Singer ’97 discusses the military’s robotics revolution

On the battlefield, robots can save lives by hunting for explosives or supporting troops from the air. And, as one unit in Iraq wrote in a letter of gratitude addressed to the manufacturer of a robot destroyed on a bomb-finding mission, “when a robot dies, you don’t have to write a letter to his mother.”

But security analyst P.W. Singer ’97 also sees practical and ethical pitfalls in the military’s use of robotic technology. In a Feb. 17 lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School, the author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Conflict said that superior technology does not guarantee success (witness the low-tech improvised explosives planted by insurgents in Iraq). Additionally, the chance to outsource fighting to machines may lower the barriers to starting a war.

By increasing the distance between a soldier and his mission, robots are changing the way soldiers view warfare. “This is how one drone pilot described taking out troops from afar: ‘It’s like a video game,’” Singer said. “Now, as anyone who’s played the game Grand Theft Auto knows, there are things that we do in the video world — in the virtual world — that we might not do in the real world.”

The U.S. military’s use of robots in Iraq is widespread, Singer said — some 7,000 drones in the air and another 12,000 on the ground — and 43 other nations also are developing robots for combat. Non-state actors like Hezbollah have gained access to the technology as well.

“Terminator”-style humanoid infantrymen may not be as far-fetched as one would imagine. Scientists who have worked with robotics estimate they could be deployed by 2020. That would be a remarkable achievement, Singer admits, but it is an advance driven largely by “our inability to get beyond our need to destroy each other.” “So the question is this,” Singer said. “Is it us, or is it our machines that are wired for war?”

The Footnotes at 50

The Footnotes, an all-male Princeton a cappella ensemble, celebrated 50 years of making music with a Feb. 21 anniversary concert at Richardson Auditorium that featured special guests from Tufts University — an all-female group known as the Jackson Jills — and an alumni sing-along steeped in tradition.

Current Footnote Kevin Moch ’10 said the undergraduate groups performed the bulk of the show, and the “Footnotes Over Fifty,” a collection of alumni organized by music director John Preston ’11 and George Bassett ’67, added a few songs in the second half of the concert. “They were a huge hit,” Moch told PAW.

At the end of the evening, the Footnotes followed tradition and finished the performance with their signature song, “All I Ask For is You,” a Footnotes original. More than 40 alumni in attendance to joined the undergraduates on stage, and to the delight of students and alumni alike, Michael Greenstein ’65 took the solo.

Greenstein, a footnote among Footnotes, composed and arranged “All I Ask For is You.”

Pyne Prize winners, by the numbers

When sociology majors Alex Barnard ’09 and Andy Chen ’09 were named co-recipients of the Pyne Honor Prize Feb. 21, it was the first time in recent memory that both winners of the University’s top general prize for undergraduates came from the same department.

Fifteen different departments have produced Pyne Prize winners in the last 15 years (28 seniors were honored in that span). The Woodrow Wilson School leads all concentrations with five recipients, followed by English (four) and molecular biology (three). Anthropology, history, and mechanical and aerospace engineering each had two recipients.

The Pyne Prize, established in 1921 and named for Moses Taylor Pyne, Class of 1877, recognizes excellent scholarship, strength of character, and effective leadership by Princeton seniors.

Former museum director recalls looting in Baghdad

When American tanks rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, their arrival signaled the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The city also entered a period of upheaval that put precious artifacts from Iraq’s National Museum at risk. More than 15,000 rare and ancient objects from Mesopotamian history were looted in less than a week, said Donny George Youkhanna, the former director general of the museum, in a lecture at McCormick Hall Feb. 18. Despite the dogged efforts of Youkhanna and others, fewer than 4,000 of the artifacts have been recovered.

The looters were Iraqis, Youkhanna said, and they fit into three categories. One group raided the administration area and took what they knew they could sell, such as computers and fax machines. Another group went into the galleries of the museums and stole large, prominent artifacts. And a third group, which Youkhanna believes had inside knowledge of the museum, went to store rooms and stole precious items from the museum’s collection — “light things, small things, but very precious and valuable things.”

In the months and years that followed, some items were returned by Iraqis, and others were discovered by customs agents or in antiquities auctions outside the country. With help from international experts, the museum retrofitted its facilities to discourage future looting. “We had to heighten the fences to three meters, and [add] turning pikes on top,” Youkhanna said, showing a slide of the new fence. “To tell you the truth, I do not like it. It looks like a prison. But this is what we had to do.”

Youkhanna and his family received death threats and eventually fled Iraq. He was appointed as a visiting professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Tiger of the Week: Anthony Roth Costanzo ’04

The Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions may be “too venerable to be called ‘Metropolitan Idol,’” The New York Times wrote Feb. 23, but the stakes are just as high: Winning the competition can launch a young performer’s career in the same way that a win on American Idol can propel a budding pop singer to the top 40. That’s great news for Anthony Roth Costanzo ’04, one of four winners at this year’s auditions, held Feb. 22.

