Newsletter Volume 7 Issue 19 - May 26, 2021 |
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Our fantastic Lunch Colloquium series continues with two talks that are quite different, yet also related. Our own Marilynne McKay will give a monumental talk next Tuesday and the next week Tom Clark will talk about his own studies of racial bias in policing. That is certainly a very “hot” topic and data on that issue are much needed. Thanks to Liza Davis, you can read below about Lauren Klein’s talk on race and eating in early America, and thanks to Jan Pratt you can read about Mindy Goldstein’s talk on the law and climate change. Finally, thanks to Don O’Shea you can see the videos of all of these talks—a real treasure of knowledge!
I so appreciate those of you who write to let me know of your activities and I hope you will continue that trend by letting Ann know about what you are doing. As you can see below, our members are involved in a wide range of activities.
I will be on vacation this summer, but I look forward to seeing you in the fall—hoping that it will be safe to once again meet in person!
I am very grateful to Gretchen Schulz, Ann Hartle, and Marge Crouse for help with editing and proofing.
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Lunch Colloquium - Tuesday, June 1
Marilynne McKay
"Historical Decisions: Monuments Gone with the Winds of Change"
Please scroll to read more below
Lunch Colloquium - Monday, June 7
Tom Clark
“Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot?”
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, May 10
Lauren Klein
“An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States”
Please scroll to read more below
Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, May 17
Mindy Goldstein
"Climate Change – It’s Real. So, What Can the Law Do About It?”
Please scroll to read more below
Faculty Activities
Michael M. E. Johns, Ruth Murphey Parker, Patrick Noonan, David Cook
Please scroll to read more below
New Members
Joyce Flueckiger, Maurice Harris
Please scroll to read more below
In Memoriam
Robert James Pollet
Please scroll to read more below
Reflections from Gray
Please scroll to read more below
Details of the Search for a New Director
Please scroll to read more below
Walking the Campus with Dianne
Please scroll to read more below
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Lunch Colloquium - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 |
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“Historical Decisions: Monuments Gone with the Winds of Change ”
Marilynne McKay
Professor Emerita of Dermatology,
Emory University School of Medicine
Lunch Colloquium - Zoom Meeting
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that in 2020, in the midst of COVID-19, 168 Confederate symbols were removed from public spaces, more than in the previous four years combined. All but one of those were removed after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May of that year. In a previous Colloquium (last summer’s “Monumental Decisions: The Origins and Messages of Confederate Memorials”), Marilynne explored the Big Lie of the Lost Cause—that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War—and the reasons why Black Lives Matter protesters were toppling and defacing statues that represented white supremacy.
Confederate symbols are indeed being removed from public display, but the process hasn’t been trouble-free. How does a community make the decision to remove a century-old monument? Are there laws against that? What permissions must be obtained? How much will it cost? What is to be done with the darn thing afterward? (Few monuments are actually destroyed, but it’s not easy to find a home for an 11-foot equestrian statue.) Join us for a look at some of the shenanigans involved in the most recent raids on town squares and courthouse lawns and hear what tactics have been most successful in achieving a peaceful resolution to the complex issues and strong feelings that arise when symbols so laden with significance are the subject of debate—and action.
About Marilynne McKay:
Marilynne McKay came to Emory in 1980 and served the Department of Dermatology as Chief of Grady Hospital for 15 years and Acting Chairman for almost 4 years, although she says “it seemed like longer.” She was the Director of Continuing Medical Education and Biomedical Media until she retired from the School of Medicine in 1999. She returned to teach resident Dermatology clinics at Grady in 2009 and “just hasn’t gotten around to leaving.” Marilynne is looking forward to getting back to judging Atlanta theater performances with the Suzi Bass awards this autumn when the marquees will be lit again. She’s currently writing a chapter in another volume of essays on “Sherlock Holmes and Medicine” for the Baker Street Irregulars.
Marilynne has contributed to the Emeritus College since 2005 and has especially enjoyed presenting whatever’s on her mind at luncheon meetings. Recent entertaining and informative Lunch Colloquium programs include "The History of White People" and "Doctors in the Sherlockian Canon," with a program from the summer of 2019 entitled "Taking Your Skin Outdoors: Sun, Bugs, and Poison Ivy,” and the program from last year, mentioned above, also on the subject of Confederate monuments. She has also and most notably stepped forward to take responsibility for the continuance of the Interdisciplinary Seminars that John Bugge himself made such a mainstay of EUEC programming, working with Jim Roark to coordinate our most recent such seminar on “The South.”
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Lunch Colloquium - Monday, June 7, 2021 |
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"Are Police Racially Biased in the Decision to Shoot?”
