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Princeton in the News
September 28 to October 2, 1998 | Feedback
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
October 3, 1998HEADLINE: Cold War throwbacks get cash lifeline
RUSSIA's weapons scientists will get an extra $20 million to keep them from selling their know-how to the highest bidder. Last week, the US Congress agreed to provide additional funding for the Department of Energy's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) programme.
In the late 1980s, the engineers who designed the Soviet Union's liquid-fuelled submarine-launched ballistic missiles were threatened with unemployment by the end of the Cold War. Many left for North Korea. There's little doubt that Russian expertise, combined with Chinese help, accelerated North Korea's missile programme, say experts on weapons proliferation. ...
Last week's grant will provide an important boost for the programme, say experts in weapons proliferation. But for the programme to succeed in the long run, Western companies need to show more interest in the technologies on offer. "It's effective in employing senior scientists at Russian institutes, but its ability to actually get commercial joint ventures is more limited," says Frank Von Hippel of Princeton University in New Jersey, an expert on nuclear proliferation. Given Russia's current economic woes, finding Western business partners will remain a tall order.
New Scientist
Copyright 1998 New Scientist IPC Magazines Ltd
October 3, 1998HEADLINE: Superhumans
BYLINE: Robert Taylor (Washington DC; Robert Taylor is a science writer in Washington DC)HIGHLIGHT: Like it or not, in a few short years we'll have the power to control our own evolution. Robert Taylor finds out how
If you put your ear to the tracks, you can hear the train coming.
In conference halls around the world, geneticists and developmental biologists have been gathering to discuss what once was unthinkable - genetically engineering human embryos so that they, and their children, and their children's children, are irrevocably changed. These experts are talking with remarkable candour about using germ-line engineering to cure fatal diseases or even to create designer babies that will be stronger, smarter, or more resistant to infections.
Doctors are already experimenting with gene therapy, in which a relatively small number of cells - in the lungs, say - are altered to correct a disease. Germ-line engineering, however, would change every cell in the body. People would no longer have to make do with haphazard combinations of their parent's genes. Instead, genetic engineers could eliminate defective genes, change existing ones or even add a few extra. Humanity would, in effect, take control of its own evolution. ...
One reason for cold feet is that large-scale genetic engineering could actually rob society of desirable traits. What if the "disease" genes in combination with other genes, or in people who are merely carriers, also help produce such intangibles as artistic creativity or a razor-sharp wit or the ability to wiggle ones ears ? Wipe out the gene, and you risk losing those traits too. And while no one would wish manic depression on anyone, society might be the poorer without the inventiveness that many psychologists believe is part and parcel of the disorder. In his book "Remaking Eden", Lee Silver, a biologist at Princeton University, goes as far as to suggest that a century or two of widespread engineering might even create a new species of human, no longer willing or able to mate with its "gene poor" relations (Us and them, New Scientist, 9 May, p 36). ...
ABC NEWS
SHOW: ABC GOOD MORNING AMERICA
OCTOBER 1, 1998HEADLINE: DEAN CAIN'S "FUTURESPORT"
BYLINE: DEBORAH ROBERTS, KEVIN NEWMAN, LISA McREEHIGHLIGHT: DEAN CAIN TALKS WITH GMA
LISA McREE: When militant terrorists threaten the safety of Americans everywhere, one man has the courage to take them on in a battle to decide the fate of the world. Sound like a job for Superman? Well, it sort of is. Dean Cain trades in his cape for roller blades in tonight's ABC movie, "Futuresport," set in the year 2025. The action-thriller stars Cain as the master of a deadly game created to settle gang disputes. Only this time, the turf war is global. ...
LISA McREE: A lot of people don't know that -- they know you played football in college. But a lot of people don't know that you actually had a very brief, abbreviated pro career.
DEAN CAIN: It was a cup of coffee. Boy, it was a cup of coffee.
LISA McREE: Tell them what happened.
DEAN CAIN: That was about it. I got injured really early in camp. I was playing for the Buffalo Bills. I got injured. It wasn't a horrible injury. ...
LISA McREE: I have one more question my husband wants me to ask. Are you a Cowboys fan now?
DEAN CAIN: I'm a huge Cowboys fan.
LISA McREE: Because?
DEAN CAIN: I can hear everybody in the audience.
LISA McREE: Evil Giants fans over there.
DEAN CAIN: Jason Garrett, the new starting quarterback, because Troy Aikman is hurt, hopefully he'll come back soon, but in the interim Jason Garret, who was my quarterback from my college, Princeton University, he's out there starting. And he did beat the Giants two weeks ago. And last. ...
