Recent News

It was page-one news across California when a confidential report on UC Berkeley admissions, prepared for UC Regent John Moores, concluded that the university had admitted nearly 400 students with subpar SAT scores. Though the report included no racial data, a Chronicle article posed the question -- was the university doing an end-run around Proposition 209 and engaging in affirmative action? Confronted with this seeming bombshell, as well as a similar story about UCLA admissions, the new president of…

The war in Iraq was initially billed as a cakewalk, the aftermath a triumphal celebration, but the Bush administration badly underestimated the difficulties of both war and peace. From Baghdad to Basra, in the past week Iraq's cities have less resembled Paris in 1944 than mayhem, "Lord of the Flies" style. While Iraq smolders, a retired three-star general and defense contractor named Jay Garner waits at his seaside villa in Kuwait City; on Tuesday he zipped across the…