Storm Season

on the eve of memorial day weekend, and two weeks before the official start of hurricane season, there is a low pressure system over florida.

it will entering the gulf by week's end and into the warm waters of the gulf.

gulp....

Superbowl Returns to NOLA

well...despite the skepticism of the city of Miami's rep, we are back on the block.

this will be our 10th game and 7th in the superdome...amazing.

School's Is Out

Finals week at the Univ. of New Orleans has come quickly and is almost over. Welcome news came as local sports and civic interests have expressed concern about the deficit in the athletic department funding for next year.

Too bad they did not express the same concern when academic programs face the budget axe now and in the past.

Play Ball !!

Now This is a Real Pisser, Mate

The Saints waived receiver Biren Ealy and tight end Kolo Kapanui on Tuesday, two days after they were arrested for lewd conduct, obscenity and disturbing the peace.

The team also officially announced the signings of three more undrafted rookie free agents -- Western Illinois running back Herb Donaldson, Kent State offensive tackle Augustus Parrish and Louisville receiver Chris Vaughn.

Ealy, 24, and Kapanui, 25, were arrested early Sunday morning and booked on charges of obscenity, disturbing the peace by being drunk in public and lewd conduct by urinating in public and exposing themselves.

Both players were long shots to make the Saints' roster even before the incident occurred. Ealy signed with the Saints in Janaury after spending the past two years with the Tennessee Titans, mostly on the practice squad. Kapanui joined the Saints' practice squad late last season, his first in the NFL.

One Year Later

Wow...has it almost been a year since my last post?

Yes it has...

Obama vs McCain: Battleground states

Battleground states

The Zurich Classic in New Orleans

It is time again for festivals, a golf tourney and generally a wide assortment of things we do in NOLA prior to the beginning of our summer and the dreaded hurricane season. The price of crawfish are so low that farmers have begun draining their fields. The pace of our recovery has quickened a bit, as a new govenor gives the agency overseeing the funding of home building a stern directive.

The local folks will undoubtebly be dissappointed by the withdrawl of David Toms, past champion and LSU grad, but alas he has back problems. The surge in success of the New Orleans Hornets has given this spring a renewed sense of enthusiasm for me, while Major League Baseball celebrates Opening Day in Japan. Bud Selig just needs to go away. Now that the steriod mess has run its course, he should have the good sense to know that his legacy will remain with needles and Canseco. We have no faith in him or the owners who knew all the while what was going on.

So while I usually am getting ready for the French Quarter and our major Jazz festivals, all the while poking the finger at my Yankee-lovers, this spring is different. Golf and the "Association" is on my mind....after March Madness ends of course. And I proudly declare that this is my first year in recovery from charting failed predictions in the tournament, which has lead me to enjoy both the men's and women's action at a new and different level. This goes along well with the use of the mute button on my remote control, to block out all the noise from Jay Bilas, Billy Packer and the other sports know-it-alls. Music is a much more soothing condiment to buzz beating shots.

Landscape Experts Focus on Gentilly & Ponchartrain

DESIGN WEEKEND
Landscape experts and students converge on Pontchartrain Park, Gentilly Woods
Saturday, October 13, 2007
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer

As Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods residents rebuild their neighborhoods, they can expect lots of ideas to choose from regarding how to design their natural areas.

A group of design experts and university students in cooperation with Longue Vue House & Gardens are gathering information about the green spaces in the two New Orleans neighborhoods, collectively known as Pontilly, so they can develop strategies for shaping the landscape in ways that add to the area's beauty while helping protect it against flooding.

"It's wonderful because you have to have plans -- and that costs money," said Concepcion "Connie" Tregre, who lives in Gentilly Woods and was among residents who participated this week in a design weekend with the experts and university students.

"I'm eager to hear their ideas for the golf course (near Southern University at New Orleans) and drainage for our area," Tregre said.

