Race, sex, law, and drones: this week’s snapshots of the future
Today I’d like to share some current stories that suggest to me ways higher education might proceed. I’ve picked them out of my horizon scanning work.
I’ve done this before, but now I’d like to link them clearly to FTTE report trends.
SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HARASSMENT: a Harvard investigation into a long-serving professor and administrator’s behavior concluded by banning him from campus.
One key detail: the university already found Jorge I. Domínguez guilty of harassing a colleague. In 1983 Harvard sanctioned him, but also kept him on. Afterwards the professor continued this behavior, according to the investigation. Over the subsequent decades.
RACIAL INEQUALITY IN EDUCATION: Williams College’s student government refusedto recognize a campus pro-Israel group. This elicited opposing charges of racism, as defenders of the vote argued the group was racist against Palestinians, while critics deemed the body to be anti-semitic.
One trend to track: rising activism opposed to Israeli policies.
OPEN EDUCATION: Knowledge Unlatched announced a new funding round. What this means is that KU is continuing to shift scholarly content into the open world, bit by bit. Open access is continuing to advance.
(If you don’t know KU, what they do is raise money from libraries and other sources to buy rights to certain scholarly works. Once each purchase is completed, the book or article or journal gets a Creative Commons license and is hosted on a public server.)
GRAD SCHOOL WOES: over the last two years Vermont Law School de-tenured and/or laid off faculty, as the school faced a serious financial crisis. This week the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a report condemning the VLS actions.
From the report, one acidic passage:
Put inelegantly, [the institution] laid off a majority of its most expensive faculty members and then outsourced the work they did to a much cheaper contingent labor force, with no intention, it seems, of looking back.
VLS responded. The back and forth is, well, quite lawyerly.
This story brings together several trends, starting with the continued decline of law schools. It also signals problems facing rural higher ed and challenges to faculty governance.
ONLINE LEARNING and FOR-PROFIT HIGHER ED: California’s legislature is considering several laws which would increase regulation of for-profit post-secondary education. Two would also heighten scrutiny over online program management (OPM) companies.
AUTOMATION: the United States military has deployed a new kind of drone. It doesn’t use missiles to strike targets, but instead a combination of shrapnel and knives.
Instead of exploding, it is designed to plunge more than 100 pounds of metal through the tops of cars and buildings to kill its target without harming individuals and property close by…
The R9X is known colloquially to the small community of individuals who are familiar with its use as “the flying Ginsu,” for the blades that can cut through buildings, car roofs or other targets.
Why this matters: it represents another step along the path to ever more precise weaponry. It may also add another layer of dread to the fear many feel for drones and robots in general.
At the same time, the United States Army is preparing a “drone buster.”
The systems… use Electronic Warfare (EW) to interfere with the GPS signal or Command and Control technology of enemy drones, disabling them or throwing them off course.
So automation is progressing as warfighting robots develop. Will we see spinoffs of these in the civilian world?
(thanks to Roger Schonfeld)
