Penn in the News

Algonquin College, a community college in Ontario, is withdrawing from Saudi Arabia. The college plans to transfer control of its male-only campus in Jazan, a city close to the Yemeni border, to its Saudi partner. “After more than a year of negotiation, we were unable to come to an agreement that would have met our financial objectives,” Algonquin’s president, Cheryl Jensen, said in a news release. “We have said from the beginning that the Jazan campus must be financially viable for us to continue operating.”

Nicholas B. Dirks, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, is stepping down from the post amid a string of controversies, ranging from budget troubles to the way the flagship university has handled sexual harassment allegations involving the faculty. He also faced questions raised in a Los Angeles Times report in July about alleged misuse of public funds for travel and the personal use of a campus fitness trainer.

Emily Rubin of the Perelman School of Medicine blogs about studying what constitutes good treatment for critically ill hospital patients and what they fear.

Chris Mustazza of the School of Arts & Sciences talks about PennSound, an online audio archive project.

During the last academic year, dozens of college presidents faced a similar dilemma. Minority students were occupying administrative offices, marching across campuses, and demanding immediate action to combat what they saw as racial injustices. The atmosphere was tense, and campus leaders had little time to decide how to react. At least four of them — including two top administrators at the University of Missouri — eventually resigned. Some pledged to address activists’ demands, while a handful refused to respond directly.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center shares her thoughts on the effectiveness of Hillary Clinton’s media strategy.

I hear both colleagues and students ask this question in a tone of dread: "Does this have to go through the IRB?" Except for the ones who ask it with a sense of grievance. They all hate the idea that an institutional review board gets to decide whether their research plan is good enough to proceed. And every time, I wish I could just reach over and flick that chip off their shoulders. I’m soft on the IRB, and for a reason. Ours, which primarily deals with social-science and humanities research, has been more helpful to me than I ever expected it to be.

When professors complain about students to administrators, they typically assume their grievances will be private. But students in the social work program at Smith College held a protest Tuesday after someone leaked two letters from faculty members to college leaders. Those letters accused the social work program of letting students make unfair accusations against people who run parts of the program.

On the subject of the migration of college freshmen, two things are clear: Most stay within their home state's borders, and the rest tend to go to private colleges in neighboring states. It’s already known that more than a third of freshmen stay within 50 miles of home, but what the interactive map clearly shows is that even those who stray beyond tend to stay in the region.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center comments on Donald Trump’s recent statements regarding Hillary Clinton’s “stamina.”