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.

The names of famous faculty members as well as University alumni and past administrators appear on Chicago magazine’s list of the 100 most important Chicagoans of the 20th century. Suzanne Ghez, Executive Director of the Renaissance Society, the city’s oldest contemporary art museum, was one of five local experts recruited to help compile the list published in the March issue. Here are the University-affiliated people who made the list: Nobel-winning physicist Enrico Fermi; Monsters of the Midway coach George Halas; Professor John Dewey, who founded the Laboratory School at the University; Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman; author and alumnus Saul Bellow; first University President William Rainey Harper; author, historian and alumnus Studs Turkel; educator and University President Robert Maynard Hutchins; artist Lorado Taft; Chicago Law School alumnus Michael Shakman; professor, author and historian Bessie Louise Pierce; and historian and author John Hope Franklin.

Dr. Janet Rowley, the Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor in Medicine, Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology and Human Genetics; Erin Bohula, Maureen Dunne and Mira Lutgendorf, Rhodes scholars; and Liz Evenson, Marshall scholar, were featured in a lead article in the Sunday, Feb. 14 Chicago Tribune about their latest achievements in their respective fields of study and research.

A front-page Chicago Tribune story on Monday, Feb. 15, focused on the effects liver transplants have on donors, patients, surgeons and scientists. Doctors from University of Chicago Hospitals, including Dr. Michael Millis, Director of Liver Transplantation, were featured in the story as they prepared for and then performed surgery on patient George Black.

Both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times carried Friday, Feb. 12 stories about the University’s retention of two world-famous architects––Cesar Pelli and Ricardo Legorreta––who will design campus structures as part of the University’s Campus Master Plan. President Sonnenschein said in the Sun-Times article: “The designs of Pelli and Legorreta will add to a campus known worldwide for its beauty and abundance of great architecture.”

Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Wednesday, Feb. 17 New York Times about the Independent Counsel Act. Sunstein said the act “has had disastrous effects on our democracy by aggravating the tendency to turn political disagreements into criminal charges.” In conclusion, Sunstein wrote, “The best approach would be to end it, not mend it.”

In a Thursday, Feb. 11 op-ed in the New York Times, Rashid Khalidi, Director of the Center for International Studies at the University and author of Palestinian Identity, said new King Abdullah of Jordan should heed Jordanians’ strong aspirations for democracy. Khalidi wrote that the absence of peace has been a pretext for the absence of democracy in many Middle Eastern countries, Jordan included.

Wu Hung, the Harrie H. Vandersteppen S.V.D. Distinguished Service Professor in Art History, was quoted in a Friday, Feb. 19 Chicago Reader story about the Chinese art exhibit at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art. “Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the 20th Century” is being exhibited at the Smart Museum through April 18.

Elizabeth Birnkrant, a first-year University student, was listed as one of the nation’s Best and the Brightest in a story published by USA Today Thursday, Feb. 25.

The Chicago Tribune Magazine published a cover story in its Sunday, Feb. 14 issue about the drug Ritalin, which is used to treat attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Ben Lahey, Professor in Psychiatry, and Edwin Cook, Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Pediatrics, were both quoted in the story.