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(05/03/09 10:00pm)
Two weekends ago, in that short period of blazing heat that followed days of cold April showers, I was in New Haven at a conference titled “Greek, Latin and Indo-European Poetry.” Since thinking about ancient literature is how I choose to occupy much of my time, being indoors for hours on end was not for me the hardship you might think. But it evidently was not a hardship for a lot of others either since more than sixty people, many of them students, attended the meeting, asked questions and participated late into the night in the general intellectual excitement and social merriment that characterizes all good academic events.
(04/28/09 10:00pm)
During her freshman year, Julia Neufeld ’10 plagiarized her roommate’s computer code — and got away with it.
(04/01/09 10:00pm)
Somewhere in the College Office is a collection of people whom I rarely see in real life — or maybe I do, I don’t think I’d recognize them — but who do a lovely job about keeping me running on schedule. Then there are the denizens of West College, who periodically pump out e-mails with important headlines, like, “REMINDER — Last Day to Apply for Housing.” Important stuff, that.
(03/29/09 10:00pm)
I should say from the start that I do not have a monolithic view on what constitutes acceptable practice in the classroom. Surely the decision to record lectures or to ban laptops ought to be a matter firmly in the hands of each individual professor (I exclude from consideration cases that involve documented disabilities) and is not different, then, from such non-technological decisions as taking a stand on the consumption of sloppy Subways in McCosh 10. Surely there is no possible one-size-fits-all policy at a university that offers small seminars in physics and large lectures in film studies, not to mention small seminars in film studies and large lectures in physics. Of course, it is the wise teacher who considers the options with an open mind — and who allows his or her students to take some part in the consideration.
(02/22/09 11:00pm)
The day well over a million people braved the January cold of Washington to witness Barack Obama’s inauguration found me in temperate Cairo. I had arrived just in time to watch the festivities on a large-screen television in a hotel whose rooms look out directly over the Great Pyramid, the last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World. There with me were a couple dozen Americans, most of them pleased about our new president and nearly all conspicuously dressed in orange and black: ties, scarves, pins and even a beer jacket or two. Of course you can run into Princetonians anywhere, but this was no accidental gathering. Rather, it was the beginning of a trip for alumni, “Egypt of the Pharaohs,” which I had the good fortune to be leading.
(11/13/08 11:00pm)
To shy away from controversial issues, however, would be a mistake. I had an English teacher in high school who was fond of telling his students "life is too short to write boring essays." The same maxim ought to apply whenever we engage in discourse. Students should air unpopular ideas on important matters even when doing so clashes with their peers' opinions. And their colleagues ought to reward them with admiration for their bold willingness to challenge convention, rather than reflexively responding with derision.
(11/09/08 11:00pm)
The first thing to say is that it would be unfair to take a few words out of context and pretend that they epitomized the whole argument. I am not pretending to do this. There is nuance in Norton's column, though Carroll, with whom (I should acknowledge from the start) I am in substantial sympathy, gives the impression of having no time at all for the man to whom he is responding, implying with his title that he is a "barbarian."
(10/05/08 10:00pm)
And then comes the banquet, which always features - right before the Katzenjammers bop in - an after-dinner talk by a Princeton luminary. Every year I am startled anew at how a supremely talented artist and a crowd of not-yet-jaded kids actually manage to put purpose into the MPR. It didn't matter last Saturday night that there were some problems with the microphone or, as Professor Gowin lamented, that no projection of photographs onto a screen, much less an ordinary pull-down screen in an oversized, low-ceilinged basement, can do serious pictures justice. Gowin was quirky and brilliant, which is what students expect us members of the faculty to be. But he was also lyrical - and if students start expecting this as well, then most of us are in trouble.
(09/07/08 10:00pm)
Over the summer, I told some old school friends of mine that I had become Director. These friends, who are not easy to impress, were impressed. After all, they thought I was just a professor. And while they don't have anything against professors - once they were students them-selves at places like Princeton and they retain fond memories of nights at Ivy - they are important people in the world of business: CEOs of multinational corporations, Presidents of flourishing businesses, Senior Partners at Dewey, Cheetham & Howe. But now, apparently, I am a big shot as well, though I'm not yet as successful as my old buddy whose sojourn in the hedge-fund stratosphere has earned him a subpoena, true, but also allowed him to retire at the age of 34.
(04/27/08 10:00pm)
But tomorrow there will be a reason to look up, to dawdle, to tote more than books. For the third Tuesday in a row, a garden of sorts will spring up between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. in that normally empty space bounded by books (the library), more books (my office) and God (the University Chapel). This is our very own farmers' market, an idea so terrific that I forgive the organization that's behind it, Greening Princeton, for taking on a name that even the erstwhile flower girl Eliza Doolittle might object sounds like the title of a Ph.D. dissertation in comparative literature from the 1980s. The market was open for business on five glorious Tuesdays last September and October, will be around for six weeks this spring and has already announced a seven-week schedule (plus a special Thanksgiving Market) for the fall. It is of course a place to buy winesap apples, cranberry honey, free-range eggs, chicken sausages, spinach ravioli and strawberry rhubarb pie (to mention some of items I've purchased in the past two weeks). But it is much more than that. It is also a place to think about what it means to eat well and to eat right (the cheerful participation of chef Rob Harbison is one sign that the University is committed to going beyond merely thinking about these things). It is a place to show support for local businesses ("locavore" was the 2007 "Word of the Year" according to the editors of the "New Oxford American Dictionary") and thereby strengthen town-gown relations. And it is a place to meet, speak with and smile at one's professors, students and colleagues - and the many community auditors who sit at the back of your lectures and remind you that there's a lot more to life than four short college years.
