5/18
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
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Penn In the News
‘Long Overdue’: Colleges Needed Lower Standard of Evidence in Sexual Assault Cases, An Advocate Says
In the five years since a federal agency announced new rules governing how colleges should respond to allegations of rape and sexual assault, opponents have argued that student and faculty rights have been dangerously eroded. The directive known as the “Dear Colleague” letter brought national scrutiny to the issue, upended the way most school officials responded to claims of sexual assault and made the problem a much greater priority for many schools.
Penn In the News
‘Our Compelling Interests’
This summer, advocates for diversity in American higher education won a major victory when the Supreme Court upheld the right of colleges to consider race and ethnicity in admissions. This fall, American colleges have experienced numerous racist incidents, leaving many minority students angry and feeling unwelcome. In this environment, leading scholars on race and the economy have contributed essays to a new collection, Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society (Princeton University Press).
Penn In the News
What Donald Trump and Many Liberals Have in Common: They Magnify America’s Faults
Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education writes about the commonalities between presidential candidate Donald Trump and many liberal Americans.
Penn In the News
Pushing Trigger Warnings
The University of Chicago has received considerable attention for Dean John Ellison’s letter to incoming students about free speech. He warned freshmen not to expect safe spaces or trigger warnings, setting off a national debate about their value and prevalence. A different kind of debate is going on at American University, where students are demanding mandatory trigger warnings -- despite the Faculty Senate’s 2015 resolution against them.
Penn In the News
Penn Students Work to Keep Polling Lines Short
Undergraduate students Krishna Bharathala and Yoni Nach are highlighted as members of Hack4Impact, a group that collaborated with the TrustTheVote Project to develop an app that notifies voters about the lines at polling locations in real time.
Penn In the News
After Gaining Legitimacy, Can Online Higher Education Replace Traditional College?
For much of their modern existance, distance-education courses have suffered from an image problem. In the 1970s and 1980s, they were seen as cheap knockoffs of on-campus offerings, hawked on late-night television by the likes of Sally Struthers, who asked viewers, “Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do,” in commercials for the International Correspondence School.
Penn In the News
Clinton Courts Pennsylvania Women, Cites Trump’s Miss Universe Fight
Matthew Levendusky of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on how close the polls are between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
Penn In the News
Afraid to Speak Up: In the Era of Trigger Warnings, a Tenured Professor Stays Silent
There has been a lot of debate about speech on campuses across the country lately, with some students demanding safe spaces where they can avoid people whose opinions they find offensive, and trigger warnings before sensitive topics such as rape are mentioned in class. Some university officials have pushed back, telling students that they are concerned about academic freedom and don’t support faculty providing warnings before discussing controversial ideas.
Penn In the News
Scholars for Trump
Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, spent two and a half years working in the George W. Bush administration and, later, voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Now Bauerlein, one of the country's most vocal conservative academics, is one of the few in the profession openly supporting Donald Trump. "We've reached a point where we need a jolt. We need someone who can take on the taboos and do so in a canny and effective way," Bauerlein said.
Penn In the News
The Right Angle: Philadelphia’s Pennovation Center Reaches Completion
The Pennovation Center is featured for its architecture and design.