All posts tagged: universities

Politics Home Article | Making Money Shouldn’t Be Universities’ Priority, Says Zack Polanski

Politics Home Article | Making Money Shouldn’t Be Universities’ Priority, Says Zack Polanski

Published by Sam Flores

Zack Polanski is set to speak to UCU members tonight (Alamy) 3 min read1 hr Exclusive: The UK should stop treating university students like customers, Green Party leader Zack Polanski will say on Thursday. Addressing members of the University and College Union (UCU) this evening, Polanski, who wants to abolish tuition fees, will accuse successive Westminster governments of seeing higher education as a “commodity”, rather than “a public good”. In remarks shared with PoliticsHome ahead of his speech, Polanski is expected to warn that “tens of thousands” of academics nationwide are facing redundancies and job insecurity, while those who stay in the sector are suffering “shattered morale, crushing workloads, and stifled innovation – often while employed on exploitative, short-term contracts”.  “We all lose out when learning is treated as a commodity, when skills are seen as something to be sold at the highest cost possible, when curiosity and creativity are dismissed because they can’t be measured by exams,” he is set to say. His speech comes as the higher education sector continues to face severe financial strain. Earlier this month, …

David Brooks: Something Is Going Right at Universities

David Brooks: Something Is Going Right at Universities

Published by Daniella Wilson

Roosevelt Montás grew up in a small mountain village in the Dominican Republic. Two days before his 12th birthday, his mother flew him up to New York, where she had found a minimum-wage job in a garment factory. A few years later, when he was a sophomore in high school, some neighbors in his apartment building threw out a bunch of books. One of them was a finely bound volume of Socratic dialogues. Montás snagged it—and Socrates changed his life. A high-school mentor helped him get into Columbia, where students confront the great books of Western civilization in the school’s Core Curriculum. There, Montás encountered the writings of St. Augustine. “In plumbing the depths of his own psyche, Augustine gave me a language with which to approach my own interiority,” he recalled in his memoir, “he gave me a model and a set of questions with which to explore the emotional wilderness, full of doubt and confusion, that was my own coming-to-adulthood, in America.” Augustine paradoxically caused Montás to lose his Christian faith, but led …

A rural college uses ancient Islamic archives to reconnect students to African legacy

A rural college uses ancient Islamic archives to reconnect students to African legacy

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — In a former segregated school in rural Virginia, an Islamic college has been reconnecting its mostly African American Muslim students with a legacy of faith and scholarship largely erased from mainstream history.  IQOU Theological College, in the town of Charlotte Court House, for the past two years has housed a small, borrowed collection of ancient manuscripts from the West African city of Timbuktu in Mali, a center of Islamic learning that thrived between the 13th and 17th centuries. It’s also a region where many Africans were kidnapped during the transatlantic slave trade.  Hafiz Hassan Ali Qadri, a Quran teacher at the college, said the 17 manuscripts can offer African American Muslims a concrete link to a part of their ancestors’ history. Seeing handwritten works on law, theology, astronomy and other subjects challenges an enduring narrative that enslaved Africans arrived in the United States with little education or scholarly traditions, he said. “It goes full circle, showing that this is where we came from — we came from knowledge,” Qadri said. “And what we’re …

Universities of Wisconsin Regents Cite Disputes Over AI and Other Topics in President’s Firing

Universities of Wisconsin Regents Cite Disputes Over AI and Other Topics in President’s Firing

Published by Sam Flores

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Leaders on the board that oversees the Universities of Wisconsin rebuffed the fired system president’s claim that he was “blindsided” by their decision to oust him, telling lawmakers Thursday that he was slow to address pressing issues like artificial intelligence and feared upsetting policymakers, faculty and staff. Members of the board of regents had said little publicly until Thursday about the surprise dismissal Tuesday of Jay Rothman as head of the 165,000-student university system. Regents voted unanimously with no public discussion to fire Rothman after a closed-door meeting. Rothman told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday that he was kept in the dark about why he was being fired and his dismissal “blindsided” him. But two regents who testified at a state Senate committee hearing on Thursday said Rothman knew more than he is letting on. They also said there were “substantial” reasons for his being fired, and Rothman was aware of them. “That decision was not made lightly,” Regent President Amy Bogost said. “It was not political. It …

