Our comment to the end of the Department of Ed meetings on reform:

Accreditation and NACIQI

Formal education has to take responsibility for good government in the United States.

Civics and legal education are where to begin.

They are both miserable — watch the Bush/Gonzales tape on the Impeach Gonzales web site.

Watch the controlled demolition of Building 7 on 9/11 on the Truth.org web site.

Those are examples of the failure of National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (”NACIQI”) to make recommendations to the Secretary that count.

All educators must become active and interested in more than “does Ward Churchill get to retain his job.”

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 9:55 am EDT on June 4, 2007
June 4, 2007

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Lack of Consensus on Lack of Consensus

No, that’s not a typo in the headline. It’s a reflection of the Alice in Wonderland nature of Friday’s final day of work for the committee negotiating possible changes in federal rules governing accreditation.

The competition for the most surreal part of the day is stiff. A strong contender might have been the nearly two hours that the panel spent debating whether gatherings of the federal panel that advises the education secretary on accreditation should be called “meetings” or “hearings.”

But the moment that best defined the months-long negotiating process, which ended with an anticlimactic whimper Friday after the fourth and final meeting adjourned with no vote on a package of possible rules, came when the members of the panel could not agree even on their failure to reach agreement. Heads shook around the room as negotiators and baffled observers alike packed up their things and went home, leaving the Education Department to make the next move in drafting accreditation rules without being bound by anything that happened during the course of the negotiations.

To back up: The purpose of this whole process, which the Education Department contemplated last fall and formally announced in January, was for the government to convene a set of interested parties — accreditors, college officials and others — to consider possible changes in the regulations that govern accreditation, higher education’s quality assurance process.

The negotiations have been controversial throughout, with many college leaders (as well as some key members of Congress) questioning the department’s legal authority to consider some of the changes it has sought, and department officials taking turns acknowledging and denying that their primary purpose in pursuing regulatory change was to carry out some of the recommendations of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

Over the months of discussion and debate during several meetings of the negotiating panel, the members reached agreement on various relatively minor issues, but remained divided about the three most significant items on the committee’s agenda: (1) ways to prod accreditors to force colleges to measure and report more quantitative data about their success in educating students; (2) a proposal to insist that accreditors ensure that the institutions they oversee do not have policies that automatically reject the academic credits of students who transfer from colleges approved by national accreditors; (3) a set of possible changes in the department’s process for granting recognition to accrediting agencies, which has come under fire as its standards for judging accreditors have appeared in recent months to shift inappropriately with the political winds.

Given the deep divisions that emerged over those issues at the negotiating panel’s third meeting in April — which ended in conflict and even a bit of intrigue — the process seemed to have ended without “consensus” on a package of proposed changes, a result that, under federal law, would have left the Education Department with the right to draft rules on any subject covered by the regulatory process. Faced with that prospect, the negotiators agreed after the end of the third meeting to make a last-ditch, “good faith” effort to resolve the remaining issues, at Friday’s fourth meeting.

In the days leading up to the meeting, rumors flew about possible outcomes. Several college lobbyists said they’d heard that the department was so desperate not to have this negotiating session end in failure as had its other two major rule making negotiations (on student loan and grant programs) this spring that department officials planned to offer significant compromises on student learning outcomes and transfer of credit. Others predicted that the department would make a few concessions and then force college and accrediting officials to vote No on the proposals, in the hope that they would make the naysayers look defensive and unwilling to change.

The composition of the audience at Friday’s meeting reflected the stakes. Sara Martinez Tucker, the under secretary of education and the department’s top higher education official, gave a pep talk as the session opened, anticipating a “tough, tough conversation at a critical point” and encouraging the panelists to do the right thing “for our children.”

Joining the usual cadre of college and accrediting lobbyists in the peanut gallery, for instance, was the Rev. Charles Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (the group’s lobbyist said he was there to “make a statement” about the importance of the process to its member colleges, but there were jokes about him being there to administer last rites for the process, too).

And keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings was a top aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican and former U.S. education secretary who last week warned Secretary Margaret Spellings that the department should not overstep its bounds in proposing accrediting rules that exceed its legislative authority.

Any thought that the department had a major gambit up its sleeve seemed to abate almost immediately. Vickie L. Schray, the department’s lead negotiator, offered a strong defense of the department’s approach, complained that critics (presumably Alexander and commenters in articles in publications like this one) had mischaracterized the department’s proposals as “trying to increase our scope and authority,” and reminded everyone that it would be more than a year until any regulations that might emerge from the process take effect. “It’s going to take a couple years, folks,” before any of these proposals really have an impact, Schray said.

Then the group delved into the intricate (read: mind-numbing) details of a proposal to ensure more clarity and consistency in the procedures of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the education secretary on accreditation issues and on granting (or withholding) federal recognition for individual accrediting agencies.

The conversation should have been an important one, given recent developments involving the advisory committee, including last week when it overrode a recommendation made by the department’s staff and, with no notice, for the first time yanked the recognition of a division of one of the six regional accrediting agencies.

That followed on its actions at its last meeting, in December, when the panel appeared to be changing its requirements for accreditors in response to prevailing pressure from the secretary’s higher education commission to insist that accreditors set minimum levels of performance for the colleges they oversee to meet for their students’ learning.

But instead of exploring philosophical or political issues about the committee’s power — “the elephant in the room,” as more than one audience member described it — the negotiating panel’s discussion focused on relative minutiae: whether calling the biennial gatherings of NACIQI “hearings” instead of “meetings” would undermine the legal rights of accreditors whose recognition is restricted, for instance, and the number of days before each NACIQI meeting (or hearing, as it were) that accreditors should get or send documents to and from the department.

While the discussion of revamping procedures for NACIQI was useful, said Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and a negotiator, “I also think we need to be going much further in considering the role and operation of the advisory committee. It’s time for a review, for a fresh look at how advisory committee members are selected, the diversity of them or lack of it, its operations and policies, going well beyond what we’re doing here.”

As the hours wore on during Friday’s discussion, it became clearer and clearer that the members of the negotiating panel were not going to reach agreement on the proposal for revamping procedures for the federal recognition process, let alone the learning outcomes and transfer of credit issues that so divided them at previous meetings.

So where did that leave them in the big picture? several panelists asked at various points during the day.

Finally, in the late afternoon, after Schray met with members of the department’s staff for a brief caucus, she said it had become clear to her that the group was not going to reach “tentative agreement” (a term of art in federal rule negotiating) on the proposal on recognition procedures. Given that failure, and the other major issues on which the negotiators remained divided, Schray said, department officials had decided to conclude the proceedings without a vote on the full package of proposals.

Instead, she said, the department vowed, “without making any promises,” to “make every effort to use your input, the language we have discussed at this table, not only on those items where we had tentative agreement, but in those we did not, in the development of proposed rules” in the weeks and months to come.