The Associated Press
October 1, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Hedge fund's managers traded on names
BYLINE: By JOHN HENDREN, AP National WriterDATELINE: NEW YORK
It started with a billion-dollar Rolodex.
Long-Term Capital Management fund's partners had all the right marquee names - a legendary Wall Street trader, two Nobel laureate economists and a top banking regulator. And they traded on them to gain access to the world's largest banks and other coveted investors.
Now the once unsullied names bear the taint of a near-collapse that required a Federal Reserve-sponsored corporate rescue. And Wall Street analysts say investors will likely demand an end to the secrecy that kept them in the dark about what was happening to their money. ...
Long-Term Capital Management - effectively an unregulated mutual fund for rich investors - got into trouble after its managers used their door-opening pedigrees to borrow lavish sums and then made spectacular gambles on the money. Because lax regulation allows so-called hedge funds to cloak their investment strategies in secrecy, investors who now fear staggering losses had little else to go on. ...
"Clearly we need far more transparency, and a far better understanding on the part of the banks and the brokerage firms as to just what the financial situation is of the people to whom they're lending," Princeton University economics professor Burton G. Malkiel said. ...
The Detroit News
Copyright 1998 The Detroit News, Inc.
October 01, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: National Briefs/Californians aren't happier, study shows
WASHINGTON -- Does living in California make you happier? No, psychologists said Wednesday, but people think it should.
A study of 1,900 college students in California, Ohio and Michigan showed they were equally happy with their lives, said David Schkade of the University of Texas and Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University. They said their report illustrated that people's expectations about happiness did not always measure up to real life.
"It appears the advantages of California are often overestimated, and that some advantages are perceived even where none exist," Schkade and Kahneman wrote in a report in Psychological Science.
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
October 1, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Economic Scene; Long-Term Capital didn't get a bailout and didn't warrant one.
BYLINE: By Michael M. WeinsteinJUDGING from the volume of criticism, William J. McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, made a dreadful mistake when he orchestrated a "bailout" of Long-Term Capital Management, the multibillion-dollar investment fund that bought most of its assets with borrowed money.
Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, wonders out loud why the Government needed to rescue private investors. Jeff Faux, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, spoke for many on the political left when he questioned the fairness of rescuing millionaire speculators when the Government turns its back on bankrupt companies that employ low-paid workers.
Other critics ask whether the Fed's action creates a destructive incentive, known as a moral hazard, for banks and securities firms to lend recklessly to investment funds, assured by last week's action that the Government would not let their investments go belly up.
Good questions all. But the Fed has even better answers. The truth is that it orchestrated no bailout, created no moral hazard and set no bad precedent. ...
The Fed-brokered deal raises the larger question of when the Government should rescue bankrupt companies. Bailing out nonfinancial companies rarely makes sense because a government that protects losers will attract losers galore. But politicians sometimes cannot resist bailing out the likes of Chrysler and Lockheed -- huge corporations whose demise threatens thousands of workers -- even though research shows that few if any jobs are truly saved.
Banks, however, are special. Burton Malkiel, an economics professor at Princeton University, argues that bailing out banks makes sense "because taxpayers are already on the hook for the federally insured deposits." And the Government needs to protect the nation's money supply. ...
The Record
Copyright 1998 Bergen Record Corp. (Bergen County, NJ)
October 1, 1998HEADLINE: BRADLEY SURE LOOKS LIKE HE'S ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
BYLINE: MIKE KELLYThe big man spent the day in New Hampshire last Friday. Today, just after dawn, he is scheduled to board a plane for Iowa.
Coincidence?
Those who know Bill Bradley caution against finding any significance in these trips. But then, the significance is hard to ignore, too.
New Hampshire and Iowa are both sites of key, and early, contests in the 2000 presidential campaign. And yes, Bradley's name has been on the short list of possible Democratic candidates for years. And yes, Bradley, who represented New Jersey in the U.S. Senate for 18 years and now lives in Montclair, has said he is thinking about the White House. ...
For all the talk during all the years, Bradley also has long assumed the role of the reluctant player, the guy with so much potential who keeps showing up at the gym, but never takes a shot when the ball is tossed his way.
Bradley surely understands this basketball analogy. As an All-American for Princeton University and later with the New York Knicks, he was hardly shy about taking the ball to the hoop. But as a possible presidential candidate, Bradley is more like Scarlet O'Hara at a garden party, coy and frustrating. ...
