Colleagues Nationwide Stand Behind Emory Scholar’s Fight Against Holocaust Denier

A petition signed by hundreds of historians and social scientists at colleges across the nation demanded that C-Span cancel its plans to air a speech by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, who asserts that Hitler was not fully responsible for the mass murder of Jews.

According to a March 18 article in the New York Times and many other media outlets, the speech was to accompany a taped March 16 lecture by Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory, which she gave in conjunction with the release of her new book, History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving. Irving, a British writer, sued Lipstadt for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier. In April 2000, the British Royal High Court of Justice dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Irving was anti-semitic and racist and that he deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.

When Lipstadt found out C-Span’s plans, she rescinded permission for the station to broadcast her lecture. According to the Times article, Lipstadt called the producer at C-span and told her that the idea of airing Irving’s views for the sake of “balance” made no sense, considering his clearly false claims regarding the Holocaust. The Times quoted Lipstadt as saying, “I told C-Span that I assumed that if they weren't going to tape my lecture, they also wouldn't use David Irving, but they said no, they were committed to having him on. This is a man who's said that Holocaust survivors are all liars, and that more people died in Senator Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers.”

According to a C-Span spokesman, plans to air Irving’s talk, which was delivered at Atlanta’s Landmark Diner the weekend before Lipstadt’s lecture, are now on hold.

Soon after word got out of the station’s original broadcast plan, a petition circulated by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies began gathered more than two hundred signatures in forty-eight hours. That number has reportedly jumped by many hundreds. The petition states, in part, that “falsifiers of history cannot 'balance' histories,” and that “if C-Span broadcasts a lecture by David Irving, it will provide publicity and legitimacy to Holocaust-denial, which is nothing more than a mask for anti-Jewish bigotry,”

In a Times quote, Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman institute, said that “I've never before heard of a television network offering free time to a Holocaust denier, so it was surprising and it may be unprecedented. I think once C-Span realizes the depth of public concern and the strong opposition of the academic community, they will reconsider.”

To read the Academic Exchange coverage of Lipstadt’s legal battle against Irving, click on
http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2002/decjan/silenced.html

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Open community meetings on strategic planning

Meetings have been scheduled by the Strategic Planning Steering Committee for the Emory community on March 22, 23, 28, and April 8 and 20. Agendas include updates on the planning process and opportunities to provide feedback on the strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. These events include two town hall meetings, open sessions of the signature theme brainstorming committee meetings, and a Futurist Forum.

The first Town Hall meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 23, from 12-1:30 p.m. in the Cox Hall Ballroom and will focus on a discussion of the signature themes. The second will be held Wednesday, April 20, from 12-1:30 p.m. (location TBD).

Open sessions of the signature theme brainstorming committee meetings will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Emory Conference Center on March 22, 23 and 28. If you plan to attend, please e-mail Makeba Morgan Hill (makeba_morgan_hill@emoryhealthcare.org) two days prior to the meeting. The schedule of open meetings is:

Tuesday, March 22
Societies in Conflict and Transition
Religion, Society and the Human Experience
Predictive Health and Society

Wednesday, March 23
Mind, Brian and Neuroscience
Policy Solutions and Implementation
Global Health

Monday, March 28
Race, Racism and Society
Citizen as Scholar and Scholar as Citizen
Critical Inquiry and Creative Experience

The "Futurist Forum" on Friday, April 8, will bring fifteen of the country's foremost thought leaders together for a panel presentation on the future trends they see affecting the study of the arts, humanities and sciences, including social, physical and biological sciences. The event will be held from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Emerson Concert Hall of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. The panelists also will meet with the signature theme brainstorming committees later that afternoon.

For more information, visit the strategic planning website at:
https://www.admin.emory.edu/StrategicPlan/

For the Academic Exchange's coverage of the strategic planning process, visit http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2004/octnov/

 

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New childhood vaccine reduces cases of pneumonia, antibiotic resistance

The problem of increasing antibiotic resistance in cases of streptococcus pneumoniae, a major cause of pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis, was dramatically reversed following the licensing and use of a new conjugate vaccine for young children in February 2000, according to research conducted at Emory, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Georgia Division of Public Health. The researchers also found a significant decrease in the
incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease in both vaccinated children and unvaccinated adults after the vaccine was introduced.

David S. Stephens, professor and vice chair of medicine and division director of infectious diseases at Emory, led the research. The findings appear in the March 5, 2005 issue of The Lancet.

The vaccine was put into general use for young children in the U.S. in February 2000, and in Atlanta by the end of 2000. Antibiotic resistance in pneumonia, after increasing steadily in Atlanta from 4.5 per 100,000 in 1994 to 9.3 per 100,000 in 1999 fell to 2.9 per 100,000 by 2002. The incidence of invasive pneumonia in Atlanta fell from a mean annual incidence of 30.2 per 100,000 in the period January 1994 to December 1999 to 13.1 per 100,000 in 2002.

In addition to declining rates of pneumonia in young children, the researchers also found significant drops among adults aged 20 to 39 (54 percent), 40 to 64 (25 percent), and 65 and older (39 percent) who did not receive vaccine, an effect known as herd immunity.

“The decline in antibiotic resistance in invasive pneumococci in Atlanta between 2000 and 2002 was the result of introducing the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine,” said Stephens. “The vaccine had both direct and herd immunity effects as shown by the striking decline in disease incidence in children under five years, as well as in adults who were not vaccinated.”

The most striking reductions in invasive pneumococcal disease were in the youngest children, which also was the age group targeted to receive the vaccine. Children younger than two years old experienced an 82 percent decrease in invasive disease, and children two to four years old had a 71 percent decrease.

“Our study showed just how quickly vaccines can become effective in overcoming antibiotic resistance, but also just how quickly antibiotic resistance can spread when antibiotics are used inappropriately,” added Stephens. “It will be important to continue combining vaccines with programs that emphasize appropriate use of antibiotics.”

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Help for faculty newcomers

Working with the Faculty Council, the Office of Institutional Research has compiled an on-line guide for new faculty. The site includes information about the campus, transportation, parking, and benefits; academic resources, calendars, and faculty development and governance; other campuse resources such as computing and bookstores; and information about relocating to the Atlanta area.

