Newsletter Volume 7 Issue 15 March 31, 2021 |
|
It is always a pleasure to welcome new members, and it is certainly an honor to have Wally Curran and John Merlino join us. It is a special tribute to have faculty who are not yet retired join us, and this week we are also introducing seven such members! These are members who are in the transition to retirement, whether that means a few months or a few years. All of these members joined after Steve Nowicki’s retirement seminar on March 17, so he obviously did a good job of recruiting on our behalf. Please be sure to welcome any of these members and assure them that retirement is not the end of their faculty life!
We also note the passing of two members who each contributed greatly to Emory: Larry Beard and David Ford. Thanks to Al Hartgraves and Ron Gould for helping to get information about them for this issue.
I am very grateful to Gretchen Schulz, Ann Hartle, and Marge Crouse for help with editing and proofing.
|
|
403(b) Settlement
Please scroll to read more below
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 5
Kristin Mann
“Transatlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil”
Please scroll to read more below
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 12
Julie Schwietert Collazo and Rosayra (Rosy) Pablo Cruz
“Shifting the Locus of Power in Immigration Narratives”
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, March 15
Dianne Stewart
“Forbidden Black Love: America’s Hidden Civil Rights Issue”
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, March 22
Raymond Hill
“Considerations for a Post-COVID Economy”
Please scroll to read more below
New Members
Walter J. Curran, Jr., John Merlino, Linda Armstrong, A. James Elliott
Dawn M. Manning-Williams, Ichiro Matsumura, Christine G. Perkell,
Charles A. Staley, and Ann Vandenberg
Please scroll to read more below
Faculty Activities
Ron Gould and Perry Sprawls
Please scroll to read more below
In Memoriam
Larry Beard and Dave Ford
Please scroll to read more below
Walking the Campus with Dianne
Please scroll to read more below
|
|
As many of our members are aware, I have been reporting on lawsuits against many universities, including Emory, over their handling of employee retirement plans. Here are links to previous articles, explaining the rationale for the lawsuits:
Note that the changes announced in this issue were postponed because of the COVID shutdown.
Announces postponement of 403(b) changes
A very short summary is that around 2016 a number of lawsuits were filed against various universities and their retirement plans arguing that members of the plans (i.e. staff and faculty) were getting lower returns than they should have been getting because the universities were using too many different companies and offering too many different options within those plans. Within the last year or two, many of those lawsuits have been settled by the sued universities. As is the case so frequently in these class action lawsuits, the winners are the lawyers and those few who actually filed the lawsuits. Emory is one of the universities that settled, and last August I sent the following email to members:
|
|
|
|
Many of you who participated in the Emory University Retirement Plan and Emory Healthcare, Inc. Retirement Savings and Matching Plan (the 403(b) Plans will have gotten an email on July 31. The Subject line of the email was “Court Ordered Notice Re: Emory 403(b) Settlement” and it was from “Emory 403(b) Settlement Administrator emory403bsettlement@noticeadministrator.com.” You should have gotten the email if you had any funds in the Emory plan between August 11, 2010 and June 11, 2020. Please Note: Several of us have found this email in our Emory email junk folder. If you should have gotten this email but didn’t see it, you should search your junk and spam folders.
If you participated in those plans and kept your money in the Emory accounts, you should have gotten the notice and don’t have to do anything to be part of the settlement. If you kept your funds in the plans past the August 11, 2010 date but later withdrew the money to place in other accounts, you are still eligible to be part of the settlement but will have to file a claim as explained in the email. According to the settlement “To be eligible for a distribution from the Net Settlement Amount, a person must be a Current Participant, an Authorized Former Participant, or a Beneficiary or Alternate Payee of such a person.” Thus some beneficiaries could be eligible as well.
The email itself is very long and full of legal jargon and links to a complete description of the settlement (85 pages!)—after all, the lawyers had to do something to justify their $6,258,333.33 in fees. One of our members did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that suggested the average settlement would be something like $130, so you probably don’t want to book a cruise until the money is in your bank (and there is a COVID-19 vaccine). Some of you might be eligible but not get a payment as there will be no payouts of $10 or less.
Note: I am not a lawyer and have no desire to read carefully through the email and the 85-page complete description. Please let me know if any of you have information that should be shared with our members!
|
|
|
On March 22 of this year, part of HR's NewsYouCanUse was the following article:
Emory Retirement Plan Class-Action Lawsuit Settled – Some Employees Will Receive Deposits to Their 403(b) Account
Emory recently settled a class-action lawsuit involving allegations about the management of the Emory University Retirement Plan and Emory Healthcare, Inc. Retirement Savings and Matching Plan (the 403(b) Plans). Emory agreed to settle the claims that remained rather than continue with an expensive trial and appeal process. The settlement put an end to the lawsuit and provides some financial benefits to 403(b) Plan participants.
As a result of this settlement, some employees will receive a deposit into their 403(b) account from the settlement fund. Only those employees who were members of the settlement class are eligible to receive the deposit.
