SHOWDOWN OVER UNIONIZATION
A planned strike by teaching assistants on eight University of California campuses is expected to have a significant impact on the treatment of graduate students nationwide: A10

A LAW PROFESSOR at the University of Chicago is staging a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Trial by Jury, in a mock courtroom: A10

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Graduate-Professional Students will move to Washington to be closer to the legislative and regulatory action: A10

STANFORD UNIVERSITY plans to offer $5,000 research grants to assistant professors to help them strengthen their bids for tenure: A12

THE STATE UNIVERSITY of New York at Binghamton has beefed up its faculty by 58 members this year, part of a hiring binge over the last few years: A12

ACCREDITING AGENCIES for engineering and technology programs and for computer-science programs plan to merge in the next two years: A12

THE STATE OF WASHINGTON is being sued by two adjunct professors who say it illegally denied retirement benefits to them and other adjuncts: A12

PEER REVIEW: A45

• Indications are that Christina Hoff Sommers will give up tenure at Clark University to remain at a think tank in Washington.

• Columbia and New York Universities are vying to lure a noted philosopher from the University of Michigan.

MINING THE ANNALS OF MURDER
By studying trial documents and press accounts of crimes, historians are opening a window onto the past and finding a pattern of changing social and moral values: A13

• One historian reports that, although it is difficult to gauge accurately, the per-capita murder rate in the United States appears not to have changed significantly in the 20th century: A14

A NEW AGE OF DISCOVERY
Oceanographers at a National Science Foundation symposium said advances in technology were deepening an understanding of the world's oceans and the life they hold: A15

A HOUSE THAT LEARNS
Michael Mozer, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has a home programmed to heat and light itself by keeping track of how its occupant lives and what he needs: A9

SCIENTISTS HAVE GROWN human embryonic cells, known as stem cells, in the laboratory for first time. The development could make possible many new forms of medical treatment: A16

NEW DNA EVIDENCE suggests that Thomas Jefferson was indeed the father of a child born of one of his slaves: A18

UKRAINIAN SCIENTISTS have altered a plant so that it serves to measure radiation damage to DNA: A18

AN ARCHAEOLOGIST at Montana State University has uncovered one of the campsites used by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in their exploratory trek across the West nearly 200 years ago: A8

A MARINE BIOLOGIST at the University of Hawaii at Hilo has named a species of seaweed she discovered after Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt: A9

HOT TYPE: A18

• In light of new evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered a slave's child, the University Press of Virginia is rushing to reprint a book on the subject.

• Two new books on Shakespeare couldn't be more different.

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS, briefly described: A19-21

• Nota Bene: Freud: Conflict and Culture, edited by Michael S. Roth, associate director of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. The book is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

GRANTS FOR VIRTUAL EDUCATION
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which long has focused on science and engineering, is committing millions of dollars to asynchronous learning on dozens of campuses: A23

• A chronological sampling of grants by the Sloan Foundation since 1993: A23

TARGET: FOR-PROFIT JOURNALS
A librarians' newsletter says commercial publishers of scholarly journals are stifling competition, making excessive profits, and issuing periodicals that libraries don't need: A25

TECHNOLOGY FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES
At the annual meeting of the League for Innovation, the talk was of training a high-tech work force and of using computers in the classroom as well as for student services: A28

PLANNING THE FUTURE LIBRARY
At the Internet Librarian conference, participants discussed building truly digital facilities and convincing students that printed materials still can be useful research tools: A28

ON-LINE FINANCIAL AID
Vice-President Gore is preparing to announce a pilot program in which the Internet will be used to improve the process of delivering federal funds: A34

THE GOVERNMENTAL ACCOUNTING Standards Board is requiring public colleges and other government agencies to disclose how they are handling the year-2000 computer problem: A23

JARGON MONITOR explains "Cyber rage": A23

AN INTERACTIVE SIMULATION designed by a political-science professor at the University of Dayton takes a look at "Ruritanian" politics: A27

WISCONSIN HAS BEEN SUED over a program that provides Internet and interactive-video hookups to public and private colleges, among them some religious institutions: A29

THREE SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, two books related to information technology, and seven other Internet resources: A27

THE ELECTION'S IMPACT ON COLLEGES
Winners in key gubernatorial races included Democrats who want to spend more state money on higher education, but many educators were upset by a Washington State vote to end affirmative action: A29

• Results of state referenda that affect colleges: A30

• Five gubernatorial winners who are expected to have a key impact on higher education: A31

• The other 31 gubernatorial winners and their positions on higher education: A31-33

CONTRACTING PLAN IS STRUCK DOWN
A federal judge not only threw out an affirmative-action policy at an Ohio community college, but also held its leaders personally liable for damages: A33

ON-LINE FINANCIAL AID
Vice-President Gore is preparing to announce a pilot program in which the Internet will be used to improve the process of delivering federal funds: A34

EDUCATING CONGRESS
In a budget process that forces discretionary domestic programs to compete with one another for support, student aid needs more and stronger champions, argues Robert H. Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education and a senior consultant with A.T. Kearney Inc.: A52

CURRENT AND FORMER college-basketball coaches endorsed rivals in the Kentucky Senate race: A29