Betty Horton, a negotiator representing the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors, which she co-chairs, said the members of the panel had been led by the department to think that they would be voting on whether the group could reach “consensus” (another formal term in the process) on the full package of proposals. She asked that they have a chance to do that.

“Our response,” said Schray, is that “while we have worked toward consensus on the full package, it is clear we will not have consensus. Therefore, we see no reason to vote on the full package at this time.”

Horton and others pressed further, and one asked questions about the implications of the fact that the group had been unable to reach consensus on the full package of proposals.

In perhaps the final through-the-looking-glass moment of an often surreal process, Schray balked. “We are not acknowledging that there is not consensus on the full package,” she said, seeming to contradict what she had said just moments before.

With that, the proceedings came to an end, leaving many of the negotiators and most of those in the audience shaking their heads, trying to understand what had just happened and why it was important for the department not to admit that its process had fallen short of agreement on the most significant issues before it.

To Eaton, of the higher education accreditation council, one thing was clear: “There may have been a relatively soft landing, but the bottom is there was no consensus, and that rule making failed.”

What that means, going forward, is that the Education Department can issue proposed regulations that say more or less whatever its officials want — because no consensus was reached, they are not bound by the results of the rule making process, even on the issues on which the negotiators agreed.

That is just what happened last week when the department issued proposed rules out of the similarly failed rule making process on student loan issues (see related article here).

As Schray told the negotiators Friday: “You’ll have another shot at us” when the proposed rules come out. She might as well have been speaking to Lamar Alexander as to them.

— Doug Lederman

Comments

Phase Two

Although rulemaking was instituted by Congress to enable stakeholders to reach consensus on regulatory matters that impacted them, you didn’t need a crystal ball this time around. In fact, as I understand it, rulemaking generally has a pretty poor track record for keeping everyone happy.
The interests of the accrediting guilds and the federal government interlock in complicated ways, with growing pressure to reform the Secretary’s accrediting agency recognition process in the background.
But whether this amounts to the much needed reform of the self-regulated accrediting associations remains to be seen.

Phase II is the public comment portion of new rule approval process, beginning with the proposed rules appearing in the Federal Register, followed by the submission of public comments, and the Department of Education response. Those unhappy with the finalized rules can attempt to sue the Secretary in federal court, but the meetings just concluded help in meeting the legal “due process” requirements, making any challenges in open court that much more difficult. Another factor that makes successful challenges unlikely is the clear mandate of HEA Sec 496.

In order to be considered, public comments must address the narrow range of issues raised in the proposed regulations. Comments falling outside the scope of the regulations are not generally dealt with. In addition, commentators must familiarize themselves with the issues before venturing into the public spotlight, since their comments become part of the public record once they are submitted.

I find it suggestive that CHEA’s Judy Eaton is drawing attention to the make-up of NACIQI’s membership. Until recently, NACIQI’s manifest duty was to rubber-stamp the US DOE staffs’ suggestions. But now, as can be deduced, a role reversal of sorts is possible, with NACIQI driving AAEU, instead of the other way around. This abrupt shift in power may explain Eaton’s concern, since she heads the umbrella group that represents the interests of those being regulated, the accrediting guilds themselves.

However, it must be borne in mind that NACIQI operates in an advisory capacity, advising the Secretary about whether to renew recognition for Title IV purposes or not. The Secretary is free to accept or reject, or even modify that advice, which, then, may once again rely on staff input.

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 9:45 am EDT on June 4, 2007

Inside Higher Education posted the following article.  The resulting comment thread, which includes the comments of our Director, William Sumner Scott, follow it.

How Sectarian Is Too Sectarian?

A federal judge ruled Friday that Colorado is entitled to bar state scholarship funds from going to students at “pervasively sectarian” institutions.

The ruling rejected a suit brought by Colorado Christian University, which did not challenge a state agency’s determination of the university’s religious nature, but said that applying a test of whether an institution is “pervasively sectarian” amounts to a violation of some religious institutions’ freedom to express their faiths. But Judge Marcia S. Krieger ruled that despite a general skepticism in federal courts of late about barring religious institutions from receiving government funds, Supreme Court rulings still gave Colorado the right to limit the use of its funds as the state has done.

The ruling could be significant beyond Colorado. The university is taking the case to a federal appeals court, where any ruling will have more value as a precedent. The U.S. Justice Department is also involved in the case — and tried to use it (without success before Judge Krieger) to ease the process by which religious colleges receive government aid. The university is also receiving support from the Alliance Defense Fund, which has been quite successful in challenging limits on religious groups in higher education. In fact, the decision is notable in being a rare victory for strict separation of church and state in higher education — at a time when many courts have been adopting a more porous church-state wall in academe.

At issue are a series of student aid programs created by Colorado for state residents who attend colleges, public and private, in the state. A Colorado student at a private college in the state could gain $2,500 a year in assistance under the programs. Students are not barred from using the grants at any religious college and the funds flow to Regis University and the University of Denver, which are Roman Catholic and Methodist institutions, respectively.

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education found that Colorado Christian University — unlike Regis and Denver — fit certain characteristics of “pervasively sectarian” in that its faculty and student body must share certain religious views, participation in religious services and theological instruction is required, and so forth. The university has never shied away from its religious identity, which is clear in its Statement of Faith, which declares the Bible infallible.

The university’s challenge was based on the fact that its students have similar majors to those at other public and private colleges — business, education, humanities, sciences, etc. The argument was in essence that business students at Colorado Christian are suffering unconstitutional religious discrimination because they enroll at a Christian university instead of a secular one. The Bush administration backed that argument, accusing the state of entering “the dangerous thicket of deciding what is too religious and what is permissibly religious.”

Much of the legal discussion on the case focused on a 2004 Supreme Court ruling known as Locke v. Davey that Washington State was entitled to bar theology students from receiving state student aid. The Bush Justice Department argued that the ruling limited the ability of states to bar student aid from supporting non-theological majors at religious institutions.

Judge Krieger disagreed. She noted that the Locke decision was based on the idea that theology students were not being barred from engaging in their desired programs of study, were not being excluded from public life, and were not being forced to abandon their faith. Rather, Judge Krieger noted the language of the Supreme Court ruling that the state “has merely chosen not to fund a distinct category of instruction.” She said that finding also fit in Colorado.

On the question of students’ majors, Judge Krieger said that wasn’t relevant once an institution had been found to be “pervasively sectarian.” Colorado Christian’s “contention that the bulk of its students major in secular subjects may be nominally accurate, but ignores what it means to be found to be a ‘pervasively sectarian’ institution,” Krieger wrote. She cited a U.S. Supreme Court definition of “pervasively sectarian” as describing “an institution in which religion is so pervasive that a substantial portion of its functions are subsumed in the religious mission.” And she cited a Colorado Supreme Court definition of such a educational institution as such a place “whose educational function is not clearly separable from its religious mission.”

