A Guide to the September 22, 1995, Issue
of The Chronicle of Higher Education

INTERNATIONAL

IN BRITAIN, AN ICONOCLASTIC LEADER
Despite his youth and Rod Stewart hairdo, Vice-Chancellor Mike Fitzgerald of Thames Valley University is winning respect as a leader of one of the country's "new" universities.

• IN BOSTON, officials at Boston University canceled plans to present an honorary degree last week to President Sali Berisha of Albania. The university was responding to charges that Albania discriminates against its Greek minority.

• IN BEIJING, education was not a contentious issue at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, but it did receive attention.

• IN SUDAN, two people were killed last week in clashes between rival student groups at Khartoum University. The rival groups were supporters and opponents of the Islamic government.

• IN HONG KONG, higher-education officials have announced plans to assess the quality of teaching and learning at the seven publicly financed universities.

• BRIEFLY NOTED: New education laws in Romania irk ethnic Hungarians; new laws bring Bulgaria a more Western-style system of higher education.

RESEARCH & PUBLISHING

• Yiddish has just about disappeared from everyday use, but the language is finding new life as a subject of scholarly study.

• The hot topic at the 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences was the postmodern question of how factual historical writing can be. Also at the conference, journal editors discussed their common woes.

RAPID RISE OF A BRAIN SCIENTIST
Erin M. Schuman, an assistant professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology, is changing the view of how brain cells function when learning occurs. The 32-year-old is one of Caltech's few female faculty members.

• POLITICAL SCIENTISTS at two universities in North Carolina have established an archive to help scholars study the parliaments of Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and seven other former Soviet satellites.

• HOT TYPE
  • Two scholars will edit, and New Directions will publish, an edition of selected letters by Tennessee Williams. For years, the late playwright's friend Lady Maria St. Just had blocked their publication, but she died in 1994.

  • Michigan Quarterly Review, under the editorship of Laurence Goldstein, has come out with a special double issue devoted to the centennial of the movie industry.

  • To mark National Banned Books Week, the Hemingway Western Studies Center at Boise State University is sponsoring an unusual kind of book burning.

• 90 NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS, briefly described.
  • Nota Bene: A Requiem for Karl Marx, by Frank E. Manuel, a professor emeritus of history at Brandeis and New York Universities. The book is published by Harvard University Press.

PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL CONCERNS

• A list of 3,634 research-doctorate programs at 274 universities, ranked according to 41 fields, that was released by the National Research Council.

• Two tables show how, field by field, the doctoral programs rank in terms of their scholarly quality and their effectiveness in educating scholars.

• Political-science programs at Idaho State and Clark Atlanta Universities got low rankings, but their defenders say their missions make it impossible to compete with research-oriented programs.

GROWING A GREATER TATER, IN MONTANA
Mike Sun, the director of the Potato Laboratory at Montana State University, has helped make the state nationally known for its seed potatoes. The tubers are sold to farmers in states such as Idaho for raising as crops.

NOVEL CHARGES OF RACISM IN FRANCE
The country's chief higher-education official, Jean de Boishue, is embroiled in a controversy over his novel Banlieue mon amour" (My Beloved Suburb). Critics say it is anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-Arab.

AN ICONOCLASTIC LEADER IN BRITAIN
Despite his youth and Rod Stewart hairdo, Vice-Chancellor Mike Fitzgerald of Thames Valley University is winning respect as a leader of one of the country's "new" universities.

• YALE UNIVERSITY plans to expand two existing programs in Western culture in the wake of continuing alumni criticism of the university's decision to return a $20-million gift that was intended to finance a new program in the area.

• A YEAR AFTER BENNINGTON COLLEGE fired 26 faculty members and eliminated some programs in a bid to revitalize the campus, undergraduate enrollment has fallen to 290 students, 80 fewer than last year.

• IN HONG KONG, higher-education officials have announced plans to assess the quality of teaching and learning at the seven publicly financed universities.

• A FORMER RESIDENT at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been charged with trying to murder a department chairman who had written him a less-than-glowing recommendation more than 10 years earlier.

• STUDENTS AT THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER demanded last month a further explanation of Susanne Woods's withdrawal from the presidency this summer. Ms. Woods reportedly withdrew after trustees learned of her relationship with a woman.

• IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY has installed in a "Plaza of Heroines" more than 2,000 bricks inscribed with the names of famous and ordinary women.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

NEW FEE IMPOSED FOR INTERNET ADDRESSES
The National Science Foundation announced last week that companies and organizations must begin paying a $50 fee for each of their Internet "domains," or top-level addresses. Colleges will not be charged, at least until 1998.

• DUKE UNIVERSITY spent the summer improving academic computing hardware and the campus network, but the result has been headaches for many electronic-mail users.

• MICROSOFT CORPORATION, the giant software manufacturer, will hold higher-education workshops this fall in 15 U.S. cities and five overseas.

• UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN officials are considering adding a CD-ROM to this year's Cactus, the university yearbook, in hopes of reversing a steep sales decline.

• OFFICIALS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS are disappointed but not deterred by their attempt to raise funds in an on-line silent auction. The event raised only $5,000 this month.

• A CONSORTIUM OF 21 UNIVERSITIES in the Southeast is offering employment recruiters an on-line clearinghouse where they can learn about all students from the institutions who are looking for jobs.

• THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, a Catholic institution, is sharing its expertise on the Virgin Mary through a new service on the World-Wide Web.

• AN OAKLAND UNIVERSITY MATHEMATICIAN has created a World-Wide Web service to help users calculate their Erdos numbers. The numbers describe people's relation to Paul Erdos, a venerable Hungarian mathematician.

• RICE UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS have developed an exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science that features an "Earth Kiosk." The computerized kiosk allows users to track storms, measure pollution levels, and monitor planets.

FEDERAL & STATE GOVERNMENTS (U.S.A.)

CLINTON STRESSES SUPPORT OF DIRECT LENDING
In a speech at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, President Clinton attacked critics of the direct-lending program of student loans, calling them captives of the banking industry.

SENATE PANEL BACKS PLAN TO KILL AMERICORPS
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week to end federal support for the AmeriCorps national-service program. The vote was consistent with an earlier one in the House of Representatives.

EMERGING EMEGENCY IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM
Republican lawmakers will soon propose that Medicare be cut by $270-billion over the next seven years. Academic health centers and teaching hospitals will be among the biggest losers under the proposal.

NEW APPROACH TO COLLEGE DESEGREGATION
In talks with the State of Florida, federal officials are pioneering a less confrontational strategy of settling these thorny cases. The approach would involve local "stakeholders" in efforts to give opportunities to minority students.

BLACK COLLEGES' OPINIONS MIXED ON DOLE BILL
Some leaders of historically black colleges are pleased that their institutions would be exempt from a bill to end federal affirmative-action programs. But few are happy with the overall measure, which was introduced by Sen. Robert J. Dole.

• THE U.S. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT is starting an experiment to encourage loan-guarantee agencies to prevent defaults on student loans.

• SEN. PHIL GRAMM, a Republican of Texas and a candidate for his party's Presidential nomination, is calling for a link to be established between students' grades and their eligibility for aid from the federal government.

• THE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE'S Office of Research Integrity has improved its handling of scientific-misconduct cases but still takes too long to resolve them, according to a report from the General Accounting Office.

• EIGHTEEN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES and 25 Nobel laureates in physics have warned Congress not to sell off or dismantle the laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

• GOV. JIM EDGAR halted payment of a grant to the Illinois College of Optometry last week amid reports that its trustees were using college funds for lavish trips.

• A NEW LEGAL CONTROVERSY has sprung up amid the lawsuit to desegregate Mississippi's public colleges. The black plaintiffs in the case dismissed their lead lawyer last month, and now he wants his job back.

• ENROLLMENTS AT HUNDREDS OF PUBLIC COLLEGES dipped noticeably in 1993-94, but their tuition revenue and state funds did not, according to the annual "Report of the States" by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

• VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS are attacking what they say is a pattern of support for Democratic legislative candidates by public colleges in the state.

BUSINESS & PHILANTHROPY

• Book prices keep going up, but publishers still make only about seven cents on every dollar a book costs. Students' greater reliance on used books is driving a vicious cycle of price increases.

HELP WITH THE MORTGAGE FROM A COLLEGE
In an effort to strengthen homeownership in its neighborhood, Lycoming College is assisting prospective buyers to purchase homes in the area around the campus. The buyers need not be associated in any way with the college to qualify.

• THE COMPANY THAT LOST $138-million in college investments placed with the Common Fund, First Capital Strategists, reportedly is closing, but the fund still plans to hold the company's partners liable for the loss.

• A COMMITTEE of the Florida Baptist Convention recommended this month that the religious organization sever all ties with Stetson University, thus ending a century-old relationship between the two.

• HARVARD LAW SCHOOL raised more than $175-million during its recently completed campaign -- the largest amount ever raised by a law school.

• UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN officials are considering adding a CD-ROM to this year's "Cactus," the university yearbook, in hopes of reversing a steep sales decline.

• OFFICIALS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS are disappointed but not deterred by their attempt to raise funds in an on-line silent auction. The event raised only $5,000 this month.

• MARIST COLLEGE gave the Dalai Lama a 60th-birthday gift of rare photographs taken in Tibet when he was a boy.

• THE ROSE-HULMAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY opened its doors to women last month, without reluctance, trepidation, or lawsuits. It had been one of only four non-military institutions in the United States that were all-male.

• 20 FOUNDATION GRANTS; 23 gifts and bequests.

STUDENTS

STUDENT JOURNAL HAS PRESIDENT UNDER FIRE
The Wabash Commentary, a conservative publication, is accusing Andrew T. Ford, the president of Wabash College, of suggesting that there should be no criticism of what goes on in the classrooms of the all-male institution.

• UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST students will soon be able to promote the legalization of marijuana when their tuition is paid. Tuition bills will have a check-off box to support the Cannabis Reform Coalition.

• RESIDENTS OF FRATERNITY and sorority houses are far more likely to go on drinking binges than their classmates, according to a study by Harvard University researchers.

• CLEMSON UNIVERSITY is distributing credit-card "condoms," paper sleeves that fit around the cards and are meant to discourage unsafe spending habits.

• STUDENTS AT THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER demanded last month a further explanation of Susanne Woods's withdrawal from the presidency this summer. Ms. Woods reportedly withdrew after trustees learned of her relationship with a woman.

• THE ROSE-HULMAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY opened its doors to women last month, without reluctance, trepidation, or lawsuits. It had been one of only four non-military institutions in the United States that were all-male.

• IN SUDAN, two people were killed last week in clashes between rival student groups at Khartoum University. The rival groups were supporters and opponents of the Islamic government.

• TWO UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE students fell off dormitory buildings last week, and one of them died. One crashed through a window; the other fell from a balcony.

• STUDENTS at the Fashion Institute of Technology are hoping to sniff the sweet smell of success with a cologne they have designed and are now marketing.

ATHLETICS

• The University of Arizona is at odds with state courts over the disposition of season tickets owned by fans who go bankrupt. The courts are auctioning off the tickets, but the university wants to resell them.
• THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT LINCOLN'S football program has been relatively free of scandal, until recently. Within the last month, players have been charged with murder and with assault and are being investigated for rules violations.

• THE ATHLETICS DIRECTOR at California State University at Fresno, Gary Cunningham, is moving to the same job at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

• 28 APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS in intercollegiate athletics.

OPINION & LETTERS

STUCK IN THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY'S SLOW LANE?
Scholars "need to pay greater attention to the content of the message, rather than be dazzled by the medium," writes Raymond W. Smock, a former president of the Association for Documentary Editing and historian of the House of Representatives.

• MARGINALIA: flubs and fumbles from the groves of academe.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

• On the failures of the tenure system.
• The scientific validity of psychotherapy.
• Do racial preferences in academe break the law?
• A scholarly wrangle over an exhibit on Sigmund Freud.
• Free speech, codes of conduct, and political correctness.
• The appeal of community colleges to students.
• The recovery of psychology in post-Ceausescu Romania.
• Using high-tech means in the job-search process.

THE ARTS

MEANINGS OF CHILDHOOD IN BRITISH ART
"The New Child," a current exhibition at the University of California at Berkeley's art museum, shows how the understanding of children and childhood evolved with the rise of the middle class in the 18th and 19th centuries.

TALES OF A LONG-HAUL TRUCK DRIVER
Ten days after he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Marc F. Wise started tractor-trailer-driving school. He then spent six years as a truck driver. He's now published a book of photographs and text about his experiences.

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