Princeton Alumni Weekly | The Weekly Blog: Brett Tomlinson Archives

November 16, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Andrew Hurwitz '68

(Arizona Supreme Court)

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1972, Andrew Hurwitz ’68 learned about the federal court system as a law clerk in district court, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and ultimately, the Supreme Court, where he worked for Justice Potter Stewart. Now, the longtime litigator and current Arizona Supreme Court justice could be headed back to the federal courts. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama nominated Hurwitz to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco.

In a news release announcing the nomination, Obama expressed confidence in Hurwitz’s “ability, integrity, and independence” as a justice. “Justice Hurwitz has proven himself to be not only a first-rate legal mind but a faithful public servant,” he said.

While Hurwitz has worked primarily in law, he also has served in state government as chief of staff to two Arizona governors, Bruce Babbitt (from 1980-83) and Rose Mofford (1988). He was appointed to the state’s Supreme Court in 2003.

Hurwitz’s interest in the law was firmly in place by the time he left Princeton. He served as president of the Pre-Law Society and wrote his thesis about the jurisprudence of Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, with Professor Walter Murphy serving as his adviser.

In other judicial news, alumna Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ’87 was confirmed on an 89-6 vote in the U.S. Senate Nov. 15, paving the way for her to begin work as a district court judge in northern California. Gonzalez Rogers was highlighted as PAW’s Tiger of the Week on July 20, 2011.

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.

November 11, 2011

Sports shorts: More about Princeton women's basketball

After two straight Ivy League championships and the graduation of its leading scorer, the Princeton women’s basketball team returns a wealth of talent this year, as Kevin Whitaker ’13 reports in the Nov. 16 issue of PAW. Princeton holds a 22-game winning streak at home and will test that record Nov. 11 when it opens against St. Joseph’s, one of five teams that managed to beat the Tigers in 2010-11.

Below, PAW provides a brief look at the Tigers and the season ahead.

Quick facts

Devona Allgood '12 (Beverly Schaefer)

2010-11 record:

24-5, 13-1 Ivy League (champion)

2010-11 team leaders:

Scoring – Addie Micir ’11, 12.1 ppg

Rebounding – Devona Allgood ’12, 7.2 rpg

Assists – Micir, 3.2 apg

Steals – Lauren Polansky ’13, 1.8 spg

Field-goal percentage – Allgood, 53.4 percent

3-point field-goal percentage – Micir, 46.1 percent

Free-throw percentage – Micir, 81.3 percent

Key returners

Niveen Rasheed ’13, guard

Less than a year after tearing the ACL in her right knee, Rasheed said she is back at full strength and ready to pick up where she left off. Arguably the best player in the Ivy League, she averaged 16.4 points per game last season before the injury. The Tigers plan to use Rasheed more as a guard or wing player this year, to take advantage of her speed and quickness. That provides match-up problems for opponents: Rasheed, at 6 feet tall, can drive past most players of comparable height; but if teams try to counter with a smaller, faster guard, she can move to the post and find scoring opportunities there as well.

Continue reading Sports shorts: More about Princeton women's basketball…

November 11, 2011

Sports shorts: More about Princeton men's basketball

New men’s basketball coach Mitch Henderson ’98 and his Tigers open the season against Wagner at Jadwin Gym Nov. 12. Henderson, a former Princeton captain and Northwestern assistant under coach Bill Carmody, is profiled in the Nov. 16 issue of PAW.

Below, PAW provides a brief look at the Tigers and the season ahead.

Quick facts

Douglas Davis '12 (Beverly Schaefer)

2010-11 record:

25-7, 12-2 Ivy League (co-champion)

2010-11 team leaders:

Scoring – Kareem Maddox ’11, 13.8 ppg

Rebounding – Maddox, 7.0 rpg

Assists – Dan Mavraides ’11, 2.7 apg

Steals – Douglas Davis ’12, 1.2 spg

Field-goal percentage – Maddox, 56.8 percent

3-point field-goal percentage – Mavraides, 38.6 percent

Free-throw percentage – Mack Darrow ’14, 80 percent

Key returners

Douglas Davis ’12, guard

Davis celebrated his game-winning jump shot against Harvard by reclining on the floor and raising two fingers on each hand – one of the most indelible images from a memorable Ivy playoff game. If he hopes to raise those fingers again, to mark a second NCAA Tournament trip, Davis will have to continue in his role as a dynamic scorer and provide leadership as one of the Tigers’ senior captains. (Forward Patrick Saunders ’12 is the other.)

