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SEEN & HEARD
Out of the park
Michael Goldsmith '72, J.D. '75, a Brigham Young University law professor in Utah, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in September 2006. Goldsmith, a baseball fan (shown here at a Baltimore Orioles fantasy camp in 2008), challenged baseball to publicly take on the killer disease in a Newsweek article. The baseball commissioner read the story, and on July 4, Major League Baseball will help fight the disease that bears the name of one of its heroes (the Yankee slugger retired July 4, 1939, and died June 2, 1941) by raising money for and awareness of A.L.S., which has no cure. "Their response has been in keeping with the 'Field of Dreams' image," said Goldsmith, father of Austen '07 and Jillian '10 and known to many Cornell classmates as Mickey. He plans to travel to a major league stadium on July 4 and read part of Gehrig's famous farewell to baseball speech.
'It's history in the making'
Tiny pinpricks of Big Red stood out amid the sea of furiously waving American flags on the National Mall, Jan. 20. Among the 1 million-plus people attending the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president were 100 Cornell students, faculty and staff who took an all-night bus together to brave the cold and witness the historic ceremony.
"It's my freshman year, so this is really exciting," said Nenha Young, AAP '12, at 4 a.m., as the bus arrived in Landover, Md., after an eight-hour journey. "It's history in the making, and we're going to be part of it."
Students from seven Cornell colleges -- chosen by lottery -- were on the trip with representatives from Campus Life, Employee Assembly, Faculty Senate, Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, Student Assembly and other organizations. The excursion was the brainchild of Curtis Ferguson, assistant director of multicultural programs in the School of Hotel Administration, and Leon Lawrence, director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusiveness in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.
Men's basketball clinches Ivy title, loses in first NCAA round
The Cornell men's basketball team -- buoyed by a boisterous Newman Arena crowd -- clinched its second-straight Ivy League title March 6 by defeating the University of Pennsylvania, 83-59 (junior forward Ryan Wittman, below, scored a game-high 25 points against Penn). The victory earned the Big Red an automatic berth to "March Madness" -- the NCAA tournament. On March 20, the 14th-seeded Big Red lost to the University of Missouri Tigers, 78-59, in the first round of the tournament in Boise, Idaho.
The Big Red finished its season 21-10 and 11-3 in the Ivy League. They have had 21 consecutive home victories.
"Winning back-to-back Ivy League championships is still a great accomplishment," said junior forward Alex Tyler.
Men's basketball is not the only winter sport in which the Big Red secured championship spots this season. On March 21, Troy Nickerson won the NCAA wrestling championship (the Big Red finished fifth as a team). Also, the men's hockey team will face Northeastern of Hockey East in its NCAA tournament on March 28. In all, Cornell captured four Ancient Eight titles, with the men's and women's indoor track teams bringing home Heptagonal titles and wrestling winning its seventh-straight conference crown.
In women's track, senior Jeomi Maduka was named Most Outstanding Performer for the second year in a row, while the men won their fifth indoor Heps title in the last seven years, propelled by middle distance and distance runners.
Follow the Big Red online at http://www.cornellbigred.com.
Borough bound
Cornell University Cooperative Extension in New York City is returning to the boroughs as part of the Eat Smart New York program, which includes an emergency food-assistance program and food and nutrition learning centers. Two of these are in Brooklyn (pictured) and Queens. The program provides nutrition education to adults, seniors and youth in the communities of Brownsville, East New York and Ocean Hill in Brooklyn, and Far Rockaway in Queens. CUCE-NYC expects to make more than 45,000 contact hours with New York City residents through this programming in 2008-09. "CUCE-NYC has always prided itself on making the most relevant research available to improve the lives of NYC residents," said Donald Tobias, CUCE-NYC executive director. "These offices will increase our capacity to connect world-class researchers with New York City."
Serious humor
John Baer drew more than 12,000 cartoons from the Great Depression through the 1960s and was known as the "dean of labor cartoonists." His 1930s cartoons have a particular resonance today as Americans grapple with economic turmoil. A sampling of his work has been donated to the ILR School's Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives. The collection includes Baer's sketches, scrapbooks and correspondence.
After his controversial 1955 novel "Lolita" became a best-seller, Cornell professor Vladimir Nabokov found himself famous. He moved his family to Switzerland and accepted speaking engagements well into the 1960s. It was at one of these events that he recorded a spoken-word album, the 1964 LP "Lolita, Poems."
Read and listen at http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/245.
Obama sees Red x 5
Lynn
Obama nominee William J. Lynn III, J.D. '80, was confirmed in February as deputy defense secretary, the No. 2 position at the Pentagon. During the Clinton administration, Lynn oversaw the Department of Defense's strategic planning and then was its chief financial officer. He previously worked for Sen. Edward Kennedy as liaison to the Senate Armed Services Committee and was a lobbyist for Raytheon Co., a manufacturer of defense technology.
Sutley
Nancy Sutley '84 has been named chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the president's chief environmental adviser. She was deputy mayor for energy and environment for Los Angeles and has had a long career in environmental policy, including serving as senior policy adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator in San Francisco and a special assistant at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. during the Clinton administration.
Nathan
The president will be getting legal advice and analysis from Cornell Law School alumna Alison J. Nathan J.D. '00, who has been named associate White House counsel. Previously, Nathan was the Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law and a visiting assistant professor at Fordham University School of Law. Before entering academia, she was a litigation associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in Washington, D.C., and New York. She has clerked for Judge Betty B. Fletcher on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle and Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. Nathan worked on both the Obama-Biden and Kerry-Edwards campaigns, focusing on voter protection and LGBT issues. At Cornell, she was editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Review and was a member of the Order of the Coif.
Late-breaking news: Obama has nominated two ILR alumni to key positions in the administration -- Alan B. Krueger '83 as assistant secretary for economic policy and Seth D. Harris '83 as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor.