Tag Archives: Topic: Colleges

National Law Journal: Harvard Law School has announced a pilot program under which Harvard undergraduates may apply and gain acceptance during their junior year, provided they agree to work for two years in between graduation and beginning their legal studies. If the pilot program succeeds, the law school might expand eligibility to juniors at other universities, assistant dean and chief admissions officer Jessica Soban said.

Washington Post: Recent law school grads face a tough job market, daunting student loans and — if they land a job — a demanding work environment. Steven Harper’s “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis”serves as a wake up call and warning for students disillusioned by the prestigious lawyers they watch on T.V.

One News Now: ADF attorney David Hacker says Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) was barring student Jacob Dagel from freely handing out flyers protesting the use of college funds to subsidize a governor’s lesbian, “gay,” bisexual and transgender youth conference. “They required student to get permission ten days in advance of doing anything on campus, and then once they got that permission, they could only speak or hand out flyers or papers to their peers if they sat at a table in the student center,” Hacker details. “It’s a really restrictive policy and one that was clearly unconstitutional.”

Volokh Conspiracy: The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is telling universities to institute speech codes. And not just any old speech codes: Under these speech codes, universities would be required to prohibit students from, for instance . . .

Statesman Journal: Data about sexual orientation are scarce on college campuses, leading an Oregon graduate student to turn to lawmakers for help to collect research.

CNN: Student loan debt is leading some borrowers to put off buying a home, saving for retirement or even getting hitched — and many now regret taking out the loans in the first place.

CNS News: And, as the poll suggests, young people share this belief: 66 percent of the students polled had a positive opinion of “entrepreneurship,” 44 percent found “free markets” positive, and 42 percent believe the federal government is an opponent rather than a partner in the pursuit of the American Dream.

The American Prospect: To critics, the degree is little more than a scam making extra cash from attorneys desperate to burnish their credentials in a brutal legal job market.

Des Moines Register (AP): “It was a non-issue the day after,” said Denson. “There was no need for a lawsuit in the first place.” Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dagel in April. A motion followed shortly for a preliminary injunction to stop the policy from being enforced. “That’s news to me,” said David Hacker, a senior legal counsel at Alliance, about Denson’s comments that the policy has not been enforced since late March. “As far as we know, when we filed the lawsuit and we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, the policy was still in the books.”

WOI-TV.com: Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dagel, says they hope to reach a settlement soon.

Des Moines Area Community College has agreed to no longer enforce its policy of limiting its approved student speech zone to a table in the student center. It has also agreed to no longer require students to get permission to distribute fliers 10 school days in advance.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday’s Newark Star-Ledger reports that in New Jersey, some Democrats are questioning the inclusion of a large, all-male Orthodox Jewish rabbinical school among the institutions of higher education that will participate in the $1.3 billion of state financing for construction at New Jersey colleges and universities.

Richard A. Epstein at WSJ: Law schools are under siege. Applications have dropped to around 54,000 annually, from around 100,000 in 2004. First-year enrollment has slipped to under 40,000 students, from 50,000 in 2010. Jobs are scarce—especially for students coming from lower-tier law schools. The average annual tuition has risen to just over $40,000 per year, from about $23,000 in 2001. Average debt on graduation has followed suit, jumping to about $125,000 in 2011, from $70,000 in 2001. No wonder many experts expect perhaps a dozen schools to close their doors within a year while other schools slash their class size, faculty and staff to stay open.

Dennis Prager at NRO: In our dialogue, we agreed that her book’s subtitle was accurate, but we disagreed as to the cause. Freitas, who holds a Ph.D. in religious studies, blamed it on peer pressure, the sex-drenched social media of young people, and the ubiquity of pornography. I blamed three other culprits: feminism, careerism, and secularism.

EagNews.org: We’ve seen a growing number of local unions break ties with state and national unions in K-12 school districts in recent years. Now unionized college employees are getting in the act.

Washington Times: The University of Colorado hired a visiting conservative professor this year, but conservatives don’t want to stop there. Republicans on the University of Colorado Board of Regents pushed Tuesday for greater intellectual diversity on campus, starting with the hiring of professors and instructors in the humanities who hold right-of-center views.

LifeSiteNews: Catholics in Pennsylvania and around the country are outraged after learning that a college student dressed as the pope from the waist up – and nude from the waist down – handed out condoms in an event organized by Carnegie Mellon University’s art department.

