Quick Takes

Six universities today will issue a joint pledge to make patent and licensing decisions on drugs developed at their institutions in ways that encourage low-cost distribution of the medicines in poor countries, Bloomberg reported. The pledge follows a push by students and others who have drawn attention to pricing policies that effectively deny access to life-saving drugs -- many of them created by university researchers, with federal funds -- in much of the developing world. The universities signing the pledge are: Boston, Brown, Harvard and Yale Universities, Oregon Health & Science University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark W. Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire, last week published a letter in the student newspaper raising questions about how a number of students saw - and did nothing -- during an assault on a fellow student on Halloween night. "We are a community. That means we are supposed to look out for and take care of one another. That didn’t happen Saturday night," he write. "Indeed, aside from the terrible injuries our student suffered, what disturbed me most was the fact that many people observed the assault and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. That is not how a healthy community behaves. While I certainly don’t want anyone to put themselves in harm’s way to break up a fight, choosing to walk past, to stop and observe, or just to ignore an altercation is unacceptable. It takes only a moment to call the police. Such a call can even be made anonymously. Remember: This 21-year-old student is not simply a statistic or a name on a police report. He is someone’s son, roommate and friend. What if he was yours? What if you were he?"

Even if Congress and President Obama agree on health care reform legislation, much of the actual reform will require the work of academic medicine, said Darrell G. Kirch, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, in a speech Sunday opening the association's annual meeting. Kirch reviewed the developments in the last year, from the excitement of many in medicine about the possibility for meaningful reform to the disappointments over town hall meetings this summer. "The nation may be on the verge of finally addressing a longstanding issue of social justice by legislating greater health insurance coverage," he said. "On the other, this news must be tempered with the realization that meaningful change and comprehensive reform of our nation’s health care will not occur until we transform how we actually deliver it. The hardest work is still ahead. And so, while we should celebrate the passage of legislation to improve health insurance coverage, we should not think that our larger health system problems have been solved." Kirch said that medical schools and academic medical centers will now need to take the lead in finding ways to promote better health care delivery, and to study all of the ramifications of reforms (including economic ramifications). Said Kirch: "As we finally appear ready as a nation to give more Americans that protection, as a profession we are holding fast to our basic ethical commitment to social justice. Now we need to turn that same courage to tackling our cumbersome and costly ‘non-system’ of fragmented health care."

Many students at Northwestern University are upset over the blackface Halloween costumes of some white students, NBC Chicago reported. Morton O. Schapiro, Northwestern's president, sent an e-mail to students saying: “While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community." A forum on the incident Thursday night attracted many students. The Daily Northwestern ran a live blog on the forum, attracting many comments. Northwestern is far from the first campus at which blackface or racially stereotyped Halloween costumes have created racial tensions.

With a decision expected this week at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on a proposal to boycott Israeli universities and academics, American groups are stepping up opposition to the boycott. The American Association of University Professors released a statement Friday urging the university to reject the boycott idea. "AAUP’s policy against academic boycotts -- detailed in our 2006 statement on the subject -- is based on the still more fundamental principle that free discussion among all faculty members worldwide should be encouraged, not inhibited. Certainly those Norwegian faculty members already working on joint projects with Israeli colleagues should not have their academic freedom taken away from them. In the long run, more, not less, dialogue with Israeli faculty members is an important way to promote peace in the region," the statement says. Also last week, the Anti-Defamation League called on the European Union to disqualify from its exchange programs any university that adopts a boycott policy. Organizers of the boycott movement at the university could not be reached, but they outlined their position online, saying that "Israeli universities and other institutions of higher education have played a key role in the policy of oppression. A substantial proportion of academics are directly involved in the country’s advanced weapon industry; social scientists play a central role in the construction of a nation of occupation; historians and archaeologists are important in the development of the Zionist ideology and renouncement of Palestinian history and identity." A spokeswoman said that Rector Torbjørn Digernes has drafted a resolution for the board to reject the boycott call. The resolution is available (in Norwegian) here.

