Recently in Campus News

Two Tiger teams vie for Ivy titles; senior pitcher finishes on top

Softball | Tigers to face Harvard in Ivy Championship

Two dramatic come-from-behind wins against Cornell April 27 propelled Princeton softball to the Ivy League’s South Division championship, and with an 18-2 league record, the Tigers also earned the right to host this weekend’s best-of-three championship series against North Division-champ Harvard (14-6 Ivy). The winner earns a trip to the NCAA Championships.
Princeton has been explosive on offense, hitting a school-record 51 home runs this year, including 38 in Ivy games. Harvard aims to counter with strong pitching: Crimson pitchers have allowed just six home runs in 20 Ivy contests. The series will be played at Class of 1895 Field, with the first two games beginning May 3 at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. The third game will be played May 4 at 12:30 p.m., if necessary.

Men’s lacrosse | Postseason hopes hinge on finale

Princeton men’s lacrosse has seen ups and downs in the last two weekends, upsetting then-No. 3 Cornell April 19 but losing at Dartmouth April 26. The Tigers still have the inside track for a share of the Ivy title and, with a tiebreaker over Cornell, the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championships. But to claim that prize, Princeton must beat Brown May 3 in Providence. (Princeton, Brown, and Cornell each have one loss in Ivy play.)

Baseball | Miller ’08 holds Cornell hitless

Steven Miller ’08’s final start as a Princeton pitcher had a rocky beginning: Two walks, an error, a hit batsman, and another walk in the first inning gave Cornell an early 2-0 lead. But Miller settled down, striking out 10 Big Red batters in seven innings and never allowing a hit in what would be a 3-2 Princeton victory April 27.
Miller was the first Tiger pitcher to throw a complete-game no-hitter since Randy Blevins ’73 accomplished the feat against Columbia in his senior year. Miller’s win, he told The Daily Princetonian, “was probably the ugliest no-hitter that’s ever been thrown. But to do that in my last collegiate start, that was definitely special.”

Pie-eyed

Ryan Dowd ’11 takes a break from getting hit in the face with whipped-cream-and-fudge-syrup pies from a charity pie toss held April 26 at Communiversity, Princeton’s town-gown street fair.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

A fresh Take on modern dance

Take Dance Company, a New York group with ties to two Princeton generations, will open its spring show May 15 at Columbia University’s Miller Theater. Sharon Park ’02 and Kristen Arnold ’06 are among Take’s principal dancers, and the group’s board includes James Kraft ’57, who was instrumental in the company’s founding four years ago, Henry Bessire ’57, and Louise Bessire, Henry’s wife.
Take draws its name from Takehiro Ueyama, the company’s founding choreographer and artistic director. “Dancing today can look like an exhausting dash to the finish line,” Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times wrote in one review of Ueyama’s work. “Mr. Ueyama brings a soft and silky calm and sunny sweetness to everything he does.” For more information about Take’s May 15, 16, and 17 shows, visit the company’s Web site, takedanceny.com.

Answers to the April 23 Weekly Blog Quiz (Letter locales)

From: Frist Campus Center, which still bears the inscription of its former name, the Palmer Physical Laboratory.


From: The School of Architecture, recently renovated with a new glass entryway.


From: West College, which carries the labels “North West” and “South West” over its two entrances.

The Countdown:

Days until Reunions 2008

Letter locales: A Weekly Blog quiz

Do the letters above look familiar? Two of them should, if you spent four years on Princeton’s campus. The “A” is a new addition. Identify the campus buildings from which the three letters were lifted, e-mail your answers to PAW, and win a prize - a vintage PAW poster. Answers will be posted in the April 30 Weekly Blog.

Burnett ’93 honored for Trying Leviathan

D. Graham Burnett ’93, an associate professor of history at Princeton, has won a 2007 New York City Book Award from the New York Society Library for Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press). Burnett will receive the award, given annually to books that capture the essence of New York City, on May 14 at the New York Society Library. Trying Leviathan explores an 1818 trial that centered on the question of whether whales are fish. (PAW wrote about Burnett’s book in the March 5, 2008 issue.)

Sports shorts

Softball | Princeton vies for division title

In an interview with PAW before the season, softball head coach Trina Salcido said she expected Kristen Schaus ’08 to bounce back from a 2007 season in which the pitcher’s earned run average crept one run higher and her confidence waned. “She’s changed her mental outlook and her whole perspective,” Salcido said. “I think she’s ready. She’s done a great job in the off-season, preparing herself physically and being a leader.”
Schaus has proved that on the field, compiling a 5-1 record and a 2.04 ERA against Ivy League opponents while striking out 47 batters in 44 2/3 innings pitched. This weekend, Schaus and the Tigers (15-1 in Ivy games) will take on Cornell (15-1) in a four-game series to determine the league’s South Division champion. The first two games will be played at Cornell April 25. The final two will be on April 27 at Princeton’s Class of 1895 Field, beginning at 12:30 p.m.

Women’s golf | Aboff ’09 tops Ivy field

Seven birdies, 11 pars, and a league-record 65 in the opening round gave Princeton women’s golf star Susannah Aboff ’09 an early lead at the Ivy League Championships April 19-20. She never looked back, winning the individual title with an 11-stroke lead over her nearest rival, 2007 champion Emily Balmert of Harvard. Princeton placed third in the team standings at the 54-hole event held at the Atlantic City Country Club.

