On Saturday, members of the New Faculty Majority, an advocacy group for college faculty members across the country, hosted a national summit in Washington, D.C. aimed at identifying causes and possible solutions for the exploitation of adjunct faculty members by institutions of higher education, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. The leaders of the New Faculty Majority presented a draft of a document advocating action on the part of key players in higher education, as well as the adjuncts themselves, to obtain better benefits, wages and job security, The Chronicle reported. Although there was no formal debate or vote among the 140 summit participants, no major objections were raised in the breakout sessions that followed the presentation, according to The Chronicle.
Elsevier, the largest scientific publishing company in the world, addressed for the first time the boycott of the company by about 2,400 scholars, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Beginning with a Jan 21. blog post by Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, accusations against Elsevier include bundling selling groups of books together for a discounted price and high costs, as well as erecting barriers to the access and sharing of research, qualities that characterize an abusive publication system, according to The Chronicle. Alicia Wise, Elsevier's director of universal access, said the prices at which libraries buy Elsevier's journals are lower than those of its competitors and that the company has examined its infrastructure for distributing research, The Chronicle reported.
Patrick Witt, a senior at Yale University and star quarterback of the school's football team, addressed recent discussion surrounding the suspension of his Rhodes Scholarship candidacy due to allegations of sexual assault by stating that he committed to play in the Nov. 19 football game against Harvard University before he was told that the Rhodes Trust had requested that Yale re-endorse his candidacy, the Yale Daily News reported. Following a Jan. 26 article in The New York Times, Witt clarified to the Daily News that he considered the game to be a more pressing priority than his required scholarship interview, which was scheduled for the same time. Witt denied that he misled the public and stated that he withdrew his candidacy, according to the Daily News.
