Short Subjects

Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge goes on a tiger hunt, the University of Missouri at St. Louis deep-sixes its Rivermen, Hendrix College refashions its Warrior, and Athens State University, in Alabama, patches up its bear.

NICE WORK, EINSTEIN: A biology major at the University of California at Berkeley has been charged with stealing Ernest O. Lawrence's 1939 Nobel medal in physics for developing the cyclotron.

ALT ROCKERS AS FULBRIGHT JUDGES: The State Department has joined with mtvU to have four alternative-rock musicians help select recipients for fellowships to explore global ties between music and culture.

INTELLIGENT DESIGNS: Students use text messaging to connect technology and religion.

The Faculty

The growing field of animal law is attracting activists and pragmatists alike to a law school that offers such courses.

"Fit" is the reason you cannot take the human out of the hiring process, and why that process will never be perfect.

A look at how one group of colleagues tries to cut its consumption of paper and energy.

PEER REVIEW: Twenty professors at Eastern Michigan University have signed a letter asking that its president be fired. ... The president of the Community College of Denver has been fired after an audit reported financial improprieties. ... The University of Iowa has finally picked a president. ... And other comings and goings in academe.

SYLLABUS: A historian and a comic-book artist at Juniata College show students the social meanings of superheroes.

Research & Books

A band of researchers pursues the theory that exposure to electric light increases women's risk of breast cancer.

Among the hot topics at the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses were a surprise request for proposals from a big foundation and a forthcoming report on publishing in the digital age.

Richard Rorty tried to rescue analytic philosophy from essentialist abstraction. In doing so, he alienated many peers but won readers across the intellectual world, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.

Most everyone has a theory about why the poor stay poor. Most everyone is wrong, writes Charles Karelis, research professor of philosophy at George Washington University.

Reasonableness is one of the first things to go when we toil to put our hearts and minds on the printed page.

HOT TYPE: Alliances between conservative Episcopalians in the United States and African nations are more complicated than a simple religious divide between north and south, says one scholar of religion.

NOTA BENE: The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America provides a translation and analysis of a play that was a staple of Yiddish theater.

NICE WORK, EINSTEIN: A biology major at the University of California at Berkeley has been charged with stealing Ernest O. Lawrence's 1939 Nobel medal in physics for developing the cyclotron.

PORK ON THE PLATE: Members of Congress have averted an impasse over earmarks in spending bills for 2008, in a deal between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives.

OVERRIDE UNLIKELY: President Bush has vetoed a bill that would have loosened his restrictions on stem-cell research, marking the second time in less than a year that he has blocked a Congressional attempt to overturn his policy.

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS

Government & Politics

Florida's competing hubs of power in the public-university system may finally be ready to go forward together.

• CALL TO ACCOUNT: When Florida A&M's new president starts work next month, he will face what even the institution's supporters concede is a financial mess.

The Senate education committee has approved a pair of bills that would slash government subsidies to student-loan companies, increase student aid, and set higher-education policy for the next five years.

Colleges wondering what to expect during student-loan investigations can find clues in previous stock and mutual-fund scandals, write Meyer Eisenberg, a senior research scholar at the Columbia University School of Law, and Ann H. Franke, a lawyer specializing in higher-education policy and risk-management consulting.

AT SEA: The auditor general of Illinois has questioned expenditures for leadership cruises taken by the president of Chicago State University.

GET IN LINE: The Senate education committee has told the secretary of education to refrain from proposing new regulations on accreditation until the committee has had a chance to deal with the issue.

'NEW LEVELS OF CORRUPTION': A group of state attorneys general and a Senate report keep the pressure on Congress to respond to the student-loan scandal.

'A PRETTY LEAN, TIGHT BILL': Most student-aid programs would get no budget increase in 2008, and spending on biomedical research would rise below the inflation rate, under a bill approved by a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

PORK ON THE PLATE: Members of Congress have averted an impasse over earmarks in spending bills for 2008, in a deal between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives.

OVERRIDE UNLIKELY: President Bush has vetoed a bill that would have loosened his restrictions on stem-cell research, marking the second time in less than a year that he has blocked a Congressional attempt to overturn his policy.

VETOES IN TEXAS: The governor has rejected budget allocations of $36-million for higher-education projects and $154-million for employee benefits at two-year colleges.

COMING ABOARD: Florida Atlantic University has begun to acquire the financially strapped Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.

PRESS PROTECTION: The Illinois legislature has approved a bill that reaffirms the First Amendment rights of students at college newspapers.

IN BRIEF: A roundup of higher-education news in the states.

ALT ROCKERS AS FULBRIGHT JUDGES: The State Department has joined with mtvU to have four alternative-rock musicians help select recipients for fellowships to explore global ties between music and culture.

Money & Management

Antioch College has given the world an innovative and often imitated educational style, at the apparent cost of its own survival.

• SHARING THE BRINK: Although they try to keep the news to themselves, some other small colleges are also near financial ruin.
• BANG OR WHIMPER: Antioch College has established a "transition office" to help students decide what to do next.

Antioch College taught how to get fired repeatedly from internships while following your activist conscience. Who's going to offer such lessons now? asks Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Public research universities in the United States use strategic partnerships around the world to help people at home as well as those abroad.

Even before the Virginia Tech shootings, courts were increasingly holding colleges responsible for their campuses' safety. Bloody Monday will only reinforce that trend, writes Peter F. Lake, a professor of law at Stetson University College of Law.

TEACHING 'THE RIGHT SKILLS': Career colleges were told by a former U.S. secretary of labor that they should provide training for jobs that cannot be "easily replicated abroad" at lower wages.

