A sad day for journalism when Glamour scoops US News & World Report on the upper education beat, but it happened this month when the former jumped on the "Every crowd around the pretty lady presidents!" bandwagon first. Yesterday's release of US News' "America's Best Leaders"  echoes Glamour's 2007 "Women of the Year" featuring Prezettes Ruth Simmons (Brown) and Shirley Tilghman (Princeton). In USN Simmons and Tilghman sit among notable peoples like Nancy Pelosi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicholas Kristof and Yo-Yo Ma.

Conspicuously missing from the list are fellow "Women of the Year" Drew Gilpin Faust (president, Harvard) and Amy Gutmann (Fairy Jihad-Mother, Penn), whose mere existence as double-X-chromosomed heads of Ivies is usually reason enough to split Simmons' and Tilghman's glory four ways.

We're already salivating for the December issue of Glamour magazine, featuring all four female Ivy League presidents as 2007 Women of the Year.

Prince and DP reports confirm that The Prezettes -- Princeton's Shirley Tilghman, Brown's Ruth Simmons, Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust, and Penn's Halloween- and maybe-Jihad-loving Amy Gutmann -- will appear in glossy photos alongside the likes of Jennifer Garner, Elizabeth Edwards, and child actress Abigail Breslin. Gutmann has already begun denying the fact that she's totally pumped to get airbrushed:

Though Gutmann doesn't "have much time to read magazines like Glamour," she said she is pleased that the magazine will use the Fund to raise money for charities that support causes for women.

Whatevs, Amy, we know you're excited to get a professional blow-out and glossy photos, and for little girls the world around to cut out your picture and decorate their notebooks with it. For those who can't wait to see if the Gutbomb reprises her strapless red Homecoming dress, fear not! IvyGate will be there for you on November 13 when Women of the Year hits newsstands.

The Ivy League's resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom Cornel West returns to hipster-hop with the release of his second rap album, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, featuring the likes of Prince, Talib Kweli, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Rhymefest, and the late Gerald Levert.  Which is impressive and all, but seriously, where's Kanye?  This is totally up his alley.  They even have the same last name!

Professor West's first album, 2001's Sketches of my Culture, predicated the professor's public spat with Harvard ex-prez Larry Summers and the professor's subsequent break from the university in favor of Princeton.  Though his new boss, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, has yet to comment on Never Forget, West thinks she'll be hipper to the project than Summers was.  In a Boston Globe article West speculates,

"I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers," he says. "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction."

A vocal opponent of misogyny and hedonism in contemporary hip-hop, West portrays his music as a "danceable education" reaching towards the genre's socially progressive roots.  "We'll go from the bling-bling to Let Freedom Ring" Brother West raps in "Bushonomics," before giving a shout-out to militant beat poet Gil Scott-Heron.  The track features New York MC and black progressive Talib Kweli denouncing "voter registration with no scope of education," "whore-mongerers," and "war-mongerers" alike.  Listen to it, and Prince collaboration "Dear Mr. Man," below. Bushonomics Cornel West and Talib Kweli Dear Mr. Man Cornel West and Prince --MAUREEN O'CONNOR