| Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, March 19, 2014; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 19 2014, 05:36 AM (136 Views) | |
| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:36 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2014/03/19/cathy-davidson-leave-duke-public-education Cathy Davidson to leave Duke for public education By Rachel Chason | March 19, 2014 Cathy Davidson—a leader in digital humanities who has held various positions at Duke over 25 years—has announced that she will join the faculty of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York in order to pursue her interest in public education. Davidson, the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, received national media attention for her decision. Beginning in July, she will direct the Futures Initiative—a CUNY-wide program promoting collaborative innovation in higher education—and hold an academic appointment in the Graduate Center’s English Ph.D. program. “Even though I will always be a Blue Devil at heart, I am incredibly excited about this opportunity,” Davidson said. “I chose this new position because of one word: scale. CUNY is the largest public university in America, and working there will allow me to reach over 200,000 undergraduates.” Davidson, who has written or edited more than 20 books and was recently appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by President Barack Obama, noted that she has always had a strong interest in public education. “Funding for public education has been decreasing for the last 50 years,” Davidson said. “I am passionately committed to refunding public education. I firmly believe that you cannot have a strong democracy or civil society without a strong public education system. The podium from which you speak matters, and I will be a better advocate for public education from my position at CUNY than I could have been at Duke.” Davidson dedicated much of her time at Duke to promoting innovative teaching and integrating technology into education, serving as the University’s first vice provost for interdisciplinary studies from 1998 to 2006 and co-founding the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in 1999. Her new position will allow her to carry her work with educational technology to the public sphere. “Her expertise in teaching innovation, technology and interdisciplinary scholarship dovetails with our strengths, particularly as a graduate school focused on Ph.D. education,” said Chase Robinson, interim president of the Graduate School at CUNY. Long interested in technology and collaborative learning, Davidson helped develop more than 70 new collaborative programs in her time as vice provost. “She was always interested in exploring new frontiers in academia, across a wide array of subject areas,” said David Sparks, Graduate School ‘13 and one of Davidson’s postdoctoral students. “She really believed in creating a world where different approaches to teaching and learning were valued, and where interdisciplinarity wasn’t just permitted, but encouraged.” Davidson is also a co-director of the Ph.D Lab in Digital Knowledge and a co-founding director of the Humanities, Arts, Technology and Science Alliance and Collaboratory, an international digital learning network with more than 11,000 members. The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions that she helps direct every year have awarded more than $10 million in funding to 100 innovation projects worldwide. “Through her work with HASTAC, including the scholars program that brings together graduate students across disciplines, she was able to connect the Duke community with many other scholars in the digital humanities, new media studies and related fields,” said Patrick Jagoda, Graduate School ‘10 and a postdoctoral student under Davidson. Although Davidson has held a variety of positions on campus, she noted that her favorite role is that of a teacher. “My first love is and always will be for teaching, and particularly student-designed teaching,” Davidson said. Her husband, Ken Wissoker, is the editorial director of Duke University Press and will also be moving to CUNY. He will take the position of Director of Intellectual Publics at the Graduate Center. He will continue in his position at the Duke University Press from New York. Davidson will remain involved with Duke after her transition to CUNY, hosting six workshops as a visiting professor and continuing to direct the portion of the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning group that will remain at Duke. |
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| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:38 AM Post #2 |
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2014/03/19/honest-work Honest work wait a minute By Joline Doedens | March 19, 2014 Duke is expensive. There is no doubt about it. A good education in the hallowed halls of Gothic architecture costs big bucks. Even if the Duke administration tells us that it is investing an average of $90,000 in each student’s education, the $60,000 a year that it costs to be an undergraduate at this school is a significant and often burdensome financial commitment. Of course, current and prospective Duke students are entitled to choose any available legal means of raising those funds, from federal financial aid, to local scholarships, to work-study programs, to part-time jobs in the service industry, to acting in pornographic films. Of course, that last means of paying for Duke’s tuition has recently garnered a lot of attention in both local and national news because of one freshman’s recent revelation of her means of paying the bill. I will not comment on Belle Knox’s personal decision to enter the pornographic film industry, or on the continued development of her story over the past several weeks. Rather, I want to point out some important continuing problems with the porn industry that could problematize the choice of acting in the pornographic film industry as a means of paying for college tuition. First, a point about the legitimacy of a career in the porn industry: Until the development of the internet, porn was far more difficult to access. Not only did you have to leave your home, but you also had to go rent a video or buy a magazine in person. With the rise of the internet porn industry, anonymous consumption became possible. With the rise of such anonymous consumption, age restraints become more difficult to enforce and even individuals legally able to purchase pornographic materials may feel less peer pressure not to explore a latent interest in pornography. The increasingly widespread consumption of porn, however, does not actually do anything to help legitimize work in the porn industry if there is not also a concurrent increase in the honesty and transparency of the industry