Articles of interest about higher ed - Oct 23

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***HIGHER ED & THE VIRUS 

US colleges that welcomed students back likely led to a surge in Covid cases

UNC-Asheville Police Officer Dies of Covid-19

***THE VIRUS AT SPECIFIC SCHOOLS 

COVID outbreak sends St. John Fisher College fully remote

2-week emergency stay-in-place order issued to Michigan students—while football team keeps practicing

Testing reveals over 6% of Carroll College students have COVID

1 in 6 Clemson U. Students Test Positive for Covid-19

Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management goes remote after over 50 students exposed to COVID-19 

***K-12 

Student’s ‘Homosexuality is a sin’ shirt didn’t violate dress code, Tennessee suit says

Experts Warn Students May Face Challenges When In-Person Classes Resume

Boston Public Schools switching to all remote-learning due to rising COVID-19 numbers

***COLLEGE FINANCES 

What Counts as a Fiscal Emergency? When do forecasted losses justify the recent layoffs, furloughs and salary freezes

Higher Education’s Big Shake-Up Is Underway

Pandemic Boosts Fundraising at Community Colleges

 $100 Million Gift for California's Community Colleges 

***HIGHER ED  

Occidental College to end football program

***LIBERAL ARTS

Will the Humanities Survive? ($)

Undervaluing the arts and humanities: where did it go wrong? (opinion)

***ONLINE CLASSES   

Why education technology can’t save remote learning

University of Iowa professors, students adjust to new formats of online testing

***ONLINE CHEATING   

An Exam Surveillance Company Is Trying to Silence Critics With Lawsuits

Students Cheat. How Much Does It Matter? ($)

What AI College Exam Proctors Are Really Teaching Our Kids

Rutgers faculty discusses cheating during remote instruction

An ed-tech specialist spoke out about remote testing software — and now he’s being sued

***ACADEMIC LIFE  

How a Mild-Mannered USC Professor Accidentally Ignited Academia’s Latest Culture War

Pitt law school adjunct professor resigns after using a racial slur in class

Pitt law school adjunct professor resigns after using a racial slur in class

***ADMINISTRATORS

University President Dies After Contracting COVID-19 

Former Okla. President and VP Will Not Be Charged in Sexual Misconduct Case involving students

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGES

Evangelical Colleges Are Handling COVID-19 Much Like Their Secular Counterparts

Former theology school administrators in Columbus charged with conspiracy, financial aid fraud

Santee Christian College to Pay $225,000 Over Federal Violations on Recruiting

Christian Colleges Will Survive, but Change Is Coming

Liberty University launches website to report misconduct under Jerry Falwell Jr.'s tenure

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGE TUITION

Houghton College to slash tuition in half for 2021

Three Evangelical Colleges Cut Tuition Prices

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGES & POLITICS

Christian College Faculty Aren't Lining Up for Trump

Teaching Politics at Belmont Has Me Worried About the State of Debate 

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGE RESIGNATIONS

Southwest Baptist University president resigns  

Houghton College president to retire in 2021

Gordon College president is stepping down  

***MOODY BIBLE

Moody Bible head responds to Title IX claims, sex abuse mishandling

Lesbian student says Moody Bible Institute threatened her for tweeting about sexuality 

***RESEARCH 

The Perils of Publication and Citation Bias

How often do leading biomedical journals use statistical experts to evaluate statistical methods? The results of a survey

Quotation errors in general science journals

***RETRACTIONS

The bizarre anti-vaccine paper a Florida professor has been trying to have retracted to no avail

Continued post-retraction citation of a fraudulent clinical trial report, 11 years after it was retracted for falsifying data  

***STUDENT LIFE 

Faced with a daily barrage of news, college students find it hard to tell what's real and what's 'fake news'

Report: 28% of College Students Come From Immigrant Families

College counselors innovate to help students with financial aid applications

Fewer Pell Grant recipients enrolled in private nonprofit colleges this fall

Nationwide, first-year enrollment has dropped 16 percent at four-year colleges, and 23 percent at community colleges

US Tycoon Who Pledged Millions For Black Students Admits Tax Fraud 

RI federal judge dismisses student lawsuit but laments “ American democracy is in peril’

***STUDENTS & COVID

Student lawsuits against universities demanding COVID-19 refunds pile up

College journalists report from their quarantined campuses

COVID is pushing these college students to drop out. That could devastate the economy and their lives

