2A - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com MONDAY:. TUESDAY:W In Other Ivory Towers Off the Beaten Path Against the odds THURSDAY: FRIDAY: Before You Were Here Photos of the Week . SERVING SWIRLS Prompted by personal experiences with fam- ily members and friends who have autism spectrum disorders, LSA, sophomores Maressa Criscito and Allison Stein founded Autism Speak- sU this past summer. "Autism spectrum disor- ders hit close to home for (both) of us," Criscito said. The two were driven to create the group after, much to their surprise, they could not find any active groups on campus that focused on the issue. "It ga've us a sense of pride that we could unite with other students in an effort to raise awareness," Criscito said. Criscito and Stein said they feel the club's creation is vitally important now, in a time when autism spectrum on fundraising for research disorders are on the rise. 'and increasing awareness of "Autism affects many these disorders. people throughout Michi- The fundraisers the group gan, throughout the nation, has planned for this year throughout the world," Cris- include small events like cito said. bake sales and events at BD's According to the national Mongolian Barbeque and Autism SpeaksU organiza- Studio 4. tion - of which the campus The culmination of the group is a chapter - one in fundraising however, will be every 91 children is affected the Walk-A-Thon, which will by autism. Autism is more take place in April. prevalent among boys, how- At the walk, all of the ever, affecting one in 58. In proceeds will be donated to 2007, the Centers for Dis- Autism SpeaksU. ease Control and Prevention Because the club is still in reported the figure at one in its infancy, Stein and Criscito 150 children. said they are pursuing a rea- Although relatively new, sonable yet substantial goal the group already has 40 this year. members who gather for bi- "We hope to raise at least weekly meetings. $1,500 during the course of Criscito and Stein said the year," Criscito said. the group will concentrate - CAITLIN HUSTON Ben Saginaw makes a latte and decorates it with a pattern in the foaw at Comet Coffee in Ann Arbor yesterday. C, h eMidciganlOaiIy 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, Mt 48109-1327 www.michigandaily.com GARYGRACA DAN NEWMAN Editor in Chief Business Manager 734-647-3336 734-764-0558 graca@michigandaily.com tmdbusiness@gmailcom CONTACT INFORMATION Newsroom Office hours:Sun.-Thurs.11 a.m. -2 a.m. y34-y63-2459 News Tips rnews@michigandaily.com Corrections corrections@michigandaily.com Letterstothe Editor tothedaily@michigandaily.com PhotographyDepartment photo@michigandaily.cor ArtsSection artspage@michigandaily.com Editorial Page opinion@michigandaiy.com Sports Section sports@michigandaily.com Display Sales ditplay@michigandaiy.com Classified Sales classifed@michigandaily.com OnlineSales ontineads@michigandaiy.com Finance flnancc@michigandaily.com EDITORIAL STAFF Courtney Ratkowiak ManagingEditor ratkowiak@michigandaiy.com Jacob SmiloVitZ ManagingNewsEditor smilovitz@rnichiganqaity.com SENIOR NEWS EDITORS: Matt Aaronson, Jillian Berman, Trevor Calero, Jenna Skrller,KyleSwanson sITAN wS rTRS: Nicole Aber, Mallory Jones, Emily Orley ,Stephanie Steinberg,ti,5o,,rTirunavuOk,,,,r Robert Soave Editorial Page Editor soave@michigandaiy.com ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS: Emily Barton, Brian Flaherty, Rachel Van Gilder ASSISTANTEDITORIALPAGEEDITORS:rEmmaJeszke,MatthewShutler AndyReid Managing Sports Editor reid@michigandaily.com SENIOR SPQRTS EDITORS: Nicole Auerbach, Mike Eisenstein, Ian Kay, Ruth Lincoln, Alex Prosperi ASSISTANT SPORT1 EDITORS: Mark Burns, Chantel Jennings, Gjon Juncaj, Ryan Kartje,OChrisMaszaros,iRyan Podges DavidWatnick ManagingArtsEditor watnick@michigandaily.com SEIRRso IO S:0Ja0i Blocrk,,rdon oraii, WhitneyrPow ASSTNTARTEDO R:JoshuaBayerCarolyK ackiAndrew Lapin, David Riva Zachary Meisner and photo@michigandaily.com Clif Reeder Managing Photo Editors SENIOR PHOTO E DITORS: Sa id Alsalah,'Chanel Von Habsburg-Lothringen ASSISTAN 0PHOTOEDITORS: Max Collins, ChrisDzombak,SamWolson AngelaChih and design@oichigandaiy.com MaureenStych Managing DesignEditors SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Allison Ghiaman Jessica Vosgerchian MagazineEditor vosgerchian@michigandaily.com Katherine Mitchel CoyChie itchell@michigandaily.com ASSnO IATEcoy CrIEF: Melanrieid,Adi