New York University officials announced Monday that Alfred Bloom, the current president of Swarthmore College, will lead its new Abu Dhabi campus in the United Arab Emirates.

The New York Times reports:

When N.Y.U. announced the decision last September to create a campus in Abu Dhabi, skeptics wondered if the university would truly be allowed to have a free exchange of ideas, especially in sensitive areas like religion and women’s rights.

Mr. Bloom, 62, said he was certain that censorship would not be a problem.

“I am convinced that we will be able to provide a vibrant environment which guards academic freedom,” he said.

Similar concerns over free speech arose this spring at UC Berkeley when the campus’s mechanical engineering faculty announced it was entering a $28 million deal with a new university in Saudi Arabia. Under the five-year plan, UC Berkeley professors would design the mechanical engineering curriculum for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

Such arrangements are becoming increasingly common these days, according to the NYT: “The (NYU) campus represents a shift in how many top universities are thinking about their international brand at a time when there is increasing competition to attract top-flight students from around the world.”

As a conceptual artist, Jonathon Keats admits that he doesn’t have much of a background in science, but that hasn’t stopped Keats from working with scientists to engineer God in a petri dish, or unveiling a temple dedicated to the worship of science in Downtown Berkeley—all in the name of art, of course.

In order to create a hymn for the temple to science, Keats thought it would be best to record sounds of the infant universe with the help of research done by Mark Whittle, an astrophysicist from the University of Virginia.

Whittle explains how he recorded the sounds of the infant universe in easy-to-read terms here.
Keats took these sounds and compiled them into a hymn.

He says it’s best heard with earphones, because “the universe speaks very quietly.”

Keats’ previous projects include:

– Copyrighting his mind.

– Producing canvas paintings from extraterrestrial signals in space.

– Orchestrating a ballet for bees by selectively planting flowers at a farm in Chico, CA.

He’s also generated a lot of press attention for his “thought experiments” in the past, proposing the logical law of “A=A” be written onto Berkeley’s law books, and some others.

-Matthew Peters

The House of Representatives unanimously passed HR 2352 last night, a bill that would require UC Berkeley and other campuses that are recipients of federal student aid to conduct annual safety assessments and create response plans in the event of a disaster.

The bill is meant to enhance safety regulations that President Bush mandated more than a month ago, when he signed a law requiring college campuses to notify students “immediately” after an emergency disaster.

UC Berkeley’s WarnMe, an alert system that notifies students of emergencies through e-mail, phone calls or text messages, complies with such standards.  However, WarnMe is an opt-in system, meaning students’ participation is optional.

On Piedmont Avenue Tuesday, a crowd of more than 300–including a slew of local and national media outlets–gathered to watch construction workers build a scaffolding to remove the Berkeley tree-sitters. Just as they neared the top of the 90-ft. redwood, the workers unraveled this sign:

The banner received mixed reactions from the onlookers, which included tree-sit supporters, students, journalists and curious passersby. Some booed; others laughed.

After a court ruling gave UC Berkeley the green light to start building a controversial athletic center near Memorial Stadium, university-hired arborists started clearing the 42 trees Friday. The four last tree-sitters stayed put in their redwood until Tuesday, when they reached negotiations with the campus, came down and were promptly taken to jail.

Valerie Woolard discusses the effects of high gas prices on students.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiwYhB1_wiU

See the full article here.

When the U.S. News & World Report ranks the nation’s educational institutions–most recently, the top graduate programs–the lists often stir debate.

But first-year Haas School of Business student Buzz Buzko, who earned his undergraduate degree in Ukraine, said that a school’s reputation carries more weight than its exact ranking for people outside the U.S. This year, the U.S. News & World Report listed Haas as tied at No. 7 with Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business Administration.

“Both employers and employees in Ukraine are not aware of anything but Harvard (University) and Stanford (University)–they don’t know what Berkeley is,” he said. “In this respect, there is a problem for students who want to come back to Ukraine and search for a job. The power of Haas is enormous here in the U.S., but it’s basically zero in Ukraine because they don’t know who Haas is.”

When University of California administrators initially sought out University of Texas Chancellor Mark Yudof for the UC president’s position, many were unsure if he would accept the role.

“Someone who knew chancellor Yudof, I said ‘Should I call him?’ (and) he said, ‘You can but you’d be wasting your time,’” said UC Board of Regents Chairman Richard Blum. “I actually expected a three-minute conversation and a polite no so I put my best game face on and got through the conversation.”

Yudof was unanimously appointed by the board on Thursday for the UC president’s position, a week after he was recommended by a regents’ selection committee.

But Yudof said he was not expecting to be contacted for the UC president’s post.

“It took me a very long time to decide that I was interested in the job,” he said. “I just wasn’t looking for another job and I hadn’t sent a resume in anywhere.”

Yudof said he has not yet put in his resignation letter to the University of Texas, but is only hoping to help them in the transition to a new chancellor.

“The (University of) Texas Board of Regents has been very gracious to me and my family. I don’t want to leave them in the lurch,” he said.

When campus police were first alerted to the tree-climb protest outside Wheeler Hall, they drew an immediate connection with the oak grove protest near Memorial Stadium.

Yet, despite the huge tree banner filled with grievances against the university, those occupying the tree outside Wheeler Hall stressed that they had no direct connection to the tree-sitters east of campus.

Still, tree protesters from both areas shared one ideal in common — that of free speech.

Wheeler Hall tree protesters called for the democratization of the UC Regents and condemned the BP Deal. But they said, in the end, it was an issue of free speech and student activism.

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