Author to speak at annual lecture
University of Pennsylvania English professor and scholar of American studies Amy Kaplan will speak at the annual Robert C. Elliot memorial lecture, scheduled for April 28.
The author of “The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture,” Kaplan has also published recent essays on 9/11 and on the Navy prison installation in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the lecture, Kaplan will discuss how the prison has become a “legal black hole” and focus on questions of jurisdiction and sovereignty.
The lecture will be free and open to the public, and is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. in room 109 of Pepper Canyon Hall.
Newspaper alleges vandalism in campaign
The Daily Nexus, a daily student newspaper at UC Santa Barbara, has said that more than 300 copies of its paper were defaced with “election propaganda” in the last days of the school’s annual Associated Students election.
Last week, employees of the paper found red stamps on its front page urging voters to support the Student Action Committee, one of the parties running candidates in the election. In an issue printed the day before the vandalism was discovered, the paper’s endorsements did not back any of the executive candidates running with the party.
Posing as an interested student, an employee of the paper also used a disposable camera to document the nearby presence of a red stamp similar to those used to mark the paper.
The party’s presidential candidate said members of his slate were not involved with the vandalism.
The campus’ police department is investigating the matter. The paper’s editor in chief, Daniel Haier, estimated that the defaced copies were valued at approximately $640.
Report backs increased distance education
In a third-annual report on distance-education programs, the U.S. Department of Education has called on federal lawmakers to ease regulations for students wishing to study without on-campus instruction. The changes could result in a significant increase in access to higher education for low-income students, the report concluded.
Under current regulation, colleges must comply with the so-called “50-percent rule,” which requires schools to meet specific requirements in order to qualify for federal financial aid. The colleges must provide at least half of their classes onsite and have no more than half of their students enrolled in distance-education programs such as online classes or telecourses.
In recent months, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives Education and the Workforce Committee have proposed eliminating the regulations.
The report urges lawmakers to expand the current demonstration program, which allowed 24 schools to waive the 50-percent rule, to cover 100 schools.
The report also called on legislators to eliminate these regulations, including the 50-percent rule, in their reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
Report: Universities spent millions to lobby
Despite a series of budget cuts in states throughout the country, public colleges and universities have spent more than $100 million on lobbying efforts in the nation’s capital in recent years, the Center for Public Integrity has reported.
The nonprofit investigative journalism organization reported that more than 300 universities have spent a total of at least $141.7 million on lobbyists in the past six years. The amount was more than twice the total spent by the 56 states and U.S. territories on similar efforts.
However, Center for Governmental Studies President Bob Stern told the organization that the public entities had more to lose than the money saved by cutting lobbying out of their budgets.
Without such efforts, “the federal government screws the states, the states screw the counties, and the cities and counties don’t have any money left,” the organization quoted Stern as saying.
Gene heals ‘skin’ in fruit flies, mammals
UCSD biologists and colleagues have discovered evidence suggesting that the gene responsible for the regeneration of insect cuticle — the outer layer of the body surface in insects — is also responsible for similar processes in mammals. The findings, they reported, could lead to new insights on medical techniques for the healing of wounds and treatment of cancer.
Published last week in the journal Science, their study identifies the “grainyhead” master gene they say activates repair genes in cells near an injury in the embryos of fruit flies.
The study was paid for by grants from the National Institutes of Health.
