From the issue dated March 1, 2002
THE FACULTY
CRISIS-DRIVEN DISCIPLINE
The job market for scholars of Islamic history, culture, and languages has never been better.
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- UNION SETBACKS: Two efforts to organize faculty members at private colleges have run into legal roadblocks.
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- CASE CLOSED: Delaware State University settled with a white former professor who charged bias in her tenure review.
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- PEER REVIEW: Princeton's philosophy department tries to lure three more scholars. ... A top AIDS researcher in the United States may head a Hong Kong university.
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- SYLLABUS: In an architecture class at Syracuse University, students discuss the dreams of America's first town planners.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
THE ANGER AND THE IRONY
After years of neglect, the first African-American novelist with a national reputation is joining the literary canon.
CREATING AN OASIS
University researchers help nomadic herders in Sudan make the switch to farming.
UNDISCIPLINED DISCIPLINE
The Encyclopedia of American Studies -- at $400, 660 entries, and 2,000 pages -- is an ambitious effort to define an ever-shifting field. But would another format have been more appropriate, asks Leonard Cassuto, an associate professor of English at Fordham University.
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- VERBATIM: The author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia discusses the meaning of the word "jihad" and the instability of a once-powerful region.
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- WHO KNEW? Studies show that cell-phone use is causing people to use their thumbs more than their other fingers; American presidents' perceived charisma and greatness may be related to the visual imagery in their speeches; an all-or-nothing strategy works best on The Weakest Link; and global warming is lengthening each day by one microsecond.
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- HOT TYPE: Books by two English professors about their children's recovery from serious brain injuries suggest connections between narrative and neurology.
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- NOTA BENE: A new biography of Andrei Sakharov, the acclaimed physicist turned Soviet dissident, depicts him as a "shy defier of tyrants."
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- PHAT FUEL: Scientists produced heat and hot water for the entire University of Georgia campus for three weeks using 300,000 gallons of chicken fat and restaurant grease.
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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
THE NEW CUNY
Toughened admissions policies have reshaped the City University of New York, attracting many new students but turning some immigrants away.
LESS IS MORE?
Universities are seeking relief from Environmental Protection Agency rules governing disposal of hazardous wastes.
PAC UP YOUR TROUBLES
New campaign-finance bill, meet old lobbying tool. Colleges and universities, take notice, write Brett G. Kappel and Kyra Fischbeck Howell, who are with an election-law practice in Washington.
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- ABOUT-FACE: The governor replaced the new member he had appointed to the University of Arkansas's Board of Trustees after being criticized for not maintaining the panel's minority representation.
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- CHIEF OF EXTENSION: A former agriculture dean has been appointed to oversee university research and extension programs within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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- DESEGREGATION PACT: A federal judge approved a settlement in a 27-year-old Mississippi case.
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- LAB RULES: The U.S. Senate quietly approved a measure that would exclude birds and rodents from the protections of the Animal Welfare Act.
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- WHY JOHNNY CAN GRADE: The Supreme Court ruled that instructors can let students mark each others' work without violating a federal privacy law.
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- A BROKEN RECORD: The Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights blasted the Bush administration's policies on education and affirmative action.
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- COUNTERING CYBERTERRORISM: The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill to expand research on protecting computer networks from terrorist attacks.
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- WHY TUITION GOES UP: A new study implicates declines in state support at public colleges and rising financial aid and faculty salaries at private colleges.
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- FACT FILE: Top institutions in federal research-and-development expenditures, 1999 and 2000.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
THE REALITY OF RECESSION
Private colleges are feeling the impact of the economic downturn, and the smallest institutions appear to be the most vulnerable.
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- SHIFTING AWAY FROM HIGHER EDUCATION: The Atlantic Philanthropies, a major supporter of colleges, is changing its direction.
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- ENRON TIES? A group of Harvard students and alumni raises the question of financial improprieties involving the embattled corporation and the university's endowment.
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- EMPLOYEE OWNED: The IIT Research Institute at the Illinois Institute of Technology will soon be owned by its nearly 1,600 employees.
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- WHOOPS: Middlebury College officials were red-faced after the W-2 forms for almost 300 employees were sent to other people on the campus.
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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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- BOND-RATING UPDATE
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- FOUNDATION GRANTS; GIFTS AND BEQUESTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
LOSS OF PRIVACY
Many college officials are confused by a new anti-terrorism law, which may affect campus networks and library records.