Costanzo, described by the Times as “a slender countertenor with heavyweight vocal cords,” performed on Broadway before arrived at Princeton. He explored his operatic talents in his senior thesis, creating, producing, and starring in a full-scale production, “The Double Life of Zeferino.” After college, he earned a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Nearly 1,800 entrants sang in this year’s National Council Auditions. Eight finalists reached the Met stage in New York. “This competition is of such importance, such magnitude, that it’s hard to fully absorb,” Costanzo told the Times before his Feb. 22 performance. “For me, it is best to go out there with a mind-set that I am simply performing, not competing.”

Mission accomplished. In addition to winning the National Council Auditions, Costanzo won first place at the National Opera Association’s vocal competition, held in Washington, D.C., in January. Later this year, he is slated to perform with the Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program, the Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York, and the New York Philharmonic in Manhattan.

(Photo courtesy the National Opera Association)

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‘Time’ links Ben Folds to Princeton’s Nassoons

When acclaimed singer-songwriter Ben Folds asks you to perform “Girl from Ipanema,” off the cusp, in front of a full house at Princeton’s McCarter Theater, you do it. So learned the Nassoons, Princeton’s oldest all-male a cappella group, while opening for Folds at his Feb. 11 concert.

The Nassoons first linked up with Folds in early December after Princeton’s Jonathan Schwartz ’10’s a cappella arrangement of Folds’ song “Time” won the group the chance to record on Folds’ upcoming a cappella album. Folds packed a skeleton crew and his own equipment into the Mathey College common room, where he recorded with the Nassoons for several hours.

“He was extraordinarily down to earth, and we had a blast with him,” said senior Nassoons member Brian Gurewitz. Before Folds left, the Nassoons joined him for a casual sing-a-long at the piano, where he took requests for their favorites of his songs.

The group gathered for extra rehearsals in the weeks leading up to Folds’ concert in Princeton, ensuring that their voices would be in good shape when they opened the show with Schwartz’s arrangement of “Time.” After the Nassoons finished their performance, the headliner asked them to sing one more song. He’d enjoyed their version of “Girl from Ipanema” during the recording session in December.

“We weren’t as prepared for that, but there certainly was a lot to be said for the spontaneity of the moment,” Gurewitz said.

The Nassoons chatted with Folds onstage and off, apparently not too fazed by his stardom. “Meeting Ben wasn’t unlike meeting a new friendly roommate,” Gurewitz said, “but it only took a short time to realize that despite his laid-back demeanor, he exudes talent. Ben seems genuinely interested in both the culture and style of collegiate a cappella music. I have a feeling he would have loved being in the Nassoons in college!” By Sarah Harrison ’09

Bonus: Watch the Nassoons perform Ben Folds’ “Time” in a fall 2008 music video.

Carril gets top billing on Jadwin floor

On Feb. 21, Princeton will honor former men’s basketball coach Pete Carril (at right, on PAW’s April 3, 1996, cover) by renaming the game court at Jadwin Gym “Carril Court.” Carril coached the Tigers for 29 seasons, winning 13 Ivy League titles and becoming one of the most beloved figures in Princeton sports history. His career concluded in 1995-96, the year that Princeton topped Penn in a one-game Ivy playoff and shocked UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

By the time that ’96 Princeton squad beat the defending-champion Bruins, Carril had “become known as the gruff Professor Almost,” in the words of Alexander Wolff ’79. His teams had suffered postseason near-misses against Georgetown, Arkansas, and Villanova. But, as Wolff noted in a 1996 PAW story, that view overlooked Princeton’s 1975 NIT Championship as well as regular-season defeats of highly ranked opponents: North Carolina (in 1971), Florida State (in ’72), Alabama (in ’75), and Notre Dame (in ’77). Carril’s Tigers also knocked Oklahoma State out of the NCAA Tournament’s first round in 1983.

Carril was inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997, and his legacy continues through the work of protégés coaching in college and the pros, including 10 alumni (see below).

Not far from the tree

Ten Princeton alumni who played for Pete Carril currently coach professional or Division-I college teams. They are (top row, left to right) David Blatt ’81, head coach, Dynamo Moscow and the Russian national team; Mike Brennan ’94, assistant coach, American University; Brian Earl ’99, assistant coach, Princeton; Mitch Henderson ’98, assistant coach, Northwestern University; Armond Hill ’85, assistant coach, Boston Celtics; (bottom row, left to right) Sydney Johnson ’97, head coach, Princeton; Chris Mooney ’94, head coach, University of Richmond; Craig Robinson ’83, head coach, Oregon State University; Joe Scott ’87, head coach, Denver University; and John Thompson III ’88, head coach, Georgetown University.

