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Princeton in the News

Enclosing directory

Why globalisation fails: Harold James' book is deliberately provocative but political leaders would do well to read it, finds Richard Lambert:

The process of globalisation, so it was said a year or two ago, is irreversible. Revolutionary changes in communications and distribution systems; economies of scale; the obvious benefits of free trade and open borders - for these and other reasons, the world could only go in one direction…

Some of that spirit survived the first world war: in the 1920s, there remained enormous enthusiasm for internationalism and free trade. But the wave of globalisation came crashing down in the great depression of the 1930s, a time of beggar-my-neighbour policies and militant nationalism.

In a timely and stimulating book, Harold James, a professor of history at Princeton University, tracks the course of this disaster. He focuses on monetary and banking instability, trade policy and the reaction against international migration, and he finds unsettling parallels with today…

As college costs rise, research under way aims to show what tuition covers

While college students and their families may get a sinking feeling with every report of rising college costs, research is under way that aims at least to show students and families what colleges do with all that money.

The National Association of College and University Business Officers is doing a school survey to devise a formula for calculating the cost of educating undergraduates, from faculty salaries to heating classrooms…

The formula itself might be used to compare colleges, as well as by individual schools to get a new angle on their financial profile.

"It does enable both individual schools and large groups of schools - all of us - to have some framework as to why costs are changing over time," said Richard Spies, chief financial officer at Princeton University and chairman of the NACUBO panel working out the formula.

And, Spies said, "that's useful for a school to explain to parents and students and others interested in that school." Princeton, he said, spent more than $40,000 on each undergraduate during the survey year, when tuition was $24,600.

It's a Bomb! United States military policy

Bush's Baby Nuke

On October 2, 1992, President George Bush signed into law a moratorium on nuclear testing. Now his son is preparing to end that moratorium.

The current Bush Administration is studying options for the development and production of a small, low-yield nuclear weapon called an earth-penetrator or bunker-buster, which would burrow into the ground and destroy a deeply buried hideaway of a "rogue" leader like Saddam Hussein.

But such a bomb would take many more people with it.

"The use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried target that is otherwise immune to conventional attack will necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties," writes Dr. Robert Nelson, a professor of theoretical science at Princeton University, in a recent study for the Federation of American Scientists.

Tyumen Oil CEO Appointed Fellow at a Top-Ranked U.S. University, Princeton

Moscow - Princeton University, a top-ranked university in the United States, has named Tyumen Oil Co.'s CEO and president, Simon Kukes, to the prestigious post of senior visiting fellow.

Kukes, 54, will serve in Princeton's Council on Regional Studies from Sept. 1 until next July. The Council includes area studies programs such as those focusing on Russia.

"I am honoured that Princeton University has selected me and look forward to contributing to the knowledge and interest in Russian affairs at the institution," said Kukes.

Kukes will lead seminars and conferences at Princeton University and other locations as arranged by the university. He got a head start on March 15 when he delivered an address to students and guests at Princeton…

Experts: Aging workforce, lack of engineers will hurt U.S. aerospace

Aerospace industry experts say an aging engineer workforce - and a shortage of young skilled engineers - may pose the greatest challenge for the U.S. aerospace industry…

One…factor in the decline is the bottom-line, economics-driven approach many aerospace companies have taken, said Professor Richard Miles of Princeton University. The result is that fewer dollars are spent for research and development projects, he said.

"In presentations from people in the industry, we have been told that economics is now the major driver, and that the industry is looking for rapid and inexpensive design cycles rather than innovation in aviation," he said…

Bush Tax Cuts Not Targeting Small Business

Small-business owners should not expect the Bush administration to press for tax breaks and other benefits "targeted" at them, the head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers warned last week.

While the administration agrees that "it's very important to try to reduce impediments of entrepreneurship," council Chairman R. Glenn Hubbard said, "that should not be taken as favoring subsidizing entrepreneurship."

Research presented at the forum seemed to back up the White House position on targeted tax breaks. Economists Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton University, James M. Poterba of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and William M. Gentry of Columbia University each presented papers all pointing to the conclusion that broad-based tax cuts stimulate small-business development and growth…

Second-rate health care blamed on stepmoms

But reasons are far more complex

…

A scan of American families seemed to turn up a lot of wicked-stepmother stories _ in this case, the second-class medical care for youngsters who lived with their stepmoms.

Specifically, a report last fall by Princeton University economics professor Anne Case said that while two-thirds of youngsters living with both their biological parents had had a medical checkup within a year, as few as one-third of those living with stepmoms had…

In a recent interview, Case said she never meant her report to disparage stepmothers. Instead, as an economist she wanted to measure the "investment" that families make in their children.

