Duke University's Student Government Senate voted on Wednesday to cut off funds for the campus chapter of the College Republicans, following the student group's decision last spring to remove its chairman allegedly because he is gay. According to The Chronicle, the university's student newspaper, the senate also took a first step toward rescinding the College Republicans' charter because the chapter had manifested a "culture of discrimination." During a four-hour meeting, the senate also heard evidence that the gay chairman's removal was followed by death threats against him as well as antigay, racist, and anti-Semitic e-mail messages from a top College Republicans official on the campus. The Student Organization Finance Committee will make the final decision on the group's charter.

A $24-million gift from a 1990 alumnus and his foundation will enable the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to increase its undergraduate enrollment by 250, to about 4,500 students, according to an MIT news release. The gift comes from Fariborz Maseeh and his Massiah Foundation.

Since the news broke last week that a longtime member of Congress had violated anti-nepotism rules in awarding thousands of dollars in college scholarships to her relatives, the congresswoman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, has insisted that the violations were inadvertent and resulted from staff errors. Today, however, The Dallas Morning News, which had the original scoop, reported that Representative Johnson had sent letters to the source of the scholarships, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, asking that the money be given directly to her two grandsons and two great-nephews, instead of to the colleges they attended. The letters, the News reported, "suggest a far more direct role" for Ms. Johnson in the scholarship awards than she has hitherto acknowledged.

A federal district judge today refused to put on hold his ruling last month that barred the U.S. government from financing research on human embryonic stem cells. The Justice Department has appealed that unexpected ruling, by Judge Royce C. Lamberth, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but it sought a stay from Judge Lamberth of his decision while the case is on appeal. Not surprisingly, Judge Lamberth declined to delay the effectiveness of his order. In its appeal to the judge, the Justice Department said stem-cell research would be seriously harmed by a sudden end to the flow of federal money. The National Institutes of Health has said that some federally backed stem-cell studies may continue.

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered a Nova Southeastern University contractor to reinstate -- and give tens of thousands of dollars in back pay -- to three janitors who were fired for their roles in a union drive at the Florida institution in 2007, according to The Miami Herald. The board said the dismissal of the union supporters was an act of retaliation that violated federal labor laws. The university said the dispute was a problem for its contractor, TCB Systems, which took over from a previous contractor, Unicco, at the time of the union drive.

The man with a suspicious item in his luggage that resulted in a partial shutdown on Thursday night of Miami International Airport turns out to be a former Texas Tech University professor who served time in prison for mishandling samples of bubonic plague. According to The Miami Herald, Thomas C. Butler was detained at the airport after what looked like a pipe bomb was seen in his luggage and the authorities found out about his past. Mr. Butler was convicted in 2003 on charges stemming from an incident in his lab that sparked a bioterrorism scare when it appeared that 30 vials of plague bacteria had vanished. He was later sentenced to two years in jail. In Miami, however, when the suspicious item was found to be only an empty metal canister, prosecutors said they would not be filing charges against him.

A shooting by a disgruntled worker that took two lives in March has led Ohio State University to make several changes in how it hires employees and how it deals with troubled ones. According to The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State announced this week that it would subject all new hires to criminal background checks, that certain workers fired during their initial probationary periods would have to cease work immediately, and that workers convicted of certain crimes must notify the university of them. In the March shooting, a custodial worker who had been told he would be dismissed in a week shot to death a supervisor, wounded another, and then killed himself. The gunman had a criminal record that did not show up in a background check, the Dispatch reported.

California State University at Fresno is no longer at the center of a dispute over whether a cache of old pictures are actually long-lost works by the famed photographer Ansel Adams. The university was scheduled to be the first stop of an exhibit of the photos, which were purchased for $45 at a garage sale and, if genuine, have been valued at $200-million. But Adams's heirs and executors have disputed the authenticity of the photos and called claims to the contrary a "fraud," putting Fresno State in an awkward position. The university has now declared that the planned show is off because the event space is booked with another exhibit. And not a moment too soon: One of the art-world experts who authenticated the photos as Adams's work has recanted his opinion. According to The New York Times, Robert C. Moeller III, a former curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, now thinks at least...

Employers responding to a recent survey said they planned to hire 13.5 percent more new college graduates from the Class of 2011 than they did from the Class of 2010, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which conducted the survey in July and August and released preliminary findings today. But the survey found that only 48 percent of employers actually expected to increase their hiring; 40 percent said they expected level hiring, and 12 percent predicted a drop in hiring.

Marquette University announced on Tuesday that its next president would be the Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, who is currently president of the University of Scranton. One issue Father Pilarz is likely to face at Marquette when he takes office next summer is academic freedom at the Roman Catholic institution. Three months ago, Marquette drew sharp criticism both on and off the campus when it rescinded a job offer to a Seattle University sociologist, Jodi O'Brien, a move widely regarded as stemming from her being a lesbian (Marquette denied the allegation). In an interview at the time, Father Pilarz declined to talk specifically about the O'Brien case, but he did discuss the tensions over academic freedom that can arise at Catholic colleges (the question appears at 1:36 of the podcast).