Education
Ban Corporal Punishment in Private Schools, New York Lawmakers Say
New York State lawmakers have launched a number of payments that will ban corporal punishment in non-public colleges after The New York Occasions reported that college students in some Hasidic Jewish non secular colleges have been repeatedly hit, slapped or kicked by their instructors.
Democrats and Republicans in each chambers have launched no less than 4 payments to outlaw the follow, which is prohibited in public colleges however not explicitly barred in all non-public colleges. A number of lawmakers mentioned they count on the measures to move with out opposition.
“No so-called educators or academic directors have a proper to place their palms on anybody’s child,” mentioned Charles Lavine, the Nassau Democrat who’s chairman of the Meeting Judiciary Committee and sponsor of one of many payments. “It’s so simple as that.”
The laws is a part of a broader push by some state lawmakers to extend oversight of personal colleges, particularly all-boys colleges within the fervently non secular Hasidic group, in response to the Occasions investigation, which revealed that these colleges had obtained greater than $1 billion in taxpayer funding whereas offering solely paltry instruction in English, math and different secular topics.
The failings occurred regardless of a state regulation requiring non-public colleges to supply an training that’s considerably equal to the one supplied in public colleges. The Occasions report, drawing on 911 calls and interviews with dozens of latest college students, additionally confirmed that academics in lots of Hasidic colleges made common use of corporal punishment to maintain college students in line throughout hours of grueling non secular classes.
Representatives of the Hasidic colleges say that their instructors don’t use corporal punishment and that any remoted incidents happen much less often than in different colleges.
Final month, throughout a joint legislative price range listening to, lawmakers questioned a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group that advocates for Hasidic colleges. The spokesman, Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, defended the colleges and mentioned they’d no tolerance for corporal punishment.
Timeline: New York’s Oversight of Hasidic Faculties
State regulation requires all non-public colleges to supply an training comparable to what’s in public colleges. In 2015, New York Metropolis’s training division mentioned it could examine complaints in regards to the high quality of secular training in colleges within the Hasidic Jewish group. Right here’s a timeline of the investigation:
“These colleges produce residents who’re well-rounded in all areas,” Rabbi Silber mentioned. “Businesspeople, professionals, each stroll of life, household life, communities which are low in crime, low in drug use.”
This week, representatives of a number of Hasidic colleges didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The payments aimed toward elevating academic requirements in non secular colleges embrace proposals that construct off the state Schooling Division’s new laws for all non-public colleges. The laws, which officers had thought-about for years, have been adopted days after The Occasions investigation was revealed in September. They supplied a highway map for holding non-public colleges to minimal requirements, requiring the colleges to show they’re offering a fundamental training or threat dropping funding.
One proposal, launched by Meeting Democrats Kenneth Zebrowski and Deborah Glick, would make clear and strengthen the state’s current regulation. One other pair of payments, by Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, would require instruction in sure topics, together with prevention of kid abuse. A 3rd piece of laws, from State Senator Robert Jackson, would reduce off funding for any non-public colleges that fail to certify that they’re offering training in particular secular topics like math, know-how and geography.
Mr. Jackson, a Manhattan Democrat, mentioned in an interview that he had unsuccessfully pushed the invoice in earlier years. He mentioned he had lengthy supported price range will increase for public training however believed colleges that accepted public {dollars} with out offering fundamental instruction in studying or math have been “committing a fraud.”
“Should you’re receiving the cash, you must do what you mentioned you have been going to do,” Mr. Jackson mentioned. “If not, you’re going to be in hassle.”
All of the payments aimed toward enhancing secular instruction in non-public non secular colleges face important opposition.
In January, eight Republican members of Congress from New York State wrote a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul asking that she not intervene with Jewish non secular colleges — often called yeshivas.
“We urge you to do all in your energy to help and empower New York’s yeshiva colleges to show their college students on their very own phrases,” wrote the lawmakers, together with Consultant Elise Stefanik.
State Senator John Liu, the Queens Democrat who’s chairman of the Senate Schooling Committee, mentioned in an interview that he believed that additional laws was pointless as a result of state officers had dealt with the difficulty final yr after they adopted new laws.
The proposal to ban corporal punishment in non-public colleges, against this, has garnered significantly extra help, together with from Mr. Liu and lots of others.
At the very least 4 such payments have been launched, however lawmakers seem like coalescing round one filed by State Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, each Democrats who signify Williamsburg, Brooklyn, house to a few of the most insular Hasidic communities within the state. At the very least six different senators have signed on as co-sponsors.
