Penn in the News

Emilie Feldman of the Wharton School is quoted about mergers and divestitures.

Deborah Small of the Wharton School talks about how consumers view brands as “friends and expect companies to share their values.”

Eslie Murraine tried college. But he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do with his life, so he dropped out after a couple years and went to work for United Parcel Service. It took seven years — and an electrical fire at his home — for Mr. Murraine to find his true calling. "I was fascinated" by the fire, he recalled, and "I started looking into what caused it."

A federal judge in California has ruled that the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX covers discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, finding that such bias falls under the law’s ban on sex- and gender-based discrimination. The Los Angeles Times reports that the ruling, by Judge Dean D. Pregerson of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, allows a lawsuit against Pepperdine University that was filed by two members of its women’s basketball team to proceed. The plaintiffs allege that they were harassed because of their sexual orientation.

After holiday celebrations are over, students who plan on attending college next fall should begin preparing for a looming financial chore: completing the document that is crucial for financial aid. Known as Fafsa, which is short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the form is used to calculate how much students and their families are expected to contribute to the cost of attending college, and what sort of financial aid they will receive.

A book, The Global Transformation of Time, 1870-1950, authored by Vanessa Ogle of the School of Arts & Sciences is reviewed.

In December, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some unenlightened comments during oral arguments in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, involving the university’s affirmative action program. Justice Scalia’s assertion that African American students would benefit from attending “a slower-track school where they do well,” is simply wrong and unsupported by evidence. Since affirmative action began, we have made significant progress toward diversifying campuses across the U.S.

New York University is known for bestowing lavish perks on its leaders. Its new president, Andrew Hamilton, will be no exception. Anticipating his January arrival from the University of Oxford, where he has been vice chancellor, N.Y.U. has been completely renovating a 4,200-square-foot penthouse duplex with four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms and an expansive rooftop terrace. The apartment is in a landmark building at 37 Washington Square West in Greenwich Village, and it will be Dr. Hamilton’s residence, a university spokesman said.

Marybeth Gasman and Shaun Harper of the Graduate School of Education share their thoughts on how linking the “quality” of colleges to the earning of its alumni or the school’s student loan default rate is problematic.

The federal gender-equity law known as Title IX has largely become known for two issues in higher education: requiring equity in opportunities for women in college sports and, more recently, a nationwide wave of demands for colleges to crack down on sexual harassment and rape. In fact, the law's reach goes much further than those specific issues, barring all forms of discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation in "all aspects of education programs or activities operated by recipients of federal financial assistance," according to an explanation of the law from the U.S.