Names in the news

The Los Angeles Times profiled Jacques-André Istel ’49, a “tireless wayfarer with an insatiable curiosity and no tolerance for boredom” who founded the town of Felicity, Calif., in the 1980s. … On April 17, Anthony Shorris *79 resigned as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after a 16-month term in which he helped to oversee construction at the World Trade Center site, growth in the region’s ports, and upgrades to the PATH rail system that connects New York with parts of northern New Jersey. … The Harvard Crimson marked the passing of Henry C. Moses ’63, a former Harvard dean who more recently served as headmaster of Trinity School in New York City. … Princeton Professor Robert Socolow was one of several experts cited in an Earth Day story about immediate changes that could help the environment. Among his suggestions were measures that could reduce travel, including congestion pricing in cities and videoconferencing for would-be business travelers.

The Countdown:

Days until Reunions 2008

Art, from personal ads

“I Want You to Want Me,” an interactive installation by Jonathan Harris ’02 and Sep Kamvar ’99 that explores the search for love in the world of online dating, is on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, through May 12, as part of the museum’s exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind.
The installation, displayed on a 56-inch touch screen, periodically collects data from online dating sites. Hundreds of blue and pink balloons float on the interactive screen, and each balloon represents a dating profile. Viewers can touch any balloon, causing a sentence to appear. The sentences begin with phrases like “I am …” or “I am looking for ….”
On a Web site describing the work, Harris and Kamvar wrote that “‘I Want You to Want Me’ aims to be a mirror, in which people see reflections of themselves as they glimpse the lives of others.” By Katherine Federici Greenwood

Photo: An image of “Who I am,” the first movement of “I Want You to Want Me.” Each balloon is a real dating profile. Image courtesy of Jonathan Harris ’02 and Sep Kamvar ’99

Names in the News

In an interview published April 4, Michael Aron *70, senior political correspondent for the NJN radio and television network, told The Times of Trenton that New Jersey politicians often follow a pattern of good intentions and bad timing. … Ilya Shapiro ’99, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, critiqued the U.S. policy on H-1B visas - given to skilled workers - in a National Review column. … Composer Steven Gerber *71’s new CD, Spirituals, features 10 brief compositions for string orchestra and draws on African influences. … In an NPR story about China’s public image abroad, human rights campaigner John Kamm ’72 said that Chinese officials are more concerned with the opinion of the Chinese people, which remains positive. … Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, who is living in Shanghai during a sabbatical year, described the contrast between Asian optimism and American pessimism in an April 14 NPR commentary. … In The Hill, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman ’78 dissected the mistakes of presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton. “Clinton did have a macro-message early on — experience,” Mellman wrote. “It was just the wrong message. Every poll for two years demonstrated that Democrats prefer change over experience by 2 to 1.”

Women’s lacrosse sprints to 10-0 start

With an impressive 18-9 win over Harvard April 12, Princeton women’s lacrosse improved to 10-0, its best start since 2004, when the Tigers were a perfect 16-0 in the regular season. Princeton, ranked No. 2 in the April 14 Inside Lacrosse poll, faces three top-10 teams in its final six games: No. 6 Penn (April 16 at 7 p.m. in Class of 1952 Stadium); No. 3 Maryland (April 30 at 7 p.m. in Class of 1952 Stadium); and No. 8 Georgetown (May 3 at 1 p.m. in Washington, D.C.).
The Tigers’ attack has shown remarkable balance and accuracy in the first 10 games. Five players have scored 16 or more goals, and 52 percent of the team’s shots have reached the back of the net, best in the Ivy League.

The countdown:

Days until Reunions 2008

Gingrich: Technology, behavior can improve health care and health

Information technology has helped to transform industries in the United States and abroad, but according to former U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich, U.S. health care continues to lag behind. When Hurricane Katrina destroyed the paper medical records of more than 1 million patients, the federal government funded a project to replace the paper records, instead of opting for a less vulnerable, more efficient electronic system. That sort of thinking, Gingrich told an audience of students, faculty, and community members April 2, is not conservative or liberal. “It’s just dumb,” he said. “It’s obsolete.”
Gingrich, founder of the Atlanta-based Center for Health Transformation, was on campus to meet with students from former Sen. Bill Frist ’74’s course on health care and technology. After his three-hour visit with the Woodrow Wilson School students, he spoke to a full house at Dodds Auditorium, covering some of his pet peeves in the world of health care.
Technology, Gingrich said, has the potential to cut waste from the system and save lives. Paperless prescription systems, for instance, have been proven to reduce errors in medicating patients. Paperless records can trim some of the time that doctors and their assistants spend on administrative work. Gingrich scoffed at the idea that technology is risky or difficult to adopt. By a show of hands, he surveyed the audience - which included many local retirees - on their technological literacy, noting that most had used ATMs in foreign countries, snapped photos with their cell phones, and tracked UPS or FedEx packages online.
While technology could change health care, changing health itself will require changes in behavior, Gingrich said. Personal responsibility and cultural patterns can shift to improve health (he cited seatbelts and reductions in smoking and drinking and driving as past examples). Optimizing health and minimizing illness, he added, would have economic benefits for the United States. By Brett Tomlinson

Magic carpet ride

The classic story of Aladdin earned top billing at Princyclopedia 2008, sponsored by the Cotsen Children’s Library and held in Dillon Gym March 29. Julia Solorzano ’10 got into the spirit with a ride on this “magic carpet,” a makeshift hovercraft consisting of a leaf blower and an inflated air mattress.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

Club sport shorts: Table tennis; Quidditch for muggles

Princeton’s table tennis club, the three-time defending champions of the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association’s mid-Atlantic division, will travel to Rochester, Minn., for the sport’s collegiate national championships April 11-13. Princeton placed second last year and returns with several of its top players, including Adam Hugh ’08, a participant in the U.S. Olympic trials.
On March 24, students from Princeton and Middlebury donned capes on their backs and straddled brooms as they faced off in a game of quidditch, the fictional game for wizards made popular by the Harry Potter novels and films. CBS Sports was on hand to cover the contest - a 100-0 Middlebury victory.