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- ONLINE: A Web site with an Internet address a lot like Reed College's was promoting antiabortion literature.
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- STILL SECRET: A professor who runs a Web site critical of administrators at the University of Louisiana at Monroe will remain anonymous while a court ruling is being appealed.
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- ONLINE EXPERIMENTS: Accrediting officials are trying to determine how to evaluate engineering programs that let students complete laboratory work over the Internet.
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- INTERNET2 CONNECTIONS: Managers of high-speed computer networks say the best way to keep up with scientists' research needs may be to build a new international backbone capable of handling the fast, large-capacity connections the researchers require.
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- COUNTERING CYBERTERRORISM: The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill to expand research on protecting computer networks from terrorist attacks.
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- DEGREE.COM: Administrators of the California State University System have asked a dean to end his ties to a controversial distance-learning institution.
STUDENTS
WHERE THEY GOT HELP
Duke University asked applicants to indicate where they received assistance on their essays, and many of the replies were quite revealing.
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- WHY TUITION GOES UP: A new study implicates declines in state support at public colleges and rising financial aid and faculty salaries at private colleges.
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- BEER STUDIES 101: In a program at the University of Alberta sponsored by Molson, students design a brew geared to campus tastes.
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- STRIKING A POSE: Three editors at Iowa State University's student newspaper were fired after they took part in a lampoon published in a local paper.
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- SEX 101: The University of California at Berkeley suspended a student-run course on male sexuality after hearing that some students had participated in an orgy and watched an instructor have sex onstage at a strip club.
ATHLETICS
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- BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Michigan State University has presented varsity letters to 200 female graduates who competed in the years before they were officially recognized as athletes.
INTERNATIONAL
ANOTHER BLACK-WHITE GAP
Brazil is considering imposing quotas to help bridge its racial divide in higher education.
CREATING AN OASIS
University researchers help nomadic herders in Sudan make the switch to farming.
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- WORLD BEAT: Noam Chomsky attended a trial of a Turkish publishing house that printed one of his books, embarrassing the country's government and winning acquittal of terrorism charges for the publisher. ... Purdue University is helping to rebuild Afghanistan's Kabul University.
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- FALSE DOCUMENTS: The Kenyan Ministry of Education was allegedly the center of a syndicate charged with selling fake degrees.
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- PROBE ORDERED: Mexico's highest court has called for an investigation into a massacre of students protesting in its capital in 1968.
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- PEER REVIEW: Princeton's philosophy department tries to lure three more scholars. ... A top AIDS researcher in the United States may head a Hong Kong university.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
WHY I HATE CHEKHOV
How to be a fiction writer, rule No. 1: Don't read brilliant fiction writers who break all the rules, writes Maurice R. Bérubé, a professor of education at Old Dominion University.
DIVIDED WE STAND
In a tribal world, America is a loud, lumbering anti-tribal juggernaut. That's what makes us so maddening, and so wonderful, writes Roland Merullo, a visiting lecturer in fiction writing at Amherst College.
HISTORY OF COMPROMISE
Stephen E. Ambrose is, at best, cavalier about attribution. But that's only one symptom of a dangerously simplistic, market-oriented approach to historical writing, writes Elliott J. Gorn, a professor of history at Purdue University.
UNDISCIPLINED DISCIPLINE
The Encyclopedia of American Studies -- at $400, 660 entries, and 2,000 pages -- is an ambitious effort to define an ever-shifting field. But would another format have been more appropriate, asks Leonard Cassuto, an associate professor of English at Fordham University.
PAC UP YOUR TROUBLES
New campaign-finance bill, meet old lobbying tool. Colleges and universities, take notice, write Brett G. Kappel and Kyra Fischbeck Howell, who are with an election-law practice in Washington.
DEAD LETTERS
The system of soliciting recommendations for job candidates and promotions is a scandalous failure of common sense, writes Deirdre McCloskey, a university professor.
BRINGING THE LOATHSOME TO LIGHT
Philip Jenkins, a professor and libertarian specializing in deflating alarmist claims, finds himself alarmed about child pornography on the Web.
ARTEMISIA'S SPELL
Why do a Baroque female painter's life and work continue to enthrall us, asks Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic.
HIGH ART
An exhibition at Stanford University shows how Yvonne Jacquette's imagination soars.
QUALITY'S BORDERS
Education and training are among America's top service exports, but ensuring that they're up to snuff is no easy task, writes Marjorie Peace Lenn, executive director of the Center for Quality Assurance in International Education.
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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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