Tag Archives: Topic: Colleges

Findlaw: Law firms have long been the training ground for new attorneys while in-house positions are generally for associates with several years of experience. The rationale is that new graduates don’t have the practical skills to dive into legal practice. In-house counsel don’t have time to provide training on both how to be corporate counsel AND how to practice corporate law. But that problem might be solved as more law schools focus on practical coursework.

National Law Journal: The school plans what administrators said will be the first Ph.D. in Law. The program is designed for students holding a J.D. from a U.S. law school who want to teach law. Students will spend three years learning how to produce scholarly research and writing; will take teaching classes; and will teach courses themselves.

Religion Clause: The Thomas More Society yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Ohio challenging the speaker access and literature distribution rules of Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Findlaw: In add to all the articles out there warning people off from law school, U.S. Newspublished a list of law schools whose graduates have the most debt.

Harvard Crimson: Harvard has appointed Vanidy “Van” Bailey as the College’s first permanent director of bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer student life. Bailey, the assistant director for education at the University of California, San Diego, will assume the new position on July 16.

William Creeley, TheFire at The Moral Liberal: When students return to the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) this fall, they’ll have one less policy restricting their First Amendment rights to worry about. That’s because UCLA has revised an unconstitutional posting policy after receiving a warning letter (PDF) from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).

One News Now: ADF legal counsel Heather Gebelin Hacker explains UCLA’s policy stated nothing could be posted that promoted “demeaning social stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, culture, gender or sexual orientation.” She says that language was much too vague. “Whether … something is a demeaning social stereotype is really in the eye of the beholder,” she remarks. “Eventually if somebody is offended by something that is written on a flyer, that flyer would not be allowed, which is a violation of the First Amendment.”

ADF letter prompts university to strike policy language that excluded certain religious activities from funding

ADF letter prompts university to strike policy language that excluded certain religious activities from funding

Education News: A federal judge has struck down central parts of hotly debated new federal regulations meant to rein in for-profit colleges that often leave students saddled with debts they cannot repay. In a ruling released on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras invalidated parts of the Obama administration’s so-called gainful employment regulations, ruling that the Department of Education “failed to provide a reasoned explanation” in arriving at guidelines to assess students’ ability to pay down loans after attending a career training program.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy has published some frightening numbers.

Vague flier policy had banned speech ‘which tends to promote demeaning social stereotypes’

BBC: The number of new UK graduates working in jobs like cleaning or bar work has almost doubled to 10,000 in five years, according to government statistics.

Baltimore Sun: Cheslack was one of 295 female plebes, a record 24 percent of the entering Class of 2016 . . . Women would be spared the head shavings imposed on male classmates, but that seemed the only break.

LoanSafe.org: “The laws are well established in this area,” said ADF legal counsel David Hacker. “When a university or government opens up a forum for speech, it has to provide essentially equal access. You can’t exclude a speaker because of their viewpoint . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: In Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley, (SD GA, June 22, 2012), a Georgia federal district court, in a lengthy opinion, dismissed claims by a former graduate student in Augusta State University’s graduate counselor education program that her constitutional rights were infringed when she was dismissed for refusing to complete a required remediation plan.

One News Now: ADF litigation staff counsel Matt Sharp says they were told school policy forbids the funding of “religious worship or proselytizing.” “So this was a clearly discriminatory policy that was targeting religious speech and religious worship for disfavored treatment and denying it access to this pool of funds that all other student groups could get access to,” Sharp asserts. [more]

One News Now: Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney Kevin Theriot says students at Florida Christian College (FCC) are being denied Florida Resident Access Grants (FRAGs) . . . We’re confident that the court’s going to uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of the students at Florida Christian College to have the same access to funding for their education as [do] other types of students,” Theriot asserts. Another ADF attorney, Greg Baylor, is perplexed as to why Florida draws a distinction between Florida Christian College and other religious schools in the state.

TheEagle.com: “The laws are well established in this area,” said ADF legal counsel David Hacker. “When a university or government opens up a forum for speech, it has to provide essentially equal access. You can’t exclude a speaker because of their viewpoint.”

The Battalion at Texas A&M: TAC is being represented by Alliance Defense Fund, an organization that “provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through legal defense of religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage and the family.” . . . “We’re hopeful that A&M will work with us to get this resolved before the fall semester,” said David Hacker, legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund.