Remembering Robert Goheen ’40 *48

President emeritus Robert Goheen ’40 *48, whose association with Princeton spanned more than 70 years, died March 31 at age 88. The University’s president from 1957 to 1972, Goheen guided Princeton through a transformative period, captured in Merrell Noden ’78’s 2006 PAW feature, “A life at Princeton,” and outlined in this week’s obituaries from The New York Times, the Associated Press, and others. He led the University’s move to coeducation in 1969, the recruitment of its first African-American professors and administrators as well as the first female full professor, a diversification the student body, and a vast physical expansion that included the construction of 25 campus buildings.
But generations of alumni also will remember Goheen from personal interactions in the classroom, where he was a distinguished student and later a professor classics; in service to his country, as a soldier in World War II and, after his presidency, as the U.S. ambassador to India; in his time as a University leader and campus peacemaker in the turbulent Vietnam War era (he expressed his thoughts eloquently in his 1970 Baccalaureate Address); or in retirement, as an active alumnus who communed with old friends at Reunions.
In 2006, PAW online columnist Gregg Lange ’70 recalled that “students comfortably referred to [Goheen] as ‘Bogo,’ while freely admitting he was as bright a person as they had ever met.” Stan Pieringer ’70, who covered Goheen for The Daily Princetonian during a time of great dissent on college campuses, summarized one view of Goheen’s term in a remembrance published this week: “Elegance of thought, moral courage, openness to all viewpoints, dedication to the life of the mind — yes,” Pieringer wrote. “But more than that — always working for progress.”
Goheen also had a sense of humor, evident during his presidency and after he retired. In 1997, a PAW story erroneously indicated that daughters of Robert Stockton, Class of 1813, had attended Princeton. Goheen, in a letter to the editor, quipped, “Too bad that precedent took so many years to materialize!”
When questioned about his legacy, Goheen was modest. He told archivist Daniel Linke, who led the Goheen oral history project at Mudd Library: “I was able to start a process of change at the University — creative change — which has been carried forward by each one of my successors. I don’t know if that’s a legacy or not, but anyhow it’s very gratifying to see that the University’s not stopped.”

To share your stories and memories of Robert Goheen ’40 *48, e-mail PAW at paw@princeton.edu.

More Goheen links:
The University’s In Memoriam blog
A video from the Goheen Oral History Project
The Daily Princetonian’s memorial section
Professor Stan Katz remembers Goheen and Professor Robert Fagels, who also died last week

Photos, from left: Goheen appeared on PAW’s cover several times, including in 1940, when he was awarded the Pyne Prize with classmate J.H. Worth; in 1957, at his inauguration as Princeton’s president; and in 2006, 70 years after he arrived on campus as a freshman.

Programming note: Spotlight on health care

The April 15 edition of PBS’ Frontline will feature reporter T.R. Reid ’66, author of the forthcoming book Quest for a Cure, and economist Uwe Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton. The show will look at health care systems in other industrialized democracies, including England, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, and ask what the United States can learn from them. The answer, Reid writes: “a lot.”

PAW Web Exclusive: Gregg Lange ’70’s “Rally ’Round the Cannon”

The fight of the century

While you were devouring in meticulous detail the colorful, beautifully illustrated booklet on the current campus development plan that you received with your issue of PAW in January - and which magically coincides with the Aspire capital campaign - you may have realized that there’s an assumption that is literally central to the concept.
The Current Big Glossy Planning Idea is that Frist Campus Center is anointed as the center of the campus. Distances are measured from there, presumably everybody knows where it is, you can meet other folks there without fuss, there’s expensive pizza, it providentially has the word “center” right in it. In fact, it’s such a natural that Woodrow Wilson 1879 figured it out a hundred years ago. … Click here to read more

Alumnus’ documentary tells the story of leprosy’s cure

Director John Wilhelm ’59 recounts the story of a little-known community of leprosy patients and its role in curing the disease in his latest documentary, “Triumph at Carville,” written and produced with wife Sally Squires. The film, which premieres March 28 at 10:00 p.m. on PBS, documents the triumph over mankind’s most feared disease and tells a tale of bravery, perseverance and compassion that flourished within the Louisiana leprosarium known as Carville.
Wilhelm, who began his career writing for Time magazine, has enjoyed award-winning success as a filmmaker, with acclaimed works that include the four-part PBS series The Health Century and the Emmy-nominated PBS science special Comet Halley.
Wilhelm’s latest film captures the history of Carville from its beginning in an abandoned, antebellum sugar plantation 25 miles south of Baton Rouge. Conditions there were horrific, and it took decades for the hauntingly beautiful grounds to become a refuge for leprosy patients from all over the world.
In time, greater understanding about this mysterious ailment emerged from the extensive research conducted at Carville. (Leprosy today is known as Hansen’s disease, named for Gerhard Hansen, the Norwegian discoverer of the bacteria that cause it.) The facility gradually evolved into a more hospital-like environment and later into something that resembled a gated community, complete with golf course, athletic fields, dances and an annual Mardi Gras with hand-me-down costumes from the New Orleans celebration. And out of this unique community came a gift for the entire world: a multi-drug therapy that today is considered a cure.
Patients in the United States no longer are quarantined. With early diagnosis and treatment, they can lead entirely normal lives. In 1999, the U.S. Public Health Service transferred Carville back to the state of Louisiana. Some 5,000 patients had passed through its gates.
Crafted from contemporary interviews, as well as old radio shows, movie news accounts and other archival materials — including an exclusive trove of photographs taken by a longtime patient — “Triumph at Carville” takes viewers inside Carville and introduces them to patients, Daughters of Charity nuns, doctors and staff who lived and worked there.
Photo: Graveyard at Carville, courtesy of Allen Moore/The Wilhelm Group, Inc.

