Latest news with #Weinstein
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Harvard Kennedy's backup plan for foreign students: Study online, or in Canada
Harvard Kennedy School is offering international students the option to study online or attend the University of Toronto for those who are unable to come to the United States, according to a Tuesday letter from Dean Jeremy Weinstein. 'We are announcing these contingency plans now to alleviate the uncertainty many students feel, but we will not officially launch these programs unless there is sufficient demand from students who are unable to come to the United States due to visa or entry restrictions,' Weinstein said. 'To our students: we hope to see you on campus in the fall, but if that is not possible, we will bring HKS to you,' he said. Read more: 'Devastating': 10 Harvard researchers detail 'essential' work set to be cut by Trump Fifty-two percent of Harvard Kennedy School's student population is international. They are from more than 100 countries, according to the institution. The announcement comes after a federal judge ruled in the university's favor on two separate preliminary injunctions — allowing Harvard to host international students and rejecting the Trump administration's attempt to ban Harvard foreign students from entering the country to study. Trump boasted on Friday of a 'mindbogglingly HISTORIC' deal with Harvard University. The reported deal is on the back of months of battling between the two parties, where the Trump administration has claimed the university failed to protect Jewish students, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza. The pair of injunctions effectively replaces two temporary restraining orders on those issues that were granted in May and June. Burroughs still needs to rule on the legality of the case, but the injunctions provide a pause until that happens. The online program would be for new and returning students through the school's HKS Global program. It offers students 'best-in-class online instruction' and the ability to participate in up to three intensive 'in-person convenings in cities around the world' where students can take credit-bearing sessions taught by Harvard faculty and engage in co-curricular activities, according to Weinstein. The option to study at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto is only available for returning students. The students are offered classes taught by Harvard faculty, both online and in person and instructors at the Canadian school. 'These are exceptional times,' said Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. 'If Harvard Kennedy School international students are not able to complete their studies in Cambridge. Mass., the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy looks forward to providing shared academic and co-curricular experiences for students from both our schools.' The battle over international students started when the Department of Homeland Security said it was revoking a key certification that allows Harvard University's international students to study there. The institution was offered an ultimatum by the Trump administration to lose the certification or give up information about its foreign student population. Quickly after, Judge Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later stated that the U.S. would begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students and increase vetting of social media accounts of student visa applicants. Following the revocation attempt, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation that barred Harvard's international students from entering the country to study. He also directed Rubio to consider stopping the processing of Harvard student visas. A temporary restraining order from Burroughs blocked that, and the State Department ordered embassies around the world to resume processing Harvard University student visas. Read more: Judge rules Trump can't invoke national security powers to ban foreign Harvard students Harvard international students have been wrongly detained at Boston Logan Airport and denied visas, according to Maureen Martin, Harvard's Director of Immigration Services, who wrote in a court filing. At the same time, the State Department told consulates last week that they should prioritize the student visas of those aiming to attend colleges with less than 15% international students, according to the Associated Press. There are 200 institutions with total student populations of more than 15% international, including all the Ivy League schools and 26 public universities, the outlet said. About 27% of Harvard's undergraduate and graduate students are international, according to 2024 to 2025 data. Harvard has a separate lawsuit in reaction to the federal government freezing or cutting nearly $3 billion in federal funding, citing antisemitism at Harvard. 'In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students,' the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in May as it cut $60 million in grants to Harvard. Why a database of bug genes could be one of Trump's most devastating cuts at Harvard Data breach affecting over 75,000 people at UMass leads to lawsuit Judge rules Trump can't invoke national security powers to ban foreign Harvard students Harvard's Jewish faculty have their own wish list for a deal with Trump These 16 states are supporting the Trump admin in lawsuit with Harvard Read the original article on MassLive.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Harvard Kennedy School lays off staff amid $53 billion endowment tax threat and federal funding cuts
