A GUIDE to the October 17, 1997, Chronicle

INTERNATIONAL

TURNOVER IN AUSTRALIA
The Prime Minister dumped his controversial Education Minister and replaced her with a former political-science professor known for his right-wing views: A57

• A BILL THAT WOULD SHIFT responsibility for most federally sponsored educational and cultural exchanges to the U.S. Department of State has stalled in Congress: A55

• SOUTH KOREAN FARMERS are learning about the latest in agricultural technology and farm management through a new program at the University of Missouri at Columbia: A55

• IN ENGLAND AND WALES, four-fifths of universities say they cannot teach effectively as a result of inadequate or obsolete equipment: A57

• A PROPOSAL BY THE UNIVERSITY of Ulster to build a "peaceline" campus in Belfast has received $4-million from an anonymous donor: A57

• STUDENTS IN NEW ZEALAND staged demonstrations to protest rising tuition and a covert plan to turn the country's seven tax-supported universities into for-profit institutions: A57

• HUNDREDS OF FEMALE STUDENTS at Istanbul University protested a new ban on the wearing of a traditional Islamic head covering in photographs for campus identification cards: A57

RESEARCH & PUBLISHING

EXAMINING COGNITIVE RESEARCH
In his new book, How the Mind Works, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Steven Pinker combines two approaches to explaining human mental abilities -- computational theory and evolutionary psychology: A16

AN UNMISTAKABLE SOUND
The editors of The New Yorker have had a comma fixation since the magazine's founding, but that era is ending, writes Ben Yagoda, an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware: B9

NEW ERA FOR RESEARCH LIBRARIES
More university libraries are finding that the only way they can store and preserve their mounting collections is to build vast off-campus warehouses: A27

• ASTRONOMERS WHO ANNOUNCED last month that they had detected a magnetic field around Mars have now concluded that what they really found were large chucks of magnetized rock in the planet's crust: A18

• THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY of Pennsylvania has dropped a controversial plan to sell part of its museum collection and to place other artifacts in storage: A18

• A NEUROLOGIST at the University of California at San Francisco, Stanley B. Prusiner, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of prions, a class of germs that cause "mad cow" disease: A20

• BARN SWALLOWS that live near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, in Ukraine, show genetic mutations that have been passed from one generation to the next: A20

• A NEW BOOK, Academic Couples: Problems and Promises, offers evidence that being part of an academic couple may be better for women than for men: A12

• HOT TYPE: A20

  • Two new books attack Daniel Goldhagen's controversial argument in Hitler's Willing Executioners that a German breed of "eliminationist" anti-Semitism dating to the 19th century led to the Holocaust.

  • Yale University Press is hoping to carve a niche in the religious-book market.

  • The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Dario Fo, an Italian satirist and dramatist, has caught most American publishers by surprise.

• 46 NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS, briefly described: A21-25

  • Nota Bene: The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg, by the anthropologists Richard Handler, of the University of Virginia, and Eric Gable, of Mary Washington College. The book is published by Duke University Press.

• THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS and Sciences has inducted 149 new members and 14 foreign honorary members: A59-60

THE FACULTY

ACCUSATIONS OF HARASSMENT
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is investigating charges that a drama professor made repeated sexual comments to students and verbally abused them: A14

FIFTY YEARS AT THE WHEEL
Dorothy Bearnson, a professor at the University of Utah, has molded a program based on her love of ceramics: A10

NOTES FROM ACADEME
At St. John's College, they still study the classics -- including Ptolemy's equations describing how the Sun revolves around the Earth: B2

• A NEW BOOK, Academic Couples: Problems and Promises, offers evidence that being part of an academic couple may be better for women than for men: A12

• PETER GAY, a retired Yale University professor, will head a new center for scholars and writers at the New York Public Library: A12

• ALLEGHENY COLLEGE of Pennsylvania may eliminate three departments to free up $1.5-million a year for a plan to improve the institution: A14

• A PROFESSOR AT SOUTHWESTERN Baptist Theological Seminary was fired after accusing the institution of academic censorship: A14

