After a U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education inquiry into the apparently racist climate at the University of California, San Diego prompted by several recent complaints, the university reached a settlement with the two departments, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The complaints stemmed from incidents that seemed to target the African-American community, including public displays of a Ku Klux Klan hood and a noose. After an investigation by government officials into the events, university administrators met with representatives of the Department of Justice and Department of Education to create a plan to address the racial tensions, according to The Chronicle. As part of the agreement, the university voluntarily agreed to conditions that included revising its racial harassment policies, creating an Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination and holding mandatory anti-discrimination training for students and staff, The Chronicle reported.
The Canadian government is drastically cutting funding for a grant program that provides financial support for Canadian studies programs at numerous American universities, according to The Vancouver Observer. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs which administers the 12 grants worth between roughly $11,000 and $15,000 to universities faces cuts to its $72-million budget for the fiscal year, The Observer reported. Speculation has arisen about whether this decision was made in retaliation to U.S. President Barack Obama's stance on the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Canadian oil sands, but professors at universities using the grants said they did not believe this to be the case, according to The Observer.
The nations' elite cancer care facilities perform only marginally better than community hospitals in meeting standard quality benchmarks in the treatment of terminal cancer patients, according to a press release by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. The report is based on a study conducted by Dartmouth researchers that will be published in the April 2012 issue of Health Affairs. The study was conducted between 2003 and 2007 by following the treatment of 215,000 Medicare patients who were given the prognosis that they were likely to die within a year. The study found that no particular hospital was more successful at meeting the standards set by the National Quality Forum, which include lower rates of intensive care unit use in the last month of life, use of chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life, deaths occurring in hospitals and hospice stays of three days or more, according to the release.
