Photo by Inside Higher Ed

Inside Higher Ed reports that the University of Florida is conducting an experiment worthy of a marketplace of ideas. With a $3 million grant from the Knight Foundation, the University recently put up a “Civil Debate Wall”: five wall-mounted touch screens with questions about controversial topics, such as “Is wealth distributed fairly in the United States?” Student passers-by have the opportunity to respond in short opinion statements. A camera overhead snaps a headshot, and the person’s response, picture, and first name go up on a screen.

It seems like a good idea for getting students accustomed to an attitude of respectful debate on a college campus. Ann Henderson, the university staff member who established the wall, told Inside Higher Ed she hopes it will help students learn to take a stand on hot-button issues but to do it with courtesy:

“We’re trying to say you can disagree with somebody, you can do it civilly, you can do it with respect,” she said.

That’s especially important, she said, at a time when political issues are polarizing and debate can be bitter. “At the end of the day, it’s not just about being polite,” Henderson said, “it’s about how to function in a democracy when you believe that and I believe this.”

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 45,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 17 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Obama’s policy has been to increase programs and funding for higher education, while Michele Bachmann promises to eliminate the Department of Education if she is elected, and Rick Perry has urged colleges to create a degree that costs only $10,000.

Herbert I. London

Herbert I. London is president emeritus of the Hudson Institute and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. As John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University, he founded the Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 1972 to promote the study of “great books” and classic texts. He served as the school’s dean for 20 years.

IndyWeek.com Photo by D.L. Anderson

This fall the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted several events related to its common reading assignment, Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The book is a non-fiction argument by the author in favor of not eating animals, primarily because of his compunctions over their treatment in factory farms.

Not one that especially lends itself to stage adaptation, I’d think, but it looks like UNC students made do with rubber chickens, dance, and multimedia in a multi-performance play this month. The adapter and director, UNC professor of communication studies Tony Perucci, said, ”As much as this show intends to be a critical reflection on how we engage with daily practices, it’s also intended to be abundantly silly and absurd. And beautiful.”

In October UNC sponsored as guest speaker animal activist Gene Bauer, who “told his audience there are no humane ways to raise animals for food.” The News & Observer reported that “None challenged Baur at the UNC-CH gathering.” At least one reader of the News & Observer, however, disapproved of the uncritical coverage of Baur’s presentation.

Two other institutions, Duke University and St. Michael’s College in Vermont, also chose Eating Animals as common reading assignments this year, as documented in NAS’s report Beach Books: What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?

If this child is going to take your money, then she needs to take your advice too. If she’s not willing to be reasonable and take your advice, then she gets none of the money. There’s no undergraduate degree on the planet worth $250,000. The whole idea is absurd, and somebody needs to say that out loud.

This girl can work, and she can go to a state school and get a great education for about a fourth of that price. Since you’re in Texas, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the University of Texas or Texas A&M. They’re great schools. And at that price range, I’m sure it would allow you guys to pitch in and help out some.

But seriously, a quarter of a million dollars for an undergrad degree? I don’t think so!

It is unlikely that Ms. Ali has ever sat at desk like mine, on the phone with a parent who cannot believe I allowed his daughter to drink, much less allowed (or not allowed — always a difficult point to discuss) a “boy” to do the things her account reports. Or a parent who wants to know why I have sent her son home without so much as a hearing, an action we call “interim removal,” while we investigate these claims.

“Because the alleged victim is afraid of seeing him, and the Office for Civil Rights has made it clear that our process must support the alleged victim in this way” is not an answer that satisfies an angry mother who believes that her son (1) has been unjustly accused, (2) has not been given a chance to defend himself (yet), and 3) may find his ability to succeed academically compromised by his absence from classes during this investigation.  Has Ms. Ali ever had a parent, in a rageful voice, point out the inequity of all of this? Because I’ve experienced that on several occasions as I have tried to do what OCR expects from a “victim-friendly” policy.

The author writes that experienced human judgment is a better approach to getting to the bottom of sexual assault charges than this “victim-friendly” rule: “I do not appreciate having my hands tied by the presumption of guilt the Dear Colleague Letter portrays.”

The OCR regulations thus harm not only students and their families but also the campus administrators trying to sort out these painful situations.

In January 2011, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld racial preferences, but one of the judges on the panel, Emilio M. Garza, wrote a 30-page “special concurrence” to accompany his decision. He wrote that although he felt that the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger bound him to decide as he did, he considered Grutter a “misstep” which only the Supreme Court could rectify. He wrote, “Yesterday’s racial discrimination was based on racial preference; today’s racial preference results in racial discrimination.” Garza’s opinion may have set up an opportunity for the Supreme Court to at least clarify, if not repeal race-based preferences.

What really happened during the student protest against the findings of the Center for Equal Opportunity? W. Lee Hansen, professor emeritus of economics at UW-Madison, documents what he observed on September 13 and offers a new assessment of the controversy. He poses a number of “unanswered questions” pertaining to the episode. Here’s one:

Were the actions of the Vice Provost and the Dean of Students consistent with the guiding purpose of a university, and this one in particular, which is to use reason and argument rather than physical protest in addressing controversial issues? Did these two officials violate the spirit of the famous “sifting and winnowing” statement?

“Whatever May Be the Limitations Which Trammel Inquiry Elsewhere, We Believe That the Great State University of Wisconsin Should Ever Encourage That Continual and Fearless Sifting and Winnowing by Which Alone the Truth Can Be Found.” [See policy]

Single-sex schooling is not for everyone. But it can help some students to become more focused and well-rounded. Girls cannot leave it to boys to dissect the frog, and boys cannot leave it to girls to edit the school newspaper. When a 2007 British study compared life outcomes for thousands of middle-aged graduates of single-sex and coed schools, it found that “gender stereotypes” were “exacerbated” in coed schools and “moderated” in single-sex schools. In single-sex schools, males were more likely to focus on language and literature, and females on math and science. And for girls, “single-sex schooling was linked to higher wages.”