Princeton in the News
October 29 to November 4, 1999
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HIGHLIGHTS
HEADLINE: Agents search US activist's Moscow apartment;
Security officials seize papers, computer of nuclear
researcher
BYLINE: By Brian Whitmore, Globe Correspondent
MOSCOW - Russian security agents have searched the Moscow apartment of American researcher and Boston native Josh Handler, who is in Russia researching a doctoral thesis on nuclear disarmament issues.
About 10 agents from Russia's Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, showed up at Handler's apartment with a search warrant Wednesday afternoon and went through his belongings for seven hours, leaving at 11:30 p.m. They seized notebooks, a laptop computer, an address book, papers, maps, newspaper clippings, photographs, and tapes from his answering machine, Handler said last night.
"I am deeply concerned that the Russian security services have harassed Josh Handler and confiscated his property. This behavior is unacceptable," Senator Edward M. Kennedy said in a statement last night. Kennedy's spokesman, Will Keyser, said the senator has contacted the State Department about Handler's situation. The US Embassy here has complained about Handler's treatment to Russian officials, a US official in Washington said.
A doctoral candidate at Princeton University, Handler, 39, has been in Russia since February as a guest of the Russian Academy of Sciences' prestigious USA and Canada Institute. He is researching a dissertation on Russian-American disarmament issues. He said he has made about a dozen trips to Russia since 1990.
A former Greenpeace antinuclear campaign coordinator, Handler also has published research on the environmental hazards caused by nuclear facilities in Russia. He recently wrote an article on the subject of how Russia stores nuclear warheads once they are removed from decommissioned missiles. The article, which appeared on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, pointed out safety hazards in the process due to a lack of storage space.
NOTE: Other accounts of the Josh Handler incident appear in the digest below.
HEADLINE: Can You Make My Kid Smarter?; A dispatch from the
frontiers of 21st century genetics
BYLINE: Lee M. Silver
Just as their marketing consultant had predicted, a simple name change spawned an explosive growth in the customer base of the St. Genevieve fertility clinic. Only 10 months earlier, in April 2024, the clinic had begun its new advertising campaign for "Organic Enhancement" on websites frequented by women with babymaking on their minds.
"Why not give your child the best possible start in life?" was the tease. A few seconds of eye focus on the ad automatically brought viewers to St. Gen's home page, where they could see the full pitch:
"Consider using our patented Organic Enhancement protocol to provide your child with all-natural resistance to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, stroke and eight different forms of cancer, as well as absolute protection against aids, allergies, asthma and Alzheimer's disease. But keep in mind, you must act before you get pregnant. Don't be sorry after she's born. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your child-to-be."
The response was immediate and enormous. The market for organic enhancement of newly fertilized embryos quickly overtook infertility treatment. Ironically, most of the prospective parents who now crowded the waiting room at the St. Gen "fertility" clinic had no fertility problems at all.
The outcry from long-standing critics was also immediate.
But first, St. Gen had a serious marketing problem on its hands. The term genetic engineering triggered images of Frankenstein-like scientists creating little monsters. This image was clearly not good for business. What could they do to change the public's view? At this point, their highly paid marketing consultant earned her keep. "Change the name!" she bellowed. "Call your service Organic Enhancement, and prospective parents will come running."
How right she was!
Lee M. Silver is a professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University and the author of Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family
HEADLINE: Andrea Jung Named CEO of Avon
DATELINE: NEW YORK, Nov. 4
Avon Products, Inc. (NYSE: AVP) today announced that its president and chief operating officer, Andrea Jung, has been named president and chief executive officer, succeeding chairman and CEO Charles R. Perrin in his capacity as CEO. Mr. Perrin is retiring from Avon. The company also announced that outside director Stanley C. Gault, has been elected non-executive chairman of the board. All changes are effective immediately.
Ms. Jung has been Avon's president since January 1998 and its chief operating officer since July 1998. Previously, she held the company's top marketing positions since joining Avon in January 1994.
Prior to joining Avon, Ms. Jung was executive vice president of Neiman Marcus, responsible for women's and intimate apparel, accessories and cosmetics. She also had been senior vice president for I. Magnin, the prominent chain of specialty stores for women. Ms. Jung is a Director of General Electric Company and serves on the boards of the Fragrance Foundation, Cosmetic Executive Women and Princeton University.
She was named one of Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in American Business" in 1998 and 1999, and was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame by the American Advertising Federation.
HEADLINE: HOW TO HELP THE BRAIN TO REPAIR ITSELF
BYLINE: By Catherine Arnst
Despite all the progress in Alzheimer's research, scientists are still many years away from a drug that will cure the disease.
Since the 1800s, it has been accepted wisdom that the adult brain, unlike all other organs, is not capable of regeneration. That dogma began to erode several years ago, when it was discovered that the canary rebuilds a whole segment of its brain every fall to learn a new song. But far more important for humans was the October report by Princeton University psychologists Elizabeth Gould and Charles G. Gross that adult rhesus monkeys continually add new cells in the cerebral cortex, the largest and most complex region of the brain. Because rhesus monkeys and humans are closely related, the same thing is probably true in people.
(J)ust a year ago, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., reported on new cell formation taking place in the human hippocampus, which plays a role in memory formation. But scientists still assumed that the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for high-level decision-making and learning, is set for life because the brain needs to have a stable structure for storing knowledge.
The Princeton researchers caution that practical application of their discovery could be years or even decades away. Even so, ''it shows there are natural mechanisms in the brain that, someday, might be harnessed for therapeutic purposes to replenish damaged areas of the brain,'' says Gould.
HEADLINE: ...And Will They Go Inside Us?; Given the promise of
nanotechnology, it's a safe bet
BYLINE: Michael D. Lemonick
Imagine an army of tiny robots, each no bigger than a bacterium, swimming through your bloodstream. One platoon takes continuous readings of blood pressure in different parts of your body; another monitors cholesterol; still others measure blood sugar, hormone levels, incipient arterial blockages and immune-system activity.
