Author Archives: Brian Murray

This article has been corrected. You may view this article’s correction here. With Election Day fast approaching, Ward 2 Alderwoman Joyce Chen’s recent decision to contest incumbent state Rep. Toni Walker has come as a surprise to many people. Chen ’01, a Green who upset Democratic Alderwoman Linda Townsend-Maier in the 2001 election, is hoping »

Thanks to the Seapine Fellowship, Amos Ductan ’06 spent six weeks last summer studying Spanish in Quito, Ecuador — and he didn’t have to pay a nickel. “I’m just glad that I got the opportunity to go,” Ductan said. “I had never been outside the country before then, so it was an exciting experience.” Ductan »

This Saturday onlookers in New Haven’s Edgerton Park caught a rare glimpse of the world’s largest bird of prey. In the highlight of a two-part program sponsored by the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Veedor, the only tame, free-flying condor in the world, captivated an audience of several hundred people as handlers showcased the »

From an early age, Anna Fisher dreamed of being an astronaut, even though female astronauts were excluded from the space program at the time. “I remember when I was 12 years old I told my friend I wanted to be an astronaut,” Fisher said. “She looked at me like I was crazy.” Now a mission »

A group of about 30 people gathered on the steps of City Hall Monday afternoon to hear New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and fellow community leaders launch the New Haven Democracy Fund campaign reform initiative. The initiative, spearheaded by the Citizens for the New Haven Democracy Fund, seeks to reduce the influence of private »

At a Saybrook College Master’s Tea Wednesday, Swiss ambassador to the United Nations and UNICEF president Jeno Staehelin spoke about the positive global impact of the United Nations as well as his country’s decision to become an active United Nations member after 54 years of neutrality. Citing the changing political landscape and the emergence of »

With the shelves in his office full of Civil War books from his childhood, it is clear that history professor David Blight’s fascination with America’s greatest conflict began at an early age. “As a kid, I was interested in the Civil War, and that led to wanting to teach,” Blight said. Blight, who is new »

Addressing the recent World Trade Organization conference in Cancun, Mexico, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization Director and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo GRD ’81 said the United States and Europe were at fault for the failure of the negotiations. “The fundamental cause is Europe and the U.S. are not being serious yet in »

Mathematics professor Harald Helfgott says his mother always told him never to cross a picket line. Helfgott, whose class, “Introduction to Number Theory,” now meets at the United Church on Temple Street, is the only mathematics professor to move his class off campus in response to the strike that began on Aug. 27. But in »

Thanks to the efforts of a handful of concerned parents and faculty at Wilbur Cross High School, parents who speak only Spanish are now able to be more involved in their children’s educations. The Latino Parent Resource Organization, or L-PRO, was established last November with the aid of a grant totaling $13,575 from the United »

When Vanita Gupta ’96 saw that one-tenth of the black population of Tulia, Texas, had been arrested on drug charges based solely on the unsubstantiated testimony of one undercover police officer with a history of disciplinary problems, she knew something had to be done. Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, worked tirelessly »

Five Yale professors were among 200 professionals selected for this year’s prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, each Fellowship provides an average grant of $36,685 intended to assist scholarly research or creative arts. Competition for the fellowship, which sees between 3,000 and 3,500 applicants each year, is fierce. Yale »