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NIGHTMARE ON TWELFTH STREET

In early 1997, the New School for Social Research unveils a plan to hire five new minority professors. Nonetheless, reports LF's Eyal Press, a student "Mobilization" for racial diversity announces a hunger strike, decries the New School as "white supremacist," and demands curricular reform, affirmative action hires, and the tenuring of one particular visiting professor. The students condemn dissenting white professors as racist, and skeptical black students as Uncle Toms. The result, writes Press, is "not the vision of a diverse community where differences are allowed to flourish, but the vision of an artificial, homogeneous community where they are effaced."

 

Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now

Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical

Oliver Stone tells American Historical Association audience that he has come "to set the record straight" - gets warm reception

Stephen W. Hawking loses wager to two fellow physicists when he concedes that naked singularities could theoretically exist

NYU's Andrew Ross signs reported six-figure contract with Ballantine to write about Disney's town of Celebration, Florida

Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and others submit "Philosophers' Brief" to Supreme Court in support of right to assisted suicide

Fake Kurt Vonnegut MIT commencement speech circulates on the Internet: "Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it"

Rising U.S. stock market helps colleges and universities achieve annual investment returns of more than 20 percent on average

 
 

Court finds that Brown University violates gender equity in athletics programs

Scottish scientists announce cloning a sheep; President Clinton bars any federal support for efforts to clone human beings

National Association of College Stores sues Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Addison Wesley Longman for "dual discounting," allegedly a form of price-fixing

N. Gregory Mankiw's Principles of Economics is released; he receives a $1.4-million advance, likely the largest ever for a textbook

Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice is formed to forge an alliance between academe and John Sweeney's

 
RACE AND THE REGENTS

After twelve hours of debate, several disruptions by demonstrators, and at least one bomb threat, the University of California regents voted to end affirmative action admissions on July 20, 1995. In 1997, a judge rejects the last appeals, and the ban goes into effect. Have the regents put a stop to unfair reverse discrimination - or to an important means of redress for deep-rooted racial inequality? LF's Pamela Burdman chronicles California's struggle to implement the regents' decision.

 
DRUG TEST

Tufts professor Sheldon Krimsky releases some alarming figures: About one-third of scientific journal articles have at least one author with a vested interest in his research. Meanwhile LF's Daniel Zalewski reports that many corporate funders claim the right to suggest changes prior to a study's publication. In some cases, the consequences are quite serious: When UCSF pharmacologist Betty Dong discovered that her funder's profitable medication was no more effective than several cheaper knockoffs, the funder prevented her from publishing her results.

 

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