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Light & Verity
May
2001
Yale,
Drug Maker Loosen Rein on AIDS Drug in Africa
After
a concerted campaign by student activists and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning
group Doctors
Without Borders, Yale and Bristol-Myers Squibb on March 14 agreed
to change the licensing arrangement for a key anti-HIV drug and
make it available at low cost throughout Africa, the continent hardest
hit by the AIDS epidemic.
At
least 34 million people around the world are infected with the virus
that causes AIDS, and more of them live in South Africa -- an estimated
4.7 million -- than in any other country. But while new medications
now enable HIV-positive men and women to live longer and more normal
lives (there is no cure), the high cost of these drugs -- estimated
at $10,000 per year -- has put them out of reach of most South Africans
and residents of other Third World countries.
Yale
holds the patent to one of these drugs, which it licensed in 1988
to Bristol-Myers Squibb. The medication, marketed under the trade
name Zerit, earned
the University some $40 million in royalties last year. During March,
however, both the licensing agreement and the profits came under
international scrutiny when Doctors Without Borders asked the University
to relax its patent rights and enable a cheaper generic version
of the drug to be made available in South Africa. In its reply,
Yale administrators expressed agreement with the group's goal but
noted that the license precluded its ability to do much of anything.
Faced with growing protests by students and faculty, as well as
a groundswell of public criticism, the University and BMS came up
with a plan to make Zerit available for the below-cost price of
15 cents per day. "This is not about profits and patents; it's about
poverty and a devastating disease," said BMS executive vice president
John L. McGoldrick, who explained that Yale and the drug company
also agreed to make the patent available at no cost to treat AIDS
in South Africa.
"I'm
very, very happy about this decision," says William Prusoff, the
80-year-old Yale pharmacologist who codiscovered the drug's anti-HIV
properties in the mid 1980s and expresses no regrets about any potential
loss of personal income from the new arrangement. "I hope other
pharmaceutical companies follow suit," he says.
Professor
Has Tenure Revoked
President
Richard Levin announced in March that he is revoking the tenure
of geology and geophysics professor Antonio Lasaga and terminating
Lasaga's employment at Yale. But the Yale Corporation will have
the last word on the subject.
Levin
said he was acting on the recommendation of a University Tribunal
Panel chaired by chemistry professor Sidney Altman. Lasaga
has been on leave since 1998, when he was arrested for sexual
assault and possession of child pornography. He pleaded guilty to
the federal pornography charges; the Connecticut charges that he
molested a 13-year-old boy are still pending.
Lasaga
has informed Levin that he will appeal the decision on his status
to the Yale Corporation. The tribunal -- and a faculty member's
right to appeal its recommendation -- are part of a process created
in 1969 to deal with serious misconduct. The five-member, University-wide
tribunal had never met before the Lasaga case.
Lasaga's
sentencing in the pornography case is being delayed while the judge entertains a request by Lasaga's lawyers to drop one of the charges.
The judge is waiting to see how an appeals court rules on a similar
case before making his decision. If the charge is not dropped, the
former Saybrook College master could face up to 15 years in prison.
An
Old Gallery Regains Its Roots
In July
1999, the University
Art Gallery's popular collections of American paintings, sculpture,
and decorative arts went behind closed doors. But when the third-floor
galleries of Americana reopened on March 24, viewers were treated
to more than a handsome renovation and a reconfiguration of familiar
images and objects from the 18th century to the present.
"We've
returned the building to a sense of its original grandeur," says
Helen Cooper, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings
and Sculpture. The "Old Art Gallery," as the structure, completed
in 1928, is known, was designed by architect Edgerton Swartwout,
Class of 1891. Swartwout modeled it after a Gothic palace in Viterbo,
Italy, and he outfitted the space with columns, graceful wall and
ceiling arches called pendentives, and dramatic skylights. But over
the years, many of the details had either been hidden behind false
walls or deliberately obscured under coats of paint.
The
result of the renovation effort, which was funded by the University
and by private donors, is an open and airy main gallery off which
are arranged a series of rooms that display, period by period, the
holdings of the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. In a landmark 1973
installation by art historian Charles Montgomery, the furniture,
sterling silver, and other material had been grouped together in
a way that mirrored his course in the American decorative arts.
"Scholarship has changed since then, and we're now looking at regions
of the country besides those on the Atlantic seacoast," explains
Patricia Kane, the Art Gallery's decorative arts curator. "The new
arrangement accords with the way a survey course would now be taught."