“CCU’s argument equating the ’secular’ education it offers and secular classes at public and generally sectarian schools such as Regis University and the University of Denver is misplaced, as the fact that those schools have not been found to be ‘pervasively sectarian’ indicates that the secular character of instruction at those schools is readily severable from any religious teaching,” Judge Krieger wrote. “Even though there are classes or programs at CCU designed to prepare students for secular jobs or careers, because CCU is a ‘pervasively sectarian’ institution, even its secular instruction is infused with religious components. Thus the unchallenged determination that CCU is ‘pervasively sectarian’ makes even its secular instruction an ‘essentially religious endeavor,’ akin to the theological instruction in Locke.“

Because the university did not challenge (in the court case) its designation as “pervasively sectarian,” the judge wrote that she did not consider whether the evaluation was fair. But in several footnotes she pointed to evidence suggesting that secular courses at the university may not be the same as those at the University of Colorado at Boulder. For example, she quoted Colorado Christian officials saying that all courses “are framed within the Christian worldview.”

The university issued a statement Friday pledging to appeal and blasting Judge Krieger’s analysis.

“The effect of the ruling is to say that Colorado students will be denied state tuition aid for college if they want to attend a religious school,” said Bill Armstrong, the university’s president. “Judge Marcia S. Krieger’s decision is a setback for the students involved and for religious liberty.”

— Scott Jaschik

Comments

Faith Defined

Faith is belief without facts.

Faith has no place in any institution of higher education.

It must be eliminated as an organized business.

Falwell passed his business on to his children.

All organized religions are frauds upon the public.

This decision is correct — it needs to be expanded.

If organized religion were regulated under the Securities Act of 1933 and Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002 and taxed as are other businesses, it would soon become extinct.

The World would be a safer.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
wss@jefound.org
http://jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 10:15 am EDT on May 21, 2007
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Too Christian

So, if your college is “too Christian”, too bad? What about all those tax payers who are also “too Christian”? Seems like they should have a say in where their tax money is being spent.

Frank McCown, at 12:00 pm EDT on May 21, 2007

Immediate Press Release
Contact: Ron Rex
Vice President for University Advancement
Colorado Christian University
Phone: 720-838-4486
rrex@ccu.edu

Inside Higher Education posted the following article.  The resulting comment thread, which includes the comments of our Director, William Sumner Scott, follow it.

Georgetown Law’s New Precedent

Jenny Woodson is no stranger to controversial causes. It’s just that the first-year law student didn’t expect that, at the most stressful time of her year, she’d be at the center of a divisive case about adherence to religious principles.
Related stories

Like classmates before her at the Georgetown University Law Center, Woodson accepted an unpaid summer position with an organization that supports abortion rights — Planned Parenthood’s public policy and litigation department. When asked during her job interview if she could secure funding for the work, Woodson said she wasn’t sure. Would a Jesuit institution provide financial support for a student to work there?

Not a problem, Woodson’s interviewer told her. Georgetown had a history of funding similar summer internships. So she expected no trouble when she turned in a 50-word job description to the campus group that provides fellowships to students participating in public interest jobs.

But in late March, Woodson was told that T. Alexander Aleinikoff, dean of the Law Center, had decided that the campus group could not fund her internship. (Georgetown helped Woodson find a nonprofit organization that plans to support her work.)

“It wasn’t a change in policy,” Aleinikoff said. “As we became more involved in the funding and more aware of the project, it was clear that the university could not fund advocacy of abortion rights. There’s a very narrow exception in an area that is central to the core identity of the university.”

Equal Justice Foundation, the student-run group that provides the fellowships, receives some funding from alumni and outside sources. But a growing percentage — this year more than $100,000 — of the money comes from the Law Center, which collects and distributes all donations.

Woodson is upset with what she calls Georgetown’s inconsistencies. She said it is intellectually dishonest for the Law Center to claim its action is motivated by a desire to follow Catholic teachings.

“If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

Days after learning of the Law Center’s decision, Woodson approached the student group Law Students for Choice, which is not officially recognized by the university. Joy Welan, the group’s president, said she agrees with Woodson that Georgetown mishandled the situation.

“We think this is a major change from what [the school] has done in the past, and it interferes with students’ career development,” Welan said. “If [Georgetown] is saying it is instituting this policy because the church demands it, then why aren’t changes happening across the board?”

“The school has tried to be too covert about its affiliation with the Catholic church,” she added. “We want [it] to come out and be honest about what [it wants] to be.”

Welan said the university still allows student groups like hers to bring to campus speakers whose positions differ from the official Jesuit policy, and that while it won’t provide funding for those speakers, the institution will set aside space, which Georgetown has already paid for.

Georgetown, she said, has taken a “piece-by-piece” dismantling approach rather than dealing with the issue of abortion rights holistically. For instance, she said before the academic year began, her group lost the right to have the “.edu” at the end of its e-mail account.

“We’re concerned that this one issue is being targeted and wondering how far this is going to expand in the future,” Welan said.

Deborah Epstein, associate dean for clinical programs and public interest, said Georgetown is trying to make its funding restrictions as narrow as possible so that students can still take part in the vast majority of public interest work.

“The law school is being quite clear — we cannot provide our own funding through EJF or other means for students to work at an organization whose primarily purpose is abortion rights advocacy,” she said. “That’s all we’re saying.”

Daniel Hughes, president of the student group Progressive Alliance for Life, said he is among the students who have confronted administrators with concerns over summer internship funding. He said he threatened to take the matter to the church officials if action wasn’t taken. Aleinikoff said Georgetown’s decision had nothing to do with external pressure.

Hughes said the university is finally taking the appropriate action by honoring church teachings.

“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.”

Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.

“If this is finally a sign of them owning up to their commitment to honor the church, I’ll be impressed but surprised,” he said. “This seems like a grudging, half-hearted commitment.”

Woodson, the law student, said she is also upset with the timing of Georgetown’s decision. She said by waiting until late in the application process, the law school hamstrung EJF.

“Almost every year someone has a job like this,” she said. “It should have been foreseen. If the school is going to make this decision, announce it in an open forum so students can understand what is going on and so people pledging money understand the new limitations.”

Epstein, the associate dean, said it was an evolving decision that “could have been made any year.”

Georgetown is working on a new statement to clarify that EJF cannot fund future summer jobs involving abortion advocacy groups.

“This is a practical question that we are trying to resolve with prudence,” Aleinikoff said. “Our policy is one of total free speech. We welcome a full discussion on campus, and speakers of diverse viewpoints are brought by student groups.”

— Elia Powers

Comments

The Right to Pick and Chose

At the core of the abortion belief and all other beliefs based upon interpretation of ancient writings is the teaching of Deuteronomy 13:6-9 — let one who teaches a false religion die at the hand of the truly religious. No educated person could possibly continue to refer to any written work based upon this arcane belief, yet the Torah, Bible and Koran do just that. No less than two of them are wrong.

Obviously, this problem goes deeper than how to deal with abortion at Georgetown Law. All law schools must teach sufficient sanity to overcome the lack of tolerance taught by all organized religious people if religious wars like the ones to preserve the Theocracies of Afghanistan and Iraq are to be eliminated. At present, no American law school makes the effort.

Begin with the question: Why no payment of real estate taxes by owners of religious brick and mortar? The buildings are protected by services provided by the pubic. The free tax ride is support of those religions with buildings over those that do not. Those who want to be free of religion pay for them all. Is that legally correct?

The Georgetown Law abortion issue should prompt a broad discussion of the harm organized religion does to the World.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
www://jefound.org
wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 7:41 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Who Decides Where the Line is Drawn

Woodson is upset with what she calls Georgetown’s inconsistencies. She said it is intellectually dishonest for the Law Center to claim its action is motivated by a desire to follow Catholic teachings.

Woodson said further “If Georgetown wants to be a Catholic University it has the freedom to identify as such,” she said. “If the school wants to abide by Catholic doctrine it should do so consistently and prevent all activities the Church disagrees with. This includes prosecutors’ offices that impose the death penalty, gay rights organizations, political candidates and judges that hold positions that disagree with the Catholic church, military law organizations and human rights organizations (the majority of which support reproductive rights, as well).

“When we apply to Georgetown Law, the most you hear about the Jesuit tradition is that [the school] supports students doing work in the public interest,” she added. “If I ever knew that taking part in women’s rights issues would lead to a chilling effect, I don’t know if I would have ever considered coming here.”

Why is the abortion issue more important than the support of the death penalty?

Who let organized religion into the provision of higher education, or any formal education for that matter.

Quizzical, at 8:01 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Who let organized religion into the provision of higher education, or any formal education for that matter.

People who believe in liberty, I would say. To forbid organized religion to establish private educational institutions would be a step on the road to authoritarianism.

K.T., at 9:16 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Response to KT

Then they must teach only what they can prove — all discussion is qualified by “there may not be a God and, certainly, the printed word must be the work of man.” If you have an opinion on abortion or any other issue, it is only your opinion or analysis of the facts, not the word of God.

Otherwise, we are led by the insane.

Quizzical, at 10:11 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Religion and Freedom

We can only teach what we can prove? So black holes are out? Any teaching of the meaning of Moby Dick (as but one example) is dead?

But wait, this is not even that. While Quizzical (a non de plume, I am certain) is railing against what GU may or may not teach, this is not an article about instruction; this is an article about the limitations on funding for students’ summer internships.

I support GU’s position on funding, but I oppose GU’s position on abortion. My position on what has been reported here is based upon my belief in the (necessary) rights of private educational instutions.

Andrew Purvis, at 11:15 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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liberty and orthodoxy

I concur with Mr. Purvis. Requiring a private institution to teach only what Quizical finds provable is not too much different from requiring people to assent to a theological doctrine of an established church.

chris b, at 11:35 am EDT on April 6, 2007
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Fact from Fiction

Certainly, Black Holes can be taught — when presented as the unknown.

The problem with the denial of abortion promotion funding is that the decision was based upon the belief that the word of God demands no funding.

It is wrong for an institution of higher learning that attempts to mold future leaders of intellectual thought, particularly a law school, to make business judgments based upon any belief that is attributed to an unproven source, such as God.

Or a mislabeled source, such as the claim that the written word of man, such as the Bible, has devine inspiration.

AP was close to express his positions as personal to him.

But he missed the point because funding denial must be condemned as impossible to justify.

Chris, at 1:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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Georgetown misled alumni donors

This article misses an important point: Georgetown’s policy change means alumni donors to EJF were misled.

While much of EJF’s funding for student summer public interest fellowships comes from Georgetown University, a large percentage of it comes from alumni donations. Alumni donated to EJF during its fund drive, expecting that reproductive rights fellowships would be funded just as they were in previous years. Georgetown waited until after the fund drive to announce that it was pulling funding from this student. Had I, and other alumni donors, known that Georgetown would discriminate in this way, we would not have contributed.

Moreover, EJF has always funded fellowships based on student votes: Students select the projects they deem most worthy of funding. If Georgetown wants to preserve a Catholic identity, it should accept students who will vote in line with what it considers Catholic doctrine. Otherwise, it should respect student and alumni choices to fund reproductive rights projects. And it certainly should not take alum’s money and then change the rules.

Emily E. Arnold-Fernandez, GULC ‘04

Emily E. Arnold-Fernandez, at 1:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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As a student, has I known that EJF would not fund students who spend their summers working in non-profits that litigate reproductive health, I too would not have donated this year. While the Administration says the decision could have been made at any time, I find it curious that the decision was made after the donation process has all but concluded. This leaves the impression that they snuck the change in after the fact. In addition to being inconsistent across the board (by funding students who work in jobs that support the death penalty, etc) this new policy decision stymies student’s educational and professional development — surely an anathema to the goals of GULC. Furthermore, it will end up penalizing students who don’t have the economic capability to forgoe funding and take the summer job in spite of the University’s refusal. As a result, only students with an indepenent source of income will be able to participate in these non-profit jobs. Considering the big push to have law students go into public interest work, this is sad and ironic.

GULC 3L, at 5:10 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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LSFC : Georgetown :: Georgetown : Military Recruitment

I know we all hated the SATs, but the title says it all. Aleinikoff’s hypocrisy is much more astonishing than the article suggests.

Georgetown receives significant government funding, but tuition and alumni donations constitutes most of Georgetown’s operating budget. Similarly, EJF receives significant funding from Georgetown, but student, alumni, and professor donations constitutes most of EJF’s budget.

When Congress threatened to pull funding from the entire university if the law school refused to allow military recruiters on campus, Aleinikoff fought the decision all the way up to the Supreme Court. Yet he feels that it’s perfectly acceptable for him to do the exact same thing to EJF — even though EJF doesn’t have the resources to contest his decision.

Moreover, EJF doesn’t directly determine which student projects get funded. Student, alumni, and professors donating anonymously rank the projects. Those rankings ultimately determine which projects get funded. It’s rather odd for a school that strongly emphasizes community to suddenly prevent the community from determining how their dollars should be spent.

