Penn in the News

On Friday the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator who was one of nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church killed by a young white man during a prayer meeting, was buried. His funeral took place just two blocks away from the church, at the College of Charleston, where one of Mr. Pinckney’s friends and former colleagues, Glenn F. McConnell, is the president. Two days earlier, thousands of mourners watched Mr.

Leaders of universities with partnerships or campuses in China attempted to assuage the fears of a congressman about academic freedom in the country, saying that their institutions had not seen any restrictions. The hearing was lead by Representative Christopher Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who chairs the subcommittee on Africa, global health, global human rights and international organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and who has chaired many hearings related to China and human rights in the country, including academic freedom.

Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia researchers are cited in studying teen driver safety using a simulator to diagnose driving.

Carl June of the Perelman School of Medicine is cited for his pioneering work on HIV and gene therapy.

Matthew Bidwell of the Wharton School comments on women who are less likely to apply for senior banking positions because of the lack of gender diversity at that level.

Now that the U.S. Department of Education has decided to ditch the ratings part of its college-ratings system in favor of a customizable, consumer-focused website, plenty of big questions remain. What’s the legacy of the nearly two-year effort? What lessons were learned? What opportunities were lost? We asked several ratings watchers for their views on the department’s change of course. Here’s some of what we heard. It may have "poisoned" future efforts for college accountability.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. What will the effect be on higher education? For most colleges, not much. But for others — in particular, Christian colleges — the ruling beckons toward an uncertain future. Some people at Christian colleges worry that they might lose federal benefits if they don’t change their own policies on same-sex relationships and marriages.

David Grande of the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School is quoted about the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Department of Education has retreated from its controversial plan to create a giant college-ratings system, top officials revealed on Wednesday. Instead, by late summer the department is now promising to produce a customizable, consumer-oriented website that won’t include any evaluations of colleges but will contain what one official described as "more data than ever before." In effect, it will be a ratings system without any ratings. The as-yet-unnamed new system will allow students and others to compare colleges "on whatever measures are important to them," said Jamienne S.

Jonathan Moreno of the Perelman School of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences says, “You don’t have to be a faith-based bioethicist to recognize that there’s some global responsibility for modifying the human germline.”