The
transformed building also includes the "Matrix" gallery -- a space
for small exhibitions (the current one highlights the design work
of Yale alumni) -- and a refurbished Trumbull gallery in which the
red walls and green upholstered furniture match the colors of the
original space that opened in 1832. Visitors are no longer charged
25 cents to view the paintings displayed in the nation's first university
art museum, but, as a broadside advertising the Trumbull collection
notes, they are still asked to leave their whips at the door.
Yale,
Playwright Bury the Hatchet
Four
years ago, the only thing Yale seemed likely to get from Larry Kramer
'57 was his contempt. Negotiations over a bequest by Kramer to the
University had broken down, and he publicly accused Yale of homophobia.
But just last month, the University announced that Kramer had agreed
to give his papers to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
and that his brother, Arthur Kramer '49, '53LLB, is giving $1 million
for a Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Kramer's
1985 play The Normal Heart is considered a classic, and he
has also written screenplays, novels, and essays. In addition to
his writing, Kramer founded the advocacy groups Gay
Men's Health Crisis and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
(ACT UP). Provost Alison Richard
said Yale is "thrilled" to house the papers of "one of the most
creative, catalytic, and controversial figured of late-20th- century
American life." The gift from Arthur Kramer will support research
and teaching in lesbian and gay studies.
Earlier
talks between Yale and Kramer had centered on a bequest in the range
of $4 million, with which Kramer wanted the University to create endowed professorships in lesbian and gay studies. Yale balked,
arguing that the field was too new to justify such a permanent commitment,
and Kramer withdrew the offer.
But
in the intervening years, Kramer says, people associated with Yale
have convinced him that Yale is committed to lesbian and gay studies.
Kramer says that he still may put Yale in his will. "He's taking
a wait-and-see attitude, and that wait-and-see has to do with how
Yale handles this initiative," says Marianne LaFrance, a professor
of women and gender studies.
Alumni
Chorus Trots the Globe
Lest
anyone think the University has forgotten its debt to Elihu Yale,
some 250 singing alumni and their guests will spend the Fourth of
July in Wrexham, Wales, paying tribute to the College benefactor
who is buried there. The Wrexham event is one stop on a 16-day tour
by the Yale
Alumni Chorus.
After
visiting Russia, where they will perform with the Marinsky Orchestra
in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in Moscow, the
chorus will open the Llangollen
International Musical Eisteddfod in Wales on July 3. The next
day, the delegation will take part in a memorial service for Elihu
Yale at St. Giles's Church in Wrexham, after which they will host
an American-style "Interdependence Day" picnic for Wrexham residents.
The chorus will finish the tour with a July 6 performance at St.
Paul's Cathedral in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
The
Alumni Chorus, a group of Glee Club alumni, was formed in 1998 for
a tour of China, where the group won first prize at the International
Chorus Festival in Beijing. With singers from the Class of 1936
to the Class of 1999, the group includes a men's chorus consisting
of singers from Yale's all-male days, a mixed chorus of post-1970
alumni, and a large combined chorus that includes spouses and guests.
The groups are conducted by David Connell '91DMA, director of the
Glee Club.
Senator
Clinton For Class Day
The
undergraduates who are charged with finding a speaker for Class
Day have an unenviable job: finding a suitably prominent person
who is willing to speak for free -- without the lure of an honorary
degree -- and who meets with the approval of a class with as many
opinions as mortar boards. This year's committee met the first criterion
in its selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton '73JD. In March, the
New York senator and former first lady accepted the committee's invitation to speak
at the traditional pre-Commencement event for seniors and their
families on May 20. But a small group of conservative students is
circulating a petition urging the committee to change its mind;
the signers say that they will boycott her address.
Petition
organizer Daniel Mindus '01, who writes for the Yale
Free Press, a conservative student monthly, says his objection
is that the choice of Clinton is divisive. "The Class Day speaker
should be someone who doesn't engender the ire of approximately
20 percent of the graduating class," says Mindus, who adds that
he would oppose the selection of conservative U.S. attorney general
John Ashcroft '64 for the same reason.
Class
Day co-chair Addisu Demissie '01 says regardless of the petition,
"the probability is virtually zero that the speaker will be changed.
We went into this knowing we couldn't please everyone, but I feel
like we have at least pleased the majority."
Yale
Spouse To Lead Harvard
After
a search process that drew national attention, Harvard University
announced in March that its new president will be Lawrence Summers,
an economist and former U.S. secretary of the treasury. While Summers
received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his doctorate from
Harvard, there will be an Eli presence in the president's house
when he takes office in the summer: His wife, Victoria Perry Summers,
got her B.A. from Yale College in 1978. (Her Cantabridgian credentials
are sufficient, too, however: She got her law degree from Harvard
in 1982.) Ms. Summers, a tax attorney, has worked for the
International Monetary Fund for the past eight years.
But
Ms. Summers is not the only connection the Harvard president has
to Yale. He was born in New Haven in 1954, when his father was teaching economics at the University.
Web
Surfing In the Sunshine
Students,
faculty, and administrators split between a desire to soak up the
springtime sun and a need to access files on the Internet are now
able to practice a new kind of multitasking. Thanks to a donation
by Norman Selby '74 and Melissa Vail '74, the University is creating
wireless access to the campus network system in a variety of locations,
including the dining halls, courtyards, and other public gathering
places in Berkeley and Calhoun colleges, as well as in the Sterling
and Cross Campus libraries, the computer science and engineering
departments, and, for sun worshippers, on the Cross Campus lawn.
"The
idea is to provide coverage where a wired connection is not possible,"
says Joseph Paolillo, the director of data network operations, the
division of Yale's information technology services department overseeing
the project, which started in January and may run through the fall
semester.
Paolillo explains that while wireless access has been technically feasible
for a number of years, the slow speed and unreliability of the connections,
to say nothing of the expense of the hardware, has limited its appeal.
But in the past 12 to 18 months, rapid improvements in technology
have made this method of linking to the campus network via radio
waves similar in quality to its wired counterpart. The cost has
dropped as well: The add-on "card" required to retrofit a laptop
can be had for as little as $100, and many of the newer laptop models
already come equipped for sending and receiving data through wireless
connections.
The
donation from Selby and Vail covers both the smoke detector-sized
transmitters and up to 300 cards that can be borrowed for the semester
by Berkeley and Calhoun students and faculty. To date, there have
been about 100 participants in the pilot.
"Based
on what we've seen, there's a strong wish to want to be connected, even when people are not at their desks or in their rooms," says
Paolillo. "The demand for this is potentially explosive."
Women's
Lacrosse Shines on New Turf
The
spring in the step of Bulldog women's
lacrosse players of late is not just from the artificial turf
of their new field (though that hasn't hurt). In its 25th anniversary
season, Yale's team went undefeated for its first eight games. Most
impressive, on March 24 the team -- then ranked 15th nationally -- upset No. 12 Dartmouth for the first time in ten years, giving
coach Amanda O'Leary her first win against the Big Green. A week
later, they eked out a 10-9 win over Harvard in Cambridge with a
last-second goal by Katherine Myers' 01, moving the team up to eighth
in the national rankings.
O'Leary
attributes the team's success to the presence of five seniors on
the 12-woman starting lineup. "They're great leaders, and they lead
in different ways," says O'Leary. "Some are vocal, and some lead
by example. I don't think I've had such a cohesive group in the
time I've been here."
And
O'Leary has had her share of success in her eight years at Yale:
She has never had a losing season, and her worst season record was
a more than respectable 10-5. But just as they had never beaten
Dartmouth, none of O'Leary's teams has ever won an Ivy championship,
a title that confers an automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs. This
year could be the one, but the Bulldogs were going to have to get
past Princeton (third in the nation) and Cornell (14th).
Lacrosse
is a growing sport. While it is still predominantly an East Coast
phenomenon, it has spread from the fields of private prep schools
to suburban public schools: Half of this year's Yale squad went
to public schools.
Recruiting
those players will be easier, says O'Leary, thanks to Yale's new
Johnson Field, a 750-seat stadium with artifical turf that will
be used by the lacrosse and field hockey teams. Unlike grass, the
surface can be used for practice even in winter, which means the
team has been able to practice outdoors since February 1; in past
years, they would have practiced in Coxe Cage until spring. O'Leary
says practicing outside helps prepare the team better for game conditions.
Also, she says, artificial turf makes for "a much faster and cleaner
game, because the ball bounces more, and more predictably than on
grass." The surface is well suited to Yale's style of play, she
adds: "I'm not sure we'd be ninth in the country without the new
field."  |