The Vancouver Sun
Copyright 1998 Pacific Press Ltd.
October 1, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: Science is still baffled by sexual relationships
BYLINE: AISLING IRWIN; THE DAILY TELEGRAPHDATELINE: LONDON
Poets, artists and columnists have mused on it, scientists have studied the bare bones of it for generations. But biologists admit they still cannot explain the intricacies behind the relationship between a man and a woman.
In the current issue of the journal Science, experts explain their latest theories about sex in the animal kingdom -- ideas that normally make their way into the news one by one and are often strikingly similar to the latest social attitudes to human behaviour.
It all raises the question of whether scientific discoveries about sex give us insight into our relationships. Or is it the other way around? ...
The evolutionary explanation lies in a distinction between social and genetic monogamy. So long as a female has a dutiful male looking after the nest, who can be kidded that the offspring under his care are indeed his, it makes genetic sense to smuggle a few chicks of a different genetic stock into the nest to spread the chances of genetically robust offspring.
But even socially monogamous bliss is now being interpreted by scientists as a lie.
"It's a war," said Shirley Tilghman, a developmental biologist at Princeton University. The battle is over the child -- inside the developing embryo, the genes of the mother and father are fighting for supremacy in the next generation. ...
The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
October 1, 1998, ThursdayHEADLINE: 2 crusaders take on political correctness; Say campuses must be changed
BYLINE: Kim Asch; THE WASHINGTON TIMESTo those who believe college campuses are bastions of academic freedom, individuality and open expression, Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate have three words: "The Shadow University."
Their new book, which takes the cryptic phrase for its title, is the latest salvo against political correctness in higher education.
While most "PC" critiques take aim at admissions biases or the curriculum, Mr. Kors, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer, assert that there is something more sinister afoot in academe.
Codes that prohibit "offensive" speech, university-sponsored sensitivity training and even freshman orientations are part of a "systematic" and covert assault upon students' liberty, individualism, dignity, right to due process and equality before the law, they say. Such accusations might be dismissed as the paranoid rantings of a vast right-wing conspiracy if they weren't so alarmingly well-documented in "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses" (Free Press). There's also this niggling detail: politically, the authors are polar opposites.
When they met in fall 1960 as freshmen at Princeton University, "I found Harvey an immediately warm and wonderful guy," recalls Mr. Kors. Yet, from the beginning, they disagreed on just about every issue, he says, and "we still argue." ...
What this duo has in common is a commitment to defending the constitutional rights of others. They fancy themselves the shadow busters of academe, shining the light on the "tyranny that seeks to assert absolute power over the souls, the consciousness, and the individuality of our students." ...
The Baltimore Sun
Copyright 1998 The Baltimore Sun Company
September 30, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Lifelong pursuit of mathematical proof; Professor: At 15, Enrico Bombieri picked up a book on number theory that introduced him to the fiendishly puzzling Riemann Hypothesis. He was hooked.
BYLINE: Douglas Birch, SUN STAFFPRINCETON, N.J. -- Asked to describe the puzzle that has stumped him for 42 years, Enrico Bombieri takes a piece of chalk out of his pocket and scrawls a lengthy series of numbers and symbols on an upright slab of stone.
The 57-year-old mathematician, standing in a grassy courtyard outside his office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, scratches furiously for a minute or so. Soon, he rubs out a few numbers with his finger and writes in new ones.
The formula Bombieri works on so compulsively may be the single most important question in mathematics: the 139-year-old conundrum called the Riemann Hypothesis.
"It's a difficult problem," Bombieri says, in a voice that occasionally accelerates into a mumble. "Either you hit a home run, or you're out. No singles, doubles or triples." ...
But the Riemann has its biggest impact in the abstract world of mathematics.
For more than a century, mathematicians have dreamt up an estimated 300 theorems that assume Riemann is mathematical gospel. A proof would not only confirm those theorems but lead to many others as well.
"The hope is, it will give us the ultimate insight into whole numbers and prime numbers," says Peter Sarnak of Princeton University. ...
Today, top-ranked mathematicians are working on Riemann at such schools as Princeton, Stanford and the College de France and at the tranquil, forest-ringed Institute for Advanced Study, where Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer pondered the nature of the universe. ...