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

How the University of Michigan failed to heed warnings about doctor's alleged sex abuse

University of Utah and family of Lauren McCluskey reach $13.5M settlement

No More Clery Act Handbook

Judge benchslaps Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for its treatment of accused student in Title IX case

***CRIME ON CAMPUS

The Crimes of the Campus ($)

No charges for former University of Utah officer who showed explicit photos of Lauren McCluskey

Articles of interest about religion - Oct 22

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***RELIGION & THE VIRUS

Ventilation and air filtration play a key role in preventing the spread of COVID-19 indoors

Data shows clusters of COVID cases linked to church services in North Carolina

Leader of evangelical school in California addresses outbreak in video

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

The Evangelical Movement’s Bad Bargain (opinion)

Billy Graham's granddaughter urges evangelicals not to support Trump 

White Christians still favor Trump over Biden, but support has slipped

Michigan billboard campaign contrasts Trump’s words against Jesus’

Evangelical leaders have long talked of conspiracies against God’s chosen – those ideas are finding resonance today

How Christian nationalism may determine whether you wear a mask

Faith leaders back Biden in sign that evangelical support for Trump is waning

Trump looks to evangelical Latinos for boost in Florida 

***DENOMINATIONS 

First-ever survey of race, sexuality and gender identity of Episcopal clergy is underway

Episcopal Church worship attendance down by nearly 25% since 2009

***CATHOLIC

Priest says someone called police about a homeless person, but it was a statue of Jesus

Pope calls for civil unions for same-sex couples, in major departure from Vatican doctrine

Pope removes Polish bishop accused of sex abuse cover-up

Computer Whiz Who Died In 2006 Could Become 1st Millennial Saint

Major U.S. diocese files for bankruptcy after 200 sexual abuse lawsuits

***MEGACHURCHES 

Megachurch pastor John Hagee tests positive for COVID-19

Megachurch Pastor Greg Laurie Tests Positive for Covid-19 

***RELIGION & SCIENCE

Elsevier journal disavows, but does not retract, paper on intelligent design

***RELIGION IN COURT

LifeWay inks out-of-court agreement with former CEO Thom Rainer

Private school sues Oregon over in-person learning restrictions

Christian Group’s cost-sharing Insurance Plan Called a Fraud by state of New York

Case dismissed of former Chattanooga pastor suing his church for $4 million

***RELIGIOUS CELEBRITIES

Kentucky Church Launches Investigation into CCM Artist Chris Rice following Allegations of Sexual Assault 

Died: Luci Swindoll, Who Believed in God’s Grace and Being Herself  

real learning

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In the early 1980s, two physicists at Arizona State University wanted to know whether a typical introductory physics course, with its traditional emphasis on Newton’s laws of motion, changed the way students thought about motion.

They gave the test to people entering the classes of four different physics professor, all good teachers, according to both colleagues and their students.

Did the course change student thinking? Not really. After the term was over, the two physicists gave their examination once more and discovered that the course had made comparatively small changes in the way students thought. Even many “A” students continued to think like Aristotle rather than like Newton. They had memorized formulae and learned to plug the right numbers into them, but they did not change their basic conceptions. Instead, they had interpreted everything they heard about motion in terms of the intuitive framework they had brought with them to the course.

The conducted individual interviews with some of the people who continued to reject Newton’s perspectives to see if they could dissuade them from their misguided assumptions. The students performed all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid confronting and revising the fundamental underlying principles that guided their understanding of the physical universe.

Those physics students who made A’s yet failed to grasp anything about Newtonian concepts had not rebuilt their mental models about motion. They had merely learned to plug numbers into formulae without experiencing an expectation failure with the universes they imagined in their minds. They took all they heard from their professors and simply wrapped it around some pre-existing model of how motion works.

Perhaps because they were focused on grades rather than on understanding the physical universe, they didn’t care enough to grapple with their own ideas and build new paradigms of reality.

Ken Bain,  What the Best Teachers Do

the strongest political bias of all

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The strongest bias in American politics is not a liberal bias or a conservative bias; it is a confirmation bias, or the urge to believe only things that confirm what you already believe to be true. Not only do we tend to seek out and remember information that reaffirms what we already believe, but there is also a “backfire effect,” which sees people doubling down on their beliefs after being presented with evidence that contradicts them. So, where do we go from here? There’s no simple answer, but the only way people will start rejecting falsehoods being fed to them is by confronting uncomfortable truths.

