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In Brief ...

Curriculum, Bok, Nobels, Hiring, Rape Trial

The Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) this week began the most comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum in more than a decade. The group's first order of business is to examine honors degree requirements, which Sidney Verba '53, associate dean of the Faculty for undergraduate education and chairman of CUE, called "the prime example" of "complicated arcane and confusing" rules. The student-Faculty committee's investigation will include the minumum course requirements for a term which currently stand at one in some cases; deadlines for dropping, adding, and changing courses; course credit for work done elsewhere and in summer school; and independent work. Dean Rosovsky called for the curriculum review last spring.

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President Bok this week began a year-long term as chairman of the board of directors of the American Council on Education (ACE) and as such will become "a leading spokesman for higher education," according to the council's director of public relations. Bok said that as chairman of the council--America's largest coalition of colleges, universities and other higher-education groups--he plans to meet regularly with politicians and federal administrators in an effort to "try and help articulate a set of responsible positions towards the Reagan administration."

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Two Medical School professors last week won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their research on how the brain processes visual information. Dr. David H. Hubel '55, Berry Professor of Neurobiology, and Dr. Torsten N. Wiesel '57, Winthrop Professor of Neurobiology, shared the award with Dr. Roger W. Sperry, a professor at the California Institute of Technology. During nearly 20 years of collaboration, Hubel and Wiesel discovered the method by which the retina transmits information to the brain. The Nobel Assembly cited the scientists' work as a "breakthrough in research into the ability of the brain to interpret the code of the impulse message from the eyes."

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Unhappy with the Department of Labor (DOL) for failing to expedite an investigation of hiring practices at the Kennedy School of Government, a nationwide women's organization this week said it will probably file a complaint against DOL if the department doesn't speed things up. Officials at the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), which last fall charged the K-School with ignoring federal affirmative action codes, have said the unexpected delay in DOL's investigation stems from federal cutbacks in the number of investigators the department may hire and from a shuffling of department personnel earlier this year. DOL had no comment.

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A Harvard senior this week was acquitted to charges that he raped a Wellesley student last February. A jury of eight men and four women found James L. Matory '82 not guilty of one count of rape and a related charge of indecent assault. After listening to more than one hour of closing arguments by the prosecution and the defense, the jury deliberated for more than three hours before delivering its verdict. "This case was an ethical injustice," Matory said after the verdict was announced, adding that "there is something wrong with a judicial system where it is only necessary for one party to allege something to make a case."

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