Member News

A group of current and former Cornell University employees asked the U.S. Supreme Court March 11 to clarify what plaintiffs must show to claim that a retirement plan fiduciary engaged in prohibited transactions under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The case, Cunningham v. Cornell University, involves an alleged circuit split. The 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 10th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal have found that ERISA requires plaintiffs to “plead and prove additional elements and facts not contained” in the law’s text, according to the employees, who said that the 8th and 9th Circuits have not found that the law makes such requirements. The 2nd Circuit held that ERISA plaintiffs must show that an alleged prohibited transaction “was unnecessary or involved unreasonable compensation” and that the Cornell employees had not met this requirement in alleging that the university engaged in prohibited transactions. A response to the writ of certiorari from Cornell is due April 12.

BlindTiger, a lesser-known social media app with anonymous posting, is taking fire from a Maine college president after reports of anti-Semitism, misogyny and anti-Arab messages in the app. Garry Jenkins, president of Bates College, penned a letter to the college’s student newspaper calling for students to delete BlindTiger.

American University (DC) announced Monday that its 16th president will be Jonathan Alger, a higher education policy scholar who has been president of James Madison University in Virginia for the past dozen years. Alger, who goes by Jon, will step into the position July 1, when current AU President Sylvia Burwell departs after seven years of leading the private university in Northwest Washington. American University, which has about 14,000 students attending, was chartered by Congress in 1893 and includes schools of law, public affairs and international service.

On a September afternoon in 2008, Thomas R. Ahlersmeyer and Patrick T. Ferry found themselves sitting next to each other in an Oregon airport. The two college presidents had been together for a meeting of the Concordia University system, which is composed of six campuses operated by the Missouri Synod, a Lutheran denomination. Ahlersmeyer was awaiting his flight home to Concordia’s Ann Arbor branch, and Ferry to its Wisconsin arm, in Mequon. Ahlersmeyer was returning to a campus on shaky financial ground, while Ferry’s had solid footing. Nearly five years later, the conversation bore fruit. The two colleges agreed on an acquisition of Ann Arbor’s campus by the Wisconsin branch, which the two sides called a merger.

Opinion Columnist David French writes:  Roughly 200 Jewish students and supporters marched through the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, this past Monday and it was newsworthy that they were not attacked. Local news hailed that they were able to, as one headline noted, “successfully march without confrontation.” The march came two weeks after violent protests forced the cancellation of an event that was to feature an Israeli speaker and was organized by Jewish students.