Shaw University

The official name has been the School of Theology at Claremont since the seminary moved to that city nearly 40 year ago. But many people often called it the Claremont School of Theology. So be it. Administrators and board members of the 350-student seminary announced this week that they have formally changed the name to Claremont School of Theology. "There are lots of schools of theology and there is only one Claremont," said President Robert Edgar.

The first scientific survey of mosques has found that organized Islam in the United States and Canada, although growing rapidly, is no larger than a small Christian denomination of about 500,000 adherents, a finding which may sharply lower many previous estimates of the total Muslim population.

"Real Life Rock, Top Ten." I read it in the Village Voice last January, compiled by the music critic Greil Marcus--a list of heterogeneous items linked by their energy and their iconoclasm, the characteristics of rock 'n' roll. And No.

You pretty much know where Sheri Ross stands on feminist issues by the sign on her office bulletin board that reads: "Sure God created Man before Woman. . . . but then you always make a rough draft before The Final Masterpiece." And, as if to back up the boast, underneath the sign are five blue and gold patches, representing the El Toro High School girls' swimming teams (1979, '80, '81, '82, '84) that Ross coached to Sea View League Championships--a record that any male coach might envy.

There is a saying at Los Angeles City Hall: It takes a year just to find the bathroom and four years to become a real player on the City Council. Mike Hernandez, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters have located the restrooms, all right. But less than two years into their terms, they have earned widely mixed marks as they try to complete the second part of the equation.

CURRENT INTEREST FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Friedman spent 10 years living in the Middle East as a New York Times correspondent and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" goes beyond the facts of tribal conflict to reveal with fresh horror how daily chaos and terror make possible a question like "Would you like to eat now or wait for the cease-fire?"

Wearing white hard hats, 17 black youngsters from California listened in respectful silence as an African American museum curator led his first tour of a converted Woolworth's store that was a key battleground in the civil rights revolution 44 years ago. "This museum will show," said Robert L. Haynes, motioning toward the building's unfinished shell, "what it was like to have your existence not valued, to have your life considered meaningless. To be invisible."

The brawny man in the Muslim skullcap gestured toward a brick apartment building across the street from where he was standing guard at a shelter for homeless families. "See that window over there?" said the man, Abdul-Hakim, pointing to an upper floor. "The FBI watches me from that window." The FBI will not comment.

Jordan J. Hayles, valedictorian of her senior class this year at Murphy High School in Mobile, Ala., had her pick of some of the nation's most esteemed colleges. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT and Stanford all accepted her. So why did Hayles recently decide on Emory University in Atlanta, a highly regarded institution but more often a place students choose when they can't get into an Ivy League school?

As Republicans handed their party nomination to Bob Dole Wednesday night, their formula for snaring the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election is based on a combination of hope in the future and faith in the past. Looking ahead, GOP strategists are counting on the boomlet detected by some polls this week to bloom into a full-fledged trend by early September.