Universities of Wisconsin Board Will Vote on Whether to Fire System President Who Refused to Quit

Universities of Wisconsin Board Will Vote on Whether to Fire System President Who Refused to Quit

Published by Sam Flores

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents scheduled a Tuesday vote to consider firing the system’s president, who refused their offer to quietly resign because he said no reason had been given for the surprise ouster. Jay Rothman said in two letters sent to regents that he would not resign from leading the 165,000-student system without an explanation of what he had done wrong. Board of Regents President Amy Bogost said in a statement Monday that Rothman “was not without notice, nor was this process sudden.” “The Board has engaged with President Rothman in good-faith discussions over the past several months,” she said. The board scheduled the termination vote for 5 p.m. Tuesday. Rothman did not immediately return an email seeking comment. The vote is scheduled for just five days after The Associated Press first reported that the board asked Rothman to either resign or face being fired. Rothman has been president of the multicampus university system since 2022. His letters were the first public indication that Rothman’s job was in …

Universities hit as US, Israel ramp up attacks on Iran’s infrastructure | US-Israel war on Iran News

Universities hit as US, Israel ramp up attacks on Iran’s infrastructure | US-Israel war on Iran News

Published by Sam Flores

Tehran, Iran – Inside the sprawling Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, a research centre lies in ruins after warplanes bombed it. The attack on Friday on the Laser and Plasma Research Institute of the elite higher education facility is part of a growing pattern of civilian sites targeted by the United States and Israel in their war on Iran. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list There were no casualties at the university because it was mostly empty after all classes across the country were moved online by the government until further notice. Dormitories nearby were lightly damaged. The US and Israel did not officially divulge the rationale behind the attack, but Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a senior theoretical physicist and nuclear scientist who was assassinated during the opening salvo of Israel’s 12-day war in June, was the director of a magneto-photonics lab there. “This hostile act not only targets the security of academics and the country’s scientific environment, but is also a clear attack on reason, research, and freedom of thought,” the university …

Strikes on Iranian universities raise war crime questions, fears of retaliation

Strikes on Iranian universities raise war crime questions, fears of retaliation

Published by Sam Flores

The same universities where students were protesting the Iranian regime weeks ago have shown up as rubble in news footage of the war.   Almost two dozen universities in the country have sustained damage, with questions arising as to whether the attacks on academic institutions constitute a war crime.   Iran is threatening to retaliate against U.S.-affiliated schools in… Source link

Canadian universities collaborate to build high-performance supercomputing system

Canadian universities collaborate to build high-performance supercomputing system

Published by skeptic

Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Queen’s University are partnering to design and build a national sovereign, secure, and sustainable high-performance supercomputing system that will keep Canadian data and intellectual property in Canadian hands. The two universities have signed a memorandum of understanding, seizing the opportunity to combine unrivalled national expertise to provide world-leading high-performance supercomputing and services for academia, government, and industry. Dugan O’Neil, vice-president of research & innovation at SFU, explained: “Canada needs secure, world‑class computing infrastructure to lead in the next generation of artificial intelligence. “By partnering with Queen’s, we’re bringing together the expertise, talent, and the national-scale facilities needed for a sovereign platform that Canadians can trust.” The growing need for high-performance supercomputing AI supercomputers are the powerful engines that train AI models, analyse massive amounts of information, and support innovations in areas such as health care, clean energy, defence, manufacturing, dual-use technology, and public safety. As the demand for AI grows, so does the need for strong computing infrastructure that keeps data secure and ensures it stays within Canadian borders. SFU …

Tehran threatens to target US universities in the region

Tehran threatens to target US universities in the region

Published by Sam Flores

Overnight, powerful explosions were reported in both eastern and western parts of Tehran, lighting up the capital’s skyline. In the south of the country, state media said US-Israeli strikes killed five people in the city of Bandar Khamir, near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials say nearly 2,000 people have been killed since the start of the war, including more than 200 children. Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened to target U.S. university campuses in the Middle East unless Washington formally condemns the strikes on two Iranian universities. Iran has also continued attacks on major infrastructure in Gulf countries, recently hitting aluminum plants in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that it claims are linked to the US military. Keywords for this article Source link