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September 11 to 18, 1998 | Feedback
Business Wire
Copyright (c) 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
September 18, 1998, Friday - 07:28 Eastern TimeHEADLINE: HR's Role Will Shift From Staff to Line by Deploying Workers Who Can Capitalize On Information Technology
HR and IT can together maximize their leverage within an organization and develop more productive work processes for greater business value, according to a just-released report by The Concours Group, a leading research, management consulting and education firm.
The HR Imperative, a provocative vision of the future of HR management, explores the potential convergence of HR and IT and features insights by some of the world's thought leaders in organizational effectiveness and HR management, including Peter Drucker, Dave Ulrich, Judy Bardwick and Marvin Bressler.
According to Robert Morison, a Concours Group senior vice president and a contributor to the HR Imperative, "The most progressive IT and HR organizations are already working together and adopting one another's perspectives to better serve their corporations. However, ten years from now, HR and IT may be merged into one entity responsible for providing business capabilities - the human-technology combinations that can achieve high performance and fast change." ...-- Marvin Bressler, a professor of sociology, emeritus, at Princeton University and a recognized scholar of social issues and trends, explains that people increasingly expect the workplace to produce the psychological gratifications and the sense of belonging that the family no longer yields. "This raises the question of how the so-called bottom line issues can be reconciled with this greater level of expectation and of how these needs can be met for part-time and contract workers." ...
The Boston Globe
Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
September 17, 1998HEADLINE: Backers fear a powerless presidency; The Clinton presidency / Debating the options
BYLINE: By Brian McGrory, Globe StaffDATELINE: WASHINGTON
Key Democrats and several White House advisers now say that if President Clinton survives his crisis with a censure, he would be rendered virtually ineffective for his final two years in office, forced by a Republican Congress to abandon his agenda and left without a moral pulpit from which to speak.
Democrats, aides acknowledged, will not trust him. Republicans will not respect him. And the public, though approving of his job performance, will not hold him in high personal regard. ...He is perhaps the most chronicled president in modern history, his strengths and failings analyzed in books, novels, documentaries and movies, his most obscure and deeply personal characteristics bared for a nation to see. It is at times of public humiliation, some analysts said, that Clinton summons his most fervent desire to succeed.
"Here's a guy who's entire career has been a roller coaster," said Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University. At times of adversity, "his remarkable talents then become less a Slick Willie thing and instead focus on real problem solving."
Business Wire
Copyright 1998 Business Wire, Inc.
September 17, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Caliper Technologies Announces Issuance of a Patent to Fundamental Laboratory-on-a-Microchip Technology
DATELINE: PALO ALTO, Calif.Caliper Technologies Corp. announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued U. S. Patent Number 5,800,690 covering an invention by Caliper scientists that relates to fundamental elements of microfluidic technology.
Caliper's proprietary LabChip(TM) technology platform functions like a "liquid integrated circuit" in managing complex laboratory processes in a microchip. LabChip devices process fluids -- containing DNA, proteins, or cells -- like semiconductors process electrons, executing biological tests in seconds. ...The new patent complements Caliper's internal intellectual property and its portfolio of exclusive licenses to broad patents from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, Princeton University, Harvard University and others. ...
The Florida Times-Union
Copyright 1998 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, FL)
September 17, 1998 ThursdayHEADLINE: Small-town politics pays off
BYLINE: From staffHAND'S ON: Chris Hand, a Jacksonville native and graduate of Fletcher High School, has been named U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's re-election campaign press secretary. Hand, a 1995 graduate of Princeton University, has been deputy press secretary and speechwriter in Graham's Washington office since February 1996.
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
September 17, 1998; THURSDAY; ALL EDITIONSHEADLINE: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REVISITED
BYLINE: CLARENCE PAGEIT MAY NOT BE as titillating as the Starr report, but the new book "The Shape of the River"pushes plenty of hot buttons of a different sort.
Affirmative action, it argues, is good for you. Good for blacks and whites. Good for America.
Authored by two former Ivy League presidents, William G. Bowen of Princeton, an economist, and Derek Bok of Harvard, a political scientist, the report's subject is in its subtitle:"Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions." ...
After years of vigorous assaults on affirmative action by conservative critics, the new data offer a defense startling and convincing enough to give some balance to the arguments surrounding an upcoming court challenge at the University of Michigan and ballot initiative in Washington, both of which are aimed at ending affirmative action in college admissions.
Bowen and Bok present affirmative action not as an impediment to a color-blind, equal-opportunity society but as an avenue to get to it more quickly. ...
U.S. Newswire
Copyright 1998 U.S. Newswire, Inc.
September 16, 1998HEADLINE: Howard Hughes Medical Institute Awards $91.1 Million for Undergraduate Science Education at 58 Universities
DATELINE: CHEVY CHASE, Md., Sept. 16
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced today that it will award $91.1 million in four-year grants to help 58 research and doctoral universities strengthen their undergraduate education programs in the biological sciences.
The grants, which range between $1.2 million and $2.2 million, bring to more than $425 million the amount awarded since 1988 through HHMI's undergraduate grants program, the largest private initiative in U.S. history to enhance undergraduate science education nationwide. The universities will use the grants to expand research opportunities for undergraduates, update science courses and curricula, attract new faculty in emerging fields of science, and modernize laboratories through new scientific equipment and technology. Many will also expand their science outreach programs with nearby schools and community colleges. ...
1998 Awardees
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, $1,900,000
The Buffalo News
Copyright 1998 The Buffalo News
September 16, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: HANDFUL OF SKEPTICS CREATE FALSE IMPRESSION THAT EXPERTS ARE DIVIDED ON GLOBAL WARMING
BYLINE: MICHAEL KUKLA -
People are always surprised to learn that there is an earthquake engineering center headquartered at the University at Buffalo. I've been on the staff of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research since its inception, and to this day, people still ask us why it's here. They assume, perhaps, that such a center has to be located where there are frequent earthquakes.
Actually, center research focuses on buildings and on finding ways to improve their performance during earthquakes. That doesn't mean the earthquake hazard in the eastern United States is negligible. In fact, the largest U.S. earthquakes on record occurred along the Mississippi River in 1811, centered near the little town of New Madrid, Mo.
New Madrid was back in the news a few years ago, when a professional prognosticator named Iben Browning predicted that a massive quake would again strike there. He didn't shrink from stating a date and a time.
Browning, of course, was a charlatan. ...
Browning owed his credibility to the opinion of literally just one seismologist, who gave the prediction an imprimatur of sorts. It wasn't two schools of scientific thought pitted against each other, but one maverick against his assembled colleagues.
I see a similarity in the current debate on global warming. A handful of the same skeptics are repeatedly quoted concerning the issue and have created the misleading impression that the experts are seriously divided over global warming. One must look, however, at the number and stature of experts on each side of this supposed debate. It is plain that the skeptics constitute a decided and less-distinguished minority. The most outspoken of them, moreover, have well-documented ties to industrial lobbies or conservative think thanks.
That segment of the scientific community most closely involved with the issue now overwhelmingly accepts the reality of human-caused global warming. Indeed, the very purpose of the world's most authoritative body of experts on global warming, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is to synthesize the findings of a large number of researchers and produce assessments reflecting scientific consensus.
As J.D. Mahlman of the NOAA Geophysical Lab at Princeton University put it, "A good guideline for evaluating 'expert' opinions on global warming is whether they use the IPCC science as a point of departure . . . If we disagree scientifically with the IPCC, we should explain why."
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
September 16, 1998HEADLINE: PAKISTAN, INDIA NUCLEAR CLAIMS CALLED INFLATED
BYLINE: ROBERT LEE HOTZ, TIMES SCIENCE WRITERIn a game of nuclear bluff, both India and Pakistan exaggerated the number and size of the nuclear weapons each nation detonated earlier this year, overstating the power of the atomic bombs by a factor of four, according to the first independent scientific accounting of the controversial tests.
Two of the five nuclear explosions announced by the Indian government may never have taken place, the analysis released today concluded. Only two in the series of nuclear tests that the Pakistan government announced actually involved real nuclear explosions, according to the study. At different times Pakistani officials have claimed up to seven devices were tested.
"This is quite clearly a case where governments tested for a political reason rather than scientific reasons, so we have to be suspicious of what they say," said Terry Wallace, a noted authority at the University of Arizona on the use of seismology to analyze nuclear explosions. ...
Experts at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Princeton University and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a consortium of 90 research universities that operates a global network of 100 seismic monitoring stations, endorsed the new study's conclusions about the nuclear blasts in India and Pakistan. ...
At Princeton, physicist Frank von Hippel, who until recently was the assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said of the Wallace study: "It seems pretty convincing to me."
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 16, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
PIEL, WILLIAMPIEL-William. Died September 13, peacefully at home in Sherman, Connecticut, age 88. Born New York City, son of the late William and Loretto Scott Piel; brother of the late Mary, Rita and John Piel & of Gerard & David Piel; husband of Eleanor Green Piel; father of Michael, Anthony and Thomas Piel. A.B., with honors Princeton University 1932; LL.B. cum laude Harvard Law School 1935.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 16, 1998, Wednesday
HEADLINE: COLLEGE FOOTBALL; Princeton to Dedicate New Stadium
BYLINE: By WILLIAM N. WALLACEDATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., Sept. 15
Tearing down venerable Palmer Stadium, where Princeton teams had performed since 1914, was an easy task. Steve Tosches, the football coach, was there watching the Mercer Wrecking Company's giant claws rip apart the grandstand and today he recalled those moments from December 1996.
"Down it came," he said. "The concrete was like sand. The wreckers said it was one of the easiest jobs they'd ever had."
The moment also justified the decision by university officials to abandon expensive preservation of Palmer and build a new facility, a decision mourned, if not questioned, by many sentimental alumni.
That this was the right decision will be affirmed and celebrated on Saturday, when the new Princeton Stadium is dedicated and the first game, the Tigers against Cornell, is played.
For $45 million, a small sum relative to that of stadiums being built for National Football League teams costing at least four times as much, Princeton gets a lot in a facility that is clearly different. ...
Financial Times
1998 The Financial Times Limited (London)
September 15, 1998, Tuesday
HEADLINE: Market turmoil 'threatens open economies'WARNING BY FORMER NY FED CHIEF:
BYLINE: By Stephen Fidler in Washington
A former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said yesterday that turmoil in international financial markets presented a serious threat to market-oriented economies all over the world.
Gerald Corrigan, now a managing director with Goldman Sachs, said the financial turbulence constituted an important threat "to the cause of open and free political and economic institutions around the world". This challenged directly the national interests of the US.
Mr Corrigan was the first of a group of economists, academics and investment bankers speaking over three days of hearings about world economic turmoil to the House of Representatives banking committee.
The hearings culminate tomorrow with testimony from Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and Robert Rubin, US Treasury secretary. ...
Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is now at Princeton University, said he shared many criticisms of the IMF - "especially its penchant for secrecy and its fascination with austerity. But you don't rebuild the fire-house while the town is burning - you send out what trucks you have." Reform, he said, could come later. ...
THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Copyright 1998 The Press Enterprise Co. (RIVERSIDE, CA.)
