From The Chronicle of Higher Education, the "veritas" about Harvard: What happens when the gods of high finance dump a gigantic pile of gold on the richest university in the world? A review of Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities by A. Lee Fritschler, Bruce L. R. Smith and Jeremy D. Mayer. From HNN, a review of For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom by Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post and Save the World on Your Own Time by Stanley Fish. From TNR, unquiet flows the don: A review of Maurice Bowra: A Life by Leslie Mitchell. From NBER, research suggests the professors’ gender may perpetuate the gender gap. A review of How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment by Michele Lamont. Lessons learned at the racetrack: Anything that flip-flops the teacher into a student again will force you to reconsider how learning works. The school of hard shocks: It may sound like educational heresy, but here's a provocative question — should everyone go to college? Big major on campus: A flight to safety is driving up enrollment at many undergraduate business programs, but that's making it tougher to get in. Colleges find juicy titles swell enrollment: Many opt for courses like "Economics of Sin". The explosion of student sex columns represents a campus movement possessed of the same subversive potential that fueled 1960s student activism. Dozens of colleges are up in arms over a new Anheuser-Busch marketing campaign that features Bud Light beer cans emblazoned with local schools' team colors. A look at America's 25 douchiest colleges.

James Clay Moltz (NPS): Toward Cooperation or Conflict on the Moon? Considering Lunar Governance in Historical Perspective. 40 years after the Apollo 11 mission, let's stop kidding ourselves about why we really want to go back. Now that we know there is water on the Moon, the solar system may now be open to us. From Popular Science, here are five human achievements that could top walking on the Moon. Mars, and step on it: When it’s not the journey but the destination that counts. How to get humans on Mars: Make it a one-way trip. We are the martians: Why we've never lost our enthusiasm for space travel. Flying high: America’s government has no money for its human-spaceflight plans — the private sector has plenty. We’re a long way from the “basestars” from Battlestar Galactica, but the concept of large manned orbiting platforms for military operations may not wholly be in the realm of science fiction. Asteroid attack: An article on putting Earth's defences to the test (and more). A review of The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christopher Cokinos. From Vision, an essay on a New Earth; an article on the Drake equation, or how alone are we? From Cosmos, are we alone? There could be more than 200 extraterrestrial civilisations humming away in our galaxy right now. Why do we only search for aliens that resemble life here on Earth? Wired on how the hunt for extraterrestrial life gets weird. While hundreds of exoplanets have already been discovered, it could just be a matter of time before we find some truly bizarre ones.

A review of Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns by Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson. A review of Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783-1939 by James Belich (and more). A review of Democracy: 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty by Peter Kellner. A review of The New British Constitution by Vernon Bogdanor. Scott Bradfield reviews The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall. A review of The Social Contract in America: From the Revolution to the Present Age by Mark Hulliung. An interview with John Curl, author of For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. Thomas Frank on why the Left should reclaim "freedom". Civilising as a continuing Australian project: A review of Empire of Political Thought by Bruce Buchan. Kevin Rudd sees social democracy as the only terrain on which the "great financial crisis" can be overcome; Tom Nairn argues that this idea is more widely relevant to the search for a politics beyond neo-liberalism. From New Matilda, five years ago, John Howard's version of Australia reigned supreme — now the left must find its own national sentiment or it will be eclipsed again. Christopher Hitchens on how Sydney's spectacular storms remind Australians of their history. From Literary Review of Canada, John Ralston Saul on how cramming northerners’ needs into a southern model just isn’t working; and books and pundits tackle the Plains of Abraham, but do they go far enough? The Observer profiles Michael Ignatieff: Prime Minister in waiting?

A panel on Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy by Alex S. Jones. How to save the news: William Baker on the case for public funding of journalism and news outlets. Nonprofit journalism comes at a cost: Jack Shafer on the downside of nonprofit news organizations like MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, and the Washington Independent. If newspapers are dying then it's their own fault; the internet merely exposes newsprint's failure to deliver what readers want. From Vanity Fair, Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism — is he also ignoring his industry’s biggest problem? Two cheers for Andrew Breitbart: Sometimes it takes an outsider to show the press corps the way. The death of the media mogul: There may be someone out there who will become the 21st-century equivalent of Bertelsmann's Reinhard Mohn — but we shall not see his like again. Censored: The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2008 and 2009. With the publication of this piece, Kevin Gosa enters the ranks of the many great (imaginary) journalists who shook off naysayers’ shackles and found a way — found the story. Between recklessness and bravery in their hunt for the story: A review of Unembedded: Two Decades of Maverick War Reporting by Scott Taylor and Murder Without Borders: Dying for the Story in the World’s Most Dangerous Places by Terry Gould. The showbiz writer who went to war: Jane Bussmann used to pen facile interviews with Hollywood starlets, then she decided to cover genocide in Africa — why?