News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301
For immediate release: April 13, 2002
Contact: Marilyn Marks, 609-258-3601 or mmarks@princeton.edu
Princeton appoints Cornel West, novelist Chang-rae Lee
to senior faculty posts
New appointments build on programs across the
disciplines
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Enhancing its strong Program in
African-American Studies, Princeton University today
appointed to the faculty Harvard University Professor
Cornel West, the acclaimed teacher and scholar of
religion, and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a Bowdoin College
professor known for his work in African-American religious
studies. Writer Chang-rae Lee, whose award-winning
novel "Native Speaker" recently was recommended as the book
to be read and discussed collectively across New York City,
was named to a senior faculty post in Princeton's Humanities
Council and creative writing program.
At its meeting today, Princeton's Board of Trustees also
appointed two new professors in the Department of
Mathematics: Andrei Okounkov, an assistant professor
at the University of California at Berkeley; and Rahul
Pandharipande, a professor at the California Institute
of Technology. All the appointments take effect July 1.
"The appointments we announce today illustrate the
richness, depth and diversity of faculty and programs across
Princeton's campus," said President Shirley M. Tilghman.
"Cornel West, who is known for his intellectual
contributions in the study of religion and for challenging
those both inside and outside of academia to think about
critical issues of race, was a popular and dedicated teacher
during his previous tenure at Princeton, and we are pleased
that he has decided to return. He will be joined by Eddie
Glaude, who studied with Professor West as a Princeton
graduate student and has since built his own reputation as a
gifted scholar and teacher.
"We welcome Chang-rae Lee, a rising star among American
novelists, and Professors Okounkov and Pandharipande, who
will continue the tradition of excellence in our mathematics
department," Tilghman said. "Together, these appointments
provide compelling evidence of Princeton's commitment to
excellence in research and teaching in both traditional and
new disciplines."
Religion
West, the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at
Harvard, will return to Princeton as the Class of 1943
University Professor of Religion. He was a member of
Princeton's faculty from 1988 through 1994, serving as
professor of religion and director of the Program in
African-American Studies.
One of the nation's most widely cited scholars of
religion, West focuses on the area where religious thought,
social theory and pragmatic philosophy meet. His most
influential scholarly work, "The American Evasion of
Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism," is a history of
pragmatism from Emerson to the present. "It would be
accurate to say that he has reshaped religious studies in
such a way that his area of interest is now seen as central
to the field," said Jeffrey Stout, a professor of religion
at Princeton.
Through his writings, West has proven himself to be one
of the most penetrating and wide-ranging critics of
contemporary religious thought, Stout said, adding that West
"defends a position that combines pragmatism and Christian
thought in a way that is reminiscent of the young Reinhold
Niebuhr."
West's book "Race Matters," which sold nearly 400,000
copies and influenced a national dialogue on race, brought
him widespread attention and honors outside the field of
religious studies. His recent work includes two important
books he co-authored on public policy issues: "The Future of
American Progressivism" and "The War Against Parents."
"I am excited to return to the greatest center for
humanistic studies in the country," West said. "I look
forward to being a part of President Tilghman's vision that
promotes high quality intellectual conversation mediated
with respect."
Writer Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in
the Humanities, said: "Depth, precision and fervor have
always characterized Cornel West's work as well as his
teaching. Princeton is extremely fortunate in securing him
-- again."
West graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude,
and earned his Ph.D. degree in philosophy at Princeton in
1980. In 1996, he was awarded the James Madison Medal, the
highest honor Princeton bestows on graduate alumni. At
Harvard University, West has taught introductory through
advanced courses, and his "Introduction to Afro-American
Studies" class was the second most popular course at the
university. In addition, West has been on the faculty at
Union Theological Seminary and Yale University, and has
served as a visiting professor at numerous other colleges
and universities.
"The Department of Religion is delighted to welcome back
Cornel West," said Professor Martha Himmelfarb, chair of the
department. "During his years here he brought extraordinary
energy to his undergraduate teaching, and he helped to
attract and train an exceptional group of graduate students.
We very much look forward to his return, which will enrich
the department in so many ways."
