Art Professor Sues After Firing Over Prophet Muhammad Images

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Attorneys for an adjunct art professor said Tuesday she is suing the Minnesota university that dismissed her after a Muslim student objected to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a global art course, while the university admitted to a “misstep” and plans to hold public conversations about academic freedom. In her lawsuit, Erika López Prater alleges that Hamline University — a small, private school in St. Paul — subjected her to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation. “Among other things, Hamline, through its administration, has referred to Dr. López Prater’s actions as ‘undeniably Islamophobic,’” hermore

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Foreign Students Returning to US Since Pandemic Decline

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International students are returning to the United States after a significant drop during the pandemic, according to the Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange (IEE). During a recent conversation with reporters, higher education officials said enrollment of international students increased almost 4% in the 2021-2022 academic year, from the year before, and almost 9% in the fall of 2022, from the year before. International student enrollment dropped 15% in the 2020-2021 school year. Almost 1 million students came to the U.S. in the 2021-2022 academic year from more than 200 countries. Most of the increase is attributed tomore

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US Schools Clash With Parents Over Bans on Student Cellphones

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Cellphones — the ultimate distraction — keep children from learning, educators say. But in attempts to keep the phones at bay, the most vocal pushback doesn’t always come from students. In some cases, it’s from parents. Bans on the devices were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since schools reopened, struggles with student behavior and mental health have given some schools even more reason to restrict access. But parents and caregivers who had constant access to their children during remote learning have been reluctant to give that up. Some fear losing touch with their kids during a school shooting.more

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China Quarantines College Students Under Strict COVID Policy  

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Almost 500 students at China’s premier college for broadcast journalists have been sent to a quarantine center after a handful of COVID-19 cases were detected in their dormitory. The 488 students at Communication University of China, along with 19 teachers and five assistants, were transferred by bus beginning Friday night. Quarantining anyone considered to have been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus has been a pillar of China’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. The quarantine centers include field hospitals as well as converted stadiums and exhibition centers that have been criticized for overcrowding, poor sanitation and spoiled food.more

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US Colleges Report Rise in Foreign Student Applications

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As a new school year begins in the United States, institutions of higher education are voicing optimism that international student numbers are bouncing back given an increase in applications for the 2022-2023 school year.   The Institute of International Education (IIE), in a report published in June, said U.S. colleges saw an increase in applications for admission after seeing significantly fewer new international student enrollments in 2020 and 2021.  Does it mean international students are returning in numbers to the U.S.?   “I definitely say that is true. Absolutely,” IIE Co-President Jason Czyz told VOA. He said IIE found the biggest factormore

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Incomplete Grade? Columbia Loses Ranking over Dubious Data

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U.S. News & World Report has unranked Columbia University from its 2022 edition of Best Colleges, saying in a statement that the Ivy League institution failed to substantiate certain 2021 data it previously submitted, including student-faculty ratios and class size. The decision to rescind the school’s No. 2 rating among national universities in the 2022 edition came about a week after Columbia announced it would not be submitting data for the 2023 edition of Best Colleges after one of its mathematics professors recently raised questions about the accuracy of past submissions.  The 2022 edition was first published in September 2021.more

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US Visa Called Too Expensive for Afghan Students

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For Breshna Salaam, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year meant a return to the same extreme poverty she and her mother had experienced under the Taliban’s first time in control of the country.   In 1996, the Taliban fired Salaam’s mother from a public service job, denying the widow and her daughter their only source of income. In August 2021, with her mother retired, the Taliban fired Salaam from a job at the Ministry of Agriculture.   Deprived of work and education in her own country, she applied for graduate programs abroad and was offered a scholarshipmore

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US Health Officials Ban Juul E-Cigarettes Tied to Teen Vaping Surge