Jay Schalin at National Review Phi Beta Cons: The latest skirmish in the campus culture war is a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defense Fund at Texas A&M. It seems the Texas Aggie Conservatives, a student organization, got tired of coming up empty when it was time to divvy up the activity funding.

One News Now: The Family Research Council is dismayed that a growing number of colleges and universities are offering classes on pornography.

National Law J. on Law.com: Slightly more than half of the class of 2011 — 55 percent — found full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage nine months after they graduated, according to employment figures released on June 18 by the American Bar Association.

Wall Street Journal: Members of the law-school class of 2011 had little better than a 50-50 shot of landing a job as a lawyer within nine months of receiving a degree, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of new data that provides the most detailed picture yet of the grim market for law jobs.

Volokh Conspiracy: In the National Law Journal, Karen Sloan reports on how the drop in law school applications this year has law schools scrambling to fill slots — and offering unusually generous scholarships necessary to try to maintain U.S. News numbers. It begins . . .

Education News: The number of international students enrolled in graduate programs at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering has risen for the past five years and is nearing the 50 percent mark, according to the campus. Last fall, 665 of the program’s 1,493 grad students — or 44.5 percent — were from countries other than the United States.

Speak Up Movement Univeristy Blog: Officials at Virginia Tech recently gave the “okay” for a long-overdue change to its policies governing funding for student organizations in response to a letter from ADF warning the university that its policies violated the First Amendment.

Christian Post: “Student groups should not be singled out for discrimination because of their political or religious views,” said ADF Legal Counsel David Hacker. “Universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not a place where funding earmarked for student groups only goes to the ones the university prefers. ADF has successfully litigated similar cases because the Constitution requires that political and faith-based student organizations not be targeted for discrimination based upon their viewpoints.”

OneNewsNow: ADF attorney David Hacker says that is unconstitutional, especially since the university approved similar requests made by the NAACP, the Muslim Student Association and the Black Student Alliance Council, among others. “From Texas A&M comes a wide variety of student groups and activities and events,” the attorney notes, “and so, to exclude political and religious views from campus is really unfortunate and violates the First Amendment.”

LifeNews: Student groups should not be singled out for discrimination because of their political or religious views,” said ADF Legal Counsel David Hacker. “Universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not a place where funding earmarked for student groups only goes to the ones the university prefers. ADF has successfully litigated similar cases because the Constitution requires that political and faith-based student organizations not be targeted for discrimination based upon their viewpoints.”

Citizen Link: “Student groups should not be singled out for discrimination because of their political or religious views,” said ADF Legal Counsel David Hacker. “Universities are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not a place where funding earmarked for student groups only go to the ones the university prefers. ADF has successfully litigated similar cases because the Constitution requires that political and faith-based student organizations not be targeted for discrimination based upon their viewpoints.”

Richard Vedder at Minding the Campus.

Fox44 (television clip): showers and t-storms have come to an end across east texas. rain chances look slim over the next week or so as summer arrives in full force with the hottest temps so far this year in against texas a&m university. the alliance defense fund…… claims the school discriminated against political and religious student groups. and it was filed on behalf of the texas aggie conservatives. the alliance Defense Fund is a legal Alliance…. of christian attorneys and organizations. their goal is to defend the right of people…. to freely live out their faith. a historic move is made….

Speak Up Movement University Blog: According to the Florida Department of Education, its financial punishment of college students who choose a school with a “religious purpose” does not even implicate the First Amendment. Moreover, contends the Department, the First Amendment has nothing to say about its segregation of schools into disfavored “too religious” and favored “not too religious” categories.

David J. Hacker at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: A federal court in Ohio has struck down a speech zone and advanced notice requirement at the University of Cincinnati.

National Law Journal: The American Bar Association and NALP are not “indispensible absent parties” to a proposed fraud class action brought by 12 recent graduates against the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, a federal judge has ruled.

Cardinal Newman Society: Duquesne University, a Congregation of the Holy Spirit institution in Pittsburgh, has joined two other Catholic colleges in a struggle against the National Labor Relations Board’s unconstitutional violations of religious liberty.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Texas A&M University to challenge a policy that unconstitutionally denies funding to political and religious student organizations while providing funds to many other student groups.

