'The UnAmerican U.N.' is topic of journalist's talk
Ian Williams, a journalist and investigative reporter who recently retired as president of the United Nations Correspondents Association, will be the guest at a tea on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 4 p.m. in the Pierson College master's house, 231 Park St. His talk, titled "The UNAmerican U.N.," is free and open to the public.
Mr. Williams served an unprecedented two terms as president of the United Nations Correspondents Association and is the author of "The U.N. for Beginners" and other books. Last year he coauthored a paper on the U.N. and the media titled "Through a Glass Darkly." He has contributed to several other books on the U.N. and the Balkans and is under contract for one on foreign lobbies in the United States. A regular contributor to a variety of media around the world, including the Village Voice, The Nation and New York Magazine, he also writes regularly for The Australian and The European. In addition to his writing, Mr. Williams has worked in various capacities for many television and radio outlets, including ABC, CNN, BBC, ITN and CNBC. A native of England, he was a speech writer for the United Kingdom's Labour party leader Neal Kinnock during the 1987 elections.
Irish poet will present reading of his works at Beinecke Library
Michael Longley, a Belfast-born poet whose 1991 poetry collection, "Gorse Fires," won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and was chosen as one of the notable books of the year in 1992 by The New York Times, will read from his works on Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 4 p.m. at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St. The event, which will be followed by a reception, is free and open to the public.
Mr. Longley's other collections of poetry include "No Continuing City," "An Exploded View," "Man Lying on a Wall," "Selected Poems" and his most recent volume, "The Ghost Orchid," which was published last year. A critic for the Times Literary Supplement described Mr. Longley's poetry as "impressive for its skill, its cadences, and the naturalness of the voice speaking within it. ... Apart from the excellence of his writing -- which is important enough -- it is that release into gentleness and into an affection which seems bewildered but always benevolent, always strange ... that makes his work a crucial and instructive part of our contemporary poetry."
Mr. Longley, a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, served for a number of years on the Arts Council of Northern Ireland as director for literature and the traditional arts.
Award-winning physicist to be featured at campus events
Amory Lovins, a physicist and environmental advocate who was described in the Wall Street Journal's centennial issue as "one of the 28 people most likely to change the course of world business in the 1990s," will be the guest at several campus events this week. On Wednesday, Feb. 5, he will discuss the topic "Hypercars -- The Next Industrial Revolution: Hybrid Electric Ultralight Vehicles" during a tea at 4:40 p.m. in the Pierson College master's house, 231 Park St. The event is cosponsored by the Yale Student Environmental Coalition.
On the following day, Mr. Lovins will be the featured speaker in the Industrial Environmental Management IEM Lecture Series, sponsored by the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His talk, "Green Both Ways: Competitive Strategy for Sustainable Business," will take place at 4:15 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. It is free and open the public.
In addition, Mr. Lovins will have breakfast with students interested in discussing resource efficiency, "green" building design and other topics of their choice on Thursday, Feb. 6, 8-10 a.m. The location will be announced. Space is limited; those interested in attending the breakfast should contact Jason Brown via e-mail at jcb33@yale.edu.
Mr. Lovins has been active as a consultant in energy policy in more than 23 countries for many years. Since 1979 he has worked as a team with his wife, Hunter Lovins, who is a lawyer, sociologist, political scientist and forester. In 1982 they founded Rocky Mountain Institute RMI , an independent, nonprofit resource policy center that fosters resources efficiency and global security. They oversee a staff of some 43 people who explore the links between energy, water, agriculture, transportation, security and development. E SOURCE, a subsidiary service of RMI and a source of technical information on advanced electric efficiency, is subscribed to by hundreds of electric utilities, governments, major industries, design firms and other organizations.
The Lovinses have advised numerous firms about energy and other issues. Their clients have also included numerous state governments, national environmental agencies and government departments, including the U.S. departments of energy and defense.
Amory and Hunter Lovins shared a 1982 Mitchell Prize for work on utility policy and won a Right Livelihood Award -- often called the "alternative Nobel Prize" -- in 1983. Mr. Lovins was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993. His other honors include the 1989 Delphi Prize from the Onassis Foundation, one of the world's top environmental awards, and the 1993 Nissan Prize for inventing super-efficient ultralight hybrid cars.
Former U.S. surgeon general to speak at medical school
Dr. C. Everett Koop, who served as surgeon general of the United States 1981-89, will lecture on the topic "Changing Medical Education at Dartmouth" on Thursday, Feb. 6, as a guest of the Medical School Council. His talk will begin at noon in the Beaumont Room of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. Lunch will be provided, and the public is welcome free of charge.