Hockey champions move on to NCAAs

Goalie Zane Kalemba ’10 notched his third shutout of the postseason in Princeton’s 3-0 ECAC Hockey semifinal win over Colgate March 21, and the Tigers continued their hot streak with a 4-1 victory against Harvard in the championship game March 22. Kalemba, who made 35 saves against the Crimson, was named the tournament’s most outstanding player.
With the ECAC Hockey title in hand, Princeton will move on to face North Dakota in the NCAA Championships March 29 at 3 p.m. at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wis. Check goprincetontigers.com for information about tickets and regional television coverage of Princeton’s NCAA games.

Perusing PRISM posters

Jacob Tarver, a graduate student in chemical engineering, reads about Princeton research in the Friend Center during the PRISM University-Industry Symposium March 18. The two-day program covered topics in “Materials for Energy” and “Photonics, Sensors, and Networks.”
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

Questions and answers with actress Molly Ephraim ’08

What do a religion major from New Hope, Pa., and Donny Osmond have in common? They are related. On screen, that is. In the recently released Walt Disney movie College Road Trip, Molly Ephraim ’08 plays Osmond’s daughter, Wendy. Throughout the movie, the duo terrorizes co-stars Raven Simone and Martin Lawrence with annoyingly cheerful show tunes. Ephraim, in addition to making her big-screen debut, played a murder victim in a recent episode of Law and Order. When not acting off-campus or with the Princeton Triangle Club and University Players, she tries to find time to work on her thesis, an investigation of female figures in Hindu and Buddhist religions. Ephraim recently spoke with The Weekly Blog’s Julia Osellame ’09.

When did you start acting?
My first passion was dancing, which I started when I was really young, 3 or 4. I started acting when I was 8 or 9, but my first professional show when I was 13. My parents always joke that I was asking for an agent for my birthday when I was 10. Most kids that age are asking for a pony. Coming to Princeton after I had done two Broadway shows, I was pretty certain of what I wanted to do with my life, but I wanted to keep my options open.
What was most difficult about your movie debut?
When you’re used doing theater you know the lingo, but when you do a movie, nobody sits you down and says, “Here’s the vocabulary list you need to know.” The first day on set, Donny Osmond was five feet ahead of me and was rehearsing the scene really quietly. I thought he was on vocal rest, something done to save your voice for theater shows. Of course, I couldn’t realize why I was so much louder than everyone. I had forgotten that the microphones pick up your voice, so you don’t need to project as much as you do on stage. The director said I was speaking six decibels higher than everyone else, but that it was great for keeping in Wendy’s character.
Did filming College Road Trip interrupt your summer?
Filming was only four days at the end of the summer. It was a great summer job! I went from working in the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in Chelsea to doing a Disney movie.
What is being on a movie set like?
I was just really happy to be there more than anything else. There isn’t the instant gratification of doing something in front of an audience, but working on a movie is much less stressful than being on Broadway. With all the little perks, it was like I was a kid in a candy store, literally. I’d stash Starbursts in a little purse that I carried. And I was so happy to have my makeup done by somebody else, but the makeup artist could always tell that I was snacking, because my lipstick would come off.
Any upcoming plans?
My next project is my thesis and then after that, I don’t know. I’ve been taking things as they come, which has been great. I’ve been really lucky and one project has been rolling into the next. But I do look forward to auditioning again. A Broadway actor’s schedule isn’t much different than a college student’s ― go to bed after a show at 1 a.m. and wake up at noon. I like being a night owl.

Skating to the semis

The Tiger mascot glided around Baker Rink between periods during the opener of the men’s hockey team’s ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series against Yale March 14. Princeton won the first and third games of the best-of-three series, with help from two shutouts by goalie Zane Kalemba ’10, to advance to the league semifinals for the first time in a decade. Princeton faces Colgate at 4 p.m. March 21 at the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y.
The NHL Network and Time Warner Sports will broadcast the Princeton-Colgate game live, while SportsNet New York will show the game on tape-delay March 22 at 1 p.m. Three regional networks ― Time Warner Sports, SportsNet New York, and Comcast’s CN8 ― will show the ECAC Hockey championship game live, March 22 at 7 p.m.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

Names in the news, March madness edition

ESPN ranked Bill Bradley ’65 No. 7 on its list of the 25 Greatest Players in College Basketball. … Longtime Princeton coach Pete Carril was included on USA Today’s list of the five best college coaches who never reached the NCAA Final Four. … John Thompson III ’88 is back in the NCAA Tournament with his Georgetown team, seeded No. 2 in the Midwest Region. … Former Princeton hoops star Will Venable ’06 is turning heads in baseball’s spring training as a top prospect for the San Diego Padres. … Sports marketing executive Rick Giles ’83 launched a third postseason tournament, the 16-team College Basketball Invitational, with a field that included two teams coached by Princeton alumni. Chris Mooney ’94’s Richmond squad fell two points short in its upset bit at Virginia March 18, while Brown, led by coach Craig Robinson ’83, lost a close opening-round contest against Ohio University.

