Nassau notes
Fristfest celebration set for May 1-3
Princeton students, faculty, staff and their families are invited to the Frist Campus Center to celebrate spring and the conclusion of the academic year at the annual Fristfest Weekend Thursday through Saturday, May 1-3.
The event kicks off at 4 p.m. Thursday on Frist’s south lawn with a Caribbean-themed picnic and carnival featuring live entertainment, games and giveaways. The music begins at 4:30 p.m. with Steel Impressions, a New York-based Caribbean ensemble. Other acts include Latin jazz guitarist Arturo Romay; winners from the “Princetonian Idol” competition, junior Andy Chen and sophomore Shenita Baltimore; and two student bands, the Friendship and the Sensemaya Afrobeat All-Stars.
The picnic menu will include grilled lime mango chicken sandwiches, mahi-mahi burgers, jerk pulled pork sandwiches and coconut shrimp. Vegetarian options include curried chickpea stew, grilled island spice vegetables and a salad bar. Students with an active meal plan contract can swipe their Princeton ID to receive tickets for the picnic dinner. Non-meal plan holders may use cash or Paw Points to purchase $2 tickets at the Frist Food Gallery on Thursday. Free snacks and beverages will be available throughout the afternoon.
The celebration continues at 1 p.m. Friday with the final round of the “Iron Tiger” culinary competition in the Frist Food Gallery, with the Frist Campus Center team facing off against the Rockefeller/Mathey colleges team. The event also will be simulcast on TigerTV.
The Taste of Princeton, a showcase of area cuisine, will take place at 8 p.m. Friday on the south lawn. Music will be provided by DJ Danny Scotton.
Fristfest Weekend concludes Saturday with the University Wind Ensemble’s “Concert Under the Stars” on 1879 Green and a moonlight movie presentation of “I Am Legend” on the south lawn, both starting at 9 p.m. Free popcorn, ice cream and churros will be available during the movie.
A full schedule of events is available at www.princeton.edu/frist/fristfest2008.shtml.
Courtesy of McCarter Theatre Center
Skaggs & Hornsby at McCarter
Continuing their unlikely but successful collaboration, country and bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs (right) and renowned pianist and songwriter Bruce Hornsby will perform at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 30, at the McCarter Theatre Center.
In addition to touring the country together in concert, the two musicians last year released a CD combining Hornsby’s piano playing and songwriting with Skaggs’ core bluegrass staples of mandolins, guitars, fiddles and banjos.
For ticket information, call the McCarter box office at 258-2787 or visit www.mcarter.org.
9/11 trial jurist to speak on terrorism cases
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the trial of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, will speak at 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 28, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall. The title of her talk is “Terrorism Cases in Civilian Courts: Balancing the Powers of Government.”
Brinkema has become one of the country’s leading experts on terrorism trials through her oversight of the highest-profile terrorism trial held in the United States. Moussaoui, known as the “20th hijacker,” is the only person who has been tried and convicted in a U.S. court for participation in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Appointed by President Clinton in 1993, Brinkema is the first woman to serve on the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia. She had been a trial attorney in the criminal division of the Department of Justice and served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia.
The event is designated as the John Marshall Harlan ’20 Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication and is sponsored by the Program in Law and Public Affairs. The lecture series honors Harlan, a Princeton alumnus who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1955 until 1971.
Symposium focuses on race relations
Projects recognized by the Princeton Prize in Race Relations — which honors high school students’ efforts to improve race relations in their schools or communities — will be presented at a symposium set for 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall. The event also will include a keynote address by Mayor Douglas Palmer of Trenton, N.J.
The Princeton Prize Symposium on Race Relations will begin with a panel discussion on “Innovations in Race Relations Within Our Local Communities.” The panel will include community organizers Richard Cammarieri of New Community Corp. in Newark, Joyce Hadley of the Bucks County (Pa.) Peace Center and Caroline Mitchell of the Racial Justice Institute of the YWCAs of Princeton and Trenton, as well as Kiki Jamieson, director of the University’s Pace Center, and Sasa Olessi Montaño, director of Trenton’s Department of Housing and Economic Development.
Presentations of this year’s Princeton Prize winning projects will follow. The prize was created in 2003 by Princeton alumni volunteers and was offered this year in 21 communities around the country.
Palmer will then follow with the keynote address, titled “The Challenges and Rewards of Leading a Diverse City.”
