Welcome to the new academic year!

US librarians defy cops, Feds – and switch on their Tor exit node

In June, Kilton had agreed to be part of a pilot program called the Library Freedom Project, which aims to use spare bandwidth at the nation’s public libraries to expand the Tor network, and so safeguard people’s privacy online. It went live in July.

But soon after the library turned the service on, it got a visit from the cops, tipped off by Homeland Security, which warned library and city officials that the service could be used for criminal activity.

Grim news from Japan: Many social sciences and humanities faculties in Japan are to close after universities were ordered to “serve areas that better meet society’s needs”.

Of the 60 national universities that offer courses in these disciplines, 26 have confirmed that they will either close or scale back their relevant faculties at the behest of Japan’s government.

It follows a letter from education minister Hakuban Shimomura sent to all of Japan’s 86 national universities, which called on them to take “active steps to abolish [social science and humanities] organisations or to convert them to serve areas that better meet society’s needs”.

(For those new to Middlebury, the Friday Links are an occasional compendium of interesting but not urgent information, sometimes with humorous interludes, contributed by any staff members from the Library or ITS who come upon something they want to pass along.)