Christian Legal Society at Hastings can't discriminate against gays

     Our own trustee Don Wagner went to Hastings. I wonder if he was a member of the Christian Legal Society there?

Anti-Bias Rules Upheld (Inside Higher Ed)

     The Supreme Court ruled today, 5-to-4, that public colleges and universities may require religious organizations seeking recognition or funds as campus groups to comply with anti-bias rules.
     The ruling came in a lawsuit by the Christian Legal Society, which challenged the anti-bias rules of the Hastings College of Law of the University of California. The Hastings policy bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and the Christian Legal Society bars gay people from becoming members. Hastings has argued – with backing from many in public higher education – that state universities have an obligation to adhere to strict anti-bias rules. But the Christian Legal Society – with backing from many religious groups – has argued that forcing it to comply with anti-bias rules amounts to infringing on its First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
     The Supreme Court's decision, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, found that the law school's policy was "a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access" that did not raise First Amendment issues in the way the Christian Legal Society argued....

Supreme Court Rules for Law School in Case Over Christian Student Group (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld a California public law school's policy of denying official recognition to student groups with membership rules it regards as discriminatory. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court's liberal wing was joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in holding that the law school's requirement that student groups accept all comers — and not reject people from membership based on their beliefs — is reasonable and viewpoint neutral, and therefore does not conflict with the First Amendment. The case at issue stemmed from a lawsuit brought against the University of California's Hastings College of Law by the Christian Legal Society, which argued that the law school's policy infringed on the First Amendment rights of religious groups that wanted to ensure members shared their beliefs.

     The seemingly inexorable (and largely unheralded) decline of American higher education continues:

Step Too Far on Textbook Costs? (Inside Higher Ed)

     With students, parents and politicians all frustrated by high textbook costs, recent years have seen many innovations as well as state and federal legislation….
     Legislation passed by the Pennsylvania Senate last week … features another requirement – one that is disturbing faculty leaders nationally. The bill requires faculty members at the state's community colleges and universities to select "the least expensive, educationally sound textbooks."
     While the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has yet to take up the bill, faculty groups are concerned about it because it would dictate specific choices to professors on which books to select. And while many professors say that they try to avoid expensive textbooks and to select reasonably priced works, many say that they regularly select books that are slightly more expensive than other "educationally sound" options, but that are better.
     "This vague and possibly unenforceable standard undermines the right of faculty members to select the best textbook, even if it is more expensive than the alternatives," says a statement issued Friday by the American Association of University Professors."
     'Educationally sound' also potentially sets a rather low standard for textbook selection. As a legal requirement, it will have a chilling effect on faculty members' ability to exercise their academic freedom in planning courses of the highest quality. Certainly the legislature has no business deciding what is 'educationally sound' in a college classroom. Only faculty members have the capacity to choose the books that best meet their pedagogical aims. If there is a tradeoff to be made between quality and price, only faculty members have the professional competence to make that choice."
     The statement adds: "The Pennsylvania legislation is also worrying because it is part of a national trend to regulate textbook selection.…”. . .
     An aide to State Sen. Andy Dinniman said that the legislator would explain why his bill did not intrude on academic freedom, but the senator did not call back. In a news release he issued after the bill was passed, however, he said: "I am not interested in and do not want to limit the rights of faculty to select appropriate textbooks. All I want to do is make sure that when textbooks and course materials are selected, that student cost is factored into the equation."….

     Meanwhile, a clueless Frisco board is throwing its weight around, at the expense of legally-mandated faculty authority:

Competing Principles (Inside Higher Ed)

     …The conflict began earlier this year when a group of the college’s trustees organized “equity hearings” aimed at figuring out why minority students were overrepresented in the college’s remedial courses and if they were shortchanged by a sequence that did not get them “college ready” until they had completed, on average, two-and-a-half years of remedial English and a year and a half of math. The trustees argued that there must be a better way to structure the remedial track and encouraged the faculty to offer a one-year, or two-semester, track for all remedial students to get “college ready.”. . .
     Faculty members did not take kindly to a mandate from the trustees to make curricular changes – decisions they think, by and large, should be made by professors.
     “There’s been a fair amount of contention about the process here,” said Karen Saginor, president of the Academic Senate and a tenured librarian at the college. “Under state law, any curricular decisions have to be made by faculty. The normal process is that the departments that are affected write proposals. In this case, a couple of trustees wrote a resolution saying that the curriculum will be like this, and that was just not really the way to do it.”
     Still, many faculty members are sympathetic to the argument that the remedial track, especially in English and math, takes way too long to complete, leading many students to leave college before reaching college courses. Faculty would just have preferred to bring forth concerns about it themselves.. . .
     From many trustees’ perspective, however, waiting for faculty to come to a consensus on how to improve remediation would simply take too long and hurt those students already in the pipeline – hence their call to action.. . .
     “We need to have more flexibility,” [Board President Milton] Marks said. “You have to be nimble enough to accommodate different learning styles. I would like to see students placed into rapid remediation if that’s best for them. We need to put students in the right place to enable them to succeed.”. . .
     Compromise between the two sides came in the form of a proposal from Don Q. Griffin, the college’s chancellor, Thursday night at the latest trustee meeting. Instead of mandating that the entire remedial track in English and math be shortened to a two-semester maximum, Griffin's proposal introduces the rapid model in steps.
     “Let’s take 20 percent of the program and do it this way,” Griffin said. “Then, after one year, you’ll have enough evidence to see how it’s working. Then, after two years, maybe you’ll have enough data to know what students can profit from this experience and we can convince people of the data. I do expect this rapid model will work.”….