Universities Weblog

Dr. Irvin D. Reid has changed Wayne State University. Now, at the age of 66 and after a decade of service to the institution, Dr. Reid is leaving the institution for retirement.

Reid's is widely credited for taking the institution from a commuter college to a major academic institution. His resignation is not effective until 2008.

A press statement release by the university quoted the Chairman of the university's board of governors, Eugene Driker:

President Reid will leave us with a great deal of positive momentum, and his impact is evident throughout our campus, the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. Among his most important accomplishments are: a significant growth in student enrollment-more than doubling the number of residential students; the strengthening of both our teaching and research missions; establishment of the Perinatology Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health; expansion of our Honors Program; the launch of TechTown, home to dozens of high-tech businesses that are bringing new jobs and investments to the city; major improvements in the university's technological infrastructure; and the addition of many new buildings to the campus, making it the linchpin for the remarkable revitalization of Midtown Detroit.

Student enrollment grew by over two thousand students while Reid was president and he oversaw a billion dollars worth of construction in his time at Wayne State - including three new dorms.

Frank Wu, dean of the University's law school, said that Reid had been "an inspiring leader" for the institution. "He has had vision and an ability to realize that vision. He transformed the campus, while making the institution a catalyst for economic growth in the area and throughout the city. He has been a phenomenal fundraiser. He also has established good relationships between the administration and the faculty. His example is admirable."

J. David McSwane, a junior at Colorado State University and the student-editor of the Rocky Mountain Collegian, decided to give CSU students a lesson in free speech. So he published the "F" word in a (very) short editorial on September 24 in headline-sized type. McSwane told the Associated Press that the newspaper's governing body might fire him, but that he had no plans to step aside voluntarily.

McSwane's editorial was a short four words: "Taser this … **** Bush." His obscenity has been replaced here by asterisks. There was no attempt to explain the remarks and no reference in that issue of the Collegian to the recent use of a Taser to subdue a student at Florida State University.

McSwane has since stated that the editorial was published because he felt CSU students were apathetic about their right to free speech; and that in light of the use of a Taser gun on a student at Florida State earlier this month, free speech seemed like an important issue.

The Blogosphere has been sprinkled with reaction to the incident:

• From Pepperdine University - "It was recklessly displayed with no accompanying story, no explanation of the editorial board's intentions and no rationale for the gratuitous display of profanity… While the intentions seem noble, their execution turned out a distasteful attempt at a bold statement. Although unrelated to their purpose, the statement was confusingly coupled with an attack on the president- a seemingly sordid attempt at killing two birds with one stone."
• From George Archibald - "Lazy, nasty, stupid kids getting their rocks off by feeding the anti-Bush frenzy among faculty and liberal weirdos they are sucking up to."
• From Colorado Confidential, with a headline that proclaims that shock value doesn't work - "McSwane, editor of Colorado State University's Rocky Mountain Collegian, got everyone's attention….the attention turned out to be counterproductive."
• From JewelDV, a student in Boston - "It's not exactly a secret that Bush isn't well liked by the majority of citizens these days and if the Collegian editorial board wants to write something like that to express themselves, they should be able to."
• From Blogger Chris Allen, a teacher in South Carolina - "Simply put, McSwane has the right to say F**k you to anyone he wishes, but the board has the right to say, Not in our paper, and the advertisers have the right to say, Not with our money.

During my 15 months or so as Editor-in-Chief of the Augusta State University Bell Ringer, I suspect I did a few stupid things. I don't remember it all that well; jimmy carter was president and my hair wasn't gray yet. I think George Archibald is a little harsh and I guess I largely agree with Chris, above.

I'm not sure I think any of our rights are absolute because our actions impinge on the lives of others. My rights stop when their free exercise begins to interfere with the rights of others. Having lived on four continents and in 14 times zones I can tell you that we have more freedom of speech in America than in the vast majority of places on Earth. If McSwane wants to speak for himself instead of for the paper, let him start himself a blog…

Evidently the bylaws of the Collegian state pretty explicitly that McSwane can't be fired to a single incident of vulgarity. But the paper is funded entirely by advertising and, since the publication of the editorial, has lost about $50,000 in revenue as a result of the incident, according to a blog called the Fire that focuses on civil rights in higher education. We'll see, I guess, since hearings on the matter are underway.

Barack Obama spoke to first year students at Howard University's convocation service on Friday. Howard University is a Historically Black College in Washington, D.C.

The Senator from Illinois and Democratic presidential candidate called it a privilege to speak at Howard and noted that "It was Howard that sent the first African-American to the United States Senate."

Obama's speech focused on the history and current condition of Black-White relations in America. He touched on the Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that started the process of desegregating American's schools. He spoke of the Jena 6 and of "inequalities" in the American justice system.

Obama compared the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950's and 60's to Moses, leading captives out of bondage. He pointed out that Moses didn't lead his people into the promised land.

Everyone in this room stands on the shoulders of many Moses. They are the courageous men and women who marched and fought and Bled for the rights and freedoms we enjoy today. They have taken us many miles over an impossible journey.

But you are members of the Joshua Generation. And it is now up to you to finish the work that they began.

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic described the speech as "strikingly expansive, a reminder of what Obama can deliver when he wants to."