Carril’s basketball connections also include Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody, a longtime assistant who succeeded Carril at Princeton; Sacramento Kings general manager Geoff Petrie ’70; Mercer County (N.J.) Community College head coach Howard Levy ’85; and Gary Walters ’67, the Princeton director of athletics, who played for Carril at Reading (Pa.) High School and later assisted him on the sidelines.

Tigers of the Week: Janet Morgan Riggs *82 and Stephen J. Friedman ’59

This month, Janet Morgan Riggs *82 and Stephen J. Friedman ’59 added their names to the list of Princeton alumni serving as college presidents — a list that includes S. Georgia Nugent ’73 (Kenyon College), Anthony Marx *80 (Amherst College), Alice P. Gast *84 (Lehigh University), and at least a half-dozen others.

Riggs, who earned her Ph.D. in social psychology at Princeton, took charge of her undergraduate alma mater, Gettysburg College, Feb. 6. She had been a professor and administrator at Gettysburg for 27 years.

Friedman, a Woodrow Wilson School major and Harvard Law graduate, was appointed president of Pace University Feb. 12. He had been dean of the law school at Pace for three years after a distinguished career in government and corporate law.

Both new presidents took office with a bit of experience — Riggs had been interim president for nearly a year, Friedman for 18 months. The Gettysburg search committee met with a national pool of candidates but found its top choice right down the hall. Said committee chairman Bob Duelks: “At every turn Janet Riggs remained in the top tier. She set herself apart with her passion, commitment, and vision for her alma mater.”

(Photos courtesy Gettysburg College and Pace University)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Film issues a call for action against human trafficking

In the call and response chants that rose up among slaves in the United States, the call signified a need and the response meant that “I hear you and I’m going to rescue you.” Musician and activist Justin Dillon uses this musical concept in his debut documentary film, Call+Response, to address the international problem of human trafficking and promote the modern abolitionist movement.

Dillon’s documentary was screened in McCosh 50 Feb. 10, followed by a panel discussion with Professor Cornel West *80, author and journalist Benjamin Skinner, and activist Bridgit Antoinette Evans.

Dillon’s film focuses on the sexual enslavement of young girls in Cambodia, Thailand, India, and the United States, and he includes several familiar faces who have spoken out against this modern form of slavery (among them musicians Moby, Talib Kweli, and Natasha Bedingfield; actresses Ashley Judd and Julia Ormond; journalist Nicholas Kristof; and former ambassador John Miller). With more than 17,000 people trafficked into the United States every year, the problem hits home, advocate Kathy Maskell of the organization Love146 says in the film.

In the discussion that followed the screening, participants spoke about creating sustainable action for the cause. “You have to play to your core competencies,” Skinner explained, highlighting examples of how plastic surgeons, musicians, and movie directors all have given differently to the cause.

In a call to Princeton students to mobilize behind today’s abolitionist movement, Evans explained that “it’s going to require students to start talking amongst themselves. … Students are a core energy in any major social movement, but they have to be organized.”

And, searching for the response, West pointed to the crowded lecture hall, two-and-a-half hours deep into the presentation. Said West: “For Princeton students to stay this long when they’re all so busy is already a sign that they’re hungry and thirsty.” By Sarah Harrison ’09

[Ed. note: Story updated Feb. 13]

Michelle Obama ’85 joins Nassau Inn wall of fame

Valerie Smith, left, the chairwoman of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies, and sociology department chairman Robert Wuthnow unveil a portrait of Michelle Obama ’85 in the Nassau Inn’s Yankee Doodle Tap Room Feb. 4. The Tap Room wall, an unofficial hall of fame for Princeton alumni, has honored distinguished graduates for more than a half-century.

Obama, whose photo hangs between images of former Secretary of State James A. Baker ’52 and astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad ’53, majored in sociology at Princeton before attending Harvard Law and working as a corporate lawyer and hospital administrator. No word yet on when the first lady plans to autograph the portrait (another Tap Room tradition). Her class will celebrate its 25th reunion in 2010.

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Cover-worthy: Answers to the Feb. 4 Weekly Blog quiz

This 1987 alumna was a P-rade sensation in 1986, rising above the Class of 1946 contingent in a Statue of Liberty costume. (It wasn’t the first or last time that her photo was featured on the cover of a magazine.) Answer: Brooke Shields

PAW’s Oct. 21, 1958, cover shows President Robert Goheen ’40 *48 waiting to begin an interview with this famous CBS News reporter. The cover line reads, simply, “Hello, Ed.” Answer: Edward R. Murrow

This 1996 cover subject - a Yale Law graduate - was on hand to help Princeton celebrate its 250th anniversary. He returned in 2006 to speak at Class Day. Answer: President Bill Clinton

Tiger of the Week: Meg Whitman ’77

On Princeton’s campus, Meg Whitman ’77 is widely known as a generous donor and the namesake of Whitman College, one of Princeton’s four-year residential colleges, which opened its doors in the fall of 2007. But during last year’s presidential primaries, the then-CEO of eBay also became known for raising funds, taking a prominent role in the campaign of friend and former colleague Mitt Romney. Apparently, that was just the beginning of Whitman’s life in politics. Earlier this week, she announced she is exploring a bid for the Republican nomination in California’s 2010 gubernatorial race.

