From the issue dated March 15, 2002
THE FACULTY
DINNER ROLLS AND A LOST JOB
Michael Ardis thinks that a bizarre dispute in a restaurant, compounded by race, led Morris College to get rid of him.
PLAYING FAVORITES
Most students scorn teacher's pets, but teacher and pet often benefit from the relationship, writes David D. Perlmutter, an associate professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.
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- SPLIT DECISION: The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld part of a lower court's findings that Trinity College wrongfully denied tenure to a woman.
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- DISPUTE AT RUTGERS: The faculty union has denounced the president for rejecting a report that castigated the dean of the social-work school.
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- THE CORRECTIONS: An academic gives her take on a new novel, set at an unnamed university, that involves a professor-student affair.
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- PEER REVIEW: The University of Kansas has lost two award-winning medical researchers to Vanderbilt University. ... Arizona State University has narrowed the field of presidential finalists to two.
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- SYLLABUS: Students at the University of Richmond use the 2000 presidential election as a case study in "Politics of Electoral Reform."
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
REVISING THE BOOK OF LIFE
Only Stephen Jay Gould would dare to rewrite Darwin. But will America's best-known scientist leave much of an imprint?
POSSESSED
In a new book, a Canadian sociologist explores the link between American pop culture and exorcism.
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- HOT TYPE: An Israeli historian whose views have been seen as pro-Palestinian appears to have partially changed his mind. ... To keep a prominent history scholar from leaving Rutgers University for Harvard, Raritan's editor gives him his job.
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- NOTA BENE: "Consumption Intensified: The Politics of Middle-Class Daily Life in Brazil" examines the effects of economic crisis on 24 families in São Paulo.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
A BAD FIRST YEAR
California's ambitious new aid program misses its goals and shortchanges older students.
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
Colleges hope that September 11 will spur a long-term rise in federal spending on foreign-language instruction.
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- REFERENDUM CRITICIZED: Florida's attorney general is challenging a ballot initiative intended to resurrect the old governance structure of the state university system.
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- NIH NOMINATION: President Bush reportedly is planning to recommend the vice dean of the John Hopkins University School of Medicine as director of the agency.
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- CONCLUSIONS QUESTIONED: Congressional auditors say scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered no proof in reporting that a 1997 missile-defense test was successful.
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- BACKING DOWN: Texas A&M University withdraws an admissions proposal that was criticized as race-based.
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- BREAKING THE RULES: The University of Connecticut admitted to more than 50 violations of the Animal Welfare Act and agreed to pay a big fine.
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- UNDER FIRE: A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee heard testimony sharply critical of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
4 DAYS WITH A VENTURE CAPITALIST
A young investor travels the country in search of university-based companies.
BRAND LOYALTY
When a college outsources functions that are ostensibly nonacademic, it should be careful to preserve what made the institution special to begin with, writes David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
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- TAKING STEPS: Harvard University settled a contract dispute with its janitors that had prompted a sit-in by students last spring, and also revised a policy in an attempt to head off any future protests.
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- RESEARCH SUBJECTS LOSE: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center by participants in a melanoma study.
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- BIG BEQUEST: New York University has received the largest cash donation in its history.
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- ONLINE INTERVIEWS: While two candidates for the University of Tennessee system's presidency were grilled by a search committee, anyone could listen in.
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- PEER REVIEW: The University of Kansas has lost two award-winning medical researchers to Vanderbilt University. ... Arizona State University has narrowed the field of presidential finalists to two.
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- FOUNDATION GRANTS; GIFTS AND BEQUESTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
VULNERABLE CAMPUS NETWORKS
Colleges are struggling with an increasing number of attacks on their computer systems.
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- ONLINE INTERVIEWS: While two candidates for the University of Tennessee system's presidency were grilled by a search committee, anyone could listen in.
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- CALL TO RESTRICT ACCESS: A librarian at the State University of New York sent a controversial e-mail message calling for librarians to screen requests for some Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents.
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- PERFORMANCE FROM AFAR: A study has found that students who took an economics course online didn't do as well as students who took the same course in a classroom.
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- LOGGING IN: The director of the University of Minnesota's Internet Studies Center discusses erosion of privacy and what state and federal governments should be doing to protect personal information in the digital age.
STUDENTS
THE BOOM IN CREATIVE WRITING
Students are flocking to programs that teach them how to produce fiction and poetry, and colleges are adding majors and concentrations to meet the demand.
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- SHADES OF TRICKY DICK: Whittier College is trying to figure out who planted an eavesdropping device in a building that houses the student newspaper and student government.
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- TALL TALES: A University of Tennessee at Knoxville fraternity faces dissolution after its president made up stories about strippers, cockfights, and staged battles among homeless men at the clubhouse.
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- MISS ADVENTURE: A beauty-pageant contestant at Georgetown College says a college official attacked her during a rehearsal.
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- MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: Anheuser-Busch and a national college association are trying to persuade students not to stage drunken riots during this year's NCAA basketball tournament.
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- JUSTICE DENIED? A law-school student kicked out of the University of California at Los Angeles for poor grades in 1952 has been fighting for readmission ever since.
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- SEX CLASS IS REBORN: The University of California at Berkeley has lifted a suspension it had imposed on a course called "Male Sexuality."
ATHLETICS
AT THE BUZZER
After 47 years and 637 games, Cole Field House at the University of Maryland has closed its doors.
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- POWER SHIFT: Athletics directors are pushing for more influence in the governance of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
INTERNATIONAL
RELIGIOUS LOYALTY
In Russia, a small Islamic university is a large political thorn in the Tatarstan republic.
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- WORLD BEAT: Academics in Britain are alarmed by a bill that would grant the government sweeping powers to monitor exchanges of technology information. ... V.S. Naipaul warns Indian writers to avoid foreign universities.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
PLAYING FAVORITES
Most students scorn teacher's pets, but teacher and pet often benefit from the relationship, writes David D. Perlmutter, an associate professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge.
IN DEFENSE OF LUXURY
The best things in life may be free, but without hope of getting a few high-end consumer items, how would you know? asks James B. Twitchell, a professor of English at the University of Florida.
BACK FROM EXTINCTION?
In Louisiana, ornithologists have found hints, but no proof, that the ivory-billed woodpecker may survive, writes Malcolm G. Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large.
HOMELAND INSECURITY
It's time we counter the longstanding terror of America's inner cities. Heeding its youngest victims is a good way to start, writes Richard A. Couto, professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond.
BRAND LOYALTY
When a college outsources functions that are ostensibly nonacademic, it should be careful to preserve what made the institution special to begin with, writes David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
CONCERTED EFFORT
It's diverting to follow which big names are leading which top-flight orchestras. But the key to the future of American symphonies is to invigorate passive audiences, writes Christopher H. Gibbs, an associate professor of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
DEATH-DEFYING ACTS
Art reconciles us to our mortality, while the circus flouts it. So, a Ringling Museum exhibit compels us to ask, how does art reconcile itself to the circus?
A PLAN FOR PLANNING
In devising ways to counter bioterrorism, we can learn from early debates about recombinant-DNA research, writes Joseph G. Perpich, who heads a Bethesda, Md., consulting company in science, education, and medicine.
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- DECONSTRUCT THIS: Three people who wrote and contributed to two new books on stupidity weigh in on the collapse of Enron.
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
GAZETTE
CAREER NETWORK JOB NOTICES
DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS,
including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe
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