Care2: Ward, with the backing of the ever ready religious conservative Alliance Defense Fund, sued, charging that the school violated the Constitution by censoring her freedom of religious speech . . . However, Ward’s representatives from the Alliance Defense Fund are pleased with the legislature’s attempts to enshrine this religious right to discriminate, with Jeremy Tedesco of the ADF saying “We’re encouraged that the elected representatives of Michigan have taken a concern in this case and decided to act.”

The new book by Brian Tamanah along with a lengthy “Look Inside” preview is available here.

LifeSiteNews: Moncton’s Crandall University, a Christian liberal arts school formerly known as Atlantic Baptist College, is in the crosshairs of homosexual rights activists who claim the school’s “Statement of Moral Standards” discriminates against homosexuals and is a violation of human rights.

Ed Whelan reports at National Review Bench Memos: The ABA data is available here, both by law school and in the aggregate. (There is of course a lot of variation among the law schools’ rates.)

Fox Business: And while 18% of 2010 graduates were able to obtain starting salaries of around $160,000, nearly half of reporting graduates were making annual salaries that fell between $40,000 and $65,000.

AnnArbor.com: Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Ward in her lawsuit, called the assertion that the bill could jeopardize accreditation a red herring. He said the code of ethics followed by EMU allows for referrals and that what’s important to accrediting agencies is the curriculum being taught, not adherence to a code of ethics. “We’re encouraged that the elected representatives of Michigan have taken a concern in this case and decided to act,” he said.

Mirror of Justice: Along with the bleak jobs picture, the class of 2011 emerged with a mountain of debt. The debt is every bit as high at Catholic law schools as anywhere else. Here is the average debt for 2011 graduates of Catholic law schools . . .

Wall Street Journal (via Google): President Obama likes to say that everyone in America should “play by the same rules.” Okay, so then why does the Administration’s new student-loan rule apply to for-profit colleges, but not nonprofits?

Phyllis Schlafly at Townhall: One of the ways to cut the big-spending binge engaged in by the federal government is to terminate the racket of college loans. It’s counterproductive, discriminatory and a bad investment for both taxpayers and students.

AWR Hawkins at Salvo Magazine: But the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill knows hate speech when it hears it. Thus, apology or not, university officials barred local radio station WRDU from even mentioning Limbaugh’s show . . . On the other hand, this same school recently paid homosexual activist Dan Savage $18,500 in speaker’s fees,1 without even wincing at the duplicity . . . But the way things look from here, UNC–Chapel Hill’s method for determining what does and does not constitute hate speech seems to be no more sophisticated than determining what speech it agrees with and what speech it doesn’t. That is obviously not a trustworthy standard.

Jordan Lorence on KPXQ AM 1360, Koinonia with Tom Brown | MP3 audio 12:04 mins | Blackstone Legal Fellowship

George F. Will at the Washington Post: So taxpayers should pay more and parents and students should borrow more to fund administrative sprawl in the service of stale political agendas? Perhaps they will, until “pop!” goes the bubble.

Findlaw: Of the 2011 graduates who found jobs, only 65.4% landed jobs that require bar passage — an all-time low in the NALP survey.

ABA Journal: The cost of legal education is out of proportion to the economic benefits of a law degree—and something needs to be done about it, a law professor says. Writing in the New York Times, Washington University law professor Brian Tamanaha declares that “the economics of legal education are broken.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Spadone v. McHugh, (D DC, June 6, 2012), the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that former West Point cadet Alan Spandone has standing to claim that the Establishment Clause was violated when, at a hearing on his alleged Honor Code violations, he was ordered by the Commandant of Cadets to stand with his body rigid in a military posture and to read aloud the “Cadet’s Prayer.”

Catholic Culture: Officials of the Diocese of Pangkal-Pinang charge that protests from local Muslims have prevented civil authorities from approving the construction of a minor seminary.

Ratio Christi Journal: Without the valuable partnerships Ratio Christi has, we could not function as well as we do. The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is one such organization RC works with that has most certainly been a valuable and vital strategic partner and has been in part a key reason for RC’s success.

SCOTUS Blog reports on this article: Barton, Benjamin H., An Empirical Study of Supreme Court Justice Pre-Appointment Experience (February 24, 2012). University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper No. 181. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2010781 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2010781

LifeSiteNews: The board of the student union at the oldest university in Australia has voted 6-5 to approve the only pro-life student society in Australia. The decision has been met with outrage by stunned pro-abortion students . . .

