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About the Longo Planetarium

Since 1973, the Longo Planetarium has been bringing stars to Northern New Jersey. Here you can explore the Universe from the Earth and other planets in our Solar System to stars galaxies and beyond. Our Digistar projection system can display thousands of stars, the planets and the Moon onto a 33-foot diameter dome. All are welcome to attend public programs; school, camp and scout groups can be scheduled in advance. Our spring schedule features the following public programs on the 2nd and 4th weekends of the month.

Upcoming Public Shows

Big Astronomy

One Sky: Sky Stories from Around the Globe

One Sky trailer

“One Sky” is a collection of beautiful short films about constellations, astronomical instruments and scientific knowledge from various cultures around the world.

Big Astronomy trailer

“Big Astronomy” shares the story of the people and places who make big astronomy and big science happen. This show takes visitors to the extreme sites where astronomy happens in the most extreme environments.

Tickets for all shows are $10 per person. Online reservations are strongly encouraged; limited tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Please note the ticket purchases cannot be refunded or exchanged.

All programs start promptly at the times indicated. For your safety, guests will not be admitted or readmitted to the Planetarium theater once the lights are off, so make sure to arrive early and plan for any unexpected delays in travel and parking!

Tickets cannot be refunded or exchanged. See Public Shows for a list of current programs and to purchase tickets.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

The County College of Morris is located at 214 Center Grove Rd, Randolph, NJ 07869. Like many college campuses, you can’t drive directly to academic buildings. Note it takes several minutes to get from the parking lot to the planetarium. Please plan to arrive at the planetarium at least 15 minutes before showtime to check in and get seated.

• Please do not go to Public Safety or the Bookstore; proceed directly to Parking Lot #7. Once on campus follow the main road on campus which ends in a loop around Lot #7. It is the closest lot.
• Park near (but do not enter) the Health & Physical Education building and follow the path to the left of that building towards the center of campus. Follow the blue planetarium signs to Cohen Hall. Use the front entrance with the large “Longo Planetarium” sign above it. The Planetarium is in Cohen Hall room 207.  The entrance is at the back of the planetarium.
• View our campus map here.

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College-Conservatory of Music

Welcome to your next stage. Tomorrow's arts leaders and luminaries get their start at UC's nationally ranked and internationally renowned College-Conservatory of Music.

A preeminent institution for the performing and media arts, CCM offers nearly 120 possible majors, along with a wide variety of pre-collegiate and post-graduate programs. The synergy created by housing CCM within a comprehensive public university gives the college its unique character and defines its objective: to educate and inspire the whole artist and scholar for positions on the world stage.  

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The Latest News From CCM Village

Get to know ccm’s newest faculty and staff members.

July 3, 2024

UC’s College-Conservatory of Music will welcome a variety of new faculty and staff members to its roster of distinguished performing and media arts experts, researchers and educators this fall.

CCM students receive 16 award nominations from NATAS Ohio Valley...

July 1, 2024

Students from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music received 16 Student Production Award nominations from the Ohio Valley Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).

Watch: CCM Acting shares student film "Sonder"

June 18, 2024

Art imitates life as CCM Acting student short film shows a group of college actresses during a sleepover where they anticipate their acceptance (or rejection) into a coveted summer acting institute program.

News Release

Three athletic director candidates to visit LC State in July

July 08, 2024

LEWISTON, Idaho – After conducting a national search, Lewis-Clark State College has invited three candidates to campus in July to interview for the position of athletic director. Campus visits will include meetings with administrators and athletics staff, and a campus presentation and open forum.

Ronald (Ronnie) Palmer, former athletic director at Post University, will visit Thursday and Friday, July 11-12. Corey Bray, current athletic director at Oklahoma City University, will visit Monday and Tuesday, July 15-16. David (Dave) Gantt, former vice president for athletics at the University of Providence, will visit Monday and Tuesday, July 22-23.

Ronnie Palmer, Corey Bray, Dave Gantt

Palmer served as athletic director at Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, from 2015-2024, and at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, from 2010-2015. Prior to this he was head baseball coach at Davis and Elkins, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education and health. He earned a master’s in education at American Intercontinental University.

Bray has been athletic director at Oklahoma City University since 2022. Prior to this he was the vice president and director of athletics at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, from 2019-2022, and the associate athletics director for compliance at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 2011-2019. He received a bachelor’s in psychology from Pacific Lutheran University and a master’s in social psychology of sport and exercise from the University of Oregon.

