Wednesday Reading

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Rep. George Miller of California have proposed legislation that would give graduate students at private colleges and universities the right to unionize, Charles Huckabee writes on The Chronicle’s News Blog. Brainstorm’s Marc Bousquet has more on the subject.
Rumor has it that some professors at the Johns Hopkins University are pushing its presidential-search committee to consider New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is an alumnus, as the next chief, The New York Sun reports.
Elsewhere on The Chronicle’s Web site, David Glenn reports that the University of Missouri has finally — after 10 years — filled its Kenneth L. Lay chair in economics, which was named for the Enron Corporation’s notorious founder, who died in May 2006, just weeks after he was was convicted on numerous counts of corporate fraud.
Meanwhile, in a recent First Person column, Philip Drew explains why requests for early tenure should often be denied.
According to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia Institute of Technology has accused two leading health-science-engineering professors, who are husband and wife, of simultaneously drawing paychecks from Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota. The couple, who’d worked at Georgia Tech since 2000, were apparently hired away by Minnesota last fall, but neglected to tell Georgia Tech and continued to collect their paychecks, the reporter, Andrea Jones, writes.
Finally, Paula Wasley reports that the University of Southern California is closing its German department.