Latest news with #Shipman
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
What This Year's Graduation Ceremonies Can Tell Us About the Future of the Ivy League
Above: Harvard president Alan Garber at the university's commencement. College graduations are always occasions for mixed emotions: excitement and anxiety, sadness and joy. For the graduates of elite universities, however, the dominant mood this year might be relief. The Class of 2025 has not had an easy time of it. They graduated from high school during the first full year of COVID, and when many of them started college, they were still social distancing in virtual classrooms and residential pods. After that health crisis finally came to an end, it did not take long for a political one to emerge. Pro-Palestinian protests earned the ire of Congress, and the Trump presidency brought massive cuts to federal funding for research and repeated attempts to kick international students out of the country. Add to all this a job market that was starting to look a little wobbly under the pressure of AI and the possibility of a tariff-driven recession. Pity the person who had to figure out what to say to the beleaguered Class of 2025. Columbia University's acting president, Clare Shipman, barely got the chance. Boos drowned her out the moment she was introduced to address undergraduates during a cold and rainy Class Day last week. The sun was shining the next day for the university-wide commencement, but the mood was just as dark. Greeted once again with boos, Shipman struggled to get the audience's attention, let alone its sympathy. Columbia's administration lost support among many students when it broke up the pro-Palestinian encampment and invited police on campus to arrest protestors. During one of Shipman's speeches, a few students shouted, 'You arrested us!' The administration lost even more students' trust after agreeing to demands the Trump Administration placed on the university. On both days, the crowd broke out in chants of 'Free Mahmoud!', a reference to the Columbia graduate student and U.S. permanent resident Mahmoud Kahlil, who was detained by ICE. After two days of jeers, Shipman might have wished Columbia had canceled graduation ceremonies like it did last year. Christopher Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, used the occasion of graduation to make a defense of the American research university, which was something of a sequel to an essay he published in The Atlantic in March. That piece traced the history of the postwar research partnership between higher education and the federal government and called out the need to stand up to the threat the Trump Administration posed to all the good that had come from it. Lacing in references to Alexis de Tocqueville and Socrates, Eisgruber returned to the themes of his essay in a brief speech that was a display of erudition and clarity, even if it was lacking in the inspiration that the graduates might have been looking for on their day. It's well and good to tell students to leave Princeton with 'a fierce independence of mind,' but ferocity and independence were likely little comfort to an audience of twenty-two-year-olds facing rescinded offers to grad school and the increasingly dimmer job prospects. The job market casts a shadow over every graduation ceremony ever, but after four years of economic growth and record unemployment, that shadow was longer than most students likely expected a year ago, even students in the Ivy League. A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that in dozens of fields a majority of recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 were unemployed or underemployed, which they define as 'a college graduate working in a job that typically does not require a college degree.' The fields with the worst combined outcomes are likely not surprises, but it's notable that computer engineers have the third highest unemployment rate among recent graduates. Things will likely work out for most of the Class of 2025 at Harvard College, where more than half the graduates are going on to jobs in finance, technology, or consulting. After months of turmoil, Harvard managed to hold a graduation ceremony this week that was largely free of disturbance. Several speakers responded with defiance to the Trump administration's efforts to ban Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard Kennedy School student Yurong 'Luanna' Jiang cautioned her classmates, 'We're starting to believe that people who think differently, vote differently, or pray differently—whether they're across the ocean or sitting right next to us—are not just wrong. But it doesn't have to be this way.' Hundreds of graduating seniors wore white flowers as a sign of support for international students, and Harvard's president, Alan Garber, welcomed the audience 'from down the street, across the country, and around the world.' In case anyone missed it, he repeated himself, 'Around the world. Just as it should be.' In stark contrast to Shipman's reception at Columbia, Garber was given a hero's welcome with a minute long standing ovation from an audience grateful that Harvard had taken a leading role in resisting the Trump administration's attack on higher education. At the same time, it was hard not to wonder how many students felt that politics were overshadowing their college experience to the very last minute. It would have been hard not to feel the presence of the Trump Administration at these Ivy League graduations, but at least one speaker made sure to keep the focus on students and what they were feeling that day. Jodi Kantor, whose reporting with Megan Twohey at the New York Times sparked the #MeToo movement, was greeted much more warmly than the president and with good reason. Her speech displayed the empathy and sharpness that has clearly served the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist well. She acknowledged that many in the audience felt that 'the story of [their] education had been one crisis after another' and recognized the anxiety some had suffered over four of the toughest years higher education has seen since the Vietnam War. Those crises will keep on coming, but that is not what Kantor wanted to dwell on. Instead, she left them with some good advice, advice that every parent fretting about where their kid will go to school might well heed themselves: 'Let's drop the assumption that your experience in college will dictate what becomes of you afterward.' You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Michael Shipman, Wayne County's longest-serving prosecutor, won't seek re-election in 2026