Gantt served as vice president for athletics and vice president of student engagement/athletics at the University of Providence in Great Falls, Montana, from 2016-2021. Prior to this he was head women’s volleyball coach at Gonzaga University from 2009-2016. He served as assistant women’s volleyball coach at the University of Arkansas in 2022. He received a bachelor’s in business administration and physical education from Providence (then the College of Great Falls), and a master’s in physical education with an emphasis in program and curriculum design at Montana State University.

Details about the public forums are available at www.lcsc.edu/position-search .

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What Modi and Putin hope to gain from their Moscow summit

Analysis: modi has arrived in russia for his first visit since the invasion of ukraine. shweta sharma looks at what both countries hope to achieve from the meeting.

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I ndian prime minister Narendra Modi has arrived in Russia for his first one-to-one summit with Vladimir Putin since the Russian leader launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It is a hugely symbolic choice of destination for Modi’s first bilateral visit since being sworn in for his third term as prime minister, and one that the Kremlin has gloated about as making the West “jealous”.

Modi is also breaking away from a tradition that normally sees Indian prime ministers start their term with a first visit to neighbouring South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, the Maldives or Bhutan.

And it reflects India’s growing confidence in its ability to play both sides in the East-West divide that has grown dramatically since Russia began waging war on Ukraine. Modi will follow up his visit to Moscow with one to Austria, which has backed Ukraine’s bid to join the EU and provided it hundreds of millions of euros in humanitarian aid.

Putin and Modi were scheduled to hold informal talks over dinner on Monday night before a day of meetings on Tuesday.

India’s foreign ministry said they would discuss the “multiple geopolitical challenges that the world has been facing”, and that the visit showed the two countries continue to enjoy “resilient” ties. Embarking on the plane to Russia on Monday, Modi said he will review “all aspects of bilateral cooperation” with Mr Putin and seek to play a “supportive role for a peaceful and stable region”.

Putin, who is making a concerted effort to showcase the support of his allies to legitimise his war and counter Western efforts to cast him as a pariah on the international stage , said “no topics will be off limits” between the two leaders, according to the Kremlin.

The Indian government has neither condemned nor condoned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and while Modi made his first foreign trip of his third term to join the G7 in Italy last month, he then skipped a Western-led Ukraine peace summit hosted by Switzerland. India was represented at those talks by its ambassador and did not sign a joint communique at the end of the meeting, insisting that Russia must be involved in negotiations.

Harsh V Pant, professor of international relations at King’s College London, tells The Independent that a Putin-Modi meeting was “long overdue” given the way geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting as a result of Ukraine.

There is a rich history to India-Russia relations, with Delhi having relied heavily on Moscow for arms imports for many decades. Since the Ukraine war began India has also bought huge volumes of cheap Russian oil after the US and European countries imposed sanctions, helping Putin fill his war chest.

Yet India has been uncomfortable with how close Putin has drawn to China, its major Asian rival with whom it has frosty border relations. And India has also been forced to diversify away from Russian arms given Moscow’s military commitments in Ukraine, buying more from the US, Israel, France and Italy.

“These talks will be about how to build the India-Russia relationship as, whatever it might seem from the outside, it is not as healthy as it seems,” says Pant. “It is a new world. India does not have a very robust economic partnership with Russia. So of course the strategic realities are changing. India would like to understand and engage with Russia on its own terms.”

With this trip, India is sending a clear signal to the US that it will hedge its bets on defence purchases, just as the US is doing by once again opening the doors to China.

“The [potential] gains for India from this summit are significant in comparison to [those for] Russia,” Dr Rafiq Dossani, a senior economist at the Rand Corporation think-tank, tells The Independent.

“By properly playing its hand, it can position itself as a power worth more than China, whose relations with Europe have taken a beating because of its stance. This can allow India to be the prime broker of a peace in Ukraine down the road,” he says.

India will also seek to maintain its steady supply of Russian energy as it seeks to pivot from its dependency on the volatile Middle East market and other sources like Venezuela, he says.

Analysts say India will also seek reassurances when it comes to arms cooperation, with India’s military still operating with large volumes of Russian hardware.

“Defence cooperation will clearly be a priority area,” says Chietigj Bajpaee, senior South Asia research fellow at Chatham House. “We’ve seen some delay in the deliveries of spare parts ... following the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “I believe both countries are due to conclude a military logistics agreement, which would pave the way for more defence exchanges.”

For Russia, the optics of the visit are likely to be more important than any tangible outcomes. As well as multiple recent meetings with China’s Xi Jinping, the Russian president has visited North Korea and then Vietnam to project the image of a world leader who still enjoys international backing.

