LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

What do a Nigerian playwright, a Nixon-era conservative and a black history scholar from Harvard have in common?

Not much, really, but that's kind of the point of UNLV's Black Mountain Institute, a new think tank devoted to bringing unlike-minded individuals to campus to explore global issues. Institute director Carol Harter said one of her dreams is to get a Palestinian and an Israeli author on campus at the same time.

Harter took over the institute, long a pet project, after stepping down as president of the university June 30. She has raised at least $780,000 in pledges for the institute to be paid out over the next six years. Approved by university regents this past spring, the institute's first public event was a fundraiser with award-winning author Toni Morrison.

On Sept. 13 the institute will kick off its first academic enterprise with Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. An exile and outspoken critic of his home country of Nigeria, Soyinka will share from his newly published memoir, "You Must Set Force at Dawn," at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History on the UNLV campus. The 6 p.m. reading is free and open to the public.

Next up on Nov. 1 is John Dean, former White House lawyer to President Richard Nixon who later became one of the prosecution's chief witnesses in the Watergate cover-up. Dean's most recent books include "Conservatives Without Conscience" and "Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."

Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University, will round out the fall lecture schedule Nov. 20.

The institute's goal is to bring artists and authors to the university to encourage dialogue on major issues.

UNLV's Lied Library Special Collections recently made public taped and filmed interviews of Nevada women active in 1970s anti-poverty and women's rights issues.

The collection, preserved on CDs from the originals and indexed by graduate students working for the university's Women's Research Institute of Nevada, provides rare documentation of women's lives, work and politics during that era, professor Joanne Goodwin said. It includes interviews with Nancy Gomes, Mary Gojack, Maya Miller, Bernice Moten and Harriet Trudell.

The interviews were conducted for three films by Los Angeles documentary filmmaker and author Mollie Gregory.

UNLV is No. 1.

At least in the number of students who chose to take public service jobs to earn their work study money, according to Washington Monthly's best college list. Unlike U.S. News & World Report, which judges institutions based on things like class size and alumni giving, this small magazine evaluates universities not on "what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country."

The study incorporated such things as the number of alumni who enlist in military service and the Peace Corps, as well as how well a university did in helping low-income students earn degrees.

Overall, Washington Monthly ranked UNLV No. 164 in the country . That's roughly the same as U.S. News & World Report, which placed UNLV in the fourth, unranked tier.

But UNR, which U.S. News & World Report placed in its third tier above UNLV, came in as No. 234 in Washington Monthly's book.