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Holding Forth In print and on the airwaves, as newsmakers and news shapers, Smith faculty and staff are widely recognized by the media as informed sources. Here's a sample of some recent Smith voices in the news. In a persuasive letter to the Boston Globe, published on January 6, Assistant Professor of Government Gregory White took issue with a columnist's claim that affirmative action compromises meritocracy. In fact, White argued, "diversity and excellence are not mutually exclusive"; he urged Globe readers to "resist the new political correctness of arguing against affirmative action." When the New York Times sought critical comment on Birthday Letters, the new book of poems by Ted Hughes, husband of the late Sylvia Plath, they turned to Susan Van Dyne, professor of women's studies and English and author of Revising Life: Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems. Although Hughes' poems focus on his marriage to Plath, Van Dyne reminded Times readers in a story published January 27 that poetry is fiction and interpretation and that both Hughes' and Plath's works need to stand on their own, not as autobiography but as art. Citing the book's role in the ongoing controversy surrounding the Hughes/Plath relationship, she added, "If [Hughes] really wanted peace he wouldn't have published it." Additional comments from Van Dyne appeared in U.S. News and World Report and the Boston Globe and were syndicated nationally by Minnesota Public Radio. College financing became big news this winter when the National Commission on the Cost of Education released its report to Congress. Drawing on 30 years of higher education history, Chief Public Affairs Officer B. Ann Wright added context to the issue in a February 10 op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor, arguing that campus fiscal management and enhanced public support-rather than price controls-are the answer to rising college costs. Reminding readers that the federal government recoups four times the cost of financial aid in the form of taxes, she observed, "The sound you hear is not that of a ticking time-bomb but rather the steady uptick of a solid, long-term investment." The surprise merger this spring of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler Corporation had a lot of people thinking about the nature of employment relationships. In a May 6 appearance, Barbara Bailey Reinhold, director of the Career Development Office, described the merger to viewers of ABC's Good Morning America in terms everyone could relate to: "It's as if someone suddenly invited the neighbors next door to your house and said, 'We're all going to live here together. We're not sure who will have which bedroom or who will be in charge, but you'll get used to it.'" Earlier this year, Reinhold was quoted by the Chicago Tribune on the value of multiple internships for a competitive edge in job searches and on the effects of stressful work situations. The business of pro sports-who owns the teams, who broadcasts the games, who makes the money-is the one of the intellectual provinces of Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics Andrew Zimbalist, and the opening of baseball season always brings the media to his doorstep. In a lengthy live interview with PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on March 31, Zimbalist cautioned against the sport's profit-driven, luxury marketing direction. "As baseball proceeds in catering to the high-income group, if it doesn't pay attention to the mass fan base it's going to be in trouble." Zimbalist's comments were featured also by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, CBS News, CNN, National Public Radio and the Boston Globe. It's not easy being a college admissions officer these days, as Sidonia Dalby, associate director of the Ada Comstock Scholars Program and a longtime college recruiter, revealed in "An Insider's War Stories," an April 20 "My Turn" essay in Newsweek. With vivid anecdotes and characteristic humor, Dalby recounted stories of prospective students and their parents pressing her for advice at wedding receptions and soccer games. As an admission officer, Dalby insisted, "I'm always on duty-from the deli line to the doctor's office." President Bill Clinton's June visit to China placed Professor of Government Steven Goldstein in the spotlight, both as commentator and fact-finder. In interviews with ABC News, the Voice of America, Wisconsin Public Radio and others, Goldstein put the significance of the trip in context. Although the president was credited at home for standing tough on human rights, Goldstein noted that that stance is already popular among much of the Chinese public. "The idea of China as one large gulag," he told one reporter, "is a mistaken one." |
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