The Pontilly neighborhood already has a master plan, said William Morrish, a professor of architecture, landscape architecture and urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. This effort, he said, will provide richer details for landscaping the environment and public parks in Pontilly.

"We're hoping that by early next year we'll have a plan to take to the public," said Jane Wolff, assistant professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "It will be less like a prescription and more like a menu" from which residents may make a selection.

Wolff, Moorish, Longue Vue Executive Director Bonnie Goldblum and students from Louisiana State University, Southern University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia toured the Pontilly area Friday. They began discussing possible options for the green spaces in connection with the four-day design weekend financed by $30,000 from the Catherine Brown Memorial Fund, which is named after Moorish's deceased wife.

There are many issues to consider, said Moorish, like using some of the land in the area to reduce flooding, making the land more productive, sorting out the best use for vacant spaces and deciding what to plant.

The notion is not only to propose ideas that make the area more beautiful with lawns and ornamental plants, but also show the how the landscape can be designed to reduce flooding and conserve water, Wolff said.

In Pontilly, the collective is "looking at issues with drainage and surface water (after a rain) and gardens that function better hydrologically and ecologically," Wolff said.

The scope of the project also includes coming up with ideas for public rights of way, parks, canals, street easements and neutral grounds, she said.

"This area is the third largest green space in the city -- after City Park and Audubon Park," said Carol Reese, an art historian who teaches in the School of Architecture at Tulane University. On Friday, she lectured students and other participants in the design weekend about the history of Pontchartrain Park, a subdivision of single-family homes created for middle-class African Americans in the 1950s.
. . . . . . .
Leslie Williams can be reached at lwilliams@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3358.
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Where Saints Fans Only Dare

After the complete defeat of the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football, there can be no doubts that both our team and the Chicago Bears will not meet again in the NFC Championship Game. And I wonder how we ever became dillusional enough to believe history would repeat itself. Little was done on paper to improve the team, and many would say that letting a steady kicker and an aging but iconic receiver go did not make this team better.

No draft pick has emerged as an impact player, which is a disturbing reminder of mistakes this franchise has made so often in the past. Not the worst draft of all times, mind you...but an extreme departure from last year's results, probably an indication of the fact that our draftees simply over-achieved as the football-speak goes and their selection was no indication of draft day/war room genius.

And so where does that leave us facing a bye this week and the perennial divison powerhouse Carolina Panthers coming to town to dispense pain-based revenge for taking the division last season, while our team seeks faith-based solutions?

We are looking for wonder-coach to revise the schemes and find answers to our offensive failures. No one expected this team to be a defensive power, but we were supposed to put the points on the board and let the other team try and maintain pace.

With Deuce gone and the defense looking as bad as ever, it looks like die-hard Saints fans like me are going to need to pace ourselves too.

MOVING ON

By JEFF ZASLOW

A Beloved Professor Delivers
The Lecture of a Lifetime
September 20, 2007
Page D1

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer_science professor, was about to give a lecture Tuesday afternoon, but before he said a word, he received a standing ovation from 400 students and colleagues.

He motioned to them to sit down. "Make me earn it," he said.

What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? For Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, the question isn't rhetorical __ he's dying of cancer. Jeff Zaslow narrates a video on Prof. Pausch's final lecture.

They had come to see him give what was billed as his "last lecture." This is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted "Last Lecture Series," in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?

Carnegie Corporation Commits $14 Million To Revitalize New Orleans’ Intellectual Infrastructure In Wake Of Hurricane Katrina

Carnegie Corporation has awarded grants of $2 million to Dillard University, $5 million to Tulane University and $4 million to Xavier University of Louisiana. The grants are one of the largest commitments of private funds to support higher education in post_Katrina New Orleans. Each of the universities incurred significant hurricane_related damage and losses and will use the new funds to focus on development, retention and hiring of displaced and new faculty; recruitment and retention of new students; resumption of critical strategic planning initiatives; and ensuring the availability of adequate financial aid.

