The University of Nevada at Reno says it has been forced to spend about $1.7-millon on outside legal help to fend off a flurry of lawsuits filed by employees who are all represented by the same lawyer, according to a report on The Chronicle’s News Blog based on an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

“UNR said it’s the target of meritless complaints filed by disgruntled current or former employees with the help of an attorney who uses ‘abusive’ tactics,” the Gazette-Journal reported.

The lawyer, Jeff Dickerson, told the newspaper that the only thing “absurd and abusive” is how the university has wasted public money in what he called its attempts to cover up corruption.

A year after DePaul University denied tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, the controversial political scientist has still been unable to find another post in academe, according to a report on The Chronicle’s News blog about a recent interview Mr. Finkelstein gave to The Jewish Week.

Mr. Finkelstein told that local newspaper that he doubted he could get even a job teaching high school.

“The way they do background checks is to Google your name,” he said. “With me, they would get 30,000 Web sites, one-third of them saying I am a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism, a crackpot, and a lunatic.”

Police arrested the president of the University of Evansville this month for driving while intoxicated, according to a report on The Chronicle’s News Blog.

In a statement released by the university, the president, Stephen G. Jennings, who is 61, acknowledged making “a very serious mistake,” apologized, and pledged to “take every necessary action to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

A Massachusetts grand jury has returned an indictment against two former administrators at Tufts University, accusing them of separately stealing from student-activity funds and wrongfully obtaining a total of nearly $1-million, according to a report on The Chronicle’s News Blog.

In other news on the administrative front:

In yet another signal that the academic job market will be weaker than usual this fall, a new study shows that state tax collections are at their weakest in five years, The Chronicle’s News Blog reports.

The study follows a similarly grim report by the National Governors Association, which found that an increasing number of states face revenue shortfalls.

The problem with workplace bullies, says Historiann on her blog, is not just that they drive off good employees but also that they turn “those who remain into bullies themselves.”

In Parts I and II of a post about bullies, Historiann advises their targets: “Don’t sue — run for your lives.”

“We don’t encourage people in abusive relationships to believe they can make the abuser change. Why should we expect people in bullying work environments to stick around and try to change the culture, when they have little if any power or influence to force reform?

She quotes Robert Sutton, author of The No A$$hole Rule, who wrote that research “on emotional contagion, and on abusive supervision in particular, finds that if you work with or around a bunch of nasty and demeaning people, odds are you will become one of them.”

Historiann chronicles her own troubles with a nasty “colleague” at...

What is the relationship between faculty members’ political affiliations and their classroom performance? Stanley Fish says he’s answered that question many times before, but he’s answering it once again.

In May, Fish wrote a column on his blog, Think Again, “lampooning the University of Colorado’s plan to raise $9-million for a chair in conservative thought,” as he described it. The angry responses to that column — a summary of which appeared in The Chronicle Review last week — prompted Fish to take up the issue again on his blog this month:

“I would never deny that there are some college and university teachers who mistake the classroom lectern for a political platform and thereby substitute indoctrination for instruction. But, I argue, this need not happen — it is not an inevitable consequence either of our fallible natures or of certain subject matters — and when it does...

What qualities should colleges and universities be looking for when hiring a chief information officer?

The Chronicle’s bimonthly Tech Therapy podcast put that question to Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges:

“When I work with people who are trying to hire a CIO, they often fall into a trap of looking for the ‘Jesus candidate‘—we have renamed it the ‘Elvis candidate,’ because that is more palatable. And that is the CIO who is all things to all people all the time, including the weekends and the holidays. Good luck.”

For more, check out the podcast. Part II of the series will discuss what a prospective CIO should look for in a college.