The site is available at http://www.emory.edu/PROVOST/newcomers/.

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Where does the new come from? Relocating the Transnational African Artist

On Thursday, March 10, Sidney Kasfir, Associate Professor of Art History, will deliver a talk titled "Where Does The New Come From? Relocating the Transnational African Artist." The lecture, scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m. in the Carlos Hall Conference Room of the Carlos Museum, is sponsored by the Institute of African Studes. For more information, contact Yvan A. Bamps at 727.6402 or ybamps@emory.edu.

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Emory Nursing Professor Trains Kurdish Nurses in Northern Iraq

Linda Spencer, associate professor of nursing at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, knows what war can do to a community. She saw it first-hand while assessing and training Kurdish nurses in war-torn Iraq. Now, on the heels of Iraq’s first democratic elections in more than fifty years, the nurses she helped train could play a major role in the development of an Iraqi health system.

In August 2003, just after the war in Iraq began, Spencer joined a program sponsored by the Washington Kurdish Institute, and traveled to hospitals in Dohuk, Erbil, and Suleimaniyah, three villages northeast of Mosul and Kirkuk, where she worked to enhance the clinical practice of the Kurdish nurses and helped them develop a continuing education program.

Dr. Spencer’s team assessed the Kurdish nurses’ situation by asking three basic questions: What are the challenges you face? What are your duties? What new skills do you want to learn? The team found a bright, eager group of caregivers who had little organization and inconsistent training and standards.

“We discovered that there are no specific standards of care, no nursing leadership organization, no job descriptions, and that the nurses’ education varied from a six-month program after sixth grade to a three-year college program after high school,” said Spencer.

Spencer and other program participants focused on the basics of care: physical assessment and body systems, hand washing and hygiene, CPR training, the Heimlich maneuver, choking and body mechanics, and preventing bed sores.

“These nurses are amazing and inspiring,” said Dr. Spencer. “I was humbled to see their dedication and determination in providing care for the Kurds in what many Western nurses would consider very bleak conditions. The nurses each have thirty-five to forty patients to take care of at a time, many of whom are burn victims or have birth defects, which are both huge problems in northern Iraq.”

To read about other Emory scholars whose work has been influenced by international unrest, visit "The Trouble with Travel" at http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2003/octnov/index.html.

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Study Reveals Major Influence of Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertising

Increased direct-to-consumer advertising by pharmaceutical companies disproportionately targets women and older viewers, according to a study conducted by Emory researcher Erica Brownfield, assistant professor of medicine, and her colleagues.

The study, which appears in the November/December issue of the Journal of Health Communications, concludes that while such ads may increase public awareness of over-the-counter (OTC)and prescription medications, as well as knowledge of specific conditions and available treatments, they also set the stage for inaccurate self-diagnoses and incorrect perceptions of illness risk or treatment efficacy.

Conducted for one week in the summer of 2001, the study recorded the quantity, frequency, and placement of prescription and OTC drug advertisements on three major networks in Atlanta—ABC, CBS, and NBC. Over the sample week, direct-to-consumer ads for prescription and OTC drugs were most commonly aired during middle-afternoon and early-evening hours. Nearly 60 percent of all direct-to-consumer drug advertising appeared during news programs and soap operas.

Brownfield says that because the average American is probably exposed to more than thirty hours of direct-to-consumer advertisements each year, many show up at doctor’s appointments with biased opinions about certain medications.

“If you look at all direct-to-consumer drug advertising for prescription and over-the-counter drugs, the number, the amount, and the percentage of commercial time is actually pretty high,” says Brownfield. “In addition, these ads were placed in news programs or soap operas, and when you think about who watches soap operas and news programs, you realize it’s usually women, who are the major healthcare decision makers in the family, and the elderly, who consume the most amount of medication.”

The research team found that an average television viewer who only watched the three networks would have been exposed to almost forty minutes of direct-to-consumer OTC and prescription advertising in one week. Overall, drug ads occupied more than 8 percent of all commercial airtime over the study period.

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Reading Reading Lolita?

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran is a book that seems to ignite different kinds of passion. If you are one of the people who kept insisting others to read it when it was first published, Lynna Williams, a professor in creative writing, would like to talk to you for an article about the enthusiasm shown for this story. What made it special for you? Please email her at lwill03@emory.edu. (She'd also be happy to hear from you if you're someone who has an alternate list of books about Iran you wish also were getting the star treatment in the United States.)

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"No fair!" Chimpanzees more prone to cry foul in close-knit relationships

The evolution of the sense of fairness may have involved the quality of relationships, according to behavioral researchers at the Yerkes Primate Research Center.

By observing variability in chimpanzees’ responses to inequity, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, both researchers in Yerkes’ Division of Psychobiology and the Yerkes-based Living Links Center, determined that chimpanzees’ responses depended upon the strength of their social connections. This is the first demonstration that nonhuman primates’ reactions to inequity parallel the variation in human responses to unfair situations, which are often based on the quality of the relationship. The findings appear on the January 26 Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Series B web site (http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk), and also in the journal’s February 7th print edition.

“Human decisions tend to be emotional and vary depending on the other people involved,” says Brosnan. “Our finding in chimpanzees implies this variability in response is adaptive and emphasizes there is not one best response for any given situation but rather it depends on the social environment at the time.”

In the current study, Drs. Brosnan and de Waal made food-related exchanges with chimpanzees from groups that had lived together either their entire lives or a relatively short time (less than eight years). Animals were paired to determine how they would react when their partners received a superior reward (grapes) instead of a less-valued reward (cucumbers) for the same amount of work. Chimpanzees in the close-knit social groups were less likely to react negatively to the unfair situation than were the chimpanzees in the short-term social groups, who refused to work when their partners received a superior reward. Such a reaction is seen in humans who might react negatively to unfair situations with a stranger or an enemy, but not with a family member or friend.

“Identifying a sense of fairness in two, closely-related nonhuman primate species implies it could have a long evolutionary history,” Brosnan says. “The capuchin responses as well as those of the chimpanzees—the species most closely related to humans—could represent stages in the evolution of the complex responses to inequity exhibited by humans and may help explain why we make certain decisions.”

