Over the past two decades, there have been 14 fatal multiple shooting incidents on college campuses nationwide, of which three assaults were committed by campus outsiders (including one by a visiting parent at Shepherd University and another allegedly by a group of gunmen last month at the University of Central Arkansas). Moreover, eight of the…

This article reports on firebomb attacks at the homes of two animal researchers which have provoked anger and unease. The firebomb attacks, which set the home of a neuroscientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz aflame and destroyed a car parked in the driveway of another university researcher's home, have left researchers and…

The author of this article, a sociologist who has studied the social roots of school shootings, describes what scholars of adolescent violence have learned from research about the causes of rampage shootings. Among her observations: (1) rampage school shootings are never spontaneous; (2) school shooters broadcast their intentions; (3) school…

As a professor of law and higher education, Lake compares the April 2007 shootings to those at Kent State nearly 40 years earlier. The mishandling of the Kent State crisis brought heavy criticism of higher education, and a culture of rules, procedures, and policies arose to replace old patterns of using force and violence to manage conflicts. …

This article reports how researchers at Virginia Tech, working in a variety of disciplines, are studying the long-term effects of the campus killings 10 months ago. After the killings, administrators at Virginia Tech realized that their normal institutional-review process for research proposals was not sufficient to deal with the likely onslaught…

With more than a dozen American universities opening branches and campuses on the Persian Gulf, the oil-rich emirates of the Arabian peninsula are threatening to dethrone cities like Cairo, Baghdad, and Beirut as the academic centers of the Middle East. Wealthy, safe, and relatively stable, these emirates are vying to become the new intellectual…

In this article, the author relates the incident that happened at the University of Texas to the tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech. On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman ascended the University of Texas Tower, in Austin, and in 96 minutes fired 150 high-powered rounds of ammunition down upon an unsuspecting university family. The…

Cho Seung-Hui was the 23-year-old English major who calmly and methodically gunned down 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech last week before killing himself, leaving the campus and the country stunned and sorrowful. Along with the grief have come questions about what, if anything, could have been done to prevent Cho's rampage. Some…

Teachers are all, in varying degrees, personally vulnerable for three reasons: (1) it is their job to demand difficult tasks of people and judge the results in ways that can have consequences for their future; (2) they cannot pursue disciplinary action within a college unless they are willing to accept the possibility of personal retaliation by…

Virginia Tech has decided to count gifts to a memorial fund for victims of the April 16 shootings toward its goal of raising $1-billion in a capital campaign. Higher-education fund-raising experts agree that counting the memorial-fund contributions toward the total does not break common donation-reporting guidelines. Many big college fund-raising…

At even the best-prepared universities, there is no playbook for handling the crush of tough decisions that comes after a mass shooting rocks an otherwise quiet campus. While colleges and universities have always had tragedies, recent occurences like the shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech have fundamentally changed the way…

This article argues that colleges should not dismiss troubled students first and ask questions later. There are better ways to prevent campus violence than trying to predict students' future behavior, including mental-health support and thoughtful, responsible risk assessment. While no panacea exists, there are helpful, proven strategies: (1)…

Richard Wright's literary career begins with a lynching and ends with a serial murderer. "Big Boy Leaves Home," the 1936 story that leads off Wright's first book, "Uncle Tom's Children" (1938), renders the vicious mob-execution of a young black man falsely accused of rape. "A Father's Law," Wright's last novel, left unfinished at his unexpected…

This article reports that a Virginia Tech professor whose wife was among 32 people killed by a student gunman last year will become director of the university's new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. Jerzy Nowak will give up his job as chairman of Tech's horticulture department to take the new post on July 1. His wife, Jocelyne…

Even with President Barack Obama's promises to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and withdraw troops from Iraq, the subject of torture keeps making the news. With all that detainees have had to endure during their incarcerations--the recent memos detail stress positions, cramped confinement, and waterboarding, among other tactics--perhaps…