In the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, in the Russian oblast of Sverdlovsk, local newspapers ran a picture of Russian activist and Yale World Fellow Alexei Navalny consorting with fugitive Russian millionaire Boris Berezovsky. The photo spurred rumors that the prominent anti-corruption leader was receiving bribes himself.
“Alexei Navalny has never made any secret of the fact that the oligarch Boris Berezovsky gives him money to fight Putin,” the newspaper’s caption said.
But the image was fake. Navalny proved the image had been photoshopped by posting the original photo, which showed him next to opposition presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhov, on his blog. Navalny said that it had likely been stolen when his email account was hacked last year.
When Yale economics professor Robert Shiller uses the word “bubble,” people listen.
The Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics said Wednesday that the United States bond market could be in a bubble, according to a report by Bloomberg News. At a conference in Oslo, Shiller said long-term interests are currently at a “record low.”
Shiller’s 2000 book “Irrational Exuberance” foresaw the end of the dot-com bubble, and he saw the housing bubble coming, as well. In a March 2011 interview with the News, Shiller discussed the recent housing crisis, stating that he did not think a bubble in real-estate will emerge again soon.
“My feeling right now is that the housing market is so damaged, our psychology is not ready to go gangbusters on another bubble, not for years,” Shiller said.
Named one of the 50 most influential individuals in global finance by Bloomberg News, Shiller has worked at Yale since 1982.
Maybe you felt the whole Universe quaking all weekend long — I know I did — with each of her holiness Beyonce’s contractions as her flawless body prepared to carry out the most consequential birth of 2012, if not all time. On Saturday evening, the whole world exploded when B gave birth to her love child with Jay-Z, a presumably-perfect girl named Blue Ivy Carter.
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My first reaction was obviously to scream and tell everyone within 50 feet of me. But after I got it together I got to thinking — Blue Ivy. Ivy League. Bulldogs. Yale. Yale Blue. Yale is the Blue Ivy. Blue Ivy is named after Yale. Beyonce loves Yale.
I thought I had stumbled upon an eminently Tweetable thought, but it turned out I was not as original as I had thought! Yale spokesman Michael Morand ’87 DIV ’93 beat me to the punch! Yet I kept thinking. Perhaps one day young Blue Ivy Carter will forgo the entertainment industry and turn to academia. Perhaps she will want an Ivy League experience, and perhaps she’ll choose Yale.
But who will she become at Yale? Where will she find her passion? Might she be just like me and pick the Yale Daily News? Perhaps she will find her true home in the Independent Party, or working for the Politic.
Probably none of the above would be true. I’m guessing Blue Ivy will join an a cappella group (duh) and grow so super close with her suitemates, who will come from all corners of the globe and be her “girls.” Blue Ivy will be in Davenport and she’ll love it, so much! Can you say princess suite? She will probably stay on campus through her junior year before moving to Chapel Street or the Eli as a senior. When she is a senior, 22 years from now, she might even invite her mother to speak at Commencement. When Beyonce strides across that stage to speak, by then one of the most venerated singers of all time, all of campus will explode the same way the whole world did when Blue Ivy burst onto the scene on Saturday.
We can only hope. Best of luck, Blue Ivy. If you need SAT tutoring or advice on admissions essays, we’re here.
“The plaintiffs’ lawsuit against President Zedillo amounts to no more than a misguided effort to impugn the reputation of someone widely regarded by international leaders and scholars as the architect of historic reforms that led Mexico into a new dawn of electoral freedom, respect for human rights, and a flourishing economy,” the motion said.
Zedillo’s lawyers told the Associated Press they have no knowledge of the U.S. ever denying a former national leader’s claim for immunity from a lawsuit involving official acts. Stanford Law professor Jenny Martinez ’93, who specializes in international courts and tribunals, said in September 2011 that Zedillo might successfully claim immunity because the laws applying to former heads of state are complex.
State Department officials will issue an opinion on whether they believe Zedillo has immunity from the lawsuit, according to the Associated Press. The plaintiffs will likely follow by filing documents opposing Zedillo’s motion to dismiss the case.
Zedillo was president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000. At Yale, he directs the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
After James Franco’s GRD ’16 first book, a collection of stories called “Palo Alto,” racked up three stars out of five on Amazon, Yale’s most famous English grad student is back for another round.
The Oscar-nominated actor has sold his debut novel “Actors Anonymous” to Amazon Publishing, Reuters reported this week. The novel, planned for release in 2013, is said to tell a semi-fictionalized story of Franco’s time as an actor.
Franco is one of a number of author-celebs to forgo traditional publishing houses and post directly to Amazon — he joins the ranks of self-help expert Timothy Ferris and meditation guru Deepak Chopra, the Huffington Post reported.