DAILY MAIL (London)
Copyright 1998 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
September 30, 1998HEADLINE: Experts shoot down the JFK conspiracies; REVIEW CONCLUDES OSWALD ACTED ALONE
BYLINE: George GordonCONSPIRACY theories about the killing of John F. Kennedy were blown apart yesterday by a $6million inquiry. The assassination was the lone work of Lee Harvey Oswald, a review board set up by the U.S. Congress has concluded.
There was no vast Mafia-style plot, no second gunman and no mystery figure skulking on a grassy knoll, its members believe.
The Assassination Records Review Board dug deep into a mountain of government secrecy and decided there is no smoking gun, no concealed evidence and no cover-up.
The board was set up six years ago in the wake of years of conspiracy theories, and then Oliver Stone's sensational movie J.F.K. which presented the prospect of a sinister inner force eliminating a President it did not like.
In a scathing indictment of government bureaucrats, the board says: 'The suspicions created by government secrecy eroded confidence in the truthfulness of federal agencies in general and damaged their credibility such secrecy led the American public to believe the government had something to hide.' It also spawned a vast conspiracy theory publishing industry, ranging from monthly newsletters to hundreds of books. ...
The five board members are Judge John Tunheim, Kermit Hall, professor of history and law at Ohio State University, William Joyce, archivist at Princeton University, and historians Henry Graff and Anna Nelson. ...
The Des Moines Register
Copyright 1998 The Des Moines Register, Inc.
September 30, 1998, WednesdayHEADLINE: Poll: Keep Social Security money out of stock market
BYLINE: Kenneth PinsSOURCE: Washington News Bureau
By KENNETH PINSRegister Washington Bureau
Washington, D.C. -Americans are so opposed to letting the government invest their Social Security funds in the stock market, they would rather pay higher taxes or get lower benefits to stabilize the program, according to a survey for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"The security and safety of the fund is number one among all groups," said G. Evans Witt, a Princeton University pollster who did the research. The work was done Aug. 6-27, before the stock market dropped sharply at the end of August, Witt noted.
Pew is nearing the end of its project to see what people know, and what they want done, about Social Security. The project included a stop in Des Moines in late spring.
As baby boomers begin to retire, experts say Social Security could face dire circumstances if something isn't done. ...
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Copyright 1998 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
September 29, 1998 TuesdayHEADLINE: RATE CUT WOULD BE KEY SHIFT BY FED; WORLD CRISIS MAY FORCE ACTION BY CENTRAL BANK
BYLINE: By Jacob M. Schlesinger, Wall Street JournalDATELINE: WASHINGTON
Ever since Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan broadly hinted last week at an interest rate cut, markets have treated a reduction as a near certainty when the Fed's policymakers meet in Washington today.
An easing of monetary policy would mark a swift and amazing turnaround in the central bank's fundamental economic outlook. For well over a year, the Fed's greatest concern has been inflation, not recession. As recently as July, Greenspan and his colleagues agreed their next move was most likely a rate increase.
Why would the Fed ease?
The new dynamic since the summer has been continued deterioration in Asia's economies, and the disease's spread to Russia and Latin America, which takes more than 15 percent of U.S. exports.
There has been minimal concrete evidence of a slowdown in the United States, mainly a slump in manufacturing and a drop in corporate profits. But some early warning signs of deeper damage may be flashing, such as hints of eroding business and consumer confidence, especially as the stock market slumps. ...
Market stability could also reduce the possibility of other Long-Term Capital type crises.
"It could turn questionable loans into good loans, and prevent other questionable loans from becoming bad loans," says Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman.
But psychological boosts only work so long, short of fundamental changes in global economic trouble spots. ...
The Associated Press
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Prodded, most - but not all - agencies give up their JFK records
BYLINE: By MIKE FEINSILBER, Associated Press WriterDATELINE: WASHINGTON
An agency created six years ago to ferret out every available fact about the assassination of John F. Kennedy says it has uncovered more than 60,000 government documents shedding some light on that tragedy but had to engage in bureaucratic battles to obtain some.
The Assassination Records Review Board has completed its task and turns over its report to President Clinton on Wednesday - then goes out of business. In the report, it says the government "needlessly and wastefully classified and then withheld from public access countless important records that did not require such treatment."
As a result of its work, the board gathered some details about the murder, the investigations, the climate at the time and secret U.S. activities in Cuba and the Soviet Union.
But it did not seek to reinvestigate the assassination, and its 208-page report draws no conclusions to affirm or contradict the Warren Commission's 1964 finding that a "perpetually discontented" Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was the killer.