September 15, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: A new player in the birth-control field
BYLINE: Gordon Johnson, The Press-Enterprise
Forgotten birth control pills. Broken condoms. Rhythm method miscalculations. Lapses in judgment. Sexual assault. All can lead to unintended pregnancies.
Preventing unintended pregnancies is the function of the PREVEN Emergency Contraceptive Kit, which was recently approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The kit can be used up to 72 hours after having sex.
Emergency contraception, which involves taking a higher dosage of birth control pills, has been available by prescription for years, but no U.S. pharmaceutical company has packaged it as such until now. ...
James Trussell, a Princeton University professor and co-author of the textbook "Contraception Technology," describes emergency contraception as "the single most important step we could take to reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy. " ...
The Associated Press
September 14, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Zoe Metro's handbags are functional - and hip
BYLINE: By FRANCINE PARNESDATELINE: NEW YORK
Designer Zoe Metro says her handbags - with their red linings and reproductions of 15th-century lucky Chinese coins - attract money and peace of mind.
They also attract celebrity customers.
Singer Mariah Carey owns Metro's Disco Fever and Disco Dance bags.
Madonna and New York socialite Blaine Trump wear her bamboo Chinese charm bracelets. The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders have them, too. "They're into yoga and good luck stuff," Metro says.
Metro, who studied ancient Asian art at Princeton University, says that for every accessory, there is a philosophical reason.
Consider her Chinese charm bracelets, packaged in Chinese food containers.
"Our bracelets are modeled after ancient prayer bracelets, and they come with the four traditions of Chinese good luck: fortune, wealth, long life and happiness. When you put one on, you say the four traditions." ...
The Associated Press
September 14, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: Brazilian official says IMF help not needed
BYLINE: By HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
Brazil needs no help from the International Monetary Fund at present and does not plan to devalue its currency or restrict capital flows or imports, a Brazilian finance official said Monday.
Amaury Bier, the No. 3 official in Brazil's Finance Ministry, said a country with $50 billion in reserves can avoid such measures despite concerns that financial turmoil in Asia and Russia will spread to Latin America.
"Our response is an orthodox one," Bier said, referring to the government's decision to raise interest rates to 40 percent in an attempt to tempt investors with high yields by leaving their currency in the country.
Since Russia's collapse, Brazil, the world's ninth largest economy, has struggled to halt a flood of dollars out of the country. Stocks on the Sao Paulo exchange have lost half their value although they have recovered slightly the last two trading days. ...
Alan Blinder, now an economics professor at Princeton University, told the House Banking Committee "it is imperative - and urgent - that the United States and the IMF stop the financial wildfire before it engulfs Latin America."
He said Brazil was "in imminent danger and both Mexico and Argentina are under threat, even though the economic policies of those nations, while not perfect, have been on balance quite sound. If Brazil falls, other dominoes will follow. "
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 1998 The Austin American-Statesman
September 14, 1998HEADLINE: Storm trackers refining science of forecasting; Texas scientists
BYLINE: Dick Stanley
A thunderstorm is a thunderstorm, whether it dumps rain on Maine or Mexia in East Texas. But geography influences how storms form in different places.But geography influences the ways the storms form from one place to another.
The Doppler radar systems of the National Weather Service, however, aren't set up to precisely interpret regional weather peculiarities. Instead, the computer software used by federal forecasters to interpret radar signals is written for a general standard, regardless of where the software is used.
In the case of thunderstorms, the standard isn't set by Mexia or Maine but by Phoenix, Milwaukee and Dallas.
Scientists are working with the weather service on individualizing the software for different parts of the country. Researchers at North Carolina State University, for instance, are experimenting with new algorithms, or calculations used in software code, to account for regional differences in thunderstorms.
At Princeton University in New Jersey, they're working on different rainfall rates, while at Texas A&M University the focus is on the specific ways in which hail, tornadoes and straight-line winds form in Texas and the southeast. ...
Computerworld
Copyright 1998 Computerworld, Inc.
September 14, 1998BYLINE: David Orenstein
Data tools simplify Web publishing
When Princeton University wanted to put an entire warehouse of data online, it made a point of picking a tool that developers don't need a Princeton Ph.D. to understand.
Princeton built its data mall with Oracle Corp.'s Web DB, one of two easy-to-use data publishing tools emerging in the market that let developers design useful, data-driven pages from within a browser.
Analysts said the emerging category of tools, which trade off power for rapid development, will help users solve the problem of quickly bringing data to the World Wide Web. ...
The Detroit News
Copyright 1998 The Detroit News, Inc.
September 14, 1998, MondayEDITORIAL
HEADLINE: Defending Racial SpoilsTwo former Ivy League university presidents are making an impassioned call to keep racial preferences alive in college admissions. They claim -- based on their study, released last week -- that racial preferences result in more overall gains for American society than losses for students denied admission.
But the data and analysis of their study notwithstanding, a policy of disbursing benefits by race is likely to collapse from the weight of its own internal contradictions -- as the lawsuit against Wayne State University filed by a Hispanic student last month demonstrates.
Critics of racial preferences have long maintained that lowering admission standards to admit more minorities, especially in elite schools, is unfair to the more qualified candidates and counterproductive for the intended beneficiaries.
Minority students admitted under relaxed standards, the critics contend, find it difficult to cope with the demands of elite institutions and therefore exhibit a disproportionately high dropout rate. Meanwhile, other students better equipped to deal with rigorous curricular requirements are consigned to settings that fail to adequately engage their talents.
The study -- conducted by Derek Bok of Harvard University and William G. Bowen of Princeton University -- challenges both of these arguments. Blacks -- the main focus of the study -- who enter elite institutions have lower average test scores than whites and graduate at lower rates, they acknowledge. Yet their study found that blacks who do graduate perform slightly better than whites: Proportionally more black students obtain advanced degrees than whites. ...
