The strategic defense debate has once again returned to the front pages of our major newspapers, with tales of concessions and hard-line stances, negotiations and motivations, strategy and policy. But the underlying debate among the country’s physical and political scientists has been raging since Ronald Reagan first aired his space-shield dream on March 23, 1983. The Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” as it has been dubbed by the media,[1] was well-received by the American people, but strong skeptics remain. This paper will attempt to survey the scientific and political arguments as to the technological feasibility and political desirability of SDI. Unfortunately, when arguing SDI, politicians and scientists tend to remain within their areas of expertise and ignore the other half of the issues.[2]  It is our goal to give an interdisciplinary assessment of the prospect of strategic defense, analyzing first the technical and then the political aspects, and then concluding with an appraisal of both in relation to each other.

Ronald Reagan concluded his first SDI speech with an appeal to new technologies: “I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these weapons obsolete.”[3] The SDI plan was to create new technologies which could track down and destroy ballistic missiles, that is, primarily intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) launched from the Soviet Union toward the United States.[4] In May, 1984, Lt. General James Abrahamson detailed the technical elements of the program to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee while recommending $24 billion for Fiscal Year 1985 and $24 billion in expenditures for the FY 1986-1989 period. He divided the program into five technical areas:

1. Surveillance, Acquisition, Tracking and Kill Assessment (SATKA)

This area involves satellites, using radar and optical imaging (lasers), and other communications devices. “The goal of this program,” states Abrahamson, “is to develop and demonstrate the capabilities needed to detect, track and discriminate objects in all phases of the ballistic missile trajectory.”[5]

2. Directed Energy Weapons

This program has four components: space-based particle beams, and nuclear driven energy weapons (x-ray lasers).

3. Kinetic Energy Weapons

Kinetic Energy Weapons will be used to destroy missiles which escape the laser weapon defensive strike during the primary boost phase. As opposed to Direct Energy Weapons, “kinetic energy weapons will rely on nonnuclear kill mechanisms to destroy the intended target.”[6]

4. Systems Analyses and Battle Management/Command, Control and Communications (BM/C³)

Because of the enormous time constraints on decision-making processes, much of the management of SDI will be handled by computers. Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown reports that “estimates for the total number of lines of code of software required range from 10 million to 100 million.”[7]

5. Support Programs

The purpose of the support programs is to “provide timely answers to a variety of critical SDI support related questions.”[8] This means analyzing the effectiveness of each weapon, determining minimum energy needs, and testing the survivability of the system as a whole.

All five of these components present serious technological and strategic problems for the developers of strategic defenses. The first two areas concern primarily the tracking and destroying of missiles during the boost phase, before the rocket leaves the Earth’s atmosphere. The third area, and part of the second, represents our defenses against those missiles which pass through the boost phase.

Proponents of SDI speak of a five-tiered defense, claiming that if each tier has a 90% success rate, the entire system would eliminate 99.999% of the missiles, in other words, allowing one in 10,000 missiles through. This five-tiered concept includes defenses during the boost phase, the warhead deployment phase in space, the re-entry phase, and at two more stages within the Earth’s atmosphere before impact. The commonly quoted estimate of 90% effectiveness at each of these stages is hotly contested by scientists analyzing the specific components of the system, taking into account limitations of the different technologies and effective countermeasures against them.

The flight of an ICBM lasts from 29 to 36 minutes. The rocket travels through a five-minute boost phase and spends three to five minutes deploying warheads. The warheads then travel about the atmosphere for about twenty to twenty-five minutes before reentering and striking their target in about one minute.[9]

The primary advantage of space based weapons is that, unhampered by the curvature of the earth, they may strike a missile during the vulnerable boost phase. During the initial ascent the missile has a very large exhaust plume which can be tracked using the current infrared sensors on our early warning satellites. The satellite could feasibly pinpoint the position of the missile and target a laser beam against it. However, one countermeasure which has been proposed is to shorten the boost-phase by increasing the power of the rockets. The Soviets have already begun deploying rockets with boost times around three minutes and experts suggest that it could easily be cut to around one minute. As Harold Brown observes, even chemical lasers, which are much faster than kinetic energy rockets, “will still not be a match for fast-burn boosters of offensive missiles.”[10] In a paper written in 1984 for the International Strategic Institute at Stanford, Sidney Drell, Philip Farley and David Halloway concur with respect to x-ray lasers:

Thus even if we assume that x-ray laser systems are successfully developed with sufficiently high gain—many orders of magnitude beyond current technology—to look promising for destroying boosters at long range, the offense can use the opacity of the atmosphere to defeat them with missiles of high thrust that complete their boost before they can be attacked.[11]

Therefore, a strategic defense which relies on boost phase interception of missiles will most likely be unsuccessful.

Perhaps the most severe handicap of space-based weapons and orbiting surveillance satellites used in the first three tiers of the defense is that they are vulnerable to relatively inexpensive modes of attack. John Tirman and Peter Didisheim, members of the Union of Concerned Scientists, opponents of SDI, point out that satellites will either be traveling in low orbits, which are necessarily periodic and predictable, or in much higher, geosynchronous orbits, which are also predictable because they remain stationary relative to the earth. “It is this fact,” they claim, “that renders defense satellites vulnerable to attacks from anti-satellite weapons. Knowing the exact—or probable—path of an orbiter (and its velocity) is a tremendous advantage to the attacker.”[12] The Soviet Union already possesses two cheap anti-satellite weapons, ABM interceptor missiles and space mines, which could critically debilitate strategic defenses before an attack.[13] Tirman et al. conclude, “As Carter, Gray, and others who have studied the matter agree, space mines—by their sheer simplicity—present a seemingly irresolvable threat to space-based defense.”[14]

Ground based lasers and other defenses used during the last two tiers of the defense are of course invulnerable to attacks by space mines but they also have their drawbacks. As stated before, they cannot hit a rocket during the boost phase due to curvature of the earth and therefore must deal with the ten to twenty warheads which are released from each rocket. The problem here is, as Louis Marquet, Director of Directed Energy Weapons at the SDI Organization admits, “it is relatively straightforward to design decoys that act very much like reentry vehicles.”[15] Marquet claims that the energy lasers will be able to measure the validity of an incoming missile so that the kinetic energy systems, whose job it will be to destroy them, are not wasted. However, Theodore Postol of the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control was quoted recently in Time magazine as saying, “the biggest problem [facing SDI is that] nobody knows how to discriminate real objects from false ones. It is the Achilles’ heel of the program.”[16] Indeed, tracking may be so complicated by decoys and other countermeasures that an effective defense may only be possible during the boost phase. As Professor George Rathjens of MIT claims,

One is driven to the acceptance of the essentiality of the boost-phase intercept for a perfect or near-perfect defense of the population. This is not only because of the infeasibility of world coverage with terminal defenses but also because of the extraordinary number of threatening objects that are likely to confront any post-boost defense system: many thousands of warheads at least tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of decoys, not easily distinguishable from warheads prior to reentry.[17]

If, as Rathjens asserts, defense after the boost phase is nearly impossible, and if we accept the conclusion above that interception during the boost phase of a quick-burn rocket is impracticable, we must conclude that these limitations on the weapons and tracking devices make SDI an unrealizable dream.

Whether computer hardware and software can be developed to run the SDI system is as important as the technical feasibility and workability of the weapons themselves. Estimates of the length of the code involved are of course daunting, because the software would be expected to work 100% the first time it is used. A minor programming error could result in a total breakdown of the system. Methods of debugging such a program are not currently known. Proponents of the system can only point to past advances indicating that one cannot predict what the future will bring in the way of computer technology. They rely on breakthroughs as yet unrealized. With a program on the order of ten to one hundred million lines of code, and a necessary reaction time of minutes or seconds, the development of hardware for such a system seems unrealizable for quite some time.

Computer speed is the primary obstacle to a space-based defense which would be required to track thousands of warheads and shoot down a missile second after it is launched. The problem with tracking so many missiles simultaneously is that the number of calculations quickly becomes enormous.

To give perspective to the size of the problem we can take an example from linear programming. Let us assume that we have one satellite per missile (a ridiculous assumption, but one which will only make the result smaller). In order to shoot down every missile, we must assign each satellite a different missile. (We don’t want two satellites to shoot at the same missile and let another missile pass through.) The problem is that not every satellite can reach every missile. The satellites will be in different orbits over different areas of the globe during the attack, and the missiles will be going off in different directions. That means that for n missiles and satellites we have n! ways of assigning them, each with n constraints to check to be sure that every satellite can reach its intended missile. For only 70 missiles that amounts to a maximum of over 10¹⁰⁰ calculations! And that it is supposed to be done in a matter of minutes or seconds! Linear programming algorithms can reduce that number considerably, but a problem with 10,000 missiles is out of the question. Marquet boasts that a new Japanese computer can compute 10⁹ operations per second, an enormous feat which does not even comes close to the speed needed to solve the above problem in a reasonable amount of time.[18] Even characteristic advances in computer technology would not allow for a reliable computer program to run our strategic defense.

The technological problems of Reagan’s vision of a strategic defense are enormous. Reagan himself admitted in his 1983 speech that the goal of a nuclear shield might not be reached for decades, and that seems to be an accurate assessment. These technical problems threaten the original purpose of SDI, that is, “to break out of a future that relies solely on offensive retaliation for our security.”[19] For if one cannot guarantee that the system will work as planned, if one cannot counter the counter-measures, if one cannot protect the satellites or debug the software, then the original motivation for SDI has disappeared and the impetus for continuing the program is lost.

The scientific rebuttal of the star wars proposal has led proponents to justify the program with specious political arguments. A proponent of SDI, Alun Chalfont, states emphatically,

the aim is not to provide 100 per cent protection, either for the population of the United States or its retaliatory missile force. It is to demonstrate a capacity to destroy so many attacking missiles that the Soviet Union would not know how many targets, or which targets, would be destroyed. This would make a first nuclear strike an even more problematic option than it is today, thus increasing the credibility of the deterrent.[20]

But Reagan’s initial speech implied that the reason for developing strategic defenses was to assure American survival regardless of deterrence. It was his desire to rid us of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) which led him to propose the idea in the first place. If our only goal is to increase deterrence then surely we can achieve that much more effectively by improving our delivery systems and expanding our nuclear submarine fleet. What is more likely is that the Administration wishes to create a defense system which would protect our missiles, not our cities, and therefore increase our retaliatory capabilities in the event of a Soviet first strike. Harold Brown writes, “Technically, [ballistic missile defenses] appear cost-effective for some kinds of strategic retaliatory forces. For defense of population against a responsive threat, they look poor through the year 2010 and beyond.”[21] George Rathjens believes that the Administration is intentionally confusing the issue by claiming the desirability of Reagan’s nuclear shield dream to gain public support while actually working toward the feasible goal of missile defense with the result being somewhat enhanced deterrence.[22] The latter, of course, was rejected in the 1970’s and prohibited by the ABM treaty.

