News

Former Israeli ambassador to United States discusses upcoming Israeli legislative elections

Former Israeli ambassador to United States discusses upcoming Israeli legislative elections

Kristin Qian

Israeli elections occur too often, Danny Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said about the upcoming Israeli legislative elections which will take place on March 17, in a lecture on Sunday. Although proportional representation makes the Israeli government more democratic,elections occur approximately every two years, he said.Elections happen all the time because to form a government, a prime minister only needs a simple majority, there is only one house, and the entire country represents one district. Moreover, anyone can run, and for that reason, there can be close to 50 parties involved in a single election, he said.

NEWS | 03/08/2015

“Say Hey” campaign aims to end awkward campus encounters

Cassidy Tucker

A new student-run campaign hopes to create awareness about awkward social dynamics on campus by encouraging students to acknowledge other people.Founder Joe Benun ’15said the idea came to him when he realized that familiarity was dictating whether students would greet each other in passing, which he said he believes leads to awkward encounters on campus.“In order to flip the social dynamic, one individual cannot do it all, which is precisely why I thought to start this campaign,” he said.The campaign launched on March 1 and has its first event this week.Say Hey is organizing “Reclaim Midterms Week,” in which students are encouraged to wear a nametag on campus through the entire week of midterms.

NEWS | 03/08/2015

U. Provost Lee GS ’99 denies anonymous discrimination reporting system in response to ‘Prince’ coverage

Jacob Donnelly

University Provost David Lee GS ’99 said the University is not creating a new anonymous discrimination reporting system, according toan email sentto the entireUniversity faculty on Wednesdayin response to a March 1 article in The Daily Princetonian.According to the article, the University might create a system for students to anonymously report discriminatory comments by professors.

NEWS | 03/08/2015

News & Notes: Dozens protest against UChicago over trauma care center

Ruby Shao

Dozens of protesters chained themselves together on Thursday to pressure the University of Chicago to open a trauma care center, NBC Chicago reported. The demonstration occurred on Michigan Avenue and Pearson Street near a University of Chicago alumni fundraising event at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, according to the Chicago Tribune. A spokesperson for the group said that the activists intended to rally and picket outside the hotel to call on alumni donors not to support the University of Chicago until it commits to opening a trauma center. Protesters released a statement saying they were willing to risk arrest to send the message that “business as usual cannot continue while black lives are being lost due to a lack of adult trauma care on the South Side and the University of Chicago’s refusal to expand trauma care." The University of Chicago does not offertraumacare for patients 16 or older.Traumacenters offer more extensive care than do typical emergency rooms. The protesters gathered outside the hotel around 5:30 p.m.

NEWS | 03/05/2015

Journalism professor discusses human trafficking issues

Paul Phillips

Human trafficking is not merely about forced prostitution and sex slavery, but instead encompasses a much wider variety of issues related to coerced labor, independent journalist and visiting professor Noy Thrupkaew argued at a talk Thursday.Thrupkaew will deliver the same presentation as a Technology, Entertainment, Design talk at the TED national conference in March.The talk began with Thrupkaew’s account of her discovery that until the age of three she had been raised not by her parents but by her “auntie.” Her "auntie" was stripped and beaten for offenses as minor as being late to pick her up and eventually ran away.

NEWS | 03/05/2015

Martinez '15, Miller '15 receive Labouisse Prize

Zaynab Zaman

Yessica Martinez ’15 and Damaris Miller ’15 were awarded this year’s Henry Richardson Labouisse ’26 Prize, a $30,000 grant to support a year-long international civic engagement project.The prize was formed in 1984 by Labouisse’s daughter and son-in-law, Anne and Martin Peretz.Martinez intends to work with a community organization in Medellín, Colombia, which has been creating theater programs for almost 25 years.

NEWS | 03/05/2015

2 U. faculty awarded Dan David Prize

Jessica Li

Two Princeton faculty members were named recipients of the 2015 Dan David Prize last month.Both history professor emeritus Peter Brown and sociology lecturer Alessandro Portelli were awarded in the “Retrieving the Past” category of the prize.They will be honored at a May 17 ceremony at Tel Aviv University in Israel.According to its website, the Dan David Prize is an international enterprise that awards grants in three categories for outstanding interdisciplinary research in the sciences and humanities.

