Recently in Brett Tomlinson

July 27, 2012

Philosophy is alive and well in America, Romano '76 argues

Carlin Romano '76 (Photo: Courtesy Knopf)
Carlin Romano '76 (Photo: Courtesy Knopf)
New book: America the Philosophical, by Carlin Romano ’76 (Knopf)
 
The author: Romano, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in criticism, writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education as a critic-at-large and teaches philosophy at Ursinus College. He served as a literary critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years and edited the 2010 fiction collection Philadelphia Noir.  
 
The book: Americans may joke about philosophy or simply ignore it, but Romano rejects the notion that the nation is anti-intellectual and “unphilosophical.” Instead, he sees a lively intellectual culture with pragmatic philosophers in realms as diverse as talk shows and the sciences. Several Princetonians play a role Romano’s wide-ranging story, including John Rawls ’43 *50, Edward Said ’57, Cornel West *80, and Michael Eric Dyson *93.
 

Continue reading Philosophy is alive and well in America, Romano '76 argues…
Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 27, 2012 at 10:00 AM | No Comments

July 25, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Brett Goodman '90

Brett Goodman '90 (Photo: Courtesy Brett Goodman)
Brett Goodman '90 (Photo: Courtesy Brett Goodman)
World-class athletes are not the only Princetonians playing an integral role in the London Olympics. NBC Universal executive Brett Goodman ’90 and a handful of other Tigers are part of the business and broadcasting collaboration that will provide an unprecedented 5,535 hours of coverage from the games, beginning with women’s soccer this afternoon.
 
Goodman is the senior vice president of strategic partnerships and business affairs for NBC Universal Sports – a title he succinctly translates as the “head lawyer” for NBC Universal’s Olympic division. His daily activities range from working on anti-piracy efforts to reviewing deals for sponsored elements of NBC’s broadcasts.
 
As an undergraduate, Goodman covered Princeton sports for the University Press Club and WPRB. He planned to go to law school after graduation but put that path on hold to become an NBC researcher for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
 
After returning from Spain, Goodman enrolled at Columbia Law School, earned his J.D., and practiced for five years at a firm in New York City. In 2000, he returned to NBC in a new role, handling legal affairs. Last year, he was part of the NBC Universal group that presented the company’s successful bid to broadcast the next four Olympics, for a record $4.38 billion fee.
 
In London, Goodman is part of an on-site team of 2,800 NBC Universal employees, working on everything from the NBC Nightly News to Access Hollywood. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s a great environment,” he said.
 
Other Princetonians behind the scenes in London include Joe Gesue ’93, the executive editor for NBC Universal Sports and Olympics; Rebecca Chatman ’94, the co-producer of NBC’s daytime and weekend coverage of the games; and Jennie Thompson ’90, a producer for the Today show. Craig Masback ’77, the former CEO of USA Track and Field, will serve as an analyst on coverage of the middle- and long-distance running events.  
 
While the Olympic work schedule is demanding, Goodman said the he’ll find time to visit a few events and catch some of the live action on video feeds in his office. “At some point, I think you have to allow yourself to be a fan,” he said.
 

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.

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 25, 2012 at 9:00 AM | No Comments

July 24, 2012

Princeton Olympians: Kicking off in London

Diana Matheson '08 (Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia/Ann Odong)
Diana Matheson '08 (Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia/Ann Odong)
The opening ceremonies of the London Olympics are still a few days away, but one of Princeton’s Olympians is preparing for an early kickoff. Women’s soccer midfielder Diana Matheson ’08 and her Canadian teammates will face Japan, the 2011 Women’s World Cup champion, on July 25 at 4 p.m. Eastern on the NBC Sports Network. (Update: CTV also will have a live feed at 11:30 a.m. Eastern.) Matheson has battled back from a knee injury and appeared to be in top form during Canada’s recent tune-up game against New Zealand, looping a perfect shot over the opposing goalie and into the top left corner of the goal (click here for video). Last week, she told Ben Rycroft of the CBC that she had few doubts about being in shape for London. “It was just a matter of how many drugs I was going to have to be on – anti-inflammatories, I mean," she said.
 
More news about Tigers in London:
 
Women’s epee standout Susie Scanlan ’14 was “made to hold a blade.” [Minneapolis Star Tribune]
 
Men’s four rower Glenn Ochal ’08 has a reputation for grueling, marathon workouts. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
 
The parents of Sara Hendershot ’10, a rower in the women’s pair, noticed her uncommon competitiveness at an early age. [Hartford Courant]
 
Continue reading Princeton Olympians: Kicking off in London…

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 24, 2012 at 11:55 AM | No Comments

July 23, 2012

Freelancer Satok '14 chronicles his Olympic adventures

This is the second post in our summer series about Dale Award recipients.
 
Ari Satok '14 poses in front of the Tower Bridge and its Olympic rings. (Photo: Courtesy Ari Satok)
Ari Satok '14 poses in front of the Tower Bridge and its Olympic rings. (Photo: Courtesy Ari Satok)
Of the thousands of journalists covering the London Olympics, freelance blogger Ari Satok ’14 may have one of the most enviable assignments. Satok, a recipient of the Martin A. Dale ’53 Summer Award, goes where he wants to go, interviews anyone who is willing talk, and writes about the things that grab his interest on a website devoted to his project, arisolympicadventures.com.
 
There are a few drawbacks, of course. As a non-credentialed reporter, Satok will have limited opportunities to speak with the Olympics’ biggest stars – though he has been in touch with some of Princeton’s Olympians and other athletes from his native Canada. He also nabbed a brief interview with Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee sprinter who will represent South Africa in the Olympic track and field competition.
 
Being outside the press room “just means that I’m going to have to be more creative,” Satok said, covering stories and angles that other media outlets might overlook.
 
In his first two weeks in London, Satok has been writing stories, shooting photos and video, and recording brief radio-style news capsules about the buildup to the games. He’s spent part of his time in parks and public spaces, talking with the city’s residents – some who are excited and others who are dreading the impending congestion.
 
Continue reading Freelancer Satok '14 chronicles his Olympic adventures …

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 23, 2012 at 10:00 AM | No Comments

July 19, 2012

Princeton's Olympic medalists: A brief history

Princeton's first Olympians traveled to Athens in 1896. From left, Francis Lane 1897, Albert Tyler 1897, Robert Garrett 1897, and Herbert Jamison 1897. (Photo: Athletics at Princeton: A History, 1901)
Princeton's first Olympians traveled to Athens in 1896. From left, Francis Lane 1897, Albert Tyler 1897, Robert Garrett 1897, and Herbert Jamison 1897. (Photo: Athletics at Princeton: A History, 1901)
When the world’s top athletes begin competing in London next week, 15 Princetonians will be among them, adding to a remarkable legacy that includes 48 medals and more than a century of the Summer Olympians.
 
Princeton’s first visit to the Olympics was by far its most successful: Four track and field teammates in the Class of 1897 traveled to the 1896 Athens Olympics at the suggestion of history professor William Sloane, a friend and colleague of International Olympic Committee founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The Princeton students were part of a 27-athlete contingent from the United States.
 
Robert Garrett Jr. 1897 was the American team’s breakout star, earning two gold medals and two silver in the field events. Classmates Albert Tyler and Herbert Jamison also won silver medals, while Francis Lane just missed bronze in the 100-meter dash, finishing fourth.
 
Garrett, who later competed at the 1900 Paris Olympics, remains the most decorated Princeton athlete, with a total of six medals. Karl Frederick 1903 *1904 ranks second on the list with three gold medals (one individual, two team events) in shooting at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.
Continue reading Princeton's Olympic medalists: A brief history…

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 19, 2012 at 8:50 AM | No Comments

July 18, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Antoine Hoppenot '12

Antoine Hoppenot '12 (Photo: Courtesy Athletic Communications)
Antoine Hoppenot '12 (Photo: Courtesy Athletic Communications)
“It’s the same story every game with Antoine Hoppenot [’12],” CSNPhilly.com’s Dave Zeitlin wrote in his weekly column about the Philadelphia Union pro soccer team. “The rookie out of Princeton comes into the game around the 60th minute, runs like crazy, never gives up on plays, and provides a late-game spark his team desperately needs.”
 
The sight is familiar to Princeton fans, who saw the same boundless energy, speed, and creativity in 90-minute intervals during the fall. Hoppenot, drafted by the Union in January, made his first Major League Soccer appearance in April and has played an increasing role off the bench in the last two months. He’s helped Philadelphia to four wins in its last five MLS matches, including two in which he scored goals. The Union also reached the semifinals of the 2012 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. Last week, MLSsoccer.com added him to its top-five ranking of the league’s Rookie of the Year candidates.
 
Born in France and raised in Princeton, Hoppenot admits that playing for the Tigers was the last thing on his mind when he was a star soccer player at Princeton Day School. He was anxious to leave home for college. But, as he said in a recent interview with the Union Sound podcast, his parents and sister Claire, a 2007 Princeton grad, urged him to reconsider. “I’m so happy they did that, because it was the best four years of my life,” Hoppenot said.
 

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.

 
Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 18, 2012 at 8:30 AM | No Comments

July 6, 2012

Lights, camera, 'Admission': Movie brings stars to Princeton

Photo: Christina Keddie '03
Photo: Christina Keddie '03

Camera crews set up in front of Blair Arch this week to film scenes for the new movie Admission, based on a 2009 book by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, and other stars of the film were spotted by The Daily Princetonian, and Fey took a moment to chat with Nobel laureate John Nash *50, the inspiration for another film set at Princeton, A Beautiful Mind.

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 6, 2012 at 12:05 PM | No Comments

July 3, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Kendall Crolius '76

Kendall Crolius '76 (Photo courtesy of Susan Patton '77)
Kendall Crolius '76 (Photo courtesy of Susan Patton '77)
Kendall Crolius ’76 says that helping to bring the Triangle Club’s annual show to life was the “defining experience” of her undergraduate years at Princeton. So when she had a chance to mentor a new generation of Triangle leaders as chairwoman of the group’s board of trustees, she jumped at the opportunity. For the last 10 years, Crolius has helped to guide the musical theater club, which continues to thrive in its 122nd year.
 
The Triangle board draws on the expertise of Princetonians working in the arts and in business to provide counsel for current students. Like others on the board, Crolius has an impressive résumé: She spent much of her career in marketing and now serves as a managing director for G100 Network, a global network of CEOs, working to aid the development of companies’ internal CEO candidates. Triangle has long been a top attraction for aspiring performers, writers, and choreographers, and Crolius sees remarkable potential for the club to train business leaders as well, offering the chance to manage a six-figure annual budget that covers performances at McCarter Theatre and in various venues on club tours.
 
Crolius will hand off her gavel in September, but she plans to continue serving on the board and fostering the club’s strong alumni connections. (Plans for a 125th-anniversary reunion already are underway.)
 
“For me, the favorite moments are when you have four or five decades of Triangle alumni on stage, singing the songs they all know,” Crolius says. “The kids get a huge kick out of it, too.”
 

Special thanks to Susan Patton ’77, who nominated this week’s honoree. 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.

 
Posted by Brett Tomlinson on July 3, 2012 at 3:30 PM | No Comments

June 27, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Anne-Marie Slaughter '80

Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 (Photo: Denise Applewhite/Office of Communications)
Everyone seems to have an opinion about Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80’s Atlantic cover story on work-life balance. The thought-provoking feature has sparked hundreds of blog posts and debates, set new Atlantic bests for Web traffic and Facebook buzz, and landed Slaughter on a tour of interview stops, including The New York Times, NBC’s Today, and NPR’s Fresh Air.
 
Slaughter, the former Woodrow Wilson School dean and current Princeton professor, writes about the realization, after two years working a “dream job” at the State Department, that “juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible.” She goes on to deconstruct some of the common views of how to “have it all,” as well as barriers that stand in the way of balancing career advancement with a healthy family life.
 
While Slaughter has critics from several camps, her own take has remained steadfastly constructive, pushing for people to reexamine workplace norms and echoing her conclusion from The Atlantic:
 
“We may need to put a woman in the White House before we are able to change the conditions of the women working at Walmart. But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all. We will properly focus on how we can help all Americans have healthy, happy, productive lives, valuing the people they love as much as the success they seek.”
 

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.

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on June 27, 2012 at 8:20 AM | No Comments

June 26, 2012

Names in the news: Slaughter on work-life balance, Daniels' next job

wb_alumni.jpgPrinceton professor and former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80’s Atlantic cover story on “why women still can’t have it all” sparked debate and commentary online. [The Atlantic]
 
Departing Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ’71 has found his next job: He will become the president of Purdue University. [Indianapolis Star]
 
Major League Soccer rookie Antoine Hoppenot ’12 scored a timely goal to lift the Philadelphia Union to victory in the U.S. Open Cup. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
 
Nick Martin *63, a former Hungarian water polo player who defected following the 1956 Olympics and eventually became a college professor, was profiled in a Sports Illustrated history feature (written by Alexander Wolff ’79). [Sports Illustrated]

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on June 26, 2012 at 10:35 AM | No Comments

June 21, 2012

Princeton Summer Theater opens 2012 season

Daniel Rattner '13, artistic director of Princeton Summer Theater. (Photo: Ariel Sibert '12/ Courtesy Princeton Summer Theater)
Daniel Rattner '13, artistic director of Princeton Summer Theater. (Photo: Ariel Sibert '12/ Courtesy Princeton Summer Theater)
Daniel Rattner ’13, the artistic director for Princeton Summer Theater, has ambitious travel plans for the next two months — on stage, at least.
 
He’s selected a season of plays designed to take audiences on a tour of Europe and a weekend getaway to upstate New York, all while seated in the cozy confines of the Hamilton Murray Theater.
 
“We wanted to provide shows that took people to totally different places,” Rattner says. “So we have a play set in Sweden, one in London, one in Paris, and then one set in the Catskills. The idea, with different time periods and different locations, is that you step into the theater and feel like you’re in a different world entirely.”
 
The season begins tonight with the debut performance of A Little Night Music. Below, Rattner describes each play, in order of performance. For showtimes and tickets, visit princetonsummertheater.org.
 
Continue reading Princeton Summer Theater opens 2012 season…

Tags:

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on June 21, 2012 at 8:05 AM | 2 Comments

June 20, 2012

Tiger of the Week: Anthony Abbott '57

Anthony Abbott '57 (Photo: Courtesy Lorimer Press)
Anthony Abbott '57 (Photo: Courtesy Lorimer Press)
The title poem of Anthony Abbott ’57’s recent collection If Words Could Save Us opens with those five words followed by a reassuring parenthetical – “(and they can, my darling).” Abbott’s hopeful line finds ample company in a collection that, in the words of fellow poet Robert Hedin, “sustains and confirms — the poet’s life, ours, and the great healing powers of language.”
 
Last week, Abbott’s work was selected as a co-winner for the Brockman-Campbell Award, given annually to the best book of poetry by a North Carolinian. (Joanna Catherine Scott’s An Innocent in the House of the Dead was the other prizewinner.) Former Poet Laureate of Indiana Norbert Krapf, who judged the competition, said that Abbott “distills a lifetime of experience into a lyrical language that brings us close to human salvation.”
 
Abbott, a professor emeritus of English at Davidson College, won a Carl Sandburg Award in 1982 for his poem “Mary’s Dream” and earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his 1989 collection The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat. He has received several honors for his work in recent years, including the Oscar Arnold Young Award and the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts.
 
In addition to winning awards, Abbott is the namesake of one: the Anthony Abbott Undergraduate Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Charlotte Writers’ Club – an organization for which Abbott once served as president.
 

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.

Posted by Brett Tomlinson on June 20, 2012 at 8:40 AM | No Comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65
« Allison S. Weiss | Main Index | Archives | David C. Walter »
 
Tiger of the Week Campus News Alumni News Princeton Authors Sports From the Archives

Meet our bloggers


Sarah Xiyi Chen ’13 Vicky Gan ’13 Gavin Schlissel ’13 Eric Silberman ’13 Tara Thean ’13 Emily Trost ’13 Kevin Whitaker ’13 Katherine Federici Greenwood Brett Tomlinson

 

Alumni Blogs

May 2013

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

Archives

PAW Online


  • Read the current print issue

Search

Recent Entries

Recent Comments

  • John Ellis '81: This is terrific! My 9-year old daughter figured out three years ago that she could achieve read more
  • John Ellis: Graham - brilliant and awesome. Congratulations. Aloha! read more
  • los angeles tours: hey Kevin, thanks for the post. interesting story! read more