Emma Roller writing in the New York Times

Recent data science articles - Oct 16

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Articles of interest about journalism, writing, fakes, & social media - Oct 16

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***THE VIRUS

A Global Data Effort Probes Whether Covid Causes Diabetes

When COVID-19 superspreaders are talking, where you sit in the room matters

This company is giving away bacon-scented face masks

Study: COVID-19 transmission risk on airplanes 'virtually non-existent' when passengers wear masks

***JOURNALISM 

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s record on press rights issues

Most in US say anonymous sources in news are OK only in special cases

Journalists, legal observers remain exempt from federal dispersal orders while feds appeal injunction, split appeals panel rules 

***JOURNALISM & THE ELECTION

National News Outlets Prepare for an Election Night that Might Turn into Days, Weeks

How Not to Cover Voter Fraud Disinformation

How The Associated Press Plans to Report The Election Results 

***WRITING & READING

People Are Recommending Books For People Who Haven't Read Since High School, And it is Wonderful

Your Local Bookstore Wants You to Know That It’s Struggling

Reading C. S. Lewis in the Time of Covid

Science as Literature

***FAKES & FRAUDS 

How to Deal With a Crisis of Misinformation ($)

“It’s been really, really bad”: How Latinx voters are being targeted by disinformation

Podcast discussion of a paper titled the online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views 

***QANON

YouTube bans QAnon, other conspiracy content that targets individuals 

QAnon is tearing families apart ($) 

How the "QAnon Candidate" Marjorie Taylor Greene Reached the Doorstep of Congress

Conspiracy Theories, Such As QAnon, Appear To Gain Ground In Britain

How a dangerous virtual cult is going global

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Facebook says it will finally ban anti-vaccination ads

64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going 

23% of users in U.S. say social media led them to change views on an issue; some cite Black Lives Matter

TikTok passes Instagram as second-most popular social app for U.S. teens 

'Freedom of speech is no longer free.' Ohio man says he was fired over a TikTok video

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Google is adding cross-app account security alerts on iOS

DuckDuckGo, EFF, and others just launched privacy settings for the whole internet

Gmail users: Expect to see these new security alerts, says Google

Google is adding cross-app account security alerts on iOS 

***LANGUAGE 

The origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language tells us a lot about language creation

The pandemic is changing the English language

In Language Learning, Mistakes Are Not Bad

In many Asian languages, 'LGBTQ' doesn't translate—here's how some fill the gaps

***POETRY

The Future of Poetry in 10 Poems ($)

Louise Glück, American poet, wins Nobel Prize in Literature 2020

Kendrick Lamar’s Poetic Awakening

The Gift of Blindness and Poetry

The New York Times project on Young Black Poets ($)

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Prezi introduces dynamic video teaching tools as education moves online

Apple iMovie vs Adobe Premiere Elements

 

Articles of Interest about higher ed - Oct 15

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***HIGHER ED & THE VIRUS 

Pandemic presents an opportunity for small liberal arts colleges to change

List of employees with COVID-19 at Volunteer State Community College emailed by mistake

How Transparent Is Your College's COVID Dashboard?

***K-12

Schools are 2 months into reopening under Covid-19 and no one's keeping track of how it's going

Up to 1 million California students may still lack connectivity during distance learning

***LAYOFFS & FURLOUGHS

University of Memphis braces for layoffs as COVID-19 takes its toll 

D'Youville College to lay off employees furloughed since spring

Ithaca College to cut 130 faculty positions due to low enrollment

Duke University to lay off 75 employees due to COVID-19 disruptions

***COLLEGE FINANCES 

Cornish College of the Arts Declares Financial Emergency and Exigency

 ***HIGHER ED  

University of Florida ends use of prison labor after mounting student pressure

Texas A&M shortens spring break to a single day

Colleges cancel diversity programs in response to Trump order

***HIGHER ED IN COURT 

Princeton will pay nearly $1M in back pay to female professors in sweeping discrimination settlement

Two Lawsuits, Five Internal Complaints Allege Discrimination within Univ. of Chicago Facilities Services Dept

***HUMANITIES 

Colleges are dropping courses in humanities

***ONLINE CLASSES   

Coursera Founder Launches Zoom Challenger For Higher Ed

Viral video shows 2 Vallejo teachers bad mouthing students after class: 'These kids are technologically illiterate'

A college student says a professor told her not to breastfeed her baby during online class

