The University of Chicago Magazine

February 1997

CHICAGO JOURNAL

BIRDWATCHING"

Trying its best to heat up the cross-town rivalry between the U of C and its Neighbor to the North, the Chicago Tribune Magazine recently held a "College Bowl," rating the U of C and Northwestern in categories from library holdings to "grid coaches." The U of C won on the first, NU on the second: Northwestern's Gary Barnett is a "household name," the Trib reminded us, while "A U of C p.r. lady had to look up the name of coach Dick Maloney." And, in a decision that left Hyde Park bibliophiles shaking their heads, NU got the nod for bookstores.

In offering President Clinton "A Little Free Advice" as he starts his second term, Time turned to American opinion leaders, from radio talk-show host Don Imus ("I'd read him his Miranda rights") to U of C religious historian Martin Marty, PhD'56, who urged Clinton to read Isaiah 58 and "get 'Bible believers' to talk not about trivia such as school-prayer amendments and the crèche on the courthouse lawn. The prophets teach us to put our religious energies into the homeless, our relatives in need, and the poor in general."

Almost six years after Ioan Culianu, a Romanian-born Divinity School professor, was found shot to death in Swift Hall, his May 1991 murder remains a mystery. Ted Antos's Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu (Northwestern University Press) speculates on the identity of Culianu's murderer, making a persuasive case that the crime was a political assassination. The bulk of the book chronicles Culianu's role both as a critic of Romania's post-revolutionary government and his fascination with the occult, creating what the New York Times calls "a fascinating portrait of a brilliant individual, a kind of late 20th-century original, swept up in the darkest forces of recent times."

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