The settlement class is defined as: “All persons who participated in the Emory University Retirement Plan or the Emory Healthcare, Inc. Retirement Savings and Matching Plan (the “Plans”) at any time from August 11, 2010 through June 11, 2020." If you were not a participant in the Plans prior to June 11, 2020, you are likely not a member of the settlement class.
The individual deposit amounts from the settlement fund will be calculated by a third-party settlement administrator—not Emory—based on the terms of the settlement agreement between Emory and the plaintiffs in the litigation.
If you are entitled to a share of the settlement proceeds, you will receive notification from your retirement vendor(s): TIAA, Fidelity Investments, and/or Vanguard in early April. More information is available at www.emory403bsettlement.com. You may also contact the settlement administrator directly at (877) 320-1298.
|
|
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 5, 2021 |
|
“Transatlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil”
Kristin Mann
Professor Emerita, Department of History,
Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellow, 2019-20
Zoom Meeting
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Kristin Mann’s most recent book pioneers a new approach to the recovery of transatlantic slave biographies, on the cutting edge of studies of slavery, the slave trade, and the African diaspora. The stories of the individual slaves reconstructed in the text bring to life and make real and concrete the history of an ignoble commerce that can too often be presented only in aggregated, impersonal terms. By restoring subjectivity to a number of enslaved women and men, the book casts powerful new light on how the many thousands of Yoruba-speakers forcibly transported from Africa to Brazil and Cuba during the nineteenth century forged relationships of different kinds among themselves and with others that helped them endure slavery, find paths to manumission, and, in some cases, return to their African homelands. The work presents an important new interpretation of the origins and early transformation of the Yoruba diaspora that still powerfully connects West Africa, Brazil, and other parts of the Atlantic world.
About Kristin Mann:
After earning her BA, MA, and PhD at Stanford University, Kristin Mann came to the Department of History at Emory in 1979. Her work has focused on eighteenth through twentieth-century African history; gender, marriage, and the family; slavery, emancipation, and the slave trade; colonial political and legal changes; and West African commercial and agricultural transformations.
The big books, authored or edited, have dealt with African history. She is the author of Marrying Well: Marriage, Status, and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (1985); the co-editor of Law and Colonial Africa (1991) and Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil (2001); and the author of Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760-1900 (2007), which was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Center’s Frederick Douglass Prize. She is currently working on a project entitled Trans-Atlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil. It uses court records from the British colony of Lagos to identify persons of slave origin mentioned in them and recover information about their lives in West Africa and Brazil.
The Heilbrun Fellowship that Dr. Mann was awarded in 2019 helped to fund the expansion and preparation for publication of "Freedom Papers: A Database of Cartas de Alforria, Salvador, Bahia, 1820-1850," an endeavor inspired by the transformative Voyages: Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, which was created at Emory University under the distinguished leadership of Woodruff Professor Emeritus David Eltis. (You will remember that Dr. Eltis spoke to us about this project at one of our Colloquiums in the fall.) The information collected in Dr. Mann’s new database will advance the research on the biographies of the individual men, women, and children enslaved in Africa and transported to the Americas that is shaping her new book on Trans-Atlantic Lives.
Of course, Dr. Mann did not spend her career at Emory locked in her office doing nothing but the scholarly work described above. Her colleagues in History described her other activities at Emory thus in the program celebrating her retirement from among them in 2018:
She helped create the Institute of African Studies, which she directed from 1993 to 1996. The Institute is one of the country's oldest and most dynamic centers of Africanist scholarship. Dr. Mann was also very active in creating the Women's Studies Program, now the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Further, she was instrumental in bringing to Emory University the African Studies Association (ASA), the world's largest organization devoted to the study of Africa, and in creating the nationally-ranked PhD program in African History.
AND, between 2008 and 2011, she chaired the Department of History.
With such a record of accomplishment, it’s no wonder that the History Department took advantage of that occasion to announce a special initiative to honor her career and legacy, The Mann Prize in African Studies, “to be awarded to an outstanding graduate student whose work and commitment to African Studies embodies the career of Professor Kristin Mann.”
A career, we might note, that is anything but over yet, witness the Heilbrun-funded work mentioned above and the related ongoing work on Trans-Atlantic Lives: Slavery and Freedom in West Africa and Brazil.
|
|
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, April 12, 2021 |
|
“Shifting the Locus of Power in Immigration Narratives”
Julie Schwietert Collazo, Co-Founder and Director, Immigrant Families Together (IFT), and Rosayra (“Rosy”) Pablo Cruz, Guatemalan immigrant and entrepreneurial activist for others like her
Zoom Meeting
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Historically, U.S.-published narratives about immigration and immigrants--both non-fiction and fiction-- are written not from the perspectives of people who have lived migration experiences, but by (usually white) journalists whose commitment to the ideal of objectivity and often limited grasp of relevant history obscure crucial aspects of such experiences. While there are notable exceptions (namely Reyna Grande's memoirs and the memoirs of undocumented and formerly undocumented writers like José Antonio Vargas and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio), the publishing industry continues to privilege white writers' narratives of experiences they have not lived. In today’s Lunch Colloquium, an asylum seeker from an indigenous background and a white, U.S.-born (and Oxford-and-Emory-educated) writer, co-authors of The Book of Rosy (named one of the best non-fiction books of 2020) will discuss the experiences that yielded that book (including Rosy’s long separation from two of her children) and what they’ve learned from their mutual endeavor about the need to shift the locus of power in immigration narratives for more just and inclusive storytelling.
