This is an announcement for the paper "The universality of $\ell_1$ as a dual space" by Daniel Freeman, Edward Odell, and Thomas Schlumprecht. Abstract: Let $X$ be a Banach space with a separable dual. We prove that $X$ embeds isomorphically into a $\L_\infty$ space $Z$ whose dual is isomorphic to $\ell_1$. If $X$ has a shrinking finite dimensional decomposition and $X^*$ does not contain an isomorph of $\ell_1$, then we construct such a $Z$, as above, not containing an isomorph of $c_0$.If $X$ is separable and reflexive, we show that $Z$ can be made to be somewhat reflexive. Archive classification: math.FA Mathematics Subject Classification: 46B20 Remarks: 33 pages The source file(s), fos3.tex: 130106 bytes, is(are) stored in gzipped form as 0904.0462.gz with size 37kb. The corresponding postcript file has gzipped size 218kb. Submitted from: schlump@math.tamu.edu The paper may be downloaded from the archive by web browser from URL http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/0904.0462 or http://arXiv.org/abs/0904.0462 or by email in unzipped form by transmitting an empty message with subject line uget 0904.0462 or in gzipped form by using subject line get 0904.0462 to: math@arXiv.org.