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Faculty Forum on the Humanities and Race

On Wednesday, January 26, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) is sponsoring a Faculty Response Forum on "The Humanities and Race." The CHI Faculty  Response Forum is an annual event that examines the role of the humanities in contemporary culture. The evening begins with faculty members having moderated discussions at individual tables around particular subtopics, followed by dinner.

This year's discussion subtopics and their moderators are:

The Intersection of Religion and Race (Laurie Patton, Religion, and Dianne Stewart, Religion)

Race: Teaching and Research (Walter Adamson, History, and Thee Smith, Religion)

Race and Place: Atlanta (Walt Reed, English, and Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, ILA)

Race and Language (Jack Zupko, Philosophy, and Cynthia Willett, Philosophy)

From Integration to Transformation (Leslie Harris, History, and Catherine Manegold, Journalism)

From Representation to Full Participation (Robert Ethridge, Equal Opportunity Programs)

Race, Speech Acts, and the Academic Campus (Michael Elliott, English)

Race in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Bruce Knauft, ICIS and Anthropology)

Race, Cultures, Class and Ethnicity: Sorting the Ethical Challenges and Guidelines for Framing and ADdressing Racial Prejudice and Conflict (James Fowler, Center for Ethics)

Race and Migration (María Carrión, Spanish, and José Quiroga, Spanish)

The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Michael C. Carlos Museum Reception Hall. Reservations are required. For more information or to participate, please contact the CHI at 727-6424 or chi@emory.edu.

To read the Academic Exchange coverage of related topics, visit "Race and the Professoriate" at http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2004/aprmay/lead.html

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Concluding King Week event on Friday

On Friday, January 21, the faculty and students affiliated with Emory's language departments and the Emory College Language Center will present "Words of Peace," a Listening Project. The writings of human rights activists around the world will be read, and will mark the conclusion of Emory King Week. This free event will begin at 3 pm in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library. For more information, contact Juana Clem McGhee at 727.2575 or jmcghee@emory.edu.           

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New Venture Lab Accelerates Transfer of Science from Lab to Marketplace

New treatments for common and devastating illnesses such as cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular diseases could reach patients sooner thanks to the new Venture Lab program in Emory University’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). Venture Lab was set up to identify potentially marketable university research discoveries in their early stages and help find the funding necessary for scientists to establish the “proof of principle”necessary to bring the technologies to market.

“The proof of concept is not always straightforward and not necessarily what academicians are focused on,” says Kevin Lei, formerly Emory’s assistant director of technology transfer and now associate director and new director of the Venture Lab. “Our program will help scientists look at their discoveries in a new way. Understanding what is required for a product to be successful is a different focus than basic research, which focuses on publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals.”

Lei has managed Emory’s patenting and licensing applications—the nuts and bolts of technology transfer—since 1997. In his new position, he will help Emory scientists bridge the often formidable gap between academia and the business world, scouting out technologies that are marketable, matching them with venture capitalists and other investors, developing them, and bringing them to market. He also will encourage scientists who may work in different areas of the university to collaborate for the sake of technology development.

For Academic Exchange coverage of issues in the transfer of academic work to the marketplace, visit

http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2005/decjan/lead.html

http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2003/decjan/lead.html

http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/1999/decjan00/ideas.html

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Physicians Turn to Virtual Reality to Train Cardiologists

Historically, physicians have learned new procedures by first practicing on animals, cadavers or mechanical models, eventually receiving
“on-the-job training” by operating on patients under the guidance of
experienced teachers. However, in a commentary published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) cardiologist Christopher Cates, director of vascular intervention at Emory University Hospital and Crawford Long Hospital, and Anthony Gallagher, an experimental psychologist for the Division of Cardiology at Emory University Hospital, say this paradigm needs to change—especially in the field of cardiovascular medicine—and that one solution is virtual reality.

“There is mounting evidence that virtual reality training is a better,
faster, and safer way for physicians to learn endovascular procedures, such as carotid stenting (surgical placement of tiny mesh tubes in the carotid arteries), than the traditional training route,” says Cates. Just as stents are often used following coronary angioplasty to keep arteries open, they can also be used to prop open carotid arteries in the neck.

He points out that the rapidly expanding application of carotid stenting,
which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in
September as an alternative to carotid endarterectomy (surgically removing
plaque from the carotid artery), has brought to the forefront challenges
involved in training physicians to perform these procedures.

“Carotid stenting is an exciting new technology which certainly offers
high-risk patients a less invasive option with significantly fewer bad
outcomes—such as heart attack, stroke, and death—when compared to carotid endarterectomy,” says Cates. “However, unlike surgery, carotid stenting makes the physician’s job more difficult because you can't see and feel tissues directly. Learning the hand-eye coordination of instruments,
catheters and guide wires are sometimes more complex, requiring different new skills.”

To help overcome these difficulties, Cates and Gallagher designed
one of the first virtual reality programs to train physicians in carotid stenting. Using simulators that look like human mannequins, physicians thread a catheter through an artificial circulatory system and view angiograms of the “patient.” Emory has already used virtual reality to train more than 103 physicians in carotid stenting.

In the JAMA commentary, the Emory researchers point out that if a shard of plaque detaches from the artery wall and enters the brain during a carotid stenting procedure, the patient could have a stroke or die. “That makes the risk conferred to the patient from the physicians’ traditional learning curve unacceptable—and makes virtual reality training the method of choice for this procedure,” Cates emphasizes. “With virtual reality, physicians can receive objective feedback on their performances during and after completion of simulated cases. That means trainees can be required to reach specific proficiency levels before ever doing an endovascular procedure on a patient.”

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A place for poetry and the poetry of place

Emeritus Professor of Medicine John Stone, also a noted poet, was commissioned to write a poem for the inauguration of Emory President Jim Wagner last spring. Below is the composition.

To read the article "Poetry Happens: The power and popularization of an ancient art at Emory, click here.