Electronics Times
Copyright 1998 Miller Freeman PLC
September 14, 1998HEADLINE: The search for a flexible friend
Flexibility is the keynote in any future design of electronic displays. Nadya Anscombe reports on the hunt for the ultimate bendy technology
The first company to commercialise truly flexible displays will make a fortune. There are currently hundreds of product ideas out there, but no technology commercially available to make them a reality.
Roll-up TV screens, emissive newspapers, curved screens on car dashboards, electronic books, disposable displays - the list is endless. Unfortunately, so is the list of problems which must be overcome before flexible displays come onto the market. ...
But researchers at Princeton University in the US say commercialisation of flexible displays is a long way off.
Paul Burrows, a Princeton research scholar, said: "We've come a long way, but I can't sell you a flexible display yet and neither will anyone else in the very near future if they're honest about it."
He has been working with Universal Display to develop roll-up displays using organic LEDs (OLEDs). In contrast to CDT's technology which is based on polymers, Universal Display's technology is based on small organic molecules.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 14, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: The Facts About Affirmative Action
A new study of elite colleges provides striking confirmation of the success of affirmative action in opening opportunities and creating a whole generation of black professionals who are now leaders in their fields and their communities. No study of this magnitude has been attempted before. Its findings provide a strong rationale for opposing current efforts to demolish race-sensitive policies in colleges across the country.
The study has been published as a book, "The Shape of the River" by William Bowen, former president of Princeton University and now president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University. It draws on data compiled by the Mellon Foundation that closely tracked the academic records, careers and attitudes of 30,000 students of all races who entered 28 elite public and private colleges and universities in 1976 and 1989.
The study looks at very selective colleges because it is primarily at these institutions that race-sensitive admission policies are an issue. "Race sensitive" means considering race as one factor among many others, like grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, where a student comes from and alumni connections, in determining admissions. The analysis focuses mostly on black-white comparisons because African-Americans have been at the heart of the debate and because they provide a better data pool than other minority groups.
The evidence collected flatly refutes many of the misimpressions of affirmative-action opponents. For example, black students who were admitted to the most selective schools with S.A.T. scores that were lower than those of their white counterparts, instead of becoming more discouraged by keener competition, had higher graduation rates than blacks who had the same test scores but went to less-competitive schools. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 14, 1998, MondayHEADLINE: I. E. Segal, 79, Mathematician Who Disputed the Big Bang
BYLINE: By FORD BURKHARTDr. Irving E. Segal, an influential mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who embraced many unpopular notions, including the view that there was no Big Bang at the dawn of the universe, died on Aug. 30 after he collapsed while walking near his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 79.
The cause was cardiovascular disease, the university said.
Dr. Segal parted company with almost all mainstream cosmologists in his belief that the universe is not expanding and that the astronomical phenomenon of "red shift" can be fully explained by his own novel interpretation of principles of mathematical symmetry. ...
Earlier in Dr. Segal's career, his work in quantum theory developed a set of axioms that concisely expressed the theories of the physicists Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger and the mathematician John von Neumann, Dr. Strauss said. Dr. Segal worked briefly at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., with von Neumann and a group of rising young stars in mathematics who left their marks in a broad range of fields.
Dr. Segal's initial impact was on functional analysis, a kind of calculus involving algebra and sometimes geometry and on nonlinear waves, which do not have the traits of linearity found in light and sound.
Irving Ezra Segal was born in the Bronx, attended schools in Trenton and received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1937 and a doctorate from Yale in 1940, both in mathematics. He then joined the Army and conducted ballistic research at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. ...
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
September 14, 1998; MondayHEADLINE: BACKING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
BYLINE: The Record
A NEW study details the most obvious benefits of several decades of affirmative action at the nation's top colleges and universities: a growing black middle class and social interaction between the races that might not have happened otherwise.
Considering the sharp decline in the percentage of blacks and Hispanics admitted to California's top schools following the end of their affirmative action programs, the fight to preserve affirmative action is vital.
But a dual if not larger focus should be on improving the urban public school systems that are failing minorities long before they reach college age.
"The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions"was written by Princeton University economist William Bowen and Harvard political scientist Derek Bok. It studied 45,000 students who enrolled at 28 of the most selective universities in 1976 and 1989.
The study documents anecdotal information that has existed for years. Of the 700 blacks admitted to the 28 schools in 1976, 225 earned professional degrees. Seventy of the 700 became doctors, 60 earned law degrees, 125 became business executives, and 300 became civic leaders. ...
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 1998 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1998, MONDAYHEADLINE: Complicated New Social Theory
BYLINE: Jon CarrollUSUALLY, AWARE THAT I am working for a mass-circulation newspaper whose readers are sometimes not that interested in the technical side of the social sciences, I try to write articles free from confusing facts, or, indeed, any facts at all.
Sometimes, however, a story comes along that is both so bizarre and so complicated that I must perforce explicate the specifics. I have limited room; I urge those confused by my all-too-brief summary to consult the source documents.
Thus: In a long, statistics-filled book from Princeton University Press by a Harvard political scientist and a Princeton economist, the assertion is made that, contrary to everything that seems "natural" or "true," black students who get good educations at good schools lead happy and prosperous lives.
Further, these same students, many of them beneficiaries of the discredited social engineering matrix popularly called "affirmative action," become leaders in their communities and inspire others of similar racial backgrounds to greater achievements in the academic and economic spheres.
Also, in contradiction to the self-evident truths found in books like "The Bell Curve," black graduates of prominent schools go on to get graduate degrees at the same rate as white students. They were slightly more likely than their white counterparts to obtain professional degrees in law, business and medicine, and substantially more likely to get involved in civic activities.
The professors suggest that the presence of black students on college campuses helps the process of integration, improves racial relations and leads inevitably to greater civility, harmony and understanding.
Thank God we're dismantling these programs before something really gets out of hand. ...
Asbury Park Press
Copyright 1998 Asbury Park Press, Inc. (Neptune, NJ.)
September 13, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: DERMATOLOGIST EXPERIMENTED ON PATIENTS AT 2 STATE INSTITUTIONS;
BYLINE: BRIAN KLADKO; STAFF WRITERFIVE DECADES ago, Dr. Albert M. Kligman needed a laboratory.
An up-and-coming dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Kligman wanted to experiment on people. He found them in southern New Jersey - at state institutions in Vineland and Woodbine.
All were mentally retarded.
In his quest to better understand the biology of skin, Kligman injected the institutions' residents with hormones, causing young boys to grow pubic hair and girls to grow beards. He exposed them to poison ivy to determine if people could be immunized against it. ...
"In the 1950s, there was a lot of ethical blindness in this area," said Harold T. Shapiro, chairman of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
But Shapiro, the president of Princeton University, said the medical mores of the 1950s don't absolve Kligman of responsibility. Years earlier, the Nuremberg Code - issued by the military tribunal that investigated Nazi war crimes - had set out a 10-point guide to the ethics of human experimentation.
"If the Nuremberg Code says anything, it says that informed consent is a prerequisite for using human subjects in any kind of experiment," Shapiro said. ...
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Copyright 1998 The Atlanta Constitution
September 13, 1998, Sunday
Editorial
HEADLINE: Affirmative action backers on solid groundBYLINE: Cynthia Tucker
Given the decibel level of the debate over affirmative action, you would think social scientists and economists have spent years studying its effects. Not so. The debate has been carried along on emotion, bias and assumption.
Now, along comes a solid report that bolsters the arguments of those who say that affirmative action in college admissions is good for the nation --- not just for recipients. In an exhaustive study, Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, and William Bowen, former president of Princeton University, found that college affirmative action programs not only have created the backbone of a newly affluent black middle class, but they have also taught white students the value of diversity.
The significance of the study lies in its extensive research. While Bok and Bowen admit that they are proponents of affirmative action, they conducted rigorous research, collecting data on 45,184 individuals who entered college in 1976 and 1989. Their report --- titled "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions" --- is a formidable rebuttal to those who claim affirmative action wreaks havoc with the vaunted, if narrowly defined, concept of "merit." ...
While those affirmative action beneficiaries had lower graduation rates than their counterparts, those who did graduate earned advanced degrees in professions such as law and medicine at the same rates as their white classmates. (After all, black students entering schools like Harvard have high scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test, just not as high as the average white kid entering the same school. The difference may be between an SAT of 1200 and an SAT of 1350, both very good scores.) Those black graduates did well in their chosen careers. And they were more likely than their white counterparts to be active in civic affairs. ...
Business Times
Copyright 1998 Times Media Limited (South Africa)
September 13, 1998HEADLINE: LUCKY-DIP STOCK LORE RULES
BYLINE: John AuthersThe public believes in stocks, but they don't understand why.
These are the words of Peter Lynch, the legendary US fund manager. They sum up a bizarre situation in which the Wall Street professional investing community is looking with dread at US retail investors, whose huge buying in past years has left them with a big chunk of the market. If small investors were to sell, prices would take a beating.
Mutual fund companies and retail stockbrokers report that small investors did nothing drastic the week Wall Street started its dive. They did not buy in force as they did during the last sharp downturn in October, but neither did they sell. Not that small savers were unconcerned. Both Charles Schwab, the largest US discount stockbroker, and Fidelity Investments, the largest mutual fund manager, reported a small but steady flow of cash out of equity funds and into cash funds throughout August. ...
Nevertheless, mounting evidence suggests that retail investors have little grasp of investment fundamentals and are guided by naive enthusiasms and the hints they pick up from friends, rather than by rational strategy. A study by Peter Huber, a Princeton University anthropologist, found that "Americans are a highly resilient and optimistic people". His survey, carried out across the US on behalf of Key-Corp, a large Ohio-based bank, found that Americans appeared to be highly credulous, particularly about information gleaned at the workplace. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 13, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
FOSTER, MALCOLM
FOSTER-Malcolm. September 10, 1998. Beloved husband of Helen. Devoted father of Malcolm Jr. and the late Barbara Hamilton. Contributions in his memory may be made to Princeton University, Class of 1932 or The American Red Cross in Greater New York. Funeral private.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 13, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: Bronx Assemblywoman Is Facing a Tough Challenge
BYLINE: By JONATHAN P. HICKSLooking slightly wilted after an afternoon of door-to-door campaigning, Assemblywoman Gloria Davis paused among the tidy, suburban-looking homes in the Charlotte Gardens section of the Bronx to take stock of her re-election effort.
"I've had races before, with a lot of different opponents over the years," said Ms. Davis, a 61-year-old who is known for being blunt. "And this time, I don't just want to beat my opponent. I want to whip him."
Ms. Davis, an 18-year veteran of the Assembly who has easily won re-election, is facing what may be her most formidable opponent in many years in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. Her challenger, Frankie Cruz, is a 32-year-old cable television show host who has worked as an aide to Assemblyman Roberto Ramirez, the Bronx Democratic Party leader.
The race is being watched closely not only because it pits one of the Assembly's most senior members against a young, well-financed opponent making his first bid for elected office, but also because it features a black politician, Ms. Davis, running against a Puerto Rican one, Mr. Cruz, in a district that has steadily become more Hispanic.