It is clear, however, that SDI, as it was originally conceived, will not be accomplished in the foreseeable future. A poll of members of the National Academy of Sciences in SDI related fields last year reported that,

Of those responding, 78 percent said prospects were either ‘extremely poor’ or ‘poor’ that a survivable and cost-effective system could be built within the next 25 years. Only 4 percent said the odds of success were better than even.[23]

Roy Woodruff, former head of weapons programs at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and an outspoken critic of SDI, was quoted in the New York Times in October as saying, “[Reagan’s] vision of a leakproof shield that makes nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete is not a practical reality.”[24] Yet the Reagan administration continues to push forward SDI as if they had heard nothing of the critics’ objections. On November 24, 1987 the Defense Department announced “that they planned to conduct the first test of a laser weapon in space in the early 1990’s.[25] His successor Frank Carlucci is somewhat less strident but still says, “we ought to deploy SDI as soon as we can.”[26] But deployment and space testing of space weapons may not be accomplished for a long time. As Harvard University Arms Control Specialist Joseph Nye says, “what killed early deployment was the recognition that there was nothing to deploy.”[27]

With the understanding that SDI, as a perfect shield against nuclear weapons, is an unfulfillable dream, we can now analyze the political justifications for continuing the program, assuming that what will eventually be deployed is a defense of missile sites. One argument giving credence just recently is that the U.S. should research SDI because the Russians are researching it. This argument is somewhat paradoxical, because it conflicts with the pro-SDI assertion that an American space shield would not upset the Soviets and provoke them to a first strike. Otherwise formulated, if we do not expect the Soviets to be angered by our space defense and perceive it as a balance-altering advantage, then why should we be angered by their attempts to build a shield? As we showed above, however, a better, i.e. more cost-effective strategy to counter a defense would be to research ways of tricking a ballistic missile defense. The prospect of a Soviet shield should not give us justification for building one of our own.

There is the common perception that it was SDI which brought the Russians to the negotiating table. This would seem reasonable if Gorbachev had not reversed himself one day before arriving in the U.S. for a superpower summit. The Soviets have agreed to postpone discussions about missile defenses to a later date, presumably because the INF agreement was more important to them. SDI could only bring Gorbachev to “the bargaining table” if he thought there was something to bargain. Reagan’s insistence that SDI is not a bargaining chip precludes that reasoning.

The Soviets do have an interest in stopping SDI, though, as does the U.S. Gorbachev’s very real concern about an expansion of the arms race into space justifies his dislike for SDI. Sure, he can make SDI irrelevant by spending $1 for every $1,000 we spend, but he has to spend that $1, and that is what he wants to avoid. Considering the grave state of the Soviet economy, opening up the superpower competition to antisatellite weapons and strategic defenses would be disastrous. The Soviet concern with SDI is real, but it must not be confused with a proof that SDI will work or that it is justified.

One pertinent question to both sides of the debate is whether research on strategic defenses constitutes a violation of the ABM Treaty. Former Chief Arms Negotiator Kenneth Adelman answers that it does not. “The treaty limits deployment of fixed, land-based ABM systems,” he says, “and prohibits development, testing or deployment of space-based, sea-based, air-based, or mobile land-based ABM systems and their components. The treaty unmistakably leaves the research doors wide open.”[28] How he differentiates research and development in the R&D branches of the companies that are doing the SDI research is a mystery. But supposing that research was permitted under the treaty, what could be the goal of such research? Certainly it implies a willingness to violate the treaty if something good shows up. That brash statement of our intention to violate the ABM treaty if it serves our interests is what justifiably worries the Soviets.

The only achievable goal of deployment is the protection of missile silos from Soviet attack. Proponents claim that if the Soviets knew that their weapons had a reduced chance of hitting their targets and knocking out our missiles, they would be deterred from a first strike. Peter Clausen, senior arms analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, believes that, “for the purpose of deterring a preemptive attack, Star Wars defenses are at best redundant and at worst counterproductive.”[29] It would seem that our present deterrent force which consists of thousands of land-based warheads as well as those on bombers and submarines would be sufficient. Indeed, our present strategy assumes that enough warheads would survive a Soviet first strike to provide a devastating response. John Holdren, American Director of Pugwash, points out that “even a single medium-size nuclear weapon can destroy a major city.”[30] Therefore it would be virtually impossible for a Soviet first strike to knock out enough of our weapons to eliminate the immense retaliatory threat posed by even just a few surviving missiles. One would only need the added protection of a missile defense if our deterrent threat were insufficient now. But that is far from the case. These arguments were hotly debated during the formation of the ABM Treaty, and SDI adds nothing significantly new to the debate. The only proven method of defense is deterrence through MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and arms limitation treaties.

Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, intended to render nuclear weapons obsolete, may never become a reality. A vast majority of scientists have rejected it, arguing that it is technologically infeasible to create a cost-effective shield against nuclear weapons. Politicians, however, continue to stand by their space laser dreams, arguing that it is the only “humane” strategy, while secretly hoping for a strategic advantage from the more realizable goal of missile defenses. SDI has turned into a public relations campaign designed to circumvent the ABM Treaty. The future of SDI is uncertain. William Broad queries in the December 6, 1987 New York Times Magazine, “Does Star Wars have enough political appeal to survive? The answer is clearly yes. It will remain in one form or another, if only as a hefty research program.”[31] This pessimistic appraisal seems justified considering the sentiment in the U.S. Senate, where in September George Bush had to break a 50-50 tie on a bill which would have cut SDI funding by $2 billion. Certainly, the upcoming presidential election will play a large role in determining the future of SDI. All six Democratic candidates have stated they will eliminate the SDI, whereas all six Republican candidates have indicated that they will continue the program. Of the six Republicans, only former Secretary of State Al Haig has said he would consider not going ahead with the proposed first stage of deployment beginning in 1992. With the political lines drawn so clearly, one would hope that SDI would become a major issue in the 1988 campaign, and that once exposed, the American people would soundly reject it.

Bibliography

Anzovin, Steve. The Star Wars Debate. (New York: The H.W. Wilson    Company, 1986.) A collection of articles on SDI.

Barnaby, Frank, What on Earth is Star Wars? (London: Fourth Estate, 1986)

Bowman, Robert. Star Wars. A Defense Insider’s Case Against the Strategic        Defense Initiative. (Los Angeles;   Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1986)

Brand, David. “Star Wars’ Hollow Promise.” Time Magazine. December 7,         1987.

Broad, William J. “Star Wars is Coming, But Where is it Going? The New York      Times Magazine. December 6, 1987.

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Promise or Peril. (Washington: Ethics and Public Policy   Center, 1986.) Collected articles on SDI.

Chalfont, Alun. Star Wars. Suicide or Survival? London: Weidenfeld and            Nicolson, 1985.)

Cimbala, Stephen J. The Technology, Strategy, and Politics of SDI. Westview       Special Studies in National Security and Defense Policy. (Boulder:        Westview Press, 1987.) A collection of articles.

Guerrier, Steven W. and Thompson, Wayne C. Perspectives on Strategic   Defense. Westview Special Studies in National Security and Defense           Policy. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987.) A collection of articles.

Haley, P. Edward and Merritt, Jack. Strategic Defense Initiative. Folly or Future? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986.) Collected articles on SDI.

Holdren, John and Rotblat, Joseph. Strategic Defenses and the Future of the          Arms Race. A Pugwash Symposium. (London: Macmillan Press, 1987.)

Jastrow, Robert. How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete. (Boston: Little,          Brown and Company, 1983.)

Snyder, Craig. The Strategic Defense Debate. Can Star Wars Make Us Safe?       (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.) A collection

of articles.

Tirman, John. Empty Promises. The Growing Case against Star Wars. Union of             Concerned Scientists. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.) A collection of            articles on SDI.

Weinrod, W. Bruce. Assessing Strategic Defense. Six Roundtable Discussions.     The Heritage Lectures 38. (The Heritage Foundation, 1985)

Wells, Samuel F. and Liwak, Robert S. Strategic Defenses and Soviet-American      Relations. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1987.)       Papers from a conference on SDI.

[1] Note that this is one of three terms the Reagan Administration has appropriated from George Lucas’ movie, the other two being “Freedom Fighters” and “The Evil Empire”. In fact, the administration criticized the use of the movie title, despite its obvious appropriateness, because they felt it misrepresented SDI as an offensive system. Harvard Professor Richard Pipes, a proponent of SDI, recently admitted in his debate on this campus with Professor Stephen Cohen that he disliked the world “initiative” because the project could more accurately be described as a “response” to Soviet strategic defense research.

[2] For example, one could hear Chief Arms Negotiator Kenneth Adelman begin an answer to a question about SDI in a Woodrow Wilson School speech last year, “Assume SDI only works 90%….”

[3] Strategic Defense Initiative: Folly or Future? Ed. P. Edward Haley and Jack Merritt. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986.) Page 24.

[4] SDI has no pretensions of stopping submarine-launched cruise missiles or bombs delivered by airplanes. This fact is rarely considered, e.g. the President’s dream of SDI “rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”

[5] op. cit. p. 45

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid. page 114

[8] ibid.

[9] Michael May, “Technical Feasibility of the SDI”. Strategic Defenses and Soviet-American Relations. Ed. By Samuel F. Wells, Jr. and Robert S. Litwak. (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1987.) Page 125.

[10] Harold Brown, Folly of Future, p. 116

[11] Sidney D. Drell, Philip J. Farley, and David Holloway, “The SDI: A Technological Appraisal” in SDI Folly or Future? Page 99.

[12] John Tirman and Peter Didisheim, “Lethal Paradox: The ASAT-SDI Link” in Empty Promise: The Growing Case Against Star Wars. The Union of Concerned Scientists. Ed. By John Tirman. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.) Page 113.

[13] Tirman and Didisheim also note: “There is, perhaps, no finer illustration of the ‘cost-exchange ratio’ than that of space mines versus a Star Wars battle station: a $3 million space mine could destroy a BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) satellite worth $2 billion to $5 billion.” Page 115.

[14] Tirman et al. p. 116

[15] Louis Marquet, “The Technical Feasibility of SDI” in Perspectives on Strategic Defense. Ed. By Steven W. Guerrier and Wayne C. Thompson. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987.) Page 105.

[16] Time magazine, December 7, 1987, p. 18

[17] George W. Rathjens, “The Technical (In)feasibility of SDI” in Perspectives on Strategic Defense, op. cit. Page 112.

[18] ibid. p. 105.

[19] Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on the Strategic Defense Initiative, March 1983.

[20] Alun Chalfont, Star Wars Suicide or Survival? (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985.) Page 84.

[21] Harold Brown, Folly of Future, Page 118.

[22] Rathjens, p. 114

[23] New York Times, October 31, 1986.

[24] New York Times, October 22, 1987. Page A31.

[25] New York Times November 25, 1987 pA13.

[26] Time Magazine Dec. 7, 1987 p. 21.

[27] ibid. p. 21.