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Patents, revenues on the rise in academe in 2003

According to the December 3, 2004, Chronicle of Higher Education, colleges and universities in FY 2003 filed for more patents, identified more scientific discoveries with commercial potential, and signed more licensing agreements than ever before. Collectively, the 165 institutions that responded to the annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers received more than $968 million in licensing revenues, an increase of about 1 percent over 2002.

To read the Chronicle article in full, click here.

To read the related Academic Exchange article "For its Own Sake: When knowledge isn't for sale," click here.

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Chimps provide clues to hand preference

Hand preference and language go hand in hand. Or do they? According to researchers at the Yerkes Primate Research Center, handedness is not associated with the language area of the brain, as the accepted scientific explanation has long been. Rather, left-handedness has more to do with motor skills. The researchers report their findings in the December 6 issue of Behavioral Neuroscience.

According to Bill Hopkins, research associate in the Division of Psychobiology at the Yerkes Research Center and the study's lead investigator, "The dominant scientific view has linked hand preference in humans with the area of the brain that controls language. After observing hand proference in chimpanzees, which have no comparable language capabilities, we concluded there must be another reason for handedness. Because human and chimpanzee brain structures are so similar, we wanted to determine if human handedness evolved from an area of the brain other than the language area."

Hopkins and his colleagues coordinated a series of motor tasks with chimpanzees to determine each animal's hand preference and then looked at MRI scans of the animals' brains. They found asymmetries in the areas known to correspond to both language and motor skills in the human brain. A detailed review of the data showed the asymmetries in the motor skills area corresponded to right- and left-handedness, while the asymmetries in the language area did not, leading the researchers to conclude that handedness is linked explicitly to the motor skills area and not other brain regions.

In a separate study, published in the same issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, Hopkins's team supported their findings about asymmetry by confirming that the brain structure of chimpanzees is similar to the brain structure of humans. Using MRI scans of the chimps' brains, the researchers discovered asymmetries in each brain hemisphere, a characteristic previously thought unique to humans. "For years, researchers thought asymmetry is part of hwat distinguished the human brain from that of chimpanzees, but our results challenge that theory."

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Celebration of Emory Authors on December 2, 2004

The Academic Exchange, the Office of the Bookstore Liaison, and Druid Hills Bookstore are co-sponsoring a reception in celebration of Emory faculty authors and editors of books in 2004. All faculty are invited to join us on Thursday, December 2, 2004, at 4:00 for wine and cheese in the Druid Hills Bookstore, 1401 Oxford Road. Copies of a newly compiled list of 2004 Emory faculty authors and editors of books will be on hand. We hope to make this event an annual tradition.

Please RSVP to Tiffany Worboy, tworboy@learnlink.emory.edu, or 712-9497.

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Irish Poet Kerry Hardie to Deliver Reading

Irish poet Kerry Hardie will read from her work Tuesday evening, November 16, at 6:00 p.m., in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library. A reception and booksigning will follow. A previous recipient of the Hennessey Award for Poetry and the UK National Poetry Award, Hardie has just received the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for her third volume, The Sky Didn't Fall (2003). The reading is sponsored by the Irish Studies Program, the Hightower Lecture Fund, and the Friends of the Library.

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Virtual Reality Training Key to Reducing Medical Errors

According to an Emory researcher, many medical errors could be avoided by training physicians with interactive, three-dimensional visualization technology instead of on patients. In a recent article in the British medical journal The Lancet, Christopher Cates, Director of Vascular Intervention at Emory University Hospital and Emory Crawford Long Hospital, noted that virtual reality (VR) training could reduce medical mistakes that are estimated to cause 44,000 to 94,000 deaths annually in the U.S. Many of the mistakes, argues Cates, result because physicians in training learn invasive procedures under the supervision of a more experienced colleague.

"The radically novel skills required for minimally invasive surgery or interventional cardiology are so difficult to learn that the standard type of training is simply no longer acceptable," Cates says. "While minimally invasive procedures have advantages for patients because they cause less trauma, they make the operator's job more difficult. You can't see and feel tissues directly, and learning the hand-eye coordination of instruments, catheters, and guide wires is problematic." During minimally invasive procedures, surgeons insert a miniature camera (an endoscope) and surgical instruments through small incisions, and watch their progress on a video monitor.

Pointing out that VR training is state-of-the-art for training in many other highly skilled professions, Cates says VR should be used more widely for training physicians who perform cardiovascular procedures. "The potential of VR to improve training and patients' safety is very exciting," he says. "It allows more than observation. You can interact with and integrate different sensory inputs that simulate important aspects of real-world experience doing these procedures."

VR training for surgical procedures was introduced in l991, but it has been slow to gain wide acceptance within the medical community due to the lack of well-controlled clinical trials. However, several well-designed smaller studies have shown that medical residents trained with VR made fewer intraoperative errors.

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Town Hall on Strategic Planning November 4

Thursday, November 4, 2004, Noon to 1:30 pm, Winship Ballroom at Dobbs University Center

The Emory University Strategic Planning Steering Committee co-chairs, Dr. Earl Lewis, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, and Dr. Michael M.E. Johns, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, will report on the Strategic Planning Processand respond to questions in a town hall forum.

Please bring your lunch. Beverages and snacks will be provided.

Contact: Makeba Morgan Hill (makeba_morgan_hill@emoryhealthcare.org or 778-4312)

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Strategic Planning at Oxford: Q&A with a member of Oxford's strategic planning committee

As difficult as the strategic planning process is, I believe it will help us articulate our identity and mission better, make budgetary decisions more effectively, and allow us to be more successful in our comprehensive capital campaign.
—David Gowler, Pierce Professor of Religion, Oxford College

AE: What has been your role and involvement in Oxford’s strategic planning process?

David Gowler: I joined the steering committee at Oxford in May. During the academic year I had been working to create the Pierce Institute for Leadership and Community Engagement. Because of the overlapping relationship of the forthcoming Pierce Institute and the overall mission of Oxford, I was asked to join the committee.

AE: How have faculty been included in the process, and what has the process entailed at Oxford?