The proposal defines corporal punishment as “any act of bodily power upon a pupil, nevertheless gentle, for the aim of punishing such pupil or modifying undesirable habits.” It states that no trainer or faculty worker could use corporal punishment.
The invoice is now pending within the Senate Kids and Households Committee.
One other proposal, from Assemblyman David McDonough, a Republican from Lengthy Island, defines corporal punishment to incorporate using timeout rooms.
Except for the Occasions articles, The Albany Occasions-Union reported final yr on greater than 1,000 cases of corporal punishment which have illegally occurred in public colleges lately.
The Occasions articles sparked debate amongst officers over corporal punishment legal guidelines. Whereas the regulation clearly says that corporal punishment is barely barred in public colleges and sure non-public colleges which are registered with the state, some officers identified after the Occasions investigation that “youngster abuse” already was unlawful beneath state regulation, and that corporal punishment may very well be thought-about abuse. The state Schooling Division even issued a proper opinion saying that was its interpretation of the regulation.
Nonetheless, a number of lawmakers mentioned they consider extra readability is required, particularly because it pertains to yeshivas.
State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, mentioned she hoped that any corporal punishment invoice the Legislature passes would come with clear enforcement measures and penalties for colleges that break the regulation.
“Frankly, there have been some first rate legal guidelines on the books,” Ms. Krueger mentioned, “however they haven’t been enforced.”
new video loaded: Judge Blocks Trump Move to Ban Foreign Students at Harvard
transcript
transcript
Judge Blocks Trump Move to Ban Foreign Students at Harvard
Harvard University sued the Trump administration after it moved to block international students from enrolling.
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“I just couldn’t believe it because I thought the administration and Harvard have been back and forth for the last couple of months on various issues — pulling funding and stuff, which is already very painful for Harvard. But I thought that was the maximum pressure that the administration was able to put on Harvard.” “It’s a real fear and a real threat. So even if we win at court, we do not know if the government will accept that or if the whole situation will just take too long for us to react in time.”
Recent episodes in Politics
new video loaded: Columbia University President Is Booed at Commencement Ceremony
transcript
transcript
Columbia University President Is Booed at Commencement Ceremony
For the second day in a row, Columbia University students critical of the administration delivered a chorus of boos toward the acting president, Claire Shipman, during her speech at the main commencement ceremony on Wednesday.
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“Please welcome the acting president of the university, Claire Shipman.” [graduates booing] “Families, you have given us a gift — thank you. And, graduates, it is time to give the world your gifts. So with that, let me turn to you, the nearly 16,000 graduates of the Columbia Class of 2025. You are the best of us. We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else — [graduates booing] and they should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right. I know many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate, Mahmoud Khalil.” Chanting: “Free Mahmoud.”
Recent episodes in U.S.
At 5:04 a.m. last Monday, Usher sent his publicist an audio file named “My Commencement 2025.”
“What ya think?” one of the world’s most renowned musicians wrote.
He had been awake for hours, tinkering with the speech he would deliver at Emory University that morning. The school was about to feed his script into a teleprompter. But Usher, who allowed The New York Times to peer into his process over more than a month, wasn’t done.
In the dark and quiet of his bedroom, the 46-year-old star was, at last, away from the roaring crowds and hypnotizing special effects of a tour through Asia and Europe. Now he had more edits to make, more lines to weigh, more pacing to measure.
Those adjustments still did not satisfy him. Even after he arrived at Emory, he kept writing.
The fans had filtered out of the O2 Arena in London, disappearing into the darkness, after Usher sang, danced, flirted and roller-skated through a panorama of his career. It was late on April 9, but Usher needed to convene a meeting.
His schedule had vanishingly few openings, and he wanted to talk through what to say at Emory, where he would receive an honorary doctorate.
He had given a commencement speech before, at a conservatory in Boston in 2023. The crowd at Emory, though, would be bigger and more academically diverse, ranging from physics majors to future United Methodist ministers.
The moment would be jarringly different and endlessly more complicated than the one in Boston. As the date of this spring’s speech approached, the Trump administration was pressuring universities and stripping funding from campuses.
A fully improvised address was out of the question. Usher, though, wanted a framework that would leave room for his performer’s instinct.
