Richard Meier at the Getty Center.

SIGHTINGS We all know that Nathan Hale slept in Connecticut Hall. And now, thanks to Richard Mooney '47, we know where he died -- more or less. When Mooney found that the spot where Hale was hanged by the British is somewhere near Third Avenue and 66th Street in Manhattan, he arranged for a plaque commemorating the spot to be placed on the facade of a new apartment building nearby.

Murky provenance: The owner of Courbet's Le Grand Pont has a Nazi past.

Light & Verity
March 2001 -- Special Tercentennial Edition

A New Neighbor for the A&A Building

Architect Richard Meier, whose works include the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles and the High Museum in Atlanta, will design a new building adjacent to the Art & Architecture Building for the history of art department. At the same time, architect David Childs '63, '67MArch of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill will oversee a renovation of the A&A Building itself, a project to be funded in part by a $20 million gift from Sid R. Bass '65.

Meier, who has won numerous architecture awards, including the Pritzker Prize, is known for his crisp, white modernist buildings. The new structure will occupy the site where the former Gentree's restaurant and an apartment building now stand on York Street. Besides the history of art department, the new structure will house an expansion of the arts library, which now occupies the ground floor of the A&A building. The Art Gallery will take over Street Hall, the history of art department's current home.

"I have always felt we should have a building that is white and glassy to contrast with and complement the A&A Building," says School of Architecture dean Robert A.M. Stern. "Lots of people could do that, but Meier is the best."

Childs, whose works at Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill include the Bertelsmann Tower in New York's Times Square and the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, will work to restore the Art & Architecture Building as closely as possible to Paul Rudolph's original design . The building was damaged by fire in 1969, and in the years following, new walls and other alterations were added in an attempt to relieve overcrowding, a problem that was solved last year by the School of Art's relocation to a new home of its own on Chapel Street. Construction on both projects is scheduled to begin next year and to be completed in 2004.

"Abortion Pill" Available at UHS

Yale students and employees who use University Health Services (UHS) now have a new option should they want to end a pregnancy: the drug RU-486. The controversial compound, also known as Mifeprex, is taken in combination with a second compound, misoprostol, early in a pregnancy to induce a miscarriage. The drugs, which have been used in Europe for ten years, were approved by the Food and Drug Administration last September, and in December, UHS officials decided to make the drugs available as part of the effort "to provide the best and most comprehensive care to the students, staff, and faculty," said Thomas Conroy, acting director of public affairs. "The Health Plan offers a full range of service in obstetrics and gynecology, including the voluntary termination of pregnancy."

The FDA decision, which came after several years of congressional attempts to block approval, was a flashpoint issue on the presidential campaign trail. The UHS move elicited both praise and protest from campus groups.

Caroline Barber '02, president of the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale, expressed strong support for the decision. But Yevgeny Vilensky '02, founder of the Pro-Life League, said the decision demonstrates that "the University is interested in promoting the culture of death on campus." Vilensky explained that League members, who oppose abortion, were especially upset because the health plan is in part funded with tuition money. "This means the Yale is forcing us to subsidize something that we consider akin to murder."

Harvard, which also started providing the drugs through its health plan recently, has a provision to refund a portion of the mandatory student health fee that would be used to pay for other students' abortions. There's "no movement" at Yale, says Conroy, to rescind a portion of the health fee.

"This is not a policy of the health services," he says. "Male students can't say they don't use gynecological services so they shouldn't have to contribute to the cost of other members of the health plan."

American Lit Joins Frosh Lineup

The last time a change was made in the introductory English courses that the College recommends to freshmen, the Class of 2005 had not yet been born. But this fall, a new course in American literature, English 127, will join the five more established introductory offerings for which freshmen are encouraged to preregister over the summer. The new course represents the first major change to the introductory courses in more than 25 years.

Currently, students are encouraged to take courses from one of two levels, depending on standardized test scores. The level-one courses are "Reading and Writing Prose" (English 114) and "Introduction to Literary Study" (English 115). On level two are "Modern Prose" (English 120), a writing course; "Major English Poets" (English 125), a requirement for the English major; and "The European Literary Tradition" (English 129), a survey of drama and fiction in translation. English 127 will be a level-two course.

English professors Amy Hungerford and Elizabeth Dillon first conceived of the course in response to the American studies program's relaxation of its literature requirement. The two hoped an introductory course would be another way to interest freshmen in American literature and in the English major. A committee of faculty who teach American literature arrived at a syllabus that includes such well-known names as Melville, Twain, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Dickinson, but also some lesser known and more contemporary writers. "There is, of course, a debate between teaching the canon and a multicultural view," says Dillon. "But in some ways, we tried to do both." So while the syllabus includes classics such as Moby Dick and Absalom! Absalom!, they are taught alongside less canonical texts such as Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife or Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker.

"We see the American canon as a living thing, rather than a static list of great works," says Hungerford. "The course shows how it is constantly being engaged and transformed by writers across the centuries, up to the present moment."

Housing Suit Is Rejected Again

Only one of the five Orthodox Jewish students who sued the University over its housing policies in 1997 is still at Yale, but their lawsuit has lived on in federal court: In December, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's dismissal of the suit. The two-judge majority argued that if the students "were dissatisfied with the Yale parietal rules, they could matriculate elsewhere."

The students argued that Yale's policy requiring freshman and sophomores to accept on-campus housing -- where separation of the sexes is not rigorously enforced -- forced them either to violate a Jewish law requiring modesty between the sexes or to pay for rooms they did not use. While none of the students are still subject to the policy, they have continued their legal battle in hopes that the court would rule in their favor and order Yale to reimburse them for the on-campus housing they never occupied.

