Bill HolderPresident Barack Obama has appointed Diana Farrell ’87 as deputy director of the National Economic Council. She most recently served as director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company’s economics research arm. In announcing the appointment, President Obama said Farrell “will work day and night with me to advance an American Recovery and Reinvestment plan that not only aims to jumpstart economic growth, but also promotes the long-term investments in our economy necessary to save and create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, and assure energy independence.” Farrell’s work has appeared in academic journals, books, and on the op–ed pages…
President Barack Obama has named Ian Bassin ’98 to be a deputy associate counsel in the Office of Counsel to the President. Bassin recently served as a member of the Education Policy Working Group for the Presidential Transition Team, and had earlier served as the Florida Policy Director on the Obama Campaign for Change. Previously, he served as a law clerk to Judge Sidney R. Thomas of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Corrina KerrWesleyan has become the latest institution to join iTunes U, a component of Apple’s iTunes Store that provides free educational audio and video content from the world’s foremost higher education institutions, museums and public media organizations. Wesleyan joins more than 160 higher education institutions who have met Apple’s strict quality control requirements and have been allowed to post educational content on Apple's iTunes U site. The initiative was the result of a joint effort between University Communications and the New Media Lab. The departments worked within the guidelines provided by Apple to create a web-based presence that showcases unique workshops,…
David LowArtist Andrew Witkin ’00 Wins Foster Prize Andrew Witkin ’00 was recently awarded the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Art's 2008 James and Audrey Foster Prize of $25,000. He was one of four finalists whose work went on show at the ICA in Boston in November (the exhibition ends March 1). His art work on display, Untitled, 1990, is an installation of carefully arranged personal effects and impersonal furniture. According to the Boston Globe, the “arrangement reflects aspects of the artist's own life, which is both fervently social (he works at the Barbara Krakow Gallery on Newbury Street and has a…
Olivia DrakeThe Spring 2009 Distinguished Writers Series features a short story author, New York Times Magazine writer, student poets and a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Amy Bloom ’75, the 2009 Jacob Julien Visiting Writer, will speak at 8 p.m. Feb. 18 in Russell House. Bloom is the author of the novel Love Invents Us, the short story collection A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, and the nonfiction work Normal. Her most recent novel, Away, was a New York Times bestseller, and she has received the National Magazine Award and been nominated for the National Book Award and…
Dick Miller, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, emeritus, is the author of “The Weighted Cost of Capital is not Quite Right” and “The Weighted Cost of Capital is Not Quite Right: Reply to M Pierru," published in the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2009.
Masami Imai, assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of East Asian studies, is the author of "Political Influence and Declarations of Bank Insolvency in Japan," published in the Journal of Money Credit, and Banking, 2009.
Joyce Lowrie, professor of romance languages and literatures, emerita, is the author of Sightings: Mirrors in Texts - Texts in Mirrors, published by Rodopi in December 2008. This book analyzes mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric and rhetorical structures. Works analyzed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain and Pieyre de Mandiargues. This work offers appeal to readers…
Andrew Seibert ’86 Promoted to President of SmartMoney Andrew Seibert has been named president of SmartMoney, a joint venture between Hearst Corporation and Dow Jones & Co. Seibert will continue in his current position as vice president and publisher of SmartMoney’s Customs Solutions, the venture’s successful custom publishing arm. In his expanded role, Seibert will be responsible for the circulation, advertising and marketing operations of SmartMoney magazine as well as for SmartMoney.com. (more…)
Jolee West, director of academic computing services, director of digital projects, was chosen to participate in the 2009 Frye Leadership Institute for library and information professionals. The intensive summer program takes place at Emory University from May 31 to June 11. Following the two week session at Emory, each participant works on a year-long practicum at their institution, and the classes remain in contact through e-mail groups and subsequent conferences. Ganesan "Ravi" Ravishanker, associate vice president for Information Technology Services, nominated West for the Leadership Institute. The nationally competitive application process selects around 45 participants from an average of 200-250…
Rob Rosenthal, professor of sociology, spoke at a conference titled "Celebrating Seattle's Striking History," sponsored by the University of Washington Department of History. The conference was held Feb. 6 at the Seattle Labor Temple to commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Rosenthal spoke about the strike, and also about a rock opera he wrote and recorded in 1986 with his band, The Fuse, about the strike. The Seattle Labor Chorus sung two songs from the album. In addition, Rosenthal was interviewed about his song on the NPR station in Portland, KBOO, and the NPR station in Seattle, KUOW.
Krishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, dean of the Arts and Humanities and coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, participated in a meeting with Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass Jan. 18-24 in Luebeck, Germany. She is the English-language translator for Grass's work and one of 16 people working on translations of his new, semi-autobiographical novel, The Box, for publication worldwide.