Continue reading Sports shorts: More about Princeton men's basketball …

November 9, 2011

'Oranje Boven': A rallying cry resurfaces at Jadwin

Visitors who come to Jadwin Gym for the women’s and men’s basketball season openers Nov. 11 and 12 may notice some new additions. Over the northwest entrance is a mantelpiece from the Osborn Clubhouse, the former athletics field house on Prospect Avenue that housed the Carl Fields Center in recent years and was demolished earlier this year.

On the northeast side is another relic from Osborn: a terra-cotta banner that reads “ORANJE BOVEN” – literally, “orange on top” or “orange above.”

W.R. Leigh's sketch of the Osborn Clubhouse trophy room, from the 1898 book Princeton Old and New: Recollections of Undergraduate Life.

The phrase is a traditional Dutch refrain that dates back to the 1670s, according to the late historian Henry Havard. When Princeton students took up orange and black as the school colors in the 1800s – as a reference to Nassau Hall, King William III, and the House of Orange-Nassau – they appropriated the slogan as well, using it as a rallying cry at sporting events. It earned a place of honor in the Osborn trophy room, built in the early 1890s, and became a popular toast at alumni banquets. According to The Daily Princetonian, there was even a song titled “Oranje Boven” in an early edition of the Carmina Princetonia. In 1935, when a group of alumni donated a portrait of William III, “Oranje Boven” served as the headline for PAW’s cover story.

“Oranje Boven” can still be heard at sporting events, when the Netherlands’ soccer team is on the pitch. But at Princeton, the words are mostly forgotten, relegated to a bygone era when gridiron heroes like Knowlton “Snake” Ames 1890 and Johnny Poe 1895 led the Tigers to the top of the college football world.

Read more: Historic building to be history (PAW, April 28, 2010)

Slide show: Farewell to the clubhouse (PAW, July 6, 2011)

November 9, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Palmer Heenan '43

Palmer Heenan '43 (Courtesy Sara Eaton Martin/GrossePointePatch)

Palmer Heenan ’43 turns 90 years old next month, but he has no plans to retire. The residents of Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., reinforced that choice on Tuesday, electing Heenan to his 15th two-year term as mayor of the Detroit suburb.

Heenan, who ran unopposed for the 13th consecutive time, told PAW on Monday that he’s having as much fun as ever in a job that offers no pay but plenty of satisfaction.

A lawyer by profession, Heenan first ran for office in his early 60s. He leans on conservative principles – and twice served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention – but in local politics, he says, partisanship takes a back seat to finding solutions to local issues.

Grosse Pointe Park has about 12,000 residents, and Heenan is happy to brag about the town, from its beautiful architecture and municipal services to its public ice rink. He admits that critics may view him as “old fashioned” or “dull,” but he’s quick to add that his town has the lowest average age among its neighboring communities – a sign that it has been a hospitable place for families with young children.

The last 28 years have not been all work and no play for Heenan. An avid golfer, the mayor won four club championships at the Country Club of Detroit in younger days, and he regularly shoots his age – or better – on the course.

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.

November 2, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Patrick Gerland *06

(Courtesy Patrick Gerland *06)

Earlier this week, according to United Nations demographers, the world’s population reached an estimated 7 billion people – a figure that drew significant attention from the media both as a current event and a milepost in the larger trend of global population growth.

Behind the scenes, Patrick Gerland *06 played a significant role in the work that led to the UN’s estimate. Gerland, a native of France, received his Ph.D. in population studies from Princeton before joining the demographic estimates and projections section of the UN Population Division.

Princeton has a long history in international demography, Gerland notes, including the influential work of Frank W. Notestein, who created the University’s Office of Population Research in the 1930s and later served as the founding director of the UN Population Division.

At the UN, Gerland specializes in demography for Africa and Asia, two regions in which population counts can be difficult to assess, due to incomplete birth and death records. “The information that exists is often very limited,” he explains. “You depend primarily on surveys and censuses to give you snapshots.” Demographers do their best to fill in the blanks and sort through contradictory information, using a “mixture of detective work and statistical modeling,” he says.

In addition to making current estimates, demographers explore “what if” scenarios, aiding other UN groups that explore policy issues in everything from energy use to education. But the field’s popular appeal seems to spike when national or global populations reach milestones.

“People are human,” Gerland says. “They like round numbers.”

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.