Meredith E., at 5:15 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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If Georgetown wants to hamstring the work its students do, then it should be honest and direct about it and work consistently within the Catholic tradition. Don’t fund pro choice groups, don’t fund gay rights groups and don’t fund people working in support of the death penalty. Then be prepared to take the hit academically and financially when you drop in the rankings. Picking on a single student in a underhanded and secretive way is, at best, poor management and at worst, cowardly. Either way, it surely isn’t an intellectually consistent or honorable position.

Sean S, at 8:00 pm EDT on April 6, 2007
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Sean,

I believe that perhaps you are allowing your personal views on abortion to color your comments on Georgetown’s decision.

I would be very suprised if Georgetown funds any pro-death penalty groups. Your other example, gay rights, shows a lack of knowledge about Catholic doctrine. I suggest you research what the stands are and then make your comment and the world not being “all good” or “all evil”.

Regarding ‘taking a hit’, Georgetown is a Catholic university, not a catholic university. As I understand things, being willing to ‘take a hit’ for something they believe in something they are supposed to do. Personally, I admire people and organizations that take stands on principle at a financial cost. And usually I admire them whether I believe in their cause or not. Too few universities do that.

Did you make these same type of arguments whenever Georgetown divests its investments in securities related to industries or regimes it finds morally reprehensable. Probably not, so long as you also find those firms morally reprehensable.

In any case, I don’t feel that Georgetown’s discontinuation of funding pro-abortion activities will seriously impact its standing or will cause any of its student’s to leave the school due to fear of having their marketablity diminished. In my experience most students are not that narrow in focus when looking for a school and, in any case, I suspect abortion activists don’t flock to schools which consider natural law a moral basis for decision making.

stm60, UConn, at 7:25 am EDT on April 7, 2007
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Religion and Law School

The stand on the abortion issue or any other discussion motivated by what the law is or should be is admirable.

The interjection of religious dogma detracts from the process.

Should the religious be allowed to remain in the law school business is the question prompted by this article and the comments.

The end result should be the loss of accreditation for all religious law schools – a free, peaceful, society begins with secular law schools open to all people.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.
www://jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 4:05 pm EDT on April 7, 2007
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So Mr. Scott, a free, peaceful society begins with the loss of accredidation for religious law schools? What sort of concept of freedom are you operating from? Do you wish to deny private institutions the right to self-regulation (unless they agree with your tolerant views)?

Cory Madsen, at 8:35 pm EDT on April 7, 2007
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What Daniel Hughes FAILED to say was that the reason he doesn’t want Catholic doctrine applied across the board (“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue — that wouldn’t be desirable,” he said) was because he is gay and also the head of the campus gay rights group. So he’s fine with enforcing Catholic doctrine when it comes to an issue he has ABSOLUTELY NO PERSONAL STAKE IN, but he certainly doesn’t want Catholic doctrine enforced in every respect, because then he wouldn’t be so welcome on campus anymore. He is an unbelievable hypocrite and entirely without credibility.

concernedstudent, at 6:20 pm EDT on April 9, 2007

Comment on the below article:

Preparatory Work Required

Changes to the legal system must be made before the need for an additional law school or the quality of legal education can be analyzed.

The demand for new law schools is driven by the tremendous profits they generate. In addition, with lawyers among the alumni, favors for the school are easier to obtain.

A legal system that serves the public must have undergraduate pre-law requirements with heavy emphasis on ethics. Legal education must be brought to focus on public service rather than legal system maintenance.

Howard Zinn’s “Peoples History of the United States” provides background information. The system must eliminate abuse of minorities, sales of pardons, rigged elections, and unprovoked wars. The focus must be on prevention of problems – reduce the drug consumption, divorce and crime rates; provide subsidized housing and medical treatment for the elderly. The elimination of government waste could provide the funds for these endeavors.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 must be repealed to return competition to journalism and payment for elections by a tax assessed equally against all Americans to stop politicians from pandering for money must be in place before the question of how many law schools are necessary can be answered.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

The right question is not do we need more lawyers but will society gain by having more people with legal training? All law school graduates do not practice law as many go into other areas where they seem to find their legal training very valuable.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Do We Need More Lawyers?

Does California – or the country for that matter – need a new law school? Officials at the University of California at Irvine believe it does and are moving ahead with plans to create another law school even though the state agency charged with studying such issues is unconvinced of the need.

The University of California Board of Regents has signed off on the law school which will cost $70 million to build and is expected to open in 2009.

Irvine’s law school proposal was sent to the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an advisory group to the Legislature and the governor on higher education, in September. After learning that the commission would recommend against the law school, the university withdrew the proposal to provide more information. After reviewing the revisions, the commission “still is unable to make a recommendation,” said Murray Haberman, executive director. While Irvine is moving ahead, the commission’s reaction has renewed criticism of the project.

Dan Walters, a columnist writing for The Sacramento Bee, wrote in an op-ed called “law school plan smells like pork” that studies have demonstrated that California has about “a 90 percent oversupply of lawyers already.”

“California doesn’t need another law school that would be built at least partially with voter-approved bond funds and whose operations would be at least partially underwritten by taxpayers,” he said.

One area in which Irvine failed to meet commission criteria for new programs was proof of demand. The American Bar Association accredits 19 law schools in California.

But the commission’s objections may not carry the day. “We don’t have final approval authority,” said Haberman. “However, it would be the first time if they moved forward with a new program without receiving the commission’s recommendation for concurrence.”

Velma Montoya, a former University of California regent, wrote in a column on the debate: “If there were a current California lawyer shortage, why aren’t California’s market-driven independent law schools expanding.” She added that if a fifth California public law school is created, it would need hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to build and operate for even a short period of time.

Irvine officials maintain that their law school will be different because of a focus on training public interest lawyers. The law school aims to train students, its material say, “to think more deeply and critically about a number of complex social issues regarding equal opportunity, racial and national identity, minority rights, civil and individual rights and social justice.”

— Sarah Rosser

Comment on the below article:

Topic Merits Discussion

Once the topic is selected, those with views can attempt to convince others of their position. No group is better qualified to take on that challenge than the American Historical Association. Our hope is that they do more than merely vote, but also publish reasons for their positions.

From our view, the word Democracy was abused by the United States administration.

That word requires separation of church from state and safety to all people regardless of race, color, sex or creed.

These attributes are not present in the governments installed by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a consequence, Americans are less safe today than they were before the wars our government initiated.

History should be fact first, interpretation later. Howard Zinn’s work “A People’s History of the United States” should be the model for the presentation of all historical events. The foreign policy, much less the wars, initiated by the United States over the past 30 years will not stand that scrutiny.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Historians Vote to Condemn War in Iraq

Members of the American Historical Association — who in an earlier generation engaged in warfare among themselves over what stand to take on Vietnam — have overwhelmingly voted to condemn the war in Iraq and to seek its “speedy conclusion.”