[28] Kenneth L. Adelman, “SDI: Setting the Record Straight” in Promise or Peril. Ed. By Zbigniew Brzezinski et al. (Washington, D.C.: The Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1986.) Page 201.

[29] Peter Clausen, “SDI in Search of a Mission” in Promise or Peril. Page 172.

[30] John Holdren, “The Pugwash symposium on Strategic Defences: An Overview” in Strategic Defences and the Future of the Arms Race. (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1987.) Page 12.

[31] William J. Broad, “Star Wars is Coming, But Where is it Going?” in The New York Times Magazine. December 6, 1987. Page 86.

“THE BATTLE OVER THE WOMEN’S CENTER”

Nassau Weekly Article (5/15/86)

By Randy Schoenberg

After months of meetings, a protest, a sit-in, and then more meetings, the Women’s Center members have been unable to get Dean of Students Eugene Lowe to accept one of the Center’s basic characteristics: consensus decision-making.

Lila Karp, outgoing Director of the Women’s Center believes that the University has muddled the issues of the autonomy of the director and the decision-making process to hide the administration’s objections to the way she has run the Center. “Perhaps what is underneath all of this is that because I as an administrator have from time to time disagreed with other administrators on certain issues—such as all women meetings and the pro-life task force—what they are really saying is they don’t want disagreement.”

Lowe counters that the issue is not how political the Center is, but how it is run. “Te notion of the Center being less critical or less feminist,” he says, “is not an issue. The issue is administrative. I don’t believe that by definition there is one way to run a Center.” Although he does not find fault in the way Karp has run the Center, Lowe does not want to guarantee that it be run similarly in the future.

Karp believes that consensus decision-making is the way to insure that minority opinions not be left out. “To be honest,” she says, “I do not understand what all this talk about the problems with consensus decision-making is about. Consensus decision-making is another way of coming to decisions; it differs from majority rule.”

Lowe says, “I wanted to have it understood that the director had the ability to act apart from a consensus.” The women of the Center however, are not convinced that Lowes objection is just an issue of the director choosing which way she would like to run the Center. Arlene Keizer, a sit-in participant, believes that the University wants more control of the activities of the Center. “What the University wants to guarantee,” she says, “is that even if something did not pass the Women’s Center consensus they could make the Women’s Center do it.”

Whedbee Mullen, who participated in the sit-in and is a member of the newly-formed Women’s Center Study Committee, agrees, “They are definitely threatened by consensus decision-making. They want it to be run by a director, to initiate and decide what goes on at the Center.” Another one of the six who protested in Lowe’s office, L.A. Kauffman sees it even more critically, “The University administration’s view of democracy is hostile to democratic institutions and administrative hierarch on the Women’s Center. They want a dictatorial director. I don’t know how any programs can come out of the Women’s Center without student input.”

In fact, Karp has been very successful with the consensus decision-making process. “Over the last eight years I have never had to use authority over any consensus,” she says. An person many attend the Center’s weekly business meetings and participate in the decision-making process. Katrina Browne, a freshman, says, “I went to my first meeting two months ago and I was immediately welcomed as part of the decision-making process.” The meetings attract over twenty women. Karp thinks that her method of directing the Center has been beneficial to the students, and hopes that her successor will continue with it. “The students and any director chosen should feel that they have the right to make decisions that go on here.”

Consensus decision-making is outlined in the Center’s ‘Statement of Purpose.’ “We discovered after two meetings that the ‘statement of purpose’ was under serious evaluation,” says Sharon Holland, a junior who was one of the six women who participated in the sit-in.

The ‘statement of purpose,’ which has existed since Karp became the director of the Women’s Center eight years ago, explicitly states, “The Women’s Center is a feminist organization whose primary purpose is the protection and advancement of women’s rights and the promotion of greater participation by women in all areas of society.” It goes on to describe the method of decision-making which the Center has adopted. “Decisions are made by consensus: a process of discussion leading to agreement rather than a majority vote that overrules minority opinion.” The students originally asked Lowe to guarantee that the ‘statement of purpose’ would not be questioned by the study. In fact, they refused to discuss any other specifics until the statement was accepted.

Lowe refused to give them any immediate guarantees on the ‘statement of purpose.’ Kauffman describes his response, “the best we could get out of Dean Lowe was some feeble statement that [the Center] clearly represent (sic) the views of recent members.” Lowe says that he did not disagree with the feminist, affirmative action nature of the Center, but objected to the insistence on consensus decision-making. “The members of the Women’s Center have thought about themselves as more of a student organization than a university organization,” he says. “There is difference in resources, since their budget is taken from the general operating funds of the University.”

With the negotiations at a standstill, the students planned the protest and sit-in which resulted in a meeting the next day with Lowe and President William Bowen. According to Mullen, “Bowen put pressure on Lowe to do something.” Lowe met with the Women’s Center representatives on Monday, May 5 in the evening to hammer out an agreement. The resulting document was to be signed on Tuesday morning, but after thinking more about it Lowe proposed additional changes which were accepted, and the agreement was signed that afternoon. The agreement says that the study report “will presuppose a feminist, affirmative action focus for the Center.” Of the role of the director in the decision-making process, it says, “The director must be aware that her dual responsibility is to represent the consensus of students to the Administration and to represent Administrative policy to the students.”

Disputes have arisen in the past that the feminist nature of the Center has unfairly excluded a part of the community. The study conducted by the ten members of the Women’s Center Study Committee will investigate the ‘image problem’ that has plagued the Center as a feminist institution. The active participants in the Women’s Center do not represent the mainstream, admits Karp. “They represent the needs of the mainstream of Princeton,” she says, “but not all women at Princeton are part of a forward-moving society when it comes to feminism.” Mullen says, “It’s difficult to be a feminist at Princeton.” Kauffman feels that feminists are not the only ones with an image problem. “Princeton University has an image problem,” she says. “It is male dominated; the old boy network still exists; the ration of tenured female faculty is abysmal; the ration of undergraduates is unacceptable; the sexual harassment policy is weak at best. When you’re talking about a place like Princeton, you need a feminist Women’s Center.”

Karp believes that while the Women’s Center has made many contributions already—the Women’s studies Program and better on-campus lighting, to name a few—its presence is still necessary. “I think that there is a myth amongst many persons on campus that because women have been here since 1969 they are perfectly integrated into the life of this campus and therefore there are no more issues. You cannot over fifteen years change attitudes of persons associated with a University that was for so long all-male, any more than you can rid sexism over the world at large. Sexism has its manifestations which need watching and need change. The Women’s Center is the place to play the role of educator and watch over a community that isn’t quite as sensitive to issues concerning women’s needs as it might be.”

The study committee will complete its report by October 31 of this year. Then a search committee will be formed to find a new permanent director for the Center. Whitcomb says that she hopes to have someone hired by April 1, 1987. The ten members of the study committee will also be asked to be on the search committee. Although the students had asked that the members of the search committee be announced this spring, Lowe reserves the right to add more members to the search committee next year. “We wanted the search committee formed now,” says Mullen, “so that seniors would have a say as to who would be on the search committee.”

Karp wonders what the search committee will look like next year. “My concern about the search,” she says, “is that students do not yet know what persons will be placed onto the search committee in addition to those on the study committee. I hope those persons who will be placed on the search committee in the future will be members of the community who are sympathetic to the concepts of the Women’s Center, sympathetic to the valuable work at the Women’s Center over the years, and knowledgeable about the Women’s Center and feminism.”

Lowe says that he will use the search committee only in an advisory role. “I am the one appointing the administrator. I will ask the committee to give me an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of certain people.”

Overall, the Women’s Center activists have been very critical of the way Lowe has handled their requests. The Daily Princetonian reported on May 5, “He said their aggressive approach had partly contributed to this reticence,” and quoted Lowe as saying, “Their presupposition has too often been one that assumes confrontation as the fundamental mode of dialogue.” Karp says, “I think it was a mistake for Dean Lowe to call the Women’s Center participants aggressive in their efforts at negotiation. In doing so, I think he fell into one of the most common traps of sexism. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall him calling divestiture students aggressive.” Lowe responds, “Some of the letters were not cast in a form to have discussions. They were categorical and didn’t allow for any give and take.” Kauffman says, “The tone of the meetings was anything but confrontational. He can’t be dealt with.” Holland says, “He refuses to react until you push against a wall.”

The six students who sat-in at Lowe’s office are awaiting a decision on their punishment, which is not expected to be too severe. Karp says that the protest was intelligent. “In light of many of the changes that have occurred since the sit-in—a larger study group, and acceptance of the Women’s Center statement of purpose—and in light of the fact that students were holding discussions since March, I would say the sit-in was a very intelligent move.”

The study committee has ten members, including three Women’s Center members, Assistant Dean of Students Muriel Whitcomb, and Assistant Dean of Students Rochelle Robinson, next year’s interim director of the Women’s Center.

Originally, Lowe had instructed Whitcomb to conduct the study herself, but after the Women’s Center members became more vocal in their complaints about student involvement, Whitcomb and Lowe suggested that the study be done by a group. Karp says, “I am extremely pleased that one person is not any more going to be responsible for studying the Women’s Center’s past and its future. I think a decent compromise has occurred now that the study group has been enlarged to include persons chosen by the Women’s Center members and Dean Lowe.”

Today at 4:00 in Whig Hall the Women’s Center Study Committee will hold an open forum to discuss the needs of Princeton women with the community at large.

[“I think it was a mistake for Dean Lowe to call the Women’s Center participants aggressive. He fell into one of the most common traps of sexism.”—Lila Karp]

“THE VALUE OF A HUMAN LIFE”

Nassau Weekly Article (4/24/86)

By Randy Schoenberg

What is the value of one human life in 1986? In civil court, ruining a lie can be worth up to $10 million—depending on how good the life’s lawyer is. In criminal court, it can be worth 10 years to life imprisonment. And for taking an extraordinary good life in a particularly bad way, only another life will suffice as payment. Out of court, the case is not so clear.

Muammar Qaddafi pays $12,000 to the family of a suicide hit-man.

Today, many political groups are trying to put a price on life. The tendency is to price a life differently for each political issue. For example, anti-abortionists, usually conservative in nature—Ronald Reagan is typical—proclaim that “every human life is of equal worth and is worthy of protection and loving care….” (From Abortion in America, Gary Bergel.) Yet, many of these same people consider some lives less equal than others. They support the death penalty. They favor “preemptive strikes of self-defense” against homes of terrorists. They like to build bombs that can kill millions of people.

Liberals are no better. They say that an unborn life is not worthy of protection, and favor abortion as a necessary evil. Ending some human lives is preferable to social turmoil and loss of freedom, they say. Yet most oppose military actions with heavy tolls in human life, even if the cause is “freedom” or “the good of society.”

I must say that I, too, am caught in this ideological dilemma. It is not one which I can solve today, but one which I am in the process of investigating. There are many side-effects of the confusion which has ensued from the ideological inconsistencies of our politicians.

The most noticeable, although I doubt anybody has noticed it yet, is that we have to elect a president who is insane. The leader of our country must be willing to say that if the United States is attacked by a nuclear power, he will order the launch of our nuclear weapons, and thereby end life on this planet. Americans have so convinced themselves of the high value of their lives, that they cannot imagine a world without them. As a matter of fact, they would rather everybody die, than have life go on after their death. Behavior like this is in any less dramatic a situation would be immediately characterized as insane. What would you say of a man, who, having contracted AIDS from the guy downstairs, decides to blow up the apartment building? It’s a more severe case of the poor loser, who ruins the game just because he was the first to lose.

The “insane leader syndrome” is tied in with an extreme jingoism. Loss of American lives, or better yet, justice (revenge?) for American lives taken, mandates that we drop bombs on aggressors—no matter how many are killed as a result. The attack on Libya killed 37 people plus two American pilots; that makes 39. The “terrorist” response has taken four, and almost 400 more. If Colonel Qaddafi were an American, he would be tried in a court of law and, if convicted, imprisoned or given the death penalty. Because he lives in Libya, we bomb his house and kill his children. Furthermore, we expect our European allies to take the counterattacks with a smile. As long as fewer American lives are lost, we say, the attack is a success.

Most people make a distinction between “innocent” and “guilty” lives. Conservatives say unborn fetuses are “innocent” and therefore should not be killed; convicted murderers and terrorists are “guilty” and so deserve death. I do not dismiss these decision-making criteria. I do question whether they are consistent. The Libyans and Nicaraguans are “guilty” because they have killed “innocent” people. We retaliate by killing, or helping to kill, more “innocent” people. In the eyes of America, Qaddafi and Ortega are guilty. In the eyes of Libya and Nicaragua, Reagan is guilty. Who decides?

Driving laws reflect the value that society puts on human life. Speed limits use to be 75 mph on many American highways. Lowering them to 55 has saved some number of lives, and there’s every reason to believe that lowering them further would save even more lives. But very few people would like to see the speed limits lowered. They are making a choice, opting for speed and convenience over the preservation of some human lives. Are we waging a war against terrorists because they inhibit our ability to speed conveniently to Europe and back?

There are consistent positions, but few people hold them. Anyone who openly proclaims that human life should be subservient to the good of society would be immediately labeled as fascist. Anyone who announces a hatred of all violence, even in self-defense, would be a pacifist or a conscientious objector. I think the Pope comes closest to the latter extreme, although his followers are often less exemplary. Perhaps he has learned from the mass murders and wars, committed in the name of religion. But, then again, if I had a billion followers (many poor and starving), lived in a huge palace, and governed over one of the largest fortunes in the world, I would be all for peace and stability, too.

It’s hard to put a price on a human life. Sometimes I think that some people must be sacrificed in the name of freedom or society. However, I also think that killing is the most heinous crime a person, or society, can commit. All that I know for sure is that I don’t want to be killed, and I don’t want to risk my own life for freedom or society; I am more comfortable with other people fighting and killing for me. Most people probably feel the same way.

“ADMISSIONS PHILOSOPHY”

Nassau Weekly Article (3/27/86)

By Randy Schoenberg

Princeton decided to actually recruit minority students in the mid-sixties. Since then the number of minority students has grown tremendously. For example, the class of ’65 had one black student, the class of ’90 will have 85-90, according to recent statistics from the Admissions Office.

Nine years ago, President William Bowen wrote an article for the Educational Record entitled, “Admissions and the Relevance of Race,” which was cited in the Supreme Court’s Bakke decision. His philosophy, in a nutshell, is that the inclusion of students from different backgrounds diversifies the community in a beneficial way, and that our goal should be a community “in which every individual, from every background, felt ‘unselfconsciously included.’ ” Bowen’s words still define the principles guiding the recruitment and admission for minority students.

The effort to achieve diversity, even within the minority group, prompted the Admissions Office to set up target numbers. These differ from quotas in that yearly fluctuations in the applicant pool could affect the number admitted. “The goal of the Admissions Office is to increase the quantity and quality of the minority applicant pool so that the number of students admitted will provide a “critical mass,” or a number of students within the minority groups enough to insure diversity within the group. Cummings explains, “What we try to do is create a decently sized community here. If a student is isolated, the potential to interact outside the group is inhibited. Exposure to diversity in one’s own group gives one the confidence to move beyond the group.”

Although Bowen admits in his article that numbers are important, the focus has been on a range, rather than a specific quantity. Provost Neil Rudenstein says that the University realizes that “there is a threshold below which students would be so isolated they wouldn’t want to come.” However, Girgus cautions that raw numbers are not the goal. “We’ve really never thought about [diversity] in terms of numbers,” she says, “and I think it’s a mistake to think about it in terms of numbers.”

With Native Americans, the numbers applying have been so small (around 12-15 per year for the last 6 years) that achieving a critical mass is impossible. Other groups (blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, other Hispanics, and Asian Americans) have been more successful. With the exception of the Asian Americans, the number of applicants, admits and matriculants for each group has been steady over the last six years.

Still, yearly fluctuations can greatly affect the number in each group. Dean Cummings was not satisfied with the numbers for the class of ’89. Seventy is the number of black students in the freshman class,” he says, “and in my view that’s too low.” But the numbers have risen this year to more respectable figures. “We have over 100 more black applicants this year than last year. It’s one of the strongest black applicant pools we’ve seen.”

The increase this year is at least in part due to the new organization of minority recruiting which Cummings has implemented. Until he took over the job of Dean of Admissions, minority recruitment was relegated to specific minority admissions offices. Cummings recalls, “There was a separate office of minority recruiting charged pretty much the exclusive responsibility for minority students. For a number of reasons, that didn’t seem appropriate to me.” Cummings feels that all staff members are responsible for recruitment of minorities and all are responsible for the evaluation of minority students. His plan took a few years to implement, and he says that only this year was it completely effective.

Former Dean of Admissions James Wickenden, who left his post in 1983, says, “It was my goal to work towards a system where everybody’s responsibility would be the recruitment of certain kinds of students…. But while I was there, the minority applicant pool was not large enough to justify the switch.”

Cummings therefore inherited a system which separated minority recruiters from the people who evaluated students in their region. “In my view, you can’t separate recruitment and evaluation,” he says. “If you are going to evaluate students properly, you have to have recruited them in their own settings. You have to have a sense of what kind of educational opportunities they’ve had or not had. And you can’t gain an appreciation for those conditions unless you visit the schools, talk to counselors and teachers and so on. On the other hand, you can’t recruit unless you’re also involved in the evaluation of students. You don’t know what makes for a competitive candidate unless you’ve been reviewing folders and so on.”

Beginning with the class of ’88, recruitment and evaluation were done by the same people. Cumming also directed every staff member to be involved in minority recruiting. “I was also concerned that the staff members not directly involved with the recruitment of minority students, no matter how hard they try, wouldn’t feel themselves responsible for the whole range of concerns dealing with minority students if they themselves weren’t recruiting them,” he says.

Finally, Cummings worried about the image Princeton was sending out to minority students by having only minority staff members as minority recruiters. “I was concerned that we were sending a message to minority students that their status at the University was dependent solely upon the fact that they were minorities.” Involving all of the Admissions Office with minority recruiting, Cummings believes, “sends out a more positive image about the kind of a University Princeton is and the kind of belief we have in the importance of interaction among students with different backgrounds.”

While recruiting methods have changed, admissions criteria have stayed relatively stable. Blacks, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans are given special consideration, just as alumni children and athletes are. However, the emphasis is placed not on the race of a student, but rather how well she/he has fared in relation to the opportunities available. “We measure all students, regardless of their ethnicity, or racial group, against the opportunities they have had or not had,” says Cummings.

By excluding Asian Americans from special consideration, the Admissions Office places more emphasis on attaining a critical mass than on compensating for racial prejudice. The Asian American applicant pool is large enough to naturally create a diverse applicant pool; therefore, they are given no special consideration. Conversely, Hispanics, who are not Mexican American or Puerto Rican, are also afforded little or no advantages in the admission process because their group has not been singled out by the administration for special consideration. Cummings sees this as a deficiency: “I think the people who make policy around here would do well to consider whether other Hispanics ought to be included as well, and given the same consideration as Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans.”

As for the immediate future, Cumming has just finished a 12-15 minute videotape which will be distributed to schools in the West and Southwest. He hopes that it will aid recruiting in cities in California and Texas, where a large amount of minority students reside. Each year, Princeton accepts more and more minority students, as Cummings says, “I think that most people will say a more diverse student body is a healthy student body.”

Princeton University decided to actually recruit minority students in the mid-sixties.  Since then the number of minority students has grown tremendously.  For example, the class of ’65 had one black student, the class of ’90 will have 85-90, according to recent statistics from the Admissions Office.

Nine years ago, President William Bowen wrote an article for the Educational Record entitled, “Admissions and the Relevance of Race,” which was cited in the Supreme Court’s Bakke decision.  His philosophy, in a nutshell, is that the inclusion of students from different backgrounds diversifies the community in a beneficial way, and that our goal should be a community “in which every individual, from every background, felt ‘unselfconsciously included.’ ”  Bowen’s words still define the principles guiding the recruitment and admission for minority students.

The effort to achieve diversity, even within the minority group, prompted the Admissions Office to set up target numbers.  These differ from quotas in that yearly fluctuations in the applicant pool could affect the number admitted.  “The goal of the Admissions Office is to increase the quantity and quality of the minority applicant pool so that the number of students admitted will provide a “critical mass,” or a number of students within the minority groups enough to insure diversity within the group.  Cummings explains, “What we try to do is create a decently sized community here.  If a  student is isolated, the potential to interact outside the group is inhibited.  Exposure to diversity in one’s own group gives one the confidence to move beyond the group.”

Although Bowen admits in his article that numbers are important, the focus has been on a range, rather than a specific quantity.  Provost Neil Rudenstein says that the University realizes that “there is a threshold below which students would be so isolated they wouldn’t want to come.”  However, Dean of the College Joan Girgus cautions that raw numbers are not the goal.  “We’ve really never thought about [diversity] in terms of numbers,” she says, “and I think it’s a mistake to think about it in terms of numbers.”

With Native Americans, the numbers applying have been so small (around 12-15 per year for the last 6 years) that achieving a critical mass is impossible.  Other groups (blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, other Hispanics, and Asian Americans) have been more successful.  With the exception of the Asian Americans, the number of applicants, admits and matriculants for each group has been steady over the last six years.

Still, yearly fluctuations can greatly affect the number in each group.  Dean Cummings was not satisfied with the numbers for the class of ’89.  Seventy is the number of black students in the freshman class,” he says, “and in my view that’s too low.”  But the numbers have risen this year to more respectable figures.  “We have over 100 more black applicants this year than last year.  It’s one of the strongest black applicant pools we’ve seen.”

