Former Northwestern professor David Protess writes a column at Huffington Post about a court’s ruling that requires Northwestern to reveal to the government “private communications between the students (and sometimes me) that included requests for references, breaking news about dead grandmothers and plans to meet for drinks.” Protess defends advocacy journalism, and concludes: “At stake is robust student-journalism, the autonomy of educational institutions and the liberty of Anthony McKinney, Armando Serrano and countless other wrongfully convicted prisoners.”
David Sirota writes at In These Times about the hypocrisy of the University of Colorado and other universities punishing marijuana use by students while tolerating alcohol abuse.
A jury has awarded a former Upper Iowa University employee more than $1.1 million in damages for wrongful termination. Lynne Seabrooke, an assistant registrar of international programs, was fired in February 2009 for verbally abusing colleagues; Seabrooke asserted that she was diagnosed with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety and therefore was protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The University plans to appeal.
Joe Berry comments on the University of Illinois spending more than $3 million on outside counsel to fight labor battles.
One of Rick Perry’s appointees to A&M gets fired by new Chancellor, brandishes a knife, and requires a police escort to be escorted from building. What’s happening to governance in the state of Texas?
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Ousted-A-amp-M-official-tells-lawyers-to-bring-2184581.php
On the subject of advocacy journalism, Bob Gibson, Executive Director of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, recently said: “Advocacy journalism can be a very valuable thing: people with a cause, people who want to change the world, people who want to take the country in a different direction. And there is more of that. There are more organizations that are doing long-term investigative reporting and generally they do buy into advocacy journalism. There are others that are forming that are taking the traditional tact of pursuing the truth wherever it leads, without a preordained direction, and we tend to trust those, I think, a little bit more because they have a track record—the good ones—of being balanced.” (Gibson appeared on the Charlottesville, VA, politics interview program Politics Matters with host and producer Jan Madeleine Paynter discussing journalism http://bit.ly/pm-gibson)