Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education

Jim Lindgren thinks he is a great choice.

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Ideological diversity through affirmative action

Now, affirmative action based on political ideology!
The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile political conservatives to teach on the left-leaning campus.
CU officials want to create an endowment for a Visiting Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy.
The program would bring a rotating cast of scholars, historians, politicians and media personalities [...]

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Criticize the prof, get sued!

This case is so absurd that it is difficult to take it seriously. Priya Venkatesan, who taught writing this year at Dartmouth College, is threatening to sue former students under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for criticizing her in course feedbacks. This report has the details along with snippets of Ms Venkatesan’s own [...]

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The quota farce in India

Buoyed by its Supreme Court success on the reservation issue, the Indian government now wants to introduce quotas in private educational institutions as well.
I quote from the report in the Telegraph (emphasis mine) :
The Centre plans to table a bill to introduce quotas and control fees in private higher education institutes in the monsoon session [...]

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Reverse McCarthyism?

Dean Christopher Edley of Berkeley responds to the John Yoo controversy:
While serving in the Department of Justice, Professor John Yoo wrote memoranda that officials used as the legal basis for policies concerning detention and interrogation techniques in our efforts to combat terrorism. Both the subject and his reasoning are controversial, leading the New York Times [...]

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Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-four

Think twice before writing a violent story. Steven Barber, a student at the University of Virginia at Wise, was searched, involuntarily committed for three days, and finally expelled from the university, for … hold your breath … writing a story in which a character contemplates murder and suicide.
I don’t know which is more disturbing – [...]

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Quotas in Science research?

Here is a link to an article by Christina Sommers in which she talks about gender politics, affirmative action in higher education and recent, extremely worrying developments. Read the whole article, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
(Link via The Volokh conspiracy)

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How dare you read that book!

Keith Sampson, a university employee and student, has been charged with racial harassment for reading a book called “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” during his work breaks. Apparently, the mere presence of the word Ku Klux Klan offended a co-worker, despite the fact that the book is in fact [...]

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Reading the Bible makes you dumb

Caltech student Virgil Griffith downloaded, using facebook, the ten most popular books in each college, and correlated it with the average SAT score of the students in that college. The results are funny and interesting. Of course, it is not a scientific survey and not meant to be taken too seriously. 

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Don’t Glock in school

This story is so unreal, that it can’t possibly be false. A student was slapped with a three day suspension by his school, because the pen he was using happened to contain the logo G which stands for the Glock company, a gun manufacturer.
This is not really about guns or extreme political correctness or even [...]

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Mathiness

This term looks rather busy. I am taking two (possibly three) classes and teaching one. Blogging is likely to suffer as a result.
I am excited about the class I am teaching. It’s called “How to solve it” and teaches techniques for solving mathematical problems. It also doubles up as a training program for the Putnam [...]

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Lang-Bang!

So how is it listening to Serge LANG?
For starters, awesome! On second thoughts, phew!
Well, Lang is a guy who actually jumps around while lecturing and every five minutes or so, comes up to a member of the audience and asks the poor creature questions!
So Jennifer was sitting there along with the rest of us, when [...]

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