Princeton University

Nassau notes

Symposium and exhibition to honor Wen Fong

Bridges to Heaven,” an international symposium on East Asian art in honor of Professor Wen Fong’s 45 years of teaching at Princeton, is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, April 1-2, in McCosh 50.

The event will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day and will feature 15 paper presentations by several of Fong’s students and colleagues. A related festschrift including 40 papers will be published following the event.

A scholar of Chinese art history, Fong was born in Shanghai and received a classical Chinese education, including training as a painter and calligrapher. In 1948 he came to Princeton, where he earned his A.B. in 1951, joined the faculty as instructor after receiving his M.F.A. in 1954 and earned his Ph.D. in 1958. The conference takes its name from his landmark dissertation and the resultant publication “The Lohans and a Bridge to Heaven.”

Fong also served as faculty curator of Asian art at the University Art Museum and as special consultant for Asian affairs and head of the Asian art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He was named the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History in 1971 and transferred to emeritus status in 1999.

A related exhibition at the University Art Museum, “Worldly Guardians of the Buddhist Law,” features a Chinese handscroll painting acquired in honor of Fong. The scroll, “Baimiao Lohans,” was painted by Ming-dynasty artist Ding Yunpeng in 1580 and is on view at the museum through July 9. A lohan is an enlightened being entrusted by Buddha to guard the law.

The symposium is sponsored by the Tang Center for East Asian Art, the University Art Museum and the Department of Art and Archaeology. For more information, visit web.princeton.edu/sites/TangCenter/.

Monthlong series explores IT policy

The future of the Internet and the ethics of information privacy will be among the subjects of a lecture series this spring sponsored by the newly created Center for Information Technology Policy.

The center has invited technologists and policy experts to give four lectures that are scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Thursdays, March 30, April 6, April 13 and April 20. The goal of the series is to introduce a range of policy, ethical and sociological issues that arise from the ongoing revolution in computer and Internet technology, said Ed Felten, professor of computer science and director of the center.

The four lectures are:

• March 30 — “Who Controls the Internet?” by Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia University.

• April 6 — “Contextual Integrity: A Conservative Approach to Privacy” by Helen Nissenbaum, associate professor of culture and communications at New York University.

• April 13 — “The Future of the Internet” by Susan Crawford, professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School.

• April 20 — “Communities of Creation” by Cory Ondrejka, vice president of product development at Linden Lab in San Francisco.

All lectures will take place in 104 Computer Science Building, except for the Crawford talk, which will be in Room 105.

The Center for Information Technology is a joint initiative of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. For details about the speakers and the center, visit itpolicy.princeton.edu/lectures.

International Festival kicks off

The Princeton International Festival, one of the largest student-organized events on campus, will kick off with an opening ceremony at 8 p.m. Friday, March 31, at Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall.

For the first time since its inception some 30 years ago, the festival will span the entire month of April, featuring 30 days of activities with international-themed performances, films, conferences and other gatherings. Representing more than 25 countries, the festival is intended to celebrate Princeton’s ethnic and cultural diversity.

The focal point of the March 31 opening ceremony will be the international cultural shows, which will present performing arts from around the globe. A dozen student groups, including Triple 8, diSiac, Ballroom, TapCats, Kalaa, Capoeira, Naacho and Sesame Street Crew, will perform everything from tap dancing and ballet to ballroom dancing and martial arts. Another highlight of the opening ceremony will be the international fashion show, which will showcase ethnic costumes from more than 30 nations.

Other events scheduled for the month include: a film festival that will focus on the issue of human rights; and a Sustained Dialogue Campus Network Conference with keynote speaker Harold Saunders, a member of the class of 1952 who spent 20 years with the U.S. government as a mediator in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The festival is organized by the Consortium of International Student Organizations under the auspices of the International Center. For more information, visit: www.princeton.edu/~consortm/int_festival.

U.N. development chief to speak

Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, will speak on “Markets, Networks and Governments: Issues in the Debate on Global Governance” at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 27, in 16 Robertson Hall.

Dervis became head of the U.N.’s global development network in August 2005. He also chairs the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all U.N. funds, programs and departments working on development issues.

Dervis earned a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton in 1973. His lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School.

Nobel laureate to pose solutions to energy problem

Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will speak on “The Energy Problem: Our Current Choices and Future Hopes” at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in A-02 McDonnell Hall.

In addition to discussing today’s options for securing clean, affordable and sustainable sources of energy, he is expected to describe some areas of energy research that may lead to transforming technologies.

Chu served as a professor of physics at Stanford University from 1987 until being named to his current position in 2004. For the previous nine years, he was a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., where he began his groundbreaking work in cooling and trapping atoms by using laser light. This work eventually led to his sharing the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997.

Chu’s talk is the physics department’s 31st Annual Donald Ross Hamilton Lecture.

Badiou, West to discuss equality

Alain Badiou, a renowned French philosopher, novelist and playwright, and Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton, will discuss “Is It Possible to Enjoy Personal Liberty Without Collective Equality? on Tuesday, March 28. The program will begin at 4:30 p.m. in McCosh 50.

Badiou, a professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, is the author of numerous writings on art, politics and religion that have had significant influence on the continent of Europe and also are taking hold in the United States. Eight of his books have been translated into English in the past two years, including “Being and Event,” the cornerstone of his work.

West is one of the nation’s most widely known and quoted public intellectuals on the topics of American society, race, politics and class issues. His 1993 bestseller, “Race Matters,” was regarded as a groundbreaking book that examined the impact of racism on America.

The event is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion, the Council of the Humanities, the departments of comparative literature, English, French and Italian, philosophy and religion, Dollars & Sins, the Graduate School, the Program in European Cultural Studies and the University Center for Human Values.

Senior thesis group show

“NYC Times Square” by Michael White is among the works on display March 28-April 7 as part of a senior thesis group show.

The other visual arts students exhibiting photographs are Lauren Bush and Lispeth Nutt. Hours for the show in the Lucas Gallery at 185 Nassau St. are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. An opening reception is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 28.

Appiah to give first Baldwin Lecture

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values, will deliver the inaugural address in the Program in African American Studies’ James Baldwin Lecture Series on Wednesday, March 29.

The talk, titled “The Cosmopolitanism of W.E.B. Du Bois,” will begin at 4:30 p.m. in 1 Robertson Hall.

Appiah is widely regarded as one of the most insightful and imaginative thinkers in the country. His interests range over African and African-American intellectual history and literary studies, ethics and philosophy of mind and language. His major current work centers on the philosophical foundations of liberalism.

This new series aims to celebrate the work of Princeton faculty and to provide an occasion for the intellectual community to reflect on the issue of race and American democracy. The lectures also honor the work of the late essayist James Baldwin, one of America’s most powerful cultural critics.

Summer camp sign-up available

Registration is now available for the Office of Campus Recreation’s annual summer day camp for children ages 5 to 10 and a new travel camp for children ages 10 to 14.

The day camp runs weekdays from June 26 through Aug. 18, beginning at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 4:30 p.m. Activities include sports, field trips, music, arts and crafts, and performing arts.

The travel camp begins July 10 and runs through Aug. 11. Campers will participate in trips to a Trenton Thunder game, Belmar Beach and the movies.

For more information, call 258-3533 or visit www.princeton.edu/~campusre/.