Modi’s visit to Moscow is the most significant achievement yet in that campaign, Pant argues, as India is both an important counterweight to China within the Asia-Pacific while also enjoying robust ties with the West.

“Putin’s efforts to court India indicate that Russia seeks to demonstrate resilience against Western isolation and assert its independence in managing relations with China,” Mr Pant explains.

“I don’t think Russia wants to be perceived as a junior partner of China. By engaging robustly with India, Russia signals to China its desire to maintain its own distinct space. With Russia increasingly isolated from the West, it risks being seen as subordinate to China, a perception it likely wants to avoid.”

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How China and Russia Compete, and Cooperate, in Central Asia

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are courting regional leaders and pushing an alternative to the U.S.-led order.

By Keith Bradsher and Anatoly Kurmanaev

Keith Bradsher reported from Shanghai, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Berlin.

With Russia mired in a long war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on China for supplies, Beijing is moving quickly to expand its sway in Central Asia, a region that was once in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

Russia, for its part, is pushing back hard.

As the leaders of Central Asian countries meet with the presidents of China and Russia this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, China’s rising presence is visible in the region. New rail lines and other infrastructure are being built, while trade and investment are rising.

Flag-waving Kazakh children who sang in Chinese greeted Xi Jinping, China’s leader, upon his arrival in Astana on Tuesday. He praised ties with Kazakhstan as a friendship that has “endured for generations.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived on Wednesday for the start of the gathering in Astana, an annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and he met with Mr. Xi, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The forum was for years focused largely on security issues. Beijing has come to dominate the group, and as it has expanded its membership, China and Russia have used it as a platform to showcase their ambitions of reshaping a global order dominated by the United States.

The group, which was established by China and Russia in 2001 with the Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has expanded in recent years to include Pakistan, India and Iran .

Even as China has expanded its economic influence across Central Asia, it still faces challenges to its diplomacy, as Russia seeks to tilt the balance of members in the Shanghai forum in its favor.

The leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is expected to attend the summit this year. He is Mr. Putin’s closest foreign ally, who relies heavily on Russia’s economic and political support to stay in power. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia has said that Belarus would be named a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at this year’s summit. That would be a minor diplomatic victory for the Kremlin.

A bigger setback for Beijing is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is skipping the summit this year. Mr. Modi plans to visit Moscow next week to hold his own discussions with Mr. Putin and is instead sending his minister of external affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to the summit in Astana.

Coming after Mr. Putin’s recent trip to two of China’s other neighbors, North Korea and Vietnam , that upcoming trip by Mr. Modi to Moscow indicates that Mr. Putin is still able to weave his own diplomatic relationships separate from Beijing, said Theresa Fallon, the director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels.

“He’s saying, ‘I’ve got other options,’” Ms. Fallon said.

India had joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Russia’s behest in 2017, when Pakistan also joined at the encouragement of China. But India’s relations with China have become chilly since then, after border skirmishes between their troops in 2020 and 2022.

While Mr. Modi had favored closer relations when he took office a decade ago, the two countries no longer even allow nonstop commercial flights between them.

India is becoming more concerned about the region’s geopolitical balance of power as China’s clout rises and Russia’s wanes, said Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London. China and Russia have also forged increasingly friendly relations with the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which has run the country since the departure of American forces in 2021 and has long sided with Pakistan against India.

“So far as Russia was the dominant player, India was fine with it,” Mr. Pant said. “But as China becomes more important economically and more potent in Central Asia, and Russia becomes the junior partner, India’s concerns would be rising.”

In broader terms, however, Russia’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is largely a rear-guard action to counterbalance the region’s seemingly inexorable shift toward China. Mr. Putin relies heavily on China to keep his economy and military production afloat amid Western sanctions, and over the years his government has come to accept Beijing’s growing ties to Central Asia’s former Soviet Republics. The massive gap between Russia’s and Beijing’s economic muscle makes direct competition in Central Asia futile for the Kremlin.

Instead, the Kremlin has sought to maintain a measure of leverage in its former satellites on issues that remain vital to its national interests, including by attending largely symbolic events like the Astana summit. On Wednesday, Mr. Putin will hold six separate meetings with Asian heads of state in Astana, according to Russian state media.

Russia wants to maintain access to Central Asian markets to circumvent Western sanctions. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has obtained billions of dollars’ worth of Western goods by using Central Asian intermediaries. These include consumer goods like luxury cars, as well as electronic components that have been used in military production.