Such are the dreams of the nanotechnologists, engineers at places like M.I.T., Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon, who are already redefining the meaning of the word miniature. The prefix nano- refers to a billionth part of a unit--the size range these visionaries are talking about. Already, nanotechnologists have built gears and rotors far thinner than a human hair and tiny molecular "motors" only 50 atoms long.
HEADLINE: A Better Idea Has Replaced 'In Loco Parentis'
BYLINE: GLENN C. ALTSCHULER and ISAAC KRAMNICK By GLENN C.
ALTSCHULER and ISAAC KRAMNICK
A few months ago, an article on the front page of The New York Times announced a "revolution" in undergraduate life, reporting that colleges and universities are bringing back in loco parentis with a regime of rules and regulations. The Times claimed that students now seem less hostile to guidance by college officials, and that baby-boomer parents are increasingly insisting that faculty and staff members do more to supervise students outside the classroom.
According to the Times, many institutions now ban parties on the campus if an adult is not present, prohibit students from rushing a fraternity or sorority in their first semester, and have established "living and learning communities," with professors residing in the dorms.
The Times is only partly right: In loco parentis is not really making a comeback, but living-and-learning communities may be changing students' lives.
In the 19th century, the golden age of in loco parentis, academic regulations covered virtually all aspects of students' lives, from libido to laundry. For instance, in 1885 the Princeton University faculty resolved that "should any students continue to have their washing done in town as heretofore, it must be done under the supervision of the College office."
Although surveillance of students became less extensive in the years that followed, the regime of moral tutoring persisted into the early 1960s, with curfews, dress codes for classrooms and dining halls, and parietal rules -- including the requirements of "three feet on the floor" and keeping the door open when a male student visited the dorm room of a female student, or vice versa.
HEADLINE: A Call for College Classmates to Reunite in Behalf of
Public Service
BYLINE: ANTHONY GIORGIANNI
If Ralph Nader and other members of the Princeton University Class of 1955 are successful, college reunions will no longer be about rowdy all-night drinking parties and the strong-arming of classmates into making big gifts. Instead, the focus will be on public service -- and on ways to turn alumni groups into a powerful force for social change.
At Mr. Nader's urging, his classmates already have spent the past decade undertaking a variety of public-service efforts, such as fighting tuberculosis and setting up public-service internships for Princeton students.
They now are trying to persuade alumni from other colleges and universities to set up public-interest projects of their own. Mr. Nader himself has donated $10,000 to what the classmates have dubbed the "Alumni Network," and grant makers have chipped in an additional $75,000.
HEADLINE: Reform Compromise Favors Fed's Oversight Powers Over
Treasury's
BYLINE: By ROB GARVER and BARBARA A. REHM
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
In the turf war between the Federal Reserve Board and Treasury Department that hung up the financial reform bill for more than a year, the Fed seems to have emerged the winner.
The battle centered on how banks would be allowed to take advantage of new powers. The Fed wanted them to be offered through subsidiaries of holding companies, which it supervises. The Treasury argued that new powers could be safely housed in subsidiaries owned directly by banks, which it indirectly oversees through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The two sides came to an eleventh-hour compromise last month that helped move the legislation toward the verge of enactment.
"My impression is that the Fed did get most of what it wanted," said Princeton University economics professor Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the central bank. "There are many cleaner solutions that could have been reached, such as writing the Treasury out altogether, but that clearly wasn't in the cards."
SECTION: Editorial
HEADLINE: Don't subsidize revitalization efforts in flood-prone
areas
BYLINE: Staff
THE FEDERAL Emergency Management Agency's commitment to ending the costly rebuilding cycle in flood-damaged areas, announced last week, is commendable and prudent.
FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, which covers homes and businesses and is funded by premiums, has been operating at a loss since 1993. And, according to the General Accounting Office, overall premium income won't meet future expected flood losses.
About 30 percent of the 4.1 million insured properties have subsidized premiums, costing just one-third of the actuarial premium, which is the premium based on the calculated risk. At the end of August --- just before the devastation of Hurricane Floyd --- the flood program's deficit was $541 million. Had rates been actuarially based, the program would have raised $500 million more in premiums. .
Government-subsidized flood insurance has encouraged the trend to rebuild on vulnerable property. "Most natural disasters are not random acts, but rather the direct and predictable consequences of inappropriate land use," a study by Richard Allen, a Princeton University researcher, reports.
HEADLINE: Love and war in the kitchen
SOURCE: Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Ellen Sweets
Betty Fussell loves to talk about food. She has written extensively about it. She truly enjoys eating it, and she enjoys preparing it for friends. When she waxes rhapsodic about the colors, smells, textures and seasonings that produce the foods she cooks, she elevates it to a place that makes it seem inappropriate to buy food already prepared.
Of course, the elevated moment passes when it's time to get dinner for six on the table after a 10-hour workday. But for the time being she has your attention. She makes you think.
Love and war
My Kitchen Wars chronicles a life that includes a 32-year marriage that ended when she came home to find her husband with a young male student. It also includes her mother's suicide - all set against a backdrop of changing cultural, political and social times. It isn't until you read the book that you realize that she didn't start her writing career until she was 54, having devoted herself to the role of faculty wife during her husband's tenure at Princeton University.
HEADLINE: A Tie That Binds Him to the Courts; Ex-Tennis Ace To
Be Architect Of Sports Center
BYLINE: Jackie Spinner, Washington Post Staff Writer
George T. Myers has left his architectural stamp on some of the most recognizable projects in the Washington area.
His Kensington firm designed the Chinatown offices for Abe Pollin's Washington Sports management team in a row of restored brownstones near MCI Center. The firm also created an office building and restaurant space on King Street in Old Town Alexandria, converted the old Granary warehouse in Gaithersburg into an award-winning retail and office complex and designed four of the trendy Xando Coffee and Bar stores in Maryland and Virginia.
But his architecture resume did not land him the job as the designer of the proposed 11.6-acre tennis training center in College Park. It was his tennis game.
In 1974, Myers was the No. 11 junior tennis player in the country. Six years later, he went on to play tennis for the University of Maryland, where he was team captain in 1984.
And he came from tennis stock. As a boy, Myers, who grew up in Chevy Chase, played doubles with his grandfather, Hugh Lynch Jr., a mid-Atlantic champion player. His uncle, Hugh Lynch III, played at Princeton University and claimed a win over Arthur Ashe.