Harvard layoffs: Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced staff layoffs and significant budget cuts as it grapples with financial pressures stemming from federal funding reductions and a looming tax increase on Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The school's dean, Jeremy M. Weinstein, conveyed the difficult news in an email to faculty and staff, describing the challenges as "unprecedented" and underscoring the severity of the situation faced by the institution. The financial strain is largely attributed to policies enacted by the Trump administration, including multibillion-dollar cuts to federal research funding and restrictions on international students, both critical revenue sources for HKS. Despite efforts to reduce costs through hiring freezes and paused merit raises, Weinstein indicated that layoffs were unavoidable, highlighting the harsh realities confronting one of the nation's premier public policy schools, as reported by the Harvard Crimson. Budget cuts and layoffs amid federal challenges In his announcement, Weinstein detailed a series of austerity measures aimed at stabilizing the school's finances. These include ending the lease on a key office space at 124 Mt. Auburn Street, halting all non-urgent construction and renovation projects, and reducing departmental budgets across the board. However, even these steps could not fully offset the financial challenges, forcing the school to lay off an unspecified number of employees. "We began planning for budget cuts as early as February, but the Trump administration's actions have since brought on unprecedented new headwinds," Weinstein wrote, as reported by the Harvard Crimson. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The administration's visa policies, particularly attempts to revoke Harvard's certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), have further endangered the enrollment of international students, who made up 59 percent of HKS's student body last year. International student restrictions compound the crisis The Trump administration's visa restrictions and travel bans have created uncertainty for international students, who play a vital role in the school's community and finances. The administration's efforts to restrict student visas have been temporarily blocked by federal courts, but new attempts to revoke Harvard's SEVP certification persist. Additionally, President Trump's 12-country travel ban affects at least five current HKS students, creating further hurdles. Weinstein outlined contingency plans, including shifting to online coursework and offering a visiting program in Canada, should international student enrollments decline drastically. These measures underscore the school's preparation for ongoing uncertainty, as reported by the Harvard Crimson. Looming tax increase threatens endowment and funding stability Adding to the financial pressure is a congressional proposal to hike the tax on Harvard's massive endowment. The House of Representatives passed legislation proposing a 21 percent tax on the endowment, which was later revised by the Senate Finance Committee to an 8 percent rate—still a sixfold increase from the current 1.4 percent tax. This tax hike could cost Harvard approximately $200 million annually. University President Alan M. Garber has described this endowment tax threat as "the threat that keeps me up at night," according to the Harvard Crimson. Such a tax would significantly impact Harvard's financial resources and exacerbate budget difficulties across its schools, including HKS. Despite the bleak outlook, Weinstein pledged transparency and support during this challenging period. "I hope we can support each other and our departing colleagues during this difficult time," he wrote, as reported by the Harvard Crimson. The layoffs and budget cuts at Harvard Kennedy School reflect broader financial challenges facing US higher education institutions amid shifting federal policies and economic uncertainty.
Vox
6 days ago
- General
- Vox
The hidden pressure messing with teen birthdays
is a senior correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work, and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New York Times. She is also the author of four novels, including the forthcoming Bog Queen, which you can preorder here This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox's newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. Birthdays are supposed to be fun. You eat cake, you open presents, maybe you have a party. They can also, however, become a source of pressure and anxiety. And for many teens today, birthdays are a time when the public nature of social media and the private joys of friendship awkwardly collide. Teens often post celebratory photos or messages on their Instagram stories for friends' birthdays, Kashika, 19, told me a few weeks ago in a conversation about kids and friendship. Then the birthday kid will reshare those posts to their own account. The number of posts you share 'forms an image of how many friends you might have,' Kashika explained. Kashika, a contributor to the podcast This Teenage Life, remembered seeing classmates share tons of birthday stories, and thinking, 'Oh my God, they're so popular.' Then, on her birthday, not a single person posted a story for her. 