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The Princeton campus will come alive this weekend with music, song, and dance. From April 25-28, Princeton Arts Weekend will celebrate the ways in which University and community members create art. The weekend will feature performances, exhibits, and collaborative projects. On Sunday, the weekend will culminate with Communiversity, the annual town-gown street festival, and Shirleypalooza, a tribute to President Tilghman’s dedication to the arts.

Some of the art that will be showcased is the product of classroom projects. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding taught an Atelier course this semester on songwriting. The students will perform their original songs Saturday night at Small World Coffee.

“It’s been a joy to work with these student writers and musicians,” Muldoon said. “Each and every one of them is remarkable in some way. I fully expect this class to throw up some people who will become household names.”

For some students, Princeton Arts Weekend marks their debut. Performing for the first time at Princeton, Avanthika Srinivasan ’16 will be singing classical Indian songs at Blair Arch.

“To be performing here in Princeton and to have all my friends come support me and learn more about my culture definitely means a lot to me,” said Srinivasan. She added that she also appreciates the University’s “willingness to give platforms for artists like me to share our passion for music, dance, or any other art form, with the community.”

For others, this weekend is the culmination of four years steeped in the arts. Daniel Rattner ’13 is presenting his senior thesis show “O Where Are You Going?” on Saturday and Sunday.

Steve Forbes '70 said that the Federal Reserve has "flooded the engine" of the U.S. economy by supplying too much money. (Photo: Ellis Liang '15)

To revitalize the economy, the U.S. needs to return to a gold standard and simplify the tax code, Steve Forbes ’70 said at a lecture in McCosh Hall March 10. 

Forbes, the chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and a two-time Republican presidential candidate, returned to his alma mater for an event sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He told the audience that the recent economic decline was not the result of free market capitalism, but of flawed monetary and tax policy. 

“If the Federal Reserve does not supply enough money to meet the organic or natural needs of the marketplace, you’re going to stall the economy. If it prints too much money, you get the economic equivalence of flooding the engine,” Forbes said. With the right amount, he continued, you have the chance to grow. 

According to Forbes, the Federal Reserve in recent decades has “flooded the engine.” He added that an unstable currency also misdirects investment into illiquid assets such as land and buildings, which gave rise to the housing bubble. Furthermore, an unstable currency distorts market information, causes wages to stagnate, and undermines social trust, he said. 

What does Forbes think the U.S. should do? 

“The dollar will be re-linked to G-O-L-D,” he said. “Why gold? It’s the one thing in the world that keeps its intrinsic value better than anything else — like the North Star, Polaris, something you can fix off of.”

Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, visited Princeton Feb. 27. (Photo: Ellis Liang '15)

Military commissions are necessary judicial institutions, Chief Prosecutor of U.S. Military Commissions Brig. Gen. Mark Martins said in a Feb. 27 lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School.

Martins, the chief prosecutor for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, emphasized that in contrast to civilian courts, military commissions have a different standard of evidence and jury composition, which are essential for dealing with cases related to armed conflict. However, Martins added that new forms of conflict, such as terrorism, blur the lines between civilian and war crimes.

“The nature of the threat is that something can be regarded both as a violation of the law of war — a war crime — and a violation of the domestic law. Those are not mutually exclusive categories, and that’s where the controversy of how you’re regarding this challenge comes in,” Martins said. 

Martins pointed out that one difference of military commissions is in allowing hearsay evidence, prompting Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs Kim Lane Scheppele to ask what that implies for evidence gathered through coercion.

“The hearsay rule in Anglo-American jurisprudence is the way that we screen out torture,” Scheppele said, “so when the hearsay rule is relaxed, it’s hitting the front line in the American system or the English system, the barrier that keeps out evidence collected by torture or by coercion.”