HEADLINE: Nuclear Researchers Questioned by FSB, THE ST.
PETERSBURG TIMES
BYLINE: Natalya Shulyakovskaya
MOSCOW - Russian security services this week detained a researcher who studies nuclear nonproliferation issues and searched the apartments and an office of two of his colleagues, including one American, the researchers said. Russian environmental activists denounced the searches, saying they were part of a crackdown on environmentalists and researchers working in the area of nuclear disarmament.
At 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, a group of FSB officers came to the one-room Moscow apartment of Josh Handler, a U.S. researcher from Princeton University, he said. Handler, who has been in Russia since early February gathering material for his Ph.D. dissertation on why U.S.-Russia disarmament work did not go further in the 1990s, said the officers discouraged him from contacting embassy representatives or a lawyer during the search. The search lasted for seven hours and the FSB officers took away scholarly articles, notebooks, a Toshiba computer with most of Handler's research and newspaper articles, including clippings from The Moscow Times. Like Sutyagin, Handler is affiliated with the United States and Canada Institute.
NOTE: A version of this story first appeared in The Moscow Times.
BYLINE: DERRICK DePLEDGE; Gannett News Service
Americans are ready for a new century of discovery and progress, a time when they expect cures for cancer and AIDS and the election of a woman and a person of color to the presidency.
Most people are hopeful, according to a nationwide Gannett News Service poll of 1,003 adults, but there is a strain of pessimism. More than half (58 percent) of those polled anticipate a global economic depression in the 21st century, while 45 percent predict another world war.
The telephone interviews Oct. 15-20 show an America that embraces promise and diversity but remains practical, a place where people believe they will get along better, where change offers more opportunity than heartbreak.
Sixty-eight percent said there is no other time in history they would rather be alive.
"I guess I'm an optimist," said Joshua Gundersen, 33, a physicist at Princeton University. "We're going to be connected by technology to the rest of the world. I think that will be something that could help everyone."
HEADLINE: 'Noble' student group aims to dress up U.
Virginia
BYLINE: By Rupali Mishra, Cavalier Daily
SOURCE: U. Virginia
DATELINE: Charlottesville, Va.
You open your window and check to see if you'll need to wear duck boots and your winter coat or if you can wear your favorite faded T-shirt and ripped jeans. It's the same old routine everyday -- except on Tuesdays for members of the University of Virginia Ancient and Honorable League of Windsor.
Second-year College student Nathan Cook founded the Ancient and Honorable League of Windsor two months ago. Its members can be recognized by their strict observance of a Tuesday "Day of Raiment."
"We dress up every Tuesday to go to classes. The purpose of our League, the main purpose, be it a small one, is to essentially look nice when we go to class," he said.
Membership is not limited to University students. Faculty members can join, as can students at other schools. One member of the League attends Princeton University. The only requirement for membership is the observance of the Tuesday Day of Raiment.
HEADLINE: Princeton fundraising campaign nears goal as economy
boost donations nationwide
BYLINE: By Damiel Stephens, The Daily Princetonian
SOURCE: Princeton U.
DATELINE: Princeton, N.J.
As Princeton University nears its goal of raising $900 million for its 250th anniversary campaign, colleges and universities across the country are experiencing a surge in donations fueled by national economic prosperity and a barrage of efforts by development offices.
Harvard University recently announced that it has raised $2.3 billion in its latest campaign, which began in 1992. That effort is widely believed to be the most successful capital campaign ever by a university, according to the Chronicle for Higher Education.
Princeton's campaign has raised approximately $870 million so far. "We're edging quickly toward our $900 million goal," Vice President for Development Van Zandt Williams '65 said.
Princeton's original campaign goal was $750 million. That goal was raised to $900 million last year, and Williams said yesterday that the campaign might reach $1 billion before it is over in June 2000.
"I think it's possible," Williams said. "I can assure you that we are really hopeful."
HEADLINE: SANGER CARRIES ON GRANDMOTHER'S LEGACY
BYLINE: BY NAOMI AOKI, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK
Alexander Sanger grew up with his grandmother's legacy - a picture of her with India's prime minister, stories of her arrest for opening the nation's first family planning clinic, jokes at school about her passing out condoms.
But it wasn't until he was researching his college thesis - combing through her published papers, letters and journals - that he began to understand who Margaret Sanger really was.
She legalized birth control in this country, opened family planning clinics around the world and advocated tirelessly for women's rights to control their bodies and their lives.
When Alexander Sanger graduated from Princeton University, he chose not to follow in his grandmother's footsteps. He wanted his own identity, distinct from his famous grandmother and his doctor parents.
He was the first Sanger to become a lawyer. He made partner in a Wall Street law firm, earned a master's in business administration and later ran a plastics manufacturing business.
But he never forgot what he had learned as the first person allowed into his grandmother's archives after her death in 1966.
NAME: BILL BRADLEY
HEADLINE: Following Rules, Finding Advantage; Bradley Chose
Reserves After Advice
BYLINE: Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer
In a gentleman's single room at Oxford, amid the fountained gardens where Lewis Carroll set his fictional Wonderland, Bill Bradley sat down at a battered manual typewriter and composed his thoughts on war.
It was Oct. 18, 1966, the start of Bradley's second and final year as a Rhodes scholar. Writing to a mentor, the Princeton historian Arthur Link, the 23-year-old tapped out a letter full of strikeovers and scratches about the large decisions ahead.
"As with most people my age the draft is a constant possibility," Bradley wrote to Link. "My board has told me that another deferment after Oxford would be difficult. I have talked with several people in the military and have found that there is the chance that I could spend my two years teaching history at West Point. The questions I have are: Do you think that this assignment would be valuable enough to warrant two years? Do you think that I am capable of it? If deferment is possible, do you think that I should go on to law school instead of teaching and taking care of the obligation with finality?"
Every major candidate for president this year came of age in the Vietnam War. Some, including Vice President Gore and Republican contender Sen. John McCain, have called attention to their encounters with the conflict. Others, including Bradley, have not. A close look at Bradley's choices then displays characteristics that recurred often in his public life: foresight, circumspection and skill at finding advantage while adhering strictly to the rules.
By April 1967 Bradley had signed a New York Knickerbocker contract that stood briefly as the richest in professional basketball. And though he did not turn against the war until much later, he enlisted for an Air Force Reserve job that kept him away from the fight.
There is no sign that Bradley sought or accepted the special influence that enabled other professional athletes of his day to bypass waiting lists for scarce reserve positions. His chief benefactor was the director of Princeton's Air Force ROTC program, Maj. Stanley Adelson, a mid-grade officer with no great status but intimate knowledge of military rules. The edge he gave to Bradley was information.
HEADLINE: Maine-Vermont couple believed on board EgyptAir
plane
BYLINE: By MICHELLE EMERY, Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Maine - Family members and friends are mourning the loss of an elderly couple feared dead in Sunday's AirEgypt crash off the coast of Massachusetts.
Virginia Chaplin, 72, was leaving on a two-week trip to see the Nile River with her new husband, retired NASA scientist Richard Brokaw, 76.
The couple met years ago while traveling in Greece. They married one year ago, after their spouses died, and split their time between Chaplin's home in Georgetown, Maine, and Brokaw's home in Strafford, Vt.
Brokaw, a father of four and grandfather of three, was born in New Jersey and attended the Putney School, a boarding school in Putney, Vt. He later went on to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and Princeton University and eventually became a rocket scientist for NASA in Cleveland. He retired in 1973 and moved to Vermont in 1983.
HEADLINE: SPORTS: Athlete's blindness no barrier
BYLINE: By MARK WOLF, Denver Rocky Mountain News
DATELINE: DENVER
Erik Weihenmayer was initially skeptical about attempting a five-day, 100-mile race through the mountains of India. He's much more of a mountain climber than a runner. The course is rugged, and the elevation ranges from 6,350 feet to 11,815 feet.
Oh yeah, he's blind, too.
"I'm not doing this to prove to anybody that blind people can do this," he said. "Let people attach meaning to it, but you have to do things because you have passion for them, not because you want to change the world. I'm not some kind of poster boy for blind people's abilities."
Actually, he is. A poster sponsored by the Glaucoma Research Foundation commemorates his climbing exploits, and he appeared in a TV commercial for the American Foundation for the Blind.
He and his father, Ed, a former Princeton University football captain and Vietnam fighter pilot, were part of a World TEAM event last year, biking tandem from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with about 75 people, many of them Vietnam veterans.
HEADLINE: OH, FOR A BUG-FREE BROWSER
BYLINE: BY STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM
HIGHLIGHT: Frequent crashes and security flaws still plague
Netscape and Internet Explorer
If the Web browser isn't already the most important application on your computer, there's a good chance it soon will be. The role of the Web as shopping mall and library is expanding rapidly. Eventually, such basic computer tasks as word processing and number-crunching may become Web-based. Which brings me to a simple question: If browsers are so important, why don't they work better?
Where Netscape is crash-prone, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 5.0 (which is also used by America Online Inc.) has gotten downright scary. On five occasions since late August, Microsoft has issued warnings on its security Web site (www.microsoft.com/security). The postings recommended that you turn off key features of IE 5.0 (and in some cases 4.0) to close holes that could allow a malicious Web site operator to gain unauthorized access to your computer. In each case, Microsoft released patches that fixed the problem, but between Aug. 25 and Oct. 18, there have only been eight days when no warning was in effect. And as of Oct. 18, Microsoft had not yet responded to a week-old report by Princeton University computer scientist Edward W. Felten of a new security problem in IE.
HEADLINE: WHEN IS THE JOBLESS RATE TOO LOW?
BYLINE: By Peter Coy in New York
HIGHLIGHT: Labor markets aren't tight enough to send prices
soaring
Inflation bugs weren't calmed Oct. 19 by a Labor Dept. report showing that consumer prices outside of food and energy rose just 0.3% in September. They worry that labor markets are too tight, wages will shoot up, and inflation will come to a boil. They note that the unemployment rate this year is averaging 4.3% -- far below the 6% or so that was long considered the ''natural rate of unemployment,'' below which inflation would take off. With the job market this tight, says Ken Matheny, senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based consulting firm, ''You run the risk that two to three years from now, you'll have higher inflation, higher unemployment, and higher interest rates. It's a slippery, somewhat dangerous slope.''
But there may be less cause for jitters than meets the eye. Several top labor economists are now saying that the so-called natural rate of unemployment has probably fallen to 5% or below -- which would put it only a little higher than today's actual jobless rate.
Even economists who do see some use for the natural-rate concept nonetheless say that changes in the structure of the labor force make it somewhat unstable. Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard, in a Brookings Institution paper this year, cited four factors that they estimate have reduced the natural rate by about one percentage point since the mid-1980s. Accounting for about 0.4 percentage points is the aging of the population; older people tend to be more fully employed. The growth of temporary staffing firms, which rapidly match job-seekers with employers, accounts for about 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points. The doubling of the prison population accounts for up to 0.2 percentage points, by removing from the labor force people who are less likely to be employed. Worker insecurity might account for another 0.1 percentage points, says Katz. So what's his take on the natural rate? ''With a very large amount of uncertainty,'' he says, ''I would think it's in the high 4's.''
HEADLINE: Younger people spending time blowing their money;
Depression-era thrift forgotten in robust economy
SOURCE: Newhouse Service
BYLINE: KATHLEEN O'BRIEN; Kathleen O'Brien is a staff writer for
The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
Seventy years after the Oct. 29, 1929, stock-market crash that triggered the Great Depression, the United States is a country where tough times are increasingly a very distant memory.
The Depression generation - raised when Christmas meant just one present under the tree - is dying off. While they may have tried to instill their values in their children, a robust economy makes Grandma's and Grandpa's thrifty ways seem pointless and antiquated, a charming artifact of a bygone era.
"In the 19th and early 20th century, thrift was a moral absolute," said Sheldon M. Garon, a Princeton University history professor who is writing a book on savings and frugality in Japan, Europe and the United States. "Thrift was a sign of leading a good, and even holy, life. If you had money, you were not supposed to flaunt it. And it was pretty hard to have too much thrift."
By contrast, if you scrimp and save today, "you're seen as a loser," he said.
HEADLINE: Q: Should great apes have some of the legal rights of persons?;
No: At stake is a valuable philosophical consensus on the uniqueness of human beings.
BYLINE: David Wagner; SPECIAL TO INSIGHT
Why do we have rights, anyway? We should not take them for granted. The century now closing, after opening with such hopes for human advancement - or should I say, advancement through tout court - has witnessed some of history's most systematic and horrific denials of rights. The Nazis denied that Jews were rights-bearing beings; the Communists treated their real and perceived political opponents the same way. In the last 10 years, the Serbs and Croats have done the same to each other.
All these examples involve denials of rights. So the solution might seem obvious: Never deny any rights claim. But, even if this advice is wise, it is not the advice we heed as a society. For instance, the Supreme Court tells us that unborn human beings are not rights-bearing beings, and Princeton University has just given a chair in ethics to a professor who teaches that rights are, in effect, lost whenever the death of the (former) rights-bearer would cause a greater increase in the total quantum of happiness than would her continued living. As a society, we accept some rights claims, we reject others - and the choices can be agonizing.
HEADLINE: Russia Questions Nuclear Experts
BYLINE: Washington Post Service
DATELINE: MOSCOW
The Russian Federal Security Service has searched and interrogated three arms control and nuclear weapons specialists, two Russians and one American, and one of the Russians has been detained, the specialists said.
Igor Sutyagin, a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, has been taken into custody by the security service, or FSB, a successor agency to the KGB.
A team of FSB agents also interrogated Joshua Handler, a researcher from Princeton University who has been gathering material in Russia for his doctoral thesis on disarmament in the 1990s. They confiscated a laptop computer, research papers and newspaper clippings, among other things, from his Moscow apartment, Mr. Handler said.
HEADLINE: Reseeding Ivy: Columbia on Comeback Trail From
Troubles
BYLINE: By KAREN W. ARENSON
Columbia University is on a roll.
The university, which during the 1970's and 80's was struggling with a declining reputation and flat alumni giving, has edged out Yale as the third-most selective Ivy League college, after Harvard and Princeton.
Last year it raised nearly $400 million in gifts -- behind only Harvard and Stanford. And Columbia is collecting more money from its patents and royalties than any American university. Even the normally testy relations with its Morningside Heights neighbors have turned adulatory. And to cap it all, Robert A. Mundell, a Columbia economics professor, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics last month, Columbia's third Nobel in four years.
George Rupp, Columbia's preacher-turned-president, who served as dean of Harvard's Divinity School and president of Rice University before joining Columbia in 1993, has proved to be an attentive manager and a careful strategist as well as a nonstop fund-raiser, many Columbia insiders say.
The son of German immigrants, Mr. Rupp, 57, brought an Ivy League pedigree (Princeton undergraduate, doctorate in theology from Harvard) and a long record as an administrator. A tall, gangly man with a preppy look, he is more determined than charismatic.
HEADLINE: All together under one roof; Fathers bill aims to
keep 'fragile' families from splitting up
BYLINE: Cheryl Wetzstein; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Keeping poor parents together under the same roof - married or not - is the latest anti-poverty approach, according to experts at a recent forum sponsored by the Urban Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
This new strategy on behalf of "fragile families" entails helping "dead-broke" fathers increase their earnings, getting both parents into parenting and relationship classes, and changing the way the child-support system handles low-income families.
This week, the House is poised to act on the "Fathers Count Act of 1999," which would spend $235 million over five years to fund "responsible fatherhood" projects in low-income areas.
Grantees would have to promote marriage; responsible parenting, including payment of child support; and employment for fathers.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) has condemned the bill, saying it favors "irresponsible men's custody groups."
Although many anti-poverty experts believe pro-marriage policies are too ambitious for neighborhoods where cohabiting reigns, researchers such as Princeton University sociology professor Sara McLanahan and Theodora Ooms of the Center for Law and Social Policy are discovering a strong desire for marriage in these communities.
Ms. McLanahan, who is surveying unwed parents in hospitals in 20 cities, said that more than 70 percent of couples agree with the statement, "Children are better off with married parents."
These couples "don't need to be sold on marriage," she told the forum, but they often say they can't marry because the father can't find a steady job or they are just "immature."
HEADLINE: Princeton and Its Principles
BYLINE: J. Bottum, for the Editors
Steve Forbes has it right: The presence on the Princeton University faculty of Peter Singer -- the Australian animal-rights activist who proclaims that a baby is of less value than a pig and who advocates a 28-day trial period before accepting newborns into the human race -- is "intolerable and unconscionable."
But Forbes, whose family has given millions to the university since his graduation in 1970 and who sits on its board of trustees with the likes of Bill Bradley and Senator Bill Frist, has now been publicly rebuked by Robert H. Rawson Jr., the board's chairman. "The trustees collectively have a special and overarching responsibility to advance and protect the core values of the University, which include the essential principles of academic freedom," Rawson wrote two weeks ago. "We sincerely regret that one of our members apparently is not willing to accept this fundamental responsibility." This was in response to a letter of complaint from Amy Gutmann (who directs Princeton's Center for Human Values at which Singer holds the chair in bioethics), George Kateb (who led the search committee that proposed Singer's appointment), and two other faculty members.
The blow-up over Forbes is only the latest installment in the controversy that has raged since Singer came to Princeton in July.
But let's be honest. Peter Singer was not brought to Princeton to slaughter the first baby, like the ceremonial cutting of a ribbon to open a new dormitory. He was not even hired primarily to advance the legality of infanticide, though the Laurence Rockefeller/population-control money that finances his position may desire that eventual result.
No, Singer was selected for a Princeton chair by Kateb and Gutmann precisely because his selection would generate controversy, and thereby use the stature of Princeton to raise as a debatable proposition -- the inviolability of human life -- what most of us supposed was a fundamental principle.
Academic courtesy, the collegiality that professors are supposed to show, has kept from news reports what is common knowledge among the faculty: that Singer is a second-rater. This is a man who has no real standing in bioethics, no significant publications in ethical theory, no major importance even in his own narrow world of utilitarianism. To animal-rights and abortion activists, Peter Singer is a founding philosopher, but to philosophers, he's mostly an activist. On a campus with faculty of the stature of the epistemologist Saul Kripke, the constitutional lawyer Robert George, and, yes, even Gutmann and Kateb, Singer is an embarrassment.
HEADLINE: Still the winning Streaks; Depth gives Township firm
hold on L-L League cross country.
BYLINE: Mike Gross
This Lancaster-Lebanon League cross-country season is epitomized by its best team.
No great runner, perhaps. But lots and lots of real good ones.
The Manheim Township boys' team supposedly started this season in the shadow of graduated Blue Streak legend Mike Baird, and a stride or two behind deep, powerful Hempfield.
"To put this in perspective, the last two years we would have won the league without Mike Baird," Township coach Terry Lee said Monday. Baird won the league and district individual titles both seasons, and now runs cross country at Princeton University.
HEADLINE: Michael Lewis; "The New New Thing"
BYLINE: FRITZ LANHAM, Houston Chronicle Book Editor
TAKE a techno-geek, inject him with an awesome will, and the result is Jim Clark - billionaire and poster boy of the Digital Revolution.
Clark is hardly a household name, even in his native Texas - he grew up in Plainview. But those who follow high-tech industries know Clark as the Silicon Valley engineer who founded Netscape, took the Internet company public before it made a dime of profit and collected a fortune. In doing so, he revolutionized the way we think about how wealth is created in this country.
Clark is also the main character in Michael Lewis' rollicking exercise in fly-on-the-wall journalism, "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story" (Norton, $25.95).
The 38-year-old Lewis is best known for his huge best seller "Liar's Poker," which grew out of his experiences as an investment banker for Salomon Brothers during the booming '80s. The book, published in 1989, has been described as "one of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era."
Lewis, who lives now in Berkeley, Calif., with his wife and new daughter, was born and raised in New Orleans. He has degrees from Princeton University and the London School of Economics. While he always wanted to be a writer, he ended up as an investment banker because he decided that too many young writers "didn't have enough experience with life."
Since the publication of "Liar's Poker," he's been writing full time.
HEADLINE: ART/ARCHITECTURE; A Closer Look Reveals a Dutch Michelangelo
BYLINE: By THEODORE K. RABB; Theodore K. Rabb is a professor of history at Princeton University. A new edition of his "Renaissance Lives" is due out next year.
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
FOR Michelangelo, who was uniquely qualified to judge, sculpture was superior to painting. And yet it is rare for a sculptor other than Michelangelo himself, Donatello or Bernini to be included among the many heroes of Renaissance and Baroque art.
The dominance of painters is not, of course, just a matter of taste. By and large, sculptors' works take longer to complete, cost far more, are more awkward to place and are more difficult to look at closely and grasp in totality. They are, as a result, fewer in number. Moreover, they often are unnoticed because they tend to be part of the scenery. To see a painting we have to go to a gallery, and once there we feel obliged to concentrate. But very few of the millions who each day walk past them give heed to the statues and fountains that adorn our cities' streets and squares, let alone stop and view them as works of art. If statuary is the glory of classical Greece, this glory is the exception that proves the rule, because a disproportionate number of sculptures, saved by their materials, have survived from antiquity.
Despite these extenuating circumstances, however, it is clear that major injustices have been done, notably to the artist who is the focus of "Adriaen de Vries, Imperial Sculptor," a show at the J. Paul Getty Museum through Jan. 9.
HEADLINE: COLLEGE FOOTBALL: EAST; It's a Coming-Out Party For a
Sophomore Passer
BYLINE: By BRANDON LILLY
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 30
The Princeton Tigers, behind the precision passing of Tommy Crenshaw, manhandled the Columbia Lions today to earn their first Ivy League victory of the season, 44-15, at Princeton Stadium.
Crenshaw, a sophomore, completed 24 of 33 passes for 304 yards and 2 touchdowns, becoming only the second Princeton quarterback to break the 300-yard mark this decade.
"I think that we're seeing a young quarterback grow up," Princeton Coach Steve Tosches said. "He took a big step today."
HEADLINE: FICKLE YOUTH PUSH JOBLESS RATE LOWER, RESEARCH INDICATES; TURNOVER AMONG WORKERS 16-24 MEANS FIRMS CAN HIRE MORE CHEAPLY, FIRE EASILY
BYLINE: By NOAM NEUSNER; BLOOMBERG NEWS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
An influx of young job seekers into a state's work force tends to send the unemployment rate there lower, not higher, according to new research by Princeton University economics professor Robert Shimer.
This finding suggests that New England states, where birth rates are the lowest in the nation, may run into problems two decades from now.
The opposite could be true in Utah, Arizona and California, where babies are being born at a faster rate and immigration is on the rise.
Workers between the ages of 16 and 24 change jobs more than older workers, so they create more open positions for all job seekers. That benefits companies in markets with high numbers of young workers because it allows them to hire more cheaply and to fire more easily, Shimer concluded.
HEADLINE: AGENTS GRILL N.J. MAN, 2 OTHER ARMS SPECIALISTS
BYLINE: FROM NEWS SERVICE REPORTS
DATELINE: MOSCOW
The Russian Federal Security Service has searched and interrogated three arms control and nuclear weapons specialists, two Russians and one from Princeton, and detained one of the Russians, the specialists said Saturday.
A team of FSB agents also interrogated Joshua Handler, a Princeton University researcher who has been gathering material in Russia for his doctoral thesis on disarmament in the 1990s.
HEADLINE: BRAINS MAY GROW NEW CELLS AFTER ALL
BYLINE: The Dallas Morning News
You can teach an old monkey brain new tricks, scientists have reported.
The "trick" is the ability of adults to grow new cells in the part of the brain used for the most advanced mental functions, like learning and making decisions. Because monkeys' brains are very similar to humans', it's possible that the same is true for people.
For years, scientists had thought that no new cells could grow in the brains of adults. Studies in the past few years have overturned that notion with findings that some areas of the brain could generate new cells.
