Bright stars can be distracting

NYU has been attracting a lot of what the gossip columnists call "bold-faced names" lately. First, James Franco started showing up in Bobst Library and made all the women on campus (and half the men) go weak in the knees. Then this week, we were graced with the presence of Emma Thompson, Nora Ephron, Spike Lee and the crème de la crop, Matt Damon.

If you're keeping score, Thompson and Ephron were on campus Tuesday, and Lee and Damon will be here today. Thompson, along with NYU President John Sexton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, helped open the sex-trafficking exhibit "Journey." Ephron was at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to discuss her various creative endeavors with Pete Hamill (no slouch himself), while Lee will do the same with James McBride (like Hamill, a writer-in-residence at the Institute). Damon will be at Cooper Union with his friend, historian Howard Zinn, where their film, "The People Speak," will be shown. Got all that? Good.

Now, all this sounds really impressive and exciting to students (case in point: WSN's website currently features a poll asking "Which celebrity speaker are you most excited to see this week?"), and bringing celebrities to campus — especially famous alumni like Lee — is a perfectly legitimate way to raise NYU's profile. But does all this star power really do any good?

Call me a cynic and a horrible person (God knows you wouldn't be the first), but I have to ask, are there any intellectual benefits to hearing Matt Damon read excerpts from "The People Speak" or hearing Emma Thompson proclaim earnestly that she was "mentally, completely excoriated" (according to The New York Times) by revelations of sex trafficking in her hometown of London?

Let me be perfectly clear: Emma Thompson is a wonderful actress and, I have no doubt, a lovely person whose activist bona fides are unquestionable. But wouldn't the exhibition have been even more effective had there been, say, a former sex worker there to talk about her experiences and supplement the sights and sounds of the "Journey" exhibit with the unflinching, unsparing quality of words? As it was, Tuesday's event starred Thompson, Bloomberg and Sexton, with information about trafficking playing a supporting role.

You could ask the same question of any of the celebrity events on campus this week. How many people have gone to the Journalism Institute to learn about writing and filmmaking, and how many have gone just to kill some time with Nora Ephron and Spike Lee?

But it is the Damon/Zinn event that really makes me feel an opportunity has been missed. How many aspiring historians, or even established historians, would kill for an audience like the one that is surely going to turn out today at Cooper Union? Why are they not being given the chance to put their thoughts, ideas and work on show?

We are surrounded by and constantly reminded of our history, and a number of damn good historians work every day to help us understand our history and to put it in perspective. Some of them sit in the history department on Washington Square South. Few of them have the backing of a Hollywood star. This doesn't make their work any less important or worthy of attention and discussion. But I fear that Damon will overshadow Zinn's work. Once again, history will be used as a star vehicle. Pity.

Samuel Chamberlain is opinion editor.