The increase this year is at least in part due to the new organization of minority recruiting which Cummings has implemented.  Until he took over the job of Dean of Admissions, minority recruitment was relegated to specific minority admissions offices.  Cummings recalls, “There was a separate office of minority recruiting charged pretty much the exclusive responsibility for minority students.  For a number of reasons, that didn’t seem appropriate to me.”  Cummings feels that all staff members are responsible for recruitment of minorities and all are responsible for the evaluation of minority students.  His plan took a few years to implement, and he says that only this year was it completely effective.

Former Dean of Admissions James Wickenden, who left his post in 1983, says, “It was my goal to work towards a system where everybody’s responsibility would be the recruitment of certain kinds of students….  But while I was there, the minority applicant pool was not large enough to justify the switch.”

Cummings therefore inherited a system which separated minority recruiters from the people who evaluated students in their region.  “In my view, you can’t separate recruitment and evaluation,” he says.  “If you are going to evaluate students properly, you have to have recruited them in their own settings.  You have to have a sense of what kind of educational opportunities they’ve had or not had.  And you can’t gain an appreciation for those conditions unless you visit the schools, talk to counselors and teachers and so on. On the other hand, you can’t recruit unless you’re also involved in the evaluation of students.  You don’t know what makes for a competitive candidate unless you’ve been reviewing folders and so on.”

Beginning with the class of ’88, recruitment and evaluation were done by the same people.  Cumming also directed every staff member to be involved in minority recruiting.  “I was also concerned that the staff members not directly involved with the recruitment of minority students, no matter how hard they try, wouldn’t feel themselves responsible for the whole range of concerns dealing with minority students if they themselves weren’t recruiting them,” he says.

Finally, Cummings worried about the image Princeton was sending out to minority students by having only minority staff members as minority recruiters.  “I was concerned that we were sending a message to minority students that their status at the University was dependent solely upon the fact that they were minorities.”  Involving all of the Admissions Office with minority recruiting, Cummings believes, “sends out a more positive image about the kind of a University Princeton is and the kind of belief we have in the importance of interaction among students with different backgrounds.”

While recruiting methods have changed, admissions criteria have stayed relatively stable.  Blacks, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans are given special consideration, just as alumni children and athletes are.  However, the emphasis is placed not on the race of a student, but rather how well she/he has fared in relation to the opportunities available.  “We measure all students, regardless of their ethnicity, or racial group, against the opportunities they have had or not had,” says Cummings.

By excluding Asian Americans from special consideration, the Admissions Office places more emphasis on attaining a critical mass than on compensating for racial prejudice.  The Asian American applicant pool is large enough to naturally create a diverse applicant pool; therefore, they are given no special consideration.  Conversely, Hispanics, who are not Mexican American or Puerto Rican, are also afforded little or no advantages in the admission process because their group has not been singled out by the administration for special consideration.  Cummings sees this as a deficiency:  “I think the people who make policy around here would do well to consider whether other Hispanics ought to be included as well, and given the same consideration as Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans.”

As for the immediate future, Cumming has just finished a 12-15 minute videotape which will be distributed to schools in the West and Southwest.  He hopes that it will aid recruiting in cities in California and Texas, where a large amount of minority students reside.  Each year, Princeton accepts more and more minority students, as Cummings says, “I think that most people will say a more diverse student body is a healthy student body.”

Published in Nassau Weekly (3/27/86)

“MILTON BABBITT, PRINCETON’S COMPOSER”

Nassau Weekly Article (2/20/86)

By Randy Schoenberg

On Saturday, February 22 the Alumni Association will honor composer Milton Babbitt with the James Madison Medal, which recognizes distinguished alumni of the Graduate School. Babbitt received his MFA degree from Princeton in 1942 and is currently William Shubael Conant Professor of Music, Emeritus. News Editor Randy Schoenberg is the grandson of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Babbitt has used Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method of composition for almost all of his works.

When Milton Babbitt was ten years old, he visited an uncle in Philadelphia who was studying with the radical Russian composer, Leo Orenstein, at the Curtis Institute. “He played for me—just to see what the reaction would be of someone who was very much involved in music, but who obviously not only was a child, but had no musical sophistication—a number of contemporary works.”   Among those works were pieces by Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, the two most important and influential composers of this century. Babbitt had another uncle, a music critic who later brought back for him some contemporary scores. But his first exposure remains the most memorable. “The fact of the matter is that I never forgot the Schoenberg,” he says.

Although he was born on May 10, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Babbitt grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. His early musical life was sheltered from the serious classical music which was to become the direction of his later life. “When I was a little boy in Jackson, playing clarinet, playing violin, playing in bands,” he recalls, “it was mainly popular music. I wrote it, I arranged it, I listened to it, and the only so-called ‘serious’ music that I knew was the music that I played in the orchestra, and that was usually repertory—music that was sub-standard at that time even. So really I didn’t have a chance to hear any serious contemporary music.”

At the age of fifteen, five years after first experiencing modern music, Babbitt suppressed his desire to study music, and instead obeyed the wishes of his mother and enrolled in the traditional school of his mother’s family, the University of Pennsylvania. Babbitt now calls this move “a great mistake.” Although Penn had his uncle and his cousin, it didn’t have a music department. “I hated Penn,” he says. “For two years I did not officially study music. There was no music department.” He did, however go many times to hear Leopold Stokowsky conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra.

At last he decided to transfer to NYU. “I did what my father thought I should have done in the first place—I forgot everything else and studied music,” he says. He went to NYU primarily because of Marion Bauer, who had just written a book called Twentieth Century Music with examples from Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Milhaud, and others. “It was so exciting to see someone who obviously cared about this music enough to have musical examples in a book, when in those days you couldn’t see musical example and you hadn’t seen many of the scores, that I went to Washington Square College at NYU, and had a perfectly marvelous time.”

Babbitt’s music is serial, or twelve-tone. Paul Griffith, author for the text book for Music 208—Twentieth Century Music, describes serialism: “[T]he twelve notes of the chromatic scale are arranged in a fixed order, the series, which are used to generate melodies and harmonies, and which remains binding for a whole work.” The music is atonal, lacking any direct reference to a key. To the uninitiated, it sounds harsh and irrational; but to composers such as Babbitt it is the musical language of the twentieth century. Babbitt’s major contribution to serialism is the extension of the method from the twelve tones to other aspects of composition, including rhythm and volume.

“[Schoenberg] was the singly most important compositional influence in my life,” Babbitt says. “I could never have written the music I have written, for better or for worse, if I hadn’t known the music of Schoenberg.” He describes how he would go to study scores at the 50^th Street Library, and remembers hearing the first performance of Schoenberg’s Fourth String Quartet by the Kolisch Quartet at the 42^nd Street Library. “If there were a hundred people there, there were a lot.” Even now, Babbitt says, he discovers things in that piece that amaze him, and states flatly, “I keep reminding myself of, or rediscovering, or discovering things that I still find absolutely unparalleled in the history of music…..I don’t think any piece has ever had the influence on me that [Schoenberg’s] Fourth String Quartet has had.”

Babbitt came to teach at Princeton in 1938—before there was even a music department. “We did not have offices. We lived under very Spartan conditions.” When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Babbitt was working toward one of the first graduate degrees offered in music at Princeton. During the second semester of that year, he taught music and math (mostly elementary calculus). “Everybody suddenly began taking math courses that semester after Pearl Harbor. I was teaching on Saturdays.” The music section disappeared as everyone was either drafted or preparing for technical jobs in the army. Babbitt was sent by the Army to Washington, but soon was sent back to teach, because mathematicians were considered top priority. Babbitt stayed with the math department until the end of the war, when he made the not-so-difficult decision to return to music.

He soon began composing again, writing a film score, and a musical comedy, published only recently. These pieces were in the traditional Broadway style, show tunes of the sort Babbitt had grown up with. He says people accuse him of knowing all the songs written between 1925 and 1935. “You can’t know them all,” he admits, “but I know most of them: words and music. That is why when I came to Princeton and discovered that I had colleagues in music who didn’t know ‘Melancholy Baby’ from ‘Embraceable You,’ I was surprised. Now I’m not surprised, because I don’t know any pop music that’s been written since 1955. I don’t know a note of any of it. So I know how one can be cut off from popular culture.”

Babbitt didn’t like show business, and quickly returned to academia. “I could not abide show business in any of its manifestations. I couldn’t stand the people; I couldn’t stand the milieu. I realized that, though I was interested in film music, I could never do it physically. I can’t work that fast. I liked doing it, but I could never do it again. I’m just not the type.” So after his brief career with Broadway and the movies, Babbitt returned to Princeton. “I realized that, whatever its deficiencies, whatever its limitations, the academic was for me.”

When Babbitt returned to Princeton, he became part of the newly-formed Music Department led by Roger Sessions, whom Babbitt calls, “personally, the most influential composer in my life.” Then, he began moving towards, historically, his most important musical achievement: work with the synthesizer.

“I had always been interested in the electronic production of sound,” he says. In the thirties, Babbitt had convinced RCA to investigate the handwritten soundtrack, but in the fifties he began working with them on their second synthesizer (the first could only play one record). RCA moved this synthesizer to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where Babbitt and others began experimenting with it. “We discovered things about the machine of which they were unaware, because they were unaware of music,” Babbitt explains. “For them it was something arrangers could use. It was The Thing for me, where I could specify every aspect of my musical ideas to this machine.”

The synthesizer is not a computer; every note must be dictated by the composer. Babbitt has often been characterized as a mathematical, calculating composer because of his use of the synthesizer, but the synthesizer actually makes the involvement of the composer greater. Every sound is produced by specifying not only the pitch, but the volume, attack, duration, and timbre. “The machine composed nothing,” Babbitt attests. “It composed less than nothing. I had to instruct it in every conceivable way. It was not a computer in the sense of the word. It had not memory for which it was probably grateful.”

Babbitt wanted the synthesizer to be in Princeton but Princeton wanted nothing to do with it. “So we had to put it on West 125^th Street in the Columbia Research Building, and that has made my life the mess that it is. It means I have had to maintain a residence in New York. It means that I have hardly done any electronic work in the last few years, because West 125^th Street is not a very happy place in which to work at night.” Unlike many composers, who turned to synthesizers and now computers in order to produce new sounds, Babbitt used it merely as a way of hearing his music, and controlling it. “The notion that we turned to these instruments to find new sounds is preposterous. Actually a great deal of it came out of the desire to be able to fix our notions of musical time with the kind of both flexibility and precision that we knew we could hear, that performers found it at least difficult if not impossible to produce. Basically it was a concern for time.” Babbitt sees temporal control as an outgrowth of Schoenberg’s serialism, the twelve notes being ordered only in time.

Babbitt has several unfinished works that he would like to complete on the synthesizer.   The synthesizer gives him not only control over the temporal aspects of composition, but the ability to leave the studio with a finished tape of his composition. Instead of waiting years for the first performance and enduring an unsatisfactory number of rehearsals (not to mention the cost of printing scores and parts), he can hear his composition as soon as he enters it into his synthesizer. “The practical aspect is a serious one, and that is why many of my colleagues are turning to a computer medium,” he says.