Dr. Koop, a pediatric surgeon with an international reputation, taught for many years at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and was surgeon-in-chief of Children's Hospital in Philadelphia from 1948 until his appointment in 1981 as deputy assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Public Health Service. Later that same year, he was sworn in as surgeon general. In that position, Dr. Koop oversaw the activities of the 6,000-member Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and advised the public on health matters such as smoking, diet and nutrition, environmental hazards, immunizations and disease prevention. He also became the government's chief spokesperson on AIDS.
Dr. Koop resigned as surgeon general in 1989. He is currently the Elizabeth DeCamp McInerny Professor of Surgery at Dartmouth Medical School and is senior scholar of the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Surgeon General's Exemplary Service Medal and the Surgeon General's Medallion, the Public Health Service Distinguished Service Medal and the William E. Ladd Gold Medal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He also received the Order of the Duarte, Sanchez and Mella -- the highest award of the Dominican Republic -- for his achievement in separating conjoined Dominican twins, and won an Emmy Award in 1991 in the news and documentary category for his five-part series on health- care reform titled "C. Everett Koop, M.D."
Physician to share observations about his field
Dr. David J. Elpern, a dermatologist in Williamstown, Massachusetts, will share his observations as a doctor who has worked far from major medical academic centers as the next speaker in the Program for Humanities in Medicine lecture series. His talk, "Art & the Calling: Bedside Stories," will take place on Thursday, Feb. 6, at 5 p.m. in the Beaumont Room of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Elpern describes himself as being more comfortable with narrative than with paradigmatic mode. He organized a series of lectures in Williamstown that explored the ways in which medicine has become a business and allowed participants an opportunity to reconnect with the humanistic aspects of the profession. Alumnus to discuss wildlife conservation efforts
Alumnus Richard Reading will discuss some of his initiatives to conserve endangered species as the keynote speaker during the School of Forestry's 13th annual doctoral research conference on Friday, Feb. 7. All are invited to attend the free event.
Mr. Reading's talk, titled "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Conservation: Lessons from Mongolia, Australia and the United States," will follow presentations by students, which begin at 9 a.m. and will be completed at 3:45 p.m. The conference will be in Bowers Auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St.
Mr. Reading earned a master's degree in environmental studies from the School of Forestry in 1996 and was awarded M.S., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from the Yale Graduate School. He is a specialist on threatened and endangered species who has researched and recommended efforts to save a variety of species throughout the world, including the black-footed ferret, black-tailed prairie dog, the Australian eastern barred bandicoot, Mongolian gazelle and others. Currently director of conservation biology for the Denver Zoological Foundation, he is also a research associate for the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative and the Nature Conservation International based in Berlin, Germany. He has been a consultant to the United Nations Development Program Global Environmental Fund and the Mongolia Ministry for Nature and the Environment, as well as for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources in Victoria, Australia. While at Yale, he was president of the campus chapter of The Wildlife Society.
Noted lawyer will deliver the Lustman Lecture
Barry Scheck '71, who has been involved in a number of highly publicized criminal cases in his 18-year career and is considered an expert on DNA evidence, will deliver the spring Lustman Fellowship lecture on Thursday, Feb. 6, at 8 p.m. in the common room of Davenport College, 248 York St. His lecture, titled "Science, Law and Justice," is free and open to the public.
Mr. Scheck is professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City and is director of the Clinical and Trial Advocacy Programs and the Jacob Burns Ethics Center there. Since 1989, he and his colleague Peter Neufeld have litigated a series of landmark cases that helped establish standards for the use of DNA evidence in courts throughout the country. In 1992 the Cardozo School of Law established the Innocence Project, through which law students and faculty members assist inmates prove their innocence through post-conviction DNA testing. Professor Scheck has authored several publications in the areas of criminal law, DNA testing and databanking.
Professor Scheck serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Criminal Justice Council of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the American Bar Association Counseling Team for High Profile Trials and the Neighborhood Defender Service for Harlem. A participant in numerous lawyer training programs, he was formerly a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society in New York.
Monitoring America's social health is topic of talk
Marc Miringoff, creator of the national Index of Social Health and director of the Fordham Institute for Social Policy, will speak on Friday, Feb. 7, at noon in the weekly lecture series sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy. His talk, titled "Monitoring Our Social Health: A New Social Movement?," will be held in Rm. 410 of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. The event is free and open to the public.