Before Actors Anonymous, Franco will release his second book later this year, a description of a 2010 art show the actor helped curate that’s slated to be called “James Franco: Dangerous Book Four Boys.” This book should be out in April, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Maybe Franco’s semi-autobiographical novel will discuss his time at Yale. Maybe he’ll lament that uncomfortably public bathroom outside Linsly-Chittenden 102, or rave about how much he loves the Chapel Street Starbucks. We can only hope — that Starbucks rocks.
Honorary degree recipient Aretha Franklin is back on the freeway of love.
The 20-time Grammy winner told the Associated Press Monday that she is engaged to “longtime friend” William “Willie” Wilkerson. Franklin and Wilkerson are thinking about a ceremony in Miami Beach sometime this summer, followed by a reception on a private yacht, she told the AP.
Franklin attended Yale’s 2010 commencement ceremony to receive an honorary doctor of music. In his remarks at the ceremony, University President Richard Levin praised Franklin’s widespread cultural and musical influence.
“We know royalty when we see it,” Levin said. “And you are the Queen of Soul.”
A year after Law School professor Amy Chua first told the world via the Wall Street Journal that Chinese mothers are superior, she returned to the national spotlight to say she only applies her notoriously strict parenting methods when the tiger cubs are in the den.
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, Chua’s daughter with Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld, her husband, matriculated at Harvard this fall. Since then, Chua has been a “hands-off” parent, she wrote in an article published in the Journal this weekend. Chua and Rubenfeld never nag their daughter about picking a major or about “what she does at night,” Chua wrote in the article. Tiger parenting techniques are most effective on younger children, for these children become “independent, creative, courageous” adults that no longer require involved parents to guide them, Chua said.
There is a distinction between Tiger parenting and “helicopter parenting,” which Chua said “is about parents, typically mothers, hovering over their kids and protecting them, carrying their sports bags for them and bailing them out, possibly for their whole lives.” Tiger parenting, on the other hand, assumes children are strong and more capable than they think, Chua wrote.
Chua told the News last January that the first Journal article — an excerpt from her book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” — did not accurately represent her views on parenting. She wrote the book as her model of Tiger parenting began to seem ineffective with her second daughter, she said. “A fiery spirit from the moment of her birth,” Chua’s daughter rebelled against the tiger cub upbringing, and Chua said she was eventually forced to change her parenting style to accommodate her daughter’s needs. For example, Chua allowed her daughter to drop violin and take up tennis.
“At the end of the book, I’m saying you really have to listen to your kids, and the happiness of your child must come first,” Chua told the News in January.
Now we’re just curious to hear what life is like for a Tiger Cantab. Sophia?
Farrow graduated from Bard College when he was 15, the college’s youngest graduate ever. After Bard, he became a humanitarian activist, writing for the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Much of his work has focused on engaging marginalized groups such as youth and women, as well as promoting the recognition of human rights abroad. Now 24 and a graduate of Yale Law School, Farrow advises Secretary of State Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 on global youth issues.
“I grew up with altruism on display in a pretty intense way,” Farrow said of his 10 adopted siblings, some of whom have severe disabilities, in his Forbes interview.
Farrow is also the only biological child of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen.
The list also includes artists Justin Bieber and Adele for the music category, and actors Donald Glover and Jonah Hill in the entertainment category. Besides Farrow, Yalies from a variety of fields made the Forbes list. See who they are below:
Energy:
Xizhou Zhou ’05 FES ’06, 29. Associate director of IHS-CERA. Heads China research team for Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Alexis Ringwald ’05 FES ’06, 28. Co-founder of Valence Energy, a company that produces energy management software and that Ringwald has since sold to Serious Energy.
Finance:
Ewan Thompson, 29. Fund manager, Neptune Investment Management. A former editor of Yale University Press now manages more than $1.5 billion in emerging markets equities at the U.K. firm.
Law & Policy:
Yhoannes Abraham ’07, 25. Deputy national political director, Obama for America 2012. Former national political director at Organizing for America.
Nick Franchot ’07, 27. Senior policy advisor for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, focusing on capital markets and financial institutions.
Anthony Vitarelli LAW ’09, 28. Staff Attorney, U.S. Justice Department. Former editor of the Yale Law Journal and D.C. Circuit clerk has argued four appeals and tried three criminal cases at the Justice Department.
Real Estate
Jonathan Bittner ’07, 27. Co-founder and COO of Splitwise, which helps roommates split rent and other expenses.
CORRECTION: Dec. 23, 2011:
The original version of this article failed to include a number of Yalies who made the list, including Jonathan Bittner ’07, Alexis Ringwald ’05 FES ’06 and Nick Franchot ’07. The News thanks commenters DPort10 and aloob for pointing out these oversights.
Having broken countless Eli hearts, ditched the stark beauty of New England for the oil fields of Texas and left all of us wondering where he’s been for the last five months, James Franco GRD ’16 has created yet another stir. The chronic grad student is now at the root of a lawsuit against New York University, where professor Jose Angel Santana is claiming he lost his post as head of acting at the Tisch School of the Arts because he gave Franco a “D” grade.