Lydia Kanuga, Usher’s publicist and the person who would prepare the earliest drafts, observed that he often spoke of “spark.” Shawn Wilson, a fixture of Usher’s charitable foundation for at-risk students, floated a two-theme talk focused on leadership and spark. Chris Hicks, a strategic adviser, pressed deeper and argued that Usher, whose foundation has close ties to Emory, should explicitly blend his life experience with the world’s turbulence.
Mr. Hicks suggested that Usher talk about the times he fell down and then got back up. “That aligns with him,” he said, adding, “because as someone who has a youngster that age, that’s all we talk about: There are going to be some very lean days, and you have to be your own champion.”
“I like that, perseverance and resilience,” Mr. Wilson chimed in. Someone else reminded Usher that the talk would need to include a few moments of celebration, too.
Friday Draft
Good morning, Emory!
What a profound honor it is to stand before you today—not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose. I’d like to thank President Gregory L. Fenves, Chairman Bob Goddard, and the esteemed members of the Emory University Board of Trustees for having me.
Monday Draft
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[ … ]
What a profound honor it is to stand before you today — not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose.
Early drafts of the speech called for Usher to begin with a fairly standard recitation of gratitude.
But Usher rewrote the top of the speech a few hours before he arrived at Emory, to bring in some guiding principles of his life.
In London, he told his team he wanted “gems,” speedy lines that might resonate sharply with individual listeners. The Monday morning rewrite added these lines up high in the text.
But no speech, the brain trust knew, could be entirely feel-good at a time when a national storm was raging over education. Usher had a political streak — he appeared at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris — but his brand had hardly been a partisan lightning rod. His team urged caution.
Usher said relatively little as his aides talked over ideas. Instead, he peered at a notebook, pen in hand. His vision was forming.
He craved a sensible message for the masses, with easy-to-remember mantras and clear takeaways that were not suffocatingly scripted. He wanted a snappy sound-bite or two and a message imbued with his own story, not just with stock lines.
He had lots of time to fill. Emory wanted his speech to run between 15 and 20 minutes, an eternity for a man whose hits have come in four-minute bursts.
The meeting ended, the gallery of faces vanished, and Usher sat alone, speaking to himself in front of a mirror well past midnight.
Ms. Kanuga started thinking. Usher kept on touring. But he also began to dream about the Emory speech. Sixteen days after the brainstorming session, he said he was sometimes startling awake to scribble ideas.
He had been reflecting on titans of oratory, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Quincy Jones and Denzel Washington, as well as two men who had taught at Emory, Desmond M. Tutu and the Dalai Lama.
Giving a speech at Emory was personal for Usher. It was, after all, going to take place in Atlanta, the city that fueled his rise to fame from a Chattanooga church choir. Speaking in a city where he had become something of a landmark himself would bring a different sort of pressure.
His post-meeting murmurs in London had been a way to test and channel ideas. But at a hotel in Amsterdam in late April, he thought the speech was still in infancy. He had grown adamant, though, that he wanted clear language — the musician who regarded run-ons as his weakness did not want to lose listeners in long sentences.
And he was looking to build a speech that would prove he was not just an entertainer, but also someone who could bring meaning, even without a college education to his name.
“There’s a beginning, there’s a middle and there’s an end, and within that process, what you choose to make people feel,” he said. “Do they smile? Do they think? Do they laugh? Do they cry? Are they angry? Are they motivated?”
Tone, he said, would matter. He was working on his speaking voice.
“In the same way I’ve figured out how tone and algorithm and cadence works in music, it does the same in speech,” he said.
The question of whether politics would enter the text loomed. Usher knew he was not headed to Emory as a candidate for Congress. He also did not seem inclined to ignore the turbulence entirely.
Friday Draft
I’m 46, and over the last few decades, I’ve seen how fast things can change. Some of those changes are beautiful — technology connecting us, communities rising up, barriers breaking down. But some of those changes are deeply troubling — especially when we look at the state of basic education in this country.
Sunday Draft
I’m 46, and over the last few decades, I’ve seen how fast things can change. Some of those changes are beautiful — technology connecting us, communities rising up, barriers breaking down. But some of those changes are deeply troubling — especially when we look at the state of basic education in this country.
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Through all of the edits in the final days, this section remained a staple of Usher’s speech.
The moment in the country, Usher thought, was too consequential to ignore. But he opted for a subtle message about policy, not a direct attack on President Trump. After some other edits, the line appeared later in the speech than where it was initially drafted.