More at PAW Online

PAW’s Web Exclusives for the March 19 issue include:
Gregg Lange ’70’s Rally ’Round the Cannon column, which highlights the contributions of the late Hugh de Neufville Wynne ’39 *40, a Princetonian with a “big grin and a nose for quality orange and black junk.” Click here to read more
An essay by Richard M. Waugaman ’70, who dissects the idea that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of William Shakespeare’s works. The “smoking gun”? De Vere’s bible, which highlights many of the passages to which Shakespeare alludes. Click here to read more
A profile of Sarah E. Walzer ’82, executive director of the Parent-Child Home Program. The program aims to “bridge the achievement gap for low-income families by empowering parents to see themselves as their children’s first and foremost teachers,” she says. Click here to read more

Kennedy ’77 examines ‘the politics of racial betrayal’

Even his name has become equated with disloyalty: To “pull a Clarence Thomas” is to sell out. But Randall Kennedy ’77, a Harvard law professor, Princeton trustee, and author of the new book Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (Princeton University Press), told an audience at Princeton Thursday, March 6, that the charge is unfair. Kennedy had harsh criticism of Thomas’ judicial rulings, but he disagrees with critics who believe - largely because of Clarence’s opposition to affirmative action - that the justice has betrayed his race.
“Attacking Thomas’ view because he himself was a beneficiary [of affirmative action] is not a good argument,” Kennedy told about 40 people at a short lecture and book-signing at Chancellor Green. “Why should he be disabled from attacking it because he’s a beneficiary? What does that have to do with the merits of the policy? I criticize Clarence Thomas because he’s wrong.”
All groups have anxiety about disloyalty and betrayal, Kennedy says, though he focused on African-Americans in his book and Princeton appearance. W.E.B. DuBois was called the “black Benedict Arnold” in 1917 for suggesting that black Americans should subordinate to the war effort their protest against white supremacy; Barack Obama’s campaign has been dogged by the suspicion “in some parts of the black community that he must be a sellout - or what else explains his white support?” Golfer Tiger Woods, tennis star Arthur Ashe, superlawyer Vernon Jordan - at one point or another, Kennedy says, all have been accused of selling out.
To Kennedy, none of these people are sellouts - he reserves the term for someone who intentionally seeks to harm his or her group, or pursues a course of conduct that is inimical able to that group.
And group coercion to prevent selling out isn’t always bad, Kennedy argues - the Montgomery bus boycott succeeded in part because even when some black residents grew tired and wanted to ride the buses again, pointed persuasion made them think twice. Nonetheless, fear of the “sellout” label means that important viewpoints are never placed on the table, and policymaking suffers as a result.
Kennedy should know. He’s been called a sellout, too. By Marilyn Marks *86

Orange and black in Iraq

When television host and producer Aaron Harber ’75 traveled to Iraq in February, he was able to take part in a unique reunion of Princeton alumni, including the very familiar face at the center. From left, the alumni pictured are Harber, Lt. Greg Cullison *99, Ylber Bajraktari *06, Capt. Jeanne Hull *07, Gen. David Petraeus *87, Andrea McFeely *07, Nick Holt *06, Pei Tsai *06, and Sean Kane *05.
Cullison is a reservist with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and Hull is assigned to the Army’s Intelligence Transition Teams. McFeely, Holt, and Tsai work as foreign service officers at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, while Kane is a political affairs officer with the United Nations. Bajraktari is a presidential management fellow for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Journal entries from Harber’s trip are available at his Web site.

Football’s Ancient Eight

For Love & Honor Productions recently announced the completion of “Eight: Ivy League Football and America,” an original feature-length documentary film that will premiere with a screening, hosted by the Ivy Football Association, at the Yale Club in New York City April 24.
“Eight,” produced by Erik Greenberg Anjou and Mark F. Bernstein ’83, senior writer for PAW, tells the history of Ivy League football from its earliest days to the present. It is narrated by two-time Tony Award-winning actor Brian Dennehy (Columbia ’60) and features interviews with Heisman Trophy winner Dick Kazmaier ’52, former Secretary of State George Shultz ’42, Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones (Harvard ’69), Penn State coach Joe Paterno (Brown ’50), Pro Football Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik (Penn ’49), actor and Heisman Trophy runner-up Ed Marinaro (Cornell ’72), and others.
The film was directed by Anjou and edited by Karlyn Michelson. It features an original score by Grammy-nominated guitarist Gary Lucas. Additional details are available at the production’s Web site.

Names in the news

Economics professor Burton Malkiel *64 fielded questions about investing in China from readers of the Financial Times Feb. 29. … Peter Kaminsky ’69 wrote about one of his favorite fishing holes, a water hazard on a Florida golf course, in a March 3 New York Times story. … In an interview for Time magazine’s March 10 issue (also available as a podcast), author Jodi Picoult ’87 said that while she may write about dark subjects, she had “absolutely no trauma” in her childhood. “If anyone ever assumed that my books were autobiographical, they’d be sorely disappointed,” Picoult said.

