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Wednesday May 10, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 60
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Wright ’17 wins Dale Fellowship By Allie Spensley senior writer
Margaret Wright ’17 has been named the recipient of this year’s Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowship, which enables an outstanding senior to pursue an independent project that widens his or her experience of the world and significantly enhances his or her intellectual development. Wright will spend the next year traveling across the country, primarily on foot, to interview the people she meets along the way and create “listening poems” from the words and phrases they use. “The ultimate goal of the project is to create a collection of these poems, whether a physical book or a series of audio files,” she said. Wright plans to follow the American Discovery Trail, the country’s only non-motorized coast-to-coast trail, which runs from Delaware to northern California. She will ask interviewees a broad range of questions, and will continually change her approach based on their input. Wright said that her experiences at the University, both inside and outside of the classroom, have shaped her interest in becoming a better listener. In particular, her study of creative writing and participation in prisonrelated advocacy work have informed her idea for the listening poems project. “I had barely studied poetry before coming here,” Wright said. “The more I started learning about poetry — both through the Creative Writing Program and also through Ellipses, the slam poetry group I joined in my sophomore year — the
more I began to see poetry as an art form that is uniquely effective at challenging and expanding our perceptions of the world and creating opportunities to access other people’s interiors.” As an English concentrator pursuing certificates in Creative Writing and Latin American Studies, Wright completed a poetry thesis this year. Advised by professors Tracy Smith and Meghan O’Rourke, her thesis partly inspired her decision to embark on a creative project after graduation. In particular, Wright said, listening to Smith and O’Rourke talk about poetry’s impact on its readers made her curious about how poems can be used to facilitate empathy and create opportunities for listening. “I sometimes got worried, when writing my thesis, that a lot of the poems I was writing were probably most accessible or interesting to people who had had life experiences similar to mine. I started to wonder about how I could help make poetry that would include a wider array of voices, and maybe work more directly towards social change — which is something that I would ideally like to be doing with all of my writing, even if in just a tiny way,” she said. This year, Wright and other members of Ellipses began co-teaching a poetry class for incarcerated people in a state prison. “We sometimes discuss poems that I’ve known and loved for a long time, but talking about them with our students — hearing what moves or angers or surprisSee DALE page 3
ON CAMPUS
Princeton Research Day to celebrate student research By Kristin Qian senior writer
Where can you find a molecular biology major sharing research next to a French and Italian concentrator, both presenting posters in the same room as a computer scientist? Princeton Research Day. The event, taking place on Thursday, May 11, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Frist Campus Center, will showcase research conducted by over 200 undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other nonfaculty researchers, spanning fields from the natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering to the arts and humanities. This year, Princeton Research Day has an online and ON CAMPUS
See RESEARCH page 3
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
By Marcia Brown and Rebecca Ngu head news editor and staff writer
COURTESY OF PRINCETON.EDU
Michael Gordin, professor of the history of science, will become the director of the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.
Gordin named director of U. Society of Fellows senior writer
Margaret Wright ’17 is the recipient of this year’s Dale Fellowship. Her project will involve writing interview-based poems.
presenting his spring junior paper. “I always think it’s fun to share your research with a larger audience and also to see all the great research that other people are doing that you don’t always get to see,” Blackman said. Blackman is a former Street editor for the ‘Prince.’ His 10-minute talk, titled “Princeton’s Lost Museum: Arnold Guyot’s E. M. Museum and the history of American natural science,” explores the worldview of the late University geology professor Arnold Guyot by studying traces of a revolutionary natural science museum that Guyot created at the University in the early 19th century. “It is a challenge to try
George among conservatives criticizing Trump’s EO
By Samuel Garfinkle
COURTESY OF PRINCETON.EDU
mobile app called Guidebook to allow visitors to follow the program of presentations. Visitors can vote for their favorite presentations on Guidebook, and winners will be presented a personalized award certificate signed by the University President, Provost, Dean of the College, Dean of the Faculty, Dean of the Graduate School, and Dean for Research. Throughout the event, the tag #PRD17 will be used on social media. Research Day will host three types of sessions: 10-minute talks, posters, and 90-second elevator pitches. Harrison Blackman ’17, a history concentrator with certificates in urban studies, Hellenic studies, and creative writing, will be
Established in 2000 by a gift from University Charter Trustee Lloyd Costen ’50, the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts supports a class of several scholars for a period of three years, providing them with financial and intellectual support. The Society, which has been directed for the last eight years by English professor Susan Stewart, will continue next year under the directorship of history professor Michael Gordin, according to a University press release. After earning his A.B. and Ph.D. in the history of science from Harvard, Gordin was also a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2001 to 2003 and 2004 to 2005. He has been a professor at the University since 2003, and he served as the inaugural director of the Fung Global Fellows Program. Gordin has also been associated with the Princeton Society of Fellows as a faculty fellow, and teaches courses on the history of science, pseudoscience, Einstein, and nuclear weapons.
Gordin said that he originally learned that the position would be open when he heard that Stewart would be stepping down as director. He said that Eric Gregory, the chair of the Council of the Humanities at the University, asked Society affiliates for recommendations to fill the position. While Gordin didn’t apply directly for the position, he expressed both interest and enthusiasm when his name was put forward. He thought that his experience with the Harvard Society of Fellows would certainly be helpful during his tenure as director, though he noted several differences between the two groups. While both groups are postdoctoral societies modeled off British equivalents at Cambridge and Oxford, they have vast differences in terms of composition. “The Harvard [Society of Fellows] is also three years long, but it’s very different from the Princeton one in that it’s, first of all, sciences and humanities, so all fields are basically open,” Gordin explained. While the Harvard SoSee GORDIN page 2
In Opinion
Today on Campus
Tom Salama lays out a blueprint for growing sports crowds, and Liam O’Connor argues that the “drinking privilege” enjoyed by Ivy League students ultimately harms them. PAGE 4
4:30 p.m.: James A. Baker III, U.S. Secretary of State and former White House Chief of Staff, will present “A Conservative Approach to Climate Change” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 10, in McCosh Hall, Room 10.
President Trump signed an executive order on May 4 intended to weaken the Johnson Amendment, a provision in the 1954 Internal Revenue Code that is designed to prohibit nonprofit or 501(c)3 organizations from endorsing a political candidate. Named for former President and thenSenator Lyndon B. Johnson, the provision concerns organizations such as churches, charitable foundations, and universities. In the ensuing controversy over Trump’s Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, conservative Christian leaders have criticized the order as a hollow. Among them? University professor Robert George. Calling the president out on Twitter, George wrote that the order was a “betrayal.” The ‘Prince’ asked George why he felt so strongly. “President Trump, when he was a candidate, promised that he would seek robust protections for religious liberty,” George said. “He assured supporters that he would do so through both executive orders when appropriate, and legislation.” The executive order, as the Associated Press reports, does not alter the law on the books. Although Trump said that the order is intended to protect churches from being pursued by the IRS for engaging in political speech, the 1954 law, which is considered an annoyance by conservatives, remains. George said that the law is “not in the top 50 of the religious liberty concerns of any major religious freedom advocacy group that I know of.” George said that his frustration with the order lies in Trump’s decision to focus mainly on the Johnson Amendment, which produced See GEORGE page 5
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