Miskatonic University is a decision available to 
New England. The decision creates the Miskatonic University in Pittsfield province in Massachusetts, which in turn is renamed to Arkham, and gives New England a +10% research modifier, and an added local consciousness of -0.01%. This decision is a reference to the fictional university and town which was used as a setting for many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, containing many items of the occult (Which is why research goes up, but consciousness, in reference to many of Lovecraft's stories, goes up.). It is considered an easter egg.
The requirement is that New England has invented Romanticist Litterature, which is the literary period of H.P. Lovecraft.