Tom Clark
Charles Howard Candler Professor of Political Science
Lunch Colloquium - Zoom Meeting
11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Tom Clark is best known as a scholar on the subject of judicial decision-making, with two acclaimed books on the subject, the most recent, in 2019, focused on the Supreme Court. But much of his current research focuses on policing and law-enforcement in American cities. And today, he’ll report on the results of the study of racial bias in policing that has been undertaken by the Politics of Policing Lab (PoPL) that Tom co-directs here at Emory. He’ll explain how that study has yielded a theoretical model that has real predictive value, given that it’s based on facts derived from rigorous collection and analysis of data.
We present a theoretical model predicting that racially biased policing produces 1) more use of potentially lethal force by firearms against Black civilians than against White civilians and 2) lower fatality rates for Black civilians than White civilians. We empirically evaluate this second prediction with original officer-involved shooting data from nine local police jurisdictions from 2005 to 2017, finding that Black fatality rates are significantly lower than White fatality rates, conditional upon civilians being shot by the police. Using outcome test methodology, we estimate that at least 30% of Black civilians shot by the police would not have been shot had they been White.
Join us to hear more from Tom about the study that is providing a nuanced answer to the question so central in political discourse today: “Are police racially biased in the decision to shoot?”
About Tom Clark [in his own words]:
I received my BA (2003) in Political Science from Rutgers University and my MA. (2005) and PhD (2008) in Politics from Princeton University.
I am Charles Howard Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory University. My research and teaching interests are in judicial politics, criminal justice and policing, rational choice institutionalism, constitutional theory and design, democratic political institutions, and applied formal theory and statistical methods...my past and on-going research projects...are focused on the politics of law-enforcement and criminal justice, judicial learning and rule-making, interactions among actors within the judiciary, representation on the courts, empirical techniques for estimating judicial preferences and the content of judicial decisions, and the interaction between the judiciary and other institutions.
I recently completed a book, The Supreme Court: An Analytic History of Constitutional Decision Making, which studies the history of constitutional decision-making by the Supreme Court and has been published in the Cambridge University Press Series in Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. My current research focuses on policing and law-enforcement in American cities, the informational properties of litigation, and the application of the death penalty in the United States. My past research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Nature: Human Behavior, Political Analysis, the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Science Research & Methods, the Journal of Law & Courts, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Wisconsin Law Review, and the Criminal Law Bulletin. My first book, The Limits of Judicial Independence, was published in the Series in Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions at Cambridge University Press and won the 2012 William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy from the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association.
Along with Adam Glynn and Michael Leo Owens, I am co-director of the Politics of Policing Lab at Emory. I am also currently Editor of The Journal of Law & Courts, the flagship journal of the Law & Courts section of the American Political Science Association. In addition to my appointment in the Political Science Department, I hold a courtesy appointment in the Emory Law School. I was a Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University in 2015-2016. I have also been a visiting research scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Toulouse School of Economics (Summer 2016). I was the Formal Theory and Methodology Field Editor of the Journal of Politics from 2019 through 2020. I have provided consulting services in constitutional litigation for cases before the US Supreme Court and in the Georgia State courts.
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Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, May 10, 2021 |
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“An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States”
Lauren Klein
Associate Professor, Departments of English and
Quantitative Theory and Methods
On Tuesday, May 11, the Emeritus College welcomed Dr. Lauren Klein, a specialist in digital humanities, to speak about the trajectory of research that led to the recent publication of her book An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States. When she began the project, Dr. Klein found that most of her primary sources failed to contain references to food artifacts from that period, so she turned to epistolary evidence to learn more about what early Americans ate and what eating meant to them. She narrowed her focus to thousands of letters written by and to Thomas Jefferson, reviewing them to find out what Jefferson ate and what role his cuisine played in the lives of people around him, particularly Sally Hemings’ brother James.
Dr. Klein opened by quoting a letter Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, from France, asking that Madison bring him American “pippins,” or Washington apples, and cranberries. For Jefferson, these food items were a form of both aesthetic and political expression. They supplemented his French diet with some of his favorite American food, but they also represented Jefferson’s determination to cultivate a sense of republican taste.
Jefferson had brought James Hemings to France with him so he could be apprenticed to a French chef. France had abolished slavery, however, so Hemings, who became fluent in French, learned what it was to be free and petitioned Jefferson to grant him freedom on their return to Monticello. But Jefferson belied his republicanism and agreed to manumission only when the young man trained someone to replace him as Monticello’s chef.
As Dr. Klein explained, Hemings apparently understood that food, for Jefferson, was emblematic of his republican ideals, and, accordingly, developed a new serving style that required Jefferson’s guests to retrieve their plates from the dining table—a round table, so as to eliminate any hierarchical seating—and serve themselves. Asking them to be self-sufficient in such a formal setting was a performative gesture that reinforced the value of egalitarianism in the young republic. And it was Hemings who arranged the meal at the center of the 1790 “dining table bargain,” a famous act of political compromise that resulted in locating the national Capitol on the Potomac rather than in New York or Pennsylvania and in ensuring that the federal government would assume all states’ debts and have taxing authority.
