Author Archives: Allison Stern

Even before he could read, Yale University Press director John Donatich said he loved books — the way they smelled, the way they looked and even the way they felt in his hands. Now, after a lifelong love affair with books and a career in publishing, Donatich at last has written a book of his »

For many Yale students, the best thing about shopping period is when it’s over. But when the schedules are turned in, the textbooks are returned, and the bluebooks are closed, the frenzy of choosing classes does not always come to a close. Anyone who has dropped a course knows just how easy it is, but »

Yale is brimming with murmured secrets. According to tour guides and campus lore, the CIA once crept onto Old Campus in the middle of the night to take the exact measurements of the Nathan Hale statue. Some students swear Skull and Bones houses the stolen skulls of Geronimo, Pancho Villa and former President Martin van »

Four days have passed since the Graduate Student Employees United of Columbia began a strike that will continue indefinitely. In the past few years, there has been a growing movement of academic unionization at independent universities, and tension has finally come to a head at Columbia. With graduate students no longer teaching classes, leading discussion »

Applied physics professor Robert Schoelkopf and graduate student Lafe Spietz GRD ’06 have developed a new thermometer — but it is far more accurate than the glass tubes typically found in medicine cabinets. The thermometer was created using quantum mechanics, and it measure temperatures one-hundredth of a degree above absolute zero. Schoelkopf and Spietz have »

Steve Bodow ’89 had to perch on the back of his chair at a crowded Pierson College Master’s Tea Monday in order for everyone in the room to even see him. About 80 Yale students listened to Bodow talk about his experience as a staff writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which won »

Seven years ago this April, Emma Jones’ son Malik, was killed by a police officer. This April, she will try to add one more success to her mounting campaign to prevent future acts of police brutality. At a meeting on Sunday attended by about 25 people, Jones, and the organization she founded in her son’s »

Thursday evening, Fareed Zakaria ’86 spoke in SSS 114, which he said was the same hall where he attended his first Yale lecture course. But instead of a typical Yale lecture, audience members heard Zakaria’s thoughts on the current state of Iraq and democracy in the world. Zakaria’s talk, titled “Can the U.S. Make the »

These days, some of Yale’s best teachers are powered by wires and cables. Though new educational implements may not design professors’ lectures, they help to deliver them to a new generation of technologically savvy students. While Gothic walls may connect Yale to the past, the wires within those walls connect Yale to a future in »

Helen Glover braved the wilds of Thailand and lived to tell the tale. Glover, who came in fourth place on the 2002 reality television series “Survivor: Thailand,” spoke at a Morse College Master’s Tea Tuesday. She discussed the “Survivor” application process and her impressions of Thailand, as well as the profound change she felt after »

The audience members at the 15th annual George Herbert Walker, Jr. Lecture in International Studies Thursday varied as much as their ultimate opinions concerning the speaker, U.S. Ambassador Richard Haass. About 200 people — including Yale undergraduate and graduate students, professors from Yale and other universities, visiting fellows, and New Haven community members — crowded »

Sawai Chinnawong’s English is muddled, but his artwork is perfectly clear. With brightly-colored paint on canvas, he fuses traditional Christian elements with Thai culture. Chinnawong, of Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was selected as this year’s Paul T. Lauby Artist in Residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center. Every year the OMSC brings in »