About Julie Schwietert Collazo and Rosayra (Rosy) Pablo Cruz:
Julie Schwietert Collazo (97Ox, 99C) is the co-founder and director of Immigrant Families Together (IFT), a non-profit organization founded in response to the zero tolerance policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. She brings her background as a bilingual journalist and former social worker and creative arts therapist to bear on her work with IFT, which raised more than a million dollars in just over six months after its founding and has raised more than three million to date, posting bond for more than 120 detained parents, grandparents, and older siblings who were separated from children. The ongoing work of IFT involves providing support to these families -- housing, legal counsel, medical/dental/mental health care, and other necessities -- as they proceed with their immigration cases, and also providing material and logistical support to border partners and to individuals currently in detention centers. Her work with IFT has been recognized by the New York State Senate and has been entered into the U.S. Congressional Record by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was named one of FWD.US's 2019 Keeping Families Together champions and recently received Emory University's 2021 Women of Excellence Award. Along with one of the mothers supported by IFT, she is co-author of The Book of Rosy, which was published in English and Spanish by HarperOne and HarperCollins Español in June 2020, and which was named by Kirkus as one of the best non-fiction books of 2020.
Rosayra Pablo Cruz, a Guatemalan immigrant turned entrepreneurial activist, is a mother of four who sought asylum in the United States during the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy, an act that resulted in the separation of her two sons from her custody for 81 days. Upon her release from detention, she became active in advocating for women who remained in detention, separated from their children, and otherwise pressing for just immigration policies. She is a recent graduate of the National Domestic Workers Alliance's training program, and now trains other asylum-seeking women about their rights as workers. She has served as co-president of her oldest son's PTA, initiating a lending library and a clothing and supply closet for recently arrived immigrant students. She is lead author of The Book of Rosy/El Libro de Rosy, her memoir, which was named by the Chicago Public Library system as one of its top 100 books of 2020.
|
|
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday March 15, 2021 |
|
“Forbidden Black Love: America’s Hidden Civil Rights Issue”
Dianne Stewart
Associate Professor of Religion and African American Studies
|
|
At the Lunch Colloquium of Monday, March 15, Dr. Dianne Stewart began her talk by saying that the urge to write her book Black Woman, Black Love burned inside her; she felt she could never be satisfied unless she wrote it. It began when she read a magazine article asking why Black women never marry. She knew this as a reality for many women who talked about not enough men to marry, but somehow the shock of that reality hadn’t registered. Even though she had been teaching a course on Black love, she had been reluctant to include romantic love in the course content because she thought it might make the course appear superficial.
The Ebony magazine article about Black marriage prompted her to do research that revealed something was not being said about Black love and coupling. Of the five central themes shaping life in the African American community--suffering, hope, justice, freedom, and love--few people were examining love. The research revealed striking disparities. For instance, in data from 2010, within the age group 25-29 years, only 29.4% of Black women and 36.4% of Black men were married at the time of the survey. Thus, 71% of Black women were not married compared with about 50% of white women; 44.8% had never been married. Response to this information in the Black community was varied. Some said that the problem was concentrated in this younger age group, and was not a general problem. Many felt that these statistics were being used to disparage Black people.
Further examination revealed that the disparities began to emerge in the 1960s, when rates of Black marriage began falling in larger numbers than in whites and Latinx. In 1960, among women over the age of 19, 61% and 74% respectively of Black and white women were married. That number declined to 30% and 55% respectively for the two groups in 2010. While marriage rates dropped for all groups, it fell by over one half in Black women.
Most scholars have looked at multiple social, economic, and political factors as causing such decreasing marriage rates including urbanization, migration, and changes in the economy and modes of production to name a few. Many believe that a through-line from the times of enslavement to modern times should not be drawn; they believe that coupling should rather be viewed in the context of the aforesaid factors as operative in individual decades.
Dr. Stewart argues differently. Her research has established that in contrast to scholarly work, popular books tend to treat love, coupling, and marriage in the Black community as if Black women need to fix themselves to make themselves more desirable to suitors in a shrunken marriage market. In such books, the broader societal issue has been transformed into a tale of personal failure. Popular belief is that poor Black women suffer the most in the marriage market. Others have pegged middle class Black women as the hardest hit because fewer Black men climb educational ladders than women so as to become eligible partners. Of course, in both groups, mass incarceration of Black men plays an important role, removing eligible partners from the community early and then, when they return to the community, limiting their opportunities for advancement and success.
Actually, drawing on a large dataset from 1995, Dr. Stewart has shown that the primary problem keeping the rates of coupling for Black women low is not class or socioeconomics; it is skin color, as with almost every other differential circumstance in the U.S. The data show that there are no differences between Black women’s marriage rates according to level of education. Rates of women with college degrees, some college, and HS degrees or less are essentially the same in the married, formerly married, and never married groups.
