful, the universities typically showed images of alumni who are white and wealthy. And the images shown to depict the tradition and history of the institutions were so void of students of color they sent the message “tradition equals whiteness,” the paper said.
Some of the universities examined by the researchers have enrollments that are so overwhelmingly white that advertisements depicting large numbers of minority students arguably could be called misleading. But the two researchers say that the messages that the advertisements send to minority students are not going to help bring much racial and ethnic diversity to those campuses anytime soon.
“With the use of people of color as token display pieces in their advertisements, these institutions communicate to any would-be students of color that their experiences will be marked by tokenism,” the paper says. As a result, it says, “The message that these advertisements send to potential students of color does untold damage to the public missions of these institutions to increase access and attainment among all populations, not simply those that are part of the dominant white and wealthy elites of the state.” —Peter Schmidt
Education Department Proposes New Student-Privacy Rules
The U.S. Department of Education proposed new rules on student privacy today that would clarify when colleges can release student information in the interest of health and safety. The proposed changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 would also give greater flexibility to college administrators in making such decisions.
The Education Department does not appear to be staking out new policy ground, but rather clarifying its longstanding belief that colleges have flexibility in balancing safety and student privacy. The proposed changes are similar to guidelines the department published in October in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
Specifically, the proposed regulations state that educational institutions must be able to articulate a significant threat before releasing student information that is typically protected under Ferpa. And institutions must only disclose information to people who need it in order to respond to the threat.
But the rules say that the department will defer to institutions’ decisions, so long as the institutions have a rational basis for their determinations.
“In short,” the regulations read, “in balancing the interests of safety, privacy, and treatment, the Secretary proposes to revise the regulation to specify legal standards, but to couple those standards with greater flexibility and deference to administrators so they can bring appropriate resources to bear on a circumstance that threatens the health or safety of individuals.” —Elyse Ashburn
'Atlas Shrugged,' and Some Faculty Members Wince
At least 17 colleges and universities have accepted grants from the BB&T Charitable Foundation that stipulate that Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged must be required reading in at least one course, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Skeptics have said that such provisions give too much leverage over the curriculum to a major donor. The Observer quotes Richard Cohen, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as saying, “It’s going to make us look like a rinky-dink university.” The Charlotte campus received a $1-million gift from BB&T in 2005, but the Atlas Shrugged requirement only became widely known there earlier this month, according to the Observer.
The Chronicle reported last summer on the efforts of Rand’s followers to promote the academic study of her ideas. Dozens of Rand-related grants have been made by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, a small California-based charity, and by the BB&T foundation, an arm of a large North Carolina financial corporation whose chairman is an admirer of Rand.
UNC-Charlotte is not the only place where the BB&T grants have caused tension recently. The Charleston Gazette reported last month that some faculty members at Marshall University were unhappy about an Atlas Shrugged requirement in a $1-million grant that their university accepted earlier this year. Cal Kent, Marshall’s vice president for business and economic research, defended the agreement, telling the Gazette that the course would be an elective and that “the university was free to accept or reject the grant.”
Meanwhile, the University of Texas at Austin announced last week that it had received a $2-million grant from the BB&T foundation to establish a chair for the study of objectivism, as Rand’s philosophy as known. The chair will be held by Tara Smith, a professor of philosophy who has previously received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from the Anthem Foundation. Next week, the Texas campus will play host to a conference organized by Ms. Smith on ”Objectivity in the Law.” —David Glenn
March 23, 2008