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Professors-at-large grow by 5; Cleese term is extended

By Franklin Crawford

Five new Cornell Andrew Dickson White professors-at-large have been appointed to six-year terms -- and comedian/actor/author John Cleese will be back by popular demand.

Cleese

Behrends

Cleese's term as an A.D. White professor-at-large has been extended for two years to 2006. Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology and Cleese's faculty host, requested the extension.

"In my 25 years here, I have not seen any visitor give as much to the Cornell community as Professor Cleese has done," Ceci said. "During each of his visits, he has tried, valiantly I think, to reach out to different constituencies, from undergraduate residents, to graduate students, to faculty from all areas of campus. How could we let him get away?"

Cornell's A.D. White program has gotten off to an early start this semester. Dr. Oliver Sacks, noted author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, has returned to campus and will give a public talk tonight, "Creativity and the Brain," to a capacity crowd in Statler Auditorium. All of the free tickets have been distributed.

A.D. White Professor-at-Large Okko Behrends has been spending the second week of his first campus visit in the Department of Classics. Behrends gave presentations at the Law School last week, and he will deliver a talk titled "The Author of the Classical Roman Law," Friday, Sept. 3, at 4:30 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. That talk also is free and open to the public.

Behrends holds the Roman Law, Civil Law and the History of Modern Private Law Chair at the University of Göttingen, Germany. His range of expertise extends from the origins of Roman law in the early Roman Republic to the current German constitution, and his work also deals with Greek -- especially Hellenistic -- philosophy, said Hunter Rawlings, Cornell president emeritus and professor of classics.

"His scholarship is marked by a blending of realia -- laws and legal procedure -- with the philosophical arguments that support or challenge them," Rawlings said.

Behrends' expertise also extends to aspects of ancient life such as surveying land and legal rights, the quartering system, defeated non-citizen barbarians, mercenaries, grave robbery and tomb desecration.

The addition of five new A.D. White professors brings the total number of appointees to 19. The new professors-at-large are:

  • David Aldous, professor of statistics at the University of California-Berkeley, whose interests are in discrete probability and its applications to the theory of algorithms; random combinatorial objects, random walks, and probability models in physics and biology.

  • Lynn Hershman Leeson, artist and professor of technocultural studies at the University of California-Davis and author of Clicking In, Hotlinks to a Digital Culture, published by Bay Press.

  • Charles Peskin, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and member of the Center for Neural Science, at New York University.

  • Osvaldo Sala, professor in the Department of Ecology, School of Agronomy, University of Buenos Aires. Sala is an international leader in both ecological science and global environmental policy.

  • Bassam Tibi, director of the Center for International Affairs at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Tibi is an international relations expert on modern Islam, Arab nationalism, democracy and religion, and the multifaceted challenges of globalization confronting both Islam and Europe.

    For more information about the A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program and its participants, contact Gerri Jones at 255-0832.

    Read about the program's new director, Michele Moody-Adams.

    September 2, 2004

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