This gets at a big debate about higher education in America, and one that Usher is thinking about as the father of two children who are approaching college age.
Ms. Kanuga had been trying to translate the ideas from the brainstorming session into a draft that Usher could use as a launchpad for his own turn working on the speech. As the commencement drew near, though, she could only guess what the singer would ultimately decide to say.
Usher landed in the United States on the Thursday before his Monday speech. He had yet to plunge fully into Ms. Kanuga’s latest draft.
Usher texted her the next afternoon. He worried that the script sounded “too corporate.”
“It needs to have more grit,” he wrote, and “more touch points that humanize me.”
Ms. Kanuga asked when they could talk. He replied with seven paragraphs.
He wanted to say how he felt his own school had not understood him — an account he had hinted at only with people who knew him well.
Sunday Draft
When I moved to Atlanta, I was so far behind that I was unable to keep up, and the staff at the school I was attending didn’t have the resources to help me, so I was assigned to special education classes. As a young black man, it was discouraging.
As Delivered
I was academically so far behind that I was unable to keep up and the staff at the school I attended didn’t have the resources to help me, so I was assigned to special education classes. so they assigned me to remedial classes, which at the time felt like a judgment on my ability. As a young Black man, or a kid at the time, I was discouraged.
Less than 72 hours before his speech, Usher added this anecdote, hoping it would help his audience understand “the reality” of education in America.
Usher relished the silence from the audience in response to this section. It seemed to him that the crowd had empathy, and that his willingness to be vulnerable landed in a poignant, powerful way.
Ms. Kanuga had never fathomed that he would want to discuss it at Emory, but a story that he had never shared publicly would now become the spine of the speech.
“I will work this in,” Ms. Kanuga replied, before Usher sent her six more messages.
Ms. Kanuga emailed the script to Emory officials — with some of Usher’s via-text additions included verbatim, and others streamlined — at 6:12 p.m. on Sunday. The subject line was “Usher speech // FINAL.”
Usher attended a reception that night, honoring him and other honorary degree recipients — an intimate, relaxed setting that left him feeling looser.
Afterward, he stopped for Japanese food and then started fiddling with the script some more.
He dozed off, he said later, with his phone in his hand.
Around 2:30 a.m., Usher was awake and accepting that he would not fall back asleep. Taking command for these final hours, he started reading and rewriting, recording and rehearsing.
His wife, Jennifer, said she stayed quiet. When Usher’s assistant walked in, the singer was still in bed, assessing how the script sounded.
“Just making certain that I pay attention to the beats,” he said later.
He actually felt more comfortable with speechwriting than songwriting, he said. But this process was still much like rehearsing a dance.
“You’re listening, and I’m like, ‘OK, let me slow this down,’” he said. “‘Make that personal. They’re going to laugh at that. Oh, that’s a joke moment.’”
By about 5 a.m., he had “completely changed just about everything” somehow, whether in text or tone or timing — everything, he said, but his intent.
Usher sent Ms. Kanuga his latest edits, and she shared them with Emory at 6:29 a.m., hoping the rewrite would make the teleprompter before the 8 a.m. event. Usher headed to the campus and donned academic regalia.
Backstage, he was still typing changes into his phone. When he heard bagpipers, he thought about the movie “Sinners” and conceived a line about vampires.
Then it was his turn.
As Delivered
Good morning Emory!
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Monday Draft
What a profound honor it is to stand before you today — not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose.
As Delivered
What a profound honor it is to stand before you, not just as an artist or entrepreneur, |But as someone more than that, who’s just like you, that knows the power of dreaming big, working hard and finding a purpose,
Usher did some ad-libbing from the start.
While he mostly stuck to the speech he had reworked overnight, he did interject a few words here and there.
For example, he reveled in multiple mentions of his newly bestowed honorary title of doctor.
He spoke for about 17 minutes and was rewarded with one of the morning’s longest rounds of applause.
Afterward, as he does after shows, he thought about what had worked.
Parents, he said, had been so animated when he spoke about education that he wound up altering the delivery of his next line. When his audience started to cheer a favored section about how “losers let it happen” and “winners make it happen,” he had thought about pausing but pressed on, looking to build momentum. And he had been pleased when the discussion of his own schooling had landed to somber silence.
He regretted nothing.
“I love the fact that it was honest, that it was conversational, that it was me authentically,” he said. “Even the adjustments in the last minute, that’s me. That’s who I am.”
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