West is "certain to make a fine contribution to the
intellectual life of the Program in African-American
Studies," said Professor Colin Palmer, the program's acting
director. "I look forward to working with him on many
projects that will enhance the study of the peoples of the
African Diaspora on this campus."
Another faculty member joining the Department of Religion
is Eddie Glaude, who was appointed associate professor.
Glaude, now associate professor of religion and Africana
studies at Bowdoin College, is the author of "Exodus!
Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black
America," a finalist for the Society of Historians of the
Early Republic first book prize. He edited "Is it Nation
Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black
Nationalism," and is the co-editor, with West, of the
forthcoming volume "African American Religious Studies: An
Anthology."
"Eddie Glaude is among the most interesting members of a
new generation of scholars in the study of American
religious life and thought. He's a teacher of extraordinary
energy and imagination and a person of strong and thoughtful
convictions," said Charles Beitz, a Princeton politics
professor who, as dean for academic affairs at Bowdoin,
recruited Glaude there. "He was a great contributor to the
Bowdoin faculty in every important dimension and we're very
lucky to have attracted him to Princeton," Beitz said.
Glaude is a 1989 graduate of Morehouse College, with a
bachelor's degree in political science. He has a master's
degree in African-American studies from Temple University.
At Princeton, he earned a master's degree and doctorate in
religion.
"I am very excited about my appointment to the faculty at
Princeton University," Glaude said. "I am convinced that
something really special is happening at the institution,
and I look forward to being a part of it."
Valerie Smith, a professor of English and director of the
African-American studies program, noted that West and Glaude
"are at different stages in their careers, but both are
distinguished and influential scholars of African-American
religious, philosophical and political thought.
"As teachers and as scholars they will add immeasurably
to the Program in African-American Studies, the Department
of Religion, and the life of the University as a whole,"
said Smith, who is on leave from Princeton this
semester.
Creative writing, Council of the Humanities
The appointment of Chang-rae Lee, who was named professor
in the Council of the Humanities and Program in Creative
Writing, brings a young, fresh voice to Princeton's renowned
humanities and creative writing programs. Lee's first novel,
"Native Speaker," was chosen by a committee of librarians,
educators and others as the book New Yorkers should read and
discuss next fall in the national "One Book" program, which
aims to promote reading.
Lee, professor of English and director of the MFA Program
in Creative Writing at Hunter College of the City University
of New York, was at Princeton last fall as an Old
Dominion Fellow of the Humanities Council with a joint
appointment in the creative writing and East Asian studies
programs. He immigrated to the United States from Korea when
he was 3 years old, and his writings explore the themes of
identity, belonging and assimilation.
"Native Speaker," his debut novel, tells the story of a
Korean-American outsider who is involved with espionage. The
book won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation / PEN Award, the
American Book Award and other honors.
Lee's second book, "A Gesture Life," won the
Anisfeld-Wolf Prize in Fiction, the Asian-American Literary
Award for Fiction and the Myers Outstanding Book Award,
among other awards. For that book, a narrative of an elderly
medic who remembers treating Korean "comfort women" during
World War II, The New Yorker magazine named Lee one of the
20 best American writers under 40.
"The creative writing program is delighted to be able to
welcome Chang-rae Lee to Princeton," said Professor Paul
Muldoon, a poet who is director of the Princeton program.
"He's a great writer, a great teacher and, as luck would
have it, a great person. The program has been arguably the
best in the country. With the arrival of Chang-rae Lee it is
unarguably the best in the country."
Joyce Carol Oates, the writer and Princeton professor,
described Lee as "one of the most talented and promising
writers of his generation."
Lee "is notable for his fusion of large political and
social issues with precisely observed domestic details and
for his sympathetic portrayal of the complexity of human
relations," said Oates, Princeton's Roger S. Berlind '52
Professor in the Humanities.
Lee joined Hunter College in 1998 after spending five
years as a faculty member at the University of Oregon, where
he received his master of fine arts degree in creative
writing in 1993. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in
English from Yale University in 1987.
In addition to his two novels, Lee has published essays
and stories in literary journals and general-interest
publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times
and Gourmet, and his writings have been collected in
numerous anthologies.
