DUBAI, July 3 (Reuters) – Pope Francis said the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, has made him angry and disgusted and that he condemned and rejected permitting the act as a form of freedom of speech.
“Any book considered holy should be respected to respect those who believe in it,” the pope said in an interview in the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad, published on Monday. “I feel angry and disgusted at these actions.
“Freedom of speech should never be used as a means to despise others and allowing that is rejected and condemned.”
A man tore up and burned a Koran in Sweden’s capital Stockholm last week, resulting in strong condemnation from several states, including Turkey whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the NATO military alliance.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, courts have over-ruled those decisions, saying they infringed freedom of speech.
On Sunday, an Islamic grouping of 57 states said collective measures are needed to prevent acts of desecration to the Koran and international law should be used to stop religious hatred.
Reporting by Maha Eldahan; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Raju Gopalakrishnan
July 3 (Reuters) – Three civil rights groups filed a complaint against Harvard on Monday, claiming its preferential policy for undergraduate applicants with family ties to the elite school overwhelmingly benefits white students, days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its race-conscious admissions policies.
The groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education claiming that Harvard’s preferences for “legacy” applicants violates a federal law banning race discrimination for programs that receive federal funds, as virtually all U.S. colleges and universities do.
Last week, the Supreme Court said race-conscious policies adopted by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to ensure that more non-white students are admitted are unconstitutional. The decision was a major blow to efforts to attract diverse student bodies and is expected to prompt new challenges to admission policies.
Harvard College is the undergraduate school of Harvard University.
The groups in Monday’s complaint said the Supreme Court ruling had made it even more imperative to eliminate policies that disadvantage non-white applicants.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The groups are represented by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit that describes itself on its website as working with “communities of color and immigrants to fight discrimination.”
Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the group’s executive director, said the Supreme Court last week made clear that any policies that disadvantage racial groups are unlawful by noting that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
“Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process,” he said in a statement.
Students and pedestrians walk through the Yard at Harvard University, after the school asked its students not to return to campus after Spring Break and said it would move to virtual instruction for graduate and undergraduate classes, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo
Legacy policies, which are common at U.S. colleges and universities, have become increasingly controversial
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in remarks following las week’s Supreme Court ruling, said schools should consider eliminating legacy policies because they “expand privilege instead of opportunity.”
Several prominent lawmakers from both parties made similar comments. Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, called legacy policies “affirmative action for white people” in a tweet.
According to Monday’s complaint, nearly 70% of Harvard applicants with family ties to donors or alumni are white and are about six times more likely to be admitted than other applicants.
About 28% of Harvard’s class of 2019 were legacies, the groups said in the complaint. That means fewer admissions slots were available for non-white applicants who are far less likely to have family ties to the school, they said.
The groups are asking the Department of Education to investigate Harvard’s admission practices and order the school to abandon legacy preferences if it wants to continue receiving federal funding. Michael Kippins, one of the lawyers who filed the complaint, said in an email that Lawyers for Civil Rights has not ruled out filing a lawsuit against Harvard in the future.
When the Supreme Court heard the Harvard and UNC cases last October, a lawyer for the group that had sued the schools argued that eliminating legacy preferences “would make Harvard far less white, wealthy, and privileged.”
Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas appeared to agree, pressing Harvard’s lawyer on why the school could not get rid of the legacy policy instead of granting separate preferences to non-white students.
The lawyer, Seth Waxman, told the court that there was no evidence that ending legacy preferences would lead to a more diverse student body.
Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie Adler
Dan Wiessner (@danwiessner) reports on labor and employment and immigration law, including litigation and policy making. He can be reached at daniel.wiessner@thomsonreuters.com.
[1/3] Members of the University of North Carolina’s diverse student body mingle and make their way across campus as the Supreme Court weighs the issue of race-conscious admissions to colleges, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., March 28, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo
WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) – In 1998, the year a voter-approved measure barring the use of race-conscious admissions policies for public colleges and universities in California took effect, the percentage of Black, Hispanic and Native American students admitted at two of the state’s elite public schools plummeted by more than 50%.
Those figures for UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley offer a cautionary tale as administrators at schools around the United States await a Supreme Court decision due by the end of June that is expected to prohibit affirmative action student admissions policies nationwide.
That potential outcome in cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina has brought new urgency to efforts by schools to maintain or increase racial and ethnic diversity in their student populations, according to interviews with senior administrators at a dozen colleges and universities.
“We cannot afford as a nation to regress on our goals to create an educated and equitable society,” said Seth Allen, head of admissions at Pomona College in California. “So it’s incumbent on higher education to figure out how to work collectively together to ensure that we’re not furthering the enrollment gap among different groups of students.”
Many selective U.S. colleges and universities for decades have used some form of affirmative action to boost enrollment of minority students, seeing value in having a diverse student population not only to offer educational opportunity but to bring a range of perspectives onto campuses.
Affirmative action refers to policies that favor people belonging to certain groups considered disadvantaged or subject to discrimination, in areas such as hiring and student admissions.