October 26, 2011

Tigers of the Week: Alex Gansa '84 and Howard Gordon '84

After graduating from Princeton, Alex Gansa ’84 and Howard Gordon ’84 went to Los Angeles together, looking for work as television writers. Twenty-seven years later, the frequent collaborators are back together as executive producers of the Showtime drama series Homeland – a spy thriller about a CIA agent trying to determine if a former American soldier and prisoner of war is working to aid foreign terrorists.

The show, which stars Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, was inspired by an Israeli series about prisoners of war. Homeland received promising ratings and positive reviews when it debuted in early October. Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-, calling it “the most serious yet entertaining, sly yet not ‘cool’ drama” of the fall season,” and TV Guide said the espionage-themed series may be TV’s “first post-post-9/11 show.”

Gordon, best known for his work as a writer and producer on 24 and The X-Files, said the show has received high marks from at least one intelligence insider. “I think we were expecting our CIA consultant to say our draft was horse[crap],” Gordon said in an interview with The Hill, “but she was surprised by how authentic it was.”

Gansa, who also wrote for 24 and produced seasons of Numb3rs and The X-Files, told The New York Times that the killing of Osama bin Laden may have opened new avenues for fiction about counterterrorism. “This is precisely the atmosphere in which the best spy shows are told,” he said. “The world has become more gray, and it’s harder to know who to trust. A spy show in which there are clear black hats and white hats is going to devolve quickly into being boring.”

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.

October 19, 2011

Tigers of the Week: Stephen Cassell '86, Adam Yarinsky 87, and Kim Yao 97

Stephen Cassell '86, Kim Yao *97, and Adam Yarinsky *87 (Photo: Lajos Geenen)

Working together as leaders of the New York-based firm Architecture Research Office (ARO), Stephen Cassell ’86, Adam Yarinsky *87, and Kim Yao *97 have developed a striking portfolio of public spaces, arts institutions, private residences, and university buildings – including the award-winning addition to Princeton’s School of Architecture. Earlier this year, ARO was selected to receive one of America’s most prestigious architecture prizes, the National Design Award for Architecture. The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will present the award Oct. 20.

According to the award citation, the firm has made its mark with proposals that address a broad range of challenges: “From a prototype for 1,000-square-foot low-income sustainable housing to a proposal to reinvent the role of ecology and infrastructure in New York, ARO uses design to unite the conceptual and the pragmatic within a strong, coherent vision.”

ARO earned acclaim for its contributions to an American Institute of Architects Latrobe Prize Fellowship project that examined the effects of rising sea levels on the harbor around New York City. The team’s designs were featured in a 2010 exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

VIDEO: Yarinsky explains ARO's work at a Museum of Modern Art open house.

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.

October 12, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Alice P. Gast *84

Alice P. Gast *84 is the president of Lehigh University and a science envoy for the U.S. Department of State. But this week, she made news for work related to her original expertise, as a chemical engineer.

Beginning in 2008, Gast chaired a panel of experts organized by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences to review evidence from the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others. In a report released in February, the committee found that while the FBI had linked the anthrax spores used in the attack to a U.S. Army laboratory, that link was “not as conclusive as stated.” Based on its investigation, the committee concluded that it was “not possible to reach a definitive conclusion” about the origins of the anthrax from scientific evidence alone.

Those findings did not attract a great deal of attention – The New York Times placed its story on page A14 – but a new study in the Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense has put Gast’s committee back in the spotlight. According to a paper by three research scientists, there are distinctive chemicals in the anthrax spores used by the attacker, and the presence of those chemicals refutes some of the findings that the FBI cited in closing the case.

This time, the Times story ran on the front page. (A joint investigation by PBS Frontline, McClatchy Newspapers, and ProPublica also examined the scientific angle.) Gast, quoted in the Times, said that the recent research paper “points out connections that deserve further consideration.”

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.

October 11, 2011

Alumni blogs: Remembering Steve Jobs

The following highlights are drawn from sites listed on our directory of alumni blogs. If you know of blogs by Princetonians that are not listed, please contact us.

Steve Jobs (Courtesy Matt Yohe/Wikipedia)

The death of Apple co-founder and technology giant Steve Jobs Oct. 5 sparked an outpouring of tributes and analysis. Princeton alumni were among the voices represented on several popular websites.

Julia Boorstin ’00 of CNBC’s Media Money examined Jobs’s wide-ranging influence on technology, from music and movies to television and advertising.

Huffington Post tech blogger Bianca Bosker ’08 memorialized Jobs as an inventor and artist, adding that he was “that rare figure who really did leave an imprint as enormous as his outsized reputation.”

