Todd Wolfson just finished graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, and already he's landed a tenure-track teaching job in journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. One might think he's the embodiment of the academic dream, in which the struggle to earn a Ph.D. has long provided an entree to a fulfilling academic career. But…

Most professors have mixed feelings about participating on peer-review panels. It's an honor. It helps the discipline. It's a waste of time. It's biased. Michele Lamont wanted to know whether it works: specifically, whether, and how, professors identify excellence. So the multi-titled Harvard University scholar--professor of European studies,…

The Social Science Research Network, an online clearinghouse popular among social scientists, has created a Humanities Research Network (HRN) that is similar. To begin with, the new network will cover three areas--philosophy, classics, and English and American literature--broken down into detailed subcategories. More disciplines will be added in…

In light of a decision by members of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences to make access to their scholarly papers free, advocates of open access celebrated, but some publishers expressed concern. Members of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to provide the university with copies of their published articles and…

Many professors and graduate students finishing their Ph.D.'s at the University of California at Berkeley scoffed at the idea of a post at a liberal-arts college. To them it was considered an acceptable choice only if none of the jobs at research universities came through. Liberal-arts colleges were viewed merely as teaching institutions and did…

Aside from the appeal to administrators as a tool to reduce costs by combining less robust departments with heftier relations, interdisciplinarity is a powerful idea because it implies that different branches of knowledge can benefit from talking to one another: a grand, unified theory of knowledge in which each discipline contributes building…

This article discusses the timeframe of programs of doctoral study. By the time the 10th anniversary of their enrollment in a Ph.D. program has rolled around, about 57 percent of doctoral students have their terminal degrees in hand, according to new data from the Council of Graduate Schools. Perhaps the most interesting of the council's findings…

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recently commissioned a study to review the research that finds liberal bias run amok in academe. Believing that the AFT is not a dispassionate observer of this debate, this article provides "The Chronicle of Higher Education's" survey of the genre. The studies reviewed include: (1) "Political Bias in the…

Interdisciplinary research is seen as coming of age across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, with interdisciplinary thought most substantive in the sciences. For that reason, some observers suggest that the gulf between scientific and humanistic learning may be widening. (MLW)

Scholarly publishers are experimenting with the "electronic monograph," a scholarly book offered on the Internet. Several converging trends (declining university subsidies, increasing research specialization, tightening library budgets) are putting pressure on academic publishing in the humanities and social sciences. Publishers are not convinced…

The science-studies approach seeks to go beyond a history of scientific concepts and their developers; rather, its practitioners want to unravel the cultural and ideological influences that shape the content of those theories. A new science-studies program was initiated at the University of California at San Diego. (MLW)

A report released by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce based on a survey of departments in 10 social science and humanities fields shows that part-time and adjunct professors receive far less pay and fewer benefits than their peers. In many institutions, nontenure-track instructors make up almost half of the teaching staff. (SLD)

H-NET (Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine) is a new, rapidly expanding international online network of scholars that was established to increase electronic mail communication among individuals. Currently, the program is devoting more attention to World Wide Web-related projects providing information and reference sources. Internal conflict…

Election of a new executive director for H-Net, a humanities and social sciences mailing-list network, is marked by controversy over the large role of Michigan State University in the network, due to the incumbent's faculty status there, and over the extent of his authority. The conflict has extended to how open the network should be to diverse…

The Javits fellowship program, designed to encourage students to enter the arts, humanities, and social sciences by offering fellowships that would allow them to attend prestigious institutions, is described. Some believe the Reagan Administration has delayed each competition because it wanted to abolish the Javits program. (MLW)