ZerostarOnline.com

Amid news reports suggesting that Colorado State University was limiting its support of a hurricane researcher who has become a leading skeptic of global warming, the university issued a statement this week in which both the researcher and the dean of his college asserted that their relationship was unchanged.
The researcher, William M. Gray, an emeritus professor known as a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting, produces a widely noticed forecast of Atlantic hurricanes in conjuncton with a colleague, Philip J. Klotzbach. Reports in the Houston Chronicle and other news-media outlets this week have also widely publicized a memorandum Mr. Gray wrote to university officials last year when it seemed they were pulling the plug on the hurricane forecasts because of the distraction of having to deal with news-media inquiries. In the memo, he called the media-distraction explanation “a flimsy excuse” and a cover for an attempt to muzzle […]

Source: Charles Huckabee

Robert C. Holub, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has been selected to become the next chancellor of the University of Massachusetts’ flagship campus at Amherst.
UMass’s president, Jack M. Wilson, selected Mr. Holub from among four finalists, the university announced today. The system’s Board of Trustees will consider the recommendation at a special meeting on Monday. Mr. Holub would replace John V. Lombardi, who left Amherst last summer amid controversial plans to shake up the top management of the five-campus Massachusetts system. Mr. Lombardi is now president of the Louisiana State University system.
Mr. Holub, who came to Tennessee in 2006, had previously served in several positions at the University of California at Berkeley, including dean of the undergraduate division of the College of Letters and Science.
He told the Associated Press he was “very honored” by the Massachusetts appointment and was keeping […]

Source: Charles Huckabee

Dormitories at the University of Maine at Fort Kent were evacuated today, and classes have been canceled for the week, because of flooding on the campus, at the state’s northernmost tip.
About 150 students were relocated to facilities at the University of Maine at Presque Isle and at Northern Maine Community College, as water overflowed the banks of the Fish and St. John Rivers. The inundation forced the municipal sewer plant to close, knocking out showers and toilets on the campus.
The swift melting of this past winter’s heavy snows and three inches of rain within 24 hours are the cause of the flooding, the Associated Press says.
Classes are scheduled to resume on Monday, May 5, and final examinations will be held the following Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. —Hurley Goodall

Source: Hurley Goodall

An Alabama judge has dismissed a jury’s $5-million award to a University of Alabama booster, who had prevailed in a defamation lawsuit against the NCAA last November, The Huntsville Times reported today.
Judge William Gordon, of the Montgomery County Circuit Court, ruled that the jury’s verdict was “the product of passion or prejudice.” He also said that an infractions announcement by the NCAA in 2002 — the impetus for the lawsuit — did not meet the standards for constitutional malice.
The booster, Ray Keller, asserted in his lawsuit that the NCAA’s announcement, which used strong language to describe him and two other boosters, represented defamation. In the announcement, the NCAA did not identify Mr. Keller by name, but subsequent news reports did.
A new trial date has not yet been set. —Hurley Goodall

Source: Hurley Goodall

The Turkish parliament voted today, by a tally of 250 to 65, to alter a controversial law that has been used repeatedly against academics, journalists, and writers.
The law, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, had criminalized the act of “insulting Turkishness.” It will now be amended to instead criminalize “insulting the Turkish nation.” The justice minister will be required to approve any Article 301 prosecutions, under the amended law, and the maximum jail term for offenders will be reduced to two years from three.
Critics of Article 301, including human-rights groups and European Union officials, who hold the key to Turkey’s hopes of joining the 27-nation bloc, say the law has been used to limit freedom of speech. Some of those same critics dismissed today’s changes as merely cosmetic.
One lawmaker told the Associated Press that “it was ‘illusive’ to believe that the amendment would advance free speech.”
In a written statement […]

Source: Andrew Mytelka

Washington — A federal program that helps finance job-training programs, including some at colleges, is coming under renewed scrutiny for lack of accountability, according to today’s Washington Post.
The High Growth Job Training Initiative has issued more than $270-million in grants since 2000, and supports several programs in higher education. A yet-to-be-released report by the Labor Department’s inspector general audited 10 recent grants, and found that a majority failed to meet objectives or evaluate their grant outcomes. Two such grantees in the audit were community colleges.
The criticism in the report appears more aimed at poor oversight and lax accountability measures from the Labor Department than at the recipients themselves. A similar investigation in 2007 found that 87 percent of the job-training grants had been awarded without competition.
Both audits were requested by Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat of Iowa who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Labor Department. […]

Source: JJ Hermes

Washington — An Iranian-American graduate student at Georgetown University has sued the institution, accusing it of racial profiling when it detained him at a graduation ceremony in May 2007.
Kambiz Fattahi — a student in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a dual citizen of the United States and Iran — says he was watching the ceremony in the university’s main gymnasium when a public-safety officer insisted that he leave and told him he was “making some people nervous.” According to the lawsuit, two officers questioned Mr. Fattahi in a public hallway, searching his backpack and making sarcastic remarks about “Babylon and the Tigris River.”
Mr. Fattahi filed suit on Tuesday against the university, the two officers, and the director of their department. He alleges several violations of his rights under the Constitution and the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act, and he seeks a revision of Georgetown’s antidiscrimination policies, related training […]

Source: Sara Lipka

Just over two weeks after being named president of Kentucky’s higher-education coordinating board, Brad Cowgill announced today that he was resigning, according to news reports.
Kentucky’s governor, Steven L. Beshear, a Democrat, had objected to the selection of Mr. Cowgill to lead the Council on Postsecondary Education. The governor asked the state’s attorney general to determine whether the council had ignored legal requirements that it conduct a national search for a president with an established reputation and experience in postsecondary education.
Last week the attorney general ruled in a legal opinion that the council’s hiring process had violated state law.
In a statement Mr. Cowgill released today, he said he was stepping down for “one reason,” according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. The reason, the newspaper quoted him as saying, was that “in the foreseeable future, it would be necessary to devote excessive time and effort to unproductive activities, denying me the satisfaction of […]

Source: Sara Hebel

North Carolina taxpayers aren’t getting much bang for their higher-education buck, according to a new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
Despite consistently large increases in state and federal money for North Carolina’s public universities, the state lags nationally and regionally in its percentage of college graduates.
The report — the first in a series that also will examine higher education in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Virginia, and Washington — challenges the conventional argument that big spending on university research in North Carolina has been an engine for widespread economic development.
The study, which uses data from the federal Department of Education, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other education sources, also alleges that some higher-spending universities have become “gated” institutions that use more money for bolstering the salaries of key faculty members than on improving instruction or access for lower-income students.
“It’s clear that the majority of […]

Source: Brad Wolverton

A Texas-based test-preparatory company has agreed to pay $1-million in a settlement with the College Board two months after the organization filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against the company, Karen Dillard’s College Prep LP.
In February the College Board said the company, known as KDCP, had illegally obtained copies of SAT forms before they were available to the public, and had used questions from those forms in practice materials distributed to its test-prep clients. In response, KDCP countersued the College Board, accusing it of improperly obtaining proprietary information about the company from a former employee.
Under the terms of the settlement, announced today, both sides have dropped their lawsuits, and the College Board will not cancel the SAT scores of students who used KDCP’s test-prep materials and classes. Also, $400,000 of the $1-million settlement will be paid by KDCP by offering free SAT test-prep services to low-income high-school students.
Karen Dillard, managing partner of […]

Source: Liz Farrell