Wollstein BUSINESSSTAFF KatielJozwiakSales Manager SALES FORCE MANAGER: Molly Twigg MARKETING MANAGER: Michael Schrotenboer Ryan Businski classified Manager CLASSIFI ED ASSISTANT MANAGER Kayla LaFata Ben English Production Manager Allison SantacreU Layout Manager Vivian Lee Finance Manager Brittany Morales circulation Manager Brad Wiley Project coordinator The Michigan Daily(ISsN 0745-%7)is published Monday through Friday during the fall and inter terms by students at the University of Michigan.One copy is available free of charge to all readers. Additional co pnstbepickedupat the Oily'soffice for$2.Subscriptionsforfatermiatingir Septembervia u.S. maiares110 Winter term(anuary through April)is$ilt, yearong tSeptember trough April) is1 95University afftsaresubjectreducedsubscrinatenrpu u6eptionsforfaltermre$3. surssicin'erete eaid. TheMian yism The Associated Press and The Associated Collegiate Press CRIME NOTES CAMPUS EVENTS & NOTES 0 0 0 0 Was that pole MCard pinched 'Cape Wind' Documentary A man tried to rob a Wen- dy's restaurant in Dearborn always there? WHERE: Intramural Sports discussion screening EHeights, Mich. Saturday Building night while his mother, the man- WHERE: University lot NC-46 WHEN: Monday at about 3:45 WHAT: Author Robert WHAT:Screening of the film ager, was working there, msnbc. WHEN: Monday at about 8:30 p.m. Whitcomb discusses the "The Take," a documentary com reported. Police said he went p.m. WHAT: A student's MCard debate around the "Cape about factory occupations through the drive-through with WHAT: A staff member dam- was stolen from a locker which Wind" off-shore wind farm in Argentina, followed by a a sawed off shot gun and a ban- aged her car after driving it he had not locked while he project in the Nantucket panel discussion. datinaover his face. His mother into a pole while trying to was using the weight room Sound. WHO: College Socialists later helped police arrest him. park, University Police report- ed. No one was injured in the accident and there were no passengers in the car. Bike swiped WHERE: Shapiro Library WHEN: Yesterday at about 12:30 a.m. WHAT: A student's white mountain bike valued at $350, along with its lock, was stolen from a bike rack near the library, University Police reported. between 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., University Police reported. There are no suspects. Tire trouble WHERE: 2700 block South Industrial Ave. WHEN: Monday at about 5:45 p.m. WHAT: A vehicle was dam- aged after hitting a tire in the road, University Police report- ed. No one was injured. WHO: Ford School of Public Policy WHEN: Today from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. WHERE: Weill Hall Winter festival WHAT: There will be per- formances, food and dance at the third annual winter holiday celebration. WHO: Michigan Student Assembly WHEN: Tonight from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. WHERE: Stamps Atdito- rium WHEN: Tonight from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. WHERE: Michigan League Performance WHAT: Singer, songwriter and composer Lindsay Toma- sic will perform. WHO: Michigan Union Ticket Office WHEN: Tonight at 8 p.m. WHERE: The Ark CORRECTIONS 0 Please report any error in the Daily to correc-' tions@michigandaily.com. Motown Records found- er Berry Gordy was in Detroit this month film- ing a documentary for the 50th anniversary of Motown. >aFOR MORE, SEE THE STATEMENT 3A manrecently broke into a home in Crestview, Fla. to take a shower. When the two children who lived there walked into the bathroom, the man told them "Obama let him in" and to "getout," the nwfdai- lynews.com reported. When police entered the house, they foundthe manwearingnothing, but a towel. MORLONLINE- - Love Crime Notes? Getlmoreonline at michigandaily.com/blogs/the wire Aaron David Miller: A career of negotiations 0 From Pagel A greatest impact I had on the Secre- tary of State." Since Shultz, Miller has worked for five other secretaries of state, advising them on one of America's toughest foreign policy issues: the Arab-Israeli conflict. Sitting in his downtown Wash- ington office ornamented with framed photos of Bill Clinton and Colin Powell, Miller described his time working for secretaries of state from 1989 until 2003 as "one constant trip or negotiation after another." "Those 15 years were really quite historic, and in the end disappoint- ing and very frustrating," he said. "Most of