DG: I am delighted with the inclusive process at Oxford. Faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the Board of Counselors have all been included. The strategic planning process began with two community-wide meetings—the first one was attended by approximately one hundred people—that led to creation of a draft of Oxford’s vision statement (and notes). Follow-up forums provided opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to respond to the draft, and a website was created to receive additional input.

The next step was to elicit information from all the above groups—faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the Board of Counselors—concerning their views of Oxford’s strengths, achievements, constraints, and weaknesses. Several hundred submissions were compiled and categorized. The Strategic Planning Committee had a two-day retreat in May to analyze the internal and external data, review and add to the perceived strengths and weaknesses, and then we developed opportunities, threats, and strategic issues.

In June, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee then crafted the Environmental Assessment, which was distributed to faculty, staff, and students. The Environmental Assessment was presented to the University’s Steering Committee.

The collaborative process continues this year. We have begun with four community-wide “brainstorming sessions” that will generate ideas for Oxford’s five-year goals. After these sessions, the steering committee will create a draft of the five-year goals and the strategic initiatives to accomplish them. We will then have two community-wide “open house” sessions for feedback on those goals.

Then a number of various constituent groups will be formed to create the measures of success, five-year measure targets, and three-year action plans, whichthe steering committee will use to create the entire planning document.

AE What are some of the chief areas of focus you see rising to the top?

DG The best way to answer this question would be to summarize some of the conclusions of Oxford’s Environmental Assessment. Some of the strategic issues that have emerged from our discussions are:

Oxford must establish and articulate our distinctive place within Emory University and higher education. Many aspects of Oxford’s academic community contribute to our success in educating and transforming our students, and we must articulate and focus on our accomplishments. We must build upon our recognition by the Carnegie Foundation as a leader in teaching and learning and become more visible as a national model for engaged student-centered learning and as an educational laboratory where innovative ideas, approaches, and methods are implemented, assessed, and then refined.

One way to highlight these strengths is to define further and to develop in an integrated way “signature programs” at Oxford, such as our scholarship of teaching and learning efforts and the Pierce Institute for Leadership and Community Engagement.

The key to our ability to become more visible within Emory University and to recruit more effectively prospective students is the necessity of restructuring university admissions to present Oxford and Emory colleges as academically equivalent options, placed in distinct learning environments.

Our strategic planning process has also demonstrated the urgent need for significant financial investment in people, programs, and facilities. The recruitment of students is hindered by the contrast of our physical plant with other colleges and universities—and even many high schools. A significant investment of resources is required to continue to attract talented faculty, staff, and students and excel as a laboratory of teaching and learning.

Oxford’s success in providing a transformative learning environment and the accomplishments of our graduates are well known—and, based on the information currently available, well deserved; our successes, however, are not well documented. In order to ascertain, assess, and promote Oxford’s achievements we must establish a systematic program of institutional research at Oxford College.

We recognize Oxford’s responsibility to diversify and increase our sources of revenue, through increasing our donor base, facilitating additional grant writing capabilities, further work with foundations, and tapping more fully the potential of our loyal alumni. Emory’s forthcoming comprehensive capital campaign also provides an opportunity to raise necessary funds, develop additional relationships with donors, and build our endowment to support our vision of excellence in undergraduate education.

Oxford’s environmental assessment has also begun to clarify more fully what Oxford students, faculty, staff, and administration have long known about our transformative learning environment but have not expressed as cogently and forcefully as necessary. Oxford is also distinctive, in part, because of its connectedness with Emory University, and Emory University is also distinctive, in part, because of Oxford’s role as a laboratory of transformative learning within it. Oxford’s place in the heart of Emory stems not only from its unique contribution to Emory’s heritage but also to Emory’s vision of being a destination university that is an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community.

AE: Would you describe the planning approach on your campus as open? Or secretive? Proprietary? In what ways?

DG: The process has been very open, and all members of the community have been invited to participate. The primary limitation to an even more open process would be the constraints of time. The timetable for the strategic planning process is very ambitious and very difficult to accomplish in conjunction with an academic calendar. Several faculty, staff, and students have devoted significant portions of their summer to working on Oxford’s strategic plan.

AE: A recurring question among faculty is whether such plan will actually lead to change and growth, or whether it will become obsolete. What are your thoughts?

DG: I certainly have seen a number of such efforts—both here and at other institutions—that are currently collecting dust on various shelves. This process seems different to me, however, for two main reasons. First, it already has generated positive results by helping us to articulate even more clearly Oxford’s distinctive place within Emory University and higher education. Second, the strategic plan—which includes a resource plan, financial projections, and a strategic investment plan—is intimately connected to the setting of priorities within the budgeting process and for the forthcoming comprehensive capital campaign. So I am much more hopeful that this process will have a real and positive impact for the university.

AE: Stanley Fish wrote recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education that “change cannot be engineered and change will always occur;” and “Planning is necessary and planning won’t work.” How do we make a plan that is realistic about that which cannot be planned for?

DG: This question is more difficult to address. To agree with the quotes, I’d have to change them slightly: “Change will always occur, but it cannot always be engineered,” and “Planning is necessary, but planning often won’t work.” As difficult as the strategic planning process is, I believe it will help us articulate our identity and mission better, make budgetary decisions more effectively, and allow us to be more successful in our comprehensive capital campaign. Of course, we cannot plan for unexpected events, but careful strategic planning might help us to be better prepared to respond to the unexpected.

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Institute of Medicine elects Emory faculty to membership

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has elected three Emory University
faculty members and two adjunct/clinical faculty members to its new class of 65 top national health scientists. This brings Emory's total IOM membership to eighteen, including adjunct professors—an increase from just one member only a decade ago. Election to the Institute of Medicine is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health. Current active members elect new members from among candidates nominated for their professional achievement and commitment to service.

Ruth L. Berkelman, MD, Rollins Professor and Director of the Center for
Public Health Preparedness and Research in the Rollins School of Public
Health; Mahlon DeLong, MD, William P. Timmie Professor of Neurology and Director, Emory Comprehensive Neuroscience Center, Emory University School of Medicine; and Stephen T. Warren, PhD, William P. Timmie Professor and Chair of Human Genetics in Emory University School of Medicine, are newly elected members of the IOM. Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, clinical associate professor of medicine in Emory University School of Medicine and adjunct professor of epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health; and James Marks, MD, MPH, a CDC scientist and adjunct associate professor of epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health also were elected to membership.

