The history of institutions of higher education includes the evolution of single-sex colleges and universities.
Read the full storyRumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006) concerned a constitutional challenge to the Solomon Amendment, a modification in a federal statute that required the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to deny funding to institutions of higher education that refused to give military representatives access and assistance for recruiting purposes.
Read the full storyIn Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the actions of university officials in denying funding to help pay for the publishing costs of Wide Awake: A Christian Perspective at the University of Virginia constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
Read the full storyIn Roemer v. Board of Public Works of Maryland (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a program from Maryland that made public funds available to religiously affiliated institutions of higher education.
Read the full storyActing in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s judgment in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith (1990), Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993 pursuant to the Necessary and Proper Clause in the federal Constitution.
Read the full storyReligious colleges and universities can be distinguished from nonsectarian private institutions by their commitment to religious rituals, traditions, and/or core religious beliefs.
Read the full storyStudent expressive rights in higher education reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Community School District (1969).
Read the full storyThe Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which traces its origins in the U.S. government’s efforts to provide rehabilitative services to military veterans after World War I, was the first civil rights law explicitly ensuring the rights of individuals with disabilities to employment and services.
Read the full storyIn Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court faced the issue of whether university officials acted arbitrarily in violation of a student’s substantive due process rights when a faculty board dismissed him from a program without granting him an opportunity to retake a medical board examination that he failed.
Read the full storyRegents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) was a landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court first addressed the merits of a claim on affirmative action, also identified by critics as race-conscious admissions policies or reverse discrimination (the term used in the plaintiff’s complaint), an extremely controversial topic with regard to admissions programs in higher education.
Read the full storyIn the United States, the postsecondary educational landscape has been dominated historically by the existence of nonprofit public and private degree-granting colleges and universities.
Read the full storyEmerging technologies, ranging from genetic testing to data mining to online social networking, have given rise to privacy concerns that affect not only students but society generally.
Read the full storyPrivacy, as Judge Thomas Cooley described it, is “the right to be let alone” (1888, p. 29).
Read the full storyWhile institutions of higher education serve as venues for participation in the marketplace of ideas, college and university officials sometimes restrict or regulate the political activities and speech of faculty members.
Read the full storyPersonnel records are the records maintained by employers such as colleges or universities to document the employment history of individual employees.
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