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:

"The Johnson trial was very similar. There was a bigger Republican majority, and Johnson didn't have a 63 percent approval rating. But the Senate came close to cracking for similar reasons. There was a sense that the partisans in the House were overstepping, and the Republicans in the Senate divided. I don't expect this one to be quite that close."

--Joel Silbey, the President White Professor in History, commenting on similarities between the Clinton impeachment trial and that of President Andrew Johnson, where Johnson escaped conviction by one vote, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 10.

"The standard neoclassical view that people make rational trade-offs between present and future and that we're saving the amount that best suits our purpose is obviously wrong."

--Robert Frank, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics and Public Policy, discussing Americans' savings rate, in The New York Times, Dec. 21.

"I'm not defending the things Pinochet did; I think some of the things he did were terrible. But there are people in Russia, there are people in China, there are people in South Africa who have done many worse things on a much larger scale, and people aren't saying 'Let's reach into those countries, grab them out and put them on trial.' I think this is the equivalent of assassinating a foreign leader."

--Jeremy Rabkin, associate professor of government, discussing the possible extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from Britain to Spain on war crimes charges, on the PBS News Hour, Dec. 2.

"This is an era when strikes don't work very well. Strikes have a chance where unions have bargaining power, and the unions that have a lot of bargaining power nowadays are those with skilled workers who are very difficult to replace."

--Richard Hurd, professor of labor relations, discussing power bargaining in The New York Times, Nov. 22

"Sometimes Peter Rabbit [Saidla's poodle] seems like he has a soul. But when he dies, my best bet is he will turn to dust. I don't think there will be a life after death for him. But then, I'm not so sure about myself, either."

--John Saidla, director of continuing education at the College of Veterinary Medicine, discussing whether animals have souls, in the Orange County Register, Nov. 13.

"The worst disservice to the research community by the current system of commercial scholarly publishing is that it dooms scholarly research to reach a shrinking audience as commercial publishers profit from the artificial scarcity enforced by high prices. The greatest rewards for universities in creating a new system of scholarly communication are in the potential for increased support based on increased awareness of the intellectual products of the universities."

-- Brendan J. Wyly, senior assistant librarian for the Johnson Graduate School of Management, in an article analyzing the profits of several publishers of scholarly journals in the October 1998 newsletter of the Association of Research Libraries, a special issue on journals. The article is online at http://www.arl.org/newsltr/200/wyly.html.