Russia also relies heavily on millions of Central Asian migrants to prop up its economy, as well as to rebuild the occupied parts of Ukraine.

Finally, Russia wants to cooperate with the governments of the largely Muslim nations of Central Asia on security, and the threat of terrorism in particular. These threats were laid bare earlier this year, when a group of Tajik citizens killed 145 people at a Moscow concert hall in the deadliest terror attack in Russia in more than a decade. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

Russia and China do not just compete in Central Asia. They often cooperate, because they perceive a shared interest in having stable regimes in the region that have little or no coordination with Western militaries, said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group.

“They see regional stability anchored in authoritarian regimes that are secular, non-Muslim and, to a degree, repressive at home,” he said.

William Fierman, a professor emeritus of Central Asian studies at Indiana University, said that Beijing also faces deep-seated public concern in Central Asia that China may use its huge population and migration to overwhelm the sparsely populated region. Soviet authorities fanned those suspicions for decades, and even a younger generation that did not grow up under Soviet rule now appears to share these concerns, he said.

In Astana, the elephant in the room is likely to be the war in Ukraine. Few experts expect much public discussion of the war at a forum dominated by Beijing, given its indirect support for the Russian war effort.

Mr. Xi will also use his visit to push his vision of building better transportation links across the region, said Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. After the summit, Mr. Xi is scheduled to make a state visit to Tajikistan, where the U.S. State Department recently estimated that over 99 percent of foreign investment comes from China.

Many of China’s investments in Central Asia are in infrastructure. China concluded an agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan last month to build a new rail line across both countries. The rail line will give China a shortcut for overland trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, and beyond them to the Mideast and Europe. China has tried for the past 12 years to expand rail traffic across Russia to carry its exports to Europe, but now wants to add a southerly route.

“From a long-term, strategic perspective, this railway is very important,” said Niva Yau, a nonresident fellow specializing in China’s relations with Central Asia at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research group.

Suhasini Raj and Li You contributed reporting and research.

Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He has lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic. More about Keith Bradsher

Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine. More about Anatoly Kurmanaev

Hungary's Orban to Head to Moscow to Meet With Putin

Hungary's Orban to Head to Moscow to Meet With Putin

FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China, October 17, 2023. Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday, Radio Free Europe and the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as neither confirming nor denying the visit. State news agency RIA cited Peskov as saying that Putin had a "busy schedule" on Friday, about which the Kremlin would inform reporters later.

It would be the first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine that Putin and Orban have met inside Russia. Orban, who has maintained a closer relationship to Moscow than other EU leaders since the invasion, visited Russia in 2022 without meeting Putin, and has met him in other countries.

From the start of this month, Hungary has taken over the rotating Presidency of the European Union, a largely ceremonial role tasked with agenda-setting and brokering agreements in legislative affairs.

Hungary's government did not reply to e-mailed questions.

Earlier this week, Orban visited Kyiv where he urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to consider a ceasefire to accelerate an end to the war with Russia.

"The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU," Charles Michel, the president of the council of European Union leaders said on social media platform X reacting to Orban's visit to Moscow.

"No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine," he added.

Hungary, a member of the EU and NATO, has refused to send weapons to Ukraine and vocally criticized EU sanctions against Russia, while stopping short of using its veto power to block them.

While countries in western Europe have made serious efforts to wean themselves off Russian gas since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, landlocked Hungary gets most of its gas from Russia.

It signaled in June that it had no plans to abandon natural gas imports from Russia and sought to deepen business ties with Moscow in non-sanctioned areas.

(Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori in Budapest and Felix Light in Tbilisi; Editing by Peter Graff)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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Putin meets Indian prime minister in Russia on his first visit since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine

Russia India Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an informal meeting at Novo-Ogaryovo residence, outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 8, 2024. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (Gavriil Grigorov/AP)

MOSCOW — (AP) — India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Moscow on Monday for a two-day visit , his first since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, complicating the relationship between the longtime partners and pushing Russia closer to India's rival, China.

Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin at his residence outside Moscow, to be followed by talks at the Kremlin on Tuesday. Modi last traveled to Russia in 2019, when he attended a forum in the far eastern port of Vladivostok and met with Putin. The leaders also saw each other in September 2022 in Uzbekistan, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization bloc.

Modi posted photos of his arrival in Moscow on the social media platform X, in both Russian and English, saying he was “looking forward to further deepening the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between our nations."

“Stronger ties between our nations will greatly benefit our people,” he wrote, also sharing a picture of himself and Putin hugging.

