2009: Winter Verbatim

Overheard on (and off) Campus

“Consider Baby Doc Duvalier from Haiti, who … never had to answer in any domestic or international court for atrocities and lives in southern France with a cozy retirement package.”

Lawrence Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, in an interview about the International Criminal Court for “Who Knows,” Amherst’s online ask-the-expert series

“Nobody keeps an eye on anything unless it hurts the other party.”

Virginia Republican Tom Davis ’71 on Washington’s role in the collapse of Wall Street, as quoted in an Oct. 5, 2008, New York Times Magazine article on his decision to give up his seat in Congress

“He was afraid of democracy. He was afraid of giving that much power to lower classes.”

Mead Art Museum docent Suzannah Luft ’08 on American painter Thomas Cole, during a 10-minute gallery talk she gave on Cole’s The Past and The Present (1838)

“For some reason, I guess I seem like the kind of person to give stuffed animals to.”

Meaghan Stern ’09, who lives in Morris Pratt Dormitory, in an interview for “My Space,” an online Amherst magazine department that features 360-degree tours of dorm rooms

“I could be lying, for all you know.”     

Piercarlo Valdesolo ’03, the Robert E. Keiter ’57 Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology, making a point about culpability to students in the Interterm course “Figuring Out Who to Blame”

“Underneath my cool veneer, all along I had wanted hope.”

Alain Hunkins ’90, writing about his experience at Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C.