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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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I was outraged to read that Richard Meier has been selected to design the new building adjacent to the Art & Architecture building (“Light & Verity,” Mar.). The site is hardly appropriate for the banal formalism that Meier practices, not to mention the fact that he is a relative dinosaur with little, I think, to say about Yale and its community. Meier certainly does not deserve to be in the esteemed company of Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn. I can only think of all the talented young architects, both here and abroad, who might have brought their inspired visions to that hallowed ground. Shame on you, architecture school dean Robert Stern, and all others responsible for this most egregious selection.
Tercentennial Cheers Lewis Lapham’s splendid “Quarrels with Providence” (Mar.) has induced me to perform two acts entirely new to my experience: save an issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine and write a letter to its editor. Let’s have more of such thoughtful interpretations—of God, of country, and of Yale. Congratulations on the Tercentennial issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine. It made me once again grateful to be a small part of this great University.
AIDS Drug Offer a “Sham” I was disappointed to read the Yale Alumni Magazine’s May “Light & Verity” article on Yale, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), and AIDS drugs—a piece which, in essence, could have been written by BMS’s public relations department. As a journalist who has covered the topic for some years, I’ve come to distrust executives from multinational pharmaceutical companies, particularly when they self-righteously claim to put “poverty and.disease” above “profits and patents.” BMS’s price reductions were no more than a publicity stunt intended to deflate growing international pressure for generic drug manufacturing, not just for expensive AIDS medications, but for all sorts of drugs effectively priced out of developing world markets. Not only did BMS refuse to withdraw from a lawsuit against the South African government seeking to prohibit the country from importing or manufacturing generic versions of AIDS drugs (a suit that government subsequently lost), BMS’s highly touted price reductions on Videx and Zerit proved to be a sham. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa’s leading advocacy group for people with AIDS, reports that BMS has refused to sell its AIDS drugs to South Africa’s private sector. BMS maintains that the price reductions are only intended for government or NGO programs, but it knows full well that no sub-Saharan NGO has the capacity to purchase and administer these drugs, even at reduced prices. Two months after it announced its price reductions, BMS has yet to sell a single dosage of anti-retrovirals to South Africa at those prices, despite repeated inquiries by South African doctors. The struggle to save tens of millions of lives in Africa has indeed just begun. Yale faculty, students, and alumni concerned with this issue should refuse to accept BMS and Yale’s attempt to gloss over the problem. The Treatment Action Campaign has called upon Yale and the NIH to issue a legally binding statement that the licenses for AIDS medications are available to any generic manufacturer with the ability to develop and distribute them. Such a move would begin to empower African governments to combat a devastating AIDS epidemic, rather than keeping them at the mercy of corporate charity—which in BMS’s case proved to be no charity at all.
Worldly Wise? I was delighted to see the news of the appointment of Strobe Talbott '68 to head the Center for the Study of Globalization (“Light & Verity,” Feb. ). At this time, when globalization is such an irresistible force, Talbott is a superb choice. Yale is lucky to have Talbott in place and to be receiving such wise policy direction from President Levin. I was troubled to learn that Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, has been named the head of Yale’s Center for the Study of Globalization. While I have no idea what, if anything, the Center actually does, I have no doubt that Talbott will find a way to mess it up. Talbott is an example of that inside-the-beltway phenomenon known as “failing upward.” Named by President Clinton to a series of senior state department posts, despite his having no prior government experience (Talbott was Clinton’s roommate at Oxford), Talbott became the architect of the Clinton administration’s disastrous Russian and Yugoslav policies and a chief apologist for the human rights abuses of some of Washington’s unsavory allies, including Turkey’s brutal repression of its sizable Kurdish minority. If Strobe Talbott is really the best we can find among our own, perhaps we ought to ask Harvard for its alumni directory.
