Wes in the News

In a recent piece for The Huffington Post, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth shares a heartfelt story about the vote on Maine’s gay marriage initiative.

ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore ‘65 will deliver a presentation titled “The Psychologies of Global Warming” in Memorial Chapel at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3. Blakemore has been reporting on climate change for the last several years. His talk will include “examples displaying different ‘psychologies, as well as manmade global warming’s place in the long history of narcissistic insults to humanity itself.’”

Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth reviewed Daniel Goldhagen’s Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the the Ongoing Assault on Humanity recently for The San Francisco Chronicle. In the book, Goldhagen attempts to show that  “that genocide is an extension of the politics of ‘eliminationism,’ which is decisively shaped by political leaders and fueled by profound and widely shared hatred. However, Roth found Goldhagen simple-minded in many of his conclusions and proposed solutions.

Jed Hoyer ‘96 has been named general manager of the San Diego Padres. According to a piece in The San Diego Union Tribune, Hoyer, who had been the assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox, impressed the ownership of the MLB team immediately during his initial interview. In a separate story in the Union Tribune, Mark Woodworth ‘94, Wesleyan’s baseball coach and former teammate of Hoyer, is quoted at length about what Hoyer brings to the Padres. At the ceremony, the Padres owner gave Hoyer a Padres shirt with 11, the number Hoyer wore for Wesleyan, on the back. More background on Hoyer is available on the Athletics Website and in a feature about Hoyer in a 2006 issue of the Wesleyan Magazine.

“Emergency Response Studio” a mobile exhibit constructed in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2006 by Paul Villinski, reviewed recently by The New York Times, is on display outside the Ezra and Cecille Zilkha Gallery until Nov. 8. The exhibit began as a mobile studio that would allow Villinski to create art in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. It became a de facto piece of performance art in itself as Villinski’s built an environmentally friendly mobile living space for the same price as the mobile emergency trailers FEMA provided, and with none of the toxic side effects.

This semester, Wesleyan has begun offering a linked major program for Environmental Studies. Barry Chernoff, the Robert Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies, Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, professor of biology and director of the Environmental Studies Certificate Program, explained the new major to interested students during a recent campus event.

The linked major program is the second major to a primary major. Students must complete all the requirements for graduation from their primary major in addition to those of ENVS as their second major. The basic information about the program can be found here.

Wesleyan has been actively involved in monitoring all information and protocols provided by The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and State of Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH), and the City of Middletown, and we have been implementing the prescribed measures aimed at precaution and treatment with regards to the Wesleyan Community. The latest information from Wesleyan’s Health Services Department is available here.

Updates and new announcements will be linked in this space as they become available.

Versed, a new poetry collection by Rae Armantrout published by Wesleyan University Press, is a National Book Award Finalist.  There will be a reading of the Finalists’ work on Nov. 17 at The New School in New York City. On the following day, the winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony.

Former major league baseball player and current Wesleyan Football receivers coach Rico Brogna hopes to be coaching at the professional level soon – in baseball. But he is drawing leadership lessons from Wesleyan’s head football coach Frank Hauser in that quest.

Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth has a piece in The Huffington Post on the 100th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s only visit to the U.S. Freud came to New England 100 years ago this fall to deliver a series of lectures.