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"The idea [that the United States should not negotiate with terrorists] is fine in theory, but the truth is we have dealt with terrorists before."
-- Ellen Lust-Okar, assistant professor of political
science, "An Open Palestinian Election May
Benefit Middle East Peace, Yale Experts Say,"
New Haven Register, Nov. 12, 2004.
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"[M]any babies and toddlers [from low-income families] are in day-care programs that require that the parents bring in enough disposable diapers for the child to use each week. We've actually heard stories of some parents not being able to go to work because they can't afford the diapers to take to their child's day-care center."
-- Joanne Goldblum, clinical instructor at the Child Study Center, "A Change for the Better," New Haven Register, Nov. 8, 2004.
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"It's an ongoing thing. Things are going extinct and colonizing islands all the time."
-- Eric P. Palkovacs, graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, on the unique forces that govern evolution on an island, "Island Creatures Great and Small; Mammals Shrink, Tiny Animals Grow, According to Biologists," Hartford Courant, Nov. 12, 2004.
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"There are always afterthoughts when you finish a book. You don't really know what a book is until it is separate from you, like part of you that has been chopped away."
-- Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English, "Wise Guy," National Post (Canada), Nov. 13, 2004.
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"Indeed, the essence of labor unions is that they know the unique problems of a distinct group of workers, bring focused expertise on these problems, and thus intelligently represent their interests. In today's complex financial economies, representing workers' interests is not so simple as battling with management for a bigger share of the pie. Unions should instead negotiate with management the same way top executives do with their boards of directors when their complex compensation packages are worked out."
-- Robert J. Shiller, the Stanley B. Resor Professsor of Economics, in his article, "Labor in a World of Financial Capitalism," The Korea Herald, Nov. 22, 2004.
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"Pharmacists who object to filling prescriptions for emergency contraception should arrange for another pharmacist to provide this service to customers promptly. ... It is difficult enough to be faced with the consequences of rape or of an unplanned pregnancy; health care providers should not make the situation measurably worse."
-- Julie Cantor, student at the School of Medicine and Dr. Ken Baum, on pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives, in their article, "The Limits of Conscientious Objection -- May Pharmacists Refuse to Fill Prescriptions for Emergency Contraception?" The New England Journal of Medicine, Nov. 4, 2004.
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"There is a sort of soft tolerance of competing views [of religious beliefs at mainstream law schools], but no real interest in exposing students to seriously developed contrary points of view that proceed from a strong faith-based perspective. Fundamentalism is derided."
-- Peter H. Schuck, the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law, "Giving the Law a Religious Perspective," The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2004.
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"We are a country with more retail space than anywhere else in the world -- 20 square feet per person -- and we also have 15 or 20 percent of our shopping centers going under. Everywhere you drive, you can find these boarded-up buildings. Somebody's got to be in there, haunting the aisles."
-- Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies, "The Endangered Haunted House," The Boston Globe,
Oct. 31, 2004.
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"What happens [during a 'lame-duck' session of Congress] is with the hot potatoes, you have an incentive to cut and run before the election and then defer those issues. It isn't that they ran out of time -- they ran out of will."
-- Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, "Big Issues Are Facing Lame-Duck Congress; Overhaul of Spy Agencies, Spending Bills on Agenda for Unpredictable Session," The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 15, 2004.
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"I think that mathematics is one of the best fields in that respect. Something that is 150 years old in maths is old but not dead and dried to dust. It is so different from physics, where something that is 100 years old but not in textbooks is, for all practical purposes, dead."
-- Benoit Mandelbrot, professor emeritus of mathematics and senor research scientist in mathematics, "A Fractal Life," New Scientist, Nov. 13, 2004.
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"The nation is not at rest on this issue [of legalizing gay marriage]. We should let Mississippi be Mississippi and Vermont be Vermont, and let's see where we are in another 10 years. At that point, there will be another generation of voters and more experience."
-- William N. Eskridge Jr., the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, "A Year After Ruling, Nation Remains Divided
Over Gay Marriage," The Associated Press, Nov. 13, 2004.
