Search

During his life and career as a muckraking journalist in Washington, Jack Anderson cultivated secret sources throughout the halls of government--sources who passed on information that allowed Anderson to investigate and write about Watergate, CIA assassination schemes, and countless scandals. His syndicated column, Washington Merry-Go-Round, earned him the enmity of the corrupt and powerful--so much so that during the Watergate years, associates of Nixon had discussed assassinating the columnist. They never went through with the plot. Anderson died in December at the age of 83. His archive, some 200 boxes now being held by George Washington University's library, could be a trove of information about state secrets, dirty dealings, political maneuverings, and old-fashioned investigative journalism, open for historians and up-and-coming reporters to see. But the government wants to see the documents before anyone else. This article reports on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's interest to examine the Anderson archive which caused outrage among members of the Anderson family and has stoked the fears of librarians and academics.

Angry over the department's vote not to hire his wife, University of Georgia history of science professor Alexei Kojevnikov obtained access to professors' and administrators' e-mails and documents related to the hiring process and spousal hires. This article discusses the controversy from different perspectives, the state of Georgia's law that grants public access to information created by public employees-including public university faculty-, and the rights of confidentiality and information access in academia.

Censored papers on bird flu, which could help terrorists, have critics wondering if academic scientists can police their own work. The near-publication has brought out general critics of the federal panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and the voluntary self-policing approach that it embraces instead of regulation. Members of the board, on the other hand, argue that more government control will slow down science and medicine so much that drugs and vaccines won't be developed before a disease hits. Even within the board, the episode has brought to the surface worries that existing biosafety committees at academic institutions are not qualified to evaluate this kind of risk, and that the work is not being sufficiently evaluated until it nears publication, which is too late.

Increasingly, college and graduate students are designing sophisticated multimedia projects for classes in diverse subject areas. Some students resist the trend, but many respond well to the new challenges, are excited about the new possibilities, and appreciate the potential job skills they acquire. (MSE)

The European Journalism Network, a United States-based nonprofit organization, methodically provides seed money and technical assistance to start newspapers produced by and for students in Eastern Europe and several former Soviet republics. The publications' impact is disproportionate to their size and frequency because they are unique in that environment, which has no tradition of an independent student press. (MSE)

Half the endowment of Macalester College (Minnesota) is controlled by the Readers Digest Association, not the college. Macalester can not sell the poorly-performing stocks. Income from the stocks supports a need-blind admissions policy. Some faculty feel the endowment should be used to further enhance the college's distinctiveness. (MSE)

The purpose of the seven rules discussed in this article is to enable the presenter to embrace his/her anxieties and put them to work: (1) Observe time limits scrupulously; (2) Write for the real audience (a paper written for the ears to hear is different from a paper written for the eyes to read); (3) Rehearse; (4) Refrain from fidgeting; (5) Check out the room in advance; (6) Limit improvisation; and (7) Remember, you are among friends: despite the competition of other panels and other things the listeners could be doing, they have chosen to come hear you. Whether an audience is comprised of five people or 500, the writer assures that bearing these thoughts in mind, the good vibes will be contagious. [For "Conference Rules Part 1:" see EJ789005.]

This article describes how academic scientists appear to have put their names on papers that are actually ghostwritten by for-profit companies and then published in medical journals. Some of the scientists accused of doing so deny any wrongdoing, but journal editors are already outlining measures to prevent future breaches of academic integrity. In the April 16 issue of "The Journal of the American Medical Association" (JAMA), four scientists published the results of a search of court documents. The documents are about the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, which has been withdrawn from the market and has been the subject of hundreds of lawsuits because of concerns about its safety. The search revealed mentions of many articles that were published under academic researchers' names but appear to have been written by others. Those others worked for Merck & Company, which is the developer of Vioxx, or for medical-publishing companies.

At some point in 1938, Joseph Stalin sat down, alone, and literally rewrote history -- marking up a draft of "The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", which would be published by the party's Central Committee in 1939. First, the Soviet leader used a gray pencil. Then he switched to quill and indigo ink. He scribbled in the margins and wrote over text, deleting words and entire phrases by drawing lines through them. Scholars say that Stalin's annotations reveal a great deal about the dictator, who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. The marked-up manuscript is part of Stalin's personal library, which was recently declassified by Russian authorities. Since Stalin apparently did not keep a diary or other personal documents, his library provides a rare window into his mind. The Russian archive and Yale University Press have struck a deal to digitize that library and some 440,000 other documents. The press will also publish books -- in both Russian and English -- featuring research gleaned from the library. The archive includes Stalin's copies of books by Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Leon Trotsky. The collection also includes correspondence between Stalin and important party functionaries from 1919 through 1952 -- a period that covers the height of the Great Terror of the 1930s, World War II, and the germination of the Cold War. Researchers will find letters from Stalin to foreign leaders, such as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman. The first documents will probably be made available for study in 2009. As the Cold War recedes into memory, avenues to publishing scholarship on the era may be shrinking. The opening of once-closed Russian archives may jump-start that research. The Stalin collection demonstrates how the dictator personally orchestrated Soviet life at every level -- from the price of sausage and the allocation of nails among factories to matters concerning atomic energy and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

