CHINA: Retired professor attacked

On 4 April, a retired professor from Shandong University was brutally beaten by five unidentified men, Human Rights In China has reported. Sun Wenguang, 75, was attacked as he returned from paying respects to the memory of the late Zhao Ziyang, former General Secretary of the Communist Party who visited students on Tiananmen Square during the 1989 democracy movement, and of Zhang Zhixin, a dissident killed during the Cultural Revolution.

Early in the morning of Qing Ming, the traditional day of remembering and honouring the dead, Sun defied university authorities to make the trip to Yingxiong Mountain in Jinan, Shandong Province. He was followed by police and attacked in broad daylight. According to HRIC, the incident was simply ignored by the police and Sun was beaten for more than 10 minutes, breaking three of his ribs.

Between 1966 and 1981, Sun Wenguang was detained and imprisoned multiple times for a total of more than 10 years for expressing his opinions on political issues. In the days leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Sun was put under 24-hour surveillance and his home searched by state security police, who seized two computers, manuscripts, and books published in Hong Kong. Last month, Sun sued Shandong University after deductions were made from his pension.

UK: Academics plan boycott of immigration rules
A group of academics are threatening to boycott the British government's new immigration rules for students, saying that orders to monitor international students' movements are discriminatory. The Guardian reports that 35 academics claim they are increasingly being drawn into the role of policing students by the immigration authorities.

In a letter to the Guardian, the academics say that under the new rules they are being asked to report on students who do not turn up to lectures and to check the ID of students and visiting academics from other countries. The letter expresses concern about such activities and states they are discriminatory and distort academic freedom. The new points-based immigration system requires international students to be sponsored by an accredited institution, an attempt to weed out bogus colleges that are fronts for immigration scams.

RUSSIA: West's right-wing critic occupies position of influence
Moscow State University's appointment of a Russian nationalist as the head of its new Centre for the Study of Conservatism has proved to be a controversial choice in academic circles, Times Higher Education says. Aleksandr Dugin, who was made a professor of the university's sociology faculty last September, has called for the restoration of the Russian Empire and believes that Russia is culturally more Asian than European.

Dr Edwin Bacon, head of the school of politics and sociology at Birkbeck, University of London, said there was no reason to suspect that Dugin's professorship signified any policy shift by the Russian government. But Bacon said it did show the continued presence of nationalist sentiment within certain sectors of the Russian elite.

Other academics are more worried by the appointment and believe that Dugin has been working for years to shift Russian elite discourse to the Right. The centre could help him get more hard-Right ideas into the Russian mainstream.

GHANA: Freedom of information can enhance academic freedom
Alex Tetteh-Enyo, Minister of Education, has become the latest minister to assure Ghanaians of the government's readiness to pass a Freedom of Information Bill, to promote a robust research environment and greater freedom. Public Agenda News, Accra, said Tetteh-Enyo asked universities to put proper structures in place to improve lecturer-student relations and the relationship between professors and junior lecturers.

Speaking at the opening of an international workshop on academic freedom and institutional autonomy in West African Universities in Accra, Tetteh-Enyo said the government's responsibility for respecting academic freedom was being fulfilled. He noted it was also the duty of the state to protect academic freedom from unnecessary abuses by other forces and that it should include the autonomy to shape the curriculum and syllabuses, along with relative freedom to recruit teachers and the freedom to admit students by criteria chosen by universities.

US: Miami offers to take more students from devastated Italian campus
The University of Miami, one of two American universities with study-abroad courses at the University of L'Aquila, will open its doors to more students from the Italian university badly damaged in an earthquake earlier this month. The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that Miami will encourage L'Aquila to send more students to study on its Florida campus during the 2009-10 academic year.

Miami typically accepts five L'Aquila students each year through an exchange programme. L'Aquila rector Ferdinando di Orio had appealed for help in finding places for the university's 27,000 students after the campus was devastated by the earthquake. At least four students were killed when a dormitory collapsed. Miami will see how rebuilding goes before deciding whether to send students to Italy next spring.

* Jonathan Travis is programme officer for the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR). www.nearinternational.org