ABA: The committee updating the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation standards hopes to wrap up its initial review by the end of 2013, but the group remains nowhere near a consensus regarding job protections for law faculty—perhaps the most controversial item on its agenda.

Edge Boston: trans woman won’t get to fulfill her dream of attending Smith College, a private women’s university in Massachusetts, because on government federal financial aid documents she is registered as a male . . . “We have a petition of over 3,700 signatures,” Schwartz said of the Change.org petition, noting plans to present the petition with the signatures to the school’s administration sometime this week. “We have a list of demands created as an organization

Buzz Feed: The federal government plans to start counting income from both parents in a same-sex couple when making federal student aid decisions beginning in 2014, the Department of Education announced Monday, a change that could result in students of same-sex couples receiving less federal aid.

Volokh Conspiracy: This Fall, I’ll be teaching a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic here at UCLA School of Law. The clinic will represent nonprofits, as well as academics or groups of academics, who want to file friend-of-the-court briefs in free speech and religious freedom cases.

The National Law Journal: It turns out that if you ask 30 different law professors, practitioners, judges and bar association leaders how to fix legal education, you’ll get about 30 different answers.

The College Fix: The latest column from Julie Baumgardner, president of First Things First, offers a great summary of how porn is destroying men, based on the research from Dr. Phil Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, as well as Dr. Gary Wilson, who has studied the neuroscience behind porn watching.

Nathaniel Peters at Public Discourse: Donna Freitas’s new book on the hookup culture rightly encourages students to see its harms, but fails to give them moral reasons for opting out of it.

One News Now: David Hacker with Alliance Defending Freedom spoke to American Family News about the circumstances surrounding the school’s actions last year during “Paint the Town.” “…The college shut [the group’s window painting] down, and said that the Christian message was – quote – ‘in poor taste,’” he says. “That’s clearly a circumstance of viewpoint discrimination and treating Christian students in a way that is not the same as other students on campus and censoring their speech.”

Wall Street Journal: City University of New York Chairman Benno Schmidt about the evolution of academic freedom on college campuses.

CANewsService: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told UC students that the Constitution is not a living document to be reinterpreted with every new generation, but a rigid set of rules which can be amended by lawmakers or citizens as society evolves.

Eastern Echo: EMU Student Government denied Students for Life the $4,954 the organization requested to support the traveling exhibit, which prompted the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal ministry, to file a lawsuit March 19 against the university on behalf of Students for Life. The ADF lawsuit, Students for Life at Eastern Michigan University v. Parker, said EMU officials denied the student organization funding for mandatory student activity fees.

David Hacker appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this: Iowa college limits free speech to one table. | MP3 audio 12:08 mins

James Taranto at Wall Street Journal: It’s one of the basic contradictions of contemporary feminism: On the one hand, it’s supposed to be about choice for women; on the other hand, some choices are more equal than others–and certain ones, such as marrying young, provoke extreme hostility, as the Patton kerfuffle demonstrated.

Findlaw: With the collapse of the entry-level legal job market, and the unfathomable employment statistics that go along with it, one would expect that the pool of potential law students would shrink.

Citizen Link: “Snow College has done the right thing in recognizing that the First Amendment protects the freedom of all students to gather with those of like mind to express their ideas, and that includes students of faith and religious ideas,” said Travis Barham, litigation staff counsel for Alliance (ADF), representing SRCC.

Yale Daily News: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor LAW ’79 told a ballroom packed with around 425 women about her grueling work ethic, the importance of not being limited by personal circumstance and even her occasional feelings of inadequacy despite her successes.

Christian News Network: However, according to Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal organization representing the students, the college has changed several of its policies to ensure that religious freedom is protected. “Colleges are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas,” stated ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Travis Barham. “Snow College has done the right thing in recognizing that the First Amendment protects the freedom of all students to gather with those of like mind and to express their ideas, and that includes students of faith and religious ideas.”

Peter Smith at the Bell Towers: The Alliance Defending Freedom is an organisation familiar to many readers. It is in essence a well-run network of legal activists who share a common Christian faith and who are involved in many of the most contentious disputes in the United States today. It protects the religious freedom of ordinary Americans under the First Amendment, for instance, and advocates up to the Supreme Court and Congress on behalf of the unborn, those vulnerable to euthanasia, supporters of traditional marriage and family life, and, indeed, anyone who strives to live out their life as an orthodox Christian in the US.