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Federal health officials on Thursday ordered Juul to pull its electronic cigarettes from the U.S. market, the latest blow to the embattled company widely blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping.  The action is part of a sweeping effort by the Food and Drug Administration to bring scientific scrutiny to the multibillion-dollar vaping industry after years of regulatory delays.  The FDA said Juul must stop selling its vaping device and its tobacco- and menthol-flavored cartridges. Those already on the market must be removed. Consumers aren’t restricted from having or using Juul’s products, the agency said.  To stay onmore

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US to Cancel $6 Billion in Student Loans for 200,000 Defrauded Borrowers

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The United States will cancel $6 billion in student loans for 200,000 borrowers who claimed they were defrauded by their colleges, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden said. A settlement agreement between the borrowers and the U.S. Department of Education was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday and must be approved by a federal judge. Student debt cancellation has become a priority for many liberals and one that could shore up popularity with younger and more highly educated voters, who lean Democratic, before November’s midterm congressional elections. About 43 million Americansmore

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Former Corinthian Students Get Federal Student Debt Erased 

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Hundreds of thousands of students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain will automatically get their federal student loans canceled, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, a move that aims to bring closure to one of the most notorious cases of fraud in American higher education.  Under the new action, anyone who attended the now-defunct chain from its founding in 1995 to its collapse in 2015 will get their federal student debt wiped clean. It will erase $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single loan discharge in Education Department history, according to the agency.  “As ofmore

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Greek Leader Urges Students to Sustain, Strengthen Democracy

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Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told graduates of Boston College in his commencement address Monday that it is their sacred duty to protect democracy in an age when it is coming under increasing stress.  The future of democracy looked unassailable when his generation graduated from college in the late 1980s, Mitsotakis said, roughly the time when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed.  But the world since then has seen a rise in populist and autocratic leaders who disdain the pillars of democracy such as free expression, a free press and free elections, he said during his keynotemore

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IBM: 6 Black Colleges Getting Cybersecurity Centers

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Six historically Black universities in five Southern states will be getting the first IBM cybersecurity centers aimed at training underrepresented communities, the company said. The schools are Xavier University of Louisiana, that state’s Southern University System, North Carolina A&T, South Carolina State, Clark Atlanta and Morgan State universities, according to a news release Tuesday. “Technology-related services are in constant demand, and cybersecurity is paramount,” said Dr. Ray L. Belton, president of the Southern University System based in Baton Rouge. The centers will give students, staff, and faculty access to modern technology, resources, and skills development, said Dr. Nikunja Swain, chairmore

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Buddhist Chaplains on Rise in US, Offering Broad Appeal

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Wedged into a recliner in the corner of her assisted living apartment in Portland, Skylar Freimann, who has a terminal heart condition and pulmonary illness, anxiously eyed her newly arrived hospital bed on a recent day and worried over how she would maintain independence as she further loses mobility. There to guide her along the journey was the Rev. Jo Laurence, a hospice and palliative care chaplain. But rather than invoking God or a Christian prayer, she talked of meditation, chanting and other Eastern spiritual traditions: “The body can weigh us down sometimes,” she counseled. “Where is the divine ormore

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Illinois Predominantly Black College Closing After 157 Years

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A predominantly Black college in central Illinois named after Abraham Lincoln and founded the year the former president was assassinated will close this week, months after a cyberattack that compounded enrollment struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic. Lincoln College, which saw record enrollment numbers in 2019, said in a news release that it scrambled to stay afloat with fundraising campaigns, a consolidation of employee positions, and exploring leasing alternatives. “Unfortunately, these efforts did not create long-term viability for Lincoln College in the face of the pandemic,” the school, which opened in 1865 in Lincoln, about 170 miles southwest of Chicago,more

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Women Settle Lawsuit Against Liberty University, Documents Say

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A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit twelve women brought last summer against Liberty University, accusing the Christian institution of fostering an unsafe environment on its Virginia campus and mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment, according to court documents filed Wednesday.  A notice of dismissal filed by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Jack Larkin, said the case had been settled but provided no details about the terms.  Larkin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. But in an email to TV station WDBJ, he said: “The terms of the settlement are confidential in naturemore