itself. The legal standard for the types of pornography that are protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech was set out in the 1973 case of Miller v. California. The Supreme Court there set out a three-prong obscenity test which would find a speech or expression obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment if: “the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;” “whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law;” and “whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Since conforming to “contemporary community standards” of what would appeal to the “prurient interest” is an essential condition to a jury’s finding of a particular speech or expression to be obscene, the porn industry itself would benefit from changing those community standards to exclude at least some types of “soft” porn from the obscene classification. So how can the porn industry help make itself legitimate by changing these community standards? Be honest and open. Learn a lesson from Dutch sex workers and make yourself a member of a recognized profession. Form a trade union, pay your taxes, submit to regular medical checkups and establish clear standards for the profession. If a career in the porn industry becomes increasingly transparent and increasingly regulated, then the community will come to accept the profession and its product as non-obscene, therefore perpetuating the cycle of increasing legitimacy. Individuals who work in the industry can themselves also increase the legitimacy of their profession by demonstrating that it is possible to be a fully functioning, productive member of society and make pornographic films. Of course, this is no easy task. No doubt a generation or two of porn industry workers will suffer considerable reputational losses in the process of helping make their profession legitimate. They may very well suffer discrimination and ostracization and objectification. In helping to bring the inner workings of the industry out into the open where they can be discussed and evaluated, however, workers in the profession can begin to remedy some of the pervasive problems in pornographic films. Among the most prominent problems in pornographic films is the exploitation of women. While it may be perfectly legitimate for consumers of pornographic materials to have a preference for submissive, child-like or even outright powerless women, it is vitally important that the actresses who portray these women do so voluntarily. There may be a need to revamp the payment structure for the performance of certain sexual acts on screen, in order to ensure that actresses in particular are not economically compelled to play a certain role. Thus, I have neither the desire nor the means to question Belle Knox’s decision to enter the porn industry in order to pay for her Duke tuition. However, being an active and productive member of the industry that furthers the legitimacy, safety and equality of the industry as a whole requires honesty and transparency, and a wholehearted embrace of one’s profession. Joline Doedens is a second-year law student. Her column runs every other Wednesday. Send Joline a message on Twitter @jydoedens. |
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| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:50 AM Post #3 |
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Complying with NC open meetings, public records laws shouldn't be difficult March 18, 2014 Updated 2 hours ago The late Pete Seeger used to sing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, every day, every day, gonna let my little light shine.” Some public officials in North Carolina know the tune, but they can’t follow the lyrics. This is Sunshine Week, during which advocates of open government celebrate the blessing of open records. Those advocates include The News & Observer and other news organizations that represent the public as they pursue in specific the disclosure of public records that the people have a right to see. How important is the timely release of records? The N&O cited a number of cases in which the opening of records led to important information for the public: data on how community college presidents were structuring their compensation packages to bolster their pensions, how the Raleigh Housing Authority was buying expensive meals for board members at Christmastime, how the state Department of Health and Human Services was handsomely paying two consultants and how much in settlement money was paid to a man wrongly jailed in a psychiatric hospital. And, yes, public records also have been important in The N&O’s continued reporting on the athletics/academic scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill. A right for all Make no mistake. This is not about just news organizations. All members of the public have the right to make requests of public agencies for records that are by law their right to have. But as The News & Observer’s Joseph Neff reported, in far too many cases, it takes months to get records that properly should be offered in weeks at most. Both The N&O and WRAL-TV have requested that the state Department of Health and Human Services release emails connected to the work of Carol Steckel, who briefly was the department’s Medicaid manager before she resigned. But six months after those public records requests were made, no emails have been produced. State law affirms that emails to and from the accounts of public officials are part of the record. Debbie Crane, who was for 19 years a public information officer in state government and a veteran of DHHS, labeled the delay “ridiculous.” She said, “Email is a pretty easy request to deal with.” The fairest of questions Here’s the public’s understandable reaction when state officials delay or simply avoid the release of public data: What do they not want us to know? That’s it, pure and simple, and it’s a fair question. And no official, and certainly no governor for whom those officials work, should ever want that question asked. Sunshine is what we call it when government operates in the public eye. Many times over many years, some officials have complained about the discomfort of conducting business openly and about what a burden it is. But other states, Florida being a noteworthy one, have set good examples for passing public records and public meetings laws that work. When elected officials know that their actions will be fully scrutinized, they perform better. If a supervisor knows everything is going to be on the record, an employee who refused to play ball with people trying to influence government is certainly less likely to get fired. If everything’s on the table, nothing goes under the table. Public curiosity and outrage should be intensified if ever the people see a public official trying to close the blinds on public records laws. No, no, no. Let the sun shine in! Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/18/3712666/complying-with-nc-open-meetings.html#storylink=cpy |