This finding led Dr Stewart to investigate how enslavement, the root of disparate treatment based on skin color, may be influencing current day heterosexual Black coupling. In the book, she traces the history of what she calls “forbidden Black love,” encompassing four structural and systemic factors that have long made love and marriage difficult, delayed, or impossible for Black women—and especially for darker skinned women: (1) separation of Black married couples and families; (2) racist, sexist jurisprudence and legal transactions; (3) sexual and reproductive violence and control; and (4) colorism and phenotypic stratification (CPS) on bases including hair texture, body type, and facial features.
In discussing the long history of the separation of Black married couples and families, Dr. Stewart noted that most women captured in Africa for transatlantic transport were of the age where they would likely have been married, hence experiencing the first of many separations. Even after the abolishment of the international slave trade, between 1808-1860 an internal slave trade emerged trafficking humans by foot and on water from the eastern coast of the U. S. across vastly expanding cotton country as far as Texas. By 1861, more than 678,000 persons had been displaced, and torn from partners and children, some multiple times. On the local level, temporary or disparate work assignments also tore tens of thousands of couples apart. Because most of the enslaved worked in small businesses, farms, or households, not big plantations, many couples lived with different masters who controlled their interactions through work assignments. The access of freedmen married to enslaved spouses was completely controlled by owners who could separate couples at their whim.
In discussing the history of racist, sexist jurisprudence and legal transactions, Dr. Stewart mentioned the example of a tax levied on Black women’s labor in Virginia in 1643. Husbands were levied for their wives. Records from the period documenting free Black men marrying white women probably reflect the fact those women were exempt from the tax required for Black women. There was also what Alexis Wells has called the “Black women’s womb as a capital asset.” One example of the impact of that view is an enslaved man who was manumitted on his owner’s death, but his “wife and her increase” were retained as slaves because of their reproductive value. The increasing value of the enslaved encouraged American enslavers to breed additional laborers in any way they could. There were forced sexual couplings between enslaved men and women demanded by their owners as well as designated “breeder slaves,” with people valued much like prize bulls and heifers. The actions of overseers, masters, and their sons, whose sexual fantasies played out in violence against Black women slaves, were underpinned by the profit to be made from additional enslaved progeny.
In terms of sexual and reproductive violence and control, Dr. Stewart ‘s research has focused on the Jim Crow reign of terror. She considers the impact of lynching on marriage and family. In her book, she also details how heteronormative, patriarchal marriage and family were made compulsory for freedmen if they were to join the nation. If a couple were to benefit from the promises of democracy, marriage with a patriarchal head of household was the portal to citizenship. This meant dispensing with their own approaches to courtship and coupling, derived from African tribal heritage, but considered immoral or unchristian by whites. However, enslaved women had never experienced this patriarchal relationship with their Black partners, and vice versa. In one sense, all enslaved women were “married” to their owners because they provided financially for them, determined their reproductive activity, and decided the intactness of a “family” unit. But after the Civil War, the government compelled marriage by withholding labor contracts from unpaired freed Black women unless a husband was responsible for the contract. In consequence, Black women were forced to marry to survive. And compulsory marriage was reinforced through religious and labor institutions as well as wider cultural norms.
And if Black women claimed to be married, but widows of Black Civil War veterans? The disparate treatment of widows of Black Civil War veterans reflected racialized denial of the capacity for honor in Negroes. For example, an instructional manual for evaluators of benefit petitions specified that the complexions of Black widows must be compared to those of their children. Any differences would suggest that the claim was fabricated. Such treatment of Civil War widows was a dress rehearsal for what would arise in the early 1960s in the welfare system when social welfare benefits were first being extended to people of color. Multiple states denied benefits if there were men in the home. If an able-bodied man was found in the home of a welfare recipient, they could be criminally charged as well as lose their benefits. The men could be forced to reimburse the welfare department for benefits, too. This policy compelled Black men to abandon women and their children. At the same time, men courting women with children would be discouraged from marrying them because they couldn’t make enough money to support the family without aid. As for relationships that partners tried to hide? The most intrusive agencies searched women’s homes for men’s toiletries and closets for clothing and even questioned neighbors about male visitors, practices that continue today. Some believe that Black men have been undercounted in the national census for decades because they have been hiding. With this in mind, statistics may not be what they appear to be.
But even if there are in fact more Black couples than statistics would suggest, it is also true that policies policing the sexuality of Black men and women have been pivotal in the disruption of Black coupling. There has been a pattern of activities beginning long ago, post-emancipation, that weaponizes heteropatriarchal expectations for husbands and fathers against Black men who have never been given an opportunity to become patriarchs. The government has sanctioned efforts to prevent relationships from developing into marriage—and marriages from lasting. Some suggest that the intent of such efforts has been racial genocide. And of course the mass incarceration of Black men has exacerbated the other forces at work against Black love and marriage.
Towards the end of her talk. Dr. Stewart identified three major areas in which change could remedy the current situation. She argues that we need to
- Build Black wealth;
- Relinquish our notion of the patriarchal nuclear family as the ideal functional and morally upright family; and
- Dismantle CPS (colorism and phenotypic characterization).