(04/17/08 10:00pm)
The University's commitment to teaching undergraduates means you'll interact with top professors, even in introductory classes. One perennial favorite is Eric Wieschaus, a Nobel Laureate in medicine who teaches introductory molecular biology and is known to act out cellular processes during his lectures. (You have to see it to understand how that's possible.) And Joshua Katz, a professor of linguistics and classics, will tell you where you're from after listening to you speak just a few words. If you're in his class, he'll know your name and remember it years later. If you thought you missed the opportunity to take a class with Toni Morrison, fear not! She retired, but she's coming back next year by popular demand to teach a class on the literature of dispossession.
(03/30/08 10:00pm)
Earlier this month, I had the interesting experience of attending on successive days two talks that seemed, oddly, to be both quite similar and quite different: On March 6th, Randall Kennedy '77 spoke about his new book "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal," and on March 7th, Scalia offered his view of "The Role of the Courts in a Liberal Democracy." Predictably, Scalia delivered his talk to a packed house in McCosh 50, where the few hundred in attendance quickly learned that the unexpected adjective in the lecture's title was not a signal of a late-career change of heart - now that would have been something! - but simply the handiwork of Whig-Clio, which sponsored the talk and had set the topic. It's an election year, so maybe we should be watching how the members of the Supreme Court behave themselves, and certainly most of us are thinking about who might be joining Scalia in the months and years ahead. (On this subject, I heartily recommend "The Next Justice: Repairing our Supreme Court Appointments Process" by Provost Christopher Eisgruber '83.) Scalia is a brilliant rhetorician, no doubt about it, and he made what I regard as an impressive case for the unpopular idea that "there are some wrongs that courts cannot right." But it is hard to believe that even his greatest admirers found that he handled the pre-submitted questions very well. It was not heartening to hear Scalia say with no apparent chagrin that he could not be expected to remember the details of his own opinions. And just as disheartening was the applause he received from the floor for this testy response to a query about his role in "Bush v. Gore": "Oh, get over it! It's eight years ago." It's one thing to let bygones be bygones, but surely it's another to clap.
(02/24/08 11:00pm)
One of my early supporters was John Keaney, who retired in 2000 after 41 years on the faculty. In his final year, John - JJK to my JTK - chose to be a preceptor for CLA 208, an extraordinary act for someone who had tenure before I was born. Gruff but with a heart of gold, he was known for his forays into essentially unknown corners of Greek literature, his strong Boston accent (he was, I believe, the son of a gravedigger who had come over from Ireland) and his love of pizza, Rome and his family. John died on Easter Monday 2003, and I think of him often, especially in connection with the current flurry of activity around Firestone Library, whose collections - from the ancient lexica to the latest mysteries - he knew as intimately as anyone.
(12/03/07 11:00pm)
Regarding 'University tightens alcohol enforcement policy,' (Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007):
(11/25/07 11:00pm)
One is dark-haired, from Egypt (by way of Delaware) and former president of the Anscombe Society; he is a fearless public speaker, likes to invoke Aristotle and copy-edited the Witherspoon Institute's pamphlet "Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles" (first principle: "Marriage is a personal union, intended for the whole of life, of husband and wife").
(11/18/07 11:00pm)
Sherif Girgis, Brett Masters and Landis Stankievech are among this year's winners of Rhodes Scholarships. The fellowships will enable each to complete graduate work at Oxford next year.
(10/21/07 10:00pm)
Earlier this month, 50 fifth- and sixth-graders at Foundation Academy, a brand-new charter school in Trenton, paid a visit to Princeton. Trenton is only 10 miles away, but for some who live there, we are in another world entirely. My job, according to Lisa Kemp '06, was to tell the students about Princeton and make them excited about the idea of someday going to college. So I stood in front of this impressively unfidgety bunch in Guyot 10 one beautiful Thursday morning and, after introducing myself, wrote "UNIVERSITY" in big letters on the blackboard. What is a university, I asked, and what does the word make you think of? I imagined that perhaps someone would say something about universal knowledge. But that's because, sad to say, I don't spend much time with 10 year-olds. What in fact happened is that one boy's hand shot up, and when I called on him, he said, "It makes me think of outer space."
(10/08/07 10:00pm)
Regarding 'The Firestone lounge?' (Monday, Sept. 24, 2007):
(10/02/07 10:00pm)
I believe librarians share the concerns Joshua Katz pointed out in his column last Monday. Many of us fear that large academic research libraries throughout the country are losing sight of their main mission, i.e., to serve the students, faculty and staff of their respective institution. Their mission is not to function primarily as a "storage space" (though we must fill that function as well, for the preservation of scholarship for future generations) or as a public library (though we fill that function too, especially in responding to questions from the public via email and telephone) or as a bookstore that offers bestsellers, coffee and armchairs (although we do carry bestsellers and have armchairs).
(09/30/07 10:00pm)
As the sun slants through the early fall leaves and warms the handsome stones of Whitman College, it's hard to believe that Princeton — or any other member of the group of wealthy private universities that it belongs to — faces serious problems. The endowment is rising like one of those guided missiles that used to worry us but somehow don't anymore, even though thousands of them are still around. Cranes loom, teams play, arts groups perform, professors babble, seniors gear up for their great intellectual bungee jumps and the president prepares to ask alumni for a lot more money to support even more frenetic activity. Everybody's virtuously busy.