Later, the two leaders were pictured in videos shared by the Kremlin at Putin's residence, Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow.

Putin drove Modi around the grounds in a buggy and showed him his stable with horses. According to state news agencies, the two had earlier watched a horse show with performers in national Russian dress.

Modi thanked Putin on X for hosting him at Novo-Ogaryovo and said he was looking forward to Tuesday's talks which he hoped will “go a long way in further cementing the bonds of friendship between India and Russia.”

Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War , and New Delhi's importance as a key trading partner has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies that shut most Western markets off to Russian exports. India now gets more than 40% of its oil imports from Russia, according to analysts.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s military action in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.

The partnership between Moscow and New Delhi has become fraught, however, as Russia has moved closer to China. Modi notably stayed away from last week's summit in Kazakhstan of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping founded by Moscow and Beijing.

Chietigj Bajpaee, senior South Asia research fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House, said India is increasingly estranged from forums in which Russia and China play a prominent role.

“This is evident in India’s relatively low-key presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last year, and now the decision by Modi not to attend this year’s summit,” Bajpaee said.

A confrontation in June 2020 along the disputed China-India border dramatically altered their already touchy relationship as rival troops fought with rocks, clubs and fists. At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed. Tensions have persisted despite talks — and have seeped into how New Delhi looks at Moscow.

“Russia’s relations with China have been a matter of some concern for India in the context of Chinese increased assertiveness in the region,” D. Bala Venkatesh Verma, a former Indian ambassador to Russia, told The Associated Press.

But Modi is expected to seek to continue close relations with Russia, which is also a major defense supplier for India.

With Moscow’s arms industries mostly serving the Russian military in Ukraine, India has been diversifying its defense procurements, buying more from the U.S., Israel, France and Italy.

“Defense cooperation will clearly be a priority area,” Bajpaee said, adding that 60% of India’s military equipment and systems is “still of Russian origin.”

“We’ve seen some delay in the deliveries of spare parts ... following the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “I believe both countries are due to conclude a military logistics agreement, which would pave the way for more defense exchanges.”

Following an arrest warrant issued in 2023 by the International Criminal Court for his actions in Ukraine, Putin’s foreign travel has been sparse in recent years, so Modi’s trip could help the Russian leader boost his clout.

“We kind of see Putin going on a nostalgia trip — you know, he was in Vietnam, he was in North Korea,” said Theresa Fallon, an analyst at the Center for Russia, Europe, Asia Studies. “In my view, he’s trying to demonstrate that he’s not a vassal to China, that he has options, that Russia is still a great power.”

Alexander Gabuev, head of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Putin’s interactions on the world stage show he “is far from isolated” and that Russia is not a country to be discounted.

Trade development also will figure strongly in the talks, particularly intentions to develop a maritime corridor between India’s major port of Chennai and Vladivostok, the gateway to Russia’s Far East.

India-Russia trade has seen a sharp increase, touching close to $65 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, due to strong energy cooperation, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra told reporters Friday.

Imports from Russia touched $60 billion and exports from India $4 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, Kwatra said. India’s financial year runs from April to March.

He said India was trying to correct the trade imbalance with Russia by increasing its exports. India’s top exports to Russia include drugs and pharmaceutical products, telecom instruments, iron and steel, marine products and machinery.

Its top imports from Russia include crude oil and petroleum products, coal and coke, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, fertilizer, vegetable oil, gold and silver.

Pathi reported from New Delhi and Heintz from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Race was once factored into college admissions. Now, it’s factored out.

One year after the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action decision, the ruling’s race-neutral model is being followed at colleges across the country.

When the Supreme Court overturned race-conscious college admissions last June, Adrienne Oddi and other administrators at Queens University paused their Board of Trustees meeting to acknowledge that their world was entering a new era.

Though Queens did not factor race into admissions decisions like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University — the schools at the center of the ruling upending 40 years of precedent — officials at the Charlotte campus knew they would have to act: Even acknowledging a student’s race in admissions discussions could now pose a degree of legal peril.

That day, Oddi, vice president of strategic enrollment and communications at Queens, published an open letter on the university’s website, noting that admissions officials had lost an “essential tool in our tool kit by losing a defining piece of each student’s story — of each student’s identity.”

A year later, many of the nation’s most selective universities have snapped into compliance with the court’s vision of a colorblind America, reconsidering all the ways they use race as a factor. But that vision has reverberated far beyond academia: Programs meant to diversify companies, public boards and government contractors face a legal onslaught unleashed by the landmark ruling, pushing American society at large toward a new race-neutral era.