Schools are exploring numerous options. Administrators said they are drafting strategies to expand their recruitment of diverse applicants, remove application barriers and increase the rate of minority students who accept their admissions offers.
An official at Rice University in Houston said the school will lean on student essay responses to ensure it admits students from diverse backgrounds. The U.S. Air Force Academy will focus on recruiting more students from diverse congressional districts.
The president of Skidmore College in New York said connecting with high school counselors will become “more important than ever” to broaden the school’s applicant pool.
Many schools said they already have waived fees, made standardized testing optional and are looking to improve financial aid offers – steps that could help boost minority enrollment.
All of the administrators said their plans could change to comply with the scope of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the Harvard and UNC cases. Some acknowledged that whatever steps schools take to circumvent a ban on race-conscious admissions policies might face legal challenges of their own.
“We’re likely to see a whole new generation of lawsuits arise from the new admission standards that will be adopted by colleges and universities,” said Danielle Holley, current dean of Howard University School of Law in Washington and incoming president of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
Lawsuits backed by an anti-affirmative action activist accused Harvard and UNC of unlawful discrimination in student admissions either by violating the U.S. Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law or a federal law barring discrimination based on race and other factors.
UNC was accused of discriminating against white and Asian American applicants. Harvard was accused of bias against Asian American applicants. The schools denied these allegations.
GOING LOCAL
Many of the school administrators said they plan to focus resources on recruitment, a part of the admissions cycle they do not expect the court will restrict.
Admissions officers said they were broadening their outreach to high schools and community-based organizations in neighborhoods with lower incomes and educational attainment – places often populated by racial minorities.
Yvonne Berumen, vice president of admissions at Pitzer College in California, said her team might run essay workshops at high schools in those targeted zip codes – postal regions – in hopes of generating applications.
Chris George, dean of admissions at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, said high school data from national organizations like the College Board, which offers information on neighborhood income and housing stability, will help guide which high schools the college sends representatives to visit and the recruitment events they attend.
Community-based organizations that identify local students who show academic promise and help them apply to college will be crucial partners for identifying and recruiting potential applicants from diverse backgrounds, the administrators said.
“They become extensions of our recruiting and admissions team in many ways, and we’re seeing each year a bigger and bigger percentage of our students come from those community-based organizations,” said Kent Devereaux, president of Goucher College in Maryland.
Administrators at schools located in or near major cities, including Pomona College near Los Angeles and Sarah Lawrence College in New York, said they would hope to draw more students from racially diverse local high schools and take more transfer students from local community colleges.
Colonel Arthur Primas Jr., the U.S. Air Force Academy’s admissions director, said his racially diverse recruiting team will continue to visit schools in U.S. congressional districts with heavy concentrations of minorities and will try to encourage more students to seek nominations to the academy from their local members of Congress.
“The Air Force Academy has had a long tradition of actively recruiting diverse candidates,” Primas said. “But we’re going to have to really be expansive.”
Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Donna Bryson; Editing by Will Dunham and Colleen Jenkins
Gabriella Borter is a reporter on the U.S. National Affairs team, covering cultural and political issues as well as breaking news. She has won two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York – in 2020 for her beat reporting on healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2019 for her spot story on the firing of the police officer who killed Eric Garner. The latter was also a Deadline Club Awards finalist. She holds a B.A. in English from Yale University and joined Reuters in 2017.
Jan 13 (Reuters) – At least one administrator at the Virginia school where a 6-year-old boy shot a teacher last week was aware the boy may have had a gun, but no weapon was found when the boy’s backpack was searched before the shooting, school officials said on Friday.
Superintendent George Parker told parents at Rickneck Elementary School during a virtual meeting on Thursday that a school administrator learned the boy may have had a gun, according to Michelle Price, a spokeswoman for Newport News Public Schools. The information was first reported by Virginia’s WAVY TV.
The administrator has not been identified nor is it clear exactly how they learned the boy may have had a gun.
Once alerted, school officials searched the boy’s backpack, but did not find the gun. Why the gun was not found at that time has not been explained. The shooting took place about 2-1/2 hours after the boy’s backpack was searched.
Abigail Zwerner, a 25-year-old teacher, was shot a week ago by the young student. Police hailed the teacher as a hero earlier this week for managing to evacuate students from her classroom even after she was shot. Police on Friday said Zwerner’s last known condition was stable.
The boy who shot Zwerner was in the custody of the Newport News Department of Human Services, police said.
Police said the investigation is continuing and once complete, they will present findings to the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Newport News, who would make any decision regarding possible charges against the boy’s mother.
The mother legally purchased the 9 mm Taurus handgun, police have said, but could face misdemeanor charges if it’s found she did not properly secure the weapon in her home.
The boy took the handgun from his home, placed it in his backpack and removed it while Zwerner was teaching class, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said earlier this week. The boy pointed the gun at the teacher and fired once. Zwerner was shot through the hand and into the chest.