Babbitt views the university as essential to the survival of modern composers. “[The University] is the last hope,” he says. “And therefore, it’s the best hope. There’s no other way a serious composer can survive. I know of no composer of my milieu who doesn’t teach at a university.” Babbitt notes that in continental Europe composers are turning to the major universities for their support. The university has already had a great effect on American music of this century, leading to the academicizing of the music and the legitimization of the field of music theory. “The whole intellectual orientation of American music is a result of that fact that the university plays the role in a composer’s life that they do,” Babbitt asserts.

Babbitt welcomes the patronage he has received, but questions the depth of Princeton’s commitment to music. “The University still doesn’t quite realize what it means to be a composer,” he says. “They don’t know what it is for us to go home at night and copy scores, and have parts extracted, and have to go to rehearsals.”

He believes that composers are not treated as equals to their academic counterparts. “They don’t satisfy all of our professional needs—certainly not the way they do physicists and chemists,” he claims. “They don’t provide us with laboratories. The University presses do not publish our music the way they publish our colleagues’ books. They do not make it possible for us to communicate with our colleagues. But they do manage to keep us alive and that’s rather crucial. At least I can go home at night and write music, otherwise I probably would not have a home in which to write music.”

Perhaps one reason that music is not as heavily supported as other fields, is that there is no consensus on what “serious” music is. So many styles and techniques have evolved in the twentieth century, that it is hard to tell which, if any, will emerge as the superior one, respected and listened to by generations to come. Babbitt sees this diversity as an indisputable fact. “It’s a truism to say that music has never been as diverse, as pluralistic, as fragmented. The apparent confusion, complexity, or diversity of the scene is not apparent, it’s genuine,” he says. “There are more young composers than there have ever been in this country. When I was a young composer in New York, you could count the number of young composers on the fingers of your hands. Now if you took the people who want to study composition on a graduate level, if they ever went to a concert, we’d have an audience that we’re alleged not to have. They are almost not interested in anybody else’s music. They’re all composing music.” Babbitt believes that the number of composers, as well as the freedom to choose alternatives to the musical tradition which ended at the turn of the century, has led to the fractionalization of modern music which we now have.

The Alumni Association award will not be the first for Babbitt. He has won a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation (1982), a B.M.I. Commendation (1982), a National Music Award (1976), a Brandeis University Gold Medal (1970), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1960-61), an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1959), and two New York Music Critics Circle Citations (1949, 1964), among others.

However, Babbitt is wary of reading too much into the awards he has received, acknowledging the small audience that his music has. “I’m sure that most of these people with whom I’m being honored have never heard of me or my music. I wonder if almost anybody whom I am going to be addressing on Saturday will have ever heard a note of my music.” He remembers his dismay when teaching the Twentieth Century Music course: “When [the students] went back to the dormitories they didn’t listen to this [modern] music. They listened to the same music that the janitors were listening to.”

The gap between the composer and audience has widened ever since the time of Beethoven; Babbitt’s music is only a most recent example of this trend. When will his music be widely heard? “I haven’t the slightest idea, nor do I have any hope.” He cites music of the early part of this century, which has become part of the musical tradition for modern composers, but which has not entered the standard repertory. He hopes that his music will be kept alive by a small group of composers, but remains uncertain despite his numerous accolades. Music has become more like other academic files, such as Physics, Math, and Philosophy. Most people have no concept of what is going on in these fields and never will.

But music is not entirely the same as other academic fields.

“Our life is a very different one from other academic departments,” he says. Music is meant to be performed, and that requires a specific time and place. The cost of performance is great, and most government funds go to music that should not need subsidizing, the so-called “classics” and “popular” music that one would hear at Lincoln Center or on PBS. Babbitt describes other difficulties. “Publishing of music has ceased; Xeroxing has killed it. Recording is at a standstill; there is no place to record an orchestra in all of Manhattan.”

The lack of publishing and recording hinders communication among composers. If music is to become just another academic field, composers must at least be able to communicate musical thoughts, says Babbitt. Unfortunately, as Babbitt sees it, “Music has one foot in the academic and one foot outside in performances and recordings.” The academic side is not completely opened up, and the performance and recording side is closing quickly. The future of “serious” music will depend on the generosity of those who know little about it.

For composers such as Babbitt, near the end of their career and with a good deal of notoriety in their field, the situation is not so dire. Babbitt’s Piano Concerto has just been recorded and his works were recently performed in Carnegie Hall. The recognition that he will receive on Saturday will not be as satisfying as a performance of his music in front of a live audience would be, but it is nonetheless a fitting and well-deserved tribute to a great American composer.

“FACULTY VIEWS ON DIVESTMENT IN FAVOR OF GENERAL DIVESTMENT”

Nassau Weekly Article (12/12/85)

By Randy Schoenberg

“There is a consistent pattern to the moral utterings of academicians,” says Uwe Reinhardt. “They tend to be vacuous.” Reinhardt, a professor of Economics at the Woodrow Wilson School, echoes the sentiment of many faculty members who opposed the motion for general divestment from companies which operate in South Africa. He disagrees with the claim of divestment advocates that the faculty and the University have a responsibility to set a moral example. “We don’t impart high moral values,” he says. “We remind you of them. We do not lead. We are not moral beacons. I think that’s quite all right. I admire the faculty for its expertise, and I personally feel it’s enough. But beacons or guides for moral conduct we are not.”

Says Marion Levy, “I don’t think the University builds character. I don’t hear people out in society say that we are a moral beacon.” Levy believes that the purpose of the University is embodies in creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge. “As a matter of values,” he says, “I think knowledge and the University are ends in themselves.”

Politicization

Henry Bienen, who specializes in African political economics, argues against the politicization of the University in opposing general divestment. “The people who are for it,” says Bienen, “their aim is to politicize the University. The aim of general divestment is to take political stands. Having the University act as a political policy actor is something I don’t like.” Levy agrees, “If we simply become another political forum, we won’t be effective, and we’ll wreck the University.”

The faculty vote disturbed Seymour Bogdonoff of the Mechanical Engineering Department. “I am very worried about the political implications of the vote. I resent being placed in a position of having the University take a political position, even one supported by a majority of the faculty, because it binds me in a political sense.” Like Levy, Bogdonoff believes that the University should not act politically as an institution. “I do not agree with the premise,” Bogdonoff says, “That the faculty should take a political position. I object to that. The University is a place where individuals take stands as individuals. We’re the wrong kind of institution to do this.”

Con…

Robert Tignor of the History Department believes that the University should take some sort of action, but feels that politicization is a problem. “The University shouldn’t be taking lots of political stances,” he says. “Hopefully, we won’t be polled on this and that.” Levy believes members of the faculty who support general divestment are inconsistent in their condemnations of international injustice. “The same people who are so excited about this issue,” he says, “never said anything about Cambodia—not one of these people ever mentioned that.”

Bienen feels that failing to divest is not a political statement. “I don’t believe that not divesting is as political as divesting,” he says. The University depends on industry and the government, Bogdonoff says, and must necessarily interact with them regardless of politics. “We consider ourselves a private university,” he says, “but we’re not. We couldn’t be a university without government and industry support.”

Boycott v. Divestment

Most of the anti-divestment sentiment stems from a strong conviction of the complete failure of divestment, both as a moral gesture and as a tool for reform in South Africa. Reinhardt argues that there are three facets of a corporation: the operations (products), stocks and bonds, and assets (buildings, machinery). To show a corporation that the University is displeased, it must affect one or more three areas. An institution like Princeton cannot readily affect a corporation’s assets, but it can manipulate stocks, bonds, and products. “The thing with stocks and bonds,” he says, “is that if you didn’t buy them, you can be sure someone else will. If you hurt a corporation through their operating pipe, there they will not find another buyer. If you wanted to hurt a corporation, you should boycott its product. Divestment would be the last thing you would think of.”:

Levy gives IBM as an example of a company which would be affected by a boycott. “If you really want to hurt IBM, don’t turn over the influence to people less concerned than you are. Stop buying their machines. Don’t use their typewriters, computer and programs.” Reinhardt agrees, “By buying and using their machines, we are facilitating IBM’s marketing program.”

Bienen sees an inherent contradiction in divesting from companies like IBM. He adds, “ I think people have slipped over these issue. You can’t say divest and solicit gifts.”

Einhardt also points to the University’s relationship with IBM. “How can it be moral and decent,” he asks, “to own IBM equipment but say that company is too soiled for us to own their stock? How can you write a petition [as the faculty resolution in favor of divestment] on an IBM/PC?” Levy notes that two of the strongest supporters of the divestment movement are in the Religion Department, which has been given a considerable grant from IBM. “There has been no movement to demand that they reject those funds,” Levy asserts. “They want the University to divest, but they haven’t asked their own department. Apparently divestment, like charity, frequently does not begin at home.”

Selective Divestment

Selective divestment was not discussed at the meeting after the original resolution succeeded. “I felt that those in favor of total divestment should have the ability to discuss their measure,” says Tignor. Unlike Levy, Reinhardt, Bienen and Bogdonoff, Tignor was not unhappy with the approved resolution. “If I had thought that the [general divestment] resolution would win, even have a fair chance not to be defeated resoundingly, I would have sat back and said, ‘Sure. Let’s go!’ ”

Bienen is an ardent supporter of selective divestment. “There will be companies,” he says,”that one would not want to hold share in, morally.” He proposes a three-point decision-making procedure whereby corporations could be judged on a case-by-case basis. Under this plan, the University would choose to divest for any of the following three reasons: one, making equipment which is directly used for repression; two, not responding to inquiry by the University; and three, not abiding by the Sullivan principles, guidelines for fair employment practices. “Selective divestment is a very different view,” Bienen says, “with different implications and motives. It has some problems, but they are a different order of magnitude [from total divestment].”

Levy entirely rejects selective divestment. “What I say applies as much to the watered-down alternative amendment,” he states. Levy considers any form of divestment as inappropriate moral posturing by the University.

Reactions to the student activism which occurred last spring were mixed. “The Coalition did a super job,” says Tignor. “The 270 [faculty] signatures were really generated by their enthusiasm.” Levy, however, feels that the students efforts could have been better spent lobbying in Washington. “I think the students are wrong,” he says. “The University is not where they should be spending their interests. When the weather turns wonderful, the demonstrations start. I don’t take them very seriously.” Bogdonoff disagrees with the stance that the student activists have taken, but thinks that their involvement is important. “I approve of student activism. It gets out hand once in a while, but I’m much more for active students than apathy.”

Reinhardt believes that more could be done to reform corporations by buying stock. “I think you should not divest,” he says, “but buy more stock, combine with like-minded institutions and mutual fund managers, go to stockholders’ meetings and throw your weight around.” He says that while Princeton by itself may not have more than 2% of a corporation’s stock, the entire Ivy League may hold a significant block, enough to dictate a change in company policy. Bogdonoff agrees, “I think that you ought to increase your investment in South Africa, not divest. This gesture of divestment may make people feel good for a moment, but I don’t understand how it will help.”

