Academic and Political Snark

In Christopher Shea,"An academic gossip makes his (or her?) debut," Brainiac, 27 August, and Shea,"Princeton pushes back against Ambrose Bierce," ibid., 29 August, Shea scoops the Louella Parsons of the history blogosphere and Princeton's Jeremy Adelman gives her an F. In Ambrose Hofstadter Bierce, III,"Scoop and Spin at Princeton," The Broad-Gauge Gossip, 2 September, Professor Bierce replies with a well-earned A for Shea and a C+ for Adelman.

For the opening of the new academic year, Radar, September, offers up its"annual semiscientific guide to the worst colleges in America."* The winners and runners-up by category are:

Worst College in America
Most Degenerate Student Body
Most Superficial
Ugliest Campus
Biggest Rip-Off
Most Dubious Degree
Most Intolerant
Most Stoned Student Body
Most Overrated
Most Closeted
Most Insufferable
Most Ironically Named Christian College
Most Radio Active

*This offering is a revision of Helen Pfeffer's and Harold Goldberg's"Bad Education," Radar, 20 September 2006.

Richard Byrne,"Dispute Widens Between Southern Illinois U.-Carbondale and Ulysses S. Grant Association," CHE, 2 September, and Sean McGahan,"Association sues university, makes accusations of forgery," Daily Egyptian, 2 September, report a legal dispute in which the USGA charges the University with forgery after the university's firing of John Y. Simon, a history professor and longtime editor of the Grant Papers, in response to sexual harassment allegations against him.

And, so long as we're doing gossip here, unless I'm mistaken, William Saletan's"Miss Conceptions," Slate, 2 September, misses the best bet: Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Her own daughter, Paulina, was almost certainly the child – not of her husband Nicholas Longworth, the Speaker of the House – but of Senator William Borah. It was Alice, after all, who had said:"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me!"