Physicist Drell tasks honor society initiates to confront terrorism
BY GEOFF KOCH
Threats to peace, freedom and security are not unique to today's college students, Stanford physicist and arms control expert Sidney Drell told Phi Beta Kappa honor society initiates at their Friday night induction ceremony in Memorial Auditorium.
"For my generation that came of age during World War II, nuclear weapons presented a grave new challenge," said Drell, co-founder of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a 2001 recipient of the U.S. intelligence community's highest honor, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. For this generation, he continued, the challenge is to deal with the threat of terrorism using diplomacy, economic aid, cultural understanding and, if necessary, force.
Drell, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and deputy director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, described efforts during own 55-year career to deal with the nuclear threat. In the 1960s, he became deeply involved in the challenge of building "fantastic" cameras for satellites to monitor the threat posed by ballistic missiles aimed at the United States.
The exposed film from these cameras that peeked behind the Iron Curtain was automatically ejected toward Earth in reentry-proof canisters and picked up by the U.S. Navy. This technology, though primitive by today's standards, allowed the United States to verify Soviet compliance with negotiated limits on nuclear weapons. The result was more strategic balance and reduced nuclear danger, said Drell.
Today, only a handful of countries possess nuclear weapons. The norm that has emerged since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that nuclear weapons will be used only as a last resort, and it is due, in large part, to international cooperation and diplomacy. But terrorists reject civilized norms, Drell said, evidenced by the attacks of September 11 and the more recent train bombings in Madrid.
"These challenges are dynamic -- they evolve under changing circumstances -- and so must [be] our understanding of how to tackle them," Drell told the 160 Stanford seniors and 31 juniors that were elected to the society. "That requires commitment to continued learning -- a talent you have demonstrated very ably at Stanford and for which you are being honored here tonight."
Inspirational teacher, inspirational students
Drell's remarks followed a surprise teaching award given to assistant professor of English Gavin Jones, described in nomination letters from students as "dynamic, fun, humorous and enlightening," "inspirational as [Robin] Williams in [the movie] Dead Poet's Society" and "life-altering."
Wrote one student: "Despite all of his experience and expertise, I have never heard Professor Jones tell us what exactly a text means. Instead, he offers an interpretation with a qualification and request that we think about this reading and come up with our own."
That student, a computer science major, said others often comment on [his or her] practical degree choice. "I think Professor Jones has given me a far more practical gift -- the ability and the desire to examine literature as a means to better understand my own beliefs and the assumptions that inform them."
Students Dinyar Patel, Vinita Kailasanath and Dana Craig -- all seniors -- also shared their Stanford experiences, many of which reflect training for cultural understanding and service urged by Drell, in remarks to their fellow initiates.
Patel, a history major, spent a quarter abroad in China as a junior. He was based in Shanghai, but before returning to California Patel longed to see how the rest of the country lived away from booming coastal cities. So he strung together a 47-hour train ride followed by nine hours of bus rides to make his way to Muli, a remote mountainous region 1,000 miles to the southwest. What he found surprised him.
"Within Muli's two Internet cafes, Tibetan youngsters played [the computer game] Counter-Strike and had full access to supposedly banned websites such as CNN.com," he said. "Roadside vendors hawked DVDs and VCDs [video compact discs]; one teenager led us into his family's small hut, where a 30-inch state-of-the-art TV took up most of the main room."
Patel asked the audience to remember that in the developing world, development as we know it is being transformed.
Biology major Kailasanath worked in the laboratory of Professor Russell Fernald trying to figure out how many types of estrogen receptors are found in a species African cichlid fish. It turns out the answer is three.
"I feel as though my time at Stanford truly came together this morning, when I received final sections of the elusive third gene I had rather monomaniacally been trying to clone for the past eight months," she said.
This work was Kailasanath's honors thesis, for which she won a dean's award. But one reward of her intellectual journey was unexpected. "It truly gave me another avenue with which to connect to my father, who is a research scientist, and ultimately gave me a sense of working on a question that was greater than myself."
Craig's transforming experience began her sophomore year, fall 2001, in a class on American foreign policy taught by Coit Blacker, director of the Stanford Institute for International Studies. She and the rest of Blacker's class spent the morning of September 11 at his house watching history unfold on television and discussing the meaning of the events on the screen.
"As the day turned to night, our teacher stood before us and spoke movingly about how there is no more noble profession than to work in the service of one's country," Craig said. "I could not have agreed more."
Craig's career goals shifted from journalism to government service. Her university years included a summer 2002 job in Washington, D.C., with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine; a research internship with Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC; and completion of an honors thesis this year -- bringing her academic life full circle -- with Blacker as an adviser.
"I realized that the future of our world requires that good men and women decide to become involved in the decision making that will shape the future," she said. "I want to be one of those people."
Geoff Koch is a science writing intern at the News Service. Dawn Levy contributed to the reporting.
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