The Index for Social Health is similar to the Consumer-Price Index, the Gross National Product or the Dow Jones Average, but instead of measuring the movement of the economy or the stock market, it measures the country's progress in addressing its major social concerns. It combines in one measure such problems as infant mortality, child abuse, children living in poverty, teen suicide, drug abuse, high-school dropout rate, unemployment, average weekly earnings, health insurance coverage, poverty among senior citizens, homicides, highway deaths due to alcoholism, food stamp coverage, access to affordable housing and the gap between rich and poor. Mr. Miringoff, who is also professor of social policy at Fordham University, has compiled the Index of Social Health annually since 1970 and will discuss trends over the past 26 years.
For more information, call 432-9935.
NASA administrator to be Dean's Guest Lecturer
Daniel S. Goldin, who became the ninth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA in 1992, will be the next lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering Dean's Guest Lecture series. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be on Monday, Feb. 10, at 4 p.m. in Davies Auditorium, Becton Engineering Center, 15 Prospect St. A reception will follow in the Becton faculty lounge.
In an effort to revitalize America's space agency, Mr. Goldin's first initiative was to bring NASA's budget process under control. He created a series of management teams to find ways to operate programs faster, better and cheaper without compromising safety. The budgetary reforms streamlined major programs, and some of the savings were reinvested in improvements to NASA's science and planetary exploration missions. He also inaugurated the Discovery Program, an entirely new class of planetary probes.
Under the leadership of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, Mr. Goldin also moved boldly to promote significant new cooperative endeavors with the Russian Space Agency. Today, Russia is a full partner in the International Space Station program, a move that will enable the project to be completed sooner and at less cost to the American taxpayer.
Early in his administration, Mr. Goldin identified as one of NASA's most important programs the Mission to Planet Earth for environmental monitoring, and he spearheaded President Clinton's revitalization of NASA's aeronautics program. Proposals call for increased investments in general aviation, subsonic transports, supersonic and hypersonic flight technology, and in aging research facilities such as wind tunnels. Mr. Goldin also formed internal review teams to prepare for the Space Shuttle mission in December 1993 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
Before coming to NASA, Mr. Goldin was Vice President and General Manager of the TRW Space & Technology Group in Redondo Beach, California. His honors include the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award from the American Astronautical Society and the Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society. Expert on Social Security to present campus talks
Peter G. Peterson, a former Secretary of Commerce who is now chair of The Blackstone Group, a private investment banking firm, will speak at two campus events on Tuesday, Feb. 11. At 11:45 a.m. he will deliver a Gordon Grand Lecture on the topic "The Pension Crisis: U.S. and Global Impact" in the General Motors Room of Horchow Hall, 55 Hillhouse Ave. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Later that day, at 4 p.m., Mr. Peterson will talk about his professional experiences as a government official and investment banker during a tea in the master's house of Davenport College, 271 Park St. The public is welcome.
Mr. Peterson cofounded The Blackstone Group in 1985. Fifteen years ago, he began writing essays about the perils Social Security posed to the nation and has since published numerous articles on the subject, including one that garnered a National Magazine Award. He is also the author of three books, the latest of which is titled "Will America Grow Up Before it Grows Old?: How the Coming Social Security Crisis Threatens You, Your Family, and Your Country."
Mr. Peterson is founding president of The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan citizens group he organized in 1992 which is dedicated to building a constituency for fiscal responsibility. President Bill Clinton named him a member of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform in 1994.
Mr. Peterson formerly was chair and CEO of Lehman Brothers, and after a merger with Kuhn, Loeb, became chair and CEO of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb, Inc. During his five-year tenure, he led the firm from significant operating losses to five consecutive years of record profits with the return on equity among the highest in the investment banking industry. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers, he served as ambassador and personal representative to President Richard Nixon. He was named Secretary of Commerce by President Nixon in 1972 after serving for a year on the White House staff as assistant to the president for international economic affairs.
The Gordon Grand Fellowship was established in 1973 to promote better understanding between business and academia. It honors a member of the Class of 1938 who was president and chief executive officer of the Olin Corporation.
Alumnus writer to share experiences during master's tea
Elisha Cooper, a 1993 Yale College graduate who has detailed some of his life experiences in two books published since leaving Yale, will be the guest at a tea on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the Calhoun College master's house, 434 College St. The public is invited; however, as space is limited, those interested in attending should call 432- 0740.
Mr. Cooper is the author of "A Year in New York," in which he describes his first year living in the city, and "Off the Road: An American Sketchbook," which is about his drive around the country. He worked as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker after graduation and is now sketching, traveling and writing a book for children. As an undergraduate, he played football and was a member of the Yale Glee Club.