Higher Education Quick Takes

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded this morning to Herta Müller, a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed," according to the Nobel committee. Müller was born in Romania, where her family was a member of the German minority in that country, and her writing and activism in opposition to the CeauÅŸescu’s dictatorship led to her censorship in Romania, clashes with the government and her eventual move to Germany. The University of Nebraska Press published her book Nadirs (in a translation by Sieglinde Lug, a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Denver). Two of her books are available through Northwestern University Press: The Land of Green Plums and Traveling on One Leg.

Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, is proposing that Congress bar the National Science Foundation from supporting research in political science. While the NSF is best known for its support for the physical sciences, computer science and engineering, it has a long history of also supporting work in the social sciences. A statement from the senator said: "The purpose of this amendment is not to restrict science, but rather to better focus scarce basic research dollars on the important scientific endeavors that can expand our knowledge of true science and yield breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition." While such an amendment is unlikely to be enacted, the American Political Science Association is organizing letter-writing efforts against the measure.

Sexually explicit materials continue to create controversies for Maryland's public university system. The Baltimore Sun reported on efforts by system officials, at legislative request, to develop a policy on student displays of pornographic movies. Lawmakers were upset last year about plans to show a porn film, for which a viewing was called off and then restored in part at Maryland's flagship campus at College Park. Under the drafts being considered, any porn film would have to be paired with educational discussions, the Sun reported.

At Towson University, meanwhile, the editor-in-chief has resigned and a controversial sex column will appear only online and not in print, following criticism -- from the university's president among others - over its explicitness. A statement from the newspaper defended the column's content, but said that the student journalists on the staff regret a break in the Towerlight's normal procedures by letting the columns appear anonymously and that the article wasn't written "less provocatively." The column that sparked the criticism was about how to perform several sexual acts. Reactions posted on the Web site back up the claims of administrators that the piece offended many, and also the claims of the newspaper that many students value the frank discussion of sex.

Researchers in Britain, Israel and the United States are sharing the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on "the structure and function of the ribosome." The three winners are: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, senior scientist and group leader at Structural Studies Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Britain; Thomas A. Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, both at Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath, Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology and director of Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly, both at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel.