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When I heard about Wolfram Alpha, I was tickled. It didn’t strike me as anything like a Google-killer, but I did think it had the potential to be a powerful research tool. Historians (and activists) often want to get their hands on quantitative data that can be hard to track down, and if Wolfram makes that tracking down easier, that’ll be a big deal.
So I plugged in some obvious search terms for scholars of higher education, along with a few big subjects from the history of student activism, to see what Wolfram Alpha would turn up.
For the most part, it turned up nothing. When I searched…
May 26 update: The AP is reporting that Obama has picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. I’ve got a new post up this morning exploring her views on race and gender in the judiciary.
In August 2007 Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled on an appeal in a high school free speech case, Doninger v. Niehoff.
The ruling in that case has come under heavy criticism from some civil libertarians, but though it’s not good, I’m not convinced it’s as bad as some people have made out. Here’s the deal:
Avery Doninger was a member of the student council of Lewis Mills High School in Connecticut. In the spring of 2007, the student council and the LMHS administration butted heads over a school concert called Jamfest, which administrators were not allowing to go forward on its originally scheduled date.
At one point in the dispute Doninger put up a blogpost saying that the principal had canceled the concert because she was “pissed off” about student pressure. Doninger called the administration “douchebags” for canceling Jamfest, and urged students to complain to the principal and “piss her off more.”
According to the principal, however, the concert had never been canceled, and in fact the day after Doninger put up her post, students and administrators reached an agreement to reschedule it.
The principal learned of Doninger’s blogpost two weeks after it went up, and punished Doninger for posting it by not allowing her to run for Senior Class Secretary. She gave four reasons: Doninger had not followed proper procedures for resolving disagreements with the administration, the post’s language had been “vulgar,” claims in the post had been inaccurate, and the exhortation to other students to “piss her off more” had been inappropriate.
Doninger ran as a write-in candidate in the election, and won, but was not allowed to take office. She and her parents then challenged that decision in court, asking for an injunction that would allow her to be seated as class secretary.
A federal district court denied that request, saying that Doninger did not have a strong enough likelihood of winning her case at trial. In making that ruling, the court accepted the principal’s account of several factual matters, rejecting Doninger’s claims.
This is where Sotomayor enters the picture, sitting as a member of a three-judge appeals court panel.
Update: Here’s my review and analysis of the case., and here’s my take on Sotomayor’s perspective on race and gender in the judiciary.
Back in January I reported on the case of a high school student who was barred from running for student government after she referred to school administrators as “douchebags” on a LiveJournal blog.
Now comes word that federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, widely believed to be on Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist, issued a ruling in that case a year ago — and it wasn’t a good one.
According to media studies prof Paul Levinson, Sotomayor was part of a panel that ruled against the student on the grounds that high schools have a responsibility to instill “shared values,” including a “proper respect for authority,” in students.
Ouch.
I haven’t had a chance to read that court’s ruling in full yet, but I’ll update this post when I do.
Longtime anti-choice wackjob Randall Terry says that someone leaked him a copy of the text of the honorary degree President Obama will be receiving on Sunday, and he says this is it:
The University of Notre Dame Confers the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on the 44th president of the United States, whose historic election opened a new era of hope in a country long divided by its history of slavery and racism. A community organizer who honed his advocacy for the poor, the marginalized and the worker in the streets of Chicago, he now organizes a larger community, bringing to the world stage a renewed American dedication to diplomacy and dialogue with all nations and religions committed to human rights and the global common good. Through his willingness to engage with those who disagree with him and encourage people of faith to bring their beliefs to the public debate, he is inspiring this nation to heal its divisions of religion, culture, race and politics in the audacious hope for a brighter tomorrow.
On Barack H. Obama, Washington, District of Columbia
I’m going to go out on a limb and call this a fake.
It reads like a right-winger’s image of how a left-winger would praise Obama, dwelling on exactly the aspects of Obama’s public persona — community organizer, healer of divisions, “advocacy for … the worker in the streets of Chicago” — that drive conservatives crazy.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t smell right to me.
Friday morning update: Fox News claims it’s legit.
Sunday morning update: Fox is still vouching for the text’s authenticity, but as far as I can tell no other news outlet has bitten. Various conservative Catholic bloggers are skeptical, but tentatively appalled — one says that it reads like Obama campaign literature, while another says that if it’s real, it’s a “Fuck you” from the university to the Catholic church’s bishops.
Sunday afternoon update: I guessed wrong. It was real. Yeah, I’d call it a bit of a fuck you to the university’s critics.
By the way, I’m liveblogging the commencement as it occurs.
The University of Tennessee has granted a football scholarship to a student who participated in the brutal rape of his cousin at the age of 13.
(I’m putting this story behind a cut, as it contains details of the crime.)
studentactivism.net 
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