For more than 30 years now, the author has benefited in his professional practice in student affairs from having attended some terrific graduate programs. His lack of knowledge of certain topics wasn't necessarily his programs' fault. Maybe the information was presented, but he wasn't ready to take it in. Or perhaps certain topics weren't…

Eight years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and a few months after the withdrawal of the military forces from the country, Iraq's universities, devastated by years of dictatorship, sanctions, and war, are still struggling to recover. The security situation has improved since the deadly, dark days of 2006 and 2007, when the country teetered on the…

In this article, a noted linguist reflects on his tumultuous foray into politics. For years George P. Lakoff has been at the center of some of the biggest intellectual disagreements in linguistics (most famously with Noam Chomsky) and has helped create an important interdisciplinary field of study, cognitive linguistics, that is reshaping people's…

The opening lines of Shakespeare's sonnet on the destructive power of sexual desire are equally potent as a description of the emotions aroused by warfare. Poets are the best witnesses to the dark connection between violence and the erotic, the link between sexual desire and military aggression. Initially justified by perjured claims about weapons…

In a well-cited 1996 editorial in "Science," "The Activist Scientist," Jaleh Daie calls for scientists to take an assertive role in educating politicians and the public about the importance of government support for research. She writes that most scientists are reluctant to become involved in political lobbying for a variety of reasons--time…

In this article, the author discusses how it is simply too late to be still speaking about French theory and its role in the intellectual life of the United States today. It seems to many observers that the gap between real-life politics and theory's guerrillas is much too wide already, after 30 years of academic fever, for the two worlds to even…

For adult students at Lehman College, in the Bronx, and LaGuardia Community College, in Queens, the separation between politics and daily life seems practically invisible. Both colleges are part of the 23-campus CUNY system, where more than two in five of the nearly 197,000 students are 23 and older. For most of these students, it is nearly…

This article talks about a course at Texas A&M University at College Station that teaches students how to detect spin in political blogs. In the new course, "Communication and Political Blogging," students are analyzing blogs from the far right of the political spectrum all the way to the far left. They are also writing their own…

Jonathan Haidt remembers reading "Metaphors We Live By", the influential book that George P. Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote with Mark L. Johnson, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. The book drew on cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, and…

The older Americans are, and the less time they have spent on a college campus, the more likely they are to believe that professors are politically biased. That's the chief finding of a question from a survey conducted through The Chronicle/Gallup Panel that asked Americans: "How often do you believe that college professors use their classrooms as…

College freshmen are discussing politics more than they have in 40 years. A record proportion--23.9 percent--call themselves conservative, and not since 1975 have there been as many liberals, at 28.4 percent. This article reports on the findings coming from the annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute…

To demand trustees take a moral position on a political issue asserts the primacy of political over other social and cultural values and denies the right of people of diverse views to pursue a non-political institution's interests cooperatively. (MSE)

The confusion among weary Chinese students protesting government policies is mirrored in the top levels of government, where an intense power struggle is occurring. (MSE)

The USSR's celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its Lumumba University in Moscow is described. The university's purpose is to provide higher education for "countries that have gained their freedom from colonial dependence" and to enable "backward" cultures to enter the modern world. (LB)

A 2005 national survey of incoming freshmen in the US reveals that two out of three college freshmen believe it is essential or very important to help others who are in difficulty, with 83 percent stating they volunteered at least occasionally during their senior year of high school. The survey also finds an increased level of political…