While the changes at colleges like Harvard have been dramatic, the principle of race-neutrality is being felt more subtly at universities like Queens that accept more applicants than they turn away. Oddi said the ruling brought more of an “emotional shift than a practical shift” to her office and described how she blinds herself to a student’s race if the student mentions it in an application essay. The Supreme Court wrote that students could discuss race so long as it’s relevant to an experience, such as a time they overcame racial discrimination.

Before the ruling, Oddi said she could “brighten” certain parts of an applicant’s identity while evaluating them “holistically” — including the applicant’s race and ethnicity. If a student wrote about being a biracial woman with a father from the Philippines, for example, an admissions official might note that the university does not see many Filipinos in the applicant pool and that “we would love to have more Filipinos in the community,” Oddi said, posing a hypothetical.

But today, she said, that conversation would not happen at Queens. In fact, Oddi said she feels barred from acting on the student’s racial information at all. Instead of brightening that aspect of a student’s identity, she feels forced to erase it. And that has instilled in her a sense of “sadness” — not necessarily for herself but rather for the students who may feel dissuaded from writing about their whole selves, including race and ethnicity.

“I want to live in a world where people can know and be known fully,” she said.

The true impact of the ruling may not be clear for some time. In the fall, universities will report the racial makeup of their freshman class. Some schools may do so this summer after students have been admitted and committed to attend. Early research suggests the ruling’s impact could be relatively minor: Only a fifth of all U.S. colleges put substantial weight on race in admissions decisions, according to a November 2023 Brookings Institution study .

A study by the Common App, a nonprofit whose application is used by more than 1,000 member colleges, found no major changes in the racial and ethnic composition of its applicant pool in the 2023-2024 admissions season. Nor did it see significant deviations from previous trends in how students self-identify their race and ethnicity on the form, or how students write about race and ethnicity in their essays.

Zachary Bleemer, an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University, said states that have banned affirmative action at public universities may offer the best preview of the ruling’s potential implications. California, Texas and Michigan — which all have highly selective public universities — saw immediate and significant declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment at their flagship institutions after state officials prohibited them from considering race in admissions.

After California voters banned affirmative action at state universities in 1996, the University of California system saw a 12 percent drop in underrepresented groups, while campuses in Berkeley and Los Angeles both reported more than 40 percent declines, according to Bleemer’s research. Over time, those numbers have climbed at the most selective UC campuses, which have used multiple strategies to bolster diversity, in part also because of growth in the state’s Hispanic population. But the race-neutral alternatives increased enrollment of underrepresented minorities far less than affirmative action.

It’s harder to predict what might happen at highly competitive private universities, Bleemer said. They may be guided by the experiences of the public schools, which have deployed a variety of strategies to try to maintain diversity. Some worked well, such as holistic review — in which admissions officers factor in many elements of a student’s academic and extracurricular performance as well as personal characteristics — but some have not been particularly successful.

Still, some experts contend schools can maintain diversity without affirmative action through strategies such as increasing financial aid for students from low-income families, investing in pipeline programs, intensifying recruitment and efforts like fly-ins that bring prospective students to campus. But those initiatives are more expensive.

Administrators say assessing the ruling’s impact is also complicated by another crisis in higher education: widespread delays in students receiving financial aid offers. Disastrous technical glitches related to the new federal student aid form (FAFSA) could affect where, and whether, students attend college, especially students from low-income families.

“What I’m nervous about is misinterpretations … because so many things have impacted this year’s data,” said Kedra Ishop, vice president of enrollment management at the University of Southern California. “It’s going to be really hard to extrapolate what this year looks like.”

The delays are weighing on efforts to maintain campus diversity — more perhaps than the Supreme Court ruling, some admissions officials said.

“Our approach this entire year has been to alleviate as much stress and pressure on students and families because we had these two really big changes happen within a couple of months from one another,” Oddi said, noting that the two variables will probably work together to change the racial and ethnic demographics on campus.

Legal experts said the Supreme Court ruling is likely to pose long-term questions for universities having to transition to race-neutral admissions.

“It’s hard to overstate the sea-change effect that occurred and is, frankly, still occurring because now there’s a second- and third-generation set of questions emerging,” said Art Coleman, managing partner and co-founder of Education Counsel, which is guiding universities as they seek to comply with the Supreme Court decision.