RICHMOND, IN — Michael Shipman, the longest-serving prosecutor in Wayne County history, will not seek re-election in next year's election cycle. Shipman's current term as prosecutor runs through Dec. 31, 2026. The prosecutor announced his decision to not seek another term in a May 29 news release. Wayne County Republican precinct officials elected Shipman as prosecutor in April 2005 after his predecessor, David Kolger, had been elected judge. Shipman later won election to four-year terms in 2005, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. In his release, Shipman noted he had "never faced opposition when running for re-election." He had joined the prosecutor's office as a deputy prosecutor in 1999 and had been chief deputy prosecutor since 2022. He previously was a deputy prosecutor in western Indiana's Benton County. Douglas Walker is a news reporter for The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@ This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Wayne County Prosecutor Shipman won't seek re-election in 2026
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Michael Shipman, Wayne County's longest-serving prosecutor, won't seek re-election in 2026
RICHMOND, IN — Michael Shipman, the longest-serving prosecutor in Wayne County history, will not seek re-election in next year's election cycle. Shipman's current term as prosecutor runs through Dec. 31, 2026. The prosecutor announced his decision to not seek another term in a May 29 news release. Wayne County Republican precinct officials elected Shipman as prosecutor in April 2005 after his predecessor, David Kolger, had been elected judge. Shipman later won election to four-year terms in 2005, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. In his release, Shipman noted he had "never faced opposition when running for re-election." He had joined the prosecutor's office as a deputy prosecutor in 1999 and had been chief deputy prosecutor since 2022. He previously was a deputy prosecutor in western Indiana's Benton County. Douglas Walker is a news reporter for The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@ This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Wayne County Prosecutor Shipman won't seek re-election in 2026
Epoch Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
HHS Investigation Finds Columbia University Violated Civil Rights of Jewish Students
Columbia University violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students from harassment, according to the findings of investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights. Findings from the office, announced on May 22, showed that the university acted with 'deliberate indifference' toward the harassment of Jewish students by other students from Oct. 7, 2023—when Hamas-led terrorists launched attacks on Israel, prompting an Israeli military counteroffensive in Gaza—through to the present, the Office for Civil Rights said in a Anthony Archeval, the office's acting director, said the findings document the 'hostile environment' that Jewish students at Columbia endured over the past 19 months, disrupting their education and well-being. The university allegedly failed to investigate or discipline students who vandalized classrooms with drawings of swastikas and other universally recognized hate symbols, according to the office. The investigation also found that Columbia did not enforce restrictions on campus protests, follow its own policies when handling complaints from Jewish students, or establish remediation mechanisms to combat anti-Semitism until last summer. The office stated that the investigation included witness interviews and a review of written policies, media reports, and reports from the university's task force on combating anti-Semitism on campus. Related Stories 5/7/2025 5/6/2025 'We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students,' Archeval stated. The notice of violation to Columbia was jointly issued and signed by the Office for Civil Rights at HHS and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Columbia University did not return a request for comment by publication time. Recent Protest at Columbia University The findings were released just days after protesters occupied a reading room at Columbia's Butler Library on May 7, leading to the Columbia's Acting President Claire Shipman Shipman said that people involved were repeatedly asked for identification and to leave the premises. They were also warned of potential consequences for failing to comply with university protocols. At Columbia's commencement ceremony on May 21, Shipman faced loud jeers and chants of ' In her 'We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right,' Shipman said. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident in the United States but not a citizen, was arrested on March 8 in his university apartment—the first of several arrests resulting from the Trump administration's policy of deporting students who took part in the protests and riots at major universities across the United States in 2024. Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Khalil qualified for deportation under the under the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which allows the secretary to make the determination that a noncitizen's continued presence in the United States poses a risk to the government's foreign policy aims. People take part in a pro-Palestinian protest at Butler Library on the campus of Columbia University in New York on May 7, 2025. Ryan Murphy/Reuters In March, the Department of Education revoked more than $400 million in federal research funding to Columbia University over its alleged failure to adequately address anti-Semitism on campus. The move forced Columbia to lay off nearly 180 staff members, which represent about 20 percent of university employees who were funded by the now-terminated federal grants. Columbia's leadership The university stated that the financial strain is 'intense,' which caused it to reduce expenditures and scale back research infrastructure in some areas. Rachel Acenas and Rudy Blalock contributed to this report.