Dr. Berkelman is a public health leader who has long been at the forefront
of the effort to prepare for the threat of emerging infectious diseases.
She has been a member of the Rollins School of Public Health faculty since
2001, with a joint appointment in Emory University School of Medicine. In
her former roles as assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health
Service and as deputy director of the National Center for Infectious
Diseases, she has confronted head on the critical need to develop strategies
against the new and reemerging biological pathogens identified over the past two decades. She recently was appointed chair of the American Society of Microbiology's Public and Scientific Affairs Board, and she is a member of the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Emerging Infections and a member of the National Academies' Board of Life Science.

Dr. DeLong is internationally recognized for his pioneering research in
Parkinson1s disease and other movement disorders. An Emory School of
Medicine faculty member since 1990, he established Emory's NIH-funded
Parkinson's Disease Center for Excellence, one of the nation1s most
comprehensive and successful Parkinson's research and treatment programs. Dr. DeLong's research led to a new understanding of the mechanisms behind Parkinson's and opened the door to an era of medical and surgical treatment advances that have dramatically improved the quality of life for thousands of patients. Dr. DeLong continues to lead research programs and develop new strategies that offer tremendous hope for patients with degenerative diseases and movement disorders.

Dr. Warren, who joined the Emory University School of Medicine faculty in
1985, is renowned for leading an international research team that identified
the gene responsible for fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of mental retardation. This groundbreaking discovery also led to the
uncovering of "triplet repeat expansion," the unique mutational mechanism
present in more than a dozen genetic disorders, including Huntington
Disease. This year Dr. Warren was chosen president-elect of the American
Society of Human Genetics. In 2003 the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development selected him for its Hall of Honor. He has served as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Human Genetics since 1999.
Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of
Medicine is recognized as a national resource for independent,
scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on issues related to
human health. With their election, members make a commitment to devote a
significant amount of volunteer time as members on IOM committees, which engage in a broad range of studies on health policy issues.

Other Emory IOM members include Michael Johns, Arthur Kellermann, Jeffrey Koplan, James Curran, William Foege, Donald Hopkins, Luella Klein, Reynaldo Martorell, Charles Nemeroff, Godfrey Oakley, Mark Rosenberg, Marla Salmon, and Asa Yancey .

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Seeking Emory faculty authors of books

On December 2, the Academic Exchange, the Office of the Bookstore Liaison, and Druid Hills Bookstore is planning to host a celebration of 2004 Emory authors (or editors) of books. We know, however, that our list of such authors is incomplete. Please take a look at the list below, compiled from our own records and resources.

If you published a book this year and your name is not on here, please let us know by emailing Allison Adams, editor of the Academic Exchange, at aadam02@emory.edu. If you know of a colleague who published this year and whose name is not on here, again, please let us know. Likewise any errors you might spot.

Look for more information to come about the December 2 event.

2004 Emory Faculty Authors of Books

Mahmoud Al-Batal, Kristen Brustad and Abbas Al-Tonsi. Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds and Al-Kitaab: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic, Part I (second ed. with DVDs). Georgetown UP: 2004.

Patrick Allitt. Religion in America Since 1945: A History. Columbia University Press: 2004.

Patrick Allitt. I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom. University of Pennsylvania Press: 2004.

Peggy Barlett, co-editor with Geoffrey W. Chase. Sustainability on Campus: Stories and Strategies for Change. MIT Press: 2004.

Robert C. Bartlett. Plato’s Protagoras and Meno. Cornell University Press: 2004.

Harold J. Berman. Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition. Harvard University Press: 2004.

Martha Albertson Fineman. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. The New Press: 2004.

Howard Frumkin. Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning and Building for Healthy Communities. Island Press: 2004.

Shalom L. Goldman. God’s Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination. University of North Carolina Press: 2004.

Jim Grimsley. The Ordinary. Tor Books: 2004.

Carol Herron, coauthored with Matthew Morris and Colette Estin. Identité, Modernite, Texte. Yale UP: 2004.

Luke Timothy Johnson. Brother of Jesus, Friend of God: Studies in the Letter of James. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: 2004.

Luke Timothy Johnson. The Living Gospel. Continuum International Publishing Group, Incorporated: 2004.

Bruce Knauft. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. McGraw-Hill: 2004

Melvin Konner. Unsettled. Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated: 2004.

Earl Lewis. Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan. University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Scott Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, and Jeffrey M Lohr, co-editors. Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology. Guilford Publications, Incorporated: 2004.

Charlotte McDaniel, Organizational Ethics: Research and Ethical Environments. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishers: 2004.

Randall M. Packard, Peter J. Brown, Ruth L. Berkelman, and Howard Frumkin, co-editors. Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda. Johns Hopkins Press: 2004.

Sidney Perkowitz. Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids. National Academy Press: 2004.

Julie Shayne. The Revolution Question: Feminisms in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba. Rutgers University Press: 2004.

Vanessa Siddle Walker and John R. Snarey, co-editors. Race-ing Moral Formation: African American Perspectives on Care and Justice. Teachers College Press: 2004

John Stone. Music from Apartment 8: New and Selected Poems. Louisiana State University Press: 2004.

Donald Stein. Buying In or Selling Out. Rutgers University Press: 2004.

Steven Strange and Zack Zupko, co-editors. Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations. Cambridge University Press: 2004.

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Emory's Anthony Stringer Receives Rare Board Certification in Clinical Neuropsychology

Anthony Stringer, director of neuropsychology in Emory’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, has attained board certification in neuropsychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology, an achievement reached by only five hundred neuropsychologists in the U.S. and seven in the state of Georgia. Stringer is also the first African American to achieve board certification in neuropsychology.

Neuropsychology is a specialty area within the field of psychology focusing on the relationship between brain dysfunction and its effects on cognitive skills and behavior. In rehabilitation medicine, neuropsychologists work with patients who experience memory loss resulting from a variety of physical impairments such as stroke, epilepsy, surgery, and traumatic brain injury.