Fine Arts majors say they struggle with online and distance learning

***ONLINE CHEATING   

150 University of Missouri students caught cheating on exams held online amid COVID-19

More Mizzou students are cheating — and you can blame the pandemic. Sort of

California bar exam takers say facial recognition software rejected them 

***ACADEMIC LIFE

More than 100 back Notre Dame faculty members sign an online letter opposing the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

Professors endure a summer of cancellations: recent assaults on academic freedom

Harvard professor Charles Lieber sues university over legal fees

***ADMINISTRATORS

Notre Dame president ends quarantine after COVID diagnosis

Former dean claims Millersville University discriminated against her race, age and gender in federal lawsuit

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGES

Ohio Wesleyan cuts 18 majors, consolidates departments to save $4 million

Gordon College cuts tuition

Facebook bans Liberty University's Falkirk Center co-founder

Former Student Claims Moody Bible Institute Put Her on ‘Warning Status' for Being Lesbian

Moody Bible Institute Must Face Sex Discrimination, Retaliation Lawsuit ($)

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGES & COVID

Notre Dame’s President Faces an Angry Campus After Getting the Coronavirus ($)

Baylor suspends football activities due to COVID issues

Point Loma Nazarene University reports jump in COVID-19 cases

***SEMINARIES

Court Dismisses LGBT Anti-Discrimination Lawsuit Against Fuller Seminary

SBC seminary votes to retain slaveholders’ names on buildings

***RESEARCH 

Blatantly shoddy work is still being published in peer-reviewed journals despite errors that a layperson can spot because there are few consequences for bad research   

Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade. Have we learned anything?

How One Prominent Journal Went Very Wrong ($) 

Journals’ English copy-editing services are inadequate and unethical ($) 

Publish, profit, predate, perish and peer review 

Retraction Watch on The Data Skeptic podcast

***STUDENT LIFE

College kids get creative to get out the vote

A college refuses to accommodate students who are afraid of being on campus

On college campuses, resident assistants in dorms adjust to a new role: COVID cop

Students continue to be stressed about college, their futures

Latinx DACA Students Contend with Adversity at Universities

***STUDENTS IN COURT

ASU journalism student sues university, claiming First Amendment violation in fallout from controversial tweet 

Student sues Case Western Reserve seeking refund for loss of in-person classes because of coronavirus

College baseball, racial epithets, and free speech

***RACIAL ISSUES ON CAMPUS

Duquesne University fires professor who used racial slur in class

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

U.S. Department of Education fines Baylor $462K for violations of Jeanne Clery Act

LSU releases new regulations addressing sexual harassment under Title IX

Why Is It So Hard to Fire a Tenured Sexual Predator? ($)

 

Motivated reasoning

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Motivated reasoning is thinking through a topic with the aim, conscious or unconscious, of reaching a particular kind of conclusion. In a football game, we see the fouls committed by the other team but overlook the sins of our own side. We are more likely to notice what we want to notice. Experts are not immune to motivated reasoning. Under some circumstances their expertise can even become a disadvantage. 

People with deeper expertise are better equipped to spot deception, but if they fall into the trap of motivated reasoning, they are able to muster more reasons to believe whatever they really wish to believe.

Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up

Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy

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The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.  

Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. This is misguided. It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out.  

James Clear, Atomic Habits

Acting The Part

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The late Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack once told me that he was at a loss when he first moved behind the camera, so he simply acted like a director. 

 The feeling of not being up to the job, the belief that the role is too big, is something every leader has felt. It is evidence that the role is greater than the individual—and thus worth taking on. Pollack made the leader's requisite leap into the unknown, accepting the risk of failure that is the first step in becoming a leader—and he excelled. 

That adaptive capacity is the most important attribute in determining who will become a leader. It's also the defining trait of the best actors. Inhabiting roles other than the one most of us think of as self is essential to both. So is the empathy needed to project yourself into someone else's skin.

Like great actors, great leaders create and sell an alternative vision of the world, a better one in which we are an essential part. Philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote that Churchill idealized his countrymen with such intensity that in the end they rose to his ideal. Mahatma Gandhi made India proud of herself. Washington and the other Founding-Fathers shared that great leader's gift of making people believe they could be—and were—part of a great nation. Martin Luther King Jr. had that same genius. 

When you consider such towering and theatrical leaders, you realize leadership may be the greatest performing art of all—the only one that creates institutions of lasting value, institutions that can endure long after the stars who envisioned them have left the theater. 

Warren Bennis, The Essential Bennis