Higher Education News

World & Nation
The solidarity of Broadway’s performers and stagehands has paid off with a new agreement between the American Federation of Musicians and Broadway producers that preserves live music on the Broadway stage.

The musicians walked out March 7 and Broadway’s actors and stagehands refused to cross the picket lines, forcing 18 musicals to shut down. The four-day strike began over the producers' demands to reduce the number of musicians who play for Broadway shows and replace them with computer-generated music.

Under the new agreement the minimum number of orchestra musicians for the largest theaters will be between 18 and 19.

Ending a three-year legal struggle, Egypt’s highest court has dismissed all charges against Professor Saad Idden Ibrahim and his co-defendants from the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developmental Studies.

Through the Khaldoun Center, Ibrahim and his colleagues were working on a film that would promote democracy in Egypt. They were charged with “receiving funding without authorization, dissemination of false information abroad, and appropriating money by fraudulent means,” because they received funding for the project from European organizations.

Ibrahim, who holds dual Egyptian and U.S. citizenship, is on the faculty of the American University in Cairo. He is a political sociologist and well-known human rights advocate. A wide network of colleagues and national and international organizations intervened on his behalf.

Boxers could gain some protection outside the ring after the 200-member Fighters Initiative for Support Training (FIST) announced it is affiliating with Office and Professionals Employees Local 153.

Former heavyweight contender Gerry Cooney founded FIST in 1998 to provide educational and vocational counseling and other services for fighters. With the affiliation, “we will be able to reach more fighters and provide even more services and benefits,” Cooney said.

Faculty & Staff
In a union representation election held last month, faculty of the University of Akron in Ohio voted to join the growing ranks of doctoral-level university faculty engaged in collective bargaining. From a bargaining unit of more than 670 members, 388 voted for the American Association of University Professors as a collective bargaining representative, and 220 voted for no representative. This 64 percent support of collective bargaining is in marked contrast to the last election in 1995 when only 29 percent voted for collective bargaining.

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System has reached a tentative settlement with a group of female faculty members at Minnesota State University at Mankato who alleged in a class-action lawsuit that they were paid less than their male counterparts. The university system did not admit to intentional discrimination, but it agreed to pay the women a total of more than $500,000 in back pay and raises.

Professional News
The faculty senate at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh is urging faculty members not to cooperate with investigations of students, faculty members, or staff members made under the USA Patriot Act.

The senate vote came following reports that a professor at Oshkosh had been investigated under the Act. Faculty are concerned that secret investigations and surveillance permitted under the Patriot Act will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.

Admissions policies in California, Florida, and Texas that guarantee slots at public colleges to students in the top portion of their high-school graduating classes have only modest effects on increasing diversity at state institutions and by themselves do not adequately replace affirmative action, says Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project, noting the programs in California and Florida also had limited effects at those states’ most-selective campuses.

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