Princeton University

Nassau notes

E-Quad Café exhibition

“The Orion Nebula” is among the works on display in a show, “The Astrophotography of Robert Vanderbei,” through March 11 at the E-Quad Café. Vanderbei is chair of the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering. In addition to conducting research in probability and optimization, he pursues astrophotography as a hobby.

The show is part of a series in the café featuring artists affiliated with the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Nobel laureate to give keynote address at Feb. 14-15 conference

Joseph Stiglitz, a winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, will present the keynote address during a gathering of university presidents from around the world on Princeton’s campus Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 14-15.

Stiglitz, a University Professor at Columbia University, will discuss “Innovative Ways for Financing Global Public Goods” at 5 p.m. Tuesday in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall. The address is free and open to the public.

The conference, which is not open to the public, is intended to explore common interests among the world’s leading universities and to provide an opportunity for these key institutions to contribute to the solution of global public policy challenges. The second annual Secretary-General’s Global Colloquium of University Presidents is chaired by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and brings together representatives of 15 to 20 universities from around the world to address two issues. This year, those issues are “The Social Benefits of the Research University in the 21st Century” and “Innovative Sources of Funding for Public Goods.”

Stiglitz, who will initiate discussion on the latter topic, was a professor of economics at Princeton from 1979 to 1988. He won the Nobel Prize, in part, for work he did with Michael Rothschild, the William Stuart Tod Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Stiglitz shared the prize with Michael Spence, a 1966 Princeton alumnus and professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and George Akerlof, a professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley. The trio was honored for their work in advancing new ways to analyze markets.

Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1995, during the Clinton administration, and served as the council’s chair from 1995 to 1997. He was chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000.

Presidential power is topic

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Commander-in-Chief Power: Lessons from the Lincoln Administration for the War on Terror” will be the topic of a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in 104 Computer Science Building.

Michael Stokes Paulsen, the McKnight Presidential Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School, will speak as part of the Alpheus T. Mason Lectures in Constitutional Law and Political Thought.

He will discuss broad claims of presidential power, including the domestic surveillance program that President Bush directed the National Security Agency to launch shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He will draw upon Abraham Lincoln’s view of presidential war power and its relationship to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Paulsen is a former attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice and a former federal prosecutor. His lecture is presented by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Toby to deliver first Jansen Lectures

Ronald Toby, professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Illinois, will deliver the first Marius Jansen Memorial Lectures Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 15-16, in 202 Jones Hall.

He will discuss “The Originality of the ‘Copy’: Mimesis and Subversion in ‘Koreans in Perspective’” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. His topic for 7:30 p.m. Thursday will be “The Birth of the Hairy Barbarian.”

Toby specializes in premodern and early-modern Japan; early-modern popular culture; 17th- to 19th-century Japanese foreign relations; and intraregional relations in premodern Asia. In his first lecture, he will discuss new ways of understanding the politics of representation, and the nature of originality and authenticity. His second lecture will focus on the real meaning behind a Japanese pejorative—research inspired by a query several years ago from Marius Jansen, a world-renowned scholar and professor emeritus of Japanese history at Princeton who died in 2000.

Donations from family and friends and funding from the East Asian Studies Program have enabled the creation of the lecture series. The program also has established a lecture series in memory of Jansen’s colleague Frederick Mote, a leading scholar of Chinese history and culture and professor emeritus of East Asian studies who died in 2005. The first Mote Lecture will be delivered later in the spring.

Kurtzer to discuss Middle East challenges

Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and a visiting professor at Princeton, will discuss “Terrorists, Tycoons, Tyrants and Theocrats: American Policy Challenges in the Middle East” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.

Kurtzer recently was appointed the University’s first S. Daniel Abraham Visiting Professor in Middle East Policy Studies in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which is sponsoring the lecture.

Book launch set for Feb. 18

In honor of its namesake and to celebrate Black History Month, the Fields Center is hosting a book launch of “Black in Two Worlds” at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18. Participating will be members of the University community and the Fields family. The Association of Black Princeton Alumni, the Princeton Human Services Commission, Red Hummingbird Press and the Fields Center are presenting the event. (For more information about Carl Fields and this book, see Fields memoir chronicles work at Princeton in this issue.)

Thesis production at Matthews Acting Studio

Four seniors who have starred in numerous shows at Princeton will perform a thesis production of Samuel Beckett’s classic play, “Waiting for Godot,” at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 16-18, at the Matthews Acting Studio, 185 Nassau St.

The play is presented by the Program in Theater and Dance and the Fund for Irish Studies.

“Waiting for Godot” features seniors John Doherty, Ben Mains, Jed Peterson, and Paulo Quiros, who have performed in an array of productions of the theater and dance program, the Triangle Club, Theatre Intime and the Princeton Summer Theater. The performance is directed by Tim Vasen, a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Program in Theater and Dance.

Tickets are $8 for students, faculty and staff; $10 for the general public; and free for Tiger Tickets holders. They are available online through University Ticketing or by calling the Frist Campus Center ticket office at 258-1742.