Righting the wrongs of slavery must focus on improving the future, not on atoning for the past, writes John Torpey, a CUNY professor of sociology. He notes Brown University’s inquiry into the institution’s roots in the slave trade.
Paid subscriptions: www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2034733

Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons is a candidate for the presidency of Harvard University, according to the Harvard student paper and Harvard officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/education/08harvard.html?ref=education

Professor of Education Kenneth Wong, a school governance expert, analyzed test scores in about a dozen cities with mayors in charge of schools from 1999 to 2003. His results show modest but statistically significant progress in reading and math for elementary and middle-school students. “Our analysis suggests that mayors can steer the ship in the right direction, but that there is still a long way to go before their districts achieve acceptable levels of student achievement," Wong says. This wire service article appeared in media outlets throughout the United States.
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4452909.html

Assistant Professor of Education Martin West found that since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, elementary schools have spent, on average, 23 fewer minutes a week on science and 17 fewer minutes on history. He also found that in states that test history and science each spring, teachers spend about half an hour more a week on each subject. His findings and comments are included in this article about how the new law has changed schools. This article appeared on several other Web sites.
www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-01-07-no-child_x.htm

Peter Sacks, author of the forthcoming book, “Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education,” discusses how “higher education is infused with class biases,” noting that “elite colleges have largely ignored socioeconomic disadvantage in their calculations of merit and their definitions of diversity.”
chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i19/19b00901.htm

Audiences of Brown University's production of the Jean-Paul Sartre play "The Flies" were greatly outnumbered by 30,000 fruit flies, bred by a science student specifically for the play. This article takes a look at the care and breeding of the flies in preparation for their stage debut.
www.the-scientist.com/news/home/39950/

Elliot Colla, associate professor of comparative literature, contributed questions and answers for the Education section’s weekly Pop Quiz feature.
graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/20070107quiz.pdf

A review of Peter Kramer’s new book, “Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind,” says the book “is an intelligent - and feeling - reassessment of a man who still sets off critical fireworks at the mere mention of his name.”
www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-FREUD_01-07-07_NJ3CEBN.2bebb7.html

Brown University has received a $636,131 grant from the National Institutes of Health to train Rhode Island high school science teachers how to integrate high-level concepts and hands-on experiments into their lesson plans.
www.projo.com/education/content/brown_science_grant5_01-05-07_Q93NAII.2feb6ca.ht
ml
See news release: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-076.html

Brown University has received a grant worth more than $600,000 from the National Institutes of Health to improve science teaching in the state's high schools. This wire service article ran in numerous media outlets.
www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2007/01/05/brown_gets_600000_gra
nt_to_train_science_teachers/
See news release: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-076.html

Professor of Economics Glenn Loury joins a roundtable discussion about New Jersey's proposal to abolish the death penalty; a new call for gays to be openly accepted into the military; and a deadly year for journalists around the world.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6723153

Scott Haltzman, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior, provides pointers on turning conflict into a relationship-building dialog.
www.hitchedmag.com/article.php?id=171

David Mumford received the 2007 AMS Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition for "his beautiful expository accounts of a host of aspects of algebraic geometry."
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/ams-ppa122906.php

Strengthening European Union policies on electronic and chemical waste will reverberate around the world, according to research conducted by Stacy VanDeveer, a visiting fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, and Henrik Selin, an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University. This article appeared on several other technology Web sites.
www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196801405
See news release: www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-074.html

A Brown University study of the role exercise played in women’s efforts to quit smoking is cited in this article describing how exercise benefits mental health. This wire service article appeared in several media outlets throughout the United States.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/05/AR2007010501398.html