Mr. Cruz has his strengths, too. Through his cable television program, "The Frankie Cruz Show," on which he invites a wide array of public officials and others to discuss the events of the day, he has become far better known than the typical political newcomer.
And he has raised nearly $75,000, both through a network of friends from his days at Princeton University and through contacts he made while working for seven years with Prep for Prep, a youth development program supported by large corporations. He said he had organized nearly 200 workers to help him on Election Day. ...
The Post and Courier
Copyright 1998 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
September 13, 1998, SundayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
CHARLES N. BARTONCharles Newburn Barton, 80, of Charleston, a retired president of the Charles B. Knight Insurance Agency Inc. and general manager with the Union Central Life Insurance Co., died Thursday at his residence. The funeral will be at 3 p.m. today in the French Huguenot Church. Burial, directed by Stuhr's Downtown Chapel, will be private.
Mr. Barton was born in Douglaston, N.Y., a son of Walter E. Barton and Marion K. Barton. He was a graduate of Deerfield Academy, Princeton University and Harvard Business School. ...
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
September 13, 1998 SundayHEADLINE: PRINCETON UNWRAPS A COZY NEW STADIUM
BYLINE: The Associated Press
DATELINE: PRINCETON
For $45 million, Princeton University has constructed a stadium that provides the best of all worlds, combining history with modern times and spaciousness with intimacy.
Built on the exact spot that Palmer Stadium once stood, the new structure, known simply as Princeton Stadium, will open to the public Saturday when the Tigers play host to Cornell.
"We're enormously proud of it,"said athletic director Gary Walters. "Rafael Vinoly a New York architect did a wonderful job in terms of achieving the objectives that we set forth for him."
Those objectives included historical continuity, intimacy, architectural compatibility with the surrounding scenery, and a civic spirit that welcomes community activities and casual gatherings. ...
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 1998 Chicago Tribune CompanySeptember 13, 1998 Sunday
HEADLINE: WHEN IS A CRIME A HIGH CRIME?;BEFORE GOING FORWARD WITH IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS, CONGRESSIONAL CRITICS MUST BUILD A CASE THAT LEAVING THE PRESIDENT IN OFFICE WOULD THREATEN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER.
BYLINE: By Keith E. Whittington. Keith E. Whittington is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University and is the author of "Constitutional Construction," to be published in the spring.
For the past several weeks, many members of Congress have evaded answering questions about the Clinton scandal by saying that they must wait for independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report and for a time when "all the facts are in." Now that Starr has turned over his report, Congress must begin to make the hard decisions on whether and how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry. Ironically, this also means Starr's report will become increasingly less important.
The most serious issue to be resolved at this point is not what the president did, but how Congress should respond to his actions. If an impeachment process is to begin, Congress must start developing that argument as to why this president is damaging his office.
The impeachment of high federal officers--president, justices, cabinet officials, senators--raises completely different problems from the relatively common removal of judges. Clear evidence of criminal or abusive activity by these officials has almost always led to a rapid resignation, rendering an impeachment unnecessary. Richard Nixon in 1974, Sen. William Blount in 1876 and Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 all left office when the evidence of their criminal activities became plain. The officials who have fought their impeachments--Justice Samuel Chase in 1804 and president Andrew Johnson in 1868--faced very different situations. The core dispute between them and Congress was not over the facts, but over the significance of those facts. This is increasingly the situation facing President Clinton as well.
Before going forward with impeachment proceedings, congressional critics must build a case that leaving the president in office would threaten the constitutional order. The constitutional requirement of "high crimes and misdemeanors" takes on a particular significance when the official under discussion is the president of the United States. On the one hand, presidents must meet the highest expectations in their personal and official conduct. On the other hand, removing a president is itself extremely damaging to the republic. The unfortunate consequence is that a disreputable president can thrust the nation into a crisis, as Congress is reluctant to impeach but does not want presidential misdeeds to set a precedent for the future. ...
America
Copyright 1998 America Press Inc.
September 12, 1998HEADLINE: I suspect America readers will be interested in knowing just how mainstream the culture of death has become; dubious appointment of Peter Singer to Princeton's Center for Human Values
BYLINE: Golway, Terry
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, "the troops" at Princeton University's Center for Human Values are "rallying" to the support of a certain Peter Singer, who will join the university's staff as a professor of bioethics next fall. Professor Singer is something of a celebrity in certain circles, particularly in academia: He is among the founders of the animal-rights movement, a very hip cause on campus these days.
It seems there's been a bit of controversy surrounding Professor Singer's appointment, according to The Chronicle. And the university, in the name of academic freedom, is preparing to defend Professor Singer from critics who, in the words of Princeton Professor George Kateb, "haven't done their homework."
Professor Kateb apparently was talking about me.
The Chronicle rather dismissively noted that I have written in "scathing" terms in The New York Observer about Professor Singer's appointment, and that I have been "lambasting the professor for writing that not all human lives are necessarily worth living." Imagine that! What nerve! How could any educated person speak ill of a man who has written: "When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects for a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed." ...
Calgary Herald
Copyright 1998 Southam Inc.
September 12, 1998, SaturdayHEADLINE: Composer Oesterle wins Leger Prize
BYLINE: HERALD NEWS SERVICES
Composer Michael Oesterle has won the Canada Council's Jules Leger Prize for New Chamber Music.
The annual award, worth $7,500, goes to Oesterle for Reprise, a work for solo cello and flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone and double bass commissioned by the Little Chamber Music Series That Could in Vancouver.