$29.4-MILLION BEQUEST: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters expects its humanities division to be transformed by an unexpected gift from a historian who lived through a lot of history himself.

MORE SPECIFICITY: The Internal Revenue Service has released a draft revision of its Form 990 for tax-exempt organizations.

MUST BE USED FOR EDUCATION: Fisk University's plans to sell two paintings worth millions of dollars have been thwarted by a Tennessee judge.

'FULL EXONERATION': A black administrator who was ousted by the University of Wisconsin will get $135,000 from the system in a settlement.

PEER REVIEW: Twenty professors at Eastern Michigan University have signed a letter asking that its president be fired. ... The president of the Community College of Denver has been fired after an audit reported financial improprieties. ... The University of Iowa has finally picked a president. ... And other comings and goings in academe.

Information Technology

Citing spam, viruses, and unreliable connections, some scientists make plans to rebuild the online world, even as others question the effort.

FEE FOR ALL: An annual copyright license for colleges will allow them to pay a blanket fee rather than to have to secure rights case by case.

THE WIRED CAMPUS: A roundup of news in higher-education technology.

INTELLIGENT DESIGNS: Students use text messaging to connect technology and religion.

Students

The founders of a Harvard student group that promotes the practical benefits of avoiding sex until marriage look forward to living the message after graduation.

CHALLENGE TO 'U.S. NEWS': In a challenge to the "U.S. News" rankings, a group of more than 100 liberal-arts institutions plans to create a college-information tool for students and their parents.

CONFIDENTIAL SETTLEMENT: Duke University has come to terms with the three lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape.

Athletics

The National Women's Law Center has accused the U.S. Office for Civil Rights of delay and inaction in the enforcement of gender equity in college sports.

• NARROW PROGRESS FOR BLACK WOMEN: Black women's participation in college sports remains minimal outside basketball and track and field.
• WINNING PROGRAM: How Stetson University raised $2-million to help build a women's softball team.
• PROPORTIONALLY SPEAKING: Lists of leaders in providing athletics opportunities for women, and of institutions that fall short.
• PUTTING UP THE MONEY: In only a year, two institutions that lagged in providing scholarships for female athletes have made significant advances.
• FAIR AND FOUL: When gender-equity experts talk about what challenges they face, their answers are sometimes at odds.

Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge goes on a tiger hunt, the University of Missouri at St. Louis deep-sixes its Rivermen, Hendrix College refashions its Warrior, and Athens State University, in Alabama, patches up its bear.

$229,000 AWARD IN LAWSUIT: A Sonoma State University softball coach who was fired in 2005 had been treated unfairly because of her gender, a jury has decided.

MORE FACULTY INPUT RECOMMENDED: An influential group of professors has released a report with more than two dozen recommendations for cleaning up problems they see in college sports.

CONFIDENTIAL SETTLEMENT: Duke University has come to terms with the three lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape.

International

Public research universities in the United States use strategic partnerships around the world to help people at home as well as those abroad.

• BEST FRIENDS: Some of the American universities focus on relationships with only a few foreign institutions.

Want to internationalize your college's programs? First, set a daunting goal, writes JoAnn S. McCarthy, assistant provost for international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania.

Buddhist monks in Cambodia's capital provide places for penniless students to stay while they attend university.

EDUCATION AND ECONOMICS: Vietnam's president and minister of education, on a U.S. visit, outlined an ambitious plan to overhaul their country's troubled educational system.

SAFETY FACTOR: Quebec's government has introduced legislation designed to keep guns out of schools and university campuses.

SHARIAH AND MONEY: A leading French business school is adding Islamic finance to its curriculum.

Notes From Academe

Buddhist monks in Cambodia's capital provide places for penniless students to stay while they attend university.

The Chronicle Review

Even before the Virginia Tech shootings, courts were increasingly holding colleges responsible for their campuses' safety. Bloody Monday will only reinforce that trend, writes Peter F. Lake, a professor of law at Stetson University College of Law.

The Academic Ethicist offers advice on scholarly boycotts. By Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George, professors at Amherst College.

Antioch College taught how to get fired repeatedly from internships while following your activist conscience. Who's going to offer such lessons now? asks Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Richard Rorty tried to rescue analytic philosophy from essentialist abstraction. In doing so, he alienated many peers but won readers across the intellectual world, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.

Most everyone has a theory about why the poor stay poor. Most everyone is wrong, writes Charles Karelis, research professor of philosophy at George Washington University.

Want to internationalize your college's programs? First, set a daunting goal, writes JoAnn S. McCarthy, assistant provost for international affairs at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cuban and American designers visualize their ideals.

Colleges wondering what to expect during student-loan investigations can find clues in previous stock and mutual-fund scandals, write Meyer Eisenberg, a senior research scholar at the Columbia University School of Law, and Ann H. Franke, a lawyer specializing in higher-education policy and risk-management consulting.

CRITICAL MASS: Robert Bork's trip-and-fall lawsuit.

Letters to the Editor

• Good Teachers, Good Grades
• You Must Remember This
• Templeton Grant Focused on Astronomy
• Engineering Students Go Global
• Assessments of Students' Learning, for Better or Worse
• The Job of a Humanist
• In Defense of the Musical
• Cartoons by Sidney Harris and Mary Nadler

Chronicle Careers

Reasonableness is one of the first things to go when we toil to put our hearts and minds on the printed page.

"Fit" is the reason you cannot take the human out of the hiring process, and why that process will never be perfect.

A look at how one group of colleagues tries to cut its consumption of paper and energy.

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