But those areas govern primitive functions, like the sense of smell and the formation of memories. In a new study in the latest issue of the journal Science, researchers from Princeton University show that adult macaque monkeys continually produce new cells in the cortex. This region of the brain gives more advanced animals their higher mental abilities.
The findings add to the idea that the adult brain might be capable of repairing itself. If scientists learn enough about this, they might be able to exploit these abilities in treating brain diseases.
The new study also raises questions about how the brain can store memories if it is always growing new cells.
HEADLINE: Brand-Name Schools Aren't Always Better
BYLINE: Michelle Singletary
I love my niece, but I hate to take her shopping with me.
Why? Because this 13-year-old fashion elitist ridicules me for my generic buying habits.
My niece snickers at me because I prefer to shop at places like Target and Wal-Mart. She chastises me for refusing to lavish my children with clothes from Baby Gap and berates me when I reach for jeans or sneakers in which the only label is a discount sticker.
My niece, like many consumers, is into brand names.
I have never let brand names drive my buying decisions, whether it's choice of clothes or choice of college, which brings me to my complaint of the week, about how some parents choose colleges.
The American Council on Education surveyed people last year about how parents generally approach the college decision: Given a choice between a very good, expensive college that would require major financial sacrifices and an average, less expensive college, what should parents do?
The majority of respondents said parents should go for the bargain deal.
When the question was turned around and they were told it was their own child who was accepted in the higher-priced school, the answer changed. The majority would go straight for the brand name.
Most recently, a study by Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher at Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, found that while students who attended selective schools do well after graduation, so do students who attended less-selective schools. The critical issue, the study says, is not so much the school as the student.
HEADLINE: Russia Detains Arms Expert; Two Others Searched Over
Possible Secrets Leak
BYLINE: David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: MOSCOW, Oct. 30
The Russian Federal Security Service has searched and interrogated three arms control and nuclear weapons specialists--two Russians and one American--and one of the Russians has been detained, the specialists said today.
Igor Sutyagin, a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, has been taken into custody by the security service, or FSB, a successor of the Soviet KGB. The investigators have been asking questions about a possible leak of classified information, others said.
A team of FSB agents also interrogated Joshua Handler, a Princeton University researcher who has been gathering material in Russia for his PhD thesis on disarmament in the 1990s. They confiscated a laptop computer, research papers and newspaper clippings, among other things, from his Moscow apartment, Handler said. Eight agents spent seven hours searching his apartment and questioning Handler, who has been affiliated with the U.S.-Canada institute.
Handler, a one-time Greenpeace activist, said, "Over the last 10 or 15 years of my work, all I have been trying to do is improve U.S.-Russian relations and to encourage greater steps toward nuclear disarmament and to try to improve the international environmental situation and the environment in Russia. I have never sought and never intended harming the security of the Russian federation."
HEADLINE: Courting 'big ideas'; Bradley takes a liberal vision
on the road against Gore
BYLINE: Andrew Cain; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Bill Bradley wrote his Senate memoir longhand, with No. 2 pencils. He is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination with the same plodding self-assurance.
After 35 years in the spotlight, the former Princeton all-American, New York Knick and three-term New Jersey senator remains an easygoing enigma, as elusive on the campaign trail as he was on the basketball court.
Mr. Bradley once was a Senate centrist, an aloof contrarian who led the fight for the rate-slashing, loophole-closing Tax Reform Act of 1986.
He is campaigning for president as a liberal, trumpeting "big ideas" such as a health care fix that would cost up to $65 billion a year.
ALL-AMERICAN
Mr. Bradley rarely mentioned his sterling basketball career once he was elected to the Senate in 1978 in his first bid for public office. He was loath to shoot baskets with his colleagues, eager not to skate by on his celebrity.
"He always had an ability to hyperfocus on anything he had to do at the time," says Bob Haarlow, a middle school guidance counselor in Columbia, S.C., who played basketball with Mr. Bradley at Princeton.
"At the same time, he was one of the guys. You never thought he was a stranger. He was a most unusual person," Mr. Haarlow says.
Mr. Haarlow recalls long post-game bus rides from Harvard back to the Princeton campus. He remembers Mr. Bradley, the basketball all-American, flicking on his reading light at 2 a.m. and delving into his school books.
HEADLINE: ETHEL WALKER SCHOOL INAUGURATES NEW LEADER
BYLINE: PAUL H. JOHNSON; Courant Staff Writer
DATELINE: SIMSBURY --
The Ethel Walker School inaugurated Susanna Jones as its 15th head of school Friday in a pomp-filled campus ceremony.
Jones, previously the director of the upper school at Marlborough School in Los Angeles, was hired in the spring to replace outgoing head of school Margaret Bonz.
Jones pledged Friday to successfully lead the all-girls' college preparatory school into the next millennium.
Jones moved to town with her husband, Rob Beguelin, who works in real estate investment, and their 3-year-old son, Aaron. Jones graduated from Princeton University and has two master's degrees from Columbia University. She has taught at the Spence School in New York and worked in development for private schools in New York as well as with the Union Theological Seminary.
HEADLINE: Phenomena
What's in An A?
Princeton University wants to ditch the A- plus, Slate reports. A university spokesman told a New York newspaper that ''there are too many of them to suggest that the students are really doing exceptional work.'' A faculty committee apparently wants to replace the A- plus with an ''A with distinction.''
HEADLINE: TEANECK WOMAN FENCING WITH SUCCESS; LAWRENCE ENJOYS
INTERNATIONAL DEBUT
BYLINE: JOSH ROBBINS, Special to The Record
Teaneck's Maya Lawrence stood atop a medal stand at fencing's Junior Pan American Championships last weekend in Brazil, watching the American flag rise to the ceiling as"The Star-Spangled Banner"played.
When she returned to Princeton University, another warm sound greeted her: the applause of her teammates.
Lawrence, a 19-year-old sophomore, won two gold medals in the competition, which drew some of the top young fencers of the Western Hemisphere.
