College Shorts: 12/03/09

Dan Brown tops college bestsellers book list

The number one bestselling book on college campuses this year is “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown, according to a list compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Other bestselling books include “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, “The Wild Things” by Dave Eggers and “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. The list was compiled from information from 37 college campuses across the country.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education

Advocacy groups push for free speech at college

Academic and free-speech groups are calling on college campuses “to exercise moral and intellectual leadership” and stand up for free expression following Yale University Press decision to remove all pictures of Mohammed from a scholarly book because of fears the images would inspire violence.

A statement from the groups named the decision as one of many recent incidents that “suggest that our longstanding commitment to the free exchange of ideas is in peril of falling victim to a spreading fear of violence.”

The statement also expresses a wish that higher education institutions “stand up for certain basic principles: that the free exchange of ideas is essential to liberal democracy; that each person is entitled to hold and express his or her own views without fear of bodily harm; and that the suppression of ideas is a form of repression used by authoritarian regimes around the world to control and dehumanize their citizens and squelch opposition.”

Another incident that inspired the organizations to act was the cancellation of a lecture by Ward Churchill at Hamilton College in response to several threats, and the closure of a controversial video exhibition at San Francisco Art Institute last year because of similar threats.

— The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

California raises tuition by 32 percent for 2010

The University of California Regents Board agreed to a 32 percent increase in tuition rates last week, inspiring many students to vocally protest the decision.

Fourteen demonstrators were arrested at U.C.L.A. following the decision, 12 of whom were students.

The student argued that the steep rise in the price tag of state schools would be detrimental to the diversity of the student body.

Maria Isabel Rocha, one of the protesters, said she already juggled two jobs, and that she “might have to take a quarter off to make money to afford tuition.”

University President Mark Yudof said that his biggest fear was that the decision would lead to “an exodus of faculty,” but that the tuition increase was necessary because the university system received half as much per student in revenue as it did in 1990.

— The New York Times