As president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger has quietly - and sometimes not so quietly - taken on a broader role as ambassador.

B. Joseph White seemed like a perfect fit when he was named president of the University of Illinois in 2004.

Colleges and universities became Exhibit A last week of how quickly the credit crisis is extending beyond Wall Street.

Robert Steven Kaplan may be the equivalent of a fill-in head coach who takes his team to the Super Bowl and wins.

The disclosure this week of a March, 2003 memo from Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo, asserting that laws banning torture were trumped by the president’s authority as commander-in-chief in a time of war, appears to offer a direct line to subsequent abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

Advice to anyone who wants to become a successful (and rich) men’s college basketball coach: Connect to Kansas.

For the second time in a little more than two years, Harvard University has named a new person to oversee its mammoth endowment fund.

G. Wayne Clough, the president of Georgia Tech, will become head of the Smithsonian Institution July 1, more than a year after the previous chief, Lawrence Small, resigned over accountability issues.

“This is a treasure of our country, and it needs to move forward,” Clough, 66, said Saturday.

It’s a new beginning for Oral Roberts University.

Monday, the school’s board of regents accepted a donation of $62 million from businessman Mart Green and his family, and agreed in principle to make sweeping changes in how the Tulsa university is run.

“We are humbled and thankful for the board’s trust in this plan and their faith in us,” Green said in a statement.

At Oral Roberts University last week, two more regents resigned, a whistle-blowing professor was reinstated and a judge issued a rare gag order in a civil lawsuit.

That was just preamble for this week and what could be one of the most important regents meetings in the Tulsa school’s history.

Beginning tomorrow, regents will evaluate “strategic opportunities,” the university says in a release. Former president Richard Roberts, son of the university’s namesake, resigned last year following allegations of mismanagement.

Ohio State plays Louisiana State for the college football national championship tonight.

What better time to look at the powerful connections of the two people who head the schools?

E. Gordon Gee is the president of Ohio State University and Sean O’Keefe is the chancellor of Louisiana State University. Gee has held several university presidencies, including Brown and Vanderbilt, and is in his second stint at Ohio State. O’Keefe is a former Administrator of NASA and Secretary of the Navy.

The shakeup at Oral Roberts University continues.

Last week, evangelist Creflo Dollar resigned from the board of regents and Benny Hinn lost his voting status.
This week, the university said that Louisiana televangelist Jesse Duplantis also resigned from the board, the Tulsa World reports.

America’s fixation on celebrity has worked its way into academia.

While adding thousands of college records to the Muckety database recently, we couldn’t help but notice several star-studded boards.

One of the most blinding is at Vassar, where trustees include Meryl Streep and Lisa Kudrow, who are both alumnae and (despite Phoebe’s ditziness) brainiacs. The University of Southern California boasts Stephen Spielberg; Bennett College for Women has poet and Oprah pal Maya Angelou; and Gallaudet University has actress Marlee Matlin.