HEADLINE: Secret service seizes computer, notes, from US
nuclear expert
DATELINE: MOSCOW, Oct 29
Russia's secret service seized a computer and documents from the Moscow apartment of a US nuclear security expert, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday, citing a Russian colleague.
The FSB, successor to the KGB, seized the computer, research documents, manuscripts and notes from the apartment of Joshua Handler, a Princeton University specialist in nuclear radiation and security, the colleague, Alexei Yablokov, told Interfax.
The seizure took place on Wednesday, he said.
HEADLINE: American scientist says apartment search
unfounded
BYLINE: ANDREW KRAMER
DATELINE: MOSCOW
An American scientist whose apartment in Moscow was searched by secret police said Friday that he has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide in his research on safe storage for nuclear warheads.
Josh Handler, 39, is in Russia doing researching on nuclear disarmament and environmental problems for a Ph.D. thesis at Princeton University.
Agents from the FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB, searched his one-room apartment for seven hours on Wednesday. Handler told The Associated Press the agents took his personal computer and notebooks.
The agents did not tell Handler what they were searching for, or if he is suspected of a crime, he said.
''In none of my work have I ever intended to harm the national security of Russia, or any other state for that matter,'' Handler said in a telephone interview.
Handler said the agents who conducted the search refused to allow him to contact a lawyer or the U.S. embassy. They were otherwise well-mannered, he said.
Handler has researched how Russia stores nuclear warheads once they are removed from missiles and published an article on warhead storage on the website of the Federation of American Scientists.
In the article, Handler wrote that Russia lacks storage space and cannot remove the warheads, indicating a type of safety shortcoming.
All the sources he cited were open to the public, he said.
HEADLINE: Russian secret services search US scientist flat
SOURCE: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1426 gmt 28 Oct 99
Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax Moscow, 28th October: Russian security service officials searched the flat of a US scientist last night, an associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences told Interfax today.
The search was held in the flat of (Joshua Handler) of Princeton University, who is on a training mission from the US and Canada Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Aleksey Yablokov said.
Research materials, manuscripts, notebooks and a computer were confiscated from Mr Handler who has written dozens of works on radiation and nuclear safety, Yablokov said.
"The Federal Security Service's action against a man who has long and widely been known as an advocate of nuclear disarmament should be viewed against the backdrop of the continued persecution of Aleksandr Nikitin, Grigoriy Pasko, Vladimir Soyfer and other defenders of the ecological rights of citizens," according to him.
CQ (10/28, Rothman) reported the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "announced several staff additions this week." Trish Reynolds is "the new director of publications," while Stephen Homes, "a Princeton University and New York University Law professor, joins the Endowment as a visiting scholar."
HEADLINE: The right tools for the right intranet job;
Internet/Web/Online Service Information
BYLINE: Pravica, Danica
Web-oriented content development tools are making the Webmaster's job that much easier
In an ideal situation, the intranet allows a company to aggregate, integrate and regulate access to all business information and processes through a single network by using the power of Internet standards.
However, there are significant challenges to face - radically reduced cost of ownership and improved communications within and between lines of business are just two - for any intranet to reach its full potential.
And as more applications and information migrate to the Web, new challenges are emerging, such as the need to structure information so that it can be easily found, edited and shared. It is equally important that the underlying software is scalable to support increasing numbers of users. Most companies that have built intranet sites have discovered that demand for resources quickly outstrips the ability of Webmasters to manage the data.
As customers, clients, business partners and suppliers become more dependent on intranet sites for day-to-day, mission-critical information, it's important that the intranet is structured for ease- of-use and security. Web-enabled databases dynamically generate content for users based on their needs and status.
Princeton University, for example, has used Web-oriented content development tools and a database to create an intranet that helps students and the administration communicate effectively.
"Students who use the system can only see the menu option that provides information meant for them, such as their telephone calls and statement," explains Rich Pickett, director of data administration at Princeton. "If an authorized individual at the Treasurer's Office accesses the system, they will have access to a different set of options that reflects their particular security profile."
HEADLINE: Americans lose sense of proportion in struggling with
their weight
BYLINE: By Karen Patterson
Try the word "fat" on for size.
If it fits, it comes with heavy social baggage. Studies suggest:
*Fat men have fewer romantic prospects.
*Fat women and girls have still fewer; to prospective boyfriends, eating disorders like bulimia tend to be viewed more favorably than obesity.
*Fat young women tend to have lower incomes, and complete fewer years of schooling, than peers with physical deformities or other chronic conditions, such as asthma.
If that weren't enough, fat people are common targets for jest and scorn. Billboards for some San Francisco health clubs proclaimed last winter that when space aliens come, "they'll eat the fat ones first."
In the United States, the "fat ones" are everywhere. About 1 in 2 Americans are overweight _ and medically speaking, almost 1 in 4 are alarmingly so.
"It's pretty clear that we've set ourselves some unrealistic standards that make us worry too much and actually may make us eat more than we would if we were more realistic," says social historian Peter N. Stearns.
Still, stigma associated with America's growing fatness may compound existing biases against certain groups. Women are more likely than men to be obese. And obesity rates peak among Americans ages 50 to 59. So bias against fat may translate into extra bias against minorities, women and older Americans.
"Particularly as our society continues to get older," Stearns says, "I think it will be interesting to see if this aggressively youthful image of the person that looks best will moderate."
Any such shift would push fat attitudes back no more than about a century. It was around 1905, Stearns says, when weight concerns took on "a distinct moral tone."
Gluttony, of course, had long been denounced in the Christian church. But the focus was greed, not fatness, says R. Marie Griffith, of Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion.
"People might focus on the fact that Jesus fasted, that he gave loaves and fishes to the people but not hundred-course meals ... that we never see Jesus being a glutton. But we didn't focus on the body," Griffith says. "In terms of thinness, I think that's definitely an imposition of our cultural ideals."
Classical composer Robert Linn, whose more than 80 works have been performed on six continents, has died. He was 74.
Linn died Thursday at St. Vincent's Hospital from complications of cancer, according to a Monday announcement from the University of Southern California, where he was emeritus professor of the Thornton School of Music.
Born in San Francisco, Linn studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College and Roger Sessions at Princeton University before attending USC, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music.