It has a dedicated foreign-language school with international teachers and touts its English-language teaching skills, the foreign studies of many of its faculty members and its alliances with foreign schools.

WSJ: Parents of China Victim Get U.S. Visas

"I think he's doing a lot of positive, progressive, constructive work right now, " said Brown University English professor William Keach, the first member of the university's faculty to sign the statement of support.

CNN: 3,000 professors sign to support William Ayers

Senior Yale lecturers like Yale's diplomat-in-residence and eminent international security studies scholar Charles Hill, and Yale's Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature and Holocaust survivor Geoffrey Hartman, served on YIISA's faculty advisory committees and participated in its activities.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Yale, Jews, and Double Standards

The University of Tennessee, meanwhile, will have faculty at its Martin and Chattanooga campuses work with Coursera to develop entirely online versions of first-year courses in English composition and masterpieces of music, both general education requirements (these courses won't be "open" to non-UT students, so aren't really "MOOCs, " but they will borrow from Coursera's technology platforms).

WSJ: Higher ed systems in 10 states turn to Coursera