Jordan’s Abdullah II addresses chances for Middle East peace

A shiny, dark Town Car with tinted windows and diplomat license plates parallel parked on Nassau Street. The four dark-suited men inside disembarked to grab their morning coffee at a local restaurant. A helicopter circled above Alexander Hall, where police and Public Safety officers kept a close watch of students, faculty, and other guests who entered the building.
Feb. 29 was not a typical morning at Princeton, as the campus prepared for a visit from King Abdullah II of Jordan. Abdullah drew four standing ovations in a nearly full Richardson Auditorium during an appearance that lasted just over a half hour. In his remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he stressed the need for an urgent resolution, saying that in 2008, the parties are better positioned for peace than they have been in the last 60 years. Abdullah also pressed for leadership from the United States.
“America’s involvement is a critical success factor of [a long-term peace] strategy,” he said. “We need a strong authority that can act and act swiftly.”
Abdullah described the Middle East as a region with many challenges, from creating jobs to improving education, but addressing those issues will be difficult without settling the region’s “core problem,” the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. He advocated a two-state solution and widespread recognition of Israel, saying that “real security for Israel will occur when it is a neighbor among neighbors.”
After his talk, Abdullah fielded three questions from the audience, met with students, and departed for Washington, where he met with President Bush March 3.

Passing through

A lone figure walks along the south end of Princeton Stadium on the morning of March 1. The stadium plaza has become a popular thoroughfare for students, faculty, and staff navigating around the construction site for the new chemistry building.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski

PAW Web Exclusive: Gregg Lange ’70’s “Rally ’Round the Cannon”

Capturing the essence of Princeton

Like any vibrant educational enterprise, Princeton is more of a buffet than an entrée. The many elements that contribute range from the Nassoons to the WMAP satellite to Pulitzer prizes to Dante, and it’s very tough to combine them in a single occasion. Reunions are too frivolous, the 250th Convocation too formal, the Princetonian too, uh, Prince-y. I have progressed to the point, however, that I’m happy to defend two events of my experience, in combination, as a fair representation of Old Nassau.
The first is the magnificent closing pyrotechnic lecture of Professor Hubert Alyea ‘24 *28. Known ex post facto as “Dr. Boom” - I don’t recall anyone ever using the term while he was still actively giving the lecture - his hour of chemistry and sophistry was a primer in educational theory, beauty, humor, doggerel, and constant bedazzlement at the world around us, a paean to the joy of learning. His thesis was there’s something new around every corner, that serendipity is the great spice of life, and that you’d be well advised to know it when you see it. … Click here to read more

Names in the news

WNYC interviewed singer and songwriter Ruth Gerson ’92, who has tapped a new stream of revenue by agreeing to have Pepsi sponsor a series of her concerts, performed in the living rooms of private homes. … Former Senator Bill Bradley ’65 and Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 gave their opinions on what the next president should do in office in a blog post from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. … Two alumni were spotlighted in a Smithsonian Magazine story about young innovators in the arts and sciences: historian Daniela Bleichmar *05, whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries, and mathematician Terrance Tao *96, a winner of the Fields Medal. Historian Kevin Kruse, an associate professor at Princeton, joined Bleichmar and Tao on the list of 37 innovators under age 36.

Great eight

Four winter sports teams have wrapped up Ivy League championships in the last four weeks, bringing Princeton’s total for 2007-08 to eight. Last weekend, the women’s swimming and diving team had a dominant performance at the Ivy meet, winning its third straight league title, and women’s track and field edged Brown and Cornell at the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonals. The teams join men’s hockey, men’s squash, women’s volleyball, field hockey, men’s cross country, and women’s cross country on the list of Tiger title-winners.
Men’s swimming is the next Princeton team that will vie for an Ivy championship. The men travel to Cambridge, Mass., for the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships March 6-8. The top Ivy team at the EISL meet - a vestige of pre-Ivy days that also includes Navy - is named the Ivy champion.

Writers who moved the nation

“A rogue Klansman knocked on our door at a motel in Louisiana … [and] cordially invited us to a cow pasture across the road in Mississippi,” said Gene Roberts at a lecture last week, recalling one of many experiences covering issues of race during the 1950s and 1960s.
Under the impression that they were invited to “get the story straight” about the Klan, Roberts and his colleagues ventured out to that Mississippi field. The demonstration they witnessed soon turned so derogatory and threatening that the reporters needed to be escorted out by a V-shaped blockade of robed Klansmen.
Roberts was on campus Feb. 21 to speak about his book, The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation with co-author Hank Klibanoff. The book, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner, explains the media’s coverage of the civil rights struggle and includes personal anecdotes from Klibanoff and Roberts, career journalists who covered many of stories about race before and during the civil rights movement.
Roberts, a native of North Carolina, said he came up with survival techniques that included “speaking Southern” to blend in and imitating FBI agents, to help himself “stay alive” when covering charged mob scenes, like the Klan meeting.
“Often, we don’t recognize that the status quo is a problem, and have more difficulty covering that than we do in covering change,” Roberts said of why the press was at first reluctant to explore the race issue. With the increasing prominence of television coverage and a more pronounced media presence in the South, America started to listen.
Roberts, now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, worked as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times before becoming the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. “Gene was part of a time when The New York Times had an enormous influence,” Klibanoff said of Roberts’ reporting on race. “It moved the nation.”
Klibanoff reported for the Boston Globe and worked as an editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer for 20 years. He is now the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By Julia Osellame ’09

Sports shorts

Women’s squash | Repeat champions
Princeton’s Emery Maine ’10 dominated the last two games in a 3-1 win over Penn’s Tara Chawla to seal the Princeton’s second consecutive title at the Howe Cup, the sport’s national collegiate championship, at Jadwin Gym Feb. 24. The top-ranked Quakers were a perfect 15-0 entering the match, but the No. 2 Tigers prevailed, 6-3, thanks to strong performances in the middle of the lineup.