NEWS | 03/05/2015

News & Notes: Five people injured in explosion, fire near Columbia, Barnard

Daily Princetonian Staff

An explosion and subsequent fire in a restaurant near Columbia and Barnard College injured five people and forced the evacuation of two Barnard dorms on Tuesday night, the New York Daily News reported. The explosion was reported at 11:30 p.m.

NEWS | 03/04/2015

Bernstein talks China's historical relationship with U.S.

Bernstein talks China's historical relationship with U.S.

Shriya Sekhsaria

The United States chose the wrong side in the Chinese civil war, Richard Bernstein, former Beijing bureau chief for TIME magazine, said in a talk on Wednesday. Bernstein discussed his recently published book, “China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and America’s Fateful Choice.” Bernstein said it was his publisher’s idea to write about a time in Chinese history that was important for the formation of China’s relationship with the United States, adding he gave himself poetic license to stretch the book from September 1944 to April 1946. “I had hoped to write something with scholarly authority that would be a good read —a popular read,” he said. The conflict began in 1927 and lasted until 1937, when the two sides united to fight a Japanese invasion, and then resumed in 1946 and continued until 1950.If the advice from a small group of China experts had been followed, the U.S.

NEWS | 03/04/2015

Rubin lectures on Ukraine crisis

Jessica Li

The United States will not take direct military action against Russia in Ukraine but will rather seek a resolution through multilateral agreements to empower Ukraine, saidEric Rubin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, at a lecture on Wednesday. “We need Russia in the world, we need Russia’s cooporation, but we can’t say that because Russia is important; it can set its own rules," Rubin said.

NEWS | 03/04/2015

Over last 15 years, U. Art Museum has redoubled efforts to determine origins of WWII-era art

Christina Vosbikian

Art museums across the country, including the University Art Museum, have intensified their efforts over the past decade and a half to determine the provenance, or origin, of art from the World War II era. Guidelines issued in 1998 by the Association of Art Museum Directors and in 1999 by the American Alliance of Museums ask museums in part to attempt to resolve whether there might be potential claimants to art they are considering purchasing or which they have in their collections if there is the possibility that work of art may have been unlawfully appropriated by the Nazi government in Germany from 1933-45. Museums should also disclose the chain of custody for a work of art if it passed through Nazi hands even if it cannot identify potential claimants, the guidelines add. “The ethics in the field really require you to know the provenance of the objects in your collection,"Ford Bell, president of the American Alliance of Museums, said."If there is a claim against [an object’s provenance], you have to take it seriously.

NEWS | 03/04/2015

4th annual Mental Health Week starts to wrap up

Katherine Oh

The fourth annual Mental Health Week has been taking place this week, featuring the Dear World photography project, Me Too Monologues and workshops by Counseling and Psychological Services.The Me Too Monologues are the newest edition to the Week’s programming.

NEWS | 03/04/2015

Latkes win in Annual Latke Hamentaschen Debate

Jessica Li

By a narrow margin, latkes were declared victorious in the Annual Latke Hamentaschen Debate on Tuesday night. “[The Latke v.

NEWS | 03/03/2015

News & Notes: ACLU sues state over withholding Ebola quarantine documents

Daily Princetonian Staff

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Monday against the New Jersey Department ofHealth’s refusal to provide public records about state policies and protocols about exposure toEbola, according to Planet Princeton. The ACLU-NJ requested these documents on Oct.

NEWS | 03/03/2015

Simon talks art and society, plays “The Sound of Silence” at lecture

Simon talks art and society, plays “The Sound of Silence” at lecture

Chitra Marti

Photo by Yicheng Sun Art today seems to be no one’s priority, singer and songwriter Paul Simon said in a public conversation with creative writing professor Paul Muldoon on Tuesday. Simon also discussed his latest projects, his songwriting process and the role art should play in our society and performedhis song “The Sound of Silence.” “The world is so for one thing brutal, and for another so obsessed with speed and wealth, that it possibly calls for a redefinition of art,” Simon said.