University Fences In a Berkeley Protest

BERKELEY, Calif., Sept. 7 — In many ways and for many months, the protest outside Memorial Stadium at the University of California has been business, and Berkeley, as usual.

On one side are the protesting tree lovers who have been living Tarzan-like since December in a stand of coastal oaks and other trees. On the other is the university, which wants to cut down the trees to build a $125 million athletic center, part of a larger plan to upgrade its aging, seismically challenged football stadium.

The two sides disagreed. They bickered. Lawyers were called. Then came The Fence.

Before dawn on Aug. 29, building crews and the university police erected a 10-foot-high fence around the grove, effectively cutting off the tree dwellers from their supplies. The university called the fence a safety measure, meant to protect protesters from football fans descending on the stadium for the season opener.
Instead, the fence has united many of the city’s fractious constituencies and unleashed years of frustration with the university that made the city famous (or was it the other way around?).

courtesy...the new york times

Continuing the Internet tax moratorium

Continuing the Internet tax moratorium

Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 12:14 PM Posted by Pablo Chavez
Policy Counsel

As Internet use continues to spread in the U.S., the government should pursue policies that help promote investment in, and greater consumer access to, faster and more robust broadband services.

The current Internet tax moratorium is one policy that Congress has enacted to help make the internet a universally accessible, free, and open platform capable of delivering a rich variety of services to consumers.

With that moratorium due to expire this November, Google recently joined Don't Tax Our Web, a coalition of companies and associations dedicated to extending the current moratorium and reducing barriers to the Internet's continued growth.

The current moratorium prohibits three things: state and local taxation of Internet access, multiple taxes on a single e-commerce transaction, and taxes that discriminate against online transactions.

I support a permanent extension of the moratorium because multiple or discriminatory taxes on internet transactions could damage internet-based commerce, a critical and growing component of our economy.

Cal State Prepares to Open Its First Doctoral Programs Ever, in Education

This fall California State University will, for the first time, independently offer doctoral programs, marking a significant change in the state’s longstanding master plan for higher education. The plan had given the University of California system sole authority among the state’s public institutions to award doctorates.

Upswing in rolls buoys colleges

Upswing in rolls buoys colleges
Freshman influx surprises some
Thursday, September 06, 2007
By John Pope
Staff writer

College administrators in the New Orleans area are jubilant at the start of this semester, even though some might not appear to have much reason to rejoice.

Eight of 10 institutions of higher education are enrolling more students this semester than they did a year ago, when all local colleges and universities were in a post-Katrina slump.
At the other two schools -- Tulane University and the University of New Orleans -- overall registration is down this semester, but officials there and at Xavier University are happy because of big increases in the number of first-year students: 52 percent at Tulane, 50 percent at Xavier and 10 percent at UNO.

"The numbers surprised me," said Earl Retif, Tulane's registrar. "I thought we would do well, but I didn't think we would do as well as we did." But those numbers won't be enough to offset the lower 2006-07 enrollment at those schools, and many students in that smaller contingent will be around for several more years as they progress toward graduation. "Clearly, a depressed class in the fall of 2006 creates a smaller continuing cohort," said Ron Maggiore, UNO's dean of admissions. "Where we're dropping is not in new students because students want to come back, but in the continuing student population."

Making things happen

College officials credit aggressive marketing and recruiting for the upswing. University leaders have routinely met with parents of prospective students to allay their fears about storms and safety, and Tulane flew in about 125 high school guidance counselors from around the country to show them the school and the city. "They went back to their communities and became ambassadors," Retif said. "We had to make sure that . . . the word was going out that the university was back and they could have a great experience." Another motivating factor, administrators said, was students' desire to participate in rebuilding the region.