Men’s hockey | No goal, but still a win
Late in the second period of Princeton’s men’s hockey game against Cornell Feb. 23, Cam MacIntyre ’10 ripped a rebound into the back of the net for an apparent goal that would have put the Tigers up 3-1. But the puck popped out of the net as quickly as it entered, and the officials and goal judge did not register the score. Cornell, looking to capitalize, opened the third period with a barrage of shots, but Princeton held firm, thanks largely to goalie Zane Kalemba ’10. “If you didn’t look at the fans and didn’t look at the score, you’d think that he was playing a noontime hockey [pick-up] game,” coach Guy Gadowsky said of his poised netminder. “He has such a calming effect.”
Princeton held on for a 2-1 win, locking up a first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey playoffs. Gadowsky, who had argued for MacIntyre’s goal, would not comment on the call after the game, other than to say he was glad it wasn’t a factor in the final outcome.

Women’s basketball | Cowher nears 1,600 points
Basketball star Meagan Cowher ’08 could become the fourth Princeton woman to reach 1,600 points when she plays the final two home games of her career this weekend against Brown (Feb. 29) and Yale (March 1). With five games left on the schedule, Cowher also has an outside shot of becoming Princeton’s all-time scoring leader. She needs 23.6 points per game - 6.6 points more than her season average - to tie Sandi Bittler ’90’s total of 1,683 points.

Oscar-worthy Tigers: Answers to the Feb. 20 Weekly Blog Quiz

Congratulations are in order for four Princetonians: Ethan Coen ’79, Todd Wider ’86, and Jedd Wider ’89, whose films won Oscars on Feb. 24; and Anthony Cerminaro ’76, who correctly identified all six films from last week’s Oscar quiz. The answers were: 1. Scent of a Woman; 2. The Philadelphia Story; 3. Cyrano de Bergerac; 4. A Beautiful Mind; 5. M*A*S*H; Bonus: Alice Adams.

Oscar-worthy Tigers: A Weekly Blog quiz

This year’s Academy Awards will be handed out Feb. 24, and for a few Princeton alumni, it could be a memorable evening. Ethan Coen ’79 and brother Joel have been nominated in the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay categories for their film No Country for Old Men. (The Coens won the 1996 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Fargo.) In the Best Documentary category, producers Todd Wider ’86 and Jedd Wider ’89 have been nominated for Taxi to the Dark Side, which explores the arrest, torture, and death of an Afghani taxi driver at an American Air Base.
To honor this year’s Princeton nominees, The Weekly Blog is taking a look back at other Tiger stars and the movies that made them famous. If you can name the five films described below, e-mail your responses to us. You could win a vintage Princeton Alumni Weekly poster and have your name mentioned in our next blog post. Answers will be posted Feb. 27.

1. Bo Goldman ’53 won a pair of screenwriting Oscars, in 1975 and 1980, and was nominated in the 1992 Best Adapted Screenplay category for this Al Pacino movie. (Princeton viewers may notice that an early scene was filmed in Holder Courtyard, not a New England prep school.)
2. James Stewart ’32, Princeton’s most memorable leading man, was nominated for Best Actor five times but only won once, for this 1940 film. (The star-studded cast included Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.)
3. Jose Ferrer ’33, Stewart’s onetime Triangle Club colleague, also won Best Actor, 10 years after Stewart, for the title role in this 1950 romance. (Gerard Depardieu played the same character in a 1990 version of the story.)
4. This Oscar-winning 2001 film, based on a biography by Sylvia Nasar, told the story of a Princeton graduate alumnus and Nobel laureate who struggled with schizophrenia. (It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture.)
5. Screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. ’36 won two Oscars, 28 years apart (a span that included his refusal to give testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and subsequent blacklisting in Hollywood). The first award was for Woman of the Year, which earned Best Original Screenplay in 1942. The second was for this 1970 war comedy. (It inspired a popular ’70s TV series.)

Bonus question: Katharine Hepburn was nominated for the Best Actress award for her role as the title character in this 1935 film, adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington 1893. (The movie’s posters called her “Tarkington’s loveliest heroine.”)

Princetonians say ‘Be my Valentine’

Whether celebrating Valentine’s Day with a meal on Nassau Street or touting “Singles Awareness Day,” Princetonians ventured out Feb. 14 to find their crushes. Participants on the University Student Government-sponsored Crush Finder Web site, in operation for the second consecutive year, got an e-mail informing them of their “match” if both students independently selected each other through the site. Campus sororities sponsored a charity drive for cancer at which students purchased “Crush” soda cans that were delivered to the door of the person of their choice. (For $1 and up, the sender could buy anonymity and would only be discovered if the recipient returned to the table in Frist and doubled their secret admirer’s donation.) Also among the Valentine’s Day activities was a USG-sponsored event for the Class of 2009 that featured cookie decorating and a giveaway of boxer shorts emblazoned with the phrase “Be Mine ’09.” By Julia Osellame ’09
At right, Crush cans outside a student’s dorm room on Feb. 14. Photo by Julia Osellame ’09

Gengler ’75, Lapidus ’81 earn tennis honors

Two of Princeton’s most accomplished tennis alumni, Louise Gengler ’75 and Jay Lapidus ’81, will be inducted into the Mercer County Tennis Hall of Fame Feb. 23.
Gengler left an indelible mark on Princeton athletics as both a player and a coach. As an undergraduate, she captained an undefeated field hockey team and played on the University’s first women’s ice hockey team. But her finest moments were on the tennis court, where she was undefeated in dual match play for four years. Gengler returned in 1979 to become the head coach of women’s tennis, leading the Tigers to seven Ivy League titles in 25 seasons.
Lapidus, a Princeton native and prep star at the Lawrenceville School, captained the University’s men’s tennis team and reached the top of the collegiate rankings in 1980. He was a three-time All-American and later played for the U.S. Davis Cup team. For the last 20 years, Lapidus has been the men’s tennis coach at Duke, where his teams have a combined mark of 362-113. From 1996 to 2004, his Blue Devils won 58 consecutive ACC regular-season matches.