The vote — announced Monday — ends a highly unusual process in which the anti-war resolution was considered. It was first passed by members who attended the association’s business meeting during the annual convention in January, in Atlanta. But in a move unprecedented in recent history, the AHA’s governing council decided that the measure had such “intrinsic importance” that it should be considered by all members. So an online discussion was sponsored in February and voting concluded last week.

Members voted 1,550 (76 percent) to 498 (24 percent) for the resolution. Those voting represented about 15 percent of the group’s membership — far more than the approximately 100 who were at the business meeting in January. The debate over the resolution has been controversial not so much because historians are backing the war, but because some of them believe that it is not in the best interests of the association to take a stand on this issue.

The measure itself — the Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession — relates the war in Iraq to key issues of importance to scholars. For instance, it notes that there have been cases of foreign scholars being excluded from the United States because of heightened security measures, and that authorities have reclassified previously unclassified documents. Other parts of the resolution are more related to broad moral criticisms of the war, saying that historians object to “using interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons required by a civilized society.”

The resolution concludes by urging all members of the group to “take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession” and to “do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.”

A group called Historians Against the War campaigned for the resolution, saying it was important for scholars to take a moral stance. A joint letter released by a number of supporters of the resolution said that it was designed to encourage “conscientious scholarship.” The letter added that “we prefer not to be remembered by posterity as ‘good Americans’ who accepted grievous wrongs, but rather as citizen-scholars who took a public stand to oppose the misdeeds of the powerful when they directly assaulted the ethical standards of our profession.”

David R. Applebaum, a professor of history at Rowan University and one of the organizers of the effort, said via e-mail Monday that he was “elated” by the outcome of the vote. “It will help us translate thought into action,” he said. “In the long run, I think it will encourage young people to enter a vibrant, vital and engaged profession that has an important part to play in the building of a more democratic society.”

One of those who spoke against the resolution in Atlanta was James Sheehan, a past president of the association, a professor at Stanford University, and a critic of the war. In Atlanta, he advocated that historians — as individuals — do whatever they could against the war. In an interview Monday, he said that the association did the right thing by having a broader vote on the resolution and that he was disappointed, but not surprised by the outcome.

He said that there are two problems with the resolution. First, he said, “it seems to me that people join the AHA with certain expectations, and the fact that the association will take political positions is not one of them. In a way, you are violating the conditions of membership, and I suspect a few people will leave.”

Second, he said it was important for the association to take political stands on issues “narrowly concerned with the interests of scholars in general and historians in particular.” So he said it was important for the AHA to speak out as it does against visa denials to foreign scholars or restrictions on access to presidential records. “But by taking more general stands, we weaken our moral authority and we become identified with partisan positions,” he said. “There is only a certain amount of moral capital that we have.”

— Scott Jaschik

Following is the Foundation’s reaction to the California decision to allow the state government to issue bonds to finance the construction of buildings at religious schools. The complete decision is here.

Childhood Indoctrination to Blame

Lawyers receive no legal education on organized religions relationship with the First Amendment.

This vacuum is filled with the prejudices provided to them by their parents from childhood.

As a result, do not expect the Courts to get religious related decisions right before formal education catches up with the free pass religion is given to teach that the books they print are the word of God without proof there is a God much less that the books have any value other than as recorded history and opinion.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Big Win for Religious Colleges

In a major win for religious colleges, the California Supreme Court on Monday ruled, 4-3, that even “pervasively sectarian” institutions can have bonds issued by government agencies on their behalf, potentially saving them millions of dollars in the costs of construction.

To be eligible, the colleges must offer a broad array of courses and the facilities must be used in ways that are equivalent to the use of facilities at secular institutions. So dormitories, dining halls, and classrooms for not specifically religious courses would be fine, but presumably the funds could not be used for churches or to house academic departments focused on religious instruction.

In the past, colleges that have religious ties, but in which religion does not play a dominant role in the campus ethos have won the right to have bonds issued on their behalf, with the associated tax benefits. But Monday’s ruling goes much further in extending that right to colleges where religion is central to everything on the campus. As a result, the dissent said that the majority had gone too far.

The ruling came in a case involving requests to issue bonds by Azusa Pacific University, California Baptist University, and the Oaks Christian School.

As described by the court’s majority opinion — and consistent with the universities’ descriptions of themselves on their Web sites — the two universities offer a broad range of courses, and take faith seriously. California Baptist expects students to live by “biblically based Christian principles” and to attend church services. Faculty members must be Christians and 51 percent must be Baptists. But only about 5 percent of students major in Christian or ministry studies.

Similarly at Azusa Pacific, only about 7 percent of students major in religious studies, but the institution’s faith is central. All faculty members must be Christians. Students must exhibit “moral character” consistent with religious belief and must complete 120 hours of student ministry assignments.

The institutions want the bonds issues on their behalf for such facilities as dining halls, dormitories, athletic facilities and classroom buildings.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court of California analyzed tests on church-state separation that have been applied under both the California and U.S. constitutions. The majority opinion stressed that separation of church and state did not require “hostility” toward religion, and it applied a series of tests, which the colleges’ bond proposal passed.

The key hurdle for the religious colleges was a test on whether the bonds would — in the majority’s words — “serve the public interest and no more than incidentally benefit religion.” The majority said that the colleges would pass this test provided that they used the funds for facilities that are not religious and nature and that any educational offerings in these buildings be for instruction that is comparable to that at secular institutions.

“The straightforward assessment … is whether the academic content of a religious school’s course in a secular subject such as math, chemistry, or Shakespeare’s writings is typical of that provided in nonreligious schools,” the Supreme Court ruled. The decision went on to say that enforcing this requirement does not require monitoring of what is said in class each day or limit a professor’s freedom of speech.

“When a school establishes, through its course descriptions or otherwise, that the academic content of its secular classes is typical of comparable courses at a public or other nonreligious schools, it is not necessary to scrutinize the school’s say-to-day classroom communications,” the ruling said. “The circumstance that a teacher may, in addition to teaching a course’s religiously neutral content, express an idea or viewpoint that may be characterized as ‘religious’ does not result in a benefit to religion that is more than incidental to the state’s primary purpose of enhancing secular education opportunities for California residents.”

The key, the court said, was to make judgments on the use of the facilities, and not the broad religious goals or identity of a college. Citing previous rulings by their court, the justices noted that fire and police departments provide the same protection for religious institutions as for secular institutions, so there is no automatic ban on government assistance to even the most religious of institutions.

Lawyers involved in the case told California newspapers that they thought the colleges involved — and most religious colleges — would have no difficulty meeting the tests set by the court.