“The school has bent over backwards to create a Franco-friendly environment,” Santana said in an interview with the New York Post. He said he thinks Franco deserved the grade, considering the actor only managed to show up to two of 14 class sessions.
Santana claims that NYU was willing to do anything Franco asked as long as the school, or even certain individuals, stood to gain from his enrollment. He said that Franco eventually hired NYU professor Jay Anania to write and direct a film, and gave John Tintori, the graduate film department chairman, a cameo in another piece.
“They’ve turned the NYU graduate film degree into swag for James Franco’s purposes,” Santana told the Post.
The New York State Supreme Court will decide on the matter; the professor hopes he will be rehired once evidence of Franco’s nefarious influence becomes apparent. NYU has so far refused to comment.
So has Franco been a delinquent over in Linsly-Chittenden, too? Far from it, according to Franco’s doctoral adviser, Robert John Williams, who published a stirring defense of the actor on Slate some hours after the Santana story broke.
Williams argued that Franco has committed significant time to his studies at Yale, often doing extra reading and watching additional relevant films while facing considerable professional commitments.
“He … was respectful, interested and eager to find out more about how he could pursue his interests in both film and literature during his time at Yale,” Williams wrote. He also said that Franco is becoming a scholar we must take seriously, and said studying film theory with Franco has been “thrilling.”
Williams noted that A-list actors like Franco also have more downtime on movie sets than popularly believed, providing ample opportunity to read for his courses. Something about the image of James Franco reading film theory on the set of “Oz: The Great and Powerful” gives Cross Campus chills.
What do Rick Perry, Charlie Sheen, Gloria Allred and the Occupiers all have in common? Their utterances landed among the top 10 quotes of the 2011, according to an annual list compiled by associate law librarian Fred Shapiro.
Shapiro released his sixth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year on Sunday. Whereas the conservative tea party movement made a big showing in 2010, the Occupy movement’s distaste for the wealthiest Americans colored the top quotes of 2011, Shapiro told the Associated Press.
“The tea party quotes are very strongly anti-government,” he said. “The Occupy quotes and the other more liberal quotes that you see at the top of the list this year are directed more at Wall Street and the upper 1 percent economically of the country rather than focus squarely on government.”
Shapiro has been making the list each year since he originally published the Yale Book of Quotations in 2006. He picks quotes that are “famous, important or revealing of the spirit of the times, not necessarily ones that are the most eloquent or admirable,” according to the AP. Each year’s top 10 quotes are added to the newest edition of the Yale Book of Quotations.
Check out the full list below, via the AP:
1) “We are the 99 percent.” — slogan of Occupy movement.
2) “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” — U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, speaking in Andover, Mass., in August.
3) “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” — Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15.
4) “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” — Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman in an Aug. 18 tweet.
5) “Oops.” — Presidential candidate Rick Perry after unsuccessfully attempting to remember the third federal agency he would eliminate during a Nov. 9 debate.
6) “When they ask me, ‘Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?’ I’m going to say, ‘You know, I don’t know. Do you know?'” — Then-presidential candidate Herman Cain in an interview by Christian Broadcasting Network on Oct. 7.
7) “I am on a drug. It’s called ‘Charlie Sheen.’ It’s not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.” — Actor Charlie Sheen in a February interview with ABC News.
8) “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” — Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ last words on Oct. 5, as reported by his sister Mona Simpson in her eulogy.
9) “I can’t say with certitude.” — Then-U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner on June 1 when he was asked whether a lewd photograph was in fact him.
10) “Instead of receiving the help that she had hoped for, Mr. Cain instead decided to provide her with his idea of a stimulus package.” — Lawyer Gloria Allred on Nov. 7 discussing Herman Cain’s alleged sexual harassment of her client.
Whether you are a true cinephile or just sometimes end up watching “Roseanne,” you have one more reason to watch the Golden Globes this year. On Thursday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced its nominees for the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards — and several Yalies, listed below, were nominated to take home Oscar’s shining, orb-shaped little brother.
Academy Award-winning actress and legend Meryl Streep DRA ’74 has been nominated for Best Actress in a Drama for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. This is Streep’s 26th nomination for a Golden Globe. Streep, a goddess, holds the record for the most Golden Globe Award nominations and wins.
Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster ’85 has received a nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for playing a politically correct mother in Roman Polanski’s Carnage.
Romeo + Juliet actress and college dropout Claire Danes ’02 earned a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama for her role as a CIA operations officer in Showtime’s Homeland.
David Duchovny GRD ’87, star of The X-Files, has been nominated for Best Actor in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical for his lead role in Californication, a series about a troubled novelist (Duchovny) who, upon moving to California, learns that life in the Golden State isn’t all collagen and Jamba Juice.
Paul Giamatti ’89 DRA ’94 has been nominated as Best Supporting Actor in a television series for his performance in the HBO television movie Too Big To Fail.
Morgan Freeman, who recently visited campus as a 2011 Chubb Fellow, will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
The 69th Golden Globes Awards presentation will be held on January 15, 2012.
