From the issue dated September 27, 2002
THE FACULTY
DISCORD OVER DISCOURSE
Guidelines for classroom discussion, popular in women's studies and sociology, have set off campus controversies over freedom of speech.
DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES
Marshall Spector, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who once prided himself on polished classroom performances, realizes he'd rather have his students debate each other and ignore him.
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- TRYING TO IMPROVE TEACHING: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute provided 20 scientists with $1-million each.
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- 4-YEAR COURT BATTLE: In a settlement, Pikes Peak Community College reinstated as history-department chairwoman a professor who had defended a colleague's parody.
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- BARGAINING OVER DISTANCE EDUCATION: A faculty union in the University of Massachusetts system wants to ensure that professors in the field aren't overworked or underpaid.
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- SYLLABUS: Students are encouraged to analyze themselves in "The Psychology of Personality" at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
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- PEER REVIEW: New York University's buildup of its economics department took a big step with the addition of Thomas Sargent, a prominent macroeconomist. ... Meanwhile, NYU's business school lured Niall Ferguson, a British political and financial historian, from the University of Oxford. ... The National Institutes of Health went to academe to find new directors for two institutes.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
REHABILITATING LIVIA
A biography of Augustus Caesar's wife says the biases of ancient and modern historians have unfairly portrayed her as ruthless, scheming, and deadly.
LOVE IN BLOOM
A growing number of ecologists argue that for plants and their pollinators, evolution encourages a libertine lifestyle.
IN OTHER WORDS
A good translator holds the keys to unlock our linguistic prisons. A great one can make us see an author's work in a whole new way, writes Wendy Lesser, the editor of The Threepenny Review.
VERSE CASE SCENARIO
Ten years ago, a popular polemic rued poetry's decline. Today, on its reissue, how does the argument hold up? John Palattella, a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., considers the question.
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- ONLINE STRATEGY: One of Canada's top business schools will stop selling the paper edition of its journal and provide it free on the Internet.
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- VERBATIM: The author of a book on Judaism's responses to scientific advances talks about the use of ancient texts in dealing with moral issues raised by modern technology.
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- HOT TYPE:
As an early step toward "revolutionizing" the humanities, Sander Gilman, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, plans to underwrite some of the publication costs of first books by young scholars. ... Columbia University Press, in collaboration with the American Historical Association, has now published six in a series of electronic books based on award-winning history dissertations.
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- NOTA BENE: In The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France, Joan DeJean explores the history of French naughtiness.
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
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- EX LIBRIS: An excerpt from Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, by Leon R. Kass.
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- WHAT THEY'RE READING ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: a list of best-selling books.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
A LARGER PORK BARREL
Fueled in part by the war on terrorism, Congress awarded a record $1.8-billion in academic earmarks in the 2002 fiscal year. Plus, an exhaustive database of earmarks since 1990, searchable by institution, agency, and state. A separate set of articles examines the top five recipients of academic earmarks since 1990.
RUNNING OUT OF ROOM
In California and Virginia, campaigns for major bond measures to support construction on campuses are in full swing.
A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, recalls how, as a graduate student in the early 1970s, she came to rethink her support for affirmative action.
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- LEFTOVERS: Arizona lawmakers consider how to use expensive computer equipment from a failed distance-education program run by community colleges.
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- GAINS MADE: The number of minority students attending and completing college continued to rise in 1999, according to a new report.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
THE LAST LAUGH
Critics derided New York University's investment strategy in the 1990s. Now the institution's endowment managers feel vindicated in a down market.
BROKEN HONOR
Gardner-Webb University is reeling after the revelation that its president voided a basketball player's failing grade to keep him eligible to play.
PLAYING HARDBALL
When baseball teams want government support, they threaten to move the franchise. Why can't universities do the same? asks Max Utsler, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas.
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- UNDESIRABLE DONOR? The government says the former head of Tyco International gave company funds to Seton Hall University in his own name.
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- STILL ON BOARD: Middlebury College, to which Tyco International's ex-CEO has also donated, is not asking him to resign as a trustee.
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- CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN: Macromedia deepened discounts in its volume-licensing programs for colleges, among which the company's software is popular.
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- GRAVEYARD SHIFT: More and more institutions are building columbariums -- vaults for the storage of cremation remains -- to meet the interest of professors, alumni, and even students.
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- THE CAMPUS LINKS: More than 250 golf carts rove the grounds of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
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- PEER REVIEW: New York University's buildup of its economics department took a big step with the addition of Thomas Sargent, a prominent macroeconomist. ... Meanwhile, NYU's business school lured Niall Ferguson, a British political and financial historian, from the University of Oxford. ... The National Institutes of Health went to academe to find new directors for two institutes.
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- TWO GRAPHS DEPICT trends in faculty pay and the cost of living and pension money invested in the stock market.
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- FOUNDATION GRANTS; GIFTS AND BEQUESTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
COMBATING SPAM
Information-technology officials devise new strategies to counter unwanted e-mail. So far, success is mixed.
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- ONLINE IMPACT: A surprising number of college students say they regularly use the Internet for academic purposes, but they see cyberspace as a supplement to -- not a replacement for -- traditional classrooms, a survey found.
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- Rx FOR CONVENIENCE: A Web-based program at Washington University in St. Louis's health center lets students get lab-test results.
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- BARGAINING OVER DISTANCE EDUCATION: A faculty union in the University of Massachusetts system wants to ensure that professors in the field aren't overworked or underpaid.
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- CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN: Macromedia deepened discounts in its volume-licensing programs for colleges, among which the company's software is popular.
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- ONLINE STRATEGY: One of Canada's top business schools will stop selling the paper edition of its journal and provide it free on the Internet.
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- BOOKMARK: Compiling a guide to online learning was a natural extension of their own research and practice for two associate deans of psychology.
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- LEFTOVERS: Arizona lawmakers consider how to use expensive computer equipment from a failed distance-education program run by community colleges.
STUDENTS
ELUSIVE IDEAL
More college men are reporting eating disorders and other problems associated with body image.
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- WORK WEEKENDS: According to a new study, colleges should hold more Saturday and Sunday classes if they want to attract nontraditional students.
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- PC GREEKS: At the University of Kansas, leaders of fraternities and sororities want people to stop using the terms "rush" and "pledge."
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- GAINS MADE: The number of minority students attending and completing college continued to rise in 1999, according to a new report.
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- CYBER SPIN CYCLE: Students on 40 Midwestern campuses will soon get Internet-based help in doing their laundry.
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- ONLINE IMPACT: A surprising number of college students say they regularly use the Internet for academic purposes, but they see cyberspace as a supplement to -- not a replacement for -- traditional classrooms, a survey found.
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- WHAT THEY'RE READING ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: a list of best-selling books.
ATHLETICS
BROKEN HONOR
Gardner-Webb University is reeling after the revelation that its president voided a basketball player's failing grade to keep him eligible to play.
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- TOUGH LOVE: While praising the Universities of Alabama and Kentucky for disciplining coaches and boosters for rules violations, an appeals committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association upheld penalties against them.
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- DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT: A women's basketball coach at the University of California at Berkeley reportedly told a pregnant job applicant to have an abortion.
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- BILLBOARD BOASTING: Juniata College is using a series of playful signs to capitalize on the tremendous popularity of a nearby football powerhouse in central Pennsylvania.
INTERNATIONAL
HALF JAPANESE
A new university in rural Japan wants 50 percent of its students to be foreigners, an unusual approach in that country.
ON THE TRAIL OF ARSENIC
A scholar follows a river in Nepal for clues to arsenic poisoning in the water supply of Bangladesh.
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- WORLD BEAT: McDonald's and the largest public university in Belarus tussle over land. ... Hebrew University of Jerusalem starts an affirmative-action program.
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- SUSPECT CREDENTIALS? The University of California at Los Angeles will more carefully screen foreign applicants to its life-sciences program, especially those from China.
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- MORATORIUM IN MONTREAL: Concordia University banned all campus activities related to the Middle East after a violent demonstration damaged a building.
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- SHUT DOWN: A Bangladeshi university was closed after clashes between students and police officers.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
PLAYING HARDBALL
When baseball teams want government support, they threaten to move the franchise. Why can't universities do the same? asks Max Utsler, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas.
IN OTHER WORDS
A good translator holds the keys to unlock our linguistic prisons. A great one can make us see an author's work in a whole new way, writes Wendy Lesser, the editor of The Threepenny Review.
A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, recalls how, as a graduate student in the early 1970s, she came to rethink her support for affirmative action.
VERSE CASE SCENARIO
Ten years ago, a popular polemic rued poetry's decline. Today, on its reissue, how does the argument hold up? John Palattella, a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., considers the question.
DISCUSS AMONGST YOURSELVES
Marshall Spector, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who once prided himself on polished classroom performances, realizes he'd rather have his students debate each other and ignore him.
SWEET DISSONANCE
Why hasn't an anthem emerged for 9/11, one that blends the otherworldly, the demonic, and the angelic? asks Martha Bayles, who teaches in the literature department of Claremont McKenna College.
SENSED BEYOND SENSE
The painter Rassouli doesn't paint abstractions, just realities we can't see.
DOCTOR OF BABYSITTING
Colleges are flooding the job market with candidates who have ever-higher degrees. Where will this "credential inflation" end? asks Randall Collins, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
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- EX LIBRIS: An excerpt from Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, by Leon R. Kass.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
GAZETTE
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DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS,
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