Talks on American Liberalism, Politics and Privacy, and Mt. Everest to be Presented at Yale this Week

The following talks at Yale University Oct. 12-19 are free and open to the public, unless noted otherwise.

San Francisco mayor to speak on campus

Willie L. Brown Jr., mayor of San Francisco, will be the featured guest at two events on campus on Monday, Oct. 12. At 4 p.m., he will speak informally at a tea in the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St. Later that day, at 7:30 p.m., he will address the Yale Political Union in Rm. 102 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High St. Both events are open to the public, and the master’s tea is free. Members of the Yale Political Union are admitted free to the evening talk; there is an admission fee of $3 for nonmembers.

Brown was sworn in as San Francisco’s first African-American mayor in January 1996. He previously served for 31 years in the California State Assembly, to which he was elected 16 times. In 1980 he was elected the first African-American speaker of the assembly, a post he held for an unprecedented 15 years. While in the assembly, Brown became known for his advocacy of civil and human rights. In the 1980s, he was an outspoken critic of apartheid in South Africa and coauthored a bill that required the state of California to divest its investments there. Raised in poverty in Texas, Brown moved to San Francisco after high school and earned both his undergraduate and law degrees in California. Newsweek magazine has called him one of the 25 “most dynamic” mayors in America. His many honors include a Presidential Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the African American Parent Council’s Award of Honor and the National Conference of Black Mayors President’s Award.

Equal protection is topic of Law School’s Thomas Lecture

Frank H. Wu, associate professor and supervising attorney at the Howard University School of Law, will deliver the 1998 James A. Thomas Lecture on Monday, Oct. 12, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. His talk will be on the topic “Beyond Black and White: How Adding

Asian Americans Changes Equal Protection Analysis.

Wu has been active in fighting against the abolishment of affirmative action. He has testified before members of Congress on that issue and has debated that and other subjects on national television and radio, including the Oprah Winfrey Show, Fox Cable and National Public Radio. He held a clerkship with the late U.S. Court Judge Frank J. Battish in Cleveland, Ohio, after which he joined the law firm of Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. In 1994, he took a leave of absence from the firm to work as a campaign organizer with Californians Against Prop. 187, an anti-immigration ballot referendum. He began an academic career at Howard University in 1995. He has written articles on affirmative action for Asian Americans and immigration reform, and is coauthor of the book “Beyond Self-Interest: Asian Pacific Americans Toward a Community of Justice, a policy analysis of affirmative action.” Wu also writes on a regular basis for The New York Times Syndicate “New America” News Service and Asian Week.

New Republic editor to discuss American liberalism

Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, will explore the questions “Why American Liberalism Died? Will It Be Revived?” when he presents the Richard V. Goldman Lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 101 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 67 High St. The event is sponsored by Branford College.

Peretz has been editor-in-chief of The New Republic since 1974. The weekly journal, based in Washington, D.C., explores issues of politics and culture. Peretz also teaches at Harvard University, where he is lecturer in social studies. He has earned numerous awards as a journalist, including the Jerusalem Medal, a Medal of Distinction of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and several National Magazine Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Essays and Criticism and for General Excellence of the Columbia University School of Journalism. Also active in investments on the World Wide Web, Peretz is cofounder and cochair of the board of TheStreet.com, a subscription-based financial daily available both on internet and intranet bases. He is the founder of The Electronic Newsstand, the largest periodical site on the Web, and is a founding director of Leukosite, a publicly-held biotechnology and pharmaceutical development company in Cambridge, Mass.

Politics, privacy and the press is topic of journalist’s talk

R.W. Apple, Jr., chief correspondent of The New York Times, will visit the campus on Tuesday, Oct. 13, as a Chubb Fellow. At 4:30 p.m. that day, he will deliver the Chubb Fellowship Lecture on the topic “Politics, Privacy and the Press.”

Apple became chief corespondent in 1997 after serving as chief Washington correspondent and as Washington bureau chief. He writes on a wide range of topics, from politics, foreign policy and economic issues to food, wine, travel and the arts. Since joining The New York Times in 1963, he has written from more than 100 countries. He has covered the Vietnam and Biafran wars, the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the Communist governments in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary. He also headed the newspaper’s coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. In the last three decades, Apple has reported on elections abroad and in the United States, where he has covered 17 national conventions and eight presidential elections.

Pianist will present “Un-Master Class”

Pianist and educator William Westney, an alumnus of the School of Music, will present an “Un-Master Class” on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St. Participants will be students at the School of Music.

Since 1989, Westney has been offering “Un-Master Classes” in music schools around the country with the goal of encouraging young musicians to recapture their instinctive connection to music. The classes are designed to shift students’ attention from trying to achieve technical perfection and please their teachers to communicating with an audience.

Westney was the top piano prize winner of the Geneva International Competition and has appeared in European television broadcasts and as a soloist with such major orchestras as L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Houston, San Antonio and New Haven symphonies. His solo recitals include appearances at New York’s Lincoln Center, the National Gallery and Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and St. John’s Smith Square in London. He has been honored three times with teaching awards, including the Yale School of Music Alumni Association’s prestigious “Certificate of Merit” for his “distinctive and innovative” contributions to the teaching of musical performance.

Physician to speak about challenge of climbing Mt. Everest

Dr. John B. West, an internationally renowned respiratory physiologist, will present the fifth James D. Hardy Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 110 of the Jane Ellen Hope Building, 315 Cedar St. His topic will be “The Physiological Challenge of Climbing Mt. Everest.” The event will be followed by a reception at the Peter B. Gordon Memorial Library in the John Pierce Laboratory, 290 Congress Ave., and will conclude with a 6:30 p.m. dinner. For reservations and additional information, contact Catherine Maresca at 562-9901, ext. 227.