• A COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY neurologist who helped evaluate a new drug to treat Lou Gehrig's disease has been charged with insider trading: A14

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

WHAT INTERNET 2 WILL DO
Organizers of the high-speed network showed members of Congress and researchers last week some of the computer applications it will allow: A28

TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
A new report documents the increasing use of computers in college courses and a growing user-support crisis on many campuses: A30

A VIRTUAL STORE
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is changing the way it sells computers by putting the process on line: A31

• A NEW SURVEY has found that smaller colleges are lagging behind larger ones in their involvement in distance education: A27

• UNIVERSAL PICTURES will be sponsoring an Animal House World-Wide Web site to coincide with its rerelease of the film about a rowdy fraternity: A27

• JARGON MONITOR: The Chronicle solicits examples of technology-charged language in academe: A27

• 8 SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, 15 Internet lists, and 12 other Internet resources: A32

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS (U.S.)

• Central Piedmont Community College has helped keep its default rate low by using a lender that performed credit checks: A36

TOO MUCH RELIANCE ON THE SAT?
Some advocates for minority students are calling on colleges that have stopped using affirmative action to also end the use of standardized tests in admissions decisions: A40

STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL IN ARKANSAS
College officials who thought that the state's coordinating board was getting too powerful found influential help in the legislature: A42

• PRESIDENT CLINTON and members of Congress were tutored on issues related to global warming at a conference sponsored by the White House at Georgetown University: A35

• ROBERT E. ALEXANDER, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, has been replaced by a former aide to Education Secretary Richard W. Riley: A35

• WILLIAM E. PAUL, the director of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health, has resigned to return to laboratory research: A38

• THE U.S. SUPREME COURT declined to hear an appeal that challenged the practice of offering prayers in graduation ceremonies at Indiana University at Bloomington: A38

• THE HIGH COURT also refused to hear an antitrust case brought by the Massachusetts School of Law against the groups that accredit law schools: A38

• PRESIDENT CLINTON has signed a military spending bill that will maintain last year's spending level for basic research: A38

• JANE ALEXANDER is stepping down as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts to resume her acting career: A39

• MIAMI UNIVERSITY OF OHIO has been cited by the U.S. Education Department for violating parts of a federal law that requires annual reports on campus crime: A39

• CHARLES B. REED, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, has been named chancellor of the 22-campus California State University System: A42

• A BILL THAT WOULD SHIFT responsibility for most federally sponsored educational and cultural exchanges to the U.S. Department of State has stalled in Congress: A55

• STATUS OF PENDING FEDERAL LEGISLATION: A38

MONEY & MANAGEMENT

• College endowments have grown rich from the bull market in U.S. stocks, but experts worry that institutions' portfolios are not diversified enough: A44

• There are some similarities between today's market and the one before the 1987 crash, but that doesn't necessarily mean disaster is imminent: A45

• A crash would have a serious but only short-term effect on donations, fund raisers say: A46

WHISTLE BLOWER?
A former money manager for the University of Texas System says he was pressured to resign after giving outside auditors details of a bad investment: A50

A VIRTUAL STORE
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is changing the way it sells computers by putting the process on line: A31

LEARNING FROM BIG BUSINESS
Universities could derive enormous benefits by applying lessons from companies that have "reinvented" themselves, writes Richard J. Mahoney, of the Center for the Study of American Business, at Washington University: B4

• BUSINESS OFFICIALS from 60 colleges that invest with the Common Fund participated in a mock trading exercise while attending a conference on risk management: A44

• THE NATIONAL ALUMNI FORUM, created in 1995 to encourage alumni to use their gifts to support academic freedom, is changing its name to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni: A44

• THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, one of the oldest private philanthropic organizations in the United States, has chosen an agricultural ecologist from Britain as its new president: A51

• EDUCATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS who oppose tobacco investments are making another effort to get the College Retirement Equities Fund to divest its portfolio of tobacco stock: A51

• PRIVATE COLLEGES in New York will be able to secure low-interest loans to purchase computer equipment with the assistance of a state agency: A51

• THE PRESIDENT OF AIMS Community College resigned after an audit revealed that he had attended a magicians' convention in Las Vegas at the college's expense: A8

