NEW ORLEANS
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, professors and students from the city’s universities took academic refuge in other schools — some as far away as the University of Haifa in Israel.
Now, more than a month after the storm, New Orleans’ universities — including Tulane, Loyola, the University of New Orleans and Xavier — are putting together ambitious plans to reopen by January.
Officials are patching up battered campuses, finding housing for employees whose homes were destroyed, gauging how many students will return and persuading top faculty not to jump ship.
“There might be some people who prefer not to go back to the city, especially if they’ve lost their houses, but for the faculty who have invested a lot in Loyola, they won’t be inclined to hunt for something else,” said Bernard Cook, a history professor at the university.
Cook, who has a visiting assistant professorship at Georgetown until his school reopens, said he is splitting his time between the university and the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where he’s working on a book about diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Romania prior to World War I.
Many New Orleans faculty have taken temporary refuge at universities like Brown, Yale and Princeton, and are using their break from teaching as uninterrupted time to focus on research projects.