Born in Germany in 1968, Oesterle immigrated to Canada in 1982, studying at the University of British Columbia and Princeton University. The Leger is the latest of several prizes, Canadian and international, on his resume.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1998 P.G. Publishing Co.
September 12, 1998, SaturdaySECTION: EDITORIAL
HEADLINE: AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE; RACIAL PREFERENCES HELP, NOT HARM, BLACK STUDENTSSupporters of affirmative action in education will not be surprised by a new study that shows the programs have been profoundly successful in improving the life chances and the lives of thousands of African Americans, and by extension, society as a whole.
The proponents - including this newspaper - have been arguing just that for years. But now it is not just a philosophical position based on intuition and instinct. The numbers are in and the evidence is overwhelming.
Do not expect, however, that the debate over affirmative action will be won or lost on the basis of statistics. Political and ideological questions are not resolved with science. But at least the arguments should be well-founded and the public discourse should take place within the context of real-world facts.
The study, which examined grades, test scores, majors, graduation rates, careers and attitudes of 45,000 students at 28 of the most selective schools in the nation over a period of 20 years, supplies a mother-lode of facts. Two former Ivy League presidents, William Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University, wrote a book using the information, called "The Shape of the River: Long-term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions.
Both men favor using race-based admission criteria, but they said they undertook the study to test the assumptions on which they based their views.
The argument that is most quickly knocked down by the new data is the notion that affirmative action cheats blacks as well as whites. Many argue that African-American students accepted to elite institutions despite lower test scores are being set up for failure, and that they would do better in a second-tier school. ...
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 1998 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
September 12, 1998 SaturdayHEADLINE: JAMES MCCAHEY JR., POLITICAL ACTIVIST
DATELINE: BRATENAHL
James B. McCahey Jr. was born into a politically active family in Chicago. He did projects for Richard Daley, the city's powerful mayor. Through business dealings, he got to know the Kennedy family.
Mr. McCahey managed the Democratic primary campaigns for presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy in Wisconsin and West Virginia in 1960, then organized the "spontaneous" demonstration for Kennedy after the Massachusetts senator's name was placed in nomination for the presidency at the Democrat's national gathering in Los Angeles. ...
Mr. McCahey, 78, died Wednesday in University Hospitals of pneumonia. ...
He was a 1942 graduate of Princeton University and became a major fund-raiser for the school.
The Washington Post
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
September 12, 1998, Saturday
HEADLINE: Crowd of Challengers Focusing on Mikulski; Candidates Not Targeting Each OtherBYLINE: Amy Argetsinger, Washington Post Staff Writer
In the remarkably uncontentious Republican primary for U.S. Senate, four political unknowns have been taking jabs not at each other but at incumbent Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D) as they travel across the state. ...
Howard David Greyber
Age: 75.
Residence: Potomac.
Education: BS, mechanical engineering, Cooper Union; MS and PhD, physics, University of Pennsylvania.Occupation: Retired from National Military Intelligence Center, Defense Intelligence Agency.
Elected Offices/Civic Activities: 1962, Republican candidate for Congress, 8th Congressional District, Massachusetts; 1980, assisted Reagan economics task force; program manager, National Science Foundation; deputy director, engineering sciences, Naval Intelligence Support Center; staff physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Princeton University.
The Associated Press
September 11, 1998, Friday
HEADLINE: Vermont educator to head Dodge Foundation
DATELINE: MORRISTOWN, N.J.An educational consultant from Vermont will become the second executive director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on the arts, education, animal welfare, public issues and local projects.
David Grant is to succeed Scott McVay on Oct. 1, the foundation announced Wednesday.
McVay will work on special assignments until his retirement at the end of the year.
Grant, 48, lives in Norwich, Vt., where he operates Grant Associates.
After teaching English for nine years, Grant developed a one-man show as Mark Twain. In 1983 he recreated Twain's world tour of 1895-96, performing on some of the same stages as the author, the foundation said.
Grant graduated from Princeton University in 1972. He taught at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., from 1974-79, and then at the Milton Academy, Milton, Mass., where he created the Mountain School, a semester-long study of the environment, and directed it for 11 years.
The foundation said it has assets of about $300 million and has made $164 million in grants since it was created by the will of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, daughter of William Rockefeller.
The Baltimore Sun
Copyright 1998 The Baltimore Sun Company
September 11, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: St. Paul's marks 150-year history; Tradition: Alumni, faculty, students and administrators gather this morning to begin the St. Paul's School sesquicentennial celebration.
BYLINE: Alice Lukens, SUN STAFF
When St. Paul's was founded as an episcopal school for poor boys 150 years ago, James Polk was president of the United States, the American flag had 30 stars, and horse-drawn carriages ruled the roads.
St. Paul's School, a private preparatory school with an operating budget of $10 million, is no longer for poor boys -- nor, in the lower school at least, just for boys. And in the mornings and afternoons, when school starts and ends, cars snake along the winding roads at the suburban Brooklandville campus.
But administrators and alumni say that in all the most important ways, the school has not changed. It may be bigger and the students may be wealthier, but that doesn't alter the sense of family, the quality education or the strong ties to the Episcopal Church. ...
In honor of the sesquicentennial, the school has commissioned a recent alumnus, Angelo Otterbein, '91, to write a history of the school. Otterbein, a 1996 graduate of Princeton University, has been raiding various archives for information, but his best material comes from old-timers like O'Connell with strong ties to the school.
"Really, the archives are dispersed among several hundred people," he said. "There are a lot of pack rats out there and they really love keeping everything." ...
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society
September 11, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: Resisting a World Recession
BYLINE: David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorDATELINE: BOSTON
HIGHLIGHT: G-7 meets Monday to stem financial unease. Experts say coordinated action is needed.