Dr. Klein paused here to note her frustration at finding no reference to James Hemings in “Founders Online,” the digital archive that features digitized copies of Jefferson’s letters and those of his interlocutors. She explained that this oversight emerged, in part, from Jefferson’s refusal to write Hemings directly, choosing instead to communicate with him through William Evans, one of Jefferson’s servants. Jefferson’s exchanges with William Evans clearly establish Hemings’ trajectory from slave to free man but provide too little insight into other aspects of his life. (Hemings did eventually ask Jefferson to write him directly about the wages he would receive as White House chef in Washington, when Jefferson became President, but he was denied that post and eventually committed suicide.)
Such power relations are reflected in archival silence. Dr. Klein approached her project determined to create new stories to rebalance the historical record, with special attention to James Hemings’ story and those of his community. To this end, she presented two data graphs included in her book, one arranging people whom Jefferson exchanged letters with into groups and tabulating the frequency of their correspondence and the other tabulating the names of people mentioned in Jefferson’s correspondence. Through this research, she established that Jefferson depended heavily on his slave staff to help him create the cultural republicanism he considered essential to shaping American identity.
As the end of her presentation approached, Dr. Klein mentioned another chapter in her book, one devoted to Melinda Russell, the first black woman to create a cookbook, which she self-published in 1866. She noted that Russell’s pastry recipes reflected resistance to “the dominant discourse of taste,” and that her “theory of satisfaction” countered “the dominant discourse of republicanism.” The expanded definition of taste that emerged in the eighteenth century had continued to evolve. Yet Russell was not even a chef, and her role was poorly documented; a supposed portrait of her has even been de-authenticated. So in researching the chapter Dr. Klein again encountered the frustration of working in the absence of cultural artifacts and with the limitations of archives. She closed her presentation by defining the challenge for scholars who seek to reanimate the stories of those Americans marginalized by history, “listening for the unsaid, translating misconstrued words, and refashioning disfigured lives” (a quotation Dr. Klein drew from Saidya Hartman’s book Wayward Lives). We much appreciated the fact that she had done exactly that for us on this special day.
--Liza Davis
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Report - Lunch Colloquium - Monday, May 17, 2021 |
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"Climate Change – It’s Real. So, What Can the Law Do About It?”
Mindy Goldstein
Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic, Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, Director of Law and Advocacy for the Resilience and Sustainability Collaboratory
That every US President since Lyndon Johnson has been briefed about climate change in hopes his administration would address it somehow was just one of the sobering facts we learned from Mindy Goldstein, Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic, Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, and newly named Director of Law and Advocacy for the Resilience and Sustainability Collaboratory of Emory University. Mindy spoke to the Emeritus College Lunch Colloquium on Monday, May 17. She challenged us to consider the various proposals that have been put forward to address global warming with their advantages and disadvantages in the light of the political realities that seem to be getting steadily “hotter,” too.
The underlying science of climate change has actually been known since the 1890s as well as the effect of human activity on the change. Although there have been some naysayers in the past, today 97% of scientists accept these facts. There is a growing recognition that the changes in the climate affect human health, property, quality of life, the natural world of flora and fauna, the proper operation of markets, and the future that will be inherited by our descendants. All 197 UN member states and territories agree that climate change is a problem and that something should be done to deal with it. Attendees at the 1992 UN convention on the climate thought that stopping further change might be possible but now, 30 years later, it is widely accepted that it cannot be stopped. All that we can hope is it that it might be possible to mitigate its effects.
Mindy summarized the problems we face under three “W”s – the world is Warmer, Weirder (with extreme weather events such as hurricanes and forest fires), and Wetter (as ocean levels rise threatening coastal communities worldwide).
So, what can the law do to regulate human behaviors and mitigate these issues? Focusing only on the United States, Mindy discussed the options at the federal level. Congress could pass new environmental regulations or use taxes to subsidize, penalize, and incentivize us. Agencies, the EPA for example, could pass new regulations. The President could issue Executive Orders (though as we have seen recently these may not last beyond the President’ s term in office). Or there could be attempts to use the courts to establish that the environment is entitled to constitutional protection.
A popular proposal is to reduce carbon emissions via a cap-and-trade program. Under such a program, a limit is established on the amount of carbon that can be emitted by a certain industry. If that industry does not reach its cap, it could trade, that is sell, its excess carbon to another industry that needs it. This proposal is popular because it makes matters predictable, and the markets can price their products with that in mind. Unfortunately, it seldom works well. In the European Union, for example, where the policy is in effect, the carbon limit is too high to reduce carbon output and, thanks to lobbying efforts, transportation, aviation and agriculture, the largest emitters of carbon, are exempt from the policy regulations. China just implemented a cap-and-trade policy on February 1, and it is already subject to the same kind of criticism.