'I felt really bad,' she said. The birthday post (or lack thereof) has become a common source of anxiety, according to experts who work with kids. Teens report 'feeling a lot of pressure to post for people's birthdays, to post in a certain way, to post efficiently, effusively,' Emily Weinstein, executive director of Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving, told me. On the flip side, teenagers worry about having enough people post on their birthdays to 'signal that you have people who really care about you' or to 'show that you have a sufficient number of friends,' Weinstein said. Birthday wishes are one way that teens feel pressure to 'perform closeness' on social media, posting photos and messages of affection publicly 'both as part of being a good friend and as a way of validating their own social acceptance and connectedness,' Weinstein and Carrie James wrote in their 2022 book, Behind Their Screens. Performing closeness isn't new — teens used to decorate one another's lockers for birthdays, Devorah Heitner, author of the book Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, told me (we did not do this at my school, and now I feel left out). But social media adds a new layer of labor to kids' already fraught social lives, forcing them to make calculations about how to celebrate their friends online — and how to respond if their friends don't do the same for them. The pressure to post Birthdays on social media offer a whole buffet of new stressors, kids and experts told me. For one thing, posts are easier to quantify than locker decorations. 'You can literally just count the likes or count the reposts,' Heitner said. 'That's very vivid.' Even posting on other people's birthdays can be nerve-wracking, kids say. 'I used to post for every friend that I had,' Divya, 19, told me. But then she realized that other kids were only posting birthday stories for friends who had posted birthday stories for them. 'It felt very weird,' Divya said, because she didn't personally care if someone had posted a birthday message for her or not. There's also pressure to make your birthday post reflect the level of your friendship. 'If someone is your best friend, you have to make it extra special,' Divya, a This Teenage Life contributor, told me. 'You have to just do it for the sake of making your friends feel special on social media.' That pressure to craft the perfect birthday post that communicates the specialness of a friendship is part of a larger pattern, experts say. On the one hand, 'social media offer compelling opportunities to validate relationships and show public support for others,' Weinstein and James write. On the other, 'when so much of posting is an expectation and over-the-top compliments are the norm, being authentic can feel nearly impossible and knowing what's authentic can be like reading tea leaves.' The pressure to perform closeness can be exhausting and annoying, kids say. One 17-year-old, Michelle, told Weinstein and James that she'd recently gotten stressed because she liked a friend's photo but couldn't think of a comment right away. 'I get really nervous about it too, because I have to think of something quick, and it has to be something really good,' she said. Once she'd engaged by liking the post, the clock was suddenly ticking. 'There's definitely expectations to comment on a post.' Especially among younger teen girls, 'there's a feeling that if we are close, people should know we're close,' Weinstein said. If they're not representing their friendship online through likes, comments, and posts, some teens feel 'they're not somehow not doing justice to the relationship.' As Kashika put it, Instagram stories and other social media posts become 'like a declaration in society that this person is my friend.' Pushing back on the pressure Performing closeness is far from unique to teenagers — adults are doing the same thing when they post cute photos and adoring captions on their anniversaries, Heitner said. And getting fewer birthday posts than you'd like, or fewer than other people get, can feel lousy whether you're celebrating your 14th birthday or your fortieth. After all, millennials on Facebook arguably invented birthday posting culture (and stressful birthday comparisons along with it). But for teenagers, whose needs for social approval and inclusion are so high, an underwhelming birthday on Instagram can be especially hard, Heitner said. Luckily, teens are developing some of their own ways of coping with the pressure social media puts on their friendships. Some are just using Instagram less in general, Heitner said. 'It is socially acceptable now to be a kid who's like, 'I don't really like this. I barely check it.'' Others are learning to draw a distinction between performed closeness and the real thing. Kashika felt bad 'for a while' when no one posted on her birthday, she told me. But 'then I thought, no, this is just part of social media,' she said. 'It does not actually depict our real friendship. And then my mood got a little better.' What I'm reading Families are reporting disturbing conditions at Texas immigration detention facilities, including adults fighting with children for clean water, and a lack of medical care for a boy with a blood disorder whose feet became so swollen he couldn't walk. The Trump administration is reinstating some research contracts at the Education Department that were initially terminated by DOGE, including a study on how to help kids with reading difficulties. The idea of giving kids a ''90s summer' may be a fantasy now that YouTube exists. My little kid and I have been revisiting Arnold Lobel's Mouse Soup, which includes stories about a lady who becomes obsessed with a rosebush growing out of her couch, and some rocks who learn the power of perspective. From my inbox When I talk to teens, I like to ask them what adults these days get wrong about young people. What don't we understand? Now I'm posing this to you — whether you're a kid or an adult with kids in your life, what do you think grown-ups are getting wrong? What aspects of kids' lives today need to be demystified or explained? Let me know at
