SPORTS
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EVENTS
Cardinals pitching confounds Cougars
Going green for Earth Day
UH lost its first series of the season as it was swept by No.10 Louisville. SEE PAGE 7
The Office of Sustainability joins fight to promote recycling and preserving the planet. SEE PAGE 8 APRIL
CALENDAR CHECK: 14
Music. Range of Motion will be performed at 7:30 p.m. in the Moores Opera House.
THE DAILY COUGAR
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Monday, April 14, 2014
Issue 103, Volume 79
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ONLINE EXCLUSIVES AT THEDAILYCOUGAR.COM
RESEARCH
The great divide Libertarian author discusses growing disparity between upper crust and the American masses Laura Gillespie Assistant news editor
Despite the controversy that has followed him in Houston this past week, libertarian political scientist and author Charles Murray spoke at UH on Thursday evening to a full room and little fanfare. Murray, a W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, spoke about marriage, ethics and the growing cultural gap between the upper and lower classes in the latest event with the Hobby Center for Public Policy and the Phronesis minor in The Honors College. Assistant political science professor Jeffrey Church, who introduced Murray and said he was a fan of his work, spearheaded the move to bring Murray to UH. The talk was funded in part by a grant from John A. Allison IV and the BB&T Bank, with which Allison formerly worked.
“It’s (a) great grant — it allows us to have the Phronesis Fellows, who are 15 to 20 of our best Phronesis minor students with The Honors College, and bring in the speakers,” said philosophy associate professor and co-director of the phronesis minor Tamler Sommers. “Not all of them do public lectures like this, but they also have private seminars with the fellows, who have read in advance something the speaker has done. ”The people who are in charge of the money would like to see a balance in ideas. They have not told us we have to invite anybody or anything like that, but there are people in the Phronesis program with ideological commitments more conservative than most academics.” Sommers called the grant “controversial,” due to Allison’s strong libertarian beliefs and vocal support
Libertarian author Charles Murray spoke Friday to a packed room at the Rockwell Pavilion on the vanishing morals of the white American lower class and an upper class that has become increasingly solitary. | Justin Tijerina/The Daily Cougar of libertarian writer Ayn Rand. “I think it’s worth it,” Sommers said. “I think it’s doing so much good, allowing us to bring
in amazing people from all sides. It really offers great opportunities for our students.” The lecture was originally
planned to be held in the Honors Commons but was moved across GENETICS continues on page 3
EVENTS
Novelist sheds light on the Indian opium trade Trey Strange Staff writer
Balancing act Sophomore defensive end Tyus Bowser is a talented juggler. He’s a two-sport athlete who attended UH so he could contribute to the football and basketball teams. Read more on page 6. — Jimmy Moreland/The Daily Cougar
The India studies program brought prominent Indian fiction author Amitav Ghosh to the Asia Society Texas Center for the first time Thursday to lecture on the opium trade. Creative writing program professor Chitra Divakaruni, who doubles as an award-winning novelist, introduced Ghosh. “Ghosh was born in Kolkata, where I, too, was born,” Divakaruni said. “It is a city … that has produced worthy writers. Amitav Ghosh is worthy of that city.”
Divakaruni spoke of Ghosh’s nu m e rou s a c c o mp l i s h m e nt s, including the two books in his unfinished trilogy, “Sea of Poppies” and “River of Smoke,” which received nominations for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, respectively. The audience applauded as Ghosh took over the microphone and began his lecture, “From Bombay to Canton: Traveling the Opium Route to the 19th Century.” He led the audience through Britain’s predicament, which was that they NOVEL continues on page 3