"I'm immensely pleased and excited to be joining the
Princeton creative writing faculty," Lee said. "I could not
ask for a more exemplary group than my new colleagues on the
Humanities Council, whose extraordinary literary
achievements I've long admired and continue to be inspired
by. It's an electric artistic milieu, one in which I'm eager
to begin writing and teaching."
Professor Alexander Nehamas, chair of Princeton's
Humanities Council, described Lee as "one of the most
prominent and promising Asian-American authors of this
generation."
"A subtle and sensitive writer and an infectiously
enthusiastic teacher, Lee adds a new dimension to our
outstanding Program in Creative Writing," Nehamas said. "His
appointment, which has the strong support of the Department
of East Asian Studies as well, is an indication of the
University's continuing effort to expand our offerings in
the creative arts and address the interests of the broadest
possible range of our students and faculty."
Mathematics
In Princeton's mathematics department, Andrei Okounkov
and Rahul Pandharipande are joining the faculty as
professors.
Okounkov, now assistant professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, specializes in representation
theory, the study of representations of algebraic objects by
matrices. He received his bachelor's degree and doctorate in
mathematics from Moscow State University, and was awarded a
Sloan Research Fellowship in 2000. Okounkov has taught at
the University of Chicago, and has been a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study and the Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute in Berkeley, and has been a research
fellow in the Dobrushin Mathematical Laboratory at the
Institute for Problems of Information Transmission at the
Russian Academy of Sciences.
Pandharipande comes to Princeton from the California
Institute of Technology, where he is professor of
mathematics. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics
at Princeton where he received the department's top senior
award, and his doctorate in mathematics at Harvard
University. Pandharipande, who specializes in geometry, has
been an instructor at the University of Chicago and a
postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Mittag-Leffler in
Stockholm. He has received numerous fellowships, including
the David
and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship, the Sloan
Foundation Research Fellowship, and graduate and
postdoctoral fellowships from the National Science
Foundation.
"Andrei Okounkov has made brilliant contributions to many
areas of mathematics. Most of his current work is concerned
with random matrices and random permutations. This work is
truly spectacular; it combines methods of modern algebraic
geometry with combinatorics," the field of mathematics
concerned with the enumeration of mathematical entities and
relations, said Professor Joseph Kohn, acting chair of the
mathematics department.
"Rahul Pandharipande is one of the greatest experts in
algebraic geometry," Kohn continued. "He has made astounding
original discoveries using a broad array of mathematical
methods as well as methods inspired by mathematical physics.
His recent joint work with Okounkov relates integrals on
moduli spaces of curves to problems about random matrices
and is a remarkable breakthrough that is being studied in
seminars throughout the world."
Other appointments
In addition to these appointments, the Board of Trustees
promoted six faculty members from assistant professor to
associate professor, granting tenure. These are: Edgar
Yazid Choueiri (mechanical and aerospace engineering),
Joshua Robert Goldstein (Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs, sociology), Frederick
McLaury Hughson (molecular biology), Tali
Mendelberg (politics), Isabelle Rolande Nabokov
(anthropology) and D. Vance Smith (English).
Su Friedrich, a lecturer in the Humanities Council
and Program in Visual Arts who specializes in film and video
production, was promoted to professor. Jacqueline Ilyse
Stone, associate professor of religion; and Zoltan
Szabo, associate professor of mathematics, were promoted
to professor.
Five new assistant professors are joining the faculty:
Rubén Gallo in Spanish and Portuguese
languages and cultures, moving from the University of
Toronto; M. Zahid Hasan, physics, moving from the
research staff at Princeton; Christina Lynn Imai,
Woodrow Wilson School and politics, who received her
doctorate in 2001 from Harvard; Evan S. Lieberman,
politics, moving from a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale; and
Pedro Meira Monteiro, from Sao Marcos University in
Brazil. Four Princeton instructors were promoted to
assistant professor: Jinho Baik (mathematics),
Christiano Galbiati (physics), Adam H.
Meirowitz (politics) and Benjamin Sudakov
(mathematics).
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