Germania Rodriguez Poleo
Dailymail.com
Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers says he is 'sickened' by Ivy League school's response to attacks on Israel after 31 organizations said the country was 'entirely responsible'
Harvard's President Emeritus Larry Summers has said he is 'sickened' by the Ivy League school's response to Hamas' terror attack on Israel after 31 organizations claimed the Jewish nation was 'entirely responsible'. Summers, who is Jewish and led Harvard University from 2001-2006, reacted to the prestigious school's lack of official response to the atrocity, as well as to a letter claiming Hamas' attacks 'did not happen in a vacuum. . . . We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,' the groups wrote.
Summers, who also served in the Obama administration, addressed the school, tweeting: '"In nearly 50 years of affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today. The silence from Harvard's leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups' statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel."
Liam Knox and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: On Tuesday, the Trump administration fired nearly half of the Education Department’s roughly 4,100 employees, leaving the agency with a skeletal staff of about 2,183. Now, a day later, the scope and impact of those layoffs are beginning to take shape.
The nation’s largest education research agency went from roughly 100 employees to about five, according to a laid-off employee, crippling the government’s capacity to inform education policy. The Office of Federal Student Aid lost hundreds of career staffers, undermining oversight of student loan practices, the maintenance of the federal financial aid system and the authorization of new programs. And the Office for Civil Rights, which fields thousands of student and educator complaints about discrimination and harassment each year, is now down to just five regional offices.
Liam Knox and Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: On Tuesday, the Trump administration fired nearly half of the Education Department’s roughly 4,100 employees, leaving the agency with a skeletal staff of about 2,183. Now, a day later, the scope and impact of those layoffs are beginning to take shape.
The nation’s largest education research agency went from roughly 100 employees to about five, according to a laid-off employee, crippling the government’s capacity to inform education policy. The Office of Federal Student Aid lost hundreds of career staffers, undermining oversight of student loan practices, the maintenance of the federal financial aid system and the authorization of new programs. And the Office for Civil Rights, which fields thousands of student and educator complaints about discrimination and harassment each year, is now down to just five regional offices.
Nicholas B. Dirks
The Atlantic
Excerpt: The first time Donald Trump threatened to use the power of the presidency to punish a university, I was the target. At UC Berkeley, where I was chancellor, campus police had at the last moment canceled an appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right political pundit who was then a star at Breitbart News, because of a violent attack on the venue by a group of outside left-wing activists who objected to Yiannopoulos’s presence.
I didn’t worry much about Trump’s threat at the time. I now realize that was a mistake. American universities did not cause the onslaught that the second Trump administration is unleashing upon them. But they would be in a much stronger position today if they had made a proactive case to the public for their own importance—and taken steps to address their very real shortcomings.