“Empty Gesture”

The whole question of what the faculty vote was intended to accomplish bothers most of these professors. Bogdonoff sees it as an empty and inconsistent gesture. “This business of making these gestures from the University point of view is bad,” he argues, “because there are many, many issues which are just as bad as South Africa.”

Reinhardt sees the faculty discussion in a more cynical light. “It’s even cheaper than smoking pot. They just engage in afternoons of exquisite rhetoric.” He also points out how ineffectual the vote was as a moral gesture or symbolic act. “The New York Times and Wall Street Journal did not even pick it up. If the faculty had decided to boycott it would have been covered by the Wall Street Journal. I find it very significant that the world took no notice of Princeton’s moral chirping.”

Levy also complained about the emptiness of the faculty’s gesture, “It was a cheap, costless gesture. What they would have loved is front page coverage in the New York Times. If they had indicated a willingness to bear the cost of their actions, that would have made the Times. The faculty is conspicuous in making such gestures as long as they are costless to the faculty concerned.” At the meeting, Levy suggested that the faculty offer a cut in salaries to support the costs of divestment, if any. The suggestion was ignored by the proponents of the divestment resolution. Bogdonoff explained the futility of Levy’s attempt, “It’s hard to get them to say that they’ll take less of anything to make this happen.”

All of the professors interviewed expect the Trustees to brush off the faculty recommendation and proceed with selective divestment as outlined in Bienen and Tignor’s resolution. Reinhardt feels that, as businessmen, the Trustees act more responsibly than the faculty which he characterizes as childish. “I have more faith in the moral convictions of the Trustees because,” he says, “they are businessmen, constantly assaulted by temptation and moral problems.” Bogdonoff has little respect for the faculty in this area as well. “Most members of the faculty,” he says, ­­“are totally irresponsible when it comes to questions of finances. They do not think through decisions which have long-term impacts, and which might affect faculty and students for generations to come.”

Reinhardt sees many other positive actions which the faculty could take if they were willing to sacrifice something for oppressed South Africans. A surtax on salaries could support scholarships to students and leaders in exile. In 1979 the faculty decided to sponsor fellowships for disadvantaged South Africans. This action was quickly forgotten, as Levy reveals, “In the six years since then, one graduate fellowship was given (and later abandoned), and four or five undergraduate scholarships. Only one of the supporters [of the 1979 resolution] ever even inquired about the fellowships. I don’t take such people seriously.” As for the faculty and its influence on the rest of the world, Reinhardt offers this analysis: “Academia is set up to keep faculty members in a perennial state of infancy or adolescence. Society presumably says we’re just like children. By and large I think the world just smiles at us.”

“ZEN AND THE ART OF COURSE SELECTION”

Nassau Weekly Article (11/21/85)

By Randy Schoenberg

I’ve done it three times now, but I still get anxious about picking courses. There is an art to course selection one must have to be successful. I’m not just talking about fooling your adviser into letting you take four introductory level courses pass/fail, or calling your upperclass friends and prodding them for inside information on the true guts. I’m talking about the distinctly human ability to plan for the future.

I have to plan out the next four months of my life, and I can’t help but think of the multitude of ramifications my choices can have over the long term. . .

Okay, that was enough thinking. After all, it’s only one eighth of my college career. However, there are some insights that I think I can share on the subject of courses to take at Princeton:

For the Hard Science Majors

By “hard” I mean difficult, as opposed to soft, or easy. The most fun I’ve ever had in a course was the first day of ECS 320. (That’s European Culture Studies for those of you who aren’t in Campus or Terrace Club, and that’s Three Hundred Twenty for those of you who are.) The professor went around the table asking what our majors were. After hearing a handful of Comp Lit, three or four French, about five History, an Architecture and a lone Politics major, the entire class stared in disbelief when I said that I hoped to major in Math! This was after, a course on Politics and Culture in France 1920-1940. What was I, a science and math geek, doing in their seminar? It was clear from their expressions that I represented their greatest fears in the entire world.

I cannot, recommend enough the value of really testing yourself among the humanities majors. I don’t mean taking Lit 141, Politics 240, Religion 211, Music 103, or any other huge, introductory, survey-type course. I mean really taking the hard-core humanities. Try out some of the programs, like Creative Writing or Humanistic Studies.

There really will be life outside the Molecular Biology Building next semester. It would be a shame for you to miss it. Besides, think of your adventure into the inner depths of the humanities as a crusade against the stereotypical perceptions of the math/science dweeb. Show them that you can beat them at their own game. Besides, you know that it takes more mental prowess to differentiate than it does to digress.

For the Humanity Majors

Don’t be put off by what I said above. That was just a pep talk for those left-brain-heavy geeks who are afraid to express in words, what can only be suggested by numbers. But you too have an opportunity this semester to expand your horizons.

I don’t mean taking the infamous guts, Astro-gut, Rocks for Jocks, Physics for Poets, Nuts and Sluts, or Volts for Dolts. (I know you all know their course numbers by heart, so I won’t include them.) And you don’t have to take Orgo or DiffeeQues’s to prove yourself in the sciences. There are programs for you as well: Linguistics (There’s a reason why MIT is the best in this field) and Science in Human Affairs. But I suggest something like Comp Sci 119, Geo 310, or maybe a higher level Econ, Psych, or Philosophy of Science course. Next year, you can try out Biology or Chemistry. Who knows? You may even become a Physics major.

Test your ability to handle equations. If not, it’ll come back to haunt you when you have to do your 1040 form for the IRS. Besides, it sure beats reserve reading.

For the Engineers

            We all know you have to take a million more courses than the rest of us mere mortals. If you don’t, put your money where your mouth is and show us what all those problem sets have done in terms of education?

Follow the advice I gave for the hard scientists, but don’t just stop there. Take a course in the sciences to find out where all those goofy equations come from. I really admire the few engineers who take Math 217-218, instead of 203-204, and Physics 105-106 rather than the standard 103-104. They prove that engineers aren’t all wimps.

It also pays to go for those daring combinations. Last year, Steven Dunne turned his EECS/WWS major and sailboat into a Rhodes Scholarship. You’ll have your whole life to design engines and computer chips. Give some thought to those things which last longer than a light bulb or a transistor. Take some time out from that schedule that you’ve followed since you were eight years old and learn what really goes into writing a work of literature or painting a masterpiece.

“TERMINAL HOOKUPS”

Interview with Dean of Computing Ira Fuchs

Nassau Weekly Article (11/7/85)

By Randy Schoenberg

The University has recently appointed Ira Fuchs the new Vice President for Computing and Information Services. Nassau talked to him about this plans for Princeton:

Nassau: Why do you think the University established your position?

Fuchs: I think there was a need for some focal point that could oversee computing for all aspects of the University. There are areas which require a more or less uniform approach to solving problems. The campus network is a good example. It is unlikely that we would want to have two totally independent networks for administrative use and for academic use.

Today there are small computer clusters in the residential colleges, and I hear that you may be planning to build some others in the upperclass dorms. Where do you see the network going in terms of undergraduate use of computers?

I see one goal as generally increasing the accessibility of computing, not just to the student body, but to the faculty and also to the administration. Specifically with respect to the residential colleges, it seems that the Forbes College pilot has been a success, and that it would make sense to replicate some or all of what Forbes has done at the other residential colleges.

As for the upperclass dorms and other buildings that undergraduates normally have access to, I think the goal in general is to extend the cable that was put in this summer to reach the remaining buildings, and to then wire each of the buildings to permit local area networks to extend to any place that one could rationally want to connect with a computer.

All connected to the Computer Center?

Once you have a local area network, and you can have any machine talk to any machine, the computing center can be viewed as a computational server on the network, the same as a machine in the Physics Department or a machine in any department, or the machine in Forbes College. In other words, they are all resources available on the network accessible to anyone who has access to the network and who has authority to use that particular source.

The same goes for high quality printing services. It’s one of my goals to improve or to increase the access to high quality printing. I haven’t witnessed it yet, but I’ve been told that at the time when junior papers and senior theses are due, there’s a great crunch of people trying to use the laser printer at the Computing Center. The cost effectiveness of distributing that particular resource I think is such that it doesn’t make much sense to force all the printing to be done at the Center. The thing that sort of ties it all together is the network. But along with doing that you have to figure out how to put the services on the network and make them easy to use and available anywhere.

Is the Network you are talking about TIGERNET?

             There seems to be some confusion, at least in some people’s minds, over what it is that people mean when they say TIGERNET. My understanding is that it is a broad-band cable that was initially run between the Computing Center and the E-Quad, and has now been extended to somewhere around half of the campus. The goal would be to extend that further to reach all of the buildings on campus.

At Dartmouth there are terminal hookups in every room, and every freshman is required to buy a computer. If a student can’t afford it he has to take a loan. Using the network a student can access library listings, have conferences, and access the mainframe. Is Princeton going to go toward something like that? 

I think in terms of the accessibility of resources like the IBM 3081 at the Computer Center or databases that might be available on various machines on campus that the answer is yes. We will seek to wire up dormitories and wire up in the rooms, so that a student who has a Macintosh or PC or some other compatible device will be able to plug it into the wall for access to the network.

I don’t foresee in the near future Princeton requiring that every student purchase one of these computers. On the other hand, the price of these computers is coming down almost on a weekly basis, and I think more and more we’re going to see students coming with their own computers. It may be that the University will encourage it by having access to all these resources. It has encouraged it already in terms of entering into pricing discount arrangements to make it less expensive to students. I suppose there is the possibility that the University could go further and provide financing or credit for acquisition of machines. I haven’t heard any discussions about that, but other universities have done that, just short of simply saying bring your own computer.

I guess as long as you have terminal hookups in the rooms…

…And clusters in as many places as is practical. That means that if a student doesn’t have his own computer he isn’t going to have a hard time getting one.

It leaves it up to the student.

Right.

How is the supercomputer at the Forestal Center going to affect the entire University?

The supercomputer will shortly be connected to TIGERNET. There will be a high speed connection from the new John von Neumann Center to the Computer Center and the ultimate goal is to make that supercomputer look like yet another server, another resource on the network throughout the University. That doesn’t mean that any student plugged into a computer terminal would automatically have his or her programs run on the supercomputer. If they had accounts there and if they were doing research which was funded by the National Science Foundation then, potentially at least, they would have access to the center. But the goal would be to make it as easy to send programs and jobs and to receive output from the supercomputer center as it is to the current central facility or any other machine.

Does the University have a goal towards centralization or do you think they are going to rely on you to formulate that? Does the University have an official stance on centralization?

I think that the University stance is that computers are important in education and by all accounts they appear to be becoming more important, that is to say they’re being used in more disciplines, and there’s more software being written that makes the use of computers important and truly useful in teaching and in research. Computers are obviously also used in the administration and management of the University. I don’t think there are too many people who see a reverse trend. On the other hand, there’s no intent to try and turn Princeton purely into an Institute of Technology, and that’s not what we’re trying to do.

