The prospects for academic couples seeking joint appointments begin to improve as universities scrap old antinepotism rules in order to draw top talent to their campuses. Bidding for Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, George Mason University even attempted to sweeten its deal by offering Raisa a job, reports LF's Paul Elie. Of course, for less famous couples, the "trailing spouse" is still often viewed with suspicion, especially when she's a woman.

In these pages, Carlin Romano declares the New Criterion to be "a hybrid of hatred and mediocrity," as mired in ideology as its rival journals on the left - and less well written. "If the New Criterion were a candidate, it would be Pat Buchanan. But if it were a punctuation mark, it would be the plodding semicolon - the badge of dullard writers everywhere." In LF's next issue, a letter to the editor replies: "I resent being characterized as 'plodding.' I may often be maligned, but the fact remains that I play a usefully relaxing role in many a sentence." Signed: "semicolon."

With a $26.9 million debt and its faculty on strike, the University of Bridgeport finds salvation. The Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA), an academic affiliate of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, offers the school $50.5 million in exchange for control of the board, the budget, and the hiring of top administrators. Despite faculty reservations and, in some cases, resignations, Bridgeport accepts the offer. By January 2000, the PWPA has pumped $105 million into the school and installed Neil A. Salonen, a Unification Church official, as university president.

Famed literary critic Harold Bloom edits a series of "highbrow Cliffs Notes" for Chelsea House Publishers, reports LF's Chris Goodrich. Some scholars decry the books as "sleazy," "terrible," and "an academic scam," claiming that Chelsea reproduced and even revised their essays without permission. Nowadays, Bloom addresses a more general audience in How to Read and Why, and the Chelsea books continue to be published.