what we tried to do ended up collapsing. But nonetheless, they were extraordinary years." Following the Madrid Confer- ence, Miller was part of the U.S. team that helped 'facilitate the Oslo Accords. The 1993 confer- ence held in Oslo, Norway estab- lished a framework for future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and was consid- ered a major breakthrough in the peace process. In 1996, Miller helped to broker two agreements to keep the Oslo process on track, but looking back, he said he now realizes the process was essentially futile. The assas- sination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish funda- mentalist completely changed the climate. Rabin, a war hero turned peace- nik and a major player in the Oslo Accords, inspired asense of hope in the Israeli and Palestinian public, which died along with him. "It was dead, we didn't really understand it,"Miller said. "Rabin's death, the nature of roles Israelis and Palestinians played as occupier and occupied - and they're each responsible in their own way for the collapse of Oslo - really made it very long odds." Miller said that despite the col- lapse of Oslo, he was part of a team that advised then-President Bill Clinton to "go for broke" with the Camp David Summit in 2000. The conference aimed to establish a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and brought Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Bara and then-leader of the Palestinian Lib- eration Organization Yasser Arafat together. "I was one of the 12 Americans there," Miller said. "Sadly, and despite all these commitments and good intentions, it was not well managed. There was never a chance. We had to watch in the fall of 2000 after first Intifada broke out, the collapse of everything Israelis and Palestinians tried to achieve - we tried to help them - essentially be destroyed." Robert Malley, the Middle East and North African program direc- tor for the International Crisis Group, worked with Miller as a White House adviser on the Arab- Israeli conflict during Miller's time at the State Department. Malley remains a close personal friend of Miller's, and called him "an exceptional colleague." "Whether people agreed with him or not, they always respected what he had to say because he came to issues with an open mind and a questioning mind," Malley said. He added that Miller rarely let the parties involved in negotiations off the hook, including himself. "Not only would he listen and question others, he would also lis- ten to and question himself, he was very introspective in that sense," Malley said. "What he applied to others, he applied to himself." A CHANGE OF SCENERY Miller no longer sits at the nego- tiating table. He resigned from the State Department in 2003, deciding that Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Min- ister at the time, and Arafat, head of the Palestinian Liberation Orga- nization, had other goals in mind besides establishing alasting peace. "Neither of them were inter- ested in doing anything other than setting up the other for destruc- tion," Miller said. "I made the deci- sion at that point that I had had enough. Twenty-five years was all I needed." Miller now occupies an office at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in downtown Washington, D.C., a few floors above amammothbustofWilson in the lobby. The nonpartisan center, which is tucked away in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, a Irre three blocks from the White House, brings prominent thinkers to Washington to do advanced study. A NON-ACADEMIC SCHOLAR Though his title is "Public Poli- cy Scholar," Miller said he doesn't consider himself a scholar in the traditional academic sense. "I'm not here to diss the acad- emy. I love goingto university cam- puses to speak, I really do," he said. "I love students, but after 24 hours on a university campus - and again I'm just speaking personally - I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go because the world is a much more complex place." Ironically, it was Miller's profes- sors at the University who made him realize he wanted to make policy instead of lecturing about it. Miller transferred to the Univer- sity after spending a year at Tulane University in New Orleans on a ten- nis scholarship and another year in England on a history exchange program. Once he arrived in Ann Arbor, Miller became a very seri- ous student, quipping that he