After the shot, another woman who works at the school rushed into the classroom and held the boy down while Zwerner escorted the estimated 16 to 20 students out, Drew said. When police arrived, they found the gun on the floor.
Parker previously told reporters the school was unprepared for a 6-year-old bringing a gun to school and firing it, saying this marked only the third time since 1970 that a child aged 6 or younger had discharged a weapon at a U.S. school.
The Newport News school board on Thursday announced that metal detectors would be installed in every school in the city following the shooting.
Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
Nov 14 (Reuters) – A suspect in a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three members of the University of Virginia football team dead was in custody on Monday, hours after he allegedly opened fire on a bus full of students returning from a field trip.
University police said during a news conference that the suspect, student Christopher Darnell Jones, 22, was arrested hours after the shooting that unfolded at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday (0330 GMT on Monday) at the school in Charlottesville, Virginia, attended by 25,000 students.
Minutes after the shooting, school officials issued alerts on social media telling students and staff to shelter in place with one tweet saying to “RUN HIDE FIGHT.” The sprawling campus remained on alert throughout the night and morning as law enforcement officers conducted a massive manhunt for Jones.
University President Jim Ryan identified the slain students as Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis and D’Sean Perry.
Chandler and Perry died on the scene, while Davis died of his wounds at a hospital. Two other students were wounded and taken to UVA Medical Center, where one is in good condition and another in critical condition, University Police Chief Tim Longo said.
The shooting unfolded on a bus full of students after it pulled into a parking garage on campus, Ryan said. The students had just returned from a class field trip to see a play in Washington, D.C.
Jones was armed with a handgun, Longo said.
Jones, who was apprehended off campus, was held on three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, Longo said. It was unclear how he was taken into custody.
[1/6] A handout picture shows college football player Lavel Davis Jr. who was killed in a shooting attack at the University of Virginia, in this undated handout. University of Virginia/Handout via REUTERS
‘HEARTBROKEN’
Jones, who was listed as a player on the school’s football team in 2018, came to the attention of the University of Virginia’s threat assessment team in the fall of 2022, according to Longo. In September 2022, the Office of Student Affairs reported to the team that it received information Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person that was unaffiliated with the university, though no threat was made.
During an investigation, the person said they never saw the gun, and Jones’ roommate reported that he never saw the presence of a weapon.
The investigation was later closed because the witnesses would not participate with the process, he said.
Ryan said in a letter posted on social media hours after the shooting that he was “heartbroken,” and added that classes were canceled for the day.
“This is a message any leader hopes never to have to send, and I am devastated that this violence has visited the University of Virginia,” he wrote.
The shooting was the latest episode of gun violence on U.S. college and high school campuses. The bloodshed has fueled debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.
A 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, about 150 miles (241 km) southwest of Charlottesville, left 33 people dead, including the shooter, and 23 injured in one of the deadliest college mass shootings in U.S. history.
(This story has been corrected to add Davis’ name in fifth paragraph)
Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Toby Chopra, Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis
Nov 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Friday again declined to block President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, this time in a challenge brought by two Indiana borrowers, even as a lower court considers whether to lift a freeze it imposed on the program in a different case.
Barrett denied an emergency request by the Indiana borrowers, represented by a conservative legal group, to bar the U.S. Department of Education from implementing the Democratic president’s plan to forgive debt held by qualified people who had taken loans to pay for college.
Barrett on Oct. 20 denied a similar request by a Wisconsin taxpayers organization represented by another conservative legal group. The justice acted in the cases because she is the justice assigned to handle certain emergency requests from a group of states that includes Indiana and Wisconsin.
The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 21 put the policy on hold in yet another conservative challenge by six Republican-led states while it considered their request for injunction pending their appeal of their case’s dismissal. That request remains pending.
Biden’s plan, unveiled in August, was designed to forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students would have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that more than 40 million Americans would be eligible to benefit.
The policy fulfilled a promise Biden made during the 2020 presidential campaign to help debt-saddled former college students. Democrats hope the policy will boost support for them in Tuesday’s midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.
Friday’s case was filed by two borrowers, Frank Garrison and Noel Johnson, represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, and claimed they would be irreparably harmed if some of their student loans were automatically forgiven because they would face increased state tax liabilities.
Soon after they sued, the Department of Education created an opt-out option for borrowers. U.S. District Judge Richard Young on Oct. 21 dismissed the case, finding that the debt forgiveness program did not injure Garrison and Johnson.
The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 28 declined to block the plan while Garrison and Johnson pursued an appeal, noting that the program is “not compulsory” and that the plaintiffs could avoid tax liability simply by opting out.
Caleb Kruckenberg, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation, in a statement expressed disappointment that Barrett declined to block the plan while his clients pursued their appeal but said they will “continue to fight this program in court.”
“Practically since this program was announced, the administration has sought to avoid judicial scrutiny,” he said. “Thus far they have succeeded. But that does not change the fact that this program is illegal from stem to stern.”
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O’Brien
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