Daily Debriefing
By Kevin Xiao
Published on Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Brown University President Ruth Simmons took a 10 percent cut in her annual compensation this past year, The Brown Daily Herald reported on Tuesday. This was the third year that Simmons requested and was given a deduction in her annual salary. She will receive about $536,000 for the year, according to The Herald. University chancellor Thomas Tisch said that Simmons’ decision to reduce her salary was a reaction to the institution’s increasing revenue gap, adding that other administrators have followed her example, according to The Herald.
Stanford University professor Robert Proctor, who often testifies as an expert witness against tobacco companies, is challenging a court decision to allow tobacco company R.J. Reynolds to see his unpublished manuscript, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Company said they plan to use the manuscript to help them cross examine Proctor in a Florida lawsuit against the company, according to The Chronicle. The Florida state court judge has granted the R.J. Reynolds Company’s lawyers a subpoena to force Proctor to disclose his manuscript, but lawyers for the plaintiff in the case filed a motion last week for the court to reconsider the subpoena. Robert O’Neil, director of The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia, told The Chronicle that, if the motion is rejected, this “is likely to complicate, if not deter, future scholarship.”
The Lookout Mountain Group, a non-partisan organization of student health experts, has found that health care reform proposals being debated in Congress may have “an adverse impact on the cost and quality of health insurance” for college students who have university-sponsored health insurance, according to an Oct. 10 press release. The organization noted that there are no provisions within the reforms that place student health insurance from colleges and universities within the definition of “group insurance.” The organization also said that the reforms do not address whether colleges and universities will be able to collect fees or use tuition to fund student health programs.