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Student interest in courses on Islam soared
after the September 11 attacks, says religious studies
professor Robert Gregg. And with the receipt
of $9 million to establish
a program and professorship in Islamic studies,
the University is better equipped to meet demand.
Atherton residents Sohaib
and Sara Abbasi donated $2.5 million for the
program, which Gregg will head, and Lysbeth
Warren, ’54,
endowed the professorship with a gift of $2
million. The Hewlett Foundation
matched both gifts.
When Yale and Stanford announced that
they would replace their early-decision admission
programs with single-choice early-action policies
last year, it seemed a trendsetting
compromise. Seniors could still apply to
one
school early, but were not bound to attend.
Admissions staff, in turn,
would not be overwhelmed by a deluge of
early applications. But by refusing to allow students
to apply early to multiple
schools, the policies violated the rules
of the National Association for College Admission
Counseling. Now,
the association
has announced that it will not sanction
Stanford, Yale or Harvard—which recently returned to
single-choice early action—and instead will launch
a two-year study to examine the entire admission process.
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While Roman emperors were hardly
known for their humility, Caligula may have
had the biggest God complex, according to findings
by archaeologists from Stanford, Oxford
and the American Institute for Roman
Culture. During a summer dig, the researchers unearthed
evidence supporting ancient
accounts that the emperor extended
his palace to the podium of the Temple
of Castor and
Pollux. “It’s the
equivalent of Queen Elizabeth taking
over St. Paul’s
Cathedral as an anteroom,” says assistant
classics professor Jennifer Trimble, who led the
Stanford team of three graduate and
nine undergraduate
students. “It’s
just outrageous.”
Everyone’s heard that bioterrorists
may be stockpiling anthrax and smallpox. But the
flu? Indeed, say Medical Center
researchers led by microbiology and
immunology professor Ann Arvin. Influenza has characteristics
that make it a possible
weapon—including efficient person-to-person
transmission, the potential to be aerosolized
and an ability
to cause incapacitating or life-threatening
illness. The team has received $15
million from the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases to study how
flu vaccines protect the
respiratory tract and
to improve them for use against a weaponized
form of the virus.
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