• A RETIRED LIBRARY EMPLOYEE admitted that she had embezzled more than $221,000 from Portland State University: A10

• A MEMBER OF LON MORRIS College's Board of Trustees resigned after the college's president came under fire for telling a registrar to change a grade on the transcript of the president's son: A8

• BOSTON UNIVERSITY agreed to pay more than $700,000 to settle charges stemming from a series of environmental mishaps, including a major oil spill in the Charles River in 1996: A8

• MORE THAN HALF OF THE 6,000 students at Clark Atlanta University are scrambling for money after discovering that the university did not process their financial-aid applications: A8

• CEDAR CREST COLLEGE commemorated the 100th birthdays of George and Ira Gershwin with a concert that raised $23,000 for the school's endowment: A10

• FOUNDATION GRANTS; gifts and bequests: A51

STUDENTS

ATTACK ON TESTING
If affirmative action continues to be edged out of the admissions process, advocates for minority students say, then the SAT should be pushed out, too: A40

WORRYING OVER THE CLASS OF 2001
A college campus is a world in which students don't feel the need to conform to adults' expectations, writes Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College: B8

• A CARTOON that ran in the State Press, the student newspaper at Arizona State University, has been criticized as insensitive to black people: A8

• MORE THAN HALF OF THE 6,000 students at Clark Atlanta University are scrambling for money after discovering that the university did not process their financial-aid applications: A8

• THE COLLEGE OF OUR LADY of the Elms has announced that it will admit men as freshmen for the first time: A8

ATHLETICS

• AFTER BEING DENIED access to the University of Iowa's football games, KCJJ-AM radio began broadcasting from a local pub. It now has a cult following: A53

• A RECENT CBS NEWS POLL found that 86 per cent of respondents supported gender equity in college sports: A53

• TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY could be forced to forfeit dozens of games by the National Collegiate Athletic Association because 76 athletes competed while academically ineligible during the early 1990s: A54

• MARIST COLLEGE'S baseball team joined the Eleanor Roosevelt Center in presenting an award to the widow of Jackie Robinson for her efforts to promote racial harmony: A10

OPINION & LETTERS

LEARNING FROM BIG BUSINESS
Universities could derive enormous benefits by applying lessons from companies that have "reinvented" themselves, writes Richard J. Mahoney, of the Center for the Study of American Business, at Washington University: B4

BEYOND VERBAL FIREWORKS
The affinities between feminists and evangelical women deserve critical inquiry, argues R. Marie Griffith, a postdoctoral fellow in the humanities at Northwestern University: B6

WORRYING OVER THE CLASS OF 2001
A college campus is a world in which students don't feel the need to conform to adults' expectations, writes Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College: B8

AN UNMISTAKABLE SOUND
The editors of The New Yorker have had a comma fixation since the magazine's founding, but that era is ending, writes Ben Yagoda, an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware: B9

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

• The college-ratings game: boycotts by institutions and questions about validity: B3
• Decline of knowledge in the information age: B3
• Conservatives or libertarians?: B10
• The astounding cost of some journals: B10
• Delayed award repeats history: B10
• Acknowledging those who influenced us: B10
• The decline of Afghan education: B11

THE ARTS

THE PROVENANCE OF IDEAS
Robert Hughes's American Visions stirred controversy last summer among art historians. Now mature reflection is needed, writes Peter Plagens, the art critic for Newsweek: A68

FIFTY YEARS AT THE WHEEL
Dorothy Bearnson, a professor at the University of Utah, has molded a program based on her love of ceramics: A10

• LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY is holding its sixth annual sculpture exhibit, which is designed to introduce freshmen to the campus and to make them feel more at ease:

A HIGHER-EDUCATION GAZETTE : PAGES A58-67

• APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATIONS on U.S. campuses.

• DEATHS of people in academe.

• COMING EVENTS of interest to the men and women of academe.

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

"BULLETIN BOARD": 80 PAGES OF JOB OPENINGS

• DETAILS OF MORE THAN 1,130 AVAILABLE POSTS, including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe: B12-91