Aug. 26

Quick Takes: Some American Political Scientists Want Canadian Boycott, Court Orders Louisville to Reveal Donors, Attitudes on Librarians, Hudson County CC Responds to Accreditor, ‘Daily Californian’ Drops Wednesdays in Print

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• The American Political Science Association is already facing boycott threats over its decision to hold its 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans, despite a Louisiana ban on gay marriage that is particularly broad and that scholars with domestic partners believe could endanger them if they had a medical emergency at the conference. Now some scholars — many of them prominent in conservative political science circles — are calling for the association to move next year’s meeting away from Toronto. The scholars say that Canadian Human Rights Commissions, which have held hearings on articles and publications that offend certain ethnic groups, hinder academic freedom and thus could discourage open discussion of controversial topics at the meeting. Some critics of the human rights commissions, however, say that the boycott call is just a political ploy to poke fun at other boycott movements — and that it is unfair to Canada. In an op-ed in The Globe and Mail, Clifford Orwin, a University of Toronto political scientists, writes that when he was asked to sign the call for a boycott, he asked organizers to name a single instance of academic freedom being violated in Canada and they could not. “So what’s really going on? Internal APSA politics,” writes Orwin. “In recent years, the question of location has become politicized, first by the left and now, in revenge, by the right. Presumably, the petition will fail. The signers have warned that, if it does, they will boycott next year’s meeting. They will remain safely where they are — the few, the proud, the cowering. If they make good on this fearsome threat, I will look forward to not seeing them. Yankee stay home.” The political scientists convene for this year’s meeting in Boston this week — so far without any boycott threats.
• The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that the University of Louisville must release the names of its donors, The Courier-Journal reported. Past donors who specifically requested anonymity may remain anonymous, the court ruled, but the university will have to release all names in the future and to tell would-be donors from now on that they can’t be anonymous.
• Ithaka, a group promoting new economic models for scholarly publishing, has released new surveys of faculty members and librarians on their attitudes on such topics as electronic archives, online resources, and the teaching and learning process.
• Hudson County Community College, in New Jersey, has announced that its vice president for human resources is leaving his position following a critical accrediting report, The Star-Ledger reported. The college was harshly criticized by the accreditor because of the fact that the vice president — John Shinnick — is also a local councilman and as such has ties to political leaders who play roles in support for the college.
• The Daily Californian, the student newspaper at the University of California at Berkeley, will now be the not-so-daily — at least in print. The newspaper announced Monday that on Wednesdays, it will publish only online, as a way to cut costs.

— Scott Jaschik

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