Soundbites

Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:

"Clearly these conversations should have been disclosed. His whole role is meant to have the utmost impartiality, but here he has had talks with someone who is suing the object of his subsequent investigation."

--Charles Wolfram, interim dean and professor in the Law School, discussing legal ethics in a news article disclosing that before he was appointed Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth Starr assisted a lawyer representing Paula Jones in her sexual misconduct lawsuit against President Clinton, in The New York Times, Oct. 15.

"It is a consummate irony that the child the Clintons worked so conscientiously to protect is now undermined by her father's sexual behavior. I hope Chelsea has the good sense to stay focused on the reading she needs to do for her courses at Stanford rather than immerse herself in the tawdry details of the Starr report. And I also hope she can internalize the fact that many Americans wish this was not happening to her or to us."

--Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of human development, discussing the effect of President Clinton's sex scandals on the first daughter, Chelsea Clinton, in an op-ed in The Boston Globe, Oct. 13.

"[College students are] willing to overlook the sexual details.... they focus more on the political and legal problems that will result if Clinton doesn't resign."

--Kevin Yamamura, editor in chief of the Cornell Daily Sun, explaining the newspaper's call for Clinton's resignation, in USA Today, Oct. 5.

"I wanted to celebrate him as a Renaissance man, maybe one of the last we will witness."

--Gavriel Shapiro, chair of the Department of Russian Literature and director of the Nabokov Centenary Festival at Cornell, talking about Vladimir Nabokov in The New York Times, Sept. 15.

"Taino is part of our cultures, but we've never been allowed to go there."

--Jose Barreiro, editor of the American Indian Program's Akwe:kon Press, commenting on rural areas in the Caribbean where Taino culture may survive, in the New Orleans Times-Picayne, Sept. 13.

"East Asia's economic problems are principally international in origin. The national solutions that are being proposed -- and imposed -- are misguided and politically dangerous. Failure to recognize this will serve solely to contribute to greater upheavals in the future."

--Jonathan Kirshner, assistant professor of government, commenting on the global economy and policies of the International Monetary Fund, in The Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13.

"I want to make products and make money. A lot of the things done here take five years to get out of the labs or never make it into the marketplace at all."

--Anit Agarwal, a Cornell student participating in an IBM-sponsored meeting at its research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., which brought together researchers, executives and summer interns to brainstorm about new technology and the marketplace, in The New York Times, July 13.