NEWS | 03/03/2015

U. student, alumnus launch Campus Anonymous

Jacob Donnelly

Dan Kang ’15 and Akshay Kumar ’14 launched Campus Anonymous, a chat website for Ivy League students, on Sunday. Kang and Kumar are alsothe creators of Tigers Anonymous,a similar website that only University students can use. As of Tuesday afternoon, approximately 400 users had registered and over 1,000 conversations had taken place, Kang said, adding that the most frequent registrations were from the University and Columbia but that all eight Ivy League schools were represented. Kang said that he and Kumar created Campus Anonymous both because University students were too small of a pool to ensure users would be able to be paired with someone else and because students at other schools had expressed an interest in the concept. “In the beginning there was a lot of usage [of Tigers Anonymous], but a lot of time when people went on during the day, there weren’t enough people on it, and they stopped coming back,” Kang said. Campus Anonymous retains some elements of Tigers Anonymous, such as anonymity, randomly selected prompts to help users begin conversations and the option for users to reveal their identities if both users in a pair agree, although Kumar noted there were approximately 20 to 30 percent more prompts on Campus Anonymous. A unique feature to Campus Anonymous is the introduction of a terms of service and a privacy policy, Kumar said, noting that they are paying for SSL encryption for the chats.Kang said that he and Kumar cannot see the content of chats, and they do not think there should not be a way for people with malicious intentions to view any of the chats or discern any of the users’ identities. Although Kang and Kumar copied a lot of the chatting code from Tigers Anonymous, they had to work on a new filtering and authentication system to make sure emails were associated with Ivy League students and not with alumni of those schools. “There was a lot more machinery with Tigers Anonymous choosing prompts, so we were able to streamline that, make that more efficient,” Kumar said.

NEWS | 03/03/2015

Friendsy launches nationally

Lorenzo Quiogue

Friendsy launched nationally on Monday, allowing users from any college in the United States to sign up for the service. The site, which was created by students and allows students to indicate their interest in becoming friends with, hooking up with or dating other students,started at the University in 2013and gradually expanded to more colleges. Within 24 hours, the service attracted around 4,500 new users, on top of itspreexisting database of around 25,000 users, said Michael Pinsky ’15, one of the site's founders. Since Friendsy's initial launch to University students in May 2013, the core team has been working to add new features and components to the site, including applications for both the iOS and Android operating systems, Pinsky said.

NEWS | 03/03/2015

Fogarty lectures on Dear World Project for Mental Health Week

Christina Vosbikian

The Dear World photography project is designed to help people express their life stories, photographer Robert Fogarty said in a lecture on Monday. Fogarty was on campus on Monday to photograph students for his project as a part of Mental Health Week. “We’re here to celebrate your voices,” Fogarty said. Fogarty began the lecture by sharing stories of people he has met over the years through Dear World, including children he met in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, former professional football player Steve Gleason and his struggle with ALS and survivors of the Boston Marathon. He started the project in New Orleans in 2009. Five University students also discussed their personal experiences at the lecture, includingBriana Christophers ’17, Ryan Fulmer ’16, Leea Driskell ’17, Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 and Christina Rice ’17. “You have to go through these things to connect with other people,” Rice said. As each student spoke, their picture taken from earlier in the day was projected on a screen.

NEWS | 03/02/2015

News & Notes: Lempert recuses herself from 7-Eleven vote

Do-Hyeong Myeong

Mayor Liz Lempert said she would recuse herself from a vote on a proposed 7-Eleven because of a conflict of interest,the Princeton Packetreported. The Planning Board has a hearing on March 19 to discuss 7-Eleven’s proposal to move into the former West Coast Video property at 259 Nassau St. Lempert explained that she had received legal advice to recuse herself from the voting since the University, her husband’s employer, owns a driveway that goes through the site. Lempert is married to psychology professor Kenneth Norman. In addition to Lempert, three other board members are recusing themselves from the vote.

NEWS | 03/02/2015

News & Notes: 28 seniors run for Young Alumni Trustee

Do-Hyeong Myeong

The online primary voting process for a Young Alumni Trustee for the class of 2015 will start on Tuesday, according to University spokesperson Martin Mbugua. Twenty-eight seniors are running in the primary election this year. The seniors are Tumi Akinlawon, Jimmy Baase, Elise Backman, Samisha Bansal, Ray Chao, Christina Chica, Albert Choi, Katherine Clifton, Gavin Cook, Catherine Dennig, Laura Harder, Zach Horton, Rana Ibrahem, Shawon Jackson, Adam Klosowiak, Joe Margolies, Zack McCourt, Sydney Montgomery, Phil Mooney, Zhan Okuda-Lim, Cordelia Orillac, Stephanie Rigizadeh, Paul Riley, Hannah Rosenthal, Misha Semenov, Jillian Wilkowski, Tiana Woolridge and Carolyn Yang. Backman is a former opinion columnist forThe Daily Princetonian.

NEWS | 03/02/2015

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