In the News

The Chronicle's biweekly column In the News offers a digest of commentary and quotations by a few of the University faculty members, students and alumni who have been headlining the news in recent weeks. Chicago faculty members are some of the most frequently quoted experts, so space allows publishing references to only selected examples.

Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Los Angeles Times online publication Tuesday, May 27. Sunstein pointed to a State of the Union address given in 1944 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that described national security as including economic, social and moral security. "That (World War II) generation saw threats to the nation's security as an occasion for a new recognition of human vulnerability both at home and abroad. Roosevelt offered no blueprint, but he provided fresh principles against which national policies should be judged. Our current leaders could do far worse than to follow his example," wrote Sunstein.

David Cronin, Assistant Professor in Surgery, was a guest on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program to discuss organ donation and the process of harvesting organs for those in need of transplants. Cronin discussed some of the ideas recently covered at a medical conference in Chicago on organ transplantation, including the idea of financial incentives for families who donate a loved one's organs or payment to a live donor. "The thing with financial incentives," said Cronin, "and particularly in the live donors--it really respects the individual's autonomy to decide what they want to do. Do they want to donate or not? Do they want to donate as a voluntary gift or do they want to donate to get some financial payment?"

Richard Hellie, Professor in History, discussed the rise of various czars in Russia during a special program on the czars throughout history. The program aired on the History Channel.

The rare, multi-organ transplant that University Hospitals' surgeons performed to replace a heart, liver and kidney in the 40-year-old patient Michael Gaynor was the subject of news stories carried by the Associated Press Newswires and the Chicago Sun-Times. Stories also were broadcast on Chicago TV newscasts, including WBBM, WMAQ, WLS, CLTV, WFLD, and WGN and on National Public Radio's WBEZ station. The transplant took place Wednesday, May 21, and was the fourth surgery of its kind ever performed on a transplant recipient. The Chicago Sun-Times story quoted Valluvan Jeevanandam, Professor and Chief of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery.

Marvin Zonis, Professor of Business Administration in the Graduate School of Business, wrote an op-ed that was published in the Monday, June 2 Chicago Tribune. Zonis described the Bush administration's ever-changing attitude toward Iran, from ignoring it and putting a halt to the initiatives for better relations that President Clinton had begun, to branding Iran as a member of the "axis of evil," to then dropping the "axis of evil" label and speaking of "regime changes." Zonis wrote that if the Bush administration adopts a policy of providing assistance to the Iranian opponents of clerical rule in an effort to force their overthrow, the United States will "learn some costly lessons." "No matter how eager the Iranian people are to be rid of their clerical rulers, any successor regime that comes to power with clear U.S. support will be seen as a tool of U.S. 'imperialism' and will have no popular legitimacy," Zonis wrote.

In the debate over regulation of the U.S. market vs. self-regulation, Raghuram Rajan, the Joseph L. Gidwitz Professor of Finance in the Graduate School of Business, and Luigi Zingales, the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance in the GSB, have responded with an op-ed, writing that "neither view is correct." Their opinions come after the announcement that 10 firms will pay $1.4 billion to settle charges of issuing over-optimistic stock reports to secure their investment banking business. The two professors wrote: "The best remedy for dealing with corrupt markets in a democratic society is the one forcefully advocated by the legal giant Justice Brandeis: 'Sunlight is the best of disinfectants, electric light is the most efficient policeman.' In practice this means more transparency. For example, forcing investment banks to disclose the list of those allotted a significant number of shares in IPOs would curb abusive spinning more effectively and less intrusively than any direct regulation."