I smell trouble (with tenure)

It’s rare that I blog about something that happens at Ithaca, but this issue raises a string of questions those involved in tenure review across the country will have to address — or, in some cases more immediate than others, answer.

The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Ithacan reported late last week that an assistant professor at Ithaca College, Margo Ramlal-Nanoke, hired a law firm to confront the college’s administration and board of trustees about her tenure.

Ramlal-Nanoke, a native of India who grew up in the Carribean, teaches classes about global race, ethnic relations and women in the third world. She also advises the student group Students for a Just Peace, which supports human rights and is against the occupation of the Palestinian territories, according to the group’s online listing.

In a letter sent to the college’s board of trustees, Ramlal- Nanoke and her law firm alleged her tenure review was “influenced by blatant political lobbying against her based on her teachings on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

The situation revisits two questions that have plagued a handful of campuses during the past year: What constitutes academic freedom, and what role does it, and the influence of outside groups and organizations, play in granting tenure?

There are plenty of colleges that have academic freedom and freedom of speech in their mission statements. But where these colleges and universities seem to struggle is how exactly to put that into practice.

The lawyers representing Nanoke were involved in a similar tenure case of a political science professor from DePaul University last year. That also centered around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ended with a settlement and that professor’s resignation.

The professor, Norman G. Finkelstein, caught heat for his writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and something he called the “Holocaust industry.” Ramlal-Nanoke’s lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, wrote in the letter to Ithaca’s board of trustees that her client was neither “pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, but many of the countries and societies she writes about are supportive of something other than Israeli policy.”

Columbia University has had its own share of tenure trouble. It’s in the midst of a two-year tenure review of Joseph Massad, a Palestinian-American scholar and associate professor of Arab politics in the university’s department of Middle East and Asian languages and culture.

A Chronicle of Higher Education article consulted professors who said Columbia’s tenure board voted “narrowly in favor” of Massad’s tenure, which the provost, Alan Brinkley ,then denied. Supporters of Massad recently convinced the provost to review his tenure, so the professor will get a second shot.

Joseph Massad’s writings and research on addressing “Zionism as the new anti-Semitism” and “encouraging the violent dismantling of “Jewish society in Israel”” have appeared in places like New Politics and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has many supporters, but many people at Columbia, including students and faculty, think Massad is using his professorship as a mouthpiece instead of as a “venue for scholarship and inquiry.”

At Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology, came up for tenure, which launched a debate about the merit of her academic research. According to a chronicle article about El-Haj’s tenure, Paula R. Stern, a Barnard alumna, posted an open letter on the site Petition Online calling Abu El-Haj a scholar of “demonstrably inferior caliber” and urging Barnard to reject her tenure bid.

In a book published in 2001, El-Haj asserted Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. She also wrote that in these quests, Israelis sometimes used bulldozers, and in the process, destroyed remains of other cultures.

El-Haj’s legitimacy was questioned because her critics said she, as a Palestinian, was not qualified to analyze Jewish scholars, especially as a scholar not fluent in Hebrew.

All of the cases mentioned in this post revolve around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I find it hard to believe that a professor be so publicly scrutinized if he or she were publishing new research on relationships involving the Russia’s relationship with Georgia, or America’s relationship with China. What seems to be missing from all of these cases is a consistent way to determine what place political beliefs should play in classrooms, and to what extent they can damage a professor up for tenure.

As if all this wasn’t enough for Ithaca College to handle, another one of its own tenure cases was exhumed in the New York Times earlier this week in an article titled (get this) “Judgment Day.”

Part of the article was an account from Carolyn Byerly, a former journalism professor who sued the college for sex discrimination in 2001 because her tenure was denied on the basis of student evaluations, she said , which her department and dean said reflected an inability to meet the standard of excellence for teaching. Byerly said her focus “on how race, gender and sexual orientation are handled by the media led students to deny her chance for tenure.”

The basis for her tenure denial, she said, was only 43 negative evaluations “full of gender bias: out of several hundred positive ones.”

Byerly lost her case on summary judgment, and when she appealed, she was denied.

It seems like Ithaca College is on the edge of its own “judgment day.” And if Ramlal-Nankoe takes the college to court, it could be interesting to see if Byerly’s case comes into play.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (and more!): Week 2 Roundup

Okay, so part of me just wanted to quote Rufus Wainwright. Don’t be embarrassed if you’re singing along (because I am).

