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Higher Education

Citing School Officials’ Campaign Contributions To Pugh, Hopkins Students Protest Private Police Plan

April 12, 2019 Fern Shen, Baltimorebrew.com , , ,
Occupying a campus building for nearly a week, protesters say plan is tainted by its ties to a “pay-to-play” mayor. They chant every hour, often choosing “No justice. No peace. No private police.” They chant whenever President Ronald J. Daniels passes by, calling on the Johns Hopkins University president to “Ne-go-ti-ate!” And now, after nearly a week camped out in the Garland Hall administration building, students protesting the school’s private police force initiative have another message...

The Militarization Of Johns Hopkins Exposes A Nationwide Trend

April 8, 2019 Corey Payne and Steph Saxton, Truthout.org , ,
Students at Johns Hopkins University — joined by neighborhood groups, workers’ unions and left-leaning advocacy organizations — are currently occupying the university administration building on campus, demanding an immediate end to the university’s push for an armed private police force and its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The sit-in — which started at 1 pm on Wednesday, April 3 — is part of a broader set of community protests organized in response to the Maryland State General Assembly’s decision earlier this week to approve a law allowing Johns Hopkins to create its own armed private police department, complete with arrest powers and state protections.

Students Face Criminal Charges After Calling Border Agents ‘Murderers’

April 7, 2019 Katherine Mangan, The Journal of Higher Education. , , ,
Two University of Arizona students who protested an on-campus presentation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency last month by calling the agents "murder patrol" and "an extension of the KKK" have been charged with misdemeanors, university officials confirmed on Tuesday. The case is being closely watched by free-speech advocates who say it is unusual for arrests to follow a nonviolent campus protest. They say tougher crackdowns on student protests can be expected in light of President Trump's executive order threatening to withhold federal money from campuses that fail to protect free speech.

“We Demand Food For Thought”: UIC Grad Workers On Strike For Living Wages And Respect

March 27, 2019 Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, Inthesetimes.com , , ,
In front of the historic Jane Addams Hull-House Museum on March 19, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) graduate workers began an indefinite strike. The union is joining a national movement of higher education employees demanding livable wages and better working conditions in the often-unstable field of academia. The strike is the result of more than a year of negotiations between UIC Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) Local 6297 and the university administration. Since September 2018, over 1,500 teaching and graduate assistants have worked without a contract.

The Real College Admissions Scandal

March 27, 2019 By Jessicah Pierre, Inequality.org , ,
In what’s being called the largest college admissions scam ever, a number of wealthy parents, celebrities, and college prep coaches have been accused of offering large bribes to get rich students into Ivy League schools, regardless of their credentials. The parents facing charges allegedly paid up to $6.5 million to get their kids into college. Shocking as it is, this is hardly a new phenomenon in higher education. Wealthy and privileged students have always had an upper hand in being accepted to prestigious universities.

Teaching Assistants Go On Strike At University Of Illinois At Chicago

March 20, 2019 Dawn Rhodes, Chicagotribune.com , ,
Graduate student employees at the University of Illinois at Chicago, saying they don’t earn a living wage, went on strike Tuesday after more than a year of contract negotiations failed to produce a new work agreement. Graduate and teaching assistants formed picket lines outside of several east campus buildings and held an afternoon rally and march. “We have students going to food pantries and going on food assistance,” said doctoral candidate Hailee Yoshizaki-Gibbons, 33.

Student Debt Is At All-Time-High Of Over $1 Trillion

February 27, 2019 By Alexandre Tanzi, Bloomberg.com , ,
More than a decade has passed since young Americans faced debt levels this high. Debt among 19 to 29-year-old Americans exceeded $1 trillion at the end of 2018, according to the New York Federal Reserve Consumer Credit Panel. That’s the highest debt exposure for the youngest adult group since late 2007. Debt levels play a role in how young adults view their spending conditions, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday. Younger adults -- those under age 35 -- have reduced their spending compared with previous generations possibly because of weakened job prospects, delayed marriage and educational debt.

How To Decolonise The University

February 19, 2019 Talia Dundoo, Mediadiversified.org , ,
In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal from their campus of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a racist imperialist businessman and politician. The emergence of the #RhodesMustFall campaign started a more globally organised movement for the decolonisation of universities across the world, including demands to make the social sciences rethink the content and form of teaching and learning. As a part of the movement, we welcomed the recently published book Decolonising the University, a collection of “resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom”...

