By Elizabeth Redden. The appointment of Michel Deneken, a Roman Catholic priest and theology professor, to lead the University of Strasbourg has attracted controversy among some who argue that the choice violates the spirit, if not the letter, of French laws calling for separation of church and state, France 24 reported. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Loss of federal funding for highly regarded program has one scholar asking, “What’s our strategy here?”
For many in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, participation in the yearlong Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) program is a rite of passage. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Academics and senior administrators at the University of Cambridge have voted in favor of keeping the centuries-old tradition of publicly posting "class lists," including student exam results by name, The Telegraph reported. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The MasterCard Foundation’s scholarship program funds high school and higher education for thousands of students from Africa. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. Chinese President Xi Jinping called for strengthening ideological and political education in universities and charged Communist Party of China officials with prioritizing their work in this area, according to an account of a speech he gave at a two-day meeting on “ideological and political work in China's universities and colleges” published in the state-run media outlet Xinhua. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The number of students from Saudi Arabia in the U.S. on student visas fell by 19.9 percent from November 2015 to November 2016, according to new data on student visas from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Many U.S. universities and intensive English programs have reported declines in admissions and enrollments of new students from Saudi Arabia -- a key country in many institutions' international recruiting efforts -- that they have attributed to changes in that country’s government scholarship program. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. In an interview with Time magazine for its Person of the Year cover story, President-elect Donald J. Trump offered sympathetic -- albeit nonspecific -- comments regarding the so-called DREAMers, young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The number of co-authored scientific publications involving American and Israeli researchers increased by 45 percent over 10 years, from 3,439 joint U.S.-Israel publications in 2006 to 4,979 publications in 2015, according to an analysis of the SciVal and Scopus databases conducted by researchers at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The governing board for Santa Fe Community College approved a resolution last week designating the institution a “sanctuary campus” for undocumented immigrant students. Read more...

By Elizabeth Redden. The latest in a series of Reuters articles about international admissions fraud examines what one critic describes as a “pay-for-play” arrangement through which Chinese education companies gain direct access to U.S. admissions officers for their student clients. Read more...