Geniuses. Two former Yalies were named 2011 MacArthur Fellows. One of them, Melanie Sanford ’96, is a chemist working on research that impacts pharmaceuticals, but also lessens “the environmental impact of their manufacture.”

The other Yale smartie is clinical psychologist Matthew Nock GRD ’03. His work has “markedly deepened our understanding of suicide and self-injury, with important implications for development of more effective treatment protocols,” the MacArthur site wrote.

Members of Yale’s chapter of Amnesty International performed on Cross Campus on Tuesday to draw attention to the conflict in Syria. Some played wounded Syrians and other indifferent members of United Nations Security Council. The group also collected signatures Tuesday on a petition encouraging the U.N. to condemn the violence and urge an arms embargo on the government among other demands.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” was officially a thing of the past as of midnight Tuesday. The policy’s repeal paved the way for both the Naval and Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to return to Yale’s campus, which they will in fall 2012.

The Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, created over the summer in the wake of the ending of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, is hosting its first event today.

Do you sing? If you do, you have been waiting for this day. Tonight is a cappella tap night.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1969 The Yale College faculty had voted to abolish academic credit for Army and Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps courses and take away the professor status of officers the previous winter, but University President Kingman Brewster tells the News that “negotiations are still going on, but they are not hopeless.”