went to only one Univerity of Michigan football game during his eight years at the University. He became close with two histo- ry professors, Richard Mitchell and Gerald Linderman, who both had careers as foreign services officers before coming to the University. Linderman, who has since retired from the University but still resides in Ann Arbor, stays in touch with Miller. He said knowing Mill- er as a student, he wasn't surprised that he rose to such a position of prominence. "He was very interested in the foreign service and we talked about it a lot," Linderman said. "But I think the important factor there is that I had discovered in my time as a political officer that it was a mat- ter of observing other countries and analyzing as well as you could and reporting them to Washing- ton." FIRST-HAND EDUCATION But according to Linderman, that wasn't enough for Miller. "I was an observer rather than a participant, and Aaron, I think, was always more dedicated to participating himself and espe- cially trying to influe ce matters of University alum Aaron David Miller with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington D.C. earlier this decade. Miller spent most of his career negotiating a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. American foreign policy," he said. Miller began his career at the University pursuing a degree in American history, but after start- ing work for his Ph.D he realized his calling lay elsewhere. "I was proceeding merrily along studying Civil War history, which I was very interested in, still am. But then around the time I should've received my master's degree, I had a change, I'm not even entirely sure why. I didn't really want to study American history. I had been inter- ested in the Middle East," he said. Miller convinced the history department that he could learn the languages and topics necessary to become a Middle East historian, and he could think of only one way to accomplish that goal. "I got married in May of 1973, and we packed up and left the coun- try and went to the only place that you could study Arabic and Hebrew as living languages in 1973, and that was Jerusalem," he said. Shortly after he arrived in Israel, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War broke out, which provided Miller with an experience he wasn't expecting. "(The war) put my wife Lind- say and miin a situation in which we had never been, in a society that was mobilized for conflict in a strange way," he said. "And that year with all of its dislocation really changed my worldview again and made me more determined to become interested in the Middle East." Miller became familiar with the conflict at a young age, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio with parents and grandparents who were very active in the Jewish and Zionist communities. "That provided a base," Mill- er said of his Jewish-American upbringing. "My academic educa- tion and my experiences then drew me, pushed me, forced me and compelled me to try to understand the problem in more of its entire- ty, which meant of course that it wasn't just one-hand clapping." "SHAPER OF DEBATE" Miller's commitment to under- stand both sides of the conflict has brought him criticism from all corners. In addition to public criti- cism, Miller receives what his wife calls, "fan mail" - letters frompeo- Vle on every side of the coikflict full of personal attacks. "The fact that I'm out of gov- ernment doesn't matter, they still continue and they come from everybody," he said. "The pursuit of truth, if that's a wayto explain it, is never easy. Separating yourself from the group, the tribe, is never easy. But it's necessary." Despite the criticism, Miller said he wants to remain part of the "public conversation" on the issue for a longtime to come, though he's turned his professional attention to a different topic - he's currently working on a book about presiden- tial greatness. Miller, who has appeared as a commentator on CNN, FOX News, Al Jazeera and many other media outlets said he takes his role as a "shaper of debate" on the issue very seriously, because the issue itself is very serious. "The notion thattrying and fail- ing is better than not trying at all, I once bought that, I don't buy it anymore," he said. "The Michigan football team can govern by that principle, but the United States can not. Every time a super power fails, it costs it its image and its creditability."