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TheHill.com STATE WATCH New York cancels history Regents exam following Buffalo shooting BY MONIQUE BEALS - 05/24/22 2:05 PM ET SHARE TWEET ... MORE The New York State Education Department announced on Tuesday that it would cancel a statewide standardized exam on U.S. history and government for high school students following the mass shooting in Buffalo. “Our experts determined that there is content on the new Regents Examination in U.S. History & Government (Framework) that has the potential to compound student trauma caused by the violence in Buffalo, which created an unexpected and unintended context for the planned assessment,” the...

If liberals had to endure what conservatives do on campus, or off of it, they would be screaming “witch hunt” so loudly you would think that we were all back in Salem. Susan Dench, founder and president of the Informed Women’s Network, was named by the governor to the University of Maine’s board of regents. “I have the perfect background,” she told the audience at the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) “Women Lead” summit meeting on June 4, 2015. “I have a background in business and they are in financial difficulty.” But first she had to get past the state assembly....

Hundreds of students and faculty members temporarily shut down a University of California Board of Regents meeting being held simultaneously today at campuses in San Francisco, Davis, Merced and Los Angeles by standing in the conference rooms and chanting slogans so loudly the regents could no longer conduct business. The meeting was going smoothly until the public comment portion ended at 9:30 a.m. and several demonstrators began yelling the Occupy movement's familiar "mic check!" call, signalling the desire to have a protest meeting. There were about 50 students at each campus' regents meeting, which was being conducted by speakerphone. "We're...

Democrat Creigh Deeds is not backing off negative campaign ads against Republican Bob McDonnell, at least in the Northern Virginia area. The campaign this morning releases a new spot already airing in the Washington area, which attacks McDonnell's claim, featured on many campaign signs, that he is "Fairfax's Own" because of his Northern Virginia childhood. "Bob McDonnell says he's from Fairfax County," the narrator says. "But that was before he attended Pat Robertson's law school. And served on its board." Before, the narrator continues, he wrote that working women are detrimental to the family, he introduced 35 bills on abortion...

At least two University of Nebraska regents were ready to step in to try to cancel William Ayers’ speech at UNL if campus administration didn’t do so. And they were willing to act despite clear recommendations against such intervention from NU’s president and regents chairman. NU e-mails reviewed by the Journal Star show Regents Howard Hawks of Omaha and Bob Phares of North Platte made multiple calls for the board to consider disinviting Ayers from UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences Nov. 15 student research conference. Ayers is a 1960s and ’70s radical who’s now an education professor at...

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry's campaign Web site touts public education as a long-standing "top priority" of his, but the school year began this week with teachers and administrators still wondering who will be the next commissioner of education. That question mark is one among many with nearly 400 expired gubernatorial appointments this year alone to state boards, commissions and universities. Senators — worried that Perry is dodging their constitutional role of confirming most gubernatorial appointments — are crying foul. By Friday, 388 of Perry's appointments will have already expired so far this year, but only one in eight have...

The University of California spent more than $90,000 last year to shuttle members of the governing Board of Regents around town in a caravan of chauffeur-driven luxury cars during five meetings in the Bay Area. The cost to taxpayers was roughly 10 times that of hailing the regents a cab, a Chronicle analysis found. "The number is a bit flabbergasting," said Patrick Callan, president of the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. ... --snip-- Since November, the 10-campus UC system has been swept up in a controversy over tens of millions of dollars in hidden perks and...

SAN FRANCISCO - University of California President Robert Dynes gets to keep his job, butthe Board of Regents pledged Thursday to watch him more closely after outrage about millions of dollars in overpayments to top administrators that prompted calls for his resignation. The regents met in closed session for much of Thursday morning, discussing the situation with Dynes, before announcing their decision to allow him to stay. They pledged to increase their oversight of UC pay practices and policies. Dynes has been under fire since last fall, when reports emerged saying that UC administrators withheld information from regents and the...

SAN FRANCISCO – University of California President Robert C. Dynes, under fire over millions of dollars in bonuses and other perks secretly paid to top executives, got the support of his board Thursday. “He is the appropriate leader to resolve these issues and guide the university through this difficult chapter in its history,” UC Board of Regents Chairman Gerald Parsky said. Smiles and applause greeted the statement, read as the board held its regular meeting in San Francisco. Still, the regents had some stern words for their president, saying they “hold him accountable for the university's compensation problems and he...

Robert C. Dynes, the president of the University of California, holds one of the most influential and visible positions in American higher education – and he faces the possibility of losing it. For months, Dynes, a physicist and former chancellor at UC San Diego, has struggled to emerge from a controversy over undisclosed pay and perks for UC executives and faculty. To some, Dynes is a victim, someone who inherited a culture that defied university rules and has simply followed the practices of his predecessor. To others, Dynes is an ineffective administrator who, despite assurances, cannot be trusted to make...