Johns Hopkins’ Latest Plan For Police Force Prompts Protest From Students, Faculty, Neighbors

February 14, 2019 Catherine Rentz, Baltimoresun.com , , ,
Worried about over-policing in Baltimore and across the country, Johns Hopkins University students, faculty members and others on Wednesday protested the school’s efforts to establish its own police force. Students Against Private Police demonstrated days before state lawmakers are to debate the issue — and one year after the group defeated a similar effort during the last legislative session. More than 100 people gathered holding signs stating “Keep guns off campus” and “No private police” amid piles of days-old snow outside the Milton S. Eisenhower library.

Professors Protest At Community College In RI

January 16, 2019 By Andrew Stewart, Washingtonbabylon.com , , ,
For some time now, I have argued that neoliberalism as a system of governance has a talent for co-opting the vocabulary and grammar of Left-leaning projects so to further their own designs for those they govern. This was brought home to me on January 2, 2019 at a picket line held by the faculty of the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) expressing their opposition to J-Term, a project forced on the college by the administration that broke norms of shared governance, involved dubious processing of paperwork in relation to the Curriculum Review Committee, and portends an erosion of an educational institute in Rhode Island that has been a major pillar for working class, African American, and Latinx students for decades.

Jeffrey D. Armstrong: Quit Threatening Peaceful CAL POLY Students!

January 3, 2019 Staff, Codepink.org , , ,
I implore you to drop the formal warnings received by students who sang in front of the Raytheon table at their fall career fair. The peaceful students repeated an activity they had held in the spring, after being cleared of any wrongdoing. But they are again being threatened with disciplinary action by your administration. For simply singing, for less than fifteen minutes. The peaceful, singing students wished to shed light on the connection between Cal Poly and Raytheon, and between Raytheon and the death of civilians in Yemen and in conflicts around the world. They skillfully put Cal Poly’s educational philosophy “learn by doing” into practice, and exercised their right to free speech.

Academic Institutions Must Defend Free Speech

December 27, 2018 Staff, Theinternationalcommittee.org , ,
We, the undersigned, oppose the coordinated campaign to deny academics their free speech rights due to their defense of Palestinian rights and criticism of the policies and practices of the state of Israel. Temple University in Philadelphia, USA and the University of Sydney, Australia have been under great pressure to fire, respectively, Marc Lamont Hill and Tim Anderson, both senior academics at their institutions, for these reasons. Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein have already had their careers destroyed by such attacks. Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtaseb, William Robinson, Rabab Abdulhadi and others have also been threatened.

How Graduate Unions Are Winning—And Scaring The Hell Out Of Bosses—In The Trump Era

December 3, 2018 Daniel Moattar, Inthesetimes.com , , ,
In a 1,035 to 720 vote, Columbia University’s graduate student union has agreed to a bargaining framework with the university’s administration, a milestone victory in the union’s nearly five-year campaign for recognition. The vote outcome, announced earlier this week, follows Columbia’s November 19 announcement that it would bargain with the union, ending long-standing efforts to halt graduate unionization on campus and in the courts. Columbia’s decision is the latest—and one of the most notable—in a string of concessions by university administrators at private institutions across the country. It’s a wave of labor action that belongs to the Trump era: The NLRB’s Columbia University ruling, extending bargaining rights to graduate workers at private universities...

HBCU Scandals Don’t Die, They Multiply

November 12, 2018 Dominica Dunbar, Blackagendareport.com ,
HBCU scandals don’t die, they multiply like vultures stalking a starving child. Black misleaders prey on Black students and faculty for their own advancement. Pretending they represent autonomous Black institutions, independent values, and cooperative development, they are, on the contrary, an embarrassment in how they wield respectability politics to discipline Black youth for purported future success. These college leaders openly preside over bankrupt educational standards, sexual impropriety, theft of student’s financial aid, repression and misdirection of student activists in pursuit of personal wealth. The heat is on.

University Of Michigan Faces Criticism After Reprimanding Pro-BDS Professor

October 26, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , ,
The University of Michigan has faced an eruption of protests in recent days after reprimanding a professor, who refused to write a recommendation letter for a student wanting to study in Israel. The professor had cited the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement for the refusal. John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor of American culture, had been reprimanded by the university for refusing to write the letter of recommendation earlier this month. Since then, he has received support and messages of solidarity from students of the university, according to Middle East Eye. Students hand-delivered a letter to the office of Mark Schlissel, the president of the university, condemning the institution for its action against the professor.
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