WYTV.com (AP): The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Friday that the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance Defense Fund has added Wayne Helper and Carrie Kolesar, owners of lumber and sawmill businesses, to the federal lawsuit filed last month by Geneva College, in Beaver Falls.

Tracey, Timothy J., Christian Legal Society v. Martinez: In Hindsight (August 12, 2011). University of Hawaii Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2065437

Greg Baylor appeared on the radio to discuss the litigation. These broadcasts were recorded within the last two weeks. | Viewpoints with Lockwood Phillps, MP3 audio 20:03 mins | The Hugh Hewitt Show, MP3 audio 10:22 mins | ADF comment on 12 new lawsuits against Obama abortion pill mandate

Kevin Theriot appeared on Family Policy Matters with Bill Brooks on the NC Family Policy Council. | MP3 audio 14:29 mins | ADF launches new nationwide effort to change unconstitutional policies at public universities

Examiner (AP): The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (http://bit.ly/L8m8T6 ) reports Friday that the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance Defense Fund has added Wayne Helper and Carrie Kolesar, owners of lumber and sawmill businesses, to the federal lawsuit filed last month by Geneva College, in Beaver Falls

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Attorneys for ADF have now added as plaintiffs Wayne L. Helper and Carrie E. Kolesar, father-daughter co-owners of the Cranberry-based Seneca Hardwood Lumber Co. and a related sawmill company.

Notre Dame Prof. Richard Garnett appeared on WABC on the Geraldo Rivera Show. | MP3 audio 8:07 mins

NC Register: Alliance Defense Fund filed a formal comment with the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of the Catholic schools, including Benedictine College, Christendom College, John Paul the Great Catholic University and Wyoming Catholic College.

Reuters: Thomas’s bitterness toward the prestigious law school has a complicated history – traceable to the view expressed in his memoir that the degree “meant one thing for white graduates and another for blacks” and exacerbated by the testimony of another Yale graduate, Anita Hill, against his Supreme Court nomination.

Nathan Harden at National Review Phi Beta Cons: Down in Arkansas, Obama’s Dept of Justice has revised theology and biology in one fell swoop, granting 38-year-old student Jennifer (formerly Russell) Braly the right to use women’s restrooms on the Fort Smith campus.

The Examiner: “The government shouldn’t punish people of faith for making decisions in accordance with their faith,” stated the Alliance Defense Fund’s President, CEO, and General Counsel Alan Sears. “We welcome these lawsuits, which are about religious freedom and freedom of conscience, not about contraception … These new cases are about the very right to determine what is ‘religious’ and what faith-based beliefs may be followed in life.”

Fox News: ADF legal counsel Jeremy Tedesco said it’s up to the group, not the school, to characterize it’s beliefs. “Saying that a Christian club isn’t religious is flatly absurd,” said ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “The First Amendment forbids the government from determining what is and what is not ‘religious,’ yet the university [was] doing exactly this by telling a Christian group that it is not religious.”

Jay Schalin at National Review Phi Beta Cons Blog: Recently, the school relented and gave Make Up Your Own Mind the right to exclude based on belief. The reversal occurred after the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit on behalf of Make Up Your Own Mind.

The Church Report: The Alliance Defense Fund said Tuesday the suit had served its purpose by forcing the school to give the group called ‘Make Up Your Own Mind’ access to university facilities and funding like it does for other groups.

Breitbart: The Obama Department of Justice has reportedly ordered the University of Arkansas at Ft. Smith (UAFS) to allow a male student to use women’s bathrooms on campus.

OneNewsNow: Since then, ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco says the school has clarified its non-discrimination policy, which officials admitted to misinterpreting. “[They] essentially clarified that they have an exemption to their non-discrimination policy that allows all belief-based clubs, including religious clubs, to restrict their members and leaders to the beliefs of the group,” Tedesco details. “And that’s a good thing not only for the Make Up Your Own Mind group, but for all groups moving forward as well.”

Huffington Post: The University of Pennsylvania is implementing a new policy that will offer benefits to faculty and staff in same-sex partnerships who are forced to pay more in taxes on health coverage than heterosexual married couples.

ABC: Eight months after a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask , don’t tell” policy, the U.S. Air Force Academy today graduated its first group of openly gay cadets.