Penn in the News

Woodrow Wilson: progressive visionary or unrepentant racist? If the 28th president of the United States were all one or the other, Princeton University would have decided long ago whether to change names and monuments on campus that honor former President Wilson, a Princeton alumnus and the Ivy League school's 13th president. But the reality, historians and students agree, is that Wilson was both.

The Obama administration is creating a new office at the U.S. Department of Education dedicated to investigating and punishing illegal activity at colleges and providing debt relief to defrauded federal loan borrowers. Officials on Monday announced a new “enforcement unit” that will be charged with investigating misconduct at colleges, imposing administrative actions against colleges and resolving student loan debt relief claims linked to fraud.

Jack Ludmir of the Perelman School of Medicine is highlighted for spending the last several weeks in Colombia helping control the Zika outbreak.

Research on the fresh start effect co-authored by Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis and doctoral student Hengchen Dai of the Wharton School is cited.

A recent ruling in a decade-old case over the lack of investment in Maryland’s historically black colleges shows the state’s troubles with inequity in higher education are far from resolved. Federal judge Catherine C. Blake nixed a proposal by a coalition of alumni from Maryland’s four historically black institutions to merge the University of Baltimore with the state’s largest public HBCU, Morgan State University.

David Rudovsky of the Law School is quoted about the overuse of Tasers.

In recent weeks, three different college campuses have seen instances of meningitis -- one which resulted in the death of a university employee -- but only one of those instances qualified as an outbreak prompting widespread vaccinations of the student body. Bacterial meningitis is a rare but dangerous infectious disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It can cause neurological damage, necessitate amputation or lead to death in some cases.

Daniel Langleben of the Perelman School of Medicine is cited for studying ways in which neural activity can signify lying.

A professor at Princeton University wrote about her arrest this weekend for what she said was a three-year-old parking ticket, sparking debate on social media between those who see it as an example of racist behavior by police and others who believe it was an overreaction to a minor incident. Her account tapped into the national conversation over police treatment of black people that has led to protests, including demonstrations at Princeton and many other colleges. It reminded some of the 2009 arrest of the prominent Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Adam Grant of the Wharton School is mentioned for studying ambiverts.