Another possibility for reducing carbon emissions is a carbon tax. The amount of the tax would be established by adding up all the projected damage from an industry’s activity. It is obviously really complicated to determine the value of future damage and markets hate uncertainty, but the strategy continues to be popular because it is revenue generating. Congress could pass a new Clean Energy Standard forcing compliance with fines and other remedies.
The main difficulty with all legislative approaches is that new legislation would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to pass into law. No substantial environmental legislation has been enacted since the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in the 1970s and in our current political climate, passage of new legislation is unlikely. As a result, President Biden may try a different process called “budget reconciliation.” Several committees work on portions of the budget including discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and the tax code. In theory, these different committees all come up with the same budget figure. The process is complicated. It cannot affect discretionary spending, but it can change the tax code so imposition of a carbon tax is possible. President Biden, in pushing for a clean energy standard, is trying to make it look less like a matter of regulation and more like a tax.
Finally, Mindy turned to the regulatory and judicial approaches to regulation in this area. In Massachusetts v. EPA, decided in 2007, the Supreme Court held that the EPA is mandated to regulate greenhouse emissions. The Obama administration proposed a Clean Power Plant regulation, but it was never passed. An Affordable Clean Energy proposal put forth by Trump is so weak it would have no effect. Perhaps under the current administration, the EPA will be able to act more freely. Taking the judicial route is difficult as a constitutional amendment is unlikely (again, considering the current political climate) though scholars are considering whether courts might deem that the right to a future livable environment is a right found within the right to life, liberty, and happiness. An intriguing test case along those lines was brought by a group of young people and considered in Julianna v. US, decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020. Although the case was dismissed for lack of standing, one judge issued a strongly worded dissent so similar cases may be brought. At present, however, the best approach continues to be through administrative regulation of deleterious emissions.
There was a lot to absorb in Mindy’s presentation and there were many questions afterwards. Most of us want to know what WE as individuals can do. We can drive electric cars or use public transportation, lobby the government to promote clean air standards, and take reusable bags to grocery and other stores (and lobby them to stop using plastic bags). And finally, we can support the work of smart young advocates for environmental protection like Mindy Goldstein. Thanks to Mindy for her excellent and timely presentation.
--Jan Pratt
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Michael M. E. Johns
Michael M.E. Johns, MD, Chair in Health Policy in the Rollins School of Public Health, Emeritus Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, and Emeritus President and CEO of Emory Healthcare
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Member Michael M. E. Johns received the 2020 Herbert Pardes Family Award for National Leadership in Advocacy for Research on May 13. The 2020 Awards were not given last year because of the pandemic and were combined with the 2021 Awards. Special guests included Joe Biden, Fred Upton, Barbara Lee, Kweisi Mfume, Francis Collins, Lester Holt and Oprah Winfrey. More information about the award to Mike Johns, as well as a video message from him, can be seen by clicking here. The entire ceremony was recorded and may be viewed by clicking here. A song was sung at the close of the ceremony by a most unlikely duo!
The HERBERT PARDES FAMILY AWARD FOR NATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN ADVOCACY FOR RESEARCH, established by the Research!America Board of Directors in 2018, recognizes individuals who, throughout their careers have – like Dr. Pardes – demonstrated distinguished leadership and sustained commitment to public engagement and advocacy for research.
Michael M. E. Johns, MD, recipient of the Herbert Pardes Family Award for National Leadership in Advocacy for Research, is an internationally recognized leader in academic medicine, health policy, and he is a head and neck cancer surgeon. He currently serves as a professor in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health at Emory University. Elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1993, he is executive vice president for Health Affairs Emeritus at Emory University, and president, CEO, and chairman of the Board Emeritus of Emory Healthcare – positions he held at Emory from 1996 to 2007. He also served as Emory’s chancellor from 2007 to 2012. Prior to his work at Emory, he was vice president of the Medical Faculty and dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He recently served as interim executive vice president for Medical Affairs at the University of Michigan from June 2014 through February 2015.
In addition to leading complex administrative and academic organizations to new levels of excellence and service, Dr. Johns is widely renowned as a catalyst for new thinking in many areas of health policy and health professions education. He has been a significant contributor to many of the leading organizations and policy groups in health care, including the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). He frequently lectures, publishes, and works with state and federal policymakers on topics ranging from the future of health professions education to national health system reform. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Johns has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Most recently, in December 2016, he received an honorary Doctor of Science from his alma mater, the University of Michigan. In 2015, Dr. Johns received the Castle Connolly Lifetime Achievement Award, which is presented to physicians for their lifetime of dedication to research and practice in their respective specialties.
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Ruth Murphey Parker
Professor of Medicine
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Ruth Parker is one of our members who has joined before retirement. At this year's commencement, she received the Jefferson Award, one of the highest honors Emory bestows: "To honor faculty and staff who have significantly enriched the intellectual and civic life of the Emory community, the Thomas Jefferson Award, named and endowed by the Robert Earl McConnell Foundation, is presented annually at Commencement. The award honors a member of the faculty or staff for significant service to Emory University through personal activities, influence, and leadership, usually over the course of many years."