The three judges who dissented said that the majority paid too little attention to the benefits of a government-issued bond to the colleges. By saving money on facilities, even if those are facilities for secular purposes, the colleges gain additional funds to advance their religious missions, the dissent said.

In that context, the dissent said, it was relevant just how significantly religion pervades campus rules and programs.

“Given the trial court’s uncontested findings that the schools are ‘organized primarily or exclusively for religious purposes,’ “restrict admission of students by religious criteria,’ ‘discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring faculty,’ and ‘integrate religion … into classroom instruction,’ the proposed bond agreements clearly violate” the state Constitution’s separation of church and state, the dissent said.

The Constitution, the dissent said, “simply does not permit a public entity to act as a fundraiser for schools of this nature.”

— Scott Jaschik

http://freejosh.pbwiki.com/

Two comments to the below article:

Beyond Her Control

Only an organized religious institution could be this insensitive to the need for love and affection at a time of stress.

Without an expression of a belief in God, this problem is one of God’s choosing and beyong Julie’s control.

My hope is that there is a hell and the people responsible for infliction of pain upon Julie go there.

This should never have become a legal issue. But now that it is, it should be resolved on a motion for summary judgment.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

No Religious Exception

This case should begin with a challenge to the existence of a religious exception. Law requires proof, not belief. Facts, not myth. See Dave Anderson, The Infidels. This is must reading.

FM, on behalf of the legal profession, I apologize for the poor education on religion and the application of the First Amendment to religious issues provided by law schools in this country.

Reforms must begin with law students if we are to have a republic. We have lost it for now to big business and political donations.

No reforms occur without the support of a free press. Bill Moyers and the 3,500 followers who went to Memphis and their supporters are the champions — Into the Buzzsaw edited by Kristina Borjesson is the source book for the cause.

Best wishes Julie — Those who love you are all that count. The rest of them can wallow in their stone age self righteousness.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Gender Change Costs Dean a Job

Religious institutions have long had leeway to hire and fire based on creed. But what happens when a man who professes the faith also starts to appear on campus as a woman?
Related stories

At Spring Arbor University, a Michigan institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, the pending termination of a transgender faculty member (and ordained Baptist minister) has raised just that question. John — who now goes by Julie – Nemecek, the former associate dean for The School of Adult Studies, said she was demoted after sharing her diagnosis of gender identity disorder with supervisors. She has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint, alleging that the university discriminated against her based on sex and perceived disability.

Meanwhile, Spring Arbor asserts its right to counter behavior in “direct conflict” with its religious ideals. In a written statement, Spring Arbor’s leadership affirms that its expectation for faculty to “model Christian character” is “clearly communicated to students, faculty, and administrators alike, and is protected by the U.S. Civil Rights Act and supported by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.”

Nemecek, a 16-year employee who is on hormone treatments and typically dresses “en femme” (her phrasing) when in public, said she first informed the president of Spring Arbor of her gender identity disorder diagnosis — and her plans to treat it in part with behavioral modifications, including wearing makeup and fingernail polish and dressing in feminine clothes — in December 2005. Nemecek said the university subsequently demoted her from the associate deanship position to a non-tenure track associate professor of adult studies position, with an accompanying 20 percent pay cut, and this winter informed her that she would be terminated as of June.

The termination decision comes after more than a year of isolation and restriction, Nemecek said. Under the terms of her current contract, Nemecek, who has her doctoral degree in education, is to teach only online courses and to work from home. The conditions of the contract, as provided by Nemecek, also call for her to “refrain from discussing his transgender situation with Spring Arbor University personnel or students,” requires that she not wear makeup, feminine clothing, or otherwise represent herself as female or transgender while on campus, requires her to seek counseling from a Christian professional who could provide “alternative perspectives,” and states that the “university will request permission to receive updates on the state of his condition.”

Subsequently, Nemecek said she received correspondence in October citing her for, among other things, wearing makeup and earrings to a campus learning fair and wearing university apparel to the grocery store (“Unless the university wishes to provide me with $300 or so to replace my SAU paraphernalia, I have no intention of changing my clothing to go to the grocery store,” the EEOC complaint reads).

Mediation on the EEOC complaint, in which Nemecek seeks unspecified damages and a reinstatement to her former position or a fiscally comparable faculty appointment, is scheduled for March, she said. If the mediation fails, she plans to file a federal lawsuit.

“What they have from the state is a statement that they can hire Christians. My beliefs are about as orthodox as they come and, if anything, this has strengthened my faith, not weakened it,” said Nemecek, who identifies as a conservative evangelical and does not plan to undergo sexual reassignment surgery in part due to her respect for her marriage.

“The university has a very clear statement of faith. I’m in full agreement with everything in it. They have a code of conduct; I’m in full agreement with what they say there too. They really have nothing in either of their statements or the denomination they’re affiliated with that would justify the way they’re responding to me,” Nemecek said.

A university spokesman referred all comment on the matter to a Grand Rapids-based public relations firm, which confirmed Spring Arbor’s decision not to renew Nemecek’s contract after the spring semester.

“We first learned of John’s situation a year ago and have worked closely with him ever since. At the same time, as an evangelical Christian university, Spring Arbor requires its faculty and administrators to be Christians and to follow biblical principles in all aspects of their lives as part of their positions as leaders of the university and our students. Our curriculum integrates faith in all aspects of our liberal arts education, and we expect our faculty to model Christian character as an example for our students,” the statement released by the public relations firm reads in part.

“Spring Arbor University has faced situations in the past where the actions of faculty members have been in direct conflict with the ideals we uphold. We approach all situations like this with grace and in all cases work with the individual to give them the opportunity for restoration. However, if they choose to persist with activities that are inconsistent with the Christian faith, we have a responsibility to take further action,” it concludes.

“It’s a really messy area of law,” said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University in Washington. “The questions involve the right of religious organizations to hire people based on religion, but at times the categories of religion creep over into other protected categories.”

The university will likely be on strong ground when it comes to the removal of Nemecek from her associate deanship, Tuttle said, since religious institutions are granted broad latitude by the courts to pick and choose their leaders. The termination of a faculty member, on the other hand, is usually subject to more stringent legal analysis, he said. But dozens of similar cases are out there in litigation, Tuttle said, and courts often draw fine lines about when religious institutions are and aren’t protected. “It’ll be interesting to watch.”

— Elizabeth Redden

Comments to below article:

Ignorance is Not Bliss

The Electoral College was established, in part, to be certain the United States never became a Theocracy. The diminishment of the effectiveness of the College has left us with a religiously motivated decision maker in the White House.

Because God is on his side, he can look Michael J. Fox in the face as he vetoes Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research without a search for facts to justify his decision.

We must develop a litmus test to keep religiously motivated decision makers from public office.

