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Education's Challenge: Economic Change and the Alienation It Brings
When the American Federation of Teachers met in Philadelphia Feb. 22, they asked Sociology Professor Elijah Anderson, Charles and William L. Day professor of social science and director of the Philadelphia Ethnography Project here at Penn, to deliver the keynote address. Anderson has written a synopsis of his speech for the Compass.
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Beavers on Race and Manhood
Even though he is walking through our biggest cultural minefield, Herman Beavers, director of Penn's Afro-American Studies Program, is calm, soft-spoken, and, as he puts it, "a pretty straightforward guy." Beavers, you see, has made it his scholarly business to examine how we explain and define what it means to be black and male in America. "When we talk about black men, we conflate masculinity and race in very tangled ways," Beavers explained in the course of a wide-ranging conversation about his research findings and views about race.
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Insanity Defense: Fair or a Cop Out?
What was John du Pont thinking at the instant he pulled the trigger and shot wrestler Dave Schultz? Did du Pont think he was in danger? Why did he kill Schultz? These are among the questions the jury must wrestle with to decide if du Pont was legally insane. More broadly, what exactly is the insanity defense and is it being used legitimately in our criminal justice system?
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More to Say from Herman Beavers
My interview with Herman Beavers was one of those occasions when I wished I had used a tape recorder, for not long after it began, it turned into a conversation that ranged from the cultural to the personal, with Beavers often drawing connections between our individual background and experiences and the issues he explores in his work. Beavers spoke easily and at length on a range of subjects of current import. Here are some of his observations. --Sandy Smith
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"Red Flags" Save Failing Students
A second semester senior with only two courses to complete fell into a serious clinical depression and was unable to complete his work and graduate that spring. Thanks to the alert faculty member who passed his name on to Alice Kelley, the faculty liaison to Student Services and an associate professor of English, the student returned to Penn in the fall to complete his degree, took five courses and got A's in all of them.
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Nobel Prize Winner: Oe Charms With Tales of His Past
One of this century's greatest writers, Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, graced the Annenberg School of Communications Feb. 14. Oe, a Japanese expatriate now living in Princeton, N.J., was greeted with a thundering round of applause from a multi-ethnic and multigenerational audience--despite showing up ten minutes late. "My apologies," stated Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Professor William LaFleur, who later went on to introduce Oe. "But we had to stop by the house of [Edgar Allen] Poe, one of Mr. Oe's great influences." Somehow, the over-capacity crowd did not seem to mind.
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WELL SAID
The following quotes from Penn professors and others appeared in publications across the country and around the world.
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Why Other Railroads are Wooing Conrail
After being quoted in several articles on the would-be Conrail merger, UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation and Professor of Systems Engineering Edward K. Morlok seemed like the right man to answer our questions about why we, as nonshareholders, should care about which suitor--CSX or Norfolk Southern--won Conrail's hand. He did answer our questions, and now we do care. Q. Why are Norfolk Southern and CSX pursuing Conrail?
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Still Publishing Significant Scholarship
The best seller at the University of Pennsylvania Press is "Witchcraft in Europe," by Alan Kors and Ed Peters, which has sold 15,000 copies in 25 years. "It's a perennial," says Eric Halpern, director of the Press, "It's heavily used in courses." But the mission of university presses in general, and Penn's press in particular, is broader than printing academic bestsellers. It's to "advance the scholastic and educational aims of the University," Halpern says. That's not to say that salability doesn't count. No profits, no press.
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Field Trip From the Moon
Geologist and former U.S. Sen. Harrison Schmitt (left), a member of the Apollo 17 lunar mission, displays a poster commemorating all the American astronauts who traveled to the Moon at a meeting of the Philadelphia Science and Space Club in David Rittenhouse Laboratory. Schmitt spent the afternoon of Feb. 7 at Penn, speaking to an audience of Penn students at the University Museum prior to meeting with the 9- to 13-year-old members of the Science and Space Club, which meets monthly at Penn.