Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat; Washington Post, June 5, 2017

Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post; Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat

"The students in the spinoff group exchanged memes and images “mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children,” sometimes directing jokes at specific ethnic or racial groups, the Crimson reported. One message “called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child ‘piñata time’” while other messages quipped that “abusing children was sexually arousing,” according to images of the chat described by the Crimson.

Then, university officials caught on. And in mid-April, after administrators discovered the offensive, racially charged meme exchanges, at least 10 incoming students who participated in the chat received letters informing them that their offers of admission had been revoked...

According to Harvard college admissions policies, the university reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission if the admitted student “engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character,” among other conditions, Dane told The Post."

University of Chicago’s P.C. Crackdown Is Really About Keeping Right-Wing Donors Happy; Daily Beast, 8/26/16

Jay Michaelson, Daily Beast; University of Chicago’s P.C. Crackdown Is Really About Keeping Right-Wing Donors Happy:

"By coincidence, the U Chicago dean’s letter came out the same week that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that teaching and research assistants, who work for years as barely-paid serfs, and who until now have frequently been banned from organizing a union, are entitled to do so. The University of Chicago sent out another letter, this time to all faculty and graduate students, alleging (with no evidence, since none exists) that such a union could “be detrimental to students’ education and preparation for future careers.”

That kind of issue points toward the real crises affecting American higher education, issues that have nothing to do with Halloween costumes and everything to do with decreases in state funding, increases in corporate funding, the demise of tenure, and outrageous spirals of indebtedness and even poverty among academics. Funny, Dean Ellison didn’t provide any trigger warnings for those."

The Complicated Process of Adding Diversity to the College Syllabus; The Atlantic, 7/29/16

Emily Deruy, The Atlantic; The Complicated Process of Adding Diversity to the College Syllabus:

"When Thomas Easley interviews people who want to teach statistics at North Carolina State University (NCSU), he poses a question most applicants probably aren’t expecting: How would you integrate diversity into your curriculum?

It’s a question more universities seem to be asking in the aftermath of student protests against the dearth of people of color on their campuses and in their coursework...

Proponents say that asking students to acknowledge and discuss ideas and concepts through a variety of lenses with classmates from different backgrounds is every bit as important in an increasingly global society as drilling the fundamentals of essay-writing into young minds. But the idea is predictably controversial, with critics saying the requirements are a left-leaning affront to academic freedom. And even professors who are generally supportive of incorporating conversations about diversity into their teaching sometimes say they don’t know where to begin; lots of schools like to talk about diversity, but it’s a nebulous if nice-sounding word, and schools that espouse the broad concept sometimes fail to define exactly what they mean or expect when they tell professors to weave it into their work."