By Andy Thomason. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Thursday released a bill meant to fight sexual assault on college campuses. The “Campus Accountability and Safety Act” bears the same name as one introduced last summer by many of the same senators, and calls for many of the same requirements for campuses. More...
By Andy Thomason. More than 100 universities are urging federal lawmakers not to pass legislation that would make it too costly for them to defend their patents. One hundred and forty-four universities wrote to leaders of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to air their concerns about pending legislation that would go “well beyond what is needed to address the bad actions of a small number of patent holders.” More...
By Andy Thomason. A Democratic member of Congress is digging into the funding of a handful of researchers who have questioned the prevailing view on the causes of climate change, The Washington Post reports. More...
By Andy Thomason. The American Association of University Professors is urging the University of North Carolina system’s governing board to reject a working group’s recommendation to close an independent center on poverty issues. The association on Tuesday released a statement saying it would be “greatly disappointed” if the Board of Governors approved a recommendation to close the UNC School of Law’s Center on Poverty, Work, and Community. More...
By Andy Thomason. A website that calls itself the “world’s largest university” is scamming students in the Middle East and elsewhere with promises of generous financial aid and degrees that turn out to be fake, an investigation by Al-Fanar Media reveals. More...
By Jeffrey R. Young. Big challenges face higher education these days, and plenty of talk about new models and approaches. At this year’s South by Southwest education conference, in Austin, Tex., The Chronicle is organizing a morning of sessions to share some of the trends and challenges we’re seeing, and we invite audience members to share their big ideas.As part of the event, we’re borrowing a page from the TV show Shark Tank. By Steve Kolowich. It didn’t take much for Glen Wright to figure out that academics on Twitter are just like everyone else.
By Paul Voosen. Magic has entered our world. In the pockets of many Americans today are thin black slabs that, somehow, understand and anticipate our desires. Linked to the digital cloud and satellites beyond, churning through personal data, these machines listen and assist, decoding our language, viewing and labeling reality with their cameras. This summer, as I walked to an appointment at the University of Toronto, stepping out of my downtown hotel into brisk hints of fall, my phone already had directions at hand. I asked where to find coffee on the way. It told me. What did the machine know? How did it learn? A gap broader than any we’ve known has opened between our use of technology and our understanding of it. How did the machine work? As I would discover, no one could say for certain. More...By Laura Kipnis. It’s been barely a year since the Great Prohibition took effect in my own workplace. Before that, students and professors could date whomever we wanted; the next day we were off-limits to one another—verboten, traife, dangerous (and perhaps, therefore, all the more alluring). More...By Jennifer Howard. A deadly virus arrives in America, carried by travelers from abroad. Health officials scramble to contain the threat, imposing quarantines and other strict measures even as they seek to reassure the public./https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