The suit raised three types of claims against the University: religious discrimination, violation of antitrust law, and violation of the Fair Housing Act. While all three Court of Appeals judges rejected the first two arguments, one judge issued a dissenting opinion on the Fair Housing Act claim, disagreeing with the majority's view that "because the plaintiffs seek exclusion from housing and not inclusion, they do not state an FHA claim." Nathan Lewin, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press that he might ask the court to reconsider its decision.

Thespians Get New Place to Play

Alumni who remember trying to mount theatrical productions in Yale dining halls -- and those who remember trying to eat around the sets -- will surely cheer the premiere of the University's new undergraduate theater space. Christened the "Off-Broadway Theater" because of its location along the walkway behind Broadway, the 2,500-square-foot theater provides a new venue for some of the scores of performing-arts events produced every year by Yale students.

The theater, which can accommodate 150 to 175 people, is a flexible open space with a lighting grid, dressing rooms, and storage. Since it opened on November 30 with a production of Peter Nichols's Passion Play, the theater has been in use every week that the College has been in session.

Jim Brezcynski, who oversees the theater and other performance spaces for the Yale College Dean's Office, says the space is "available to any undergraduate for any kind of event they want to do." Proposals to use the space are reviewed by a student committee chaired by Brezcynski.

In addition to providing a sorely needed theatrical venue, the new theater -- which occupies the former Yale Co-op textbook annex -- will help enliven the Broadway area, says vice president for New Haven and state affairs Bruce Alexander, who is overseeing the Broadway redevelopment. The inclusion of office and work space for Yale student organizations above the new retail buildings on Broadway, he says, will also put more pedestrian traffic in the area.

Surprising Link to Parkinson's

Physicians have long known that the hormone estrogen helps protect premenopausal women against both heart disease and the loss of bone density known as osteoporosis, but a recent study by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine has shown that estrogen may also help prevent the development of Parkinson's disease. This condition, characterized by a steady decline in the ability to move, is the result of the death of brain cells responsible for secreting dopamine, a chemical called a neurotransmitter that is critical for nerves and muscles to work together.

Parkinson's disease affects about 1.5 million adults in the United States, and scientists have wondered why men tend to develop the crippling ailment earlier than women. According to a study that appeared in the December issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the answer may well be hormonal.

The investigators showed that when they removed the ovaries, the primary source of estrogen, from a group of monkeys, the number of dopamine-secreting neurons in a key part of the brain called the substantia nigra declined by more than 30 percent. "The cell loss occurs rapidly within 30 days," says D. Eugene Redmond, professor of psychiatry and neurosurgery. "But if we give the animals supplemental estrogen within ten days of the surgery, the neurons are kept alive."

Nobody knows precisely how estrogen protects brain cells, and while Redmond is confident that the process the researchers observed in monkeys, who have human-like menstrual cycles, is also occurring in humans, he is reluctant to turn the study into a clinical recommendation. "Unfortunately, estrogen has a number of undesirable properties," he says.

Males, who typically make small amounts of the hormone, may develop breasts and other female sex characteristics if they're given supplemental estrogen. Among women, supplementation after menopause has been associated with an increased risk of cancer.

"There are risks that will have to be balanced against benefits," says Redmond.

Family Claims Painting at Yale

The descendants of a Jewish woman who fled Berlin in 1938 have claimed that a painting in the Yale University Art Gallery is rightfully theirs, raising questions not only about the painting itself -- Gustave Courbet's Le Grand Pont -- but also about the past of the collector who has loaned it and 47 other paintings to Yale.

European collector Herbert Schaefer placed Le Grand Pont and the other paintings on loan to the Gallery in 1981 at the urging of a Munich art dealer and Yale alumnus. Schaefer's collection includes a number of Dutch and Flemish works that helped to fill a gap in Yale's holdings; these formed the basis for an exhibition titled "Saints, Sinners, and Scenery" in 1998.

But last October, three descendants of Josephine Weinmann made a formal claim of ownership to the Gallery, saying that Weinmann had bought the painting at auction in 1935 and later left the country without it. The descendants say she was never compensated.

The claim inspired the Boston Globe to investigate Schaefer's background, and in January the newspaper reported that Schaefer was a Nazi storm trooper in the early 1930s and a member of the Nazi party during the war. Schaefer confirmed this information to the Globe, but insisted that he had acquired the painting legally.

Art Gallery director Jock Reynolds says that the Gallery is investigating the painting's provenance and will make its findings public when they are complete. Meanwhile, the painting will continue to be on display in the Gallery's European paintings collection.

Alums Coming Home in April

At least one former president of the United States will be on campus for next month's "Alumni Leadership Reunion," the second of three major events planned for Yale's Tercentennial. George Bush '48 will be among the estimated 1,200 alumni in attendance over the weekend of April 19-22.

The weekend will include some 50 separate events, including lectures, panel discussions, a Woolsey Hall concert, and a gala dinner in the Lanman Center at Payne Whitney Gymnasium. The University has invited 2,000 graduates who are active in alumni affairs to attend. Among them will be the delegates to the spring AYA Assembly, which carries the theme "300 Years of Creativity and Discovery."

In addition to former president Bush, who will address attendees on Saturday, "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau '70, former treasury secretary Robert Rubin '64LLB, author Tom Wolfe '57PhD, and playwrights Christopher Durang '74MFA and Wendy Wasserstein '76MFA will participate in the weekend's events.

Unlike the October campus- wide open house that kicked off the Tercentennial, the April activities will not be open to the public. The third and final major weekend of the yearlong celebration will be an academic convocation and evening of entertainment on the weekend of October 5-6.

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