"Loyola is in a position to attract students who are in a position to do more than build résumés," said Lori Zawistowski, the interim admissions director. "They'll be in a position to see what social justice means." Although Zawistowski is optimistic about Loyola's enrollment prospects, she said figures will not be available until the middle of the month. At UNO, Maggiore said, students want to return after leaving two years ago because of the storm and staying away for the 2006-07 academic year. "They were able to stay at LSU or the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, but they want to come home," he said. Vincent Brown said he is noticing the same phenomenon at Xavier University, where he is dean of admissions. "These students who are coming back are committed to staying here," he said. "They're battle-tested."

Retif, who also is Tulane's vice president for enrollment management, said last year's calm hurricane season played a role in students' deciding to head to the New Orleans area.
"If something had been out in the Gulf, that number would have been diminished greatly," he said. This year's registration totals represent progress toward regaining prehurricane enrollment levels, college officials said. Reaching those goals, they said, is still three to five years off.

A new study shows that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita did more than lay waste to much of the Gulf Coast. About 35,000 students -- 26,000 in Louisiana and 9,000 in Mississippi -- who had been in public colleges didn't return to school last year because their lives were still in storm-related flux, according to the report that the Southern Education Foundation, an Atlanta-based education philanthropy, published last week. "Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s has the United States witnessed so many of its own students thrown out of school," the report's authors wrote. They also found that nearly 70 percent of the 76,000 students from New Orleans area colleges and universities dropped out for at least a semester after Katrina struck in August 2005 and Rita hit a month later.

Challenges vary

The storms' impact was hardly uniform. While Our Lady of Holy Cross College in Algiers sustained relatively minor damage, Tulane sustained upwards of $650 million in losses, and the campuses of Xavier, Dillard University, Southern University at New Orleans, Delgado and Nunez community colleges, and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center were overwhelmed with floodwater. SUNO is the only local institution of higher learning that still hasn't returned to its campus. Even though it is operating out of a compound of portable buildings next to the Lake Pontchartrain levee, its enrollment jumped nearly 14 percent from last fall's figure, spokesman Harold Clark Jr. said.

In addition to advertising in newspapers and on television, radio and the Internet, Donna Grant, the new enrollment-services manager, promoted SUNO by talking at churches and community meetings and by taking fliers door to door. "We got even more aggressive," Clark said.
At Dillard, where repairs are continuing, officials expect enrollment to stay around 1,000, the same as last fall -- and 46 percent of its pre-Katrina total. This year, Dillard recruiters went after transfer students by recruiting at community colleges and by increasing the amount of financial aid available to men and women coming from these institutions, said Toya Barnes-Teamer, the university's vice president for student success.

The most that a transfer student could hope for used to be $2,500, she said, but that was changed to make it possible for people in this category to get a scholarship for full tuition, which amounts to $11,760 per year. "When we started this initiative, we probably had 45 or 50 applicants" from prospective transfer students, Barnes-Teamer said. "After we got the word out to local community colleges and contacted some alumni, that went to 140 in two months. We were thrilled."

At Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, where enrollment has remained relatively steady, the problem has been recruiting teachers, especially in the School of Nursing, Chancellor Larry Hollier said. There is a nursing shortage that LSU is striving to eliminate, he said, but the salaries that nurses can command in the private sector are much greater than what they can earn as teachers. Consequently, Hollier said, "we are pretty much maxed out on how many students we can handle."

There have been enrollment increases this semester in the medical and nursing schools, as well as the schools of Graduate Studies, Allied Health Professions and Public Health, said Hollier, who also is the medical school's dean. But, he said, "we're talking about relatively small numbers of increases because of the number of teachers we have."

At Delgado and Nunez, where students learn skills they can use in rebuilding the area, there were hefty enrollment increases -- 11 percent at Delgado and 27 percent at Nunez.
Delgado also is responsible for Louisiana Technical College's two Jefferson Parish campuses, where enrollment jumped this semester by 30 percent. At Nunez Community College in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, administrators said they were pleased at this semester's enrollment, even though it's less than half of its pre-Katrina total. "We're not up to where we were before, but I'm impressed," spokeswoman Dorothy Harrington said.
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John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3317.
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The Death of Television

Vint Cerf, aka the godfather of the net, predicts

the end of TV as we know it
Web guru foresees download revolution

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
The Guardian

Monday August 27 2007

Vint Cerf helped build the internet in California in the 1970s. Now he is working on taking it beyond the earth’s confines, with a plan to use it to control space vehicles.

