On a recent trip to Budapest, Malcolm Bilson, the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music Emeritus, received The Order of the Hungarian Gold Cross, an award given each year to seven or eight foreigners who are distinguished artists, scientists, writers and others for their contribution to Hungarian intellectual and cultural life.
With tens of thousands of migrants entering Slovenia this last week, Europe is scrambling for a solution. The European Commission called for a mini-summit on Sunday, but Cornell University sociologist Mabel Berezin says that despite the effort to bring states together, the crisis might be the last nail in the European Union’s coffin.
Andrew Willford, associate professor of anthropology, is a faculty member who led a group of seven Cornell students who studied and worked at the Nilgiris Field Learning Center in Tamil Nadu in southern India as part of a brand-new semester abroad program, which includes indigenous communities in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.
Travis Gosa is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University, and is affiliated with the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality.
During his time at Cornell, Udai Tambar '97 conducted research on nutritional science, played intramural sports and majored in both chemistry and Asian studies. Today, he plays an instrumental role in shaping New York City’s public policies as chief of staff to the deputy mayor for health and human services.
Professor Emeritus of Music Marice Wilbur Stith, who as director of bands conducted the Cornell University Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band over his 23-year Cornell career, died Oct. 7 at Cayuga Medical Center after a long illness. He was 89.
From last Wednesday to Dec. 8, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), also known affectionately as the “world’s coolest microscope” by CHESS Director Prof. Joel Brock, applied and engineering physics, will be holding a scheduled x-ray run for users around the nation.
Three young Cornell researchers have won National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Awards. Part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, the awards provide up to $1.5 million over five years for innovative, high-impact projects.
The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archives is an unparalleled resource of some 53,000 individual testimonies of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Nanjing massacre and the Armenian genocide. Cornell will mark the launch of its access to the archive Tuesday, Nov. 3, with a talk by noted New Yorker columnist and Rwandan genocide expert Philip Gourevitch ’86.
As a graduate student Peter Wittich, associate professor of physics, worked at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located in an active nickel mine in Ontario, Canada. The observatory is deep underground to block out background radiation from other particles.
American poet Robert Frost was not above toying with his friends, or his readers. And one of his best-known works may be his grandest joke of all, as detailed in a new book by David Orr, “The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong” (Penguin).
This piece by David H. Holmberg and Kathryn S. March, both professors of anthropology, reflects on the Nepali earthquakes and their impact in north central Nepal.
An interdisciplinary collaboration between Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame has awarded nearly $2 million to 18 projects in five countries to examine the theoretical, empirical and practical dimensions of hope and optimism.
In a surprising move, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the race for Speaker following John Boehner’s resignation. Elizabeth Sanders, an election expert and professor of government, says McCarthy’s exit could make it harder for the GOP to find a presidential candidate and message they can rally behind.Sanders says:
Prof. Jonathan Culler, English and comparative literature, spoke Wednesday about his new book The Theory of the Lyric as part of Cornell University Library’s Chats in the Stacks book talk program.
James R. Houck, a noted astronomer in the field of infrared spectroscopy for astrophysics, died in Ithaca Sept. 18 at age 74 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.Houck received his Ph.D. from Cornell in condensed matter physics in 1967, then switched fields to astronomy. After post-doctorate work at the Naval Research Laboratory, he worked at Cornell until he retired as the Kenneth A. Wallace Professor of Astronomy in 2012.
Joseph Margulies, civil rights attorney and professor of government and law, comments on the Justice Department’s decision to release 6,000 inmates. He says the move is a step in the right direction, but adds that it does not solve the problem of mass incarceration in America. Margulies says:
Holly Case, associate professor of history, writes this piece in Dissent Magazine about Hungarian thinker and former statesman, István Bibó.Case is the author of Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea During World War II (Stanford University Press, 2009).
In an article published by the Huffington Post, Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English Literature Daniel R. Schwarz speaks to parents about what they need to know about the college experience. Here are a few highlights:
The idea of introducing a novel gene into a few individuals that then spreads through an entire population sounds like a premise for science fiction. And yet fiction can be prophetic.Cornell researchers have used mathematical models to illuminate the promises – and potential problems – of a new genome editing mechanism, called a gene drive.
This article about languages includes the research of Morten Christiansen, psychology professor and co-director of Cornell's Cognitive Science Program. He is a co-author of new research finding that language is less arbitrary than assumed: the sounds and shapes of words can reveal aspects of meaning and grammatical function.
Barry Strauss, military historian, prolific author, and chair of the Department of History at Cornell University, says U.S. military action in Syria carries high risks and shouldn’t be pursued.
Grad student Rachel Abbott and undergrads Andy Wong ‘17 and Diamond Oden ‘17 have become experts in identifying various creatures of the Adirondacks – the calanoid copepods that they’re studying, as well as myriad others that were biting them as they spent hours taking water samples in canoes.
Jennifer Hanley '06 just began a new position at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, shifting her attention from Mars to Pluto and a moon of Saturn, but she's still focused on one goal – the search for water.Hanley was one of eight authors of a paper, published in the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of Nature Geoscience, on the discovery that liquid water appears to exist on Mars.
To feed the world’s burgeoning population, producers must grow crops in more challenging terrain – where plant roots must cope with barriers. To that end, Cornell University physicists and Boyce Thompson Institute plant biologists have uncovered a valuable plant root action, in that roots – when their downward path is blocked, as often occurs in rocky soil – display a “grow and switch” behavior, now reported in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Edward E. Baptist, associate professor of history, discussed slavery’s continued legacy in American social and political structures at a Tuesday talk titled “Abolitionism, Modern ‘Anti-Slavery’ and #BlackLivesMatter,” and covered in this Cornell Daily Sun story.
To review current astrobiological knowledge and assess the prospects of life beyond Earth, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology heard testimony Sept. 29 in Washington, D.C., from Cornell’s Jonathan Lunine and three other space experts on the reasons, ways and means for space exploration’s next steps.
When David S. Cohen ’85 was a student at Cornell, he was active in the Peace Studies Program as president of the Cornell Civil Liberties Union. He helped negotiate agreements between Cornell officials and apartheid protestors and stood on the steps of Willard Straight Hall to support ROTC members who had been kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation.
In light of Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United States, Vincent Ialenti, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow and a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, and Annelise Riles, a professor of anthropology, encouraged people in this NPR column to read the letter he wrote to all of us, Laudato Si.
In her new book, The Ethical Dimension of the Decameron, Marilyn Migiel, professor and chair of the Romance Studies department, examines the dialogue about ethical choices that Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron generates for readers.
Travis Gosa, an assistant professor of Africana Studies, and co-author Erik Nielson, an assistant professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond, explore the relationship between Obama and hip-hop in the Washington Post article, “Obama and hip-hop: a breakup song.”
Alejandro L. Madrid, associate professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Music, has released a new book, In search of Julian Carrillo and Sonido 13 (Oxford University Press). Madrid’s research on popular and art music, dance and expressive culture from Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the circum-Caribbean focuses on the intersection of modernity, tradition, globalization and identity.
Jessica Chen Weiss, associate professor of government, is interviewed in this New York Times Q&A about Chinese President Xi Jinping's brand of nationalism and how that has played out in China.
What began as a project for two Cornell students working on an event for Human Rights Month has transformed into a play that will be previewed this weekend in Ithaca before moving to an off-Broadway theatre.
When members from the Cornell Glee Club’s 1966 tour of Southeast Asia joined the current singers on stage Sept. 19 at Bailey Hall, passion poured through the music. The audience replied with a standing ovation, making it a Homecoming concert for the ages.
