Columns:: Around Academe

since 12/15/98

Columns::September 3, 2002

Around academe

Islam reading spurs controversy
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held a seminar for entering freshmen and transfer students on the first day of classes about a controversial book about the Koran. Despite efforts to obtain a legal injunction against the reading, a federal court denied the request, and the seminar took place as planned. Opponents of Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations claimed it blurred the line between the separation of church and state. The book also was criticized as painting a positive picture of Islam. Three days after the seminar, a panel of the UNC Board of Governors endorsed academic freedom.

New data to help affirmative action
A research panel at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association presented data to support the legal defense of affirmative action. The researchers argued that minority students may earn lower grades as a result of a hostile environment at leading undergraduate institutions, and that law schools and other graduate programs must therefore expand or maintain affirmative action programs in admissions.
The researchers presented data from a 2000 study that was submitted into the record of Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action program is being challenged. They interviewed minority students at four colleges that send many students to Michigan’s law school and found that minority students tend to suffer insults that affect their academic performance.

--Leslie Bakun

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