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harvey Weinstein guilty of one sexual assault count, not guilty of another in retrial
A New York City jury found disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein guilty of one count of sexual assault of former Project Runway assistant Miriam Haley, but not guilty of another count of sexual assault against former model Kaja Sokola, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The verdict was handed down Wednesday afternoon during a retrial after Weinstein's 2020 conviction was overturned in April 2024. There is still one count of rape in the third degree that the jury has not yet been able to reach a consensus about, but the jurors have been dismissed for the day and will reconvene tomorrow. The alleged rape was committed against aspiring actress Jessica Mann. Per THR, the first-degree sexual assault charges are a higher felony and carry maximum sentences of 25 years. The news comes after days of reports of tense deliberations, with The Wrap reporting earlier this week that a standstill between the jurors led some to begin bringing up and discussing other details about Weinstein's past that were not explicitly disclosed during the trial. At least one juror asked to be excused from the trial because he did not feel like it was 'fair and just.' Charges faced by Weinstein stem from incidents in 2006 and 2013. Haley and Sokola both alleged that Weinstein forced them to perform oral sex on him during separate incidents in 2006. Mann accused Weinstein of raping her during the 2013 incident, and Weinstein was found guilty of all three charges in 2020. In a separate 2022 trial, a California jury found him guilty of three counts of rape and sexual assault and was sentenced to 16 years. That conviction still stands, though Weinstein's legal team is currently appealing. More from A.V. Club 3 new songs and 3 new albums to check out this weekend Duster gets to the fireworks factory Bonnaroo 2025 canceled mid-festival due to heavy rains
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harvey Weinstein's rape charge gets mistrial after tense jury deliberations
Harvey Weinstein's rape charge ended in a mistrial today, after the jury foreperson said he felt threatened by other jurors. Yesterday, Weinstein's 12-person jury found the disgraced mogul guilty of one criminal sexual act against former Project Runway assistant Miriam Haley, and not guilty of another against former model Kaja Sokola. He jury was not able to reach a verdict on a third rape charge, related to actor Jessica Mann, after days of tense deliberation. After four days of discussions, jurors were sent home Wednesday afternoon after reports of fighting in the jury room, per The Hollywood Reporter. That day, the jury foreperson reportedly sent a note asking to speak to Judge Curtis Farber, after which he told Farber and attorneys, 'I feel afraid inside there. I can't be inside there.' He went on to explain that he felt other jurors were pressuring him to change his decision, and said, 'Oh we will see you outside,' when he refused. When asked whether he would return to the jury room on Thursday, he said he would not. When Farber spoke to other jurors on Thursday, they said they 'don't understand why the foreperson bowed out.' Tension was apparently so high on Wednesday, however, that Weinstein himself addressed the court to ask for a mistrial. 'This is not right for me, the person who is on trial here… This is my life that's on the line, and you know what? It's not fair. It's simple. It's just not fair,' he said. Earlier this week, the foreperson had asked to speak to the judge, claiming that other jurors were considering elements from Weinstein's past that weren't submitted as evidence in this particular trial. Previously, a different juror had asked to be excused from the trial, proclaiming he had heard jurors talking about other jurors in the elevators and the process wasn't 'fair.' 'If you're a deliberating juror you have to be punched in the face in order for it to rise to the level of a real threat,' Weinstein's attorney, Arthur Aidala, said Thursday. 'It's insane in the membrane, insane on the brain.' This retrial is happening in the first place for a similar reason. Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction was overturned in 2024, after a New York court determined that the original trial had been prejudiced due to the decision to let women testify about allegations that weren't officially part of the case. Weinstein's rape conviction, which stems from an alleged incident with Mann in 2013, will now be retried on July 2. Mann is 'ready and willing and wants to retry this count,' prosecutors said. More from A.V. Club AVQ&A: What reboot actually got you excited about the franchise again? Duster gets to the fireworks factory Merciful Brad Garrett swears we'll be spared an Everybody Loves Raymond revival
