The author reports on a legal battle over oral-history records housed at Boston College that casts light on how little legal weight pledges of confidentiality to research subjects actually have. As a federal court weighs whether to let the federal government seize, and hand over to British authorities, the college's records of confidential…

When a jury convicted a Tennessee professor this month of illegally exporting information to foreign countries via his graduate students and a trip to China, it sent a message to colleges that they need to scrupulously monitor their faculty members' research and their compliance with the often confusing universe of export-control regulations. In…

In this article, the author discusses a computer program called Psiphon which bypasses government filters undetected. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, a research center for digital media and politics, designed Psiphon for technology-savvy activists. Some technology-savvy activists use other open-source software, like Tor (which relies on…

Canadian universities now have the fastest research network backbone in the world, CA*Net 3, claiming it can transmit the contents of the Library of Congress in one second. In the United States, network officials feel that their competing Internet2 project supports more research into new network applications than the Canadian project. CA*Net 3…

The unexpectedly rapid expansion of the Internet in Eastern and Central Europe is having a significant effect on institutions of higher education, still suffering from decades of isolation. The benefits include global access to information and cost-effective communications. A number of international efforts are under way to expand Internet access,…

A recent international conference of Internet users highlighted the empowerment the computerized information network promises to countries around the world and some of the difficulties faced in promoting access, particularly in developing countries and former members of the Soviet Union. (MSE)

European educators concerned with international higher education are experimenting with assessment of educational quality within and across national boundaries, particularly for purposes of international educational exchange. More and better information on program quality is needed, and some would welcome institutional or program rankings. (MSE)

Five of the world's largest libraries have joined Google in a herculean effort to digitize millions of books and make every sentence searchable. The project involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, in England, as well as the New York Public Library. It could…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 30, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Fighting to Get out of a Rio Slum" (Lloyd, Marion); (2) "Against…