Penn in the News

A series of racially charged incidents and student protests have roiled Ithaca College. One incident involved two alumni referring to a third, a black woman, as “the savage” at a college event after she said, “I had this savage hunger” to build a successful career. Another involved an unaffiliated fraternity that encouraged students to wear “’90s thuggish style” clothing and “bling” to a party.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center critiques a question John Harwood posed to Donald Trump during the third Republican presidential debate.

The University of Louisville apologized on Thursday after its president, James R. Ramsey, and other university officials drew sharp criticism for appearing in a photograph in stereotypical Mexican costumes, complete with sombreros, bushy mustaches, and maracas, reports The Courier-Journal, a newspaper in Louisville, Ky. The newspaper published the picture on Wednesday in a photo gallery about a university-owned mansion. The costumed officials were pictured at a Halloween party there on Wednesday. On Thursday the university’s view of the event was somewhat less festive.

Andy Porter of the Graduate School of Education writes about the importance of asking teachers what they need in order to succeed in the classroom.

Yasmin Kafai of the Graduate School of Education advocates for the Maker Jawn program.

Dean Denis Kinane of the School of Dental Medicine is mentioned about leading the celebration of the art left to the School by Thomas W. Evans.

“The single most important factor preventing change in higher education is tenure.” Wow. That was the sentiment expressed in 2010 by Mark C. Taylor, then chair of Columbia University’s department of religion, and every critic of higher education in the United States seemed to agree with him. Tenure, they charged, was the place where deadbeat faculty could go for a rest cure, protected from critical standards, working as little as they could — and generally sending a once world-renowned system to the backwater, behind the rising tide of Asia and Europe. Not quite.

Some of the most selective and well-known public universities could do a better job of enrolling and graduating low-income students. A new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy examined those selective colleges that have low Pell Grant recipient enrollments to find the best methods for solving this controversial "undermatching" phenomenon. Addressing and studying the undermatching issue has been a priority of the Obama administration.

President Amy Gutmann is cited for co-authoring The Spirit of Compromise.

Paulo Arratia of the School of Engineering and Applied Science is quoted about how 3-D printers are the “democratization of the making process.”