News

Liberal bias hurts colleges, study suggests

In response to a recent report accusing college faculties of being overly liberal, several University professors said that political ideologies don't adversely affect the Princeton experience.The study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, titled "A Profile of American College Faculty: Volume 1: Political Beliefs & Behavior," suggests that faculties' liberal leanings put them at odds with the beliefs of Americans at large.

Endowment climbs past $13 billion

The University endowment grew to $13 billion in the past year, Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO) president Andrew Golden said yesterday.Investment returns for the 2005-06 fiscal year were 19.5 percent, surpassing last year's returns of 17 percent and the University's 10-year average of 15.6 percent.Golden described 2005-06 as "a fabulous year" for PRINCO's investments, explaining that "the return was very strong relative to our benchmarks."Returns trailed M.I.T., whose 23 percent returns brought the endowment there to $8.4 billion, and Yale, whose endowment returns of 22.9 percent outpaced all Ivies in 2005-06. Stanford's endowment generated returns of 19.4 percent last year, while Harvard saw returns of 16.7 percent.Harvard's endowment, now valued at $29.2 billion, remains the largest university endowment in the world, while Yale comes in at second with $18 billion.

New UK fellowship taps young scientists

Hoping to recruit the world's best scientists to work in Great Britain, the British government earlier this week announced a new fellowship program for talented young researchers.The program, called the Royal Society International Fellowship and based partly on Germany's prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowships, may attract some Princeton scientists who wish to collaborate with their peers overseas.Since "there's a lot of excellent research in my field" at universities in the United Kingdom, computer science professor David Blei said, the fellowship "would be a great chance to visit [those] institutions" and "work with colleagues that I usually don't see.""It's the first scholarship for assistant professors that I've heard of that does this."Alistair Darling, Britain's trade and industry secretary, announced the initiative on Oct.

Ninjas, nerds and net neutrality

Having spent the summer in Silicon Valley, that glorious land of technowizardry, hybrid cars, unabashed liberalism and startup companies floating on the hopes and dreams of nerds and venture capitalists alike, I was shocked to find that almost no one at Princeton knows anything about the mysterious idea of "net neutrality."To begin with, it's about the Internet.

Up, up and away

Athletes in Action hosted an ultimate frisbee game under the football stadium lights yesterday.

Court backs gay rights, but not marriage

The state supreme court ruled yesterday that New Jersey must grant same-sex couples "the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes," delivering a partial but important victory to gay rights supporters on campus and across the state.The court's 4-3 decision in the case of Lewis v.

Social site aids in job search

Students looking for jobs quickly learn that solid credentials are good, but personal connections may be better.Capitalizing on this reality is doostang.com, a "professional networking" website intended to enable students and alumni to build the personal connections needed to get noticed ? and hired.The site, which was launched in June 2005 by Stanford graduate Mareza Larizadeh and MIT grad Pavel Krapivin, has grown steadily in popularity at Stanford, MIT and Harvard and is beginning to generate buzz at Princeton.Doostang student representatives Jesse Creed '07, William Peng '10 and Hosham Eltahir '10 are currently working with full-time employee Chelsea Burkett on spreading the word at Princeton through organizations such as Business Today and the Pre-Business Society.

Oberdorfer '52 tells stories of the Cold War

Former Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer '52, who covered many of the defining moments of the Cold War, returned to campus yesterday to discuss life as a diplomatic correspondent.Speaking in Robertson Hall in a lecture sponsored by the Wilson School, Oberdorfer focused much of his attention on the 17 years he spent covering the Cold War.