"We think there may be a 'mother's sphere of influence' and a 'father's sphere of influence,' " she said. "And these sorts of things, like taking a child to the dentist or going to the grocery store, are still things that fall within a mother's sphere.

"And in these dimensions, a stepmother is not a complete replacement for a biological mother," she said… 

Beijing's Turnabout Is Seen as a Maneuver to Mollify the U.S.

…

Mr. Qu, a Chinese citizen, was sentenced on Tuesday to 13 years in prison in the spying case, charged with providing photocopies of speeches and magazine articles deemed state secrets to Gao Zhan, the American-based scholar who was reunited with her family in the United States today. Few people expect that the appeal he is reportedly preparing will win him his freedom…

Some people charge that the Chinese government adeptly manipulates American concerns for individual rights by releasing people like Ms. Gao ahead of important meetings with American officials, creating a subtle undercurrent of indebtedness on the part of the Americans that can color bilateral talks…

"It may have the effect of making Powell feel grateful and then perhaps not being as firm on underlying issues," said Perry Link, a China specialist at Princeton University…

Social Security

The commissioner's misleading report

Last spring, when President Bush appointed a commission to study Social Security, skeptics wondered whether the panel would produce a balanced review of the system's problems or merely promote a privatization scheme favored by the White House. This week the answer became clear, and it was not encouraging…

The report, however, goes on to make three assertions that are misleading and reckless:

- That Social Security does nothing to create real saving for the future. It's true that Social Security's $1 trillion trust fund consists of U.S. Treasury bonds, which are only government IOUs. But it's flat wrong to deny that these are real assets.

As economists Paul Krugman and Alan Blinder of Princeton University have pointed out, every new dollar going into the Social Security trust fund is now used to pay off debt somewhere else in the federal budget. These are real tax collections, and last year they helped retire roughly $150 billion in other federal debt. Reducing the national debt in this way is exactly the same as increasing national savings _ it frees up money for investment elsewhere and improves Washington's balance sheet for the future…

Wielding an axe in the chamber

Electric guitar, world premiere are chamber music festival surprises

Every July, in what has come to represent a musical embodiment of summer, the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival hires about 20 musicians for a half-dozen concerts at the Crofton House school…

…This year they include the first-time presence of an electric guitar and a world premiere for string octet -- eight violins, four violas and four cellos. The factor common to them both is the American composer Steve Mackey, who wrote the octet and is the featured guitarist in the other work, his Troubadour Songs for guitar and string quartet…

Mackey, 45, has written a lot of music for electric guitar, including two concertos, the second of which, Tuck and Roll, is being released next year on the BMG label with the San Francisco Symphony under conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who is a big supporter of Mackey…

His early days didn't suggest that by age 36 he'd become a full professor of music at Princeton University, where he still teaches...

A maverick at the helm

Princeton's new chief wants to alter status quo

Shirley M. Tilghman just started her job as the president of Princeton University but she has already identified a major problem. It is green hair. Not that there is too much green hair on campus. But that there is none at all...

Tilghman, it is true, does not have green hair. At 54, she has short-cropped grayish-brown hair. She wears baggy blue pants and not a spot of makeup. It is the guise of a closet radical. Tilghman is, after all, the first female president of the 255-year-old school and only the second woman to take over as the head of an Ivy League institution...

Guide Proposed for Trials of Rogue Leaders

A group of leading international legal scholars and jurists, convinced that more public figures are likely in coming years to face trial for abuses like genocide and crimes against humanity, is proposing the first set of guidelines for such cases.

The guidelines, to be published on Monday by a new law program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, were devised by more than 30 legal experts from at least half a dozen countries and several international organizations, including the United Nations.

Titled the Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction, the guidelines are arranged as 14 provisions governing all aspects of international trials from definitions of crimes to disputes between governments over the accused...

Legal scholars issue principles to guide international jurisdiction for war crimes

No matter where the offense was committed, fugitives accused of war crimes, torture or genocide should be liable for trial in the courts of the country where they are found, according to new principles devised by a panel of international legal scholars.

The Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction, a result of 18 months of work, aim to clarify an increasingly important area of international law, that of universal jurisdiction.

"Universal jurisdiction is a potent weapon," said Princeton University professor Stephen Macedo, chairman of the project that developed the guidelines. "It would cast all the world's courts as a net to catch alleged perpetrators of serious crimes under international law."...

String theory, supersymmetry on horizon

Ed Witten is one of the 21st century's most celebrated physicists and with good reason -- many of his peers believe he is almost always right. A professor at Princeton University... Witten follows a road to the future of science fraught with complexity and twists -- in as many as 10 dimensions.

