JUSTICE AND PHYSICS: The Louisiana nun made famous by her book-turned-movie, Dead Man Walking, condemned the death penalty in a January 20 campus appearance. Sister Helen Prejean said the issue has less to do with justice than with race and politics. "No one cares when the little black girl is raped and killed in cold blood," Prejean said. "But when the white suburban housewife is killed, then it's a matter of concern." Douglas Hofstadter, '65, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and expert on artificial intelligence, talked about his career on February 28 and 29. Hofstadter spoke as part of a lecture series honoring his late father, Robert, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who taught at Stanford for 40 years.
OUT OF AFRICA: Nkosinathi Biko spoke February 17 about the legacy of his father, Stephen Biko, who led South Africa's black consciousness movement and was murdered while in police custody in 1977. "The story of South Africa is embodied in the story of Stephen Bantu Biko," Biko said. Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian-born filmmaker, came to campus on March 2 to introduce his latest movie, which commemorates the Ethiopian victory over Italian colonialists. Robert Farris Thompson, an art history professor at Yale, spoke on January 28 about the influence of Mbanza Konzo, Zaire's ancient capital, on black Americans.
ART AND BEYOND: Nineteen panelists, including experimental filmmaker Paul Kaiser and choreographer Merce Cunningham, participated in a two-day symposium on special effects on February 11 and 12. The humanists and engineers touched on topics from Cartesian reasoning to Michael Jackson videos. Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana lesbian-feminist writer, read from her work and spoke about her cross-cultural experiences on February 17.