Eagle Forum (includes audio): If you don’t yet realize that Christianity is under attack in America, here is more evidence that might wake you up. Rollins College in central Florida has ruled that Christian student clubs that require their officers to be Christian are in violation of the college’s “non-discrimination policy.” . . .

National Review: I just learned that today is the national Day of Silence, sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Angela Batista, dean of students at the University of Southern Indiana, explained in an e-mail to the university’s faculty and staff . . .

Speak Up Movement: This week, a pro-abortion professor went berserk on campus, railing at police officers and pro-life students until she was dragged away in handcuffs.  She claimed that their pro-life display was “profane” and that the images were “swearing” to her.

Utah’s Snow College has changed several policies to restore greater religious freedom to its campus and settle an Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit filed in October of last year on behalf of a Christian student group.

LifeNews: A college professor has been arrested for a profane rant at pro-life students at the University of Buffalo.

Boston Globe: Harvard will give an extra $1,500 per year to its employees who extend health care benefits to their same-sex spouses, to help offset the federal taxes that homosexual couples are required to pay under federal law, the university announced earlier this week.

Salt Lake Tribune: Most of the settlement payment went to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national group based in Arizona, that represented the club. Solid Rock received $800.

Religion Clause Blog: The school also affirmed that while it currently does not plan to sponsor the “Paint the Town” event, if it does so in the future it will not restrict religious themes or imagery. The school also paid $12,000, of which all but $800 went for attorney’s fees to Alliance Defending Freedom.

Des Moines Register: Dagel’s complaint, which was filed by Des Moines attorney Timm Reid and three lawyers from the Georgia-based Alliance Defending Freedom, seeks a court declaration that the campus policy is wrong.

Des Moines Register: The complaint, which was filed by Des Moines attorney Timm Reid and three lawyers from the Georgia-based Alliance Defending Freedom, seeks a court declaration that the campus policy is wrong, plus attorney fees and “compensatory and nominal damages for the violation” of Dagel’s rights. (complaint is embedded on the web page)

The Huffington Post: The Texas Aggie Conservatives and Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit in June 2012 over which student groups on campus are funded, alleging bias against right-wing clubs.

DFWCatholic: Note: A couple of years ago there was the case of Dr. Kenneth Howell who was fired by the University of Illinois for setting forth Catholic doctrine on homosexuality in a class. Although this was a secular school, but he as hired to teach a class on Catholicism. He was later rehired after the Alliance Defense Fund got involved.

LifeSiteNews: Yale University is organizing a conference on “Personhood Beyond the Human” for December 6-8, 2013. It will feature, among other proponents of personhood rights for animals, notorious infanticide and bestiality-promoting ethicist Peter Singer.

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of a student prohibited from distributing fliers on campus that protested the use of college funds for a conference on sexuality.

The Eastern Echo: The GAP is also the subject of an ongoing lawsuit brought against EMU in March. The Alliance Defending Freedom group filed the suit on behalf of the Students for Life organization citing that EMU’s Student Government denied Students for Life funding from mandatory student activity fees.

Religion Clause Blog: In Hollander v. Members of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, (2d Cir., April 10, 2013), the 2nd Circuit dismissed on collateral estoppel grounds an action claiming that the state and federal governments have violated the Establishment Clause by providing funding to Columbia University which maintains an Institute for Research on Women’s and Gender Studies and a Women’s Studies program.

Above the Law: An obvious point to make here is that these rankings don’t seem to distinguish between prestige of clerkship. Were these feeder judges or non-feeder judges, circuit courts or district courts, Article III courts or non-Article III courts? In the land of law, these things are very important. Considering how coveted clerkships are and how closely we hold U.S. News rankings to our hearts, this is information we’d love to see.

Above the Law: Since then, we’ve been receiving reports of 2Ls around the country being hired as law clerks during this current semester, before they even have their spring grades.

The Hill: Neurosurgeon Ben Carson on Wednesday withdrew as commencement speaker at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine after students protested statements he made about same-sex marriage.

Tufts Daily: Tufts Democrats and Tufts Republicans last Thursday joined the leaders of 49 other collegiate Democrat and Republican organizations in a statement supporting marriage equality for LGBTQ couples.

Baltimore Sun: The controversial anti-abortion group, Voice for Life, at the Johns Hopkins University won its battle to become a fully recognized club that will conduct “sidewalk counseling” sessions outside clinics and be eligible for funding, the university announced Wednesday.