A former student at the University of Michigan at Flint is suing the institution for $40 million, saying he dropped out and suffered from debt and depression because of the way the institution responded to a complaint about a grade, The Flint News reported. The former student charges that the university, in a post-Virginia Tech overreaction, perceived him as a threat, and the student has obtained e-mail messages from safety officers at the university as saying he was “strange, creepy and had an attitude." University officials declined to discuss the suit in detail, but said that the institution had done nothing wrong and would defend itself in court.

The athletics department at the University of New Mexico is spending a lot of time on physical altercation issues. On Friday, the university announced that it was moving control of personnel issues previously handled by the department to the university's central human resources department, the Associated Press reported. The announcement follows the university's admission of mistakes in investigating claims by an assistant football coach, J.B. Gerald, that he was punched and choked by the head coach, Mike Locksley. In women's athletics, the university has suspended a soccer player who was seen in a widely viewed video colliding with her opponents from a Brigham Young University team and yanking the ponytail of one BYU player such that she fell to the ground, the AP reported.

A federal judge in Texas on Friday granted a temporary injunction allowing two students to wear empty holsters in public spaces at Tarrant County College as part of a national series of student protests this week over laws or policies barring concealed weapons on college campuses. The students -- backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- sought the injunction against rules that would have limited them to wearing the empty holsters in a "free speech zone" and not elsewhere on campus. The judge agreed with their claim that they were likely to prevail in their challenge to the strict limits on where they could engage in peaceful protest. But the judge did not extend the injunction to classrooms, where the students remained barred from wearing their empty holsters.

Three professors at Southwestern College who were suspended following a protest against the administration at the California community college are back in class. The suspensions -- which the college denied were suspensions -- angered many faculty and student groups at the college. The administration did not respond to requests for clarification about the suspensions or their apparent end, but a blog sympathetic to the professors said that they had been given letters of reprimand over the protest, and that many faculty members believe the letters to be inappropriate.

The Rev. Joe Vetter, the Roman Catholic chaplain at Duke University, is criticizing a study for which female undergraduates were recruited to small parties at which they could see and discuss sex toys, The Raleigh News and Observer reported. The university noted that the study was subject to standard peer review procedures. The research comes at a time when some researchers have advocated education about sex toys as a way to encourage healthier attitudes about sex. Father Vetter isn't convinced, telling the newspaper: "I'm concerned about promiscuity also.... And to be honest, I don't have the solution.... My concern is these students are in this developmental phase, and I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes relationships."

A special panel created by Maryland's General Assembly has failed to reach consensus on how to improve the treatment of graduate teaching assistants and adjuncts. The panel issued its report last week, finding evidence of economic difficulties facing both groups, and recommending that both groups receive more money (when economic conditions improve) and better working conditions. But the panel was divided on the question of whether these groups can best be helped through collective bargaining or through the shared governance process of higher education.

Officials at the University of Sydney and elsewhere in Australia are denouncing a pro-rape Facebook page that a group of students created and removed only after it was discovered, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The group's members described themselves on the page as "anti-consent," and many featured the group on their personal pages.

Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's president, announced plans for significant expansions of the island's foreign student population and university courses taught in English, Taipei Times reported. “Higher education in Taiwan should not keep its doors closed any more. We need to promote the idea of studying in Taiwan and attract great students to Taiwan,” he said.

Most of us have probably hit "send" once or twice before being certain that the correct person (and only the correct person) was in the address field. But when it comes to misfiring e-mail, two employees of Cornell University's business school may have set a new standard for embarrassment. The sexually explicit exchanges between these employees (both married, not to each other) were sent accidentally on Friday to a global list at the business school, and now are appearing in numerous places online. A Cornell spokesman confirmed the incident and said that, "an e-mail was sent by the university shortly after the incident to all those who may have received the accidental mailing, with an apology and a request that recipients discard the accidental mailing."