YAM March 2002

Previous Columns

February 2002 The Times's literary gatekeeper; James Jeffords, the Shah's heir . . .

December 2001 Donald Cohen remembered; Judy Blume visits; a "hero" is honored.

November 2001 New Drama dean; Hart and Coffin discuss September 11.

October 2001 A royal shutterbug; Venus shines; Bobby Seale finally sees Yale; rhythm and blues on the Green.

Summer 2001 Beltway veteran, Survivor champ; new master.

May 2001 New dean for Divinity; plus-size model; lone bowlers; a psychologist for Morse.

April 2001 Sandra Boynton '74 on chickens, pigs, and Yale.

February 2001 A pianist's guide to life; candidate Schiavone; farewell to a hero on and off the field.

December 2000 Tom Wolfe on grad school; Ernest Borgnine on acting.

November 2000 The business brain behind the Palm Pilot; a zipless tea with Erica Jong.

October 2000 Goodbye to Larry Kelley; the alumni elect a fellow; Levin at the plate; Bloom v. Potter.

Faces
March 2002

For nearly 20 years, Margaret Holloway '80MFA has been known to campus denizens as the "Shakespeare lady" who recites lines of Shakespeare or Chaucer for spare change. Holloway's story has now been told in a short documentary, "God Didn't Give Me A Week's Notice," which premiered at the York Square Cinema in December. Holloway graduated from Bennington College and the Yale School of Drama before falling victim to schizophrenia and becoming homeless. The film was made by Richard Dailey, who knew Holloway at Bennington.

Charles Spencer, the brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, came to the Center for British Art in January for the opening of the BAC's exhibition "Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II." The ninth Earl Spencer lent several paintings from Althorp, his family home, to the exhibit, which was first mounted at the National Portrait Gallery in London. "This is pretty much the first time they've been out of the house since the 1680s," said Spencer of the paintings.

Sopranos fans take note: Lorraine Bracco, who plays mob boss Tony Soprano's psychiatrist on the HBO television series, was given a Berkeley College paperweight at a master's tea on January 29 and vowed to put it on Dr. Melfi's desk in an upcoming episode. Bracco, who appeared with Sopranos producer Ilene Landres at the tea, warned students that acting is a hard life. "If you're interested in anything else in life," she said, "don't take up acting."

Clarkson University professor Christina Hoff Sommers argued in favor of the resolution "Women's studies is not a legitimate academic discipline" at a Yale Political Union debate on January 28. "If you took 13 of these courses, you'd have to be deprogrammed," said Sommers, referring to the offerings in Yale's women's and gender studies program. Sommers has criticized orthodox feminism in her books The War Against Boys and Who Stole Feminism?, calling for "equality feminism," rather than "victim feminism."

Among the 18 members of the President's Council on Bioethics named by George W. Bush in January is Stephen Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at the Law School. The Council is charged with exploring the ethics of human cloning for making genetic replicas of people and for creating potentially useful stem cells. Carter has written a number of books on race, religion, and social issues.

Sterling Professor Emeritus of English Louis Martz, an expert on 17th-century poetry and a leader of Yale's legendary postwar English department, died on December 18 at the age of 88. Martz earned his PhD at Yale in 1939 and joined the faculty that same year, teaching at Yale until his retirement in 1984. Among his other academic projects, he chaired the Yale University Press's publication of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Stuart, and five children.

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Cyrus Vance '39, '42LLB was the consummate negotiator, called in by U.S. presidents to help resolve sticky issues. Vance, who died on January 12 at the age of 84, represented president Lyndon Johnson at the Paris Peace Talks in 1968, went to Detroit in 1967 when riots broke out there, and in that same year helped Greece and Turkey avoid a war over Cyprus.

As secretary of the Army under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and as president Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, he epitomized the patrician, Ivy-bred public servant. A native of West Virginia, Vance attended the Kent School, then came to Yale, where he played hockey and was elected to Scroll and Key. After graduating from Yale College and the Law School, he served in the Navy in World War II. When he wasn't in government, he was an attorney with the firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett.

Vance was a fellow of the Yale Corporation beginning in 1968. He was later named a successor trustee, a post he held until 1987 (with a two-year interruption during his tenure as secretary of state). He helped to found the School of Management, and he tried unsuccessfully to convince the city of New Haven to allow the University to build two new residential colleges in 1973.

It was as secretary of state that Vance faced a moment of crisis, resigning over the Carter administration's plan to rescue the American hostages in Iran (which proved unsuccessful).

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