Sayonara Smokers: Students at the 14 universities in Pennsylvania’s state school system were fuming (pun intended) last Wednesday after the chancellor told them — via e-mail — that smoking would be banned everywhere on campus. That includes courtyards, parking lots and athletic fields.

A state law was put into action the day after that prohibited smoking in any public place in Pennsylvania.

The chancellor, John Cavanaugh, discussed the law with the university presidents and other board members and decided that the law extended beyond buildings to include the rest of campus.

Most students responded by ignoring Cavanaugh, lighting up in protest and receiving warrants. But there were not arrests.

Apparently this isn’t anything new. The American Lung Association states that more than 130 colleges and universities ban smoking on their campus, with 500 more banning smoking in their residence halls.

For now, Cavanaugh said he doesn’t expect people to “stop smoking overnight.” We’ll see how long it takes for the issue to go up in flames. (Don’t worry. The smoking puns stop here).

The new thirst quencher: This article from the New York Examiner is just insane.

Several studies this summer indicated chocolate milk was better than sports drinks, including an Indiana University study that showed cyclists who drank the beverage after cycling worked out longer and with more power for a second workout as compared to a carboyhydrate replacement beverage, and just as long when they consumed a traditional fluid replacement beverage.

It seems to work so well that Mitzi Duluan, who consults with the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, is advocating for chocolate milk use. A number of colleges and universities are using it for football practice, too.

Is anyone else disturbed by the image of large, sweaty football players chugging chocolate milk?

It gets better: there are several pro athletes, including NBA All-Star Dwight Howard and tennis star Ana Ivanovic, that support chocolate milk as a post-workout beverage. Howard is now working with the national Milk Mustache “got milk?” (R) campaign to launch a 25-city Refuel Your School tour. They’re actually REWARDING 25 high school athletic teams for choosing chocolate milk after games.

Take that as you will.

I don’t think they cover this in seminary: A Roman Catholic priest at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has pleaded not guilty to accusations that he sold cocaine out of the university’s Newman Center.

How comforting.

The university’s paper, The Pantagraph, reported the priest was arrested last Wednesday after a police search of the student center and his rectory turned up three grams of cocaine, as well as drug paraphernalia.

The paper also said he faces two counts of “unlawful delivery of a controlled substance” and one count of “unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.”

He could face up to 30 years in prison if he’s convicted — plenty of time for a hearty penance.

Your favorite four letter word.

Or maybe its just mine.

The RIAA (for those not up on college lawsuits, that’s the Recording Industry Association of America) gained some serious ground in President Bush’s Higher Education Act, signed into law in August.

The act covered everything from gift sharing to tuition and student loans, but we’ll get to that later.

The reason why the HEOA matters now is that the impact it will have on peer to peer file sharing is just starting to surface.

The ease with which college students used to (illegally) download music is gone, after the RIAA hit thousands of college students with pre-litigation letters that ordered them to pay a settlement fee, often up to $3,000, or face jail time.

Now, the steps RIAA used to “strongly recommend” are written into the bill:

What the bill lays out isn’t far removed from what many colleges are already doing. But it’s going to elevate the tension that’s long existed between information officers and the recording industry.

The tension started in the first wave of RIAA pre-litigation letters in February 2007.  Here’s how it works : The RIAA traces illegal activity to an IP address. Then it asks  the college or university , usually via information or technology officers, for the identity of the alleged offender (your average student).

And then, administrators from some colleges and universities (like our own Dave Weil — thanks Dave!) refused to hand over the information.

Unfortunately, subpoenas eliminated that road block.

That’s chapter one.

Chapter two made colleges and universities even more angry. In January  the Motion Picture Association of America let it slip that they may have … probably … definitely overestimated how much college students contribute to the country’s illegal file sharing. In 2005, they claimed college students accounted for 44 percent of all illegal file sharing. Earlier this year, they took it back. It turns out only 15 PERCENT of illegally shared material  was by college students.

… Oops?

So now what we’re left with is the beginning of a new tug of war : how much the colleges and universities are willing to comply with the rules, and how strictly the RIAA and feds will enforce them.

I’m not saying RIAA is completely wrong. What’s going on is illegal — but targeting a population that comprises only 15 percent of your problem probably isn’t the best way to go about changing a long history of music downloading culture. Not to mention these new regulations could cost colleges upwards of $40,000 a year — money, in light of how the economy has been going, that could probably be directed somewhere more practical.

Keep this on the radar. It could get feisty.

Seven years later …

… it seems like some campuses have forgotten about what happened on Sept. 11.

Or, at the very least, are indifferent to the consequences.