West is professor of medicine and physiology at the University of California, San Diego. He has made two treks to the summit of Mt. Everest, the first as a physiologist on Sir Edmund Hillary’s Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition in 1961. He made his second climb 20 years later with the American Medical Research Expedition. He also has acted as a scientific adviser to NASA, helping design physiological experiments that were carried out in space. West serves on numerous national and international committees and is the author of 17 books and more than 300 research articles.

The Hardy lecture series honors James D. Hardy, the fourth director of the John Pierce Laboratory and a professor at Yale 1961-74. Hardy is best remembered for his application of physical principles to the understanding of thermal physiology.

Noted scientist to discuss ‘tyranny of metaphors in biology’

Richard C. Lewontin, who pioneered the field of molecular population genetics about 25 years ago, will deliver a lecture titled “The Tyranny of Metaphors in Biology” on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.

Lewontin is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He has devoted particular attention to the philosophical and social implications of genetics and evolutionary theory. He is the author, most recently, of “Human Diversity” and of “Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA.” Apart from his work in the biological sciences, Lewontin has also engineered domes for Buckminster Fuller and has for many years been involved in the radical science movement.

Lewontin’s talk is sponsored by the Issues in Science and the Humanities program (ISH), an interdisciplinary lecture and discussion series providing a forum for exchange between the natural sciences and the humanities. Based at the Whitney Humanities Center, ISH is coordinated by Professors Michael Holquist, Neil Ribe and Robert Shulman.

Gershon Lecturer to discuss immune responses

Dr. Ralph M. Steinman will deliver this year’s Richard K. Gershon Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 14. His lecture, titled “Dendritic Cells and the Control of Immunity,” will focus on the role of T cells in regulating immune responses. The lecture will begin at 5 p.m. in Rm. 216 of the Jane Ellen Hope Building, 315 Cedar St. It will be followed by a reception in Room 208 of the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine, 295 Congress Ave.

Steinman, who is the Henry G. Kunkel Professor of Immunology at Rockefeller University, is best known as the discoverer of a novel antigen presenting cell, which he named the dendritic cell for its branched morphology. These cells account for most of the ability of antigens to activate T cells.

The Richard K. Gershon Lecture is named in honor of a former Yale faculty member who was a pioneer in the field of regulation of immune responses by T lymphocytes. Gershon died in 1983.

Columnist Frank Rich to discuss

“Journalism in the Age of Monica”

New York Times columnist Frank Rich will lecture on contemporary journalism at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15, in the Yale University Art Gallery lecture hall (entrance on High Street). The event is sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship and Jonathan Edwards College. Following the talk, there will be a reception in Taft Library of Jonathan Edwards, which is adjacent to the Yale Art Gallery’s sculpture garden.

Rich was named a columnist for the Op-Ed Page of the New York Times (NYT) in September of 1993. His column, which appears twice a week, is a commentary on American society and culture, drawing from his background as a theater critic and observer of art, entertainment and politics. Prior to that, Rich served as chief drama critic for the NYT for 13 years. Rich has written about culture and politics for many publications, including The New Republic, Esquire and the Washington Monthly. His book, “Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for the New York Times, 1980-1993,” is being published this month by Random House.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale was established by Nelson Poynter ‘27 M.A. It brings to campus journalists who have made significant contributions to their field. Jeff Greenfield, Bob Woodward, Steven Brill, and Tim Russert have been among the Poynter Fellows in recent years.

Short story writer will talk about her work at master’s tea

Judy Budnitz, author of the recent short story collection “Flying Leap,” will discuss her work at a tea at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15, at the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St.

Budnitz is currently working toward a master’s degree in creative writing at New York University and is a cartoonist for The Village Voice. “Flying Leap,” which was published in January of this year, is a collection of 23 short stories exploring everyday life and its oddities. The New York Times Book Review wrote that Budnitz has “a bionic ear for clever dialogue and a picturesque writing style with a fearless tone that rarely wavers, no matter how quirky the conceit.” Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Story and Glimmer Train, and one of her works is included in the anthology “25 and Under.” Her stories have also been broadcast on National Public Radio. Budnitz is the creator of an animated film, “Hershel,” which premiered two years ago at the Annecy International Animation Festival and was also screened at the Atlanta Film and Video Festival.

Head Start for infants, toddlers is topic of Bush Center talk

John Love and Ellen Kisker, researchers at Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, New Jersey, will talk about their evaluation of the nation’s new Early Head Start program for infants and toddlers on Friday, Oct. 16, at noon in Rm. 119 of the Hall of the Graduate Studies, 320 York St. Their talk, titled “Evaluating Dynamic Early Childhood Programs in Changing Times: The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project,” is sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

Love, a developmental psychologist, has 27 years of experience conducting research, program evaluations and policy studies with Head Start, other early care and education programs, as well as family programs. He has devoted much of his career to understanding issues in providing comprehensive services to low-income families and their children, and is currently directing the national evaluation of Early Head Start.

Kisker, an economist, is deputy project director of the Early Head Start evaluation. She directed the Profile of Child Care Settings Study for the U.S. Department of Education and also played a key role in evaluating the Teenage Parent Demonstration, a mandatory work/welfare program targeted to teenage parents. She and her colleagues assessed the long-term impacts of the program on the economic self-sufficiency of teenage parents and on their children’s well-being in early elementary school.

For further information, call 432-9935.