“Meg 2010 - A New California” appears to be Whitman’s new slogan (or at least that’s the banner on her campaign Web site), and her early priorities include restoring economic prosperity and educational excellence. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published Feb. 11, the candidate said her corporate background would be an asset during tough economic times. Said Whitman: “I think maybe it is about time for a governor who has created jobs, who’s managed a budget, who’s led and inspired large organizations, who listens well, and who can drive an agenda.”

(Photo: Office of Communications, Princeton University)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Princeton football draws a dozen on ‘signing day’

Since Ivy League colleges do not award athletic scholarships, recruits for Princeton’s football team are not asked to sign the NCAA’s letter of intent. But even without the paperwork, several Princeton-bound players announced their intentions on “signing day,” Feb. 4. The early indicators show a geographically diverse recruiting class for coach Roger Hughes’ squad: The first 12 incoming Tigers hail from 10 different states.

Stuart Ahlum, quarterback, Myers Park H.S., N.C. [Charlotte Observer]

Andrew Bierschenk, kicker, Oaks Christian H.S., Calif. [Ventura County Star]

Cover-worthy: A Weekly Blog quiz

Do any of these PAW covers look familiar? Even if they don't, you might be able to identify the missing subjects from the clues that accompany them. Take our Weekly Blog quiz and send your answers to btomlins@princeton.edu. If you identify the three missing faces correctly, you could win a vintage PAW poster. Winners will be chosen randomly from the correct submissions.

This 1987 alumna was a P-rade sensation in 1986, rising above the Class of 1946 contingent in a Statue of Liberty costume. (It wasn't the first or last time that her photo was featured on the cover of a magazine.)

PAW's Oct. 21, 1958, cover shows President Robert Goheen ’40 *48 waiting to begin an interview with this famous CBS News reporter. The cover line reads, simply, "Hello, Ed."

This 1996 cover subject -- a Yale Law graduate -- was on hand to help Princeton celebrate its 250th anniversary. He returned in 2006 to speak at Class Day.

Names in the News

Princeton donors Peter Lewis ’55, Gerhard Andlinger ’52, and Dennis Keller ’63 are among this year's "Slate 60," a list of the top charitable contributors in America. [Slate]

Assistant coach Armond Hill ’85 helps to keep the ball moving on offense for the Boston Celtics. [Worcester Telegram & Gazette]

Nobel laureate Gary Becker ’51 is not convinced that the economic stimulus packs enough punch. [CBS News]

San Diego Padres pitcher Chris Young ’02 wins the team's Chariman's Award for his contributions to the local community. [San Diego Union-Tribune]

Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 weighs in on the ideological balance on the Supreme Court. [The New York Times]

Mielke ’07's Olympic bid falls short

Alumnus Matt Mielke ’07's quest for a spot on the 2010 U.S. Olympic Curling Team ended Feb. 1 in the challenge round of the U.S. Nationals, held in Mielke's home state of North Dakota. Mielke's team, captained by Matt Hames, won three of nine matches in round-robin play, finishing tied for seventh in a 10-team field. The top four teams moved on to the U.S. Olympic Trials, which will be held Feb. 21-28 in Bloomfield, Colo.

Tiger of the Week: Yasser El Halaby ’06

As a collegiate squash player, Yasser El Halaby ’06 achieved unparalleled success. He won four individual national titles in four tries and rarely lost a match in team play, helping Princeton win two Ivy League titles and reach the College Squash Association finals twice. But when El Halaby continued his career after college, professional squash promised new challenges. Many of the world's best players are El Halaby's age, and they've faced pros regularly since they were teenagers.

El Halaby has held his own, climbing as high as No. 40 in the world rankings (he's currently 51st), and he had one of his best tournaments to date at last week's JP Morgan Tournament of Champions, held in a glass court at Grand Central Station in New York. El Halaby was one of eight players to reach the main draw through a qualifier. In the round of 32, he won a tight 3-2 match over Scotsman John White, once the world's No. 1 pro. El Halaby lost his next match, 3-0 to James Willstrop (No. 5 in the world), despite having what the tournament Web site called a "roaring fan contingent" that included Princeton alumni.

The crowd support should come as no surprise to a player who drew standing-room-only audiences at the Jadwin Gym courts. As teammate Hugh Meighen ’05 told PAW in 2005, "A lot of people don't know squash, but they know Yasser."

(Photo: Beverly Schaefer)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW's Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.