Thirty years ago he helped create a technology that has revolutionised millions of lives around the world. But yesterday the man known as the "godfather of the net" laid out his vision of where our online future might be, including a time when we download entire TV series in seconds - and even surf the web from Mars. Talking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Vint Cerf - one of the handful of researchers who helped build the internet in the 1970s - said that the television industry would change rapidly as it approached its "iPod moment".

The 64-year-old, who is now a vice-president of the web giant Google and chairman of the organisation that administrates the internet, told an audience of media moguls that TV was rapidly approaching the same kind of crunch moment that the music industry faced with the arrival of the MP3 player. "85% of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," he said. "You're still going to need live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later."

Dr Cerf, who helped build the internet while working as a researcher at Stanford University in California, used the festival's Alternative McTaggart Lecture to explain to television executives how the internet's influence was radically altering their businesses and how it was imperative for them to view this as a golden opportunity to be exploited instead of a threat to their survival. The arrival of internet television has long been predicted, although it has succeeded in limited ways so far. But the popularity of websites such as YouTube - the video sharing service bought by Google in 2005 for $1.65bn (£800m) - has encouraged many in the TV industry to try and use the internet more profitably. Last month the BBC launched its free iPlayer download service, and digital video recorders such as Sky Plus and Freeview Playback allow viewers to instantly pause and record live television.

Dr Cerf predicted that these developments would continue, and that we would soon be watching the majority of our television through the internet - a revolution that could herald the death of the traditional broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services. "In Japan you can already download an hour's worth of video in 16 seconds," he said. "And we're starting to see ways of mixing information together ... imagine if you could pause a TV programme and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them." Some critics, including a number of leading internet service providers, have warned that the increase in video on the web could eventually bring down the internet. They are concerned that millions of people downloading at the same time using services such as iPlayer could overwhelm the network. Dr Cerf rejected these claims as "scare tactics". "It's an understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around online," he said.

But some pundits had predicted 20 years ago that the net would collapse when people started using it en masse, he added. "In the intervening 30 years it's increased a million times over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity." Dr Cerf also revealed that he has been working on future developments for the internet, taking it beyond the confines of planet Earth. With other researchers he has been developing systems for using the net to communicate and control space vehicles, including interplanetary landers sent to explore the surface of Mars. "Up until now we've been using the so-called Deep Space Network to communicate across space with radio signals. What my colleagues and I would like to do is use a version of internet," he said. He said the problems encountered by the project - such as having to wait 40 minutes for a response from a space vehicle 235m miles away - were proving awkward, but predicted the system could eventually be used to enhance internet communications. "I want more internet," he said. "I want every one of the 6 billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the internet - I think they will add things to it that will really benefit us all."

Taken from Guardian Unlimited

Saints Return Home for Pre-Season Opener

As one former coach so eloquently put it..."NFL stands for Not For Long" which means our team will have to climb the mountain again this year...and now the other teams are going be fired up when they face us.

Brace yourselves for our wild ride...as we enter this crazy scene called the NFL Regular Season.