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Cornell University Event Calls for School’s Disentanglement With Chinese Partners

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   The tweeted invitation for a teach-in at Cornell University featured a photograph of “Pillar of Shame,” a sculpture that commemorates the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which authorities removed from Hong Kong University last year. The topic: “Academic Freedom, Global Hubs and Cornell Involvement in the People’s Republic of China.” The speakers: Three Cornell University academics with China-related specialties and Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch. The event was organized as a rebuke to the university’s growing involvement in China and reflected a broader trend of calls for colleges and universities to cut tiesmore

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Harvard Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Role in Slavery

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Harvard University is vowing to spend $100 million to research and atone for its extensive ties with slavery, the school’s president announced Tuesday, with plans to identify and support direct descendants of dozens of enslaved people who labored at the Ivy League campus. President Lawrence Bacow announced the funding as Harvard released a new report detailing many ways the college benefited from slavery and perpetrated racial inequality. The report, commissioned by Bacow, found that Harvard’s faculty, staff and leaders enslaved more than 70 Black and Native American people from the school’s founding in 1636 to 1783. For decades after, itmore

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Struggling Marymount California University to Close

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Marymount California University, a half-century-old private Catholic institution, will close this summer, its board of trustees announced. The liberal arts school located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula south of Los Angeles has been struggling in recent years due to declining enrollment, rising costs and the coronavirus pandemic, the university said in a statement Friday. “This decision was not made lightly. But we felt the most compassionate thing to do was to give everyone time to make plans. Our focus now will be to help our students, faculty and staff,” said Brian Marcotte, the university’s president. Marymount California has 500 full-timemore

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Mask Mandates Return to US College Campuses as Cases Rise

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The final weeks of the college school year have been disrupted yet again by COVID-19 as universities bring back mask mandates, switch to online classes and scale back large gatherings in response to upticks in coronavirus infections. Colleges in Washington, D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Texas have reimposed a range of virus measures, with Howard University moving to remote learning amid a surge in cases in the nation’s capital.  This is the third straight academic year that has been upended by COVID-19, meaning soon-to-be seniors have yet to experience a normal college year.  “I feel like last summermore

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Azerbaijani Student Held in Russian Captivity in Mariupol, Ukraine Describes Torture

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A 20-year-old Azerbaijani university student is describing near-daily beatings during his time as a prisoner of Russian forces near Mariupol, Ukraine last month. Huseyn Abdullayev, who was studying at Mariupol State University when Russia invaded Ukraine, tells VOA Azerbaijani he was held from March 17 until April 12 after Russian military personnel kidnapped him at a military post west of Mariupol in Berdyansk. Abdullayev said that after he was taken, “They tied my hands and covered my head with my jacket so that I could not see anything. Then they threw me in a truck and took me to prison.more

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New Mexico Hails Expanded Free College, but Some Remain Wary

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Even after failing a test that set her back a semester, Maribel Rodriguez will be heading back to nursing school this fall with a generous new state scholarship that abandons eligibility criteria to help more working adults get a college degree. New Mexico is expanding its “Opportunity Scholarship,” which has already paid for Rodriguez’s tuition and allowed her to apply for federal grants toward living expenses like gas and groceries. She’s reapplying to the nursing program and hopes to finish her degree without racking up debt that could hurt her husband and three children. “I didn’t think a whole lotmore

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Biden to Extend Student Loan Repayment 3 More Months

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The Biden administration is set to extend the moratorium on repayment of student loans until August 31. The payments were scheduled to resume May 1 after the moratorium went into effect early in the pandemic when the economy contracted sharply, and many Americans lost their jobs. Now, some lawmakers say the extensions are needed because of high inflation. The extension, the fifth, reportedly would affect some 43 million Americans who have a combined student loan debt of more than $1.6 trillion. Some 7 million have defaulted on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a payment in at least 270 days.more

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