The Scholars' Initiative is an international effort to resolve lingering questions about the decade of wars in former Yugoslavia. The aim of the program is to create research teams combining reputable scholars from the Balkan region with their counterparts in other countries which would address historical flashpoints created by the conflicts with…

Recently, 36 people who had never taken hallucinogens before gave them a try. The pill they took launched a daylong psychedelic journey, sometimes fantastic, sometimes frightening. When it was over, a few who took the drug said it was the most meaningful experience of their lives, as momentous as the birth of a first child or the death of a…

Modern discussions of race and racial identity are hostage to the eye, tending to treat race as an exclusively visual phenomenon, and ignoring the role of the other senses, namely hearing, smell, touch, and taste. However, taking seriously the sensory history of race and racism helps in appreciating just how unthinkingly race is made, how racism…

A nonprofit organization known as Internet Archive is guiding a mass-digitization project called the Open Content Alliance that plans to take carefully selected collections of out-of-copyright books from libraries around the world and turn them into e-books that will be available free to anyone who wants to view, print or even download them to…

The Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College, which share a hilltop campus in Boston, Massachusetts, are experimenting in academic-religious cooperation that seeks to go beyond programs that simply promote dialogue among disparate groups. The collaboration is the inspiration of Reverend Nick Carter, president of the Christian school,…

Students from Colgate University's India Study Group visit South India every two years to study music, dance, languages, yoga, and philosophy. The Americans take a few days to adjust to the culture shock, and face a challenging workload through the semester, with an intensive program that immerses them completely in South Indian culture and…

Conrad Colbrandt gave Saint Mary's College of California a financial permission slip to dream big--a $112-million pledge to support new construction and endowments. From the time that Colbrandt made his pledge in 1997 until 2004, talk of new athletics facilities and classroom buildings became real architectural plans. However, all of those plans…

In an article in the "Northern Star," a university student newspaper, reporter Lauren Stott began a lyrical note: "It's every student's dream: Wake up for school, stumble over to the computer, and download the day's class lectures ... then crawl back into bed--iPod in one hand, notebook in the other." The object of the student journalist's…

In this article, the author, a former tenured professor who found her niche once she gave up the need to fit her new life into her old credentials, describes her experience in academe and how she enjoys her life now being a nationally certified massage therapist. One lesson she learned is that people outside academe quit their jobs all the time.…

This article reports on a new national survey showing that state spending on higher education is continuing to rise throughout most of the nation and growing faster in much of the South. Total state general-fund appropriations for higher education are up by 7 percent, to $72.18-billion, in the current 2006-2007 fiscal year, according to an annual…

For decades it has been happening everywhere in academe, but nowhere in particular. The sweeping shift toward non-tenure-track academic labor has been one of the most worried-over trends in American higher education. But it has been charted mostly with broad-brush data, which give little indication of the trend's progress at the institutional…

The U.S. Supreme Court provided evidence that its membership had shifted to be more critical of affirmative action as it heard oral arguments last week in two cases involving the race-based assignment of students to public schools. Although the court did not exhibit any desire to reconsider its stand on affirmative action in higher education, the…

Princeton University has decided to build up its African-American-studies program, developing a new major and adding a number of faculty positions. Enhancing its program will not only allow Princeton to confront the challenge of racial inequality, it will also enable the university to attract some of the "talented students" that members of the…

This article presents the case of of Martin Zelnik v. Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) et al. and the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on the case. Zelnik served on the faculty of FIT from 1969 to 1999, retiring as a full professor of interior design. Zelnik applied for an emeritus status but was denied by FIT. The…

Alan Wolfe's article "Free Speech, Israel, and Jewish Illiberalism" prompted numerous responses on The Chronicle's online discussion forum. The essay commented on the debate that erupted following the Polish Consulate's decision to cancel a speech by the scholar Tony Judt--allegedly prompted by protests over his critical views of Israel from the…