In the past, beautiful science ruled the minds of bold theoreticians. Einstein beautified the science of gravity by equating it to acceleration and to the curved pathways accelerated objects traverse. Maxwell beautified the science of electrical and magnetic forces by showing they were merely the flip sides of electromagnetism...

...Witten wields the mathematician's pen, becoming the rare physicist to win math's top prize, the Fields medal, and create a language of equations so beautiful physicists and mathematicians cannot help but keep saying, "Witten must be right."...

Princeton prof. says 'No' to Sri Lanka child monks

Lanka's prime minister to recruit 2,000 children into Buddhist monastic orders to cope with a shortage of monks has met criticism from a scholar who says child ordination is against Buddhist doctrine.

Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropology professor at Princeton University, says the campaign targets children as young as 5 years even though Theravada Buddhism doctrine states that a boy must be at least 15 years of age to become a monk...

...Obeyesekere, in his remarks published in the Colombo newspapers Sunday Island and the Daily News, says if more monks are needed for the orders, older people should be recruited as they are increasingly given to meditation and usually have a good knowledge of the Buddha teachings....

Monsters in our midst

HIGHLIGHT: Bring out the T. rex in your chicken and the ape in your aunt. The past is coming back to life with a roar as we discover the power of evolution's sleeping genes, says Philip Cohen

...

Besides, Crichton's naive scientists generated their giant lizards from DNA fossilised in amber. Most real-life experts argue that DNA is such a fragile molecule that little if any authentic dino DNA still survives in the world. So the whole notion of resurrecting dinosaurs is preposterous. Isn't it ?

Perhaps not. There's another source of dino DNA - albeit modified by millions of years of evolution. Modern birds are the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs... So, the reasoning goes, take some bird DNA, let evolution work on it for the right amount of time - in reverse - and you could end up with the blueprint for a dinosaur...

..."The technology will be there," says David Stern, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. "Things are happening so rapidly now." Just two years ago, Stern predicted that scientists would take two centuries to resurrect a dinosaur. "Now I'd guess more like 60 to 100 years," he says...

Jurassic Chicken Project Aims To Rewind Evolution

Teams of scientists are working on plans to recreate dinosaurs by winding backwards evolution and picking out genes in modern animals that would also have existed millions of years ago.

The scheme - called the "Jurassic Chicken Project" because researchers reckon most of the genes in chickens are interchangeable with those of dinosaurs - is so ambitious that it could take decades to come to fruition....

David Stern, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, said: "If something is possible then someone is going to try it. We have 50 to 100 years before this happens, and we need that much time to think about the ethical implications."...

Members of commission to review science at the Smithsonian

A new commission to review the scientific research at the Smithsonian Institution and make recommendations for it's future direction was announced Monday. The members are:...

-Simon Levin, professor of biology, Princeton University....

The Language of Identity - Novelist A.J. Verdelle's struggle to discover her inner voice.

Although the language in her debut novel, The Good Negress, won it four national prizes and was hailed by Toni Morrison as "truly extraordinary," A.J. Verdelle still remembers when liberating words weren't enough to free her from feeling trapped within herself. During a conversation last winter at a cozy, yet noisy, American University student coffeehouse, the 40-year-old author explained why...

Through this effort, and like Denise, Verdelle would "write myself to a future," with the publication of The Good Negress in 1995. Awarded four national prizes, the book was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Verdelle earned grants from the Whiting Foundation and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, as well as a position to teach creative writing at Princeton University. Of course, Verdelle's writing achievements were also influenced by Toni Morrison--who lectures at Princeton...

Princeton Reaches Deal on Disputed Painting

SUSANNAH DAINOW

The Art Museum at Princeton University has reached an agreement that will allow it to keep an Italian Renaissance painting that was sold at a court-ordered auction in Nazi-occupied France in 1941. Although Princeton acquired the painting without knowing its history, the university paid the heirs of the work's owner at the time an undisclosed amount to retain possession of it...

The Art Museum plans to recognize Mr. Gentili di Giuseppe's onetime ownership of the painting with a label that explains the history of "St. Bartholomew," said Marilyn Marks, a Princeton spokeswoman...

How a Princeton Classicist Leads in Instructional Technology

Princeton University's associate provost, S. Georgia Nugent, sits at a table in her office with three techno-wizards who are bringing her up to date on the university's plans for adapting on-campus classes to online education for alumni. Inside jokes and laughter pepper the conversation...

A woman who leads largely male troops in instructional technology is an uncommon sight in higher education. But the role suits Ms. Nugent well. As a classicist whose specialty is epic poetry, she enjoys exploring the lives of maverick female characters. She was in the first class of women to enter Princeton, in 1969, and she was the first alumna to be appointed to the faculty...

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