Penn in the News

Jonathan Moreno of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences explains how the Zika virus causes brain damage in newborns.

The symbol of Harvard Law School is already changing after the Harvard Corporation voted Monday to accept a committee’s recommendation to remove the shield used for 80 years because it does not reflect the values of the school. It was a powerful symbolic decision from one of the world’s most elite universities at a time when campuses across the United States and overseas are debating whether historic symbols, statues and names should be removed because of their ties to racism, or whether that would amount to erasing the past.

About one year, almost to the day, after Christina H. Paxson was inaugurated as the 19th president of Brown University, the institution became the latest site in a string of battles on campuses nationwide that boiled down to two questions: Should a college disinvite a controversial speaker, and if so, when? At Brown in the fall of 2013, the speaker was the commissioner of the New York Police Department, Raymond W. Kelly, who oversaw its controversial "stop and frisk" policy, which was widely viewed as racial profiling. Students pushed for Mr.

Susan Wachter of the Wharton School is cited for publishing a paper showing that greened lots increased the values of adjacent homes.

When U.S. News calculates our annual rankings of the Best Graduate Schools, we get all the statistical data we use from the schools themselves. This means U.S. News depends on those schools to provide accurate and complete data in response to our statistical surveys. When a school does not provide data that are used in the rankings methodologies, that can have a significant effect on its position in the rankings.

Shaun Harper of the Graduate School of Education is quoted about his research on black male student-athletes and the graduation gap.

Families are socking away more money in 529 college savings plans than ever, investing a record $253 billion last year in preparation for the sky-high cost of higher education, according to a report released Tuesday by the College Savings Plans Network. The advantage to 529 plans — named for a section of the U.S. tax code — is that families can invest through such accounts without the earnings being taxed, so long as the funds ultimately are used to pay for college expenses.

Faculty members at Our Lady of the Lake University recently noticed some newcomers in their courses: administrators and staffers, including their department chairs and program directors. Without notifying the faculty or asking for permission, professors say, the university has given administrators the ability to add themselves to courses in Blackboard Learn, the university’s learning management system. The faculty members only discovered the monitoring after a professor noticed the new names on the course roster while composing an email.

President Amy Gutmann is cited for her leadership skills.

Pennsylvania’s lengthy budget impasse has caused the commission that accredits colleges and universities regionally to question Temple University about its ability to stay in compliance without the $147 million in state funding it has yet to receive. Heather F. Perfetti, vice president of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, asked Temple in a March 10 letter to provide a report on the impact the budget impasse has had on the university’s operations and its contingency plans. The university must submit the report by April 10.