Penn in the News

Nearly one million international students studied at colleges and universities in the United States in 2014-15, according to the 2015 Open Doors Report on International Education Exchange (IIE). The report, released on Monday, found that the numbers of international students in the United States jumped by more than 10 percent since 2013-14, the greatest rate of growth in 35 years. The United States maintains its lead over other countries in terms of attracting the greatest proportion of international students to its academic institutions.

Postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Wilson of the School of Arts & Sciences writes about promoting difficult dialogues on college campuses.

Georgetown University will rename two buildings named for school presidents who organized the sale of Jesuit-owned slaves to help pay off campus debt in the 1830s, the university’s president announced. Mulledy Hall, a new student dormitory named for the president who authorized the sale of about 272 slaves to a Louisiana plantation owner in 1838, will be called Freedom Hall until a permanent name is chosen.

When Payton Head ran as a gay, black man for student president at the University of Missouri — a school now known for one student's hunger strike and other protests against the administration's handling of racial bias and hostility on campus — he promised to "ignite Mizzou." "We've definitely done that," Head, a 21-year-old senior from Chicago who is studying political science and international studies, told The Associated Press.

Lauren Sallan of the School of Arts & Sciences is highlighted for leading research that shows ancient mass extinction led to dominance of tiny fish.

His cellphone started humming at 11:20 p.m. on Thursday. An urgent voice jolted Jonathan Holloway from his slumber. Students protesting against racism on campus were streaming toward the home of the university’s president, the caller said. Dr. Holloway is the first black dean of Yale College, a scholar of African-American history, and an administrator who prides himself on his close ties to his students. But the late-night march took him by surprise. Within minutes, he was dialing Yale’s president: “You might want to get dressed.”

In recent years the University of North Carolina system — long considered one of the best in the country — has sustained massive budget cuts by the state legislature as well as efforts to force some academics to change their priorities. Now there is a new challenge: the appointment of Margaret Spellings, education secretary under President George W. Bush, as system president. The move — by a Republican-dominated governing board — is being attacked by students and faculty as a political move that will damage the state.

Shaun Harper of the Graduate School of Education talks about the “semantic substitutes” used to described racism on college campuses.

Andres Castro Samayoa, Marybeth Gasman and Paola Esmieu of the Graduate School of Education write about creating more access and resources for study abroad opportunities.

The protests at the University of Missouri, which upended an entire campus system this week, continue to have an impact across the country as student demonstrators seize on the energy of the moment and racial tensions escalate. “They smell blood in the water,” said Raymond Cotton, a lawyer who represents university presidents and boards, of activists who have been emboldened by the success of the protesters at Mizzou. “The students out there got their university not only to back down, but they got the heads of two administrators.”