NEW WORLD DISORDER: "The Internet is indeed a splendid tool of wonder, but there is a dark side -- of hacking, crashing networks and viruses -- that we absolutely must address," said U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. She proposed initiatives for fighting cybercrime at a January meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General held on campus. Maintaining stability on the changing globe was the topic when Josef Joffe, an editor of Suddeutsche Zeitung, spoke in January about nationalism in the "Baghdad-Belgrade world." United Nations official Jayantha Dhanapala covered similar ground in a January talk about the prospects for global nuclear disarmament.
COMMEMORATING KING: The Rev. Bernice King, youngest child of the late Martin Luther King Jr., gave the keynote speech at Stanford's celebration of the civil rights leader's life in January. The King commemoration began earlier in the month with an interfaith service featuring a sermon by the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who along with King and three others founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Shuttlesworth encouraged the congregation at Memorial Church to work for change.
LITERARY TYPES: Playwright Tom Stoppard, perhaps best known for the film Shakespeare in Love, took questions from a packed campus audience in January. All first-year students had received copies of his award-winning play, Arcadia, in the fall through the "Freshman Book" program. Allegra Goodman, PhD '97, author of the novel Kaaterskill Falls, read from her work in January as part of the President's Reading Series, which brings contemporary writers to campus. Harvard English professor and noted cultural commentator Marjorie Garber spoke in January as part of the Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts.