Five Princeton athletes to watch

Peter Capkovic ’09 | Men’s tennis
Capkovic, a native of Slovakia, won six of seven matches in Ivy League play as Princeton’s top singles player last spring. His lone loss, to Harvard’s Chris Clayton, came in a third-set tiebreaker.

Katie Lewis-Lamonica ’08 | Women’s lacrosse
Lewis-Lamonica ranked second among Ivy players with 51 goals in 2007. Her 117 career scores have put her on pace to reach the top five on Princeton’s all-time list.

Dan DeGeorge ’09 | Baseball
DeGeorge, the Tigers’ starting shortstop for two seasons, posted a .936 fielding percentage last year and batted .328 in Ivy games to earn second-team All-Ivy honors.

Susannah Aboff ’09 | Women’s golf
Aboff shot even-par or better in four of her 11 competitive rounds during the fall season, leading the Tigers to team wins at the Princeton Invitational and the Nittany Lion Invitational.

Natalie Kim ’08 | Women’s water polo
Kim, an All-Eastern goalie last in 2007, has been a three-year stalwart in the cage for Princeton, which ranked 15th in the CWPA national preseason poll. The Tigers open the season at home Feb. 16 and 17 with four matches in the Princeton Invitational.

Tales of a traveling flag

For the last two years, Denali Barron ’09 has been carrying an orange-and-black checkered flag, “liberated” from a nearby golf course, with an extraordinary goal in mind: take the flag to all seven continents before graduation. With the help of friends and family, she has completed that goal with time to spare, as she explains excerpts from her travel journal, below. A quick guide to the abbreviations: “DB” refers to the author, “TAB” is Tom Barron ’74, and “LH” is Lyra Haas ’09.

July 13, 2006. Uttaranchal, India. Flag crests a new pass, halfway across the world from Colorado. Though swift clouds obscure what are surely spectacular views of the Indian Himalaya, DB anchors Flag among a string of its pious cousins and snaps a picture.
Tiny bells, left at 16,000 feet for purposes of luck or prayer, are piled on the ground. Descent from the ridge top follows quickly, for after two weeks of backpacking in the Milam and Ralam Valleys, DB cannot resist the idea of another thatched-roof chai house down the trail.
Dec. 27, 2006. South Georgia Island, South Atlantic Ocean. Flag makes landfall among 300,000 King penguins on Gold Harbour, a mile-long bay on South Georgia Island. The smell of guano and grunts of elephant seals announced this land from several kilometers away. Flag stays very still as a curious bird investigates. Strong sun continues to diminish hanging glaciers that Ernest Shackleton crossed nearly 100 years ago. DB travels in style, returning after a few short hours to the USS Explorer II for tea.
Jan. 12, 2008. Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, Africa. Two 400-pound silverback gorillas tussle in a bamboo thicket. It’s behavior that one might expect from three- or four-year-olds, but never from these majestic kings of the jungle. Rwanda is full of surprises. Though dozens of birds caw, sing, and warble within earshot, DB and TAB are spellbound: We hear nothing but gorillas breathing, vegetation rustling, one of the silverback’s - playful?! - smacking chest-beats. Other members of our trekking group pale, gape, and giggle in succession. A female with infant looks up, alert, when DB carefully draws Flag from her pocket. Less than a mile from this dense and wild forest, furrowed fields cover every square meter of Rwanda’s thousand hills. In the face of a burgeoning population, resource pressure and extraction, and international instability, can this tiny country save its remarkable National Parkland? Its efforts have been exemplary so far.
Jan. 19, 2008. Princeton, N.J., USA. Six continents accomplished. One to go. Today I, DB, bestow the Flag upon LH ‘09 as she embarks for a semester studying politics in Australia. The condition shall be met, but Flag has many places left to go. Iceland? Turkey? The Galapagos Islands? Even an auspicious Princeton graduation?
William of Orange only knows what will be next.
To read Barron’s complete account, visit PAW Online.

Names in the news

“Time Release,” a percussion concerto by Princeton music professor Steven Mackey, made its New York debut at Carnegie Hall Feb. 9. The piece features the marimba, a resonant type of xylophone, and draws inspiration from Mozart’s piano concertos. … Visiting professor Daoud Kuttab discussed secularism in Turkey and the debate over headscarves in a brief Washington Post online piece posted Feb, 11. … In men’s basketball, six of the Ivy League’s eight head coaches are African-American, The Philadelphia Inquirer noted Feb. 9, including Princeton’s Sydney Johnson ’97 and Brown’s Craig Robinson ’83. “I thought about it on Martin Luther King Day,” Yale coach James Jones told the Inquirer. “I had a meeting with the guys, and I told them I don’t know if I’d be here if not for him.”