In Brief

A group of area residents filed a lawsuit in early October that seeks to block the University from moving the Dinky train station 460 feet south of its current location, as part of the arts and transit neighborhood proposal. 

The complaint argues that Princeton lacks the authority to move the Dinky, based on its agreement with NJ Transit to purchase the station in 1984. The University disagreed, saying that the contract provides the right to move the station and that NJ Transit has confirmed this position. 

Robert “Bob” Parris Moses, an education-reform activist and a leading figure in the civil-rights movement, has joined Princeton’s Center for African American Studies as a distinguished visiting fellow for 2011-12. He will co-teach an undergraduate course in the spring on race, education, and labor policies.

In the early 1960s, Moses became field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and directed the group’s Mississippi Summer Project to register black voters. After receiving a MacArthur “genius award” in 1982, he founded the Algebra Project, which seeks to improve the way mathematics is taught in public schools. 

A gift from Benjamin H. Griswold IV ’62 and his family will endow the University’s Center for Economic Policy Studies, founded in 1989 to support research and bring economic and governmental leaders to campus. The gift honors Griswold’s father, the late Benjamin H. Griswold III ’33, for whom the center will be named. The amount of the gift was not released. 

Benjamin Griswold IV is the chairman of Brown Advisory and formerly served as senior chairman of Deutsche Bank Securities and of Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. He is a member of the executive committee of the University’s Aspire fundraising campaign. 

Two Princeton professors are among a group of 94 researchers selected to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. ­Benjamin Garcia, assistant professor of molecular biology, has developed a new method to research small proteins known as histones and their effect on gene expression, while Amit Singer, associate professor of mathematics, has used advanced mathematical processes to uncover pieces of hidden data. 

Courtesy Grinnell College Archives

A. Richard Turner ’55 *59, an expert on the Florentine renaissance and the former president of Grinnell (Iowa) College, died of lymphoma Sept. 9 in Cape May Court House, N.J. He was 79. Turner may be best known for his 1993 book, Inventing Leonardo, a study of the different perceptions of Leonardo da Vinci over time. An art and archaeology professor at Princeton from 1960 to 1968, Turner served as president of Grinnell from 1975 to 1979.