SAR Academic Freedom Media Review – January 7-13, 2012

The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available here. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.

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Texas Can Regulate Secular Matters at Religious Colleges, Opinion Says
Katherine Mangan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/13

US teachers offered support for climate change lessons
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, 1/13

Free Speech and (Offensive) Art
Daniel Grant, Inside Higher Ed, 1/13

Stormy waters ahead as ‘disruptive forces’ sweep the old guard
Sarah Cunnane, Times Higher Education, 1/12

Independence, transparency key to research work of ESRI
Frances Ruane, The Irish Times, 1/12

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The Steel Wheels Coming to Town

If you are fortunate enough to live in or near Marlinton in Pocahontas County, WV, make your way to the Opera House this Saturday, November 12 to see The Steel Wheels in concert at 7:30 pm.  I’ll be there!  I’ve been a fan of these guys for a while now, but this is the first chance I’m getting to see them live.  I can’t wait.  I learned about them from Bicycle Times magazine’s June 2010 issue which reported on their  pedal-powered, seven night, concert tour.  They strapped their instruments and merchandise to their bikes and headed from town to town, covering nearly 300 miles.  This wasn’t some stunt, followed by a support vehicle in case they got tired and needed a lift; this was a genuine concert tour on bicycles.  In fact, they did another this year.  As I read I learned that they were based in Harrisonburg, VA, a place I knew well having gone to James Madison University for my first two years of college.

Those two things alone were reason enough reason to like these guys.  They hail from Virginia, and they tour by bicycle.  (Not always, of course.  They have a national following, and a bicycle tour across the entire country is impractical, at best.)

They were praiseworthy, but were they any good?  Now I had yet to check out the music.

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Why is Virginia Really Challenging the Health Care Law?

What is wrong with the state government in Virginia? Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond threw out Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act, but now he and Governor Bob McDonnell have vowed to appeal.

Why are the Republicans in Virginia against ensuring that everyone has access to health care? As I understand it, the law is being attacked as un-Constitutional because it compels everyone to purchase insurance, and the federal government does not have that power. What, then, is the solution? A national system in which the government is guarantor is fine by me, Medicare for all. However, that is not palatable to the right, for one reason or another. It’s costly, inefficient and unlikely to remain solvent, or so they say. My interactions with Medicare have generally been favorable, and wonder about these characterizations. Even if they are true, can’t these things be fixed? Wouldn’t expanding the pool of participants in medicare with healthy, younger people be a way to do that. But the Right is not particularly interested in solving these issues because their real concern is ideological, and they think Medicare is a form of socialism. (Click here to cue ominous music!)

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SAR Academic Freedom Media Review, April 9-15

The Scholars at Risk media review seeks to raise awareness about academic freedom issues in the news. Subscription information and archived media reviews are available here. The views and opinions expressed in these articles are not necessarily those of Scholars at Risk.

Scholars at Risk calls for letters on behalf of Professor Nasser bin Ghaith of the UAE
Scholars at Risk, 4/15

12 Organizations Ask U. of Virginia to Safeguard Climate Researcher’s Academic Freedom
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/14

Hastings’ board pulls UC brand from rights meeting
Bob Egelko, The San Francisco Chronicle, 4/13

Top PEN Prize to Honor Nasrin Sotoudeh, Jailed Iranian Lawyer, Writer, Activist
PEN, 4/13

Iran: independent civil society organisations ignored over draft law on associations
Education International, 4/12

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Budget Cuts and the National Community

Discover history at our National Parks

When I was growing up we traveled often as a family for vacations and weekends. We had a camper and took it to all kinds of interesting places, frequently our nation’s national parks and historic monuments. I remember fascinated by the history I learned visiting the birthplace of George Washington, the Yorktown Battlefield and National Cemetery, the battlefields of Gettysburg, the birthplace of Booker T. Washington, the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial and so many others. Frequent visits to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the Blue Ridge Parkway or the Smoky Mountains awakened my fascination with the natural wonders of the world, and the visitor centers, trails or markers were as good as any classroom. I was an inquisitive boy, so I took home the free brochures maps and field guides from these places to study more, and begged my parents, more often than not successfully, to buy me the books in the gift shops that I could read at home.