I think that in talking about centralization, I don’t see what I’m doing, or what the University seems to be committed to, as implying greater centralization. I think that the University is looking for leadership, and trying to create a coherent environment for the use of technology at the University. In some ways, I suppose some people could view it as a further emphasis on some form of decentralization of computers. In other words, by making it possible for all of the departmental machines and distributed machines to be used in an equally easy way, you are in some ways encouraging distribution of resources.

Right now if a student is in a computer science course or a physics course, and he needs to use a computer for it, he has to use a computer, not at the Computer Center, but at the E-Quad or at the physics department. Do you see those departmental computers being linked up so that someone could work from the computer clusters or from his room?

Absolutely. With the cable reaching all the buildings, and with the local area networks gateway to the cable, and then with the appropriate set of standards or protocols used by all the machines on the network, it will be possible for any work station, any personal computer, to ask to connect to any of the servers on the network.

How much time and money is it going to take?

I really can’t estimate that yet, it’s something that I was working on when you came in. It’s going to be a significant project. I would hope that it could be completed in the next couple of years, and one of our problems will be to decide which pieces get done first. I certainly think it’s achievable and I think that there is a commitment on the part of the administration and of the faculty to see it happen.

How do you think Princeton stands now in comparison to other institutions as far as computer accessibility goes?

Better than some, worse than others. There are plenty of campuses that have not yet, for example put in the kind of broad-band cable systems that TIGERNET represents and that are planning to do so. And that’s a significant and expensive effort and it’s one that Princeton is already well on the way to completing. The development of local area networks on the campus is perhaps slower than some of the Universities that are at the forefront—Stanford, MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, and so on—but we’re not that far behind.

The technology is changing very fast in this particular area. So, it may be the case that it’s fortuitous that we haven’t made too many decisions yet, because we get to take advantage of all the new advances. Some people think that the best strategy in computing is not to do anything because it’s always cheaper and better if you wait a little longer. But then you don‘t have anything either.   I think though that in the case of Princeton, it’s the right time to be doing the things we’re doing. Five years ago, if we had tried to make some of these decisions, it probably would have been quite difficult, if it was even possible. And yet I don’t see any point in waiting another five years to see how it all turns out at other universities. I don’t think we can afford to do that.

“GEOMETRIC ABSTRACT ART AT MOMA”

Nassau Weekly Article (10/10/85)

By Randy Schoenberg

New York’s Museum of Modern Art, in response to a tremendous gift from the Riklis Collection of the McCrory Corporation, has opened an ambitious exhibit entitled, Contrasts of Form: Geometric Abstract Art 1910-1980. The exhibit may be the most comprehensive showing ever of this most important artistic development of the twentieth century and is a must for any person even remotely interested in artistic expression.

The Riklis Collection was assembled by Celia Ascher with the support of Meshulam Riklis, chairman of the Rapid-America Corporation (parent company of the McCrory Corporation). The 249 art works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and collages, contain important works by well-known masters, as well as unexpected treasures by many artists who have not yet received public attention. The museum has also included numerous works from its own collection to complement the already exhaustive list of works donated by the McCrory Corporation.

The exhibit is separated into five chronological divisions:

Origins of the Nonobjective—Cubism, Futurism, Cubo-Futurism: 1910-1914.

This section would be more accurately described as Origins of Geometric Art. The Cubist works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Fernand Leger, as well as the early cubist and collage attempts of Kasimir Malevich, are objective works, depicting in fragmented angular planes a guitar, clarinet, ballet dancer, and collage materials. The Italian Futurist works of Giacomo Balla, the color abstractions of Robert Delauney, and a few works by Russian artists in the Rayonist style are more clearly abstract and nonobjective. The latter works reveal the diversity of expression that emerged with the emancipation of abstraction and “art for art’s sake,” while the former exemplify objective perception pushed to its furthest limits. Together they lead to the art form that is the focus of this exhibit. I was disappointed not to find a painting by Vasily Kandinsky in this section, as he is considered the founding father of abstraction. However, the studies by Malevich of cubist paintings were fascinating and extremely informative. If you’ve ever looked at a Picasso and wondered where the figure went, these illustrated examples by Malevich will help immeasurably. Also in this section is an early work by Piet Mondrian, a peek at the developments to come.

From Surface to Space—Suprematism, de Stijl, Russian Constructivism: 1915-1921.

            Malevich took off from where the cubists left off, and founded suprematism, which he believed was an expression of “absolute” art. Flat, two dimensional paintings consisting of purely geometric figures in solid colors, these works sought to free art from the constraints of cubism and futurism. The foremost example of the new style is Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White; this masterpiece contains only a skewed off-white square on a pure white background.

Malevich and his Russian contemporaries continued in this vein until the revolution, when the urgency of the political and social upheaval necessitated a more socially conscious idiom. They developed a three-dimensional adaptation of Suprematism and called it “Constructivism.” The founder of this school was Vladimir Tatlin whose charcoal drawing, Counter-Relief, is made up of conic sections, rectangles and intersecting planes.

At the same time in Holland, Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg formed “de Stijl”, also intended to be an expression of “pure” art. Their works consist of rectangles and squares arranged without overlapping, and tend to be more grid-like and patterned than their Russian counterparts, reflecting an emphasis on architectural design. Here, as in the entire exhibit, works by lesser-known artists display the breadth of invention that accompanied the new forms of expression.

International Constructivism: 1922-1929.

            In the post-war years, de Stijl and Constructivism spread through Europe, sparking individual artists to direct their abstract works in a more geometric style. This section of the exhibit contains significant works by van Doesburg, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, Georges Vantangerloo, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart.

Kandinsky, Klee and Moholy-Nagy were members of the Bauhaus in Weimar, an artistic school founded by the architect Walter Gropius in 1919. The objective paintings of Oskar Schlemmer, also a member of the Bauhaus, is included in the exhibit in order to show the architectural influence of the new school.

Most interesting in this section is the reemergence of the early revolutionaries in the constructivist style. The futurist Balla and the cubist Leger both contributed to the development of the genre in this decade; Kandinsky and Klee had founded in 1911 the Munich-based Blue Rider group; and Schwitters and Mohaly-Nagy were involved in the Dali movement before attempting Constructivism.

The Paris-New York Connection: 1930-1959.

            The exhibit catalogue describes this period as one of synthesis rather than invention. “It is not a period of innovation or creation, of new philosophies, but rather a period of relaxation that blended earlier disciplines such as classic Cubism, de Stijl, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, the art of Mondrian and that of Kandinsky, as well as the biomorphic forms of Surrealism and the decorative aspects of Synthetic Cubism.”

Established artists such as Moholy-Nagy, Mondrian, Schwitters and Vantongerloo, are presented alongside other notables, Josef Albers, Hans Arp, Sophi Taeuber-Arp, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson, and some relative newcomers, including Charmion von Wiegand, Charles Biederman, Ilya Bolotowsky, Burgoyne Diller, and Jean Gorin. The effect is an overwhelming feeling that Constructivism, or Abstract Geometric Art, was the mode of expression of the times. In my opinion, this leads to a much better understanding of the works, and it certainly provides for enjoyable viewing.

As evidenced in the title, this period marks the entrance of American artists into the domain of modern Western art. The exhibit does not include any of the museum’s numerous works by the abstract expressionists who were also making their mark on the art world at this time. Instead, it maintains the focus on geometric abstract art, an area which was heretofore underrepresented in the museum collection.

Recent Nonfigurative Tendencies: 1960-1980.

This final section follows the genre through the last two decades, introducing major figures of the art world today. Josef Alber’s Homage to the Square: Silent Hall is perhaps the most significant piece, reminiscent of Malevich’s ground-breaking White on White. I think Al Held’s C-B-1 completed in 1978, stands out among the new works. Alfred Jensen, subject of the current exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum, is also represented here, as is Princeton’s own Frank Stella. (Incidentally, the current exhibit at the McCormick Art Museum of Stella’s paintings based on El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya would make an excellent introduction to the New York exhibit, for those unsure of what to expect.)

Minimalism is the most recent development in abstract geometric art and the exhibit is not without representatives of this style. These pieces don’t do anything for me. The concepts behind the works of Malevich and Albers are lost in the 36 square foot, all-white canvas of Robert Ryman. Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhart are equally unimpressive. However, Ad Dekkers’ From Square to Circle, with a white circle just barely too large to be inscribed in the white square underneath it, is inspired, as are Robert Mangold’s Distorted Circle within a Polygon I, and Ellsworth Kelly’s Two Panels: Yellow-Orange.

The patterned illusionistic pieces of artists like Richard Paul Lohse and Victor Vasarely show the abundance of new forms which the abstract geometric style allows, and move in a more productive direction than their minimalist counterparts. Sculptors such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Kenneth Martin each have works in the exhibition. Judging from them, it may be that sculpture provides the most opportunity for varied artistic expression in this style. Other pieces, such as Ludwig Sander’s yellow composition Tioga II, are reminiscent of the earlier works of Mondrian. It is clear from all of these works, that geometric abstract art is far from dead and will continue to be an important form of artistic expression.

This exhibit is extremely significant in terms of the scope and quality of the works presented. From Cubism to Minimalism, Geometric Abstract art is portrayed in amazing detail through the masterpieces of the artists so crucial to its development. As a complement to the Museum of Modern Art’s already incredible collection of modern masterpieces, the Riklis Collection is an extraordinary addition. The exhibit will be showing for three months, from October 7 to January 7. For goodness sake, take advantage of our proximity to New York and see this once-in-a-lifetime exhibit!

Letter to Editor by Amy Weisser in Response to Original Article.

GEOMETRIC ABSTRACT ART IS NOT FOR EVERYONE (From 10/17/85 Issue)

To the Editor:

I applaud the decision by Nassau to review an art exhibition in New York. (Contrasts of Form: Geometric Abstract Art 1910-1980 at the Museum of Modern Art.) However, I question the reviewer’s appraisal of the show as “a must for any person even remotely interested in artistic expression” and a “once-in-a-lifetime exhibit!”

The review correctly states that the Riklis/McCrory donation includes a comprehensive range of artists; it is not true, however, that most of these artists are represented by important works. The majority of the exhibition’s “masterpieces” were from the Museum’s own collection, chosen by the curators to bolster the quality of the exhibition. The Riklis/McCrory collection will undoubtedly be more valuable within the Museum’s study collection that in future exhibitions. In addition, Constructivist art is not easily appreciated, and without prior knowledge, the exhibition could be more confusing than enlightening.

In short, I agree with the review’s suggestion that we should all “take advantage of our proximity to New York” and visit the MOMA, but I suggest that, for most of us, the time would be better spent viewing the Museum’s permanent Painting and Sculpture Collection, which is installed in chronological order and encourages comparisons of artists and trends, or the current exhibition of sketches of Loony Tune cartoons, just for the fun of them.