On The Washington Post’s Achenblog, Joel Achenbach ’82 called Jobs the personification of the tech industry, with star power and the ability to reinvent himself. “Jobs always seemed to be the innovator, the rock-star genius revolutionary,” Achenbach said.

Moira Forbes ’01 of Forbes.com recalled a line from Jobs’s 2005 Stanford commencement speech, when he referred to death as “life’s change agent.” Jobs was able to find a novel way to view “a universal, yet deeply personal experience,” Forbes wrote.

Timothy B. Lee *10, author of the Disruptive Economics blog at Forbes.com, also drew on the Stanford commencement address in his spirited defense of “Jobsian Megalomania,” the message of never settling that Jobs promoted. “Jobs’s advice isn’t good advice for everyone,” Lee wrote, “but it’s a message that unusually-talented 22-year-olds ought to hear.”

October 5, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Peter Gott '57

(Courtesy United Features Syndicate)

In the last five years, Peter Gott ’57 has retired twice – first from his work as a general internist in 2006 and again late last month from his nationally syndicated medical advice column. Gott, better known as “Dr. Gott,” began writing for a local newspaper in 1967, and since launching his syndicated column in 1984, he’s dispensed a distinctive blend of home remedies and advice to readers of some 400 U.S. newspapers.

In that time, Gott drew a loyal following, as Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph editor Nick Pappas learned when he tried to bump the column in favor of Sudoku five years ago. Pappas wrote:

“[I] wasn’t prepared to engage Dr. Gott disciples about the value of a daily syndicated health column that at various times has advocated using Vicks VapoRub on toenail fungus, placing a bar of soap under the sheets to prevent leg cramps, or rubbing castor oil on sore joints.

“When one upset caller referred to me as a ‘whippersnapper,’ I knew I was in trouble.”

The Telegraph reversed its decision, giving readers five more years of ointment lore and other homespun advice. Pappas remarked that Dr. Gott fans were “the nicest, most polite group of disappointed readers” he’d ever encountered.

While Gott’s column has disappeared from print, the doctor is still fielding questions on a daily basis online through the website AskDrGottMD.com. The self-proclaimed “technophobe” has found that his tips read just as well on the Web. In a recent post titled “New beginnings,” he urged readers to keep sending their questions. “I’m here to stay by using a different venue,” he wrote, “and value every letter I receive.”

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.

September 28, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Daphne Oz '08

(Courtesy ABC)

Daphne Oz ’08 got an early start in her career as a healthy-eating expert: She published her first book, The Dorm Room Diet, before starting her junior year at Princeton. Now, at age 25, she is expanding her reach to national television as a cast member on “The Chew,” ABC’s new food-themed daytime talk show, which premiered Sept. 26.

While promoting The Dorm Room Diet, Oz, the daughter of cardiologist, author, and TV host Mehmet Oz, realized that she enjoyed television and began to consider it as a career path.

In an interview with the Bergen Record this week, Oz conceded that she was lucky to have a father who could share his knowledge about health and wellness at the dinner table – not to mention lessons from the media world. “At the same time, I have such huge shoes to fill,” she said. “[He]’s quite the role model to live up to.”

After its first day on the air, “The Chew” drew mixed reviews. David Hinkley of the New York Daily News said the show “felt overstuffed,” and Sandra Gonzalez of Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch wrote that “while it certainly made me hungry, I’m not sure I’ll be lunching with this show every day.” But Joe Crea, TV critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, had a more positive take on the debut’s ambitious menu: “Americans love to cook, or at least eat, but they want their information, quick, light and in easy-to-digest morsels,” Crea wrote. “On that level (and at least on the first go around) ‘The Chew’ delivered a smorgasbord of small, tasty bites.”

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.

Recently in Brett Tomlinson

November 16, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Andrew Hurwitz '68

November 11, 2011

Sports shorts: More about Princeton women's basketball

Quick facts

Key returners

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November 11, 2011

Sports shorts: More about Princeton men's basketball

Quick facts

Key returners

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November 9, 2011

'Oranje Boven': A rallying cry resurfaces at Jadwin

November 9, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Palmer Heenan '43

November 2, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Patrick Gerland *06

October 26, 2011

Tigers of the Week: Alex Gansa '84 and Howard Gordon '84

October 19, 2011

Tigers of the Week: Stephen Cassell '86, Adam Yarinsky 87, and Kim Yao 97

October 12, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Alice P. Gast *84

October 11, 2011

Alumni blogs: Remembering Steve Jobs

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October 5, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Peter Gott '57

September 28, 2011

Tiger of the Week: Daphne Oz '08

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