Category: International
October 8, 2010, 05:31 AM ET
Chinese Dissident, a Former Academic, Wins Nobel Peace Prize
A former literature faculty member at Beijing Normal University who has repeatedly pressured Chinese authorities as a human-rights activist, and who currently sits in a Chinese prison, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. Liu Xiaobo, who is 54, was recognized by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for "his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." Mr. Liu, the country's best-known dissident, won the prize, worth about $1.5-million, after two decades of writing essays and engaging in other peaceful work urging China to reform its authoritarian political system. He took part in the student-led Tiananmen Square protests, which were ruthlessly crushed by the Chinese government in 1989, and since then, blacklisted from academe, he has led efforts to push for free elections, freedom of expression, and other human rights, which the Nobel Committee said were...
Read MoreOctober 7, 2010, 07:32 AM ET
Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded this morning to Mario Vargas Llosa, the versatile Peruvian writer and politician, for what the Swedish Academy hailed as "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." Mr. Vargas Llosa, who is 74, will receive the award, worth about $1.5-million, at a ceremony in December. His prolific writings include plays, literary criticism, journalism, and more than a dozen novels, several of which have been turned into movies. An early admirer of communism and the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro, Mr. Vargas Llosa, whose papers are stored at Princeton University, has steadily moved to the right in the course of his life, in part in reaction to brutal leftist guerrilla movements that have plagued his country. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of Peru in 1990 and since then has...
Read MoreOctober 6, 2010, 06:13 AM ET
3 Scientists Share Nobel Prize for Creating Key Tool in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded this morning, like the physics prize yesterday, for pioneering work with carbon. The three organic chemists who won the chemistry prize -- Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki -- were honored for developing new, more efficient ways of linking together carbon atoms, which ordinarily are not readily reactive, to build more complex molecules. The prize, worth about $1.5-million, will be shared equally by Mr. Heck, 79, a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware; Mr. Negishi, 75, a professor at Purdue University; and Mr. Suzuki, 80, a professor emeritus at Hokkaido University, in Japan. The three men are being recognized for their development of palladium-catalyzed cross coupling, a technique that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences hailed as allowing scientists to create chemicals "as complex as those created by nature itself,"...
Read MoreOctober 5, 2010, 02:24 PM ET
American Council on Education Names Blue-Ribbon Panel on Internationalization
The American Council on Education has named 19 prominent leaders in education and international affairs to a blue-ribbon panel to explore issues related to universities' global engagement. The commission will be led by John E. Sexton, president of New York University and chair of the council's Board of Directors, and includes higher-education leaders from the United States and overseas. The group is expected to meet throughout the 2010-11 academic year and to make final recommendations on the council's approach to global issues next fall.
October 5, 2010, 06:08 AM ET
2 Physicists Win Nobel Prize for Work With Carbon Film a Single Atom Thick
Continuing a British sweep of this year's Nobel Prizes, two professors at the University of Manchester this morning were awarded the physics prize for what the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described as their "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene," a film of carbon just a single atom thick, with unusual and exciting properties for both studies in quantum physics and practical applications in consumer electronics.
The winners, Andre Geim, 51, and Konstantin Novoselov, 36, were born in Russia and worked together in the Netherlands before moving to Manchester. They will split the prize, worth about $1.5-million this year, which is to be presented at a ceremony in December. For Mr. Geim, at least, this is not the first Nobel recognition: In 2000 he was a recipient of an Ig Nobel Prize, an award presented by a science-humor magazine at Harvard...
Read MoreOctober 4, 2010, 05:15 AM ET
Indian Tycoon Gives $10-Million for Harvard's Humanities Center
Harvard University announced today that it had received a $10-million gift for its Humanities Center from an alumnus who is an Indian industrialist, Anand Mahindra. According to a Harvard press release, it's the largest donation for the humanities in university history and will further the indisciplinary work of the center, whose director, Homi K. Bhabha, is a periodic contributor to The Chronicle Review.
September 30, 2010, 05:09 PM ET
Georgetown U. Is Urged to Dismiss Former Colombian President as Visiting Scholar
More than 150 professors have signed a letter, delivered today to Georgetown University's president, seeking the removal of a former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, as a visiting scholar, according to the North American Congress on Latin America. The letter urges Georgetown's president, John J. DeGioia, to drop Mr. Uribe because of concerns about his administration's ties to human-rights violations and illegal organizations. Georgetown announced Mr. Uribe's appointment as a "distinguished scholar in the practice of global leadership" on August 11, just four days after the end of his two-term presidency.
September 27, 2010, 03:40 PM ET
6 U.S. Colleges Named to Build Study-Abroad Programs With Indonesia
Six American colleges have been selected as part of a pilot project to send their students to study in Indonesia and to better prepare institutions in that country to serve as hosts. As part of the U.S. Indonesia Partnership Program for Study Abroad Capacity, the American institutions -- Chatham, Lehigh, and Texas A&M Universities, Miami Dade College, and the Universities of Michigan and of Washington -- will each receive $15,000 to work with Indonesian counterparts to create new programs over the next two years that can serve as models for future student exchanges. The project is part of a broader effort to build closer academic ties between the two countries.
September 24, 2010, 09:00 AM ET
Linda Buck, Nobel Laureate, Withdraws 2 Additional Papers
For the second time in two years, a Nobel laureate, Linda B. Buck, has had to retract a published paper. Her two newest retractions, as well as one in 2008, all involved studies of the sense of smell in mice and all involved the same first author, Zhihua Zou, a postdoctoral researcher who carried out the experiments as part of Ms. Buck's group at Harvard Medical School. Ms. Buck is now at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, and the retracted material does not involve findings for which she shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
September 6, 2010, 09:17 PM ET
4 Academics to Receive Balzan Prizes for 2010
Four academics have been named as winners of the international Balzan Prizes for 2010. Each prize carries an award of 750,000 Swiss francs, or about $737,000, half of which must be used for research. The prizes are given in different fields of the humanities and sciences each year. This year's categories and the winner in each are as follows: European history from 1400 to 1700, Carlo Ginzburg of Italy's Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; the history of theater, Manfred Brauneck of the University of Hamburg; mathematics, Jacob Palis of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, in Brazil; and stem cells, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the University of California at San Francisco.
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