With financial storms lapping at the gunwales of their economic ships, the leaders of the industrial world are manning the pumps.
Their goal is to dump out some of the turbulent and fearful waters threatening to sink their economies into recession.
"The current crisis now has systemic peril written all over it," maintains Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley, a New York investment bank. "And the risk is that the world's policymakers are not up to the task."
Some efforts, though, are being made to calm the riled financial sea. The Bank of Japan said Wednesday it would ease a key rock-bottom interest rate even lower, to 0.25 percent, to boost its ailing economy. The move, its first monetary policy change in three years, is aimed at expanding the nation's money supply and helping its troubled banks. ...
IN Russia, the ruble recovered some of its lost value. Nonetheless, there are uncertainties about what the G-7 will be able to do to help Russia. The G-7 has decided against giving any further money to Russia at this time.
Princeton University economist Peter Kenen was at a loss. "Forty years as a practicing economist has given me no solution," he says. "What do you know about the efficacy of prayer?" ...
News & Record
Copyright 1998 News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
September 11, 1998, Friday, ALL EDITIONSHEADLINE: CELEBRATING 100;
GREENSBORO AGRICULTURAL FAIR IS STILL GOING STRONG AS IT MARKS ITS CENTENNIAL.
BYLINE: BY JIM SCHLOSSER; Staff Writer
In this age of nastiness on TV, in the movies and at the White House, who could argue that anything is more morally pure than it was in grandfather's and great-grandfather's prime years?
Here's a nominee: the fair, specifically the Greensboro Agricultural Fair.
True enough, carnies then and now need a bar of soap and look in need of a good night's sleep. But hygiene aside, the Greensboro fair no longer can be called the ''unfair.''
In the past quarter of a century or so, the fair seems to have cleaned up its acts, including bye-bye to midway pickpockets and to girlie shows that were a throwback to the days when fairs were heavy on vaudeville. The fair no longer books acts with insensitive names such as the ''Kawana Japs: A Brilliant Trio of Oriental Equilibrists,'' who played here in 1931.
The annual harvest-time extravaganza of wild rides, games, candy apples and cotton candy, cows and corn opens for a 10-day run today in the parking lot and Special Events Center of the Greensboro Coliseum.
This year's event is being billed as the 100th coming of the Greensboro fair, and you'll just have to take the word of the promoters that the numbers add up to three digits. Overlook evidence at the Greensboro Historical Museum that indicates the fair was founded in 1900.
Why quibble over a couple of years? What can't be denied is the claim by the fair's longtime owner, New Jersey impresario George Hamid Jr., whose father learned the trade under the tutelage of straight-shooting Annie Oakley, that no entertainment event has ever been as loyal to Greensboro for as long as the fair. ...
Today, at 79 and in good health, the Princeton, N.J., resident limits his holdings to the Greensboro fair and the Hamid Royale Circus, which plays indoor arenas all over the nation. He says he held on to the Greensboro operation because after so many years, the place seems like home.
George Hamid Sr., a dapper man with a pencil-thin mustache, eventually quit performing to become an entertainment promoter, staying active until his death in 1971. He became rich enough by the 1930s to send George Jr. to prep school and to Princeton University, where the young man majored in economics and English and played on the football team. One of his teammates was a student from Greensboro, Richardson Preyer, the former congressman who still lives here. ...
The San Francisco Examiner
Copyright 1998 The Hearst Corporation
September 11, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: Firm facts on affirmative action
COLUMN: ROB MORSE
SOURCE: EXAMINER COLUMNIST
EVERY ONCE in a while a book comes along that transforms a national debate, and I'm not talking about special prosecutor Ken Starr's report to Congress.
The former presidents of Princeton and Harvard, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, respectively, have written a book that would have been nice to have two years ago.
Remember the polemic-fest about affirmative action? It's hard to forget at UC-Berkeley. Because of the UC Regents' 1996 ban on taking race into account in admissions, the number of black and Latino freshmen has been cut in half, from not nearly enough to nearly nil.
Bowen and Bok's book, "The Shape of the River," released Thursday by Princeton University Press, shows us what the UC system, the state and the nation will be missing by not considering race when admitting students.
This isn't 1996's abstract debate about "fairness," "merit" and what might happen to black students admitted to elite universities despite lower SAT scores than whites.
The book is about what really has happened to almost 50,000 black and white students admitted to 28 elite colleges and universities. Twenty years of their lives, incomes and contributions to the nation have been charted in a database developed by the Mellon Foundation.
Bowen, an economist, is now president of that foundation. When I spoke to the authors by phone on Thursday, Bowen said with both pride and understatement: "We've gotten beyond the anecdotal level."
I'll say they did. There's no tired talk about the mythical "level playing field." This book is packed with data, charts and sober analyses of the things that happened in the lives of black and white students admitted to top colleges and universities. ...
The Seattle Times
Copyright 1998 The Seattle Times Company
September 11, 1998, FridayHEADLINE: ANDREW WILLIAMS, WAS LAWYER WITH JUDGMENT'
BYLINE: CAROLE BEERS; SEATTLE TIMES STAFF REPORTER
Andrew Murray "Mike" Williams enjoyed a successful 35-year legal career in Seattle, but he wasn't a high-profile lawyer.
Nonetheless, he was a member of the Perkins Coie legal teams for Boeing, for the former Puget Power, and for the Seattle Pilots baseball organization.
"He just came from the old-fashioned tradition of attorneys," said his son-in-law, Bruce Chapman of Seattle. "It wasn't that they were so laid back, but rather that they were devoted to the community. They had judgment."
Mr. Williams learned that tradition from his father, a New York attorney, and from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he earned bachelor's and law degrees. ...