“What does this mean for financial aid and scholarships? What does this mean for nonprofit organizations that are partners with institutions that may have a racial focus? What does this mean for issues of sex and gender beyond the question of race and national origin?” Coleman said. “All of the questions the court did not specifically address — there are ripple effects and implications here.”

The University of Connecticut chose to keep applicants’ self-reported racial data sealed to avoid any possible appearance of influence, said Vern Granger, director of undergraduate admissions. Although the college for years has used a system of review that uses the “full picture” of a student to make decisions, this year the checkboxes indicating race were not visible to application readers. But those readers were able to consider applicants’ life experiences, including how race affected them, he said, as described in essays and letters of recommendation.

“We had our general counsel’s office come and do a couple of sessions with our readers, just reiterating holistic review and their professional judgment,” Granger said.

Oddi, the Queens administrator, said her office made similar operational changes, redacting race reporting on applications and instructing readers not to consider racial information if it’s apparent in an essay or a list of extracurricular activities.

But Oddi said Queens has long been able to achieve campus diversity without explicit racial considerations. The university dispatches recruiters to every high school in Charlotte and tries to visit a variety of public high schools outside the city, delivering an “inclusive” message that encourages applicants to apply no matter their backgrounds. In last year’s incoming class, about half of students identified as White, she said, while Black and Hispanic students each made up about 14 percent. Another 5.5 percent identified as multiracial and 2 percent as Asian.

Oddi said that the optimist in her sees the Supreme Court ruling as an opportunity to test new strategies that can help schools reach new students. But as an administrator who has read tens of thousands of student applications over her career, she also feels a sense of loss.

“For some students who are ready, willing, interested in engaging in topics around race and ethnicity and how important their individual, racial and ethnic identity is to them, we can receive that information — but we can’t advocate,” Oddi said.

That means she can’t always see students in the ways they want to be seen.

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Take a guided virtual tour of CCM Village

Follow along as musical theatre major madison hagler provides a virtual look at ccm's facilities.

Visit UC's nationally ranked and internationally renowned College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) from the comfort of your own home! Follow along as musical theatre major Madison Hagler (BFA, 2020) provides a virtual tour of the state-of-the-art facilities within the CCM Village complex. Visit several of the college's major production, rehearsal and performance spaces in this walk-along video provided by CCM Admissions Counselor Emilee Suchomski , M.Ed.

The four buildings that comprise the CCM Village are unrivaled in the nation, providing students with comprehensive performance and educational spaces. CCM is integrated within UC’s main campus, which has been hailed as one of the most beautiful campuses in the world by Forbes magazine.

After you view CCM's guided tour video, explore the rest of UC's campus with a virtual visit .

Welcome to your next stage. Take your next step at ccm.uc.edu

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Featured image at top: The entrance to the CCM Atrium on UC's campus. Photo/ UC Creative + Brand .

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Archived updates from the university of cincinnati college-conservatory of music (2008-21), take a guided virtual tour of ccm village.

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Visit UC’s nationally ranked and internationally renowned College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) from the comfort of your own home! Follow along as musical theatre graduate  Madison Hagler (BFA, 2020) provides a virtual tour of the state-of-the-art facilities within the CCM Village complex. Visit several of the college’s major production, rehearsal and performance spaces in this walk-along video provided by CCM Admissions Counselor Emilee Suchomski , M.Ed.

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Featured image at top: The entrance to the CCM Atrium on UC’s campus. Photo/UC Creative + Brand.

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Modi’s Russia visit a sign of India’s unresolved tensions with China, analysts say

• Modi's visit underscores importance of Russia ties and reluctance to engage China with border issues still outstanding, observers note

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has confirmed a two-day visit to Russia, following his decision to skip a regional summit where Chinese President Xi Jinping is in attendance.

Analysts suggest the two moves are a sign of New Delhi's unresolved tensions with Beijing over their border issues, its desire to maintain strong ties with Moscow and its strategic efforts at balancing relations between the two.

Modi was absent from a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) - a grouping initially established by China, Russia and the ex-Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - which convened this week in Kazakhstan's capital of Astana.

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Instead, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar was tasked to attend the meeting, with Delhi claiming the dates clashed with India's first session of parliament under Modi's third-term government.

Analysts are divided on whether Modi's decision signals his unwillingness to engage directly with Xi at the regional meeting due to the outstanding border issues that have remained a source of tension since their troops clashed in 2020.

But what is clear is Modi is more than willing to meet Putin, with the Kremlin confirming on Thursday that the Indian prime minister is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Friday for a two-day visit.