Accreditation System Is Misguided Failure, Trustees Group Says

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
By PAUL BASKEN

Washington
The federal government's system for accrediting colleges is a misguided failure that should be largely replaced with a simpler method that relies on key institutional data about cost and quality, a trustees group is arguing.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative-leaning lobbying association led by Anne D. Neal, proposed in a report released on Tuesday that a process of "expedited accreditation" might begin to repair a system that the council regards as detracting from academic quality rather than improving it.
"Nothing in the accreditation process concretely measures student learning, instructional quality or academic standards," the council said in the report. "If the accrediting process were applied to automobile inspection, cars would 'pass' as long as they had tires, doors and an engine -- without anyone ever turning the key to see if the car actually operated."
The report, "Why Accreditation Doesn't Work and What Policy Makers Can Do About It," is the latest in a series of attempts by both administration allies and critics to force changes in the federal government's use of accrediting agencies as the means for determining which American colleges are eligible for government-guaranteed student loans.
The administration-appointed Commission on the Future of Higher Education, in its final report last September, proposed that accreditation agencies judge colleges on the basis of "performance outcomes," such as graduation rates, rather than on the basis of "inputs or processes," such as financial resources.
Ms. Neal, an outspoken advocate of such a new approach, was appointed by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to serve on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. The committee, known as Naciqi, evaluates whether accrediting agencies should be recognized by the Education Department for the purpose of student-aid eligibility.
Naciqi, and Ms. Neal in particular, have been accused by some accrediting agencies of forcing the accreditors to begin abiding by outcomes-based methods of evaluating colleges without first waiting for such standards to be written into federal law or regulation.
Resistance to Outcomes-Based Methods
The Education Department has "gone beyond what's reasonable" in demanding that accrediting agencies employ outcomes-based criteria in evaluating colleges, Susan F. Zlotlow, director of program consultation and accreditation at the American Psychological Association, told participants at a conference last month organized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.
In large part, the report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni reads as a chronicle of Ms. Neal's discontent with Naciqi and the accrediting agencies that have appeared before it.
Such agencies include the American Bar Association, which provides accreditation to law schools and has been demanding that its member schools work to ensure racial diversity among students and faculty. Ms. Spellings, following Naciqi's recommendation, last month approved only an 18-month renewal for the bar association's accreditation authority, rather than the five-year standard, with a requirement that the bar association further clarify its diversity standard.
The Education Department needs only to ensure that colleges receiving federally guaranteed student aid aren't misusing that money, and it already has systems in place to verify that, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni said in its report. The report cites the bar association's diversity standard and other anecdotal cases as evidence that too many accreditors are imposing requirements on colleges beyond those necessary simply to ensure academic quality.
Such anecdotes, however, do not constitute empirical proof that support the report's conclusion that the current system of accreditation is broken, said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.
"This is not a careful, thoughtful analysis of what accreditation does," Mr. Hartle said. "It's just a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas and anecdotes."
The report should also fuel concern among accrediting agencies that they might not receive fair treatment from Naciqi while Ms. Neal is a member, he said.
"It's impossible to imagine her giving unbiased advice based on the evidence presented in those meetings," Mr. Hartle said. "If the Department of Education wonders why colleges and universities are skeptical about their motives with respect to accreditation, they need look no further than this report."
Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, an umbrella group of accreditors, agreed that the report may make Ms. Neal's future service on Naciqi untenable.
"How can someone with such strong views on accreditation function evenhandedly on a body that advises the secretary?" Ms. Eaton said. "If I were an accreditor coming up for review, I would say to myself, 'Is it appropriate for this member of the committee to recuse herself?'"
"It's the blanket negative characterization, without evidence," that makes Ms. Neal's report alarming, Ms. Eaton said.
At the same time, Ms. Neal is correct to provoke the discussion of whether the Education Department should be using accreditation, rather than some other method, to limit access to the government's $83-billion student-aid program, Ms. Eaton said.
"With everything that's happened in the last few years," Ms. Eaton said, "a very serious discussion of the gatekeeping role, accreditation, and the federal government, and the relationship, is in order."
Ms. Neal and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued an earlier report, in 2002, that also called for an end to the government's use of the academic accreditation process to police the student-loan program.
The key addition in Tuesday's report is the suggestion, as "a short-term alternative," that colleges that are already accredited can renew that accreditation by submitting to Naciqi updated data on cost, quality and achievement, Ms. Neal said.
Criticisms of that recommendation that focus on her fitness to serve on Naciqi are a "predictable" attempt to avoid the issue, Ms. Neal said.
"Instead of meeting a good-faith effort to improve the education our students receive with a thoughtful discussion," she said, "the establishment is denying everything and trying to shoot the messenger."