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"The Japanese are sending a warning shot across the bow that they will not be ignored. They're worried about China's longer-term dominance in the region."
-- Michael Auslin, assistant professor of history, "Japanese Pursuit of Chinese Sub Raises Tensions," The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 15, 2004.
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"Politics is a better spectator sport, but the world revolves around scientific progress, and it may be that the most important votes cast on November 2nd were not in Ohio or Florida, but in California [where voters passed a proposition to spend
$3 billion on stem cell research]. ... Like other campaigns around the country, Proposition 71 was a conflict of values, with Hollywood, Democrats and science aligned against the Catholic Church, the Republican Party and fiscal conservatives."
-- Robert Solomon, clinical professor of law, in his article "Selling Stem Cells," Connecticut Law Tribune, Nov. 15, 2004.
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"I don't think I've made a film that isn't as alive today as it was when we made it. I feel good about that. Everything still looks like it happened yesterday rather than 40 years ago."
-- Michael Roemer, adjunct professor of film and American studies, about his films, such as "Nothing But a Man" and "The Plot Against Harry," which have gained recognition decades after they were produced, "New Life for a 1964 Film," The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2004.
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"Although the [No Child Left Behind (NCLB)] act has its flaws, it has forced educators to focus clearly on student outcomes. If a child fails, the school has failed in its mission and must be held accountable. ... Unfortunately, NCLB has gone to the extreme in setting pie-in-the-sky goals instead of realistic ones. Children with special educational needs are now required to take achievement tests at their grade level, as if they didn't have special needs at all. Only the most severely impaired students are exempt, but if enough students are excused, the school gets an F on its federal report card."
-- Edward Zigler, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology, and Sally J. Styfco, associate director of the Head Start Unit at the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, in their article "Special Education: Feds Ignore the 'Special' Part," Hartford Courant, Nov. 14, 2004.
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"In 1940 the instructions to the Form 1040 [income tax document] were about four pages. Today they are more than 100 pages, and the form itself contains more than 10 schedules and more than 20 worksheets. The complete tax code totals about 2.8 million words -- about four times longer than 'War and Peace' (and considerably harder to parse). The public simply cannot cope -- and neither can the I.R.S. If tax reformers are truly serious about getting the I.R.S. out of the lives of the American people, they must place tax simplification at the top of the agenda."
-- Michael J. Graetz, the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law, in his article, "To the Point of No Returns," The New York Times,
Nov. 15, 2004.
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"We can think about air pollution affecting our health in two ways. One is how it affects our health from the air pollution we breathe in today, tomorrow and over the next few days. But the other way is how it affects health over many years."
-- Michelle Bell, assistant professor at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, "Ground-Level Ozone Tied to Deaths," Newsday (New York), Nov. 17, 2004.
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"I react against what I think of as political correctness that says there is no such thing as race. ... [The saying that all men are created equal] is a statement of morality, not of science. Genetic variation is not uniform, but that has nothing to do with the value of a person."
-- Dr. Kenneth Kidd, professor of genetics and psychiatry, "Cure Is More than Skin Deep: Medicine Exploits Genetic Variations, Not Crude Differences," The Guardian (London), Nov. 11, 2004.
T H I S
W E E K ' SS T O R I E S
Two professors win prestigious honorsLibrary of Congress gives Pelikan Kluge Prize for lifetime achievements
Scully is awarded National Medal of Arts at White House ceremony
Yale's newest Rhodes Scholars are Oxford-bound
New program will promote Yale-Pfizer links
The Art of Shopping
Market offers 'alternative' gifts that benefit world's needy
Vincent Scully: On architecture and its integral landscape
Book explores Yale's architectural relationship with New Haven
CNN anchor offers her perspective on presidential election
Neurosurgery advances rely on interdisciplinary focus, scientist says
Study shows how different levels of alcohol impair areas of brain
Conference pays tribute to scholar Robert Dahl
Viennese Vespers
Older persons with chronic illness have range of untreated . . .
Red Sox ovation
Yale Books in Brief
Campus Notes
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