At least two of five women who were denied tenure at DePaul University this year intend to sue the university because they believe it discriminates against women, according to the Chicago Tribune. Of 33 faculty members up for tenure—18 men and 15 women—all but seven received it, the newspaper reports, and of the seven only two were men. Four of the five women appealed their rejections to the university's president, Dennis Holtschneider, but he e-mailed each of them Friday afternoon to say he would not overturn the decisions, which have prompted protests and sit-ins by students. Four different faculty panels heard the four appeals, and two of the panels concluded that the process for awarding tenure was so badly flawed that the women whose appeals they heard should not be denied tenure. But a spokeswoman for DePaul, Denise Mattson, said: "Every faculty member seeking tenure is held to the...

The University of Idaho has agreed to pay $105,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by two former researchers, Kenneth and Martha Hass, who accused the former director of the university's Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research of conducting a smear campaign against them after they assisted university auditors who reported conflicts of interest, nepotism, and misuse of funds at the center. According to The Spokesman-Review, a newspaper in Spokane, Wash., the university also released a statement saying that allegations lodged against Kenneth Hass -- in a letter from NASA that allegedly was orchestrated by the former director, Gary Maki -- were "unfounded."

The British government has dismissed David J. Nutt, a pharmacology professor who headed the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, after he suggested that marijuana was no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco and that the government's approach to classifying drugs had become politicized, the BBC reported. The home secretary, Alan Johnson, asked for Mr. Nutt's resignation. A spokesman for Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Nutt's comments "damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs." But Mr. Nutt, a pharmacologist who teaches at both Bristol University and London's Imperial College, said he could not "mislead" the public about the dangers of drugs just because the government had a message it wanted to convey. A spokesman for the opposition party, Chris Huhne, said: "What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice that...

Michigan State University has proposed a series of program cuts to cope with declining state support, according to reports in the Lansing State Journal and The State News. The proposed cuts include closing at least nine departments and more than a dozen degree programs, among them the classics, veterinary technology, retailing, and American studies.

The state's 2009-10 budget, signed on Friday, provides no money for the merit-based Michigan Promise Scholarship but retains $31.7-million in need-based grants for students at private colleges, the Detroit Free Press reported. The budget also spares Michigan State's agricultural extension services.

Federal agents arrested the director of the University of Florida's Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute on Friday, along with his wife, and said that the two had siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from federal research contracts into their own bank accounts, according to The Gainesville Sun. In addition, prosecutors said that a company operated by the couple—Samim Anghaie, a professor of nuclear engineering, and Sousan Anghaie—had claimed to have carried out research that was actually done by others, including University of Florida graduate students. Mr. and Mrs. Anghaie were charged with multiple counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering, as well as with making false statements. They were released on a $50,000 bond. Mr. Anghaie has been on leave from the university since February, when federal agents raided his office.

Idaho State University has fired a veteran professor of engineering who has been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the university, and who was suspended in August, even though a faculty appeals panel voted last week to support the professor, saying the university did not provide him with due process and lacked evidence to dismiss him. According to KIDK, a local television station, the university's president, Arthur C. Vailas, said he had made the decision to fire the professor, Habib Sadid, "in the best interest of the institution." Mr. Sadid, who Idaho State says has acted insubordinate and unprofessional in his bitter criticism of university actions, vowed not to give up. "I will fight this, and I will win," he told KIDK.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has settled a lawsuit with a former dental student that last year resulted in a $1.72-million jury verdict against the university. Michigan initially pursued an appeal, but according to the Associated Press, lawyers for the university and the student reached a settlement and asked a federal judge to expunge the jury verdict. Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. The jury found that the university had illegally kicked Alissa Zwick out of its dental school for what it said was poor performance in clinical classes. Ms. Zwick said she had been caught in an academic feud at the school.

Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley again finished first, second, and third in the Annual Ranking of World Universities, published today by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University. As in previous years, American universities dominated the ranking, filling out 55 of the top 100 positions. The only non-American institutions in the top 20 were the Universities of Cambridge (4), Oxford (10), and Tokyo (20). The Chinese university's ratings, which are based on a formula that includes the number of alumni who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of papers published in Nature and Science, and scholarly-citation indexes, is part of a growing global obsession with university rankings.

City health officials were called in to investigate after Boston University reported that a graduate student had come down with a bacterial infection after conducting experiments with meningitis pathogens, The Boston Globe reported. While the officials found no immediate safety problems, the incident added fuel to tensions between some community members and the university over a new infectious-disease laboratory it has built -- but not yet opened -- to deal with some of the world's deadliest pathogens.

Worried about India's low research output, the government has doubled the salaries and annual contingency grants of research professors in public universities, according to the country's Press Information Bureau. The government agency says inflation and the devaluation of the Indian rupee are behind the decision, but officials have long been concerned about India's declining research activity.