Happy trails, TSHA
After a 110-year tenure in Austin, the Texas State Historical Association is packing its bags and moving from UT to the University of North Texas in Denton. While employees of the association seem positive about the move - president Frank de la Teja told the Austin American-Statesman that "it's the best thing that could have happened to us" - still waters run deep. Over the past few years, the group had become micromanaged by UT. Several years ago, they were moved from offices in the history department to the Center for American History, weakening important ties with history faculty, and more recently, UT wanted to usurp the association's autonomy by requiring that its employees become employees of the University. According to de la Teja, the University was reticent to compromise. So despite its longstanding history in Austin, the TSHA will have to go Denton and begin work on a new legacy.
Majoring in charity
Philanthropy has long been an art reserved for image-conscious tycoons and ladies-who-lunch. But Stanford University is trying to change that. The university recently established a Center on Philanthropy and Society to put philanthropy in focus for its students. However, programs like Stanford's are slow to revolutionize philanthropy because the field still needs to be clearly defined in a modern context: According to the center's Web site, "the knowledge base about philanthropy's behavior and impact, including its effectiveness, is quite thin." But the discipline is becoming a major arena for power and change, and can only move forward with serious youth interest and dedication. As Princeton professor Stan Katz notes on his Chronicle of Higher Education Web log, "the establishment of the Stanford Center highlights the importance of convincing bright young scholars that the field is one that can sustain first-rate scholarship... Perhaps the momentum is picking up, and a real 'field' of philanthropy will finally emerge." Harvard, UCLA, Johns Hopkins and the City University of New York's Graduate Center have similar institutions to Stanford's. Perhaps UT could establish one in lieu of the logistically impossible medical school our top officials continue to dream about.
Sorry, bud, you've had one burger too many
A bill recently introduced in Mississippi's state legislature would bar restaurants from serving people determined to be obese. House Bill 282 requires dining establishments to follow guidelines set by the state's health department to determine a prospective customer's obesity, turning away those considered too fat to serve. Considering the Magnolia State's perennial status as "fattest state in the union," the bill seems to come from good intentions but what, if we may wonder, would keep those hordes of hungry people (nearly a third of Miss.'s population) from descending on a supermarket and gorging themselves at home?
HE wants to be president; SHE doesn't
Hillary Clinton's rise to the top of the presidential hopeful field appears to be a harbinger of a new age of gender-diverse politics. But it seems that women applying to the politico grooming academy that is law school are not following in her flat-heeled footsteps. According to a Kaplan survey of LSAT takers, 52 percent of males say they will either "definitely" or "probably" run for public office eventually, while only 34 percent of female test-takers saw politics in their future. Perhaps this marks a shift in the cultural evolution, or most likely, the women polled had more honest life ambitions in mind.
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