Keeping Track

Keeping Track is an occasional feature of The Harvard Crimson containing short items of interest about the city and the University. Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

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The youngest person ever to serve as a trustee at Brandeis University University is Michael J. Sandel, assistant professor of Government, who was recently elected to a five-year term at the ripe young age of 28.

The 1975 summa cum laude graduate of Brandeis and former Rhodes scholar sees no conflict between his new duties with the Waltham, Mass., school and his teaching responsibilities at Harvard.

"As a trustee," he said recently, "seeing the university whole will give a better understanding of the role of the faculty. The two responsibilities will be mutually supporting."

Sandel, a former journalist who teaches Gov 1070, "Ideas and Institutions in American Politics," also believes his youth Americal Politics," also believes his youth will help rather than hinder him as a trustee. Young people, he said, "remember more acutely the experiences of students."

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Well, it seems that Bobby Ray Inman, that good ole boy who became America's second-ranking intelligence official, isn't coming to Harvard so soon after all. The former head of the National Security Agency and current deputy director for Central Intelligence, has sent his regrets to planners of a joint Center for International Affairs/Center for Science and International Affairs seminar scheduled for this Wednesday at Coolidge Hall.

Inman's reason: his boss, William Casey, will be out of town, and Inman has to mind the store.

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Flattery Will Get You Nowhere Dept.: Dean Fox, speaking to a biennial admissions conference last week, noted that Harvard hasn't really changed that much over the years--'The Crimson still puts out the same miserably misleading newspaper every day."

Expect Sundays, that is.

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Stephen Drury '77, a non-resident music tutor in Adams House, recently won $3000 and a third-place finish in an international piano contest in New York City.

A native of Spokane, Washington, Drury, 26 years old, captured the show position in the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored "International American Music Competitions" by surviving three months of preliminary contests and outlasting 70 other aspirants to reach the three-man finals before an audience of 700 at Carnegie Hall on September 27.

Though he didn't get the top spot Drury seemed satisfied with his performance, which included Ives' "Concord Sonata" and Lew Karchin's "Fantasy II."

"I think I was playing about as well as I can play at this point," he said last week. "Technically, I brought off everything I could have."

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Career Opportunity: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts informs us via press release, that the state internship office still has 400 (count 'em, 400) volunteer positions currently on file. "There is still time for anyone seeking an internship for the fall," assures Peggy Tierney, education specialist for the internship office, in the October 9 press release.

And she adds: "Now that everyone's schedule is in order for the fall, an internship is in order for the fall, an internship is an excellent way to fill spare time productivity."

Those interested in the internships, which require ten to 15 hours weekly, may call the State House at 727-8688.

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Two comments on the death of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat come from Radcliffe officials who met the late leader.

Sadat, said President Horner in a statement released the day after the October 6 assassination, "was a man of principle who had the courage to stand up for what he believed in."

Horner, who visited Egypt in 1978, said she was "shocked by the violence of his death and mourn[s] the loss of a world leader in search of peace."

Now director of the Bunting Institute, Margaret McKenna met Sadat while a deputy counsel to former president Jimmy Carter.

"I first learned that President Sadat had been killed when I saw the news on the marquee at Harvard Square," she said. "My first thought was for the problems that his death will mean for peace in the world. But my second thought was about what a warm and human person he had been. He really went out of his way to know people. He was a very caring and concerned human being."

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Another person who had his mark in Mid-East affairs, former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, visited Harvard last week for a faculty luncheon at the Center for Jewish Studies.

In an interview with The Gazette, Rabin criticized statements by former U.S. presidents Ford and Carter urging direct talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and chided the Reagan administration for not doing all it could to further the negotiations between Egypt and Israel aimed at establishing autonomy for West Bank Palestinians.

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Reliable sources tell Keeping Track that Science A-20, "From Alchemy to Elementary Physics," recently moved to Saunders Theater after smaller sites were jammed with up to 500 students.

Instructor Sheldon L. Glashow, Higgins Professor's of Physics, attributed the popularity of his course (and "the presence of the football team") to his 1980 Nobel Prize of Physics, and the legendary 1.7 workload rating by the Curriculum Evaluation Guide.

Now, however, some of the gut-seekers have found the course's problem sets unexpectedly difficult, and complain that lectures don't cover all the problem set material, thus requiring outside reading or a strong physics background.

Teaching assistants in the course, which has higher enrollment than all but Soc Anal 10 this fall, disagree. "Just glancing over the problems, it seems to me that they don't require a hell of a lot of math," commented t.a. Jairam Lingappa.

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Celebrity Alert: Jane Pauley of the "Today Show" will speak to the Law School Forum Tuesday in Langdell hall South at 1:30 p.m. Admission is $1.50, with an informal question-and-answer session thrown in as a bonus.

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Another prominent speaker on the horizon: tonight the new head of NASA, James Beggs, will be in Science Center B for a speech sponsored by the Harvard Student Branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Harvard-Radcliffe Space Research Group.

Ask his if we're going to Halley's Comet or not.