Columbia University appointed Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as its first female University Professor of color March 9. The most prestigious rank of professor at Columbia, only eleven professors are designated as University Professors; five are Nobel Laureates. Spivak's academic work covers Marxism, feminism, deconstruction and postcolonial theory. She is an activist for women's issues, ecological agriculture, and rural education in Asia, and has generated some controversy for appearing to justify Palestinian suicide bombings. Spivak was born in Calcutta, India, in 1942 and has taught at Columbia since 1991. She is currently the Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities and the director of the Center for Comparative Literature.
A group of students from the Tuck School of Business traveled to Spain this month to attend a program called Doing Business in the European Union. The one-week program was held in the Instito De Empresa Business School in Madrid and focused primarily on the differences in the political and economic climate between Spain and the United States. The students discussed the higher taxes and stricter regulations of Spain and how they affect business. Large Spanish multinational firms, such as banking corporation BBVA and the airline Iberia, visited to share their perspectives with the students. This fall, the Spanish students will attend a similar program in the United States through Tuck as part of the transatlantic exchange between the two business schools.
Dartmouth-affiliated corporation Mascoma Corp. received $4.9 million from the U.S. government for ethanol research. The grant is focused primarily on developing fermentative organisms that can convert cellulosic biomass such as grass and wood chips into ethanol, which can be used as a fuel to power cars. Mascoma was formed in January 2006 to create a cost-effective way to turn cellulosic biomass into ethanol, and conducts its research at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center. The grant was one of five worth $23 million given by the Department of Energy as part of the Bush Administration's initiative to reduce domestic gasoline use by 20 percent in 10 years.
