Higher Education Quick Takes

Yale University Press will this fall be publishing a book, The Cartoons That Shook The World, about the furor that followed a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons making fun of Muhammad. But The New York Times reported that the book will not feature any of the cartoons themselves, or other images of Muhammad, including ones that are historic and have been widely featured elsewhere. The Times said that Yale brought together a special panel to consider the use of the images -- and that the press agreed with the recommendation not to include these illustrations. John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, told the Times that he has always defended controversial work, but that the cartoons and other images could be described in words. One religion scholar, angered by the decision, has withdrawn a blurb for the book. Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who wrote the book, questioned Yale's decision, telling the Times: "Muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.”

Rick Pitino is not only facing a personal scandal, but it turns out that the University of Louisville basketball coach has a morality clause in his contract, The Louisville Courier-Journal reported Wednesday. The same newspaper reported Tuesday that Pitino told police that he had engaged in consensual sex with Karen Cunagin Sypher in a Louisville restaurant on Aug. 1, 2003, and paid her $3,000 to have an abortion. Sypher has made accusations -- which police say lack a basis for acting upon -- that the coach assaulted her. She faces charges of trying to extort money from Pitino to keep the situation private. The newspaper reported that the university -- which has backed Pitino -- can fire him for acts of “moral depravity” or if he engages in “willful conduct that could objectively be determined to bring (the) employee into public dispute or scandal, or which tends to greatly offend the public.”

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which is best known in higher education for easing the path of community college students into four-year colleges, announced today that it has hired Lawrence Kutner as its new executive director. Kutner, who co-founded and co-directs the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital and lectures on psychology in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, is an expert on child development as well as an author and documentary producer. Among its other activities, the Cooke foundation focuses on helping community college students transfer to and succeed at competitive four-year colleges, and is financing an expansion of a University of Virginia program that puts graduates into low-income high schools to help students prepare for college.

Security on Campus, a group that pushes for tougher responses to crime on campus, on Tuesday issued a statement saying that a recent ruling by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights would force colleges to take firmer action against students who harass other students on online gossip sites, even if those sites aren't part of colleges. In the ruling, the department did not directly address that issue, and in fact rejected the complaint in question. But Security on Campus believes that because the rejection was not over the nature of the Web sites, this marks a shift in federal policy. "Schools have the same obligation to respond to sexual harassment in cyberspace that they have when the harassment occurs in the classroom – according to a first of its kind ruling," said the group's announcement. However, the Education Department sees things differently. A spokesman for the department said: "OCR would not characterize this as a 'landmark ruling.' In this case, OCR found insufficient evidence of a violation of Title IX. The OCR resolution letter speaks for itself in explaining the parameters of OCR's investigation and findings and should not be interpreted beyond those parameters." The dispute involves postings on the defunct Web site Juicy Campus.