Kuwait Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
‘Free Mahmoud' cries at Columbia Univ graduation
NEW YORK: There was one notable — and loudly noted — absence on Wednesday at Columbia University's graduation ceremony: Detained pro-Palestinian student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil. 'Boo... Shame on you!' students chanted when Clare Shipman, interim president of the prestigious New York City school, took the podium. Columbia has been the site of demonstrations calling for an end to violence in Gaza for the past 18 months, and more recently, has seen student protesters arrested by the Trump administration. Khalil, one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against the Zionist entity's war in Gaza, has been detained by US authorities for more than two months following his campus activism. Even though he is a permanent US resident, he has been marked for deportation. Before Wednesday's graduation ceremony, attendees were warned over loudspeakers that any interruption was prohibited and those who didn't follow the rules could be asked to leave. That didn't prevent chants of 'Free Mahmoud'. Some students wore keffiyehs as scarves or in lieu of graduation caps, donning a symbol of the Palestinian cause. As light rain fell and a damp chill set in, Shipman congratulated 16,000 new graduates as they depart a school that remains in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. 'We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and they should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right,' Shipman said. 'And let me also say that I know many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate, Mahmoud Khalil,' she added before launching into a plea to defend democracy, which she described as 'the essential work of your generation'. Without directly naming US President Donald Trump, Shipman defended academic institutions as 'pillars of a healthy, functioning, democratic nation'. The White House has cut $400 million in federal aid to Columbia alone, taking aim at schools that don't fall into line with its demands while arresting students involved in pro-Palestinian causes. Earlier in May, 80 pro-Palestinian students were arrested on Columbia's campus after attempting to occupy the main library. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said officials would review the visa status of the 'vandals' involved for possible deportations. Recent Columbia graduate Khalil is being held in a detention center in Louisiana and faces possible deportation after his March arrest amid accusations of supporting Palestinian group Hamas. His lawyers said Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials barred Khalil from holding his newborn son, after his wife Noor Abdalla flew with the baby to Louisiana. 'It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse,' Abdalla said in a statement. Columbia students have reported a chill to campus free speech and a sense of shame that their university did not do more to support freedom of expression. 'With the behavior of the university over the last few years — oh, it's been horrific. I feel embarrassed every single day that my degree is attached to this university,' said Olivia Blythe, a 30-year-old masters graduate in social work who wore a keffiyeh over her pale blue gown. Blythe said tension was palpable during a ceremony Tuesday for students in her department, with audience members yelling 'arrest them, get them out, kick them out' at pro-Palestinian students like herself. Sociology graduate Alfred Young said he appreciated his social justice-focused education at Columbia, but felt that was disconnected from the school's administration. 'I was honestly surprised that President Shipman referenced Mahmoud, and honestly, I do believe it was a bit tone deaf, given how the administration handled everything,' Young said. At the end of the ceremony, students tossed their caps as speakers blared Jay-Z's 'Empire State of Mind', a hip-hop ode to New York City. With that, Columbia's tense year ended with hugs and selfies. Outside campus, as hundreds of police kept watch, a few dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators stood their ground. One held a sign that read: 'There is no graduation in Gaza today.' – AFP
