It probably wouldn’t be that hard for faculty members to imagine that academic mobbing — a form of bullying in which members of a department gang up to isolate or humiliate a colleague — could derail their careers. But a discussion of the phenomenon today at the American Association of University Professors’ international conference on globalization, shared governance, and academic freedom illustrated that the consequences can be much worse.

The session, based on a paper titled “Mobbing as a Factor in Faculty Work Life,” began with a gripping story about how colleagues and administrators had ganged up on a highly productive tenured professor — think of being subjected to a stream of trumped-up complaints, ousted from an office, shut out of departmental meetings and committees, accused of an affair with a graduate student, and more. The professor was eventually fired and almost...

David B. Ashley, president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, cut short a trip to Singapore this week to deal with mounting questions about his future, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

The university system’s outspoken chancellor, James E. Rogers, recently told Mr. Ashley that he had lost the support of the Board of Regents, which he said was unlikely to renew Mr. Ashley’s contract.

Mr. Rogers told the president to cancel his trip to Singapore, the highlight of which was the first commencement ceremony on UNLV’s branch campus there. Mr. Ashley left last week on the trip but went back to Las Vegas on Wednesday, three days before his scheduled return.

Mr. Ashley has been president for three years. He followed Carol C. Harter, who had clashed with Mr. Rogers and suggested that the chancellor ruled with a heavy hand.

Mr. Rogers, who is in a continuing feud over budget cuts with...

Martha L. Minow has been appointed dean of Harvard Law School, effective July 1, the university announced today.

Ms. Minow, who has taught at the law school since 1981, will succeed Elena Kagan, who became U.S. solicitor general this year.

Ms. Minow’s scholarship has covered a host of topics, including cultural pluralism, educational equality, and post-genocide reconciliation. Her newest book is an edited volume on government contracting and democratic control.

In a 2002 interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Minow criticized the idea that democratic deliberation must be purely secular. “I don’t think the Constitution is allergic to religion, and I don’t think the public sphere should be allergic to religion,” she said. “We can’t say to people for whom religious identity is important that they have to check that part of themselves when they walk into public spaces.”

A footnote: In...

The University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents selected M.R.C. Greenwood as the university’s next president today, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported. A somewhat controversial choice, she had become the sole finalist last week after the other remaining candidate withdrew.

The regents’ unanimous vote today — 12 to 0, with three members absent — decisively rejected criticism from some politicians and a faculty leader who wanted the board to reopen the search, in part because of Ms. Greenwood’s connection to controversies in California.

A former provost of the University of California, she had received an undisclosed housing allowance that figured in an executive-compensation scandal that rocked that system. Questions were also raised about whether she had improperly influenced hiring decisions involving her son and a former business partner and friend of hers. Members of the search...

Bavardess advises women to stop playing nice when it comes to negotiating. As she states simply in title of her post: If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

When you get that job offer, don’t immediately say yes. Don’t take the first offer on the table out of unwarranted gratitude for even being considered for the role. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking, ‘they really want me, but they’ve said they can’t afford to offer me more.’ You are always worth more than their first offer and they expect you to negotiate. If you had a Y chromosome, you’d bargain as a matter of course. Consider your many talents, your experience, the qualifications you worked so hard to attain. And then ASK FOR MORE. Believe me, you would if you were a man. And if you don’t, nobody is going to just up and give it to you.

Money is not inherently dirty and it is not a character flaw in women to want more...

A budget-cutting reorganization plan at Florida Atlantic University has resulted in layoff notices to at least five tenured professors, causing anger among union officials at the institution.

Florida Atlantic’s president, Frank T. Brogan, has called for eliminating a total of 170 faculty and staff jobs, 30 of which are currently filled, to deal with a $16.7-million cut in state support for the 2009-10 academic year. Those cuts are outlined in a proposed budget that Mr. Brogan will present to the university’s Board of Directors on Wednesday, the president said in a video message on Florida Atlantic’s Web site.

The five professors who received layoff notices last month have not been publicly identified, but all are in the university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, and all have been teaching at the university for more than 15 years, said Sharmila Vishwasrao, an associate...

Mary P. Easley, wife of a former Democratic governor, was fired today from her position at North Carolina State University, as the controversy over her hiring and promotion continue to swirl with a federal investigation and the resignation of three top university officials in recent weeks.

Newly released e-mail messages indicate that former Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina was heavily involved in creating a job for his wife at the university, according to The News & Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.

Today, the university’s Board of Trustees met and decided to terminate Mrs. Easley’s contract, which is at the center of a federal investigation and has led to the resignation of two top university officials and the chairman of its governing board.

James L. Oblinger, chancellor of N.C. State, announced this morning that he was stepping down. Mr. Oblinger has denied any...

In a memorandum that offers a look into the harsh decisions that leaders throughout the University of California system are making as they cope with further cuts in state support, the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside has announced that his campus will cut faculty and staff positions by 15 percent over the next couple of years and enroll fewer students in the fall of 2010.

In the memo, posted last Friday on Riverside’s Web site, the chancellor, Timothy P. White, also said that hiring freezes would remain in place and that employees probably would be asked to take 16 unpaid furlough days — a measure that is expected to be adopted systemwide.

The university system is preparing for a cut in state support of about 20 percent in the 2009-10 fiscal year. Riverside faces a reduction of up to $40-million, or at least double what it expected before the state’s budget...

A friend contacted me the other day to see if I had any insight into a salary range for a position he was considering. Because it was an executive-level position at a private institution, I sent him to GuideStar, where he could scout existing salaries from a couple of years ago (which are public record, thanks to IRS Form 990). If it had been a state institution, I would have sent him to one of the Web sites that make those salaries public (my local newspaper, for example, has a link to the salaries of our state university and community-college faculty).

When I worked on the state side, I remember that each year the budget was printed, salaries and all, and deposited in the library for review. According to campus legend, the two rival alphas in one department used to compare themselves each year; apparently their dean had rigged it so that they alternated making $1 more than the other...