The Chronicle has notified the University of California that it will ask an Alameda County judge today to order a UC Board of Regents committee to meet in public next week when it votes on pay proposals for high-ranking officials, according to the newspaper's lawyers. In a suit to be filed in Superior Court, The Chronicle argues that a closed-door committee meeting scheduled next Wednesday violates the state's open-meeting laws. The newspaper's lawyers plan to ask for a court order at a hearing today to require a public session. --snip-- In response, the university's general counsel, James Holst, said the...

The chairman of the University of California's board of regents wants to limit the number of corporate boards university leaders can sit on, a step that could directly affect UCSD's chancellor, Marye Anne Fox. UC Regent Chairman Gerry Parsky said the system needs to ensure chancellors keep the university as their top priority and that any benefits board memberships may bring to the university aren't outweighed by excessive demands on their time. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported last month that Fox sits on 10 corporate and nonprofit boards, more than any other chancellor in the 10-campus system. Fox has said...

More than a decade after promising to end the practice, the University of California has given several top administrators lengthy paid leaves when they stepped down. In the past 13 months alone, at least three senior managers have received paid furloughs at their executive salaries before returning to teaching. Former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl received a 13 1/2-month leave at $315,600 a year. Former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Directory Charles Shank is finishing a yearlong leave, during which he has earned $336,000. And Wednesday, UC said former Provost M.R.C. Greenwood had begun a 15-month leave with a $301,840 annual...

November 29, 2005 -- The percentage of city high-school students earning the gold-standard Regents diploma has fallen over the last three years — and the lackluster progress of African-Americans and Latinos has one prominent education watchdog declaring a "civil-rights crisis." According to the city Department of Education, just 33.2 percent of students who graduated high school in 2004 left with a Regents diploma — a drop from 2002, when 35.4 percent of students earned the coveted sheepskin. When the figures are broken down along ethnic lines, they show that just 9.4 percent of African-Americans and 9.8 percent of Latinos were...

Prof defends academic work with 50 pages in response to criticism By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News May 17, 2005 University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill on Monday submitted his response to the faculty committee that is investigating whether he committed research misconduct and should lose his tenured teaching position. His attorney, David Lane, said a response of more than 50 pages, single-spaced, was delivered to a committee representative Monday afternoon. Lane said that Churchill answered each and every point on which his past scholarship and academic credentials have been challenged. "He responded to everything, including the absolutely unconstitutional inquiry...

Unless he resigns of his own volition - perhaps to take a better offer from a school that places greater value on radical leftist celebrities of questionable scholarship and character - it now appears that the University of Colorado at Boulder will be saddled with Ward Churchill for at least another year or two. Such is the nature of the bureaucratic faculty-review process at CU, which slows justifiable due process to a snail's pace. I suspect this is by the faculty's self-serving design to discourage scrutiny and accountability of the omniscient professoriate. But that shouldn't deter us from turning the...

By Kevin Vaughan And Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News March 15, 2005 The University of Colorado's governing Board of Regents has retained a $350-per-hour public relations consultant as they continue to deal with the fallout from a football recruiting scandal and the ongoing saga surrounding controversial professor Ward Churchill. The regents signed the contract with Christopher Simpson, of Williamsburg, Va., on Feb. 28, just hours before a TV report aired based on a leaked copy of a grand jury report that criticized university leaders and raised allegations that female trainers were subjected to sexual harassment and sexual assault. The contract...

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News March 15, 2005 The University of Colorado Foundation does not intend to fund a buyout of controversial professor Ward Churchill's contract, the head of the private nonprofit fund-raising group said Monday. "We do not anticipate that there would be a situation where the foundation would be involved in any kind of financial settlement at all," said Michael Byram, chief executive officer and president of the CU Foundation. Byram's remarks came one day after a majority of the CU Board of Regents rejected a plan to use university funds to entice Churchill to taken...

By John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News March 14, 2005 A majority of CU regents said Sunday they oppose any financial settlement with Ward Churchill, aborting an attempted buyout of the controversial professor's contract. "I'm almost certain there's not going to be a settlement," said Steve Bosley, one of five on the nine-member board who has decided to oppose a deal. Two others said any chance of their supporting a buyout was extremely slim. The opposition represents a reversal by the board, which voted 7-2 in a closed session last month to authorize interim University of Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano...

Gov. Tom Vilsack’s nomination of Ruth Harkin to the state Board of Regents has caused muffled grumbling among some Republicans who think the primary reason is her marriage to U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin. While Ruth Harkin is highly regarded for her intellect, character, business acumen and career success, they say, she has little or no working knowledge of the institutions the Regents oversee, doesn’t live in Iowa, didn’t send her children to college here and isn’t familiar with the problems — financial and otherwise — facing the state’s universities. Yes, she serves on the board of the University of Iowa...