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| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:52 AM Post #4 |
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http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-mccrory-administration-unc-should-open-up/article_4b4633b0-aeb5-11e3-9a17-001a4bcf6878.html Editorial: McCrory administration, UNC should open up Journal editorial board | Posted: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 4:00 pm North Carolina’s Republican leaders might not like the public-records laws enacted by their Democratic predecessors, but they still have a responsibility to follow them. Likewise, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leaders are tired of the prolonged press probe into their athletic scandal, but they are still legally bound to answer public- information requests. When it comes to the public records law, both the McCrory administration and UNC are defying the mandate to provide citizens with requested information “as promptly as possible.” The News & Observer of Raleigh detailed Sunday how its reporters, and those of other news outlets, have been blocked in efforts to secure public records. The paper said simple requests from UNC sometimes run into a stone wall. Same thing happens when more complicated information is sought from the administration. The administration and UNC don’t seem to get the concept of public information. Both protect public records as if they belonged to the administrators who oversee them. They treat public requests as if they were intrusions into their private living areas. Although the press uses the state’s open records law, it was written for the general public. The information that state workers gather while in the employ of taxpayers is public property. Yet it often contains items that public officials, especially politicians, would prefer to see remain hidden. There’s irony in both the administration’s behavior and that of the university. Legislators wrote this public records law two decades ago with considerable input from UNC professors. And for years, North Carolina Republicans strongly supported open government bills because they were out of power. It’s time that for the administration and UNC to obey the law. |
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| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:54 AM Post #5 |
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http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/dennis-dodd/24489569/north-carolina-investigator-will-interview-whistleblower-in-academic-fraud-scandal North Carolina investigator will interview whistleblower March 17, 2014 7:55 pm ET Willingham says 8-10 percent of UNC athletes she screened were 'functionally illiterate.' (USATSI) The school's independent investigator in the North Carolina academic fraud scandal says he will interview whistleblower Mary Willingham, CBSSports.com has learned. Washington, D.C., attorney Kenneth Wainstein was hired by the school 3 ½ weeks ago to look into claims of academic fraud involving athletes by Willingham and others. Willingham had reached out contacting Wainstein recently. She is a former academic advisor at UNC who claims there was widespread academic fraud among North Carolina athletics for more than a decade. "Yes, they are planning to speak to Mary Willingham," Wainstein spokesman Brendan Riley told CBSSports.com. When that will be is uncertain, Riley said. "I called him," Willingham said on Sunday. "I told him, 'Here I am.' This is what I want him to do." Willingham also told Wainstein any interview may require her to have legal representation. She is assisting the plaintiffs in the O'Bannon class-action anti-trust lawsuit against the NCAA. If the two sides do not settle, the O'Bannon trial is set to begin June 9. "I will be checking in with [O'Bannon attorney] Michael Hausfeld to let him know that we spoke, and that we may speaking again. It may be necessary for me to be represented during that meeting," Willingham wrote in an email dated March 10. She shared the email with CBSSports.com. "There is much that I have said/told here that is already on the record," Willingham wrote to Wainstein who was retained by North Carolina on Feb. 21. Part of the scandal revolves around Willingham's assertions that 8-10 percent of the North Carolina athletes she screened between 2005-2012 were"functionally illiterate." Her allegations have touched off a firestorm at the NCAA, academic and athletic levels. None of the information offered to Wainstein is particularly new. In the email she directs him to a 2010 interview with a UNC vice provost and information she sent to North Carolina Gov. Jim Martin in 2012. Wainstein formerly worked for the U.S. Justice Dept. and FBI. He was hired by the NCAA as an independent investigator in the Miami case after it was determined the association's enforcement staff had engaged a third-party attorney to improperly obtain information. The NCAA eventually threw out 20 percent of the information gathered in the case to that point. Willingham also has started a website -- paperclassinc.com -- that houses a summary of her allegations. She added there have been inquiries about a screenplay regarding her story. Willingham said she will not benefit financially in any O'Bannon verdict favorable to the plaintiffs. "This isn't about making any money," she told CBSSports.com. "I worry about stepping over that line. I don't need it. I don't want it." |
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| abb | Mar 19 2014, 05:55 AM Post #6 |
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http://paperclassinc.com/ When the whistle blows for the final time in their college careers, too many of our profit sport athletes have little to show for all of their efforts. They are unlikely to be able to play their sports professionally. Instead, as the NCAA commercial likes to say, “they will go pro in something else.” But their participation in college sports did not guarantee them an education that would prepare them adequately for life after sports. Paper Class Inc. will take up the fight on behalf of these athletes. It will serve as a portal and rallying point for the college sports reform movement. It will explore real solutions, push the boundaries of the current conversation of reform and mobilize action. We owe it to these young men to end their Alice-in Wonderland status as athletes who don’t get paid and students who don’t receive a real education. Their unjust treatment is a scar on all big time sports universities. It’s time to confront that injustice and do right by these young men. Mary Willingham |
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