A well-established market in prewritten research papers violates the ethical standards of every college, but it persists because selling papers is not illegal and the cost and difficulty of prosecuting a student suspected of submitting a purchased paper is prohibitive. (MSE)

Companies in the term-paper-research business insist that they are legitimate enterprises. Research Assistance of Los Angeles insists that "the best way to learn research techniques is through studying research papers." Author's Research Services adds a disclaimer that all materials are sold for research assistance, not as finished product. (MLW)

A federal appeals court has ruled that the University of Virginia, as a public institution, correctly denied a request that it help finance a Christian newspaper. The case centered on school policy concerning student organizations and is expected to go to the Supreme Court. (MSE)

The Supreme Court decision to let stand a lower-court ruling that allows a government agency to inspect confidential documents in a faculty tenure case is discussed. An appeal by Franklin and Marshall College on a decision granting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission access to tenure materials was declined. (MLW)

Some faculty members and administrators feel that the Dartmouth "Review" is beginning to cause serious, long-term damage to the college. Controversies sparked or fanned by the paper have cost the college the support of some alumni and have impaired its ability to attract some top students and faculty members. (MLW)

Educators are entitled to exercise control over student expression to assure that participants learn whatever lessons the activity is designed to teach, that readers are not exposed to material inappropriate for their level of maturity, and that the views of the individual are not erroneously attributed to the school. (MLW)

In "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Indiana Jones--perhaps the last heroic professor to appear in a major Hollywood film--survives a series of adventures involving spiders, snakes, treacherous colleagues, and countless Nazis who are determined to recover the ark of the covenant for their "Fuhrer." Apparently the ark has mystical powers. Ultimately, Jones recovers the ark. But the great artifact is not displayed in a museum or used in the war effort; instead it is enclosed in a packing crate and wheeled into a vast government warehouse, never to be seen again. That is what happens to the majority of undergraduate projects in the humanities. Heroic research is undertaken, and the student suffers mightily during the writing process. But after being submitted for a grade, the results of all that work are filed away, never to be read again. Fortunately, people are living at a moment when students can undertake a far wider range of learning experiences than was possible when the traditional research paper was the gold standard of scholarly production. This author has written several columns about what the "digital humanities" movement means for scholars. But as a teacher at a liberal-arts college, what also excites him about the digital humanities is what it offers to undergraduates: Students can "build" as well as "write." The digital humanities encourages scholars and students to use the Internet to present their work to a global audience. There is no guarantee that the world will beat a path to one's online project, but at least it is available, and updatable. It is not a moribund, bound manuscript shelved in a university library's off-site storage warehouse. In what seems to be the worst of times for higher education, the digital-humanities community is cultivating an academic culture that enables new directions in research while it reduces the warehousing of neglected scholarship and the isolation of scholars.

This author realizes that an important part of his job is to make sure his graduate students get their own jobs. What that means is talking about job placement as soon as they walk in the door and tell him they want to do a Ph.D. First he informs them of the current job situation, whatever that is at the time. He makes it clear that the first thing they need to do is start thinking about the minimum requirements for going on the job market. The next thing he does is set the bar for the minimum requirements in his field. To even get into the race, he tells students, they will need three published articles, two or three book reviews, attendance and paper presentation at professional conferences, and, ideally, a contract for the publication of the dissertation. He tells his students to plan their dissertation committees with the job search in mind. They should pick professors who not only are skilled in the field of the dissertation, but who also have national and international reputations. Letters from those professors will count a great deal. He advises students to attend professional conferences for a number of reasons. First, there is the inevitable networking, which helps them not only now but also later in their career. Second, by attending sessions at the conference, students can learn the latest scholarly insights circulating, well before the publication of those ideas. Third, the book exhibits of such professional organizations will let students browse the newest texts and even unpublished page proofs before the material is filtered through the review mill and enters the consciousness of scholars and critics. Another important reason to attend professional conferences is that often the editors of presses are there looking for new books to publish. Getting to know those editors, and even pitching a book idea to them, is an important part of career development. At the end of the academic day, having a job is really what should be the outcome of spending years in a Ph.D. program.

The text of "Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education," the report of the Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education is presented. (Author/MLW)

Presents the report of the AAMC Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine concerning the purposes of a general professional education, clinical education, admissions, promoting independent learning, curriculum development, and faculty involvement. (MSE)