University helps alumni entrepreneurs

Former Princeton roommates Randolph Altschuler '93 and Sumir Chadha '93, who each founded multi-million dollar companies by exploiting India's undeveloped potential, shared their secrets to business success in a panel discussion in the Friend Center yesterday afternoon.The talk, sponsored by the Princeton-Jumpstart Lecture Series on Technology Entrepreneurship and hosted by electrical engineering professor Ed Zschau '61, focused on entrepreneurship, particularly in India ? where Chadha said "every sector is booming."Altschuler and Chadha represent two sides of the same coin in the world of entrepreneurship: Altschuler created a business, while Chadha provides the funding for startups like Altschuler's.Altschuler, who started his company Office Tiger in 2000, sought to "use labor arbitrage and outsource work to Indians.""Watching as banks moved back offices to less expensive locations," in Manhattan or New Jersey, Altschuler wondered, "why not move the back office all the way to India?"Altschuler and classmates Joseph Sigelman '93 and Ravi Srinivasan '93 left prestigious Fortune 500 firms to try out their experiment: a company that performs professional services like data entry and accounting for leading banks.

Our man in Iraq

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus GS '87 is not easy to sum up. In a rapid-fire clip, he recalls studying in Firestone Library's now-defunct Halliburton Map Room, arranging elections in the Iraqi city of Mosul and coauthoring the American military's new counterinsurgency doctrine with equal enthusiasm.

Comparing Lewis with other gay marriage decisions

The majority and dissenting opinions in Lewis v. Harris closely mirror previous decisions in Vermont and Massachusetts, with the majority opinion in Lewis following the logic of the Vermont decision and the dissenting opinion adopting the logic of the Massachusetts case.In 1999, Vermont's supreme court ruled that gay couples should be given the same rights as opposite-sex couples, but that the state legislature should determine whether those rights should be offered through marriage or another institution.

Midterm monotony

U.S. official urges WMD vigilance

Ambassador Kenneth Brill, director of the National Counterproliferation Center, said the government must expand the resources it devotes to countering the spread of deadly weapons."The biggest challenge to both policy and intelligence is the effort by states to acquire WMDs, like North Korea and Iran," Brill said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian yesterday.

Meyer '49 brought American history to Oxford University Press

Sheldon Meyer '49, a renowned Oxford University Press (OUP) editor who over a 50-year career transformed the world's oldest publishing house into a leading purveyor of American cultural history, died Oct.

University meets fire safety rules

New fire safety standards approved by a New Jersey State Senate committee today would not affect the University, which already conforms to the regulations, associate director of operations for Housing Patty Smith said.Assembly Bill 1945, if passed by the full senate, will require New Jersey colleges to meet the strict fire safety standards for seating furniture created by the California Bureau of Home Furnishings.The legislation was created partly in response to a fire in a Seton Hall dormitory in 2000 that killed three students.The fire was caused in part by the presence of furniture that burned and spread a toxic smoke throughout the dorm floor.The new standards set forth in the legislation require upholstery that melts rather than ignites.Princeton will not have to order new furniture, however, as it has followed the standards since before the Seton Hall fire.

Freedom Filmmaker

Famed French filmmaker Yann Beauvais screens seven of his video works in the Stewart Theater. Beauvais, who lives in Paris and Sao Paulo, is one of the world's foremost experimental film artists.

Supreme court says state must provide equal rights to gay couples

The state supreme court ruled today that New Jersey should give gay couples the right to marry or create a "parallel statutory structure" that would provide the same rights and obligations as marriage.This decision would appear to be a setback to those who had hoped that the court would require the state to offer gay couples the right to marry, instead of permitting the state to consider a separate-but-equal, alternative structure.On campus, the confusing nature of the decision was immediately apparent.

Bigwig

Jireh Li '08 and Grant Bermann '09 rehearse a scene from French novelist and dramatist Marivaux's "Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard," a production of L'Atelier, the University's french theatre workshop, that runs Oct.

Filmmaker follows cup of joe

In the midst of midterms, most students can appreciate the subject of filmmaker Su Friedrich's current project: coffee.Friedrich, a professor of visual arts and the subject of a recent retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is working on an as-yet-untitled film that traces the production of one cup of coffee.It's "quite a departure from my previous work," which usually focuses on personal experiences, Friedrich said.

Visiting students readapt to Big Easy

Little more than a year has passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, but the Tulane students who attended Princeton last fall say that life has almost entirely returned to normal on their home campus."For people who were here before, things are the same," Tulane junior Rosa Mathai said.