The report says that board - despite an unusual grant of power from Congress to force the declassification of documents - hit resistance from some agencies. Some needed urging to produce documents and some required "dunning letters" threatening unilateral declassification, the board said.
It especially criticized the Secret Service. Two years after the board was created, the board said, the Secret Service destroyed "protective intelligence files" concerning "threats to President Kennedy in the Dallas area," Kennedy's travels in the weeks before the assassination and the activities of the pro-Fidel Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee with which Oswald had aligned himself weeks earlier. ...
The board was made up of five people with legal, archival and historical expertise: U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim of Minnesota; historian Henry Graff of Columbia University; Kermit Hall, Ohio State University professor of history and law; William Joyce, Princeton University archivist; and Anna Nelson, professor of foreign relations at American University in Washington.
The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: New World Order for Finance?
BYLINE: David R. Francis, Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorDATELINE: BOSTON
HIGHLIGHT: Political leaders consider reforms to global financial system - including an entity to oversee flow of private money.As financial markets continue trembling like jello, world leaders are considering some of the biggest changes to the global monetary system in more than 50 years.
Their aim: greater stability.
Suggestions range from the more conventional, such as a partial merger of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, to the novel, such as the creation of an entirely new institution to oversee the flow of private capital around the world.
If adopted, the changes would mark a significant shift in a system that impinges on everyone from Des Moines to New Delhi. ...
Such dramatic changes in the system could take years to work out. There is not yet consensus among the Group of Seven industrial powers. "We have everybody shooting their mouth off," says Peter Kenen, a Princeton University economist. "I think (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair jumped the gun."...
Health Line
Copyright 1998 The National Journal Group, Inc.
September 29, 1998HEADLINE: MEDICAL EDUCATION: STRIVING TO BOOST MINORITY ENROLLMENT
A sharp decline in the number of minority students enrolling in medical schools is prompting minority groups, medical societies and higher education leaders to fight restrictions on "affirmative action that they believe threaten the future health of minority communities," today's New York Times reports. A key battle this fall is Washington state's Initiative 200, which would ban all forms of affirmative action. ...
IN DEFENSE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Affirmative action policies at elite colleges "created the backbone of the American black middle class and have taught white classmates the value of integration," according to a recent study "of the grades, test scores, choice of major, graduation rates, careers and attitudes of 45,000 students at 28 selective universities over 20 years." In the study, Derek Bok and William Bowen, former presidents of Harvard and Princeton Universities, respectively, concluded that eliminating affirmative action would have a significant impact on minority enrollment in medical and law schools, "because the more selective the institution, the greater the impact." ...
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 1998 Times Mirror Company
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: KNICKERBOCKER PLANDS 25% STAFF CUT; DOWNSIZING: THE LAKE FOREST MANUFACTURER, IN A SERIOUS REVENUE AND STOCK SLUMP, ALSO WILL TRANSFER SOME JOBS FROM MAINE TO CALIFORNIA
BYLINE: From Times Staff and Wire ReportsL.L. Knickerbocker Co. Inc. said Monday that it plans to eliminate about 25% of its 290-employee work force in the U.S. to save money.
The Lake Forest company, which markets a variety of collectible dolls and toys, lost $4.4 million last year, and its revenue for the first two quarters this year has fallen below year-earlier levels. ...
The company is attempting to focus on its core business, streamline operations and return to profitability, Chief Operating Officer Robert West said in a prepared statement.
In August, Knickerbocker formed a new wholly owned unit to manage the investment arm of the business. The company began diversifying two years ago, investing in Pure Energy Corp., which holds the exclusive license to manufacture and distribute an alternative fuel developed at Princeton University. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 29, 1998, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
HEADLINE: Struggling to Bolster Minorities in Medicine
BYLINE: By HOLCOMB B. NOBLEMEDICAL authorities, educators and civil-rights lawyers, concerned about a sudden drop in minority enrollment in the nation's medical schools, are striking back at moves to fight affirmative action that they believe threaten the future health of minority communities.
A coalition of 51 medical associations is mobilizing forces and raising money to help defeat a Nov. 3 voter initiative in the state of Washington that would ban any form of affirmative action. And minority groups as well as higher education leaders are conducting research and planning court strategies to challenge the movement against affirmative action. The coalition opposing the ballot measure, representing some two million medical professionals, includes the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association. ...
Wading into the fray, Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, and William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University, have completed a study of the grades, test scores, choice of major, graduation rates, careers and attitudes of 45,000 students at 28 selective universities over 20 years. They concluded that affirmative-action policies in general at the nation's elite colleges have created the backbone of the American black middle class and have taught white classmates the value of integration. ...
