Penn in the News

A “ghetto”-themed party hosted off campus by students over the weekend set off a wave of discussion about race and a lack of diversity at Fairfield University, a mostly white Roman Catholic institution here. University officials learned about the party from photos and posts that spread widely on social media, claiming that students had worn brown makeup and “perpetuated racial stereotypes that have no place in our community,” according to a statement from the university president, the Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx.

When Rep. Jackie Speier first glimpsed a damning confidential report outlining a sexual-harassment investigation of Timothy F. Slater, conducted by the University of Arizona when he was an associate professor of astronomy there, the U.S. congresswoman was deeply disturbed. Ms. Speier, a Democrat from California, said the problem wasn’t just his inappropriate conduct — which, according to the report, involved a pattern of sexually charged jokes and open leering at female students, and at least one lunchtime trip with a graduate student to a strip club.

It may appear to outside observers that colleges and universities have made tremendous progress in regard to racial attitudes and practices over the past several decades. Certainly, their brochures and other public-relations materials would lead to this conclusion, as do the messages on their websites and social-media platforms. But the intensity and frequency of demonstrations conducted by students of color at campuses across the nation during the last few months do not reconcile with the sense of racial harmony that the institutions have attempted to convey.

Paola Esmieu of the Graduate School of Education, a Law School student, writes about Hispanic-serving institutions.

Laura Perna of the Graduate School of Education is quoted about the importance of high schools on students’ journey to college.

When the Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, suggested last month that students majoring in French literature should not receive state funding for their college education, he joined a growing number of elected officials who want to nudge students away from the humanities and toward more job-friendly subjects like electrical engineering.

Officials at California's four-year public universities are reaching out to an estimated 10,000 undergraduate students who might qualify for a special loan aimed at reducing their tuition — a program that further distinguishes the state as a national trendsetter in providing services to immigrants who are in the country illegally. The California DREAM low-interest loans are designated for such immigrants who are enrolled at University of California or California State University campuses. Gov.

Paul Robinson of the Law School comments on the post-incarceration effects of solitary confinement.

Williams College’s president took “the extraordinary step” this week of canceling the speech of an author who had been invited to bring provocative ideas to campus, saying his ideas cross the line into hate speech. John Derbyshire, a mathematician who used to write for the National Review until he wrote a piece for a blog which was widely decried as racist, had been invited by a student group to speak about immigration and national identity.

The authorities in western New York are investigating whether fraternity hazing played a role in the death of a 21-year-old Buffalo State College student from Brooklyn, the college said on Friday. The student, Bradley Doyley, died on Thursday night in a Buffalo hospital, the college’s president, Katherine S. Conway-Turner, said in a statement. The authorities did not disclose the nature of Mr. Doyley’s death, but The Buffalo News reported that he had been hospitalized after falling ill in January while he was trying to join the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.