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The Hasty Pudding Theatricals' woman and man of the year are Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman, Steel Magnolias) and Mel Gibson (Braveheart, the Lethal Weapon series). Although the traditional "Woman of the Year" parade through Harvard Square and "Man of the Year" presentation (on the opening night of the Hasty Pudding's Me and My Galaxy) were scheduled to bracket Valentine's Day, it is business, not romance, that brings the Tinseltown twosome together (above) in the forthcoming film Conspiracy Theory, a thriller.

Heaney Heads Home

Heaney Photograph by JOE WRINN

Seamus Heaney, whose poems about his native Ireland helped win the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, is loosening his Harvard ties. At the end of this term, he will relinquish the Boylston professorship of rhetoric and oratory, which he has held since 1984, and become the Ralph Waldo Emerson poet in residence, in the tradition of Robert Frost '01, Litt.D. '37, and Robert Lowell '39. In that capacity, beginning in the fall of 1998, Heaney will spend six weeks in Cambridge every second year. During those visits, he expects to lecture, give readings, and meet informally with student poets.

Hoffmann Honored

Political scientist Stanley Hoffmann, founder of Harvard's committee on degrees in social studies and cofounder of the Gunzburg Center for European Studies, has been named the

Hoffmann Photograph by JANE REED

first Buttenwieser University Professor. The new chair was endowed by Paul A. Buttenwieser '60, M.D. '64, and his wife, Catherine, as part of the current University Campaign. Hoffmann, who has written widely on Europe and international relations for scholarly and popular audiences, began teaching at Harvard in 1955. Commenting on the appointment, Jeremy Knowles, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, noted that Hoffmann has been called a "passionate intellectual." One passion the new University Professor said he might pursue is "more teaching in film and literature, two lifelong interests which I wouldn't mind indulging in my old age."

Golden in Germany

Goldhagen Photograph by MARY LEE

In Bonn on March 10, Daniel J. Goldhagen '81, Ph.D. '92, associate professor of government and social studies, will receive the Democracy Prize awarded occasionally by the Journal for German and International Politics. The prize recognizes his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The controversial bestseller explains the Holocaust as the result of virulent anti-Semitism among Germans at large (see "Ordinary German Killers," March-April 1996, page 23). Stateside, the book is one of five nominees for this year's National Book Critics Circle award in nonfiction; winners will be announced March 18. Among Goldhagen's advisers on the dissertation from which the book grew was none other than Stanley Hoffmann.

Applied Scientist

After 20 years as dean of the divison of engineering and applied sciences, Paul C. Martin '52, Ph.D. '54, Van Vleck professor of pure and applied physics, will shed his administrative duties to pursue teaching, research, and continued work on the use of

Martin Photograph by MARY LEE

information technology across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The recently announced $25 million gift from William H. Gates III '77 and Steven A. Ballmer '77 for a modern computer-sciences building and academic support ("Building Boom," January-February) symbolizes the growth in that field and in electrical engineering during Martin's deanship. He will continue to chair the committee planning the structure. In the 1995-96 academic year, 370 undergraduates were enrolled in concentrations in applied mathematics, computer science, and engineering sciences.

Valediction

Outgoing Secretary of State Warren Christopher chose the Kennedy School as the venue for his farewell address on January 15. After summarizing the foreign policy accomplishments of President Clinton's first term, Christopher devoted the bulk of his speech to a tough-talking plea to Congress for additional State Department funds. Citing the shutdowns of more than two dozen consulates and several embassies during his tenure, Christopher warned that American diplomatic leadership is at risk, and that the Congress should not call on the State Department to broaden its international presence while slashing its budget: "Talk is cheap," he said. "Leadership, certainly, is not."

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