Dr. Stewart argues that building Black wealth is probably the most important structural change needed to shift the prospects for Black love and marriage. Working class men and women are both looking for partners who can move them into the middle class. So many men stay out of the marriage market, believing they don’t have the wealth and financial stability to participate. The man making $35,000/year is looking for the woman who's making $50,000 to marry, but she’s looking for the man who's making $75,000. Moreover, generations of stolen Black wealth have left many, perhaps most of the Black families that do form, without the wealth that allows families to invest in the future, buy a home, care for parents, and cover illnesses and other unfortunate events that are more common for Blacks. Dr. Stewart cites Darrick Hamilton’s Baby Bonds project, which Corey Booker used in his campaign for the presidential nomination, as well as proposals for reparations as potential remedies for this situation.
She suggests we must also relinquish our notion of the patriarchal nuclear family as the ideal. It is important to project images of such Black families as do exist as a counterweight to the insistence that they don’t across all areas of the media. However, we also need to rethink what family can look like, including forms of family that have been maligned and deemed pathological when practiced in the Black community. Often the families of single mothers enmeshed in poverty are being nurtured by a circle of grandmothers and neighbors. Traditionally, friends, former girlfriends, and relatives have taken in orphans and abandoned children without any formal arrangements, in the style of Hilary Clinton’s “it takes a village” model. But these arrangements are viewed as an outgrowth of “dysfunctional” families when African Americans practice them, instead of being celebrated as in the reception given Mrs. Clinton’s model. People can organize themselves within marriage and partnering and parenting in different ways.
Dismantling CPS (colorism and phenotypic characterization) is probably the most difficult among the kinds of effort that may benefit Black love and marriage. Data show that in a sample of women 16-29 years old, light complexioned Black women are twice as likely to be married as darker ones. They also marry Black men of comparable education and income at higher rates than darker women. And when one turns to the OkCupid dating site data analysis from 2014 on racial preferences, Black women are the least likely to be selected for dates by all men. Asian, Latinx and white men all deeply discount Black women. Granted, African American men also discount white women, dispelling the myth that Black men just can’t wait to get their hands on white women. But while Black men show some preference for Black women, their preference for Asian and Latinx women is two fold that for Black. And Black women? Black women are the only group that prefer Black men only; every other group of women prefer men of their own racial group and white men.
Remedying CPS has been and will be a difficult task. It goes all the way back to enslavers’ favoritism of mulattos, often unacknowledged progeny or kin, through better treatment and work assignments. Ever since, it’s been the lighter the skin color, the closer to whiteness, the “better,” with beauty also judged based on similarity to Caucasian characteristics, societal standards that still dictate choices in the fashion, entertainment, and advertising industries for who becomes a star or supermodel, etc. Current exceptions like Lupita Luango are usually Africans, who typically use their non-American accents to emphasize their distinction from the native born. Nor has just telling women to love themselves without regard to skin tone and other race-related features had much effect. It contradicts the reality that society does privilege lighter complexions and straighter hair. Black women spend billions of dollars worldwide on skin lightening creams and makeup. And long straight hair is still considered the normative for the beautiful, in spite of some normalization of a variety of natural hair styles.
As the time allotted for our Lunch Colloquium began to run short, Dr. Stewart attempted to wrap up her review of the history that accounts for the current state of things (where Black love and marriage are concerned) and the actions that might enable change for the better in the future. She reiterated the point that she’d been emphasizing since the start, namely, that “the current state of things” has everything to do with the shameful facts of slavery itself and the equally shameful facts of the racial oppression and resultant inequities in all spheres of life that have followed from that earliest of times till the present. The issues plaguing Black love and marriage are Civil Rights issues. And it will take addressing the whole range of Civil Rights issues (including that of reparations) in order to address those that have long had such a negative impact on coupling among African-Americans (and parenting, as well). But we’ve got to note that the immediate outburst of innumerable Q’s demanding A’s made it difficult for Dr. Stewart to conclude her wrap up—and bid us good-bye. Indeed, she was generous enough to answer questions for an extra half an hour before she finally did have to go.
Unfortunately, there’s not time (or space) here to deal with the particulars of the further discussion of marriage stats (fascinating), of welfare policies that are more like warfare policies, of the challenges of interracial dating and marriage (and Black women telling it like it is), of history misunderstood and the flawed paradigms it has yielded, vitiating the efforts of the most determined to right wrongs, and so forth and so on. You really had to be there . . . But if you weren’t, or if you were, and just want to refresh your memory of this decidedly memorable talk, there is a recording of the talk and much of the Q & A available on the Emeritus website.
--Denise Raynor
|
|
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, March 22, 2021 |
|
“Considerations for a Post-COVID Economy”
Raymond Hill
Senior Lecturer in Finance, Goizueta Business School
At the Lunch Colloquium scheduled on Monday, March 22, in a talk entitled “Consideration for a Post-covid Economy,” Professor Ray Hill, Senior Lecturer in Finance at Goizueta Business School, began by introducing the following four questions, and offering a brief caveat after each.