The symposium is sponsored by the Princeton class of 1966 and cosponsored by the Office of the Alumni Association and the Fields Center. For more information, go to www.princeton.edu/pprize/.
Imagery in black politics is topic
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton, will present a talk titled “From Liberation to Mutual Fund: Images of Christ in Black Politics” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 30, in 16 Robertson Hall.
Harris-Lacewell’s interests include the study of African American political thought and black religious ideas and practice. She is the author of “Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought,” published in 2004, and the forthcoming “For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn’t Enough.”
The talk is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Center for the Study of Religion as part of their “Crossroads of Religion and Politics” series.
“Earth Intruders,” a painting by Kelsey Halliday Johnson
Program in Visual Arts presents senior thesis exhibition
“Earth Intruders,” a painting by senior Kelsey Halliday Johnson, is part of a senior thesis exhibition by three students in the Program in Visual Arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts. It runs Tuesday through Friday, April 29 through May 2, in the Lucas Gallery, 185 Nassau St.
In addition to paintings and photography by Johnson, the exhibition will feature installations by Meredith Thompson and photography by Lena Neufeld.
Singer, George to discuss early human life
Scholars including Princeton’s Peter Singer and Robert George, two noted figures in the public debate on abortion, will discuss the question “Is It Wrong to End Early Human Life?” at a conference planned for 2:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in 101 Friend Center.
The event will include talks by Singer, the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values; Don Marquis, professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas and the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the University Center for Human Values; Patrick Lee, the John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Professor of Bioethics and director of the Institute of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville; and Jeff McMahan, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University.
The talks will be followed by a panel discussion featuring these scholars as well as three others: George, Princeton’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions; John Haldane, professor of philosophy and director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and Elizabeth Harman, assistant professor of philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton.
The event is sponsored by the University Center for Human Values and the Madison program.
Lectures explore ‘New World Order’
New World Order: Internationalism and the End of Empire” is the focus of a three-lecture series to be delivered by historian Mark Mazower at 4:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, April 28-30, in 10 East Pyne.
Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, specializes in modern European and international history, and is considered to be one of the world’s foremost specialists in Balkan history. A former Princeton faculty member, he currently is the Lawrence Stone Visiting Professor in the Davis Center for Historical Studies.
Mazower will deliver the following lectures:
• April 28: “Smuts and the Limits of Imperial Internationalism”
• April 29: “Minorities, Nations and International Law: The Lessons of the Nazi New Order”
• April 30: “Nehru’s World: After Eurocentrism”
They are designated as the Lawrence Stone Lectures, which are named in honor of the founding director of the Davis Center for Historical Studies and aim to bring distinguished historians to Princeton to speak on a topic of general interest to a broad audience. The lectures will form the basis of a book published by Princeton University Press.
The lectures are sponsored by the Davis Center, the Department of History and Princeton University Press.
Austrian foreign minister to speak
Ursula Plassnik, the foreign minister of Austria, will deliver a lecture on “Women, Religion and Diplomacy” at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.
Plassnik has served as Austria’s top diplomat since October 2004. Her lecture is the last in a series on the influence of religion on diplomacy, politics, crisis and conflict management. The series is sponsored by the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations in the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination. Plassnik’s talk also is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
May events set at Labyrinth Books
Labyrinth Books will host the following events in May. The events, which are free and open to the public, will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the bookstore, 122 Nassau St., and will be followed by a reception:
• Professor Nigel Smith will discuss his new book, “Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?” and debate the subject with his colleague in Princeton’s Department of English, Professor Larry Danson, on Thursday, May 1. Smith’s book asks whether Shakespeare is the only poet the public can still appreciate. Smith argues that Milton speaks more powerfully to the eternal questions and to the important concerns of our time.
• Anthony Grafton, Princeton’s Henry Putnam University Professor of History, will read from and discuss his new book, “Codex in Crisis,” on Monday, May 5. In the book, Grafton examines the new “information ecology” and explores the implications of digitization for the ways that people read, write and store information.
• Poet John Hollander will read from his new book, “A Draft of Light,” in an event cosponsored by Princeton’s Department of English on Tuesday, May 13. The author of 18 books of poetry and 10 books of criticism, Hollander is the current poet laureate of Connecticut and the Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University.
For more information about these and other events at Labyrinth, visit www.labyrinthbooks.com/ events_calendar.aspx.