Harsh Pant, an international relations professor at King's College London, said Modi probably wanted to avoid "the optics of meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping" to signal that the "top Indian leadership will not engage with China at the highest level unless something changes in the Chinese approach" to resolving the border issue.

At the same time, Modi wanted to emphasise the importance of India's historically strong ties with Russia by planning a visit, Pant said.

"This will be his [Modi's] first visit to Russia in his third term. He is underscoring the importance of this relationship."

It will also be Modi's first visit to Moscow since 2015, though he has met Putin regularly at other venues. Their last in-person meeting was in 2021 when Putin visited Delhi.

The Indian prime minister will be breaking convention by visiting Russia instead of neighbouring countries in South Asia after being elected for a third term, which analysts suggest is due to Russia and India maintaining strong ties despite Moscow's ongoing war in Ukraine.

India has become a major buyer of Russian oil since other countries placed embargoes on the commodity following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has also been a major supplier of arms and heavy military equipment to Delhi for several decades.

However, India has in recent years increasingly shifted towards Western allies for military supplies and engaged them more deeply on strategic defence ties.

At the same time, India has countered US and European nations' efforts to cast Russia as a pariah state, for example by abstaining from UN votes condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow has signalled its increasing dependence on Beijing amid Western efforts to isolate the country, a development Delhi is wary about. Putin went to China in May, the first foreign visit since the start of his latest term in office.

"India would not like to see Russia completely falling into the Chinese sphere," Pant said, adding that Modi wanted ties between India and Russia to balance out Moscow's relationship with China.

Western allies have frowned on India's purchases of oil and weapons from Russia - especially since it is a member of the Quad, the quadrilateral security bloc that includes the US, Australia and Japan.

Analysts say that while Western nations are unlikely to be happy about Modi's visit to Russia, the Indian prime minister will be conscious about balancing interests.

Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said supplies of arms and equipment, including delays in the supply of S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile systems, were among the issues that the two leaders were likely to discuss.

Payment snags for oil deals due to Western sanctions on Russia were also likely to be on the agenda, he said. The short duration of the visit "indicates that India is not going to go overboard" in keeping Western interests in mind, Joshi added.

At a meeting with Xi on Wednesday, Putin hailed the SCO as "one of the key pillars of a fair, multipolar world order", and said ties between Moscow and Beijing were "experiencing the best period in their history".

Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar met his counterpart, China's Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the summit, where he reportedly reiterated Delhi's demand for a resolution to the border issue.

Sreeradha Datta, an international-affairs professor at Jindal Global University in Haryana, said there was no ambiguity about India's stance in prioritising the border issue with China, though Beijing would prefer to move ahead on other issues such as trade.

"That is the core for India and until China agrees to have a discussion on that, the rest is not important enough," she said, adding that sending a senior minister such as Jaishankar to the SCO meet showed Delhi was still giving importance to the grouping.

Modi's visit to Russia only showed that Delhi would maintain its foreign policy stance of trying to maintain cordial relations with as many countries as possible, Datta said.

"I think India is balancing its interests extremely well," she said, adding that the nation's ties with Western powers including the US would not be affected by Modi's visit to Moscow.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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Report: 4-star Amari Allen schedules official visit with Gophers

Tony liebert | 8 hours ago.

• Minnesota Golden Gophers

National Basketball Reporter for Four-star basketball recruit Amari Allen has scheduled official college visits with Minnesota, Wisconsin and Central Florida, according to On3 basketball recruiting analyst Joe Tipton.

NEWS: Four-star 2025 forward Amari Allen ( @2amariii ) is expected to take official visits with the #Gophers (Aug. 26), Wisconsin and UCF according to @TiptonEdits 6-foot-7 native of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Played HS basketball last season at IMG Academy. https://t.co/z4tJ9SExLJ pic.twitter.com/xSY2zIcCQa — Tony Liebert (@TonyLiebert) July 8, 2024

Standing at 6-foot-7, Allen is the No. 69 player in the country according to On3's latest rankings. He plays his high school basketball at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., but originally hails from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He unofficially visited Minnesota on June 17, which was his second time on campus. He embark to Minneapolis for his official visit on Aug. 26, with Tipton reporting that Allen will officially visit Wisconsin and UCF later this summer. Allen has already made an official visit to the College of Charleston.

Ben Johnson and the Gophers' staff have identified Allen and Cretin-Derham Hall forward Tommy Ahneman as two of their biggest targets in the class of 2025. Adding either player would be a huge boost to Minnesota's 2025-26 roster outlook.

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