News & Views
Letter from the President - The “Vision Thing” |
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Why is it next to impossible to talk about a “vision” for the
university? A true university’s vision is made up of the multiple pursuits of its faculty
and students. The main responsibility of a university’s leaders is to create and maintain
the conditions that make university work possible. These conditions do not include tightly
formulated five-year plans. By Gerhard
Casper
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On Campus
Reshaping the Humanities |
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It has been a rough year for the program in Cultures, Ideas and Values. The
object of a Faculty Senate mandated review, CIV appears destined for considerable reshaping and a
new name. But even as the rhetoric revs up, it is clear that a required, year-long program in cultural
literacy and humanistic inquiry is here to stay. By Diane Manuel
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Campus Briefs |
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The Objective Has Been Met The first $100 million has been pledged
in a campaign to raise a $200 million endowment for graduate fellowships.
In the Best Silicon Valley Style The inventors of Yahoo! have donated $2 million to
establish a new endowed chair in the School of Engineering.
Tuition Up 4 Percent The Board of Trustees has approved a 4 percent increase in
undergraduate tuition for 1997-98.
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Science & Medicine
Giving Nature a Price Tag |
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For thousands of years we have taken for granted the vital life-support systems of
Earth that sustain our prosperity and our very lives. Now we can no longer be so blase. To replace
these natural utilities would cost trillions of dollars; worse, most cannot be replaced at
any cost. By Janet Basu
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Science & Medicine Briefs |
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Mood and Hormones The Women’s Wellness Clinic
offers counseling and therapy to help women going through hormonal
changes.
That Gooey-Green Scum A glut of nitrogen is wreaking biological havoc
worldwide.
“Naive” T Cells Against HIV Researchers have identified certain
T cells that suppress the reproduction of HIV carried within them.
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Sports News
An Affair to Remember |
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For a few days in February and March, when both the women’s and
men’s basketball teams had reached the third round of the NCAA championship
tournaments, all things were possible. By Jim Bettinger
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Sports Briefs |
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A Parallel End No Stanford basketball fan will soon forget
the explosive parallel finishes of the women’s and men’s final 1997
games.
For the First Time in 55 Years “We got to a place we’d never been
before,” said basketball coach Mike Montgomery.
Recruiting Stars Stanford has recruited 22 high school football stars, and the
women’s volleyball team has signed three outstanding high school seniors for
next fall.
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Features
Stanford Takes on U.S. News Rankings |
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A clash of values is testing the wills of scholars and publishers. On one
side is President Gerhard Casper and a national corps of student activists. On the other
is the editorial staff of U.S. News and World Report, which publishes its
“America’s Best Colleges” issue every
fall. By Elaine Ray
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Learning Curve |
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The fourth in an ongoing series highlighting some of Stanford’s
mode thought-provoking courses.
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Class of 2000 |
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Fifth in a series: Keeping tabs on five freshmen from the last class
of the Millennium. By Marisa Cigarroa
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Woman |
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The very science that enables sex testing is demonstrating that simple
definitions are no longer biologically sound. An individual’s genes, chromosomes, anatomy
and psychosocial sex characteristics may not always agree, and researchers are having
trouble stuffing human biology into two distinct boxes labeled “male”
and “female.” By Sally Lehrman
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Speaking of Sex |
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What accounts for both the variations and the universalities in sex-linked
differences? This is one of the central paradoxes of
gender. By Deborah Rhode
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Billy Tipton: Self-Made Man |
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Biographer Diane Middlebrook found herself face to face with questions about
sex identity when she began researching the life of jazz musician Billy
Tipton. By Sally Lehrman
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A History of the Breast |
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In her book tour across the United States this winter, Marilyn Yalom, a senior
scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford, encountered the
breast in all its vibrancy as a symbol of female identity
today. By Sally Lehrman
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The Trillion-Dollar Man |
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Every month “comparison shoppers” across the country check prices of
thousands of products and services for the nation’s Consumer Price Index. It is a vast and
impressive effort, but one that Stanford economist Michael Boskin believes is
flawed. By Kathleen O’Toole
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