Although board certification is the standard for medical doctors, it is the exception for psychologists. The certification process includes a close examination of the candidate's clinical experience, a one-hundred-question, three-hour written exam, the submission of two case reports including support materials, and a three-hour oral exam. ''It's an arduous process, but one that's worth it," says Stringer, adding that he is surprised he is the first African American to achieve certification. ''It's certainly a nice honor. There are perceptions that neuropsychology is a very difficult field to go into, and therefore many people are deterred from trying to enter it. I hope I have created a perception that a door has been open, and more people will follow in my footsteps."

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Flannery's Thomas Moore book and recording to be featured on nationwide radio program "Thistle and Shamrock"

James Flannery’s book/recording Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore will for the third time be featured in October on Public Radio’s nationally syndicated “The Thistle and Shamrock.” Host Fiona Ritchie has described Flannery’s recording of thirty-nine of the airs of Moore as “a landmark collection” and credits his work with gaining an understanding of Moore as Ireland’s first internationally-known Irish artist as well as a seminal figure in the revival of Irish traditional music and the establishment of the Irish literary and dramatic movement. She also praises Flannery’s effort to establish the connections between Moore and the Scottish bard Robert Burns, especially in their effort to create a cultural identity for their respective nations by writing patriotic lyrics to ancient Celtic airs.

In Atlanta, the PBS-affiliate WABE (90.1 FM) will broadcast “The Thistle and Shamrock” program devoted to Flannery’s work on Sunday, October 17, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. “The Thistle and Shamrock” is broadcast internationally via NPR Worldwide and is also streamed on many affiliate stations.

“The Thistle and Shamrock” is the most popular and influential program devoted to Celtic music and culture on the airways. In the United States it is broadcast weekly on over 390 PBS stations nationwide while it is also broadcast throughout Europe on the BBC international network. Fiona Ritchie, who first began broadcasting “The Thistle and Shamrock” from Charlotte, North Carolina in 1983, is often credited with making the single most important contribution to the worldwide interest in Celtic music.

Flannery holds the Winship Chair of Arts and Humanities at Emory University where he teaches mainly in Irish Studies. He is currently working on another book/recording, Heart Mysteries: Traditional Love Songs of the Irish. He also produces the annual Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert, now in its twelfth season.

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Theology professor comments in New York Times on hip-hop and the church

You’ll probably never hear the music from hard-edged rappers like Slim Shady or Dr. Dre right before the preacher’s sermon. But according to a recent New York Times article, the long-standing antagonism between hip-hop and the church (one Harlem Reverend literally drove a steamroller over a pile of CDs 11 years ago) has diminished to the point where the blunt rhythms are heard more frequently during services, though fleshed out with gospel messages. The idea is to embrace at least part of the hip-hop culture, fill up the pews and spread the Word to young people who are drawn to the street-wise honesty of hip-hop. Said Alton Pollard III, the director of black church studies at the Candler School of Theology, who is quoted in the article, the resistance that many churches have shown to hip-hop culture resembles previous battles over gospel music or drums in church. “This is just the latest version" of the battle, he said. "It's about the continuing need for new expressions of what it means to be human, and the church oftentimes is not able to keep up, whether we're talking about jazz, the blues, soul or gospel music.”

To read the full text of the Times article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/arts/music/13hiph.html

 

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Presidential Powers of Recall

The September 20 edition of Newsweek magazine includes a mention of a recent article in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology that examines a case-in-point of the plasticity of memory, a key notion explored in the September 2004 cover story of the Academic Exchange on memory research. In "President Bush's False Flashbulb Memory of 9/11/01"(published online in March 2004 in Applied Cognitive Psychology), Daniel Greenberg of Duke University notes that President George W. Bush's reported recollections of how he learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center are factually impossible. The inacurracies, suggests Greenberg, are a prominent example of evidence that "flashbulb memories"—memories of major events people believe they remember perfectly—are not as perpect and indelible as experts once thought.

Visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5970907/site/newsweek/ to read the Newsweek article.

Visit http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/107639961/ABSTRACT for an abstract, references list, and downloadable .pdf file of the full Applied Cognitive Psychology article text.

Visit http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2004/sept/lead.html for the Academic Exchange article on the art and science of memory.

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The Poetry of Memory

In the cover story of the September 2004 issue of the Academic Exchange, Emory scholars from the sciences to the liberal arts reflect on their investigations into the nature and mechanisms of memory. Such inquiries also loom large in the work of associate professor of creative writing and poet Natasha Trethewey.

The cultural and the chemical processes of memory making are similar because their meaning takes shape over a period of time. In both processes, meaning may change as memories are recalled repeatedly. For Tretheway, this plasticity in cultural memory allows for a productive tension between history and imagination.

Even though each of her books is different, Trethewey says, “the underlying obsession is the same. I’m really interested in the way we make cultural memory and the gaps between personal stories and authoritative history—what gets written down and what gets written out.” Trethewey’s current project examines the “Native Guards” during the Civil War in her home state of Mississippi. Newly freed slaves joined the Union troops on Gulf Coast barrier islands that are now home to a national park.

“If you don’t know to ask who those soldiers really were, the park ranger doesn’t mention it," she says. "So the idea of the Native Guards became for me both the literal subject of poems—the soldiers I’m writing about—and a figurative connection to myself as a mixed-race daughter of the South, standing at the borders of this history.”

Below is a poem inspired by Trethewey's explorations of memories of the Native Guards.

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New Associate Editor of the Academic Exchange

For five years, Amy Benson Brown served as the assistant and later associate editor of the Academic Exchange. With her poet’s ear and her doctorate in literature, Brown brought the rich perspective of a humanist to bear on major issues in the sciences at Emory, as well as larger questions of university life. Brown is now devoting her energies to the continued growth of the Provost’s Program in Manuscript Development, an initiative she launched two years ago to help faculty respond to the changing landscape of scholarly book publishing.

Succeeding Amy Brown as associate editor of the Exchange is Steve Frandzel, an accomplished science writer and editor whose work has focused on healthcare and related sciences, as well as the social and economic impact of medicine. Frandzel joined the staff on August 9.