1. Where are we now? The question is complicated but answerable.
2. What will the path out of the virus look like? The answer is becoming less uncertain.
3. What kind of lasting structural changes are we likely to see? Economists probably don’t have any better insights than we do, but he’ll offer some.
There’s a huge divergence among economists’ views. Why?
Dr. Hill then discussed answers to the four questions using quantitative data to support his conclusions. He provided excellent graphical support throughout his presentation.
Where are we now?
Dr. Hill showed that the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), growing at a modest average rate of 2.3% before the recession in 2019, went down a substantial amount, at worst by about 35%, during the recession. Now, however, it is only 2.4% below its previous peak. The U.S. unemployment rate jumped up from 4% to over 12% during the recession, but it is now around 6%. Compared to its experience in other recessions, the U. S. has recovered much faster than ever before, within one year. But the graph on the recovery shows the “V-shaped curve” we’ve heard so much about. As expected, certain areas have done much better than other areas. For example, service industries like leisure and hospitality have dropped significantly and have not recovered while expenditures on goods like furniture or pleasure boats have risen sharply. European countries are struggling more than we are in their recovery. But Japan has recovered all but 1 % of its loss and China has fully recovered.
What will the path out of the virus look like?
Dr. Hill then went on to share the good news that the U. S. industrial production index has continued to rise nicely. Furthermore, there has been a nice increase in the number of new jobs, as was recently reported. However, we are still down nine million jobs. The U. S. personal savings rate went up considerably during the virus and the expectation is that people will start spending more as we move past the worst of the pandemic, increasing the economy. There have been some supply chain issues—with supply of goods slow to meet expansion of demand-- because the recovery has happened more quickly than manufacturers anticipated.. However, the bottom line here is that such issues will soon be resolved and things are looking pretty good.
What kind of lasting structural changes are we likely to see?
What do economists say about this matter? Dr. Hill stated that economists (himself included) aren’t great at making these predictions. He discussed how the virus has impacted remote working, migration to the suburbs, on-line shopping, food delivery, education, and travel. It is possible lasting structural effects will ensue. Travel for business purposes may well be reduced due to people making more use of Zoom. And educators may continue to make much use of Zoom (and other such platforms), as well. However, Dr. Hill talked about his own teaching experience with Zoom. He indicated that the recent round of midterms he just finished grading show his Zoom teaching has resulted in much lower student learning than has been typical in an actual classroom. He then moved on to the last topic.
What will be the effect of huge federal government spending and Federal Reserve intervention?
What do economists say regarding the possibility of higher inflation ahead? There are two conflicting views. Some say yes, of course, the large federal recovery package and the increase in consumer spending will result in higher inflation. The Federal Reserve has seen large increases in the monetary base and the money supply. The data so far indicate only a small increase in inflation. However, financial markets are still betting on higher inflation, as reflected in the rising difference in yields between normal government bonds and those that adjust for inflation (called treasury inflation-protected securities or TIPS).. The trend seen recently is that the inflation-adjusted bonds are out-performing the un-adjusted bonds. It would seem their purchasers anticipate inflation.
On the other hand, those economists who say that we will probably not see higher inflation base their argument on the performance of the economy prior to COVID. In the decade after the 2008 financial crisis there were also large increases in the money supply and the Federal Reserve balance sheet, a succession of large federal government budget deficits, and historically low interest rates. In addition, the pre-COVID 3.5% employment rate was low. And yet there was low inflation.
Dr. Hill looked at three reasons for that low inflation pre-COVID. Looking first at the supposed low employment rate then, he noted it did not account for those people who got tired of looking for a job after the financial crisis of 2008 and just dropped out of the job market. If they all had come back into the job market again then the unemployment rate would have been around 8%, not 3.5%. Secondly, he noted that our industrial capacity utilization had not gotten back to its levels before the financial crisis so that companies had extra capacity to produce that was being wasted. Thirdly, the long-time on-going rise in international trade may have acted as a restraint on prices. We simply cannot count on these three factors to work now as they did then, pre-COVID, to keep inflation low in spite of other factors that might send it higher.
Dr. Hill then raised questions about the future. What is “full employment”-- that is, the lowest unemployment rate that does not trigger rising inflation? Will the Federal Reserve recognize rising inflation quickly enough? Does the Fed have the tools to quickly adjust to inflation? And: Can the Fed resist the political pressure to keep interest rates low even in the face of rising inflation? These questions are of interest especially to him since he plans to retire soon (in about two years). The answers to these questions were as follows: No one really knows what “full employment” is; The Fed will recognize inflation quickly and will have the tools to deal with it. And: The Federal Reserve continues to show signs of independence from political pressure. Therefore, Dr. Hill stated that while he is worried about inflation, he is also fairly confident that the power-that-be will act properly to keep it under control.
Dr. Hill then provided a very simple illustration of how things are likely to go in terms of Federal Reserve policies, using the driving of a car as an analogy. When the economy starts to speed up, the Feds put their feet on the brakes, and when the economy starts to slow down, the Feds put their feet on the gas pedal. In real terms, when the Feds increase the money supply resulting in a reduction in interest rates then, if we are in a recession, the economy accelerates and unemployment falls, whereas if we are at “full employment,” then inflation occurs.