At least Harriet Miers has resigned as the President’s legal counsel effective January 31, 2007, so she cannot be blamed for this insanity any longer.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Jan. 12, 2007

A Vote for Embryonic Stem Cell Research

As expected, a large majority in the House of Representatives voted Thursday to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. But with President Bush promising to veto the measure as he did last year, and with House leaders acknowledging that they lack the votes to override such a veto, the national outlook for the research remains unsettled.

The final vote was 253 to 174, which would leave Democrats several dozen votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto in the House.

Senate leaders plan to discuss the bill in coming weeks. “We will be seeing some action on this bill within a few weeks,” said Tom Reynolds, press secretary to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Reynolds said that he expects the Senate to gather enough votes to override a veto threat.

Debate over the issue has united Democrats while dividing Republicans, some of whom complained about the president’s veto only months before the fall elections. Even solidly conservative (and strongly anti-abortion) Republicans, such as Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), crossed party lines to vote for the bill. During Thursday’s debate, he mentioned family members who could be helped by medical advances.

Thousands of embryos are thrown away as medical waste every year, and Barton said that they should be used to alleviate human suffering. “The choice is medical research or medical waste,” he said.

“When we find these cures, we will say, ‘We did the right thing today,’ ” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a sponsor of the bill.

The National Institutes of Health currently funds research for 21 embryonic cell lines. These are lines that were derived for research before President Bush’s ban in 2001.

Experts have voiced concerns that banning access to embryonic stem cells will drive U.S. researchers to institutions overseas in countries such as Britain. In response, several states have started their own efforts to finance stem cell researchers, with an eye to keeping researchers in the United States. Aaron Levine, a graduate student at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, has studied stem cell policy for several years. Last summer, he published a study in Nature Biotechnology that found that many stem cell scientists are considering relocating to California, which passed an initiative to provide $3 billion for stem cell research.

Still, Levine said that even as other states begin to fund stem cell research, scientists support federal funding because they are more comfortable with the grant approval process at federal agencies than with state procedures that are new and unfamiliar. He added that lifting the federal ban would reduce the uncertainty for job prospects and funding in the stem cell field — an uncertainty that Levine said might be causing some graduate students and post-docs to consider careers in other lines of research.

Carrie D. Wolinetz, director of communications for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, said that if the bill ultimately becomes law it will erase the need for researchers to keep separate labs for embryonic stem cell research. To ensure that monies from federal grants do not accidentally help support research on banned cell lines, scientists perform such research in separate labs and sometimes separate buildings.

But after following the stem cell debate for the last five years, Wolinetz declined to opine on how stem cell legislation might advance. “I gave up long ago on making predictions,” she said. “Embryo stem cells rise above easily predictable political and ideological lines.”

— Paul D. Thacker

Comments to below article:

The problem with law school education is the lack of preparedness by all law students. Because there are no requirements prior to entry to any law school course, the professor must begin with the most rudimentary explanation of the subject matter. Good moral conduct must begin at birth - the danger of religious bigotry must also begin at birth. Neither of these subjects is addressed either before or after law school. The public suffers William Jefferson’s $80,000 in the freezer and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without the removal of Islam as the appointed religion in their Constitutions. John F. Kennedy is assassinated and over 3,000 people murdered on 9/11 without proper investigation. The reason the problems go unresolved is because the legal profession is not held accountable for the Country’s morals. Those interested should begin with the posting of the American Bar Proceedings before the Department of Labor - National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity that was held on December 4, 2006 on our website. The first step is to remove the ABA from the accreditation of American law school process. The ABA is a labor union for lawyers that has no business in the education process other than to be an advisor. Now they totally control the process.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

More Moral and Practical Law Schools

By Elizabeth Redden

Law schools need to do a better job integrating the teaching of legal doctrine with a much stronger focus on helping students develop practical “lawyering” skills and understandings of ethical and moral considerations, according to a new study from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

“The gap between learning to think like a lawyer and being capable of acting like a lawyer, both clinically and morally, is, if anything, greater than it’s ever been before,” said Lee S. Shulman, president of the foundation, which released “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” one of a series of Carnegie reports on professional education, on Thursday.

The study comes at a time when numerous law schools from across the country (including Harvard and Stanford) have initiated reviews of their curriculums, and the Association of American Law Schools and American Bar Association both have active committees examining the law school curriculum, Shulman said. Several institutions are praised in the report as already moving in the direction the Carnegie Foundation is proposing, including Southwestern Law School and the law schools at the City University of New York and Yale and New York Universities.

The two-year study, based on field work at 16 institutions in the U.S. and Canada, found that law schools have proven themselves to be exceptionally successful at quickly training their students to master “a distinctive habit of thinking.” Within months of arriving, the report found, law students “demonstrate new capacities for understanding legal processes, for seeing both sides of legal arguments, for sifting through facts and precedents in search of the more plausible account, for using precise language, and for understanding the applications and conflicts of legal rules.”

But the report also found that the “remarkably uniform” approach to the instruction of these legal thinking skills — the “case-dialogue method” — encourages students to focus on abstractions in reaching conclusions, to consider “as ‘facts’ only those details that contribute to someone’s staking a legal claim on the basis of precedent.”

“By contrast,” the report’s summary reads, “the task of connecting these conclusions with the rich complexity of actual situations that involve full-dimensional people, let alone the job of thinking through the social consequences or ethical aspects of the conclusions, remains outside the case-dialogue method. Issues such as the social needs or matters of justice involved in cases do get attention in some case-dialogue classrooms, but these issues are almost always treated as addenda.”

“In theory, Americans have always recognized that lawyers must serve two interests: the interest of justice and the interest of their clients,” said William M. Sullivan, a senior scholar at Carnegie and the primary author of the study. “Learning to think like a lawyer … is insufficient as a basis for becoming a competent legal professional.”

The report lays out a number of recommendations to counteract Sullivan’s observation that instruction of legal thinking tends to overwhelm the teaching of practical lawyering skills and the role of ethical and moral considerations in today’s law schools. Among the recommendations are to offer a more integrated three-part curriculum and to encourage faculty to do work across that curriculum. Law schools need to revisit their traditional hierarchies that value the teaching of legal scholarship over more costly clinical instruction, Shulman added, in determining how best to reallocate resources.

The report also recommends that law schools should make better use of the second and third years by offering “capstone” opportunities for students to develop their specialties, complete advanced clinical training and work closely with faculty. “In many law schools, there are clinical opportunities for students, externships and different kinds of skill courses that students may choose to take, mostly electives in either the second or third year. But our hope is that there could be more of these, more places for more students,” said Judith Welch Wegner, who led the study. Wegner is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a past president of the Association of American Law Schools.

The executive director of the association was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon, due to the AALS’s annual meeting in Washington.