Here at Ithaca College, that’s the case, but I shouldn’t generalize: There are many college students who were affected by the terrorist attacks on our country, either directly through the loss of family or friend, or indirectly by the way they see the world.

But for many more its unclear about what role it should play in our lives. How do we respond? Do we observe the day every year? Do we keep it active in the way we discuss and argue? Do we let it become a buzz word that’s overused and dies away?

I don’t have answers, but this article from the Houston Chronicle gets some from professors and students.

How will one of the most profound events in the country’s history will shape our future? If we don’t talk about it, we won’t get answers any time soon.

Cuomo to student-loan companies: Shape up. Or I’ll sue you.

It turns out New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo won’t have to take legal action against eight student-loan companies who he said used “false and misleading advertising practices.”

The companies, Campus Door, EduCap, GMAC Bank, Graduate Loan Associates, Nelnet,  NextStudent and Xanthus Financial Services, agreed to a code of conduct today that banned

My Rich Uncle voluntarily agreed to the code.

Seven of the companies also agreed to pay a total of $1.4 million to help educate students and their families on the student loan and financial aid process.

In June, Cuomo’s office launched investigation into the companies’ practices, like luring student borrowers with cash and iPods and being dishonest about loan terms and benefits. Last week, he announced he would prepare a lawsuit against the companies because these practices broke state and federal laws.

Cuomo isn’t new to this game — he kicked off another major investigation last year, when he was the first to uncover conflicts of interest in the way lenders dealt with universities (like, I don’t know, lenders who paid universities to recommend their companies to students. Someone in public relations missed that red flag …)

Because of that, Cuomo developed a separate code of conduct  for lenders and universities that became the model for New York State’s SLATE, the Student Lending, Accountability, Transparency and Enforcement act.

Between SLATE and the new code, New York state students, at least, can sleep safe knowing they’re getting more complete knowledge about the loans they take out. Now if only Cuomo could figure out a way to reduce the cost of education … he wouldn’t have to regulate at all.

Religion, smoking and drinking: Yup, looks like a roundup.

I know I haven’t shown College Ave much love this week. I’ve been in Atlanta, home of GTech, Georgia State, U Georgia, Spellman College … greek life mayhem … the list continues.

Starting next week I’ll have a roundup every Sunday, but here are a few items to get us back on track.

Academic Freedom? Anyone?: The University of Southern California recently removed text from Islamic scripture from its Muslim Student Association’s Web site. The school’s newspaper, the Daily Trojan, reported the text contained excerpts called hadiths, sayings from the Prophet Muhammad not included in the Quran. The school’s provost, C.L. Max Nikias, said the passage advocated violence against Jews, and the DT indicated it called on Muslims to “kill jews.”

The DT reported Nikias took down the site without consulting the group first.

Here’s where it gets good: Nikias learned about the passage when a Jewish human rights group approached him about the language. And David Horowitz, a conservative activist, (whose exact connection to this whole scenario besides being an activist is unclear) said this was his first “concrete victory” against student associations he said are tied to radical Islamist thought.

What action, if any, the MSA will take isn’t clear either. But this raises a few interesting questions.

I don’t have the answers to any of those questions — but maybe by the week’s end the Provost, or the students, will.

Hookahs are the new Camels: Hey there, hookah friends. Looks like you may be in trouble. A study by the University of Pennsylvania showed about 40 percent of college students had smoked tobacco from a hookah.

More than 200 hookah cafes have opened in the U.S. during the past decade.

The interesting side note: One third of the students who smoked using water pipes hadn’t smoked a cigarette.

You can vote, go to war and get married. Now, you might be able to drink, too, thanks to the Amethyst Initiative . The initiative is a pact signed by the presidents of about 130 colleges and universities who are asking lawmakers to

“To support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21 year-old drinking age.

To consider whether the 10% highway fund “incentive” encourages or inhibits that debate.

To invite new ideas about the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.

We pledge ourselves and our institutions to playing a vigorous, constructive role as these critical discussions unfold.”

The last time the U.S. drinking age got this much attention was 1984, when Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. It didn’t set the drinking age per se, but essentially imposed a penalty of “10% of a state’s federal highway appropriation on any state setting its drinking age lower than 21.” The presidents who have signed this initative believe the age has encouraged binge drinking, and hope to start a conversation about the issue — not necessarily change it.

The outcome of this initiative and legislation that follows could dramatically alter the experience of college students nationwide. Stay tuned throughout the year to see how this unfolds.