Universities Must Not Ignore Intelligence Research

By AMY B. ZEGART
Last week the CIA finally released the "Family Jewels" — a 700-page secret file made in 1973 that chronicles domestic spying programs, foreign assassination plots, and other skeletons in the agency's closet. Jewelmania quickly ensued: a feeding frenzy to examine what these documents revealed, what they continued to hide, and what they mean. As bloggers, pundits, journalists, policy makers, and others raced to their computers and hit the airwaves, one group remained conspicuously absent from the debate: university professors.

This is not an aberration. At a time when intelligence agencies have never been more important, universities are teaching and studying just about everything else. In 2006 only four of the top 25 universities ranked by U.S. News & World Report offered undergraduate courses on intelligence agencies or issues. Students at America's elite universities had greater opportunities to learn about the rock band U2 than the spy plane by the same name; more of the top 25 offered courses on the history of rock 'n' roll.

Scholarly inattention is even more glaring in academic publishing. Between 2001 and 2006, the three most highly regarded academic journals in political sciencethe American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics — published a total of 750 articles. Only one discussed intelligence. At precisely the time that intelligence issues have dominated headlines and policy-maker attention, the nation's best political scientists have been studying other subjects.

The University of Pennsylvania lost two prominent professors who study black culture this week.

2 Scholars of Black Culture Are Leaving Penn
By ELIZABETH QUILL

Elijah Anderson, a sociologist known for his work examining urban inequality, has moved to Yale University, and Michael Eric Dyson, an ordained Baptist minister, author, and commentator, has taken a position at Georgetown University.

Mr. Anderson, 63, had worked at Penn for 32 years. During that time, he became known for his studies of the black experience in Philadelphia, writing such books as Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (W.W. Norton, 1999). He also wrote A Place on the Corner (University of Chicago Press, 1978), an examination of life at a Chicago bar and liquor store that is regarded as a sociological classic. Mr. Anderson says he hopes to give urban ethnography a prominent place at Yale.

"I am looking forward to new opportunities," Mr. Anderson said. "It is a new challenge."
There has been some speculation that an unsettled controversy involving allegations of "conceptual plagiarism" of Mr. Anderson's work by a junior faculty member affected his decision to leave. But Mr. Anderson said the dispute did not contribute in any significant way. "That is pretty much in the past," he said. (Penn made a comparable counteroffer, he said, but he still chose to go to Connecticut.)

Mr. Dyson's departure had no slice of controversy, only confusion. Before any official moves were announced, the 48-year-old scholar, who is an authority on hip-hop and many other cultural topics, listed himself as a university professor at Georgetown on a Web site promoting his new book.

Terrence P. Reynolds, chairman of the theology department at Georgetown, said this week that he had heard conversations about Mr. Dyson, but that they were at a level above him. "It may be a complicated matter," Mr. Reynolds said.

Mr. Dyson, who was a professor of humanities and religious studies at Penn, confirmed later that he began at Georgetown on July 1 and would teach English, theology, and African-American studies. As a university professor, he will move between departments.

"I had a true home at Penn," Mr. Dyson said of the university where he worked for five years. "But there is no city more vibrant and teeming with ideas and possibilities to explore than Washington."

Mr. Dyson is the author of numerous books, including Come Hell or High Water (Basic Civitas, 2006), and is set to go on tour to promote his latest book, Know What I Mean? (Basic Civitas, 2007), this month.

Penn's provost, Ronald J. Daniels, declined to comment on the departures beyond a brief e-mail statement acknowledging the contributions of both professors to the university.