NEWS BRIEFS

Mike Burton to retire from position as vice provost of School of Extended Studies

Mike Burton announced last week that he’ll retire from his post as head of the School of Extended Studies after nearly a decade of leading the department.

“This has been a fantastic time to be at Portland State,” he said. “I’m always humbled at how much the faculty, staff and students have accomplished.”

During his eight years of service, Burton oversaw the extension of PSU’s curriculum to many regional community college campuses through degree-completion programs. He also helped develop an online service center.

Vice Provost Kevin Reynolds will serve as the interim head of Extended Studies when Burton retires on June 30.

This week on Facebook

Harvard sociologists are accused of violating students’ privacy through Facebook. The Chronicle reported Monday that the findings of researchers with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society were wiped from the Internet as critics say the information collected from about 1,700 student Facebook profiles was private.

In 2006, the Harvard team culled Facebook to study the interplay of race, culture and relationships. 

After part of the research was publicly released in a data set called “Tastes, Ties and Time,” the project began to crumble when a privacy scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukie showed that the “anonymous” data could be traced to the profiles of Harvard undergraduates.

Meanwhile, Israel used Facebook to blacklist protesters expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment, according to the news blog ZDNet.com. On Friday, Israeli government officials compiled a pro-Palestine headcount based on Facebook profiles and contacted foreign airlines, asking administrators to prevent the suspicious people from boarding flights to Israel. ?