Fact or façade? “The Art School On Its Own” (Dec.) states that “it was after Yale bought the [former Jewish Community Center] that it became apparent that the building—or at least its façade—had been designed by Louis Kahn.” My family and I were residents of New Haven, and I was a member of a local architectural firm and also a visiting lecturer in the School of Art and Architecture at the time the JCC was being built. We followed its progress with interest. Contemporary news reports on the building did not mention Louis Kahn as the designer or architect, but the “scuttlebutt” reported otherwise. Shortly after the building was finished, Mrs. Spatz and I attended a faculty reception and had the good fortune to talk with Kahn. We asked him if he had designed the JCC. His response was an emphatic “no,” followed by a few uncomplimentary words about the architects who did design it. Now I wonder whether Louis Kahn was expressing frustration with a project that had gone sour, or simply passing judgment on the building’s design and designers. The record of Kahn’s involvement in the design of the Jewish Community Center is surprisingly sketchy. But Val-Jean Woods of Yale’s Office of Facilities sent us a copy of the original blueprints from October 1951 identifying Kahn as “consulting architect” for the project.—Ed.
Expanding Biotech Your article on biotechnology in New Haven (“New Haven: Biotech City?” May) was an excellent exposition of a very important development for the future of New Haven. There is an additional aspect to this story that is worthy of note. Without Governor John Rowland, the hard work of his economic development officials, and the support of the Connecticut General Assembly, there would be no biotech cluster in our city. While it is true that the new firms most often spring from Yale science, the State of Connecticut has contributed in a least three important ways to making this industry possible. First, Connecticut Innovations was an initial investor in many of the successful start-up companies. This quasi-public entity, the state’s largest investor in high tech companies, is led by two Yale alumni, Arthur H. Diedrick '59, chairman, and Victor R. Budnick '71, ‘86MPPM, president and executive director. In addition, a $40 million State of Connecticut biofacilities fund managed by Connecticut Innovations provides support for the laboratory space that allows these startup companies to operate. Finally, Science Park, the early home to such firms as Alexion, Vion, and Genaissance, was the recipient of significant state funds before it began operating in the black this year. Diedrick is also chairman of the development office of the governor and, along with economic development commissioner James Abromaitis, has been key to the Rowland administration’s success in promoting economic development and the biotech industry in the State of Connecticut and in the New Haven region.
Author’s Query In preparation of a biography of A. Bartlett Giamatti, who was a member of the Yale faculty from 1966 to 1978 before becoming President of the University, Robert P. Moncreiff would appreciate recollections of Giamatti as a teacher in the classroom. Please send correspondence to: Robert P. Moncreiff, Palmer & Dodge LLP, One Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108. Email: rmoncreiff@palmerdodge.com.
Addenda Readers have sent the following names as additions to “Who’s Blue: The Environment” (Dec.): Felice Pace '69, conservation director, Klamath Forest Alliance; Oakleigh Thorne II '51, ‘53MS, founder, Thorne Ecological Institute; and James Seif '67, secretary of environmental protection, Pennsylvania. Also, an addition to “Who’s Blue: Museums” (Apr.) is: Marc Wilson '63, ‘67MA, director, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. The March Tercentennial Issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine included the names of a large number of prominent alumni who have passed through Yale over its 300 years. We knew that no such sampling could be comprehensive or satisfy everyone, and we are happy to provide the names that readers (so far) have felt were unjustly overlooked: Attorney Floyd Abrams '59LLB, U. S. Senator James L. Buckley '44, geologist James Dwight Dana, Class of 1833, television columnist Rowland Evans '44, Heisman Trophy winner Clint Frank '38, Washington Post commentator Philip Geyelin '44, football All-American Chuck Mercein '65, television executive David Milch '66, former Michigan governor Bill Milliken '44, film executive Walter Parkes '73, television anchor Stone Phillips '77, and tennis professional and surgeon Renee Richards '55. Among organizations: Dwight Hall, Out of the Blue, WYBC, Yaledancers, and the Yale track team. Additions to our section on “Great Moments In Sports” were too numerous to mention.
Corrections In the April “In Print,” we wrote that Paul Kane, author of Drowned Lands, is a member of the Class of 1984, while in fact he received his BA in 1973 and his PhD in 1990. In our May feature, “A Closer Look at Alcohol,” we misquoted Dr. Lorraine Siggins, the chief of mental hygiene at Undergraduate Health Services. She said that women metabolize alcohol more slowly than men, not more quickly. Slower metabolization means that women can become more intoxicated while drinking the same amount as men.
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