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The Misery of Leading Columbia University

On Wednesday Nemat Shafik resigned as president of Columbia University after little more than a year. Her resignation letter began by describing her “immense sadness” in stepping down, understandable given the prestige and opportunity of an Ivy League presidency, long considered a plum role in what
Shafik described as a “life dedicated to public service.”

In normal times, you would have to ask why someone would give all that up. But these are not normal times, and the answer is obvious. A glance at the jubilant and downright vicious comments noting Shafik’s departure on the official Columbia University Instagram account gives a sense of the climate in which Shafik, who uses the name Minouche, was operating.

“A pathetic end to a feeble and embarrassing tenure,” noted one of the gentler posts. “Shame on her for not responding to antisemitism with courage and strength,” said another. “Go to hell Minouche! Free Palestine,” wrote a third. From many others, there were sounds of glee: “brat summer,” “Ding dong the witch is dead” and unprintable epithets laced with watermelon emojis. . . .

--Pamela Paul, Opinion Columnist, New York Times

Austin Community College receives multimillion dollar federal grant for semiconductor training [ KVUE ]

Shawnee Community College students go back to school [ WSIL News 3 ]

Which College Won the Olympics? [ WSJ ]

The flava:

When the Paris Olympics ended on Sunday, the final medal table looked exactly the way that everyone
around the world expected. Team USA was once again at the top, followed by China, Great Britain, host France, Australia, Japan, Italy—and Stanford. 

Excusez-moi? 

When it comes to which countries bring home the most Olympic medals, there’s not much competition: The U.S. has dominated every Summer Games since 1996. This year, the Americans and Chinese wound up tied with 40 gold medals, but Team USA easily topped the overall medal count yet again. 

So we dove into the only fight more tribal than a global competition for athletic supremacy and looked at which colleges won the Olympics. 

And as it turns out, these intramurals were also a beatdown. 

Stanford took home 39 medals, more than double the number of any other U.S. school—and more than the Netherlands, South Korea, Germany and Canada. . . . 

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/olympics-medals-total-usa-stanford-texas-f5cdc101

How US Colleges Became Corporations [ Second Thought ]

Architect Breaks Down the Most Common Styles of College Campus [ Architectural Digest ]

Why Are Universities Slow to Adopt Zero Trust? [ EdTech ]

The flava:

Higher education institutions have been slower to adopt zero-trust principles than their peers in other industries, according to a new survey — findings that indicate colleges and universities are leaving themselves vulnerable to the continuing onslaught of cyberattacks.

The 2024 CDW Cybersecurity Research Report polled IT professionals in education, government, private business and other fields to gauge how prepared organizations are to defend themselves. And while 78% of respondents in the education sector (encompassing both K–12 and higher ed) were confident that they had sufficient visibility into their cybersecurity landscape, and 61% felt either somewhat or very prepared to respond to a cybersecurity incident, far fewer could attribute their confidence to the introduction of tools and strategies that align with zero trust.

Just 26% of education respondents assessed their zero-trust maturity level as advanced or optimal, while 38% were in the initial stages and 18% hadn’t started toward zero trust at all. Those numbers veer sharply from the overall survey findings: 53% of respondents across all industries were at the advanced or optimal level, and only 9% had not yet started on their zero-trust journeys. . . .

The article:

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2024/07/why-are-universities-slow-adopt-zero-trust

How many classes were taught during the past week?

https://www.thescaleoflife.com

The Relationship Between Students and Their Institution of Higher Education [ Anthony Edwards ]