A pro-Obama political blog, Think on These Things, has published the full text of Obama's speech.

If you're a college football fan, and especially if you cheer for any team in the Big East conference, it's hard not to wonder whether West Virginia University and the University of Southern Florida aren't set to become the nation's newest bitter rivalry.

Last year, lowly USF knocked the Mountaineer's out of contention for a Bowl Championship Series bowl berth with a 24-19 upset at Morgantown in November. This year, fifth ranked WVU came to Tampa to play the USF Bulls - and lost under the lights on Friday night. The previously undefeated Mountaineers had been ranked as high as third in the AP Poll. The loss knocks them out of contention for a national title and has to leave WVU coach Rich Rodriguez hoping his team can still find some way to at least win the Big East.

Personally, I don't mind seeing WVU do well on the gridiron. But I'm a graduate of interstate rival Marshall University (whose football program is in the dumps at the moment) and a big fan of the Tennessee Volunteers (not having the greatest year). So I'm a little relieved to see some of the air taken out of the Gold and Blue sails. I'm surrounded by Mountaineer fans at work and now they'll have less to mouth off about…

Tampa sportswriter Greg Auman summed up the atmosphere surrounding USF's biggest home game ever in his blog this morning: "Craziness. That's all I can say about Friday night's sellout and historic win for USF over No. 5 West Virginia."

President Bush signed the sweeping new Student loan bill into law on Friday, slashing federal subsidies to private loan companies and increasing grants for students. The bill will provide "$20 billion in federal aid to college students and is being likened to the G.I. Bill, which helped millions of World War II veterans attend college," according to the Washington Post.

The new law is called the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. The college lending industry has fought the bill, saying that it will actually hurt students. President Bush pointed out that the bill is not entirely funded yet and that finding money to fund it fully and to increase the Pell Grant will require work on the part of Congress. Between now and 2012 the Pell Grant will be increased to $5,400 per year.

The law provides a $4,000 a year grant for future teachers.

Scholarships Dot Com is one of a number of sources that looked at the details of the new law in blog posts.

Philanthropist Robert Day has donated $200 million to his alma mater Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles, the college reported today. The gift will create the Robert Day Scholars Program. Claremonet McKenna said it is "the largest recorded gift to a liberal arts college, the largest gift in the field of economics and finance, and among the top 20 gifts ever given to a college or university."

The scholarships created by the gift will shift the emphasis of the small liberal arts college toward finance and accounting. That has created debate on campus among the faculty, according to University Business.

While Ivy League rival Harvard may still have the largest endowment in America, Bloomberg reported today that the fastest growing endowment in America was at Yale. Yale University's endowment grew by a whopping 28 percent during the fiscal year that ended on June 30.

The Yale endowment is now worth over $22 billion. The 28% growth rate was the best since since 2000 when the fund grew by 41% in a single year. The public radio show Marketplace took at look today at some of the ways university endowments manage to reach such high growth rates.

In his blog today, Phil Deely takes a quick look at how Yale's endowment is managed.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has asked President Bush to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to a university faculty member who died while trying to physically prevent gunman Seung-Hui Cho from entering his classroom during the April massacre there.

According to the Associated Press, Liviu Librescu was "a 76-year-old aeronautics engineer and lecturer" who had worked for the university for 20 year. He was a native of Romania and a holocaust survivor. Librescu was one of five faculty member who died in the shooting spree that claimed 32 victims on campus.

The Romanian government has already awarded Librescu that country's highest medal posthumously for his scientific accomplishments and heroism.

Librescu has been commemorated in a number of locations in the blogosphere. Some of those blog posts date to shortly after the shootings.

Former New York City Mayor and GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani thinks that Columbia University made a mistake when it invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to speak on campus. His opinion is shared by many, but is he right? I guess my answer is, why does it matter?

Ahmadinejad is an enigma - a dark, obscure, or inexplicable riddle of a person. Jay Leno makes fun of his name (that's easier than trying to understand him). He gets demonized in the Western press. And he would perhaps be almost irrelevant to Western thought and culture if it were not for the power of his position.

Iran's president asked permission to lay a wreath at the site of World Trade Center attack and was told (quite literally, I think) to go to Hell. I wasn't particularly fond of the idea of him tramping the ground at a site that has become almost holy to Americans.

But a university podium seems different to me…

One of my biggest concerns about the future of education (and of America, for that matter) is that we seem to have become less tolerant. Pluralism has not died, but it seems to be going out of fashion.

It's not as though anyone at Columbia endorsed Ahmadinejad or his ideas on behalf of the university. According to the Associated Press, President Lee C. Bollinger told Ahmadinejad on Monday he exhibited "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," called him "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated" for his denials of the Holocaust and said he doubted he had the "intellectual courage" to answer questions openly. That's not the warmest of welcomes (which is not to say that I think he should have gotten a warm welcome).

I suppose I agree somewhat with Thom Hartmann when he says, "Ahmadinejad is the president of a major nation in a vital part of the world, and we should have enough self-assurance and belief in our own system of government, and in the intelligence of our college students, that we can let them (and our larger public) evaluate his words, whatever they may be."

It's not like ignoring Ahmadinejad will make him go away. What better forum for him to speak than a university podium…?

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