I learned a lot about our nation’s history and the natural world this way, it seems like as much as I did in school. I don’t remember being taught about Booker T. Washington before college. That’s not to say I wasn’t, but I don’t remember it like I do the visit to his birthplace. We must have learned about Thomas Jefferson, but I don’t remember that, either and my virtual obsession with him sprang out of a family visit to Monticello. While visiting the Smoky Mountains I was first exposed the the tragedy of the Native Americans and the horrors of incidents like the Trail of Tears. Most of these parks had not entry fee, paid for entirely with tax dollars. That meant that we could and would, explore something on on a whim. If it was a rainy day and we had planned to do something outside, we could tour a historic mansion, instead. In addition to the National Parks and Historic Places, there was a whole other network of state parks and sites operated by non-profits that were also free.

More recently an increasing percentage of these sites have imposed an entry fee. People want low taxes, budgets are small, and government at all levels from local to national is practicing austerity. Fee for service became a model for a lot of what government does in the 1980s, and it has been that way since. It makes sense on a certain level. Why should those of who never have any intention of visiting one of these sites pay for their upkeep and for providing services there? In fact, these properties are part of our national heritage. We, as a people, have decided that these places are an important part of our history and they need to be preserved. They are monuments that need to be visible to our fellow citizens and the world to remind us of our common heritage and who we are as a people. The White House has offered to cut $105 million from the budget of the National Park Service, and the Republican’s want more.

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Virginia’s Attorney General and the Universities

Colleges and Universities in the State

The University of Virginia said Monday that it would continue to fight state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II‘s efforts to obtain documents related to a climate scientist’s work, just hours after Cuccinelli reissued a civil subpoena for the papers.

The new Civil Investigative Demand revives a contentious fight between Cuccinelli (R), a vocal global warming skeptic, and Virginia’s flagship university over documents related to the research of Michael Mann, who worked at the university from 1999 to 2005. A judge blocked Cuccinelli’s first bid to obtain the documents.

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Mann, whose research concluded that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming, works at Penn State University.

Cuccinelli has been trying to force the public university, technically a client of his office, to turn over documents related to Mann’s work since April. Cuccinelli has said he wants to see the documents to determine whether Mann committed fraud as he sought public dollars for his work.  — The Washington Post, October 5, 2010

Health Care Reform Provisions Take Effect Today

Key provisions of the new health care law that was ratified six months ago went into effect today.   Critics say they will raise the cost of insurance unbearably.  The White House acknowledges there will be increases, but they estimate premiums to go up by 1-2%.  Most independent estimates don’t expect huge huge increases.

Moreover, the benefits and protections of the reforms may be worth small premium increases to most people.  Some of them already went into effect yesterday!  There’s not been very much coverage, but what there has been has focused on these provisions.

  • Parents may keep their children on the family health insurance to age 26, if the child is not offered coverage through an employer.
  • Children can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.
  • Lifetime limits on essential benefits like hospital stays are abolished.
  • Insurers must cover preventive services such as immunizations, mammograms and colonoscopies, without charging consumers deductibles, co-pays or co-insurance fees.
  • All of those provisions are valuable and important protections.

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    Academic Freedom Media Review

    Academic Freedom Media Review
    May 22 – 28, 2010

    Below is the weekly compilation of news articles addressing issues of academic freedom that is put together by Scholars at Risk.

    MLA Pushes for End to Ideological Denials of Visas
    Inside Higher Ed, 5/28

    Groups protest Israel denying US student’s entry
    Jeff Karoun, The Associated Press, 5/27
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    A Television Viewing Guide: Lost, The State of the Union, and The Wanda Sykes Show

    I’m a big fan of Wanda Sykes.  This is a quotation from her show last week.  Well put!

    The good news, the White House has confirmed that the State of the Union will not be on the same night as the season premier of Lost.  The bad news, Americans are more interested in a made up island than their own bleep-ed up country.

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    Ruffles and Flourishes

    A quick addendum to my post on schools refusing to carry Obama’s speech. Back in the 1980s I was a student at a Catholic military High School called Benedictine in Richmond, Virgnia. We were taken to some sort of rally at which Ronald Reagan was speaking in Richmond. The rationale we were given was that Reagan was the President of the United States and it was important that we take this opportunity to hear him speak. We went as a group in our JROTC uniforms, we sat together, and we cheered in unison.

    Some people were critical, but our local newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch praised us. I remember the last sentence to this day. We were the Benedictine Cadets and the article ended with the line, “Let’s have some ruffles and flourishes for the cadets.”
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    Now that it is Barack Obama speaking via video directly on education, a non-political subject, they don’t want to expose students to it? Go figure.