Pittsburgh Tribune: He said he would like to see the high court include justices from law schools other than Harvard and Yale, which dominate the bench today. Thomas went to Yale, with which he has had a contentious relationship. “I’ve been all over the country. … There is something valuable about these people from modest neighborhoods who work their way up,” he said.

Harvard Gazette: James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern University, began with numbers, citing a study in which only 13.2 percent of faculty at the country’s 100 largest law schools reported being “Republican or Republican leaning.” Of law school faculty that have donated more than $200 to a political party, 81 percent have donated to Democrats (91 percent at HLS), according to the study. “My opinion is that there is some discrimination in law school hiring,” Lindgren said.

Cardinal Newman Society: The joint comment, prepared by the expert attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), is posted online here. The comment asks the Obama administration to exempt all organizations with “a religious or moral objection from being forced to provide, offer, pay for or in any way participate in a health insurance plan that covers or specifically triggers coverage of‘contraceptives’ (including abortifacients… ), sterilization, and related education and counseling. Religious freedom requires no less.”

LifeSiteNews: A federal court dismissed the case, on Good Friday, of Ave Maria University’s on the grounds that the federal regulations in question are not in final form. “One thing is clear, Ave Maria is not going to comply with the federal contraception mandate,” university President Jim Towey said in a statement.

George F. Will at Washington Post: Hopkins’s institutional intolerance would be boring were it simply redundant evidence of academia’s commitment to diversity in everything but thought. It is, however, indicative of the increasingly extreme ambitions and tactics of those operating under the anodyne rubric of “choice.” . . . Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million in government subsidies, is branching out, expanding its mission beyond the provision of abortions to the defense of consumers’ rights: If you pay for an abortion, you are owed a dead baby.

Patheos: And when I say that, I’m thinking of this quote from the student leading the assault on Father Greg, who, after Father Greg told him that his homosexual behavior would prevent him from having a priestly vocation, became a priest in a schismatic sect . . .

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a lawsuit against a Michigan university for denying funds to a pro-life student group because of its “very controversial” views.

Above the Law: These are schools that we don’t talk about very much (except for when they accidentally release the personal data for their entire incoming class), but the trend here seems to be that if the school has any kind of a religious affiliation, its peer assessment score drops quicker than the Walls of Jericho.

LA Times: Nearly 20 lawsuits — five of them against California schools — are being litigated at a time of dim employment prospects for lawyers. Much of the work once done by lawyers can now be done more quickly by computers.

Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University compared pro-life students to white supremacists and denied them official club status at the school.

LifeSiteNews: On March 12th, a pro-life group at Johns Hopkins University, Voice for Life (VFL), was denied the right to become an official student club by the Student Government Association (SGA) during a student Senate meeting, after having been recommended for approval by the SGA Appointments and Evaluations Committee.

WECT.com: “No university should refuse promotion to an accomplished professor simply because it disagrees with his religious and political views,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Vice President Jordan Lorence. The group is representing Adams in his lawsuit.

The Eastern Echo: Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal ministry, filed a lawsuit against EMU on March 19 on behalf of Students for Life. ADF’s lawsuit said EMU officials have denied Students for Life funding for mandatory student activity fees. The fees would be used to fund a pro-life exhibit called the Genocide Awareness Project. The display is a traveling exhibition that shows photos comparing abortion to genocide.

BizJournals.com: The Goldwater Institute is jumping into the fray between the Arizona Board of Regents and the Arizona Students Association, which is fighting for its financial life.

David Hacker appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the case. | MP3 audio 8:10 mins

AP: Boston College is threatening disciplinary action against a group of students who distribute condoms out of their dorm rooms.

Jordan Lorence at Speak Up Movement: Controversy continues to swirl around an anti-Israel “BDS” event at Brooklyn College on February 7, in which police removed four Jewish students from the event advocating for “BDS,” which is “boycott [of], divestment [from] and sanctions [against])” Israel. School officials are now investigating the removal, according to an article in the Jewish Daily Forward.

Travis C. Barham at Speak Up Movement: After over six years of litigation, Mike Adams has won the right to present his retaliation case to a jury of his peers. Back in 2006, he was denied promotion to full professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

Baptist Press on Opposing Views: Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty legal group based in Arizona, filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University on behalf of a student group that was denied university funding for an exhibit that compares abortion to other historically recognized forms of genocide, according to a report on the Detroit Free Press website.