The New York Times
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: A Blast at Secrecy in Kennedy Killing
BYLINE: By TIM WEINERDATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 28
There is no second gunman, no assassin skulking on the grassy knoll, no vast conspiracy. But now more than 60,000 secret documents on the killing of President John F. Kennedy are public records, released by a citizens' commission that concludes its work on Wednesday after taking one of the deepest cuts ever into official Government secrecy.
That commission, the Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress six years ago to dispel an abiding sense among Americans that the truth about the Kennedy assassination had been hidden, has since helped put more than four million pages of secret records into the public domain, using unprecedented powers to order declassification of documents.
For decades, "the official record on the assassination of President Kennedy remained shrouded in secrecy and mystery," says the board's final report, to be issued on Wednesday. "The suspicions created by Government secrecy eroded confidence in the truthfulness of Federal agencies in general and damaged their credibility." ...
The review board had five members: John R. Tunheim, a Federal district judge in Minnesota, the board's chairman; Henry F. Graff, a Columbia University historian; Kermit L. Hall, professor of history and law at Ohio State University; William L. Joyce, archivist at Princeton University, and Anna K. Nelson, historian at American University. ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 1998 P.G. Publishing Co.
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: LOCAL BLACK COLLEGE GRADUATES SEE BENEFIT OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
BYLINE: STEVE LEVIN AND ERVIN DYER, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITERS
Adrianne Andrews graduated from Chicago's Roosevelt University in 1976, earned her master's degree from Northeast Illinois University and arrived at Northwestern University in 1982 to pursue her doctorate in anthropology.
None of it would have been possible, Andrews said, without the help of affirmative action.
"I felt that it was a major breakthrough in comparing myself to others in my family who hadn't had the opportunity for college because of discrimination in admittance," said Andrews, now an assistant professor of Africana at the University of Pittsburgh.
"It played a major role just in terms of opening up institutions, just opening the way. I do know that I would not have been able to go to school ... until affirmative action made [schools] stop what they had been doing. The legislation forced these places to open up the door." ...
Andrews' personal experience, and those of several other blacks in Pittsburgh, corroborate the findings of a recent major study on affirmative action. That study, culled from the grades, test scores, graduation rates, careers and attitudes of 45,000 students at 28 top American colleges and universities, found that affirmative action policies have not only helped create a black middle class, but also taught whites the importance of integration.
The study was published earlier this month by Princeton University Press in a book titled "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions." It was written by two former presidents of Ivy League universities, William Bowen of Princeton University, an economist, and Derek Bok of Harvard University, a political scientist.
The study's large database and its focus on race-conscious admissions to top schools of higher education between 1976 and 1989 highlight one of the basic premises of affirmative action: Affording blacks a chance for a quality education provides them with an opportunity to succeed in society. ...
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company: Abstracts
Information Bank AbstractsSeptember 29, 1998, Tuesday
HEADLINE: HEDGE FUNBDS: THE NEW BARBARIANS AT THE GATE
BYLINE: BY BURTON G MALKIELABSTRACT:
Princeton University economic professor Burton G Malkiel and New York University business professor J P Mei article assert hedge funds pose threat to world financial stability; drawing (M)
The Washington Times
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
September 29, 1998, TuesdayHEADLINE: Is Bradley preparing game plan for 2000?; Ex-senator already stumping in key states
BYLINE: Liz Trotta; THE WASHINGTON TIMESNEW YORK - Bill Bradley, the New Jersey Democrat who gave up his Senate seat two years ago saying "politics is broken," is feeding the fires of speculation over a possible presidential bid in 2000.
Last week in New Hampshire and this week in Iowa, the former New York Knicks basketball star is talking to Democratic Party audiences about values and principles, the kind of themes, his supporters say, that make him the "un-Clinton" and a candidate who could defeat front-runner Vice President Al Gore.
For his part, the rangy, soft-spoken Mr. Bradley has said he will decide whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination by the end of the year, although Democratic operatives believe a decision could come shortly after the congressional elections in November. ...
Taking a page from his latest book, "Values of the Game," the former basketball star talks about responsibility, leadership, and respect - three of the ten virtues he suggests are required to play both the game of basketball and the game of life.
In the book, he writes: "In the U.S. Senate, along the campaign trail, or on any number of projects I became involved with after Princeton, it was the same story: I was determined that no one would outwork me." ...