The citation stated: This year’s Jefferson Award winner, Ruth Murphey Parker, long has led efforts to advance the progress of health literacy, resulting in improved outcomes for the most vulnerable patients.
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Patrick Noonan
Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Information Systems
and Operations Management
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Outer Park returns with “Whole Lotta Orange”
Wild Orchard Records announces the release of Outer Park’s sophomore album, “Whole Lotta Orange.” On the heels of their late-2019 debut, “1968 (slight return),” the band once again conjures the free-wheeling spirits of early underground FM radio, with a 10-song release that remixes and reimagines that era’s kaleidoscopic blend of rock, jazz, blues, Americana, funk and psychedelic.
The band’s celebration of the work of Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Imogen Heap, Eva Cassidy, Charles Mingus, Jeff Beck and Pink Floyd is enhanced by three original tunes (“Foxy Roxy,” “Make The World Magic Again,” “Paradise Lost”).
As before, these sessions meld the diverse talents and musical experiences of Outer Park’s contingents in New Orleans (James Singleton on bass and trumpet), Orléans, France (Charles Tobermann on keys and guitar), and Atlanta (vocalist Chelsea Austin and guitarist Patrick S. Noonan).
The band is again joined by musical guests and friends from around the world: on drums, from NOLA, jazz powerhouse Jason Marsalis and multi-instrumentalist/composer Justin Peake; Boston-based studio ace Paul Lieberman on flute and saxes; and French musicians Simon Couratier on baritone sax and Franck Chevalier on viola.
Outer Park formed in 2018. Three members - Singleton, Tobermann and Noonan - had played their first gig together fifty years earlier, in 1968, as pre-teens. Their musical adventures in the intervening decades had taken them in different directions. However, at a chance reunion in 2013, they discovered they still had much common ground - as well as a great curiosity about how their musical and life experiences would have reshaped their take on the eclectic sounds that had molded them as young musicians.
You can click here to read more about this album and the band.
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David Cook
Professor of Film Studies, retired
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EUEC Member David Cook, currently Professor of Media Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has a new book (above) that will be published in August by Anthem Press, London. A History of Three-Dimensional Cinema chronicles 3-D cinema from its origins in 19th-century stereoscopic photography through anaglyphic/digital stereoscopic cinema in the 20th century to the promise of Virtual Reality in the 21st century. You can read more about this book by clicking here.
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New members are the lifeblood of any organization.
Please make a special effort to welcome them to the EUEC!
Members in Transition / Not Yet Retired
Joyce Flueckiger, PhD, Professor of Religion
Maurice D. Harris, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiology
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Robert James Pollet, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine
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Robert Pollet was born on January 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, NY, and passed away on April 27, 2021, with loved ones by his side. Robert's career and life were spent improving the lives of others. He devoted himself to research, medicine, and teaching and he embodied the humble, humanist ideals he espoused. Robert never wavered in his belief that we can and should bend our scientific, medical, social, and political efforts to the benefit of everyone. He was the son of New York City public school teachers and he grew up with love and science in his home. Robert and his parents joined the families of a number of other public-school teachers in spending their summers in the Fourth Lake Community in upstate New York - a place of special meaning, refuge, and community for Robert for much of his life. Robert attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn and then Columbia University in New York, NY as an undergraduate. As part of a summer internship in college he worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, his first lab, and fell in love with research. In his pursuit of dual passions in both research and clinical medicine, he chose a path that was unusual at the time and attended New York University's School of Medicine earning both an MD and PhD (Biochemistry). While at NYU, Robert met Donna who was interning as a college student in the NYU hospital's Social Work department and that marked the start of a fifty-year story of love, mutual professional support and pride, and family. Together, Robert and Donna moved to Chicago for his Internship at the University of Chicago, and then later to Ann Arbor where he completed his Residency at the University of Michigan, and finally to Washington, DC where he did a Fellowship in Endocrinology at the National Institutes of Arthritis, Metabolism & Digestive Diseases in Bethesda, MD. Robert had much professional success throughout his career though he rarely spoke of it with his family. He authored or co-authored over forty published papers in his field and was a Professor of Medicine first at the University of South Florida and then later at Emory University where he also served as the Senior Assistant Dean of the School of Medicine. He was a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and was an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Endocrine Society. However, Robert took the most professional joy from his work over twenty years as the Associate Chief of Staff for Research and Development at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Hospital. During that time, he launched major cross-department research initiatives and brought in substantial new funding in order to build - with the help of so many others - a world-class academic and medical research program that continues as a foundational legacy of his work to this day. As part of this effort, he was a founding Board member of the Foundation for Atlanta Veterans Education and Research (FAVER) and served as its President from 1989 through 2016. Robert is survived by his wife of more than fifty years, Donna, his three children, Sarah, Adam and his wife Natalie, and Joshua and his wife Ashley, and his five grandchildren, Ezra, Saul, Sam, Henry, and Ben. We plan to hold a ceremony celebrating Robert's life in the coming months. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to FAVER or the Union of Concerned Scientists. Services by Dressler's Jewish Funeral Care.
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I never expected to be Director of the Emeritus College. That is an understatement. I remember years ago getting an occasional email from the Emeritus College and deleting the emails as soon as they arrived in my inbox, hoping they would not contaminate the rest of my emails. I was definitely not ready to give up my faculty identity. How did I get from that point to a position in which I am retiring as Director after seven years?
I joined the Emory College faculty in 1984 and as a faculty member I served on many college and university committees. I started becoming active in faculty governance in 2008 with election to the University Senate and Faculty Council and thus also as an ex-officio member of the College Governance Committee (the predecessor to the current College Senate). In 2009 I was elected as a member of the College Governance Committee and in 2011 I was elected Chair of the College Governance Committee and independently as President-Elect of the University Senate and Chair-Elect of the University Faculty Council. My position in the University Faculty Council also put me on the Emory Board of Trustees as a Faculty Counselor. These positions in faculty governance helped me to develop a broad perspective on faculty life across the university.
As my term as President of the Senate and Chair of the Faculty Council was winding down, I was offered by then-Provost Claire Sterk a three-year term in the Office of the Provost as Senior Director for Faculty Affairs. The position was a half-time position split with my faculty position in the Department of Biology. Among issues I was expected to work on were faculty development, faculty governance, faculty career matters, and establishing strategies for meaningful engagement among Emory’s senior faculty. As part of my duties in the first year I met with various Faculty Deans and recently retired faculty, and searched for retirement information on various university websites, as well as reading what literature I could find on faculty retirement. Early on, I met with John Bugge co-founder and long-time member of the EUEC, and Susanne Thomas, who was then the Director of the Emeritus College. I also did a survey of recently retired faculty; among the findings were that a lot of recently retired faculty knew little about the Emeritus College (even though many of them were members!).
Quite unexpectedly, near the end of my first year as Senior Director for Faculty Affairs, I was approached by Dorothy Brown, then Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, with the blessing of Provost Sterk, to consider the position of Director of the Emeritus College, which was then open. That was actually a radical proposal, as I don’t think at the time there was any emeritus organization in the country that was led by a faculty member who was not retired. Their reasoning was that the Emeritus College needed greater visibility and interaction with faculty who were not yet retired. They realized that the Emeritus College should not be viewed as an organization separate from faculty life but should be viewed as part of the faculty life course. I very much agreed with that idea and although I had not expected the possibility of becoming Director, I was very interested in the challenge it presented and accepted the position when it was offered officially, again as a split position with my Biology faculty appointment. In retrospect, the year I spent in the Office of the Provost was great preparation for becoming Director. I had a year to read, study, and talk with many people about faculty retirement and the issues and challenges involved. I don’t think there could have been better preparation for me. Of course, there was much I was to learn!
In some ways, my term as Director, starting in June of 2014, began at a good time. While I was still in the Senior Director position in the Office of the Provost, Emory was in the process of making plans to end the retiree healthcare plan for those 65 and older and send retirees to the Medicare market. I had been talking to faculty groups across campus about these proposed plans. By the time I began as Director, the time for all members to have to find a new healthcare plan was getting very close, and there was considerable interest (to say the least) in getting help to know what to do. Jim Keller and Sid Stein had already begun information programs for these members and were to be important resources for healthcare information for the remainder of my time as Director. In my previous faculty governance positions, I had observed that channels of communication with faculty were essential—if there was no communication there was effectively no governance. When I began as Director, I discussed with the Executive Committee starting a newsletter. They thought that was fine. When I proposed that it should come out approximately biweekly, they politely agreed (but thought that was totally unrealistic). The need to communicate complex information about healthcare to all members provided an immediate need for the newsletter and also a reason for members to read it. The first four issues of the newsletter had much information about healthcare choices, among other topics, and foreshadowed the separate healthcare newsletter we now make available to faculty who are not yet retired, but at the point of wanting unbiased and relevant information about what they will need to do at retirement. This issue of the newsletter marks the 155th issue since I began and without all of the help of the many writers of articles, it would have been totally impossible to have done this. The newsletter has been one of the ways in which members anywhere can be connected to the Emeritus College. The fact that it remains an email-only product has a few limitations, but is the only realistic way to produce a newsletter so often with distribution to now almost 850 people for each issue.
One of the programs that was already in existence when I began was the Lunch Colloquiums. There were excellent speakers, but attendance was relatively low. I saw the newsletter as a way of advertising the Lunch Colloquiums. Having reports on the Lunch Colloquiums was a way of demonstrating the interesting quality of the talks and also providing a record of our activities. There was a fairly quick increase in attendance and with that attendance an increasingly vibrant Q&A session, which is now one of the hallmarks of our Lunch Colloquiums and one of the features that makes such a positive impression on our speakers. Pre-COVID, the problem we were seeing frequently with our Lunch Colloquiums was having to cut off registrations and put some people on a waiting list because of the limited capacity of our meeting room at the Luce Center.
Our Lunch Colloquium program is an example of all of our programs: they depend on the efforts of our members. Dianne Becht and I can support our programs and can help with the back-end work on the newsletters, but it is members who make them happen and we are clearly very fortunate to have an amazingly talented pool of members. Gretchen Schulz with a small group of other members has been scheduling our Lunch Colloquiums since 2011. Because of our expanded programming, that committee has been greatly expanded and one of the challenges we face is recruiting more new members to help with both existing and new programs.
There were clearly many excellent aspects of the Emeritus College when I began as Director. There were parts of the Bylaws, however, that I felt needed to be changed, and with the support of the Executive Committee we were able to make those changes. The Bylaws spoke of “dues” and inactive vs active members. From an operational aspect, I felt that trying to keep track of yearly dues and what might differentiate dues-paying members was not worth the effort. More importantly, no other college or school in the university asked its faculty to pay dues, and I felt it was not appropriate that our members should pay dues to be part of an organization that was a continuation of their faculty life. The Bylaws spoke of business meetings in a manner that suggested that members should be able to attend those meetings, but that drew attention to one aspect of our membership that is different from that of the other schools and colleges in the university: our members are not all local. Finally, the Bylaws differentiated in membership status between faculty with emeritus rank and those without that rank. There seemed to be no reason for that distinction, since both member titles had the same privileges, so that difference was eliminated. That change also eliminated a barrier to welcoming faculty as members before retirement as faculty members don't know before retirement whether they will receive emeritus status.
The newsletter was my first attempt to try to reach out to all members. Our Lunch Colloquium programming was terrific but could only be appreciated by those who were able to attend. I thought that this was another part of our activities that could be shared with all members, local or not, so I sought to find ways to broadcast those colloquiums. Adobe Connect was the university standard for video conferencing and we made our first Webcast on June 22, 2015. Relatively few off-site members joined those webcasts, but it was the start of such an outreach. One advantage of doing those webcasts was that it was relatively easy to record the programs and put the recordings on our website. The first of those recordings was July 25, 2016. The quality of the video and sound was not great, but it was a start on that journey! The quality of our posted videos improved when Don O’Shea started helping do video editing of our programs in early 2018. He has been a master at this, but of course has always been limited by the initial quality of the recording. In January of 2019, Emory LITS Videoservices conducted a survey of Adobe Connect users investigating interest in switching to a program called “Zoom.” Adobe Connect worked for us, but I indicated an interest in investigating what this new program might have to offer and on March 18, 2019 went to a private training session to see what would be involved in switching to Zoom. On March 21 I replied “I think Zoom will work well for our purposes.”
On March 25, 2019, we did our first program using Zoom—a program in which Don and Helen O’Shea described their garden. We used the Webinar form of Zoom, in which members could submit questions via Chat, but wouldn’t connect with their microphones and cameras, because who among our members would even want to do that? We continued webcasting Zoom webinars of our programs in the Luce Center until this message was sent on March 11, 2020: “In an abundance of caution, we have decided to cancel next Monday’s Lunch Colloquium that was to feature Kip Jensen.“ We were fortunately well-positioned to broadcast our Lunch Colloquiums via Zoom, but it was a different matter to have members ready not only to view but to participate in those meetings! We scrambled and by March 30 had our first completely virtual Lunch Colloquium. Once we shut down in March, I decided that we really needed to increase our programming and not decrease it. It was clear to me that we were in for a time of being shut in (little did I know for how long!) and that our members needed to have as much virtual interaction as possible. Thus, March 30 began our new schedule of Lunch Colloquiums in which we have had programs with few exceptions every week rather than twice a month. This drastically increased the workload of our Mind Matters Committee, led by Gretchen Schulz, and I am not sure who but Gretchen could have actually dealt with the challenge. It was a strong impetus to expand that committee and now Gretchen has built a larger committee, which will remain essential going forward as there is much work behind the scenes to pull off the level of programming we have. In retrospect, the COVID pandemic made possible the interactions we have developed with members all over the US and also in Atlanta with members who might find it difficult to make the trip to the Luce Center. Members realized that if they were to “see” family members and friends, they would have to do it virtually, so there was a big incentive to use Zoom, and we were fortunate that Emory had instituted the infrastructure to facilitate our work on Zoom.
Zoom has made it possible for our other activities to continue: Women’s Conversations has continued virtually and has recently switched to a monthly schedule. Our Retirement Seminars for faculty who have not yet retired have attracted more participants than our live seminars. Our Mock Interview Program for undergraduates wanting to do practice interviews for medical school saw a huge increase in requests for such interviews; we did 60 during the year, with many of the interviews conducted by faculty in NC, FL, and CA!
Not every program we have tried has succeeded of course, but I don’t see that as a problem. I feel it is far better to try various programs and see if there is sufficient interest to sustain them, than to worry about trials that might not garner enough interest. It is also not necessary to be concerned about numerical success. There are relatively few members who serve as Retirement Mentors and relatively few who conduct mock interviews. Yet the importance of the service these programs have provided has been great. In some cases, such as our Retirement Mentoring program, the program needs a leader from our membership, and Helen O’Shea is doing a great job in that capacity. In other cases, such as the mock interview program, once initiated, it runs with the support of Dianne Becht in the EUEC office.
It has been a great honor to have served as Director for seven years and I am so grateful Ann Rogers will be the next Director. I look forward to seeing how the Emeritus College will develop in the coming years!
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Details of the Search for a New Director |
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In order to leave some institutional memory, I wanted to give a short summary of how I approached the search for a new Director. I want to make it clear that I did not view my role as that of choosing my successor, but rather in finding candidates who would then go through an application and selection process not involving me. Given my own background I felt that advertising for an opening, no matter how widely broadcast, would not turn up any suitable candidates. I retired from my faculty position in August of 2019, with plans to continue as Director through the end of my second three-year term in June of 2020. My search for candidates thus began in the fall of 2019.
I had several criteria for my search:
The Director should be a faculty member. I don’t think any other school or college at Emory would want a leader who was not a faculty member, and I believed it was critical that the Emeritus College be led by a member of the faculty.
The Director should be a faculty member who was not yet retired. This is by no means to imply that a retired faculty member could not “do the job” but rather that our outreach to faculty who are not yet retired, which is an important part of our mission, is greatly facilitated by someone who is not yet retired.
The Director should be someone with experience of Emory outside their own school or college. One of the great strengths and attractions of the Emeritus College is that it is truly interdisciplinary, but most faculty don’t get to experience life outside their own school (or even their department). Faculty life varies greatly across the university and the Director needs to have some understanding of those differences in order to help build an institution of which all faculty can feel a part.
I sought names of potential candidates by asking deans, faculty in other leadership positions, and colleagues for suggestions. I then sent an email to the faculty member with a request to meet with them. Fortunately, almost everyone agreed without asking why I wanted to meet. In my meeting, I talked about the importance of the Emeritus College to the university, the vitality of the organization, and the opportunity it provided to continue the development of an institution that is a leader in higher education. Gratifyingly, most of the faculty I spoke with had a favorable impression of the Emeritus College, but for many it was not the right time for them to make that commitment. In that case, I asked them for additional suggestions, and that provided another source of potential candidates. I did manage to find some excellent candidates; I don’t think any of them would have applied for the position had I not talked with them and encouraged them to think about the position. Just as candidates were going to interview with the Emeritus College Executive Committee, the pandemic struck, Emory was essentially closed, and a hiring freeze implemented. I was asked to stay as Director for another year.
In the end, the process yielded a wonderful result; we are so fortunate to have Ann Rogers as Director. It is likely however, that similar efforts will be needed to find her replacement when the times comes for Ann, too, to move on.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne |
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The two places we viewed on our last walk are indeed off the beaten path. Both "houses" are located on Peavine Creek Road which is off Eagle Row near the Sorority houses. Casa Emory and Emory Bayit are two of the theme houses provided by the Office of Residence Life and Housing. Others include a German house and a Media, Literature and Arts Outreach house.
Casa Emory, located at 746 Peavine Creek Road, provides students with the opportunity of living in a Spanish and Portuguese-speaking environment. It is also a center for departmental activities ranging from informal discussions of contemporary topics to the staging of cultural activities such as films, lectures, music and dance. When possible, a student from the Universidad de Salamanca resides in the building and serves as a liaison between Casa Émory and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The affairs of the House are governed by a Constitution that defines the goals, responsibilities, and expectations of its residents.
The Emory Bayit, located in the Asbury House at 764 Peavine Creek Road, provides its residents with more than a Jewish living experience – it fosters a dynamic student-led environment with the objective of stimulating personal growth, leadership development, Jewish education, and commitment to Jewish community and traditions. The Bayit is a facility that allows Jewish students to practice Kashrut, Shabbat, holidays, and other customs, while being part of a community committed to a pluralistic Jewish lifestyle.
So that you can better recognize the structures if you are in that area of campus, I've included additional photos of the houses below.
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Let's go back to my stash of photos for our next walk. This nicely decorated glass stairwell is normally a place of heavy foot traffic but I'm sure now, and perhaps until the fall semester, it is as empty as in the photo. |
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Where will you find this on the Emory campus? |
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Emory University Emeritus College
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206
Atlanta, GA 30329
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