WISCONSIN HAS BEEN SUED over a program that provides Internet and interactive-video hookups to public and private colleges, among them some religious institutions: A29

A MARINE BIOLOGIST at the University of Hawaii at Hilo has named a species of seaweed she discovered after Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt: A9

CODES FOR MAKING COLLEGE APPAREL
Institutions are devising policies to insure that the T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other clothes that carry their names are not manufactured by underpaid or underage foreign workers: A35

GRANTS FOR VIRTUAL EDUCATION
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which long has focused on science and engineering, is committing millions of dollars to asynchronous learning on dozens of campuses: A23

• A chronological sampling of grants by the Sloan Foundation since 1993: A23

TURNING AFFINITY INTO GIFTS
Development officers need to realize that faculty members can be the most vital link between the institution and alumni when it comes to raising money, says Robert C. Allen, a professor of American studies, history, and communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: B4

THE PRESIDENT of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey will be reimbursed by the institution for the cost of pursuing a libel lawsuit against a professor who accused her a crime she did not commit: A35

THE FORMER PRESIDENT of two Southern Baptist seminaries has given $250,000 to another institution, one formed to counter the conservative trajectory of the denomination: A35

THE GOVERNMENTAL ACCOUNTING Standards Board is requiring public colleges and other government agencies to disclose how they are handling the year-2000 computer problem: A23

OFFICIALS at Everett Community College are trying to figure out how confidential college documents and personnel records ended up in a barn owned until recently by an employee of the Washington institution: A8

CASTLE COLLEGE, a Roman Catholic institution in New Hampshire, will close next spring because of dwindling enrollment: A8

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS'S M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has been billed by AT&T for more than $120,000 in telephone calls that were never made from the center: A9

FOUNDATION GRANTS; gifts and bequests: A37

AN 'INSIDE' LOOK AT COLLEGES
As a high-school guidance counselor, Frederick E. Rugg saw a market among his colleagues for information on admissions. Now dishing out such material is his living: A39

• Some of Mr. Rugg's "most overrated" colleges: A39

TEACHING ASSISTANTS PLAN WALKOUT
In their effort to win collective-bargaining rights, thousands of graduate students in the University of California System are threatening to stage the biggest strike ever by T.A.'s: A10

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
Cam Strader, a freshman at North Carolina State University, decided to major in business administration to help him in his planned career -- as a stock-car racer: B2

UNION COLLEGE in New York has waived tuition for 40 students from a dilapidated local neighborhood: A39

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER at Neumann College has resumed publication after a dispute in which college officials demanded to preview its contents: A39

FACT FILE: earned degrees conferred by U.S. institutions in 1995-96, by racial and ethnic group, by sex, by discipline, and by level of study: A41

A 40-YEAR-OLD MAN has made the Fresno City College football team: A8

HIGHER EDUCATION AFTER APARTHEID
The University of the Witwatersrand has set out to help change South Africa -- and to change itself from within -- by increasing the number of its high-ranking black faculty members: A42

CRACKDOWN IN IRAN
In raids against an underground university for Baha'i students, Teheran authorities arrested 36 professors and confiscated books, computers, and other equipment: A44

KOSOVO'S DIVIDED UNIVERSITY
An eight-month-old agreement to share a university campus between Serb and ethnic-Albanian students has foundered amid violence in the Yugoslav province: A44

A STRIKE SHUT DOWN the National Library of France's new research wing days after it opened: A42

THE UNIVERSITY of Cape Town had to get a court order to keep striking workers from disrupting final examinations: A42

EDUCATING CONGRESS
In a budget process that forces discretionary domestic programs to compete with one another for support, student aid needs more and stronger champions, argues Robert H. Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education and a senior consultant with A.T. Kearney Inc.: A52

TURNING AFFINITY INTO GIFTS
Development officers need to realize that faculty members can be the most vital link between the institution and alumni when it comes to raising money, says Robert C. Allen, a professor of American studies, history, and communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: B4

COLORBLIND IN THE FOOTLIGHTS
From 19th-century blackface to today's non-traditional casting, the importance of race has provoked debate in the theater no less than in society, notes Robin Breon, the administrator of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Toronto: B6

ROMANCING THE ROMANCE NOVEL
Volumes by publishers like Harlequin and Avon are celebrated by some scholars, but they deserve a more critical reading, argues Tania Modleski, a professor of English at the University of Southern California: B8

MARGINALIA: A8

EX LIBRIS: B10

• How colleges should treat students who behave unacceptably off the campus: B3

• University of Phoenix values its adjuncts: B11

• Copyright law and electronic media: B11

• The privileged lives of academics: B11

WOMEN SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST
The exhibit "Voices in the Shadows: Women Survivors and the Holocaust, a Photographic Memoir" is at the State University of New York College at Brockport: B112

AN ART GALLERY at the State University of New York at Buffalo features a massive pop-art mural called "El Gloominator": A8

A FORMER STUDENT at Wake Forest University is exhibiting his formidable collection of abstract art at his alma mater: A9

• APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS on U.S. campuses.

• DEATHS of people in academe.

• COMING EVENTS: conferences, workshops, and seminars.

• DEADLINES for fellowships, grants, the submission of papers, and more.

DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS,
including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe.