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Do you have some nagging questions about the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov problem? Are you curious about reproductive rights in Tanzania or Uruguay? Do you want to know more about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony? And is there the odd Poet Laureate you’d like to ask, “Have you ever seen a tree as lovely as a poem?” If so, CUNY is the place for you. New Distinguished Professors—the University’s highest academic rank—eminently equipped to help you out in these and several other fields of research have just been named.

Nine nationally and internationally renowned scholars in seven fields—Computer Science, History, English, French, Criminal Justice, Political Science, and Psychology— were appointed by the Board of Trustees at its June 25 meeting. Welcoming the action, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein said, “We are very pleased to recognize the extraordinary contributions of these dedicated scholars, writers and teachers. These appointments are illustrative of the significant achievements of CUNY's world-class faculty.”

Four of these leaders in their field were recruited from other institutions and will begin teaching this fall. The remaining five new D.P.’s are from within the University: two at the Graduate Center and one each from Brooklyn, Hunter, and Lehman Colleges.

The appointment of Lehman College professor of English Billy Collins was thoroughly upstaged by the news, which broke four days earlier, of his selection as the next Poet Laureate of the United States (see story, page 3). Collins’ popularity has soared over the last decade, with the appearance of eight collections. The much- sought-after poet has been a member of the Lehman College faculty since 1969. He earned a B.S. at Holy Cross College and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside.

James Fyfe, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is considered the nation’s leading scholar of the police, first coming to attention in the field as co-author of Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. Seven books written or co-written by him have since appeared. During a 16-year career he rose from patrolman to commanding officer in the NYPD. Fyfe arrives from his position as Professor of Criminal Justice and a Senior Public Policy Research Fellow at Temple University. He will be returning to his alma mater as a role model for his students, having earned his B.S. at John Jay. His M.A. and Ph.D in Criminal Justice are from SUNY, Albany. For his latest research project, a comprehensive study of dismissed police officers in New York City, he was allowed access to 20 years of NYPD records, a privilege seldom given to scholars.

The work of Hunter College political scientist Rosalind Petchesky on reproductive and sexual rights hasbrokennew ground and significantly impacted international public policy. On the Political Science and Women’s Studies faculty since 1987, Petchesky is the founder and international coordinator of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have cited her work, notably her first book, Abortion and Women’s Choice: The State, Sexuality and Reproductive Freedom. Petchesky has won many honors and awards including a MacArthur Foundation “genius award.” She earned her B.A. at Smith College and her M.A and Ph.D. at Columbia University. Previously, she taught at Bryn Mawr College, Ramapo College, Columbia University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Graduate Center historian David Nasaw is a leading exponent of American cultural history. His most recent work, The Chief, a biography of William Randolph Hearst, won the Bancroft Prize and the J. Anthony Lucas Prize. His 1993 study, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusement, is a major contribution to the history of recreation in America. Also the author of Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States and Children of the City: At Work and At Play, Nasaw has taught at the College of Staten Island since 1978 and served in the Graduate Center’s doctoral faculty since 1990 (he was also Executive Officer). Nasaw earned a B.A. from Bucknell University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Michael Cunningham, fiction writer and professor of English at Brooklyn College, is author of The Hours, whichwon the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999 and is being made into a film starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman. He has also penned A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood and numerous short stories. Cunningham has taught fiction writing in Columbia University’s M.F.A. program and this spring was the Donald I. Fine Professor in Creative Writing in Brooklyn College’s M.F.A. program. A graduate of Stanford University, he earned an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

Relinquishing an endowed chair at the University of Michigan in French to come to the Graduate Center is Domna C. Stanton, considered the preeminent scholar of her generation in 17th-century studies. Over nearly 30 years, Stanton has achieved prominence in early modern French studies, in women’s studies, in the human rights advocacy community, and in the Modern Language Association (she was the first female editor of PMLA). She is the author of seven influential books, her first, The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnête Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth- and Nineteenth- Century French Literature, and her newest, appearing this year, Women, Writ, Women Writing: Gendered Discourse and Difference in Seventeeth-Century France. She sits on the advisory committee to many women’s studies centers. Stanton has also taught at Rutgers University, Harvard University, Barnard College, and Columbia College.

Sergei N. Artemov, one of the world’s most influential researchers in the field of logic in computer science, has taught since 1984 at Moscow State University, where he founded and directed the renowned Local Problems of Computer Science Laboratory. Joining the Computer Science Program at the Graduate Center, Artemov was previously a Visiting Professor at Cornell’s Mathematical Sciences Institute. Among his most significant achievements are his solutions of both the Gödel and the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov problems. His mentor was Andrei Kolmogorov, the founder of modern probability theory, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Artemov has authored more than 80 research papers and served as editor of leading journals in his field. In mathematics, he earned a Diploma with Perfection from Moscow State University and a Ph.D. and Doctor of Sciences from the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Louis Menand, often described as a leading “public intellectual,” has taught in the Graduate Center’s Doctoral Program in English since 1993 (hitherto he taught at Queens College, Princeton, and Columbia). Menand also served for several years on The New Yorker staff as a writer and literary editor. His most recent book, The Metaphysical Club, has been enthusiastically received. It is the first of a projected three-volume intellectual history of America spanning the mid-19th through mid-20th centuries. Menand’s other books include Discovering Modernism: T.S. Eliot and his Context, The Future of Academic Freedom, and Pragmatism: A Reader. He earned his B.A. at Pomona College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Previously the Gallup Professor in Law and Psychology at the University of Nebraska, Steven Penrod arrives at John Jay College as one of the top figures nationally in the field of forensic psychology. One of the most widely published and most cited researchers in the history of psychology and law (and current president of the American Psychology-Law Society), Penrod’s research has included assessing the effects of pretrial publicity, eyewitness identification, violence against women, and the decision-making of juries. Work now in progress concerns the attitudes of juries and attorneys to the death penalty. Penrod earned his B.A. at Yale College, his J.D. at Harvard Law School, and his Ph.D. at Harvard University.