However, Dr. Hill added that this simplistic view of monetary policy no longer seems accurate since so many of the linkages between Federal Reserve actions and the real economy appear to have broken down. In 2008 the Federal Reserve injected huge amounts of reserves into the banking system, but banks did not expand their lending, and the money supply did not increase by much. The interest rate the Federal Reserve controls (the Federal Funds rate) fell, but other interest rates (like the 30 year mortgage rate) did not. In spite of success in keeping the Federal Funds rate near zero for years, growth in real GDP or investment did not result, allowing us to bounce back in the same way as we had after previous recessions. This breakdown in the workings of monetary policy has substantially decreased our ability to see what lies ahead for the economy.
Dr. Hill ended his formal presentation with a very lively question and answer session. Maybe we old folks managed to learn more from his “Zoom class” than his Goizueta students have been doing this semester.
--Mike Kutner
|
|
New members are the lifeblood of any organization.
Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC!
Walter John Curran, Jr., MD, Professor Emeritus and Lawrence W. Davis Chair Emeritus of Radiation Oncology, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Chair Emeritus in Cancer Research
|
|
Wally Curran served for 11 years as the Executive Director of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in the state of Georgia. Before that, he was the Chair of Radiation Oncology. He graduated with honors from Dartmouth College, received his MD degree from the Medical College of Georgia, and is a Board Certified Radiation Oncologist. Curran completed his residency in the Department of Radiation Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center and his internship in internal medicine at Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia. Wally has authored or co-authored more than seven hundred abstracts and scholarly papers, as well as numerous presentations, reviews and book chapters. He has been chairman or co-chairman of more than 40 clinical trials and a reviewer for twelve national/international journals.
He states “I left Emory in order to begin my next professional chapter in January serving as the Global Chief Medical Officer of GenesisCare, a rapidly growing international group which is now the world’s largest provider of radiation oncology care and a major global provider of other medical services. I will continue my service as a group chairman of NRG Oncology. In order to continue to train for and participate in future Winship 5K's, I will still reside in Atlanta.”
|
|
John D. Merlino, MD, Assistant Professor Emeritus of Medicine
|
|
I am delighted to be a member of the Emeritus College. My involvement with Emory has been long and richly rewarding. Membership in the College allows me to maintain this valued relationship.
I was born and raised in Providence, RI. I attended Tufts undergrad and Brown University Medical School. After Brown all my educational and professional activity has been at Emory. I completed my Internal Medicine training and Cardiology training here, and consequently had the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best teachers and clinicians in the world. I had always planned to return to Rhode Island to practice, but I had the great fortune of being offered a faculty position in the Emory Medical School and a clinical position at Emory Midtown where I have practiced and taught for the past 30 years. I will be forever grateful to Emory for giving me those opportunities.
Melissa and I have been married for 35 years. We are fortunate to have our son Fenway and his spouse, Katherine, living nearby in Atlanta. We have recently added a grandchild, Matthew, to our family. Our daughter Patricia will start Columbia Law in the Fall.
In retirement I hope to able to do some volunteer clinical work and teaching, baby stroller pushing, and to continue to learn from you all.
|
|
Members in Transition
Linda Armstrong, MFA, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts
A. James Elliott, JD, MBA, Associate Dean, School of Law
Dawn M. Manning-Williams, MD, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology
Ichiro Matsumura, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry
Christine G Perkell, PhD, Professor of Classics
Charles A. Staley, MD, Holland M. Ware Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery
Ann Vandenberg, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics
|
|
Ron Gould
Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
|
|
Ron has given a number of talks recently. Many of us last year enjoyed a version of the one above!
Extensions Under Edge Density Conditions, Special Session on Advances in Graph Theory, American Math. Society Southeastern Sectional Meeting, March 13-14, 2021, Zoom meeting.
Chorded Cycles, Discrete Mathematics Seminar, Virginia Commonwealth University, March 17, 2021. Zoom talk.
The Oddball's Oddball: The Unusual Life of Paul Erdos, Discrete Mathematics Seminar, Virginia Commonwealth University, March 24, 2021.
|
|
Perry Sprawls, PhD, FACR, FAAPM, FIOMP
Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Emory University
|
|
Perry has just published an article "Preserving Our History and Heritage" in the above section of the American College of Radiology website. The article can be read by clicking here. Perry says that one of his efforts now is encouraging and helping families to “get with it now!” to preserve elements of their family histories, especially documents, pictures, and memories before they are lost forever. “This is actually a rewarding project for us during this time of restricted social contacts and activities and looking for things to do. I am working through various organizations on this and publishing articles in some local newspapers. I have also developed a website that provides detailed information and specific suggestions: http://www.sprawls.org/heritage/.”
|
|
Larry Beard, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Accounting
|
|
Dr. Larry H. Beard, Professor Emeritus of Business, passed away on March 4, following a brief illness. He was born in 1942 in Commerce Georgia and lived there until he entered college at The University of Georgia. Professor Beard received the bachelor’s degree in journalism, the master’s degree in marketing in the Journalism School, and the Ph.D. degree in Business, all from The University of Georgia. Prior to entering the doctoral program, he worked for several years as an information systems consultant with Management Science America, and in systems management with Oxford Industries.
Dr. Beard joined the Emory faculty in 1981 as Associate Professor of Accounting, having previously been a member of the faculty at Wake Forest University, The University of South Carolina, and The University of Maryland. For more than 25 years he taught Managerial Accounting and Cost Management courses at Emory in the BBA, MBA, and Executive MBA Programs. His research and publications focused on management control systems, budgeting, and management performance evaluation. His articles were published in The Accounting Review, Managerial Accounting, Business, and many other journals. He was tenured at Emory and promoted to Full Professor in 1986. His years of experience in business and academia provided him a rich background for teaching in the School’s non-degree Executive Programs at companies such as IBM, BellSouth, Home Depot, Eastman Kodak, and many other major companies. His love for travel and his interest in international perspectives on business took him to Linz, Austria on several occasions to teach in the Emory faculty exchange program with Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, and the LIMAK Executive Program in Austria.
At Emory, Larry was noted not only for his excellence in teaching, research, and service to the Business School, but also for his keen sense of humor and his ability to insert just the right amount of levity into every situation. He was especially adept at lowering the temperature with a touch of humor when discussions got a bit too intense in faculty meetings or important committee meetings.
Professor Beard is survived by his wife of 58 years, Dr. Linda N. Beard, who is retired from Emory as a long-time administrator in the Medical School. Together they pursued their passion for art and travel, especially Irish art. Their travels included frequent visits to Ireland and other destinations in the British Isles and Europe.
|
|
David A. Ford, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
|
|
David Alexander Ford, Sr., of Canton, Georgia, died on March 15, 2021, due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by his wife of fifty-six years, Helen Hamm Ford; his daughter Leslie Ford; son David Alexander Ford, Jr., and daughter Shannan Ford LaPorte.
Dave was born October 25, 1935 in Pasadena, CA, and he grew up in California. He graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1955 and then earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Utah in 1962 under the direction of Don H. Tucker.
After receiving his degree, Dave entered the Air Force as an officer, and he was stationed at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, in the early 1960s. There he was Section Chief, responsible for research in optimal control theory. This work, done in conjunction with NASA, was to solve problems related to rocket development in the Apollo program.
In 1965, soon after they married, Dave and Helen moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where Dave took a position at Emory University in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He remained at Emory for forty years, retiring in 2001.
Dave served his department in many roles over the years. Some of these were as Director of Graduate Studies (1980-82), Acting Chair (1982-83), and Director of Undergraduate Studies (1983-89, 1991-95). Dave was an effective, dedicated teacher. A highlight of his tenure at Emory was receiving the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award.
Besides developing a number of new mathematics courses, Dave, along with Chris Curran from the Economics Department, developed the joint undergraduate major in Economics/Mathematics. Dave taught in this program until his retirement. This highly successful program has sent many students on to graduate schools across the country. Dave was also a highly respected teaching mentor for graduate students. To this day former students sing his praises as a teaching mentor and note the many teaching tips and encouragement he provided.
While living in historic Druid Hills for most of this time, Dave enjoyed playing softball, tennis, and golf, as well as camping, and singing in the Collegium Vocale, a community choral group.
After retirement, Dave and Helen moved to Canton, Georgia. There Dave jumped into new pursuits such as becoming a founding member of the Laurel Canyon Optimist Club, continuing his singing with the Soleil Singers and Silver Sounds Chorale, and pursuing his zeal for cooking as a member of Les Marmitons and the Soleil Men’s Cooking Club. Dave also spent time playing bridge with various groups. Always a deep and critical thinker, he enjoyed an abiding passion for reading throughout his life.
Dave will be greatly missed by those who knew and loved him. Donations can be made in his name to the Laurel Canyon Optimist Club, care of Alan Ludwick, 202 Aster Court, Canton, GA 30114.
|
|
Walking the Campus with Dianne |
|
|
Did you figure out where we stopped for our last walk? As mentioned, we have visited this place before...it is the Brumley Bridge located on Haygood Drive. The bridge connects the Health Sciences Research Building to the Emory Children's Center. It is named for George W. Brumley Jr., chair of the School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and a recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award for service to the University.
For those of you who may not have read about it before, here's a repeat of the information from my first posting in 2018:
Brumley and his family established the Zeist Foundation in 1989 to support children's medical clinics, hospice care, juvenile justice programs, and other philanthropies. He, his wife Jean, and 10 other members of their family died in a plane crash on Mount Kenya in 2003.
Here's a couple of links that will give you more information on the bridge.
|
|
With the spring weather upon us, I have been outside a bit more, but unfortunately not as much on Emory's campus as I would like. I'm hoping that will change soon, but for now it's back to my cache of photos.
Let's go back indoors and take a look at something that is expansive and, in my opinion, quite beautiful. It's located in a space we've visited before and is hard to miss once you've entered the building.
|
|
Where will you find this on the Emory Campus? |
|
Emory University Emeritus College
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206
Atlanta, GA 30329
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