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Member of Emory Psychiatry Department Killed in Car Crash in China

Xiaohong Wang, MD, PhD, a promising researcher at the interface between immunology and psychiatry with particular regard to anxiety, depression and mood disorders in patients with cancer and other medical illnesses, was killed Saturday, July 24, in a car accident along with his sixth-grade son Jim while vacationing in Wuhan, China. He had returned to China for the first time in a number of years to visit his parents. Dr. Wang’s wife, Dr. Xiao Lan Ou, and their older son, John, escaped injury in the accident.

Dr. Wang, 47, was an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences in the Emory University School of Medicine. He practiced throughout the Emory system at Emory University Hospital, Emory Crawford Long Hospital, Wesley Woods Geriatric Hospital, and Grady Memorial Hospital, where his main clinical responsibilities were in the psychiatric emergency room.

“Xiaohong Wang was a model faculty member who was universally liked and respected,” said psychiatry department chairman Dr. Charles Nemeroff. “This is a tragedy and a shock whose pain will be felt not only by his family but by all his friends and colleagues here at Emory.”

Dr. Wang was a graduate of the Tongji Medical University in Wuhan, China, who had served an internship at Wayne State University in Detroit and a residency at the State University of New York – Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He had also pursued his education at Texas A&M where he earned a PhD. A member of the American Psychiatric Association, he had been recognized with a Janssen Psychiatry Resident Award of Excellence, a Janssen Faculty Career Development Award, a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, a
psychiatric research fellowship sponsored by the APA and Wyeth-Ayerst, and a Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Wang was also an outstanding teacher, receiving the psychiatry residents’ teaching award in 2003. He came to Emory in 2001 and his research program was regarded as extremely promising. His studies provided novel insights into the role of inflammation in the development of mood disorders as well as the regulation of the neuroendocrine system. He had taken on three postdoctoral research fellows just in the past several months.

“Xiaohong was a treasured friend, whom we will all miss terribly,” said Dr. Andrew H. Miller, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of psychiatric oncology at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute. “He was on a major upswing in his career, and his premature death is all the more tragic when considering his immense potential to make significant contributions to the lives of so many.”

The funeral was held in China. The department plans to hold a memorial service in Atlanta. Dr. Wang resided in Tucker.

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Faculty and racism
In a recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“White Professors Can Help Uproot Racism,” May 7, 2004, B16), Julie W. de Sherbinin, associate professor of Russian at Colby College, discusses her efforts to form a collective of mostly white faculty members to become better allies to students of color on her campus. Earlier in her career, de Sherbinin writes, she was primarily concerned with tenure, but she became increasingly interested over the last decade in race-related issues. She began attending lectures, films, and forums on race; she read extensively about white privilege; and she eventually became involved with the campus chapter of the Society Organized Against Racism in New England Higher Education (SOAR). Finally, after talking with many colleagues who had served as mentors to students of color and hearing stories of students’ encounters with racism on campus, she invited faculty members to get together to discuss these issues, resulting in the formation of a group called Faculty Allies. This group’s goal, writes de Sherbinin, is “to contribute to the academic and social success of students of color through informal faculty-student interactions.” Faculty Allies has been involved with planning faculty-student events; it provides faculty mentors for students at the students’ request; and it recently sponsored the publication of a poetry volume by African American and Latino students. Although de Sherbinin recognizes that this group “does not represent an unmitigated success story” and acknowledges that “uprooting racism happens excrutiatingly slowly,” she does assert that white faculty members can do their part by working as academic mentors and through social interactions. To read the full article, visit http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i35/35b01601.htm.

To read the April/May Academic Exchange examination of race and the faculty, visit http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2004/aprmay/lead.html

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Highlights from “Coping with Copyright”
A panel discussion sponsored by the Manuscript Development Program and the Academic Exchange on April 15, 2004

Topics included: basic definitions in copyright law; trends toward broader copyright restrictions; the process, time, and cost of securing permissions for scholarly books; and issues covered by the TEACH (Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act). Below are highlights from the four speakers’ remarks. Contact Amy Benson Brown at abrow01@emory.edu if you are interested in obtaining a transcript.

“There is a broad march of expanding copyright to cover anything that anyone considers creative and pretty soon we will have nailed everything down, and we won’t be able to use anything without a license. . . . We have a trend that’s not favorable for academics."

—Sara Stadler Nelson, Assistant Professor in the School of Law.

“What was particularly surprising was the amount of time this process of securing permissions took—and how much it cost, even after my negotiations. And it is possible to negotiate with the publishers. As Routledge says in their packet: 'Don’t be afraid to try to negotiate the fees or have them waived entirely.' But simply collecting these permissions took me approximately six months.”

—Kim Loudermilk, Director of Special Academic Projects in Emory College

“My press said, 'We can’t go forward with your book until you clear this permissions issue up.' I asked my editor, 'Will you consult your legal department?' The legal department came back and said, 'You’ve got to clear this up.' I called Emory University’s General Counsel Office, and the response was that I needed to find a lawyer. What I was faced with was educating myself on the state of the fair use laws in copyright at my own expense, to try and figure this thing out.”

—Matthew Bernstein, Associate Professor in the Film Studies Department

“We all need to do something about it because right now the content provider industry has the ear of Congress, and they have it very effectively. If we don’t stand up and let our voices be heard, the long-term repercussions . . . [will] impact creativity in this country. The way derivative works are being interpreted today, they seem to cover any and all uses of the original copyrighted work, and that’s a real problem. It’s not only creativity at stake but also innovation, even technical innovation in the long, run if we don’t address this.”

—Doris Kirby, Director of Policy and Compliance for IT at Emory

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April 15, 2004
More on Scholarship in an Age of Terror
Emory Professor of Religion Paul Courtright was featured in a Washington Post article about recent attacks on scholars of Hinduism. The wave of attacks has been orchestrated by the Hidutva movement, which claims, “scholars are imposing a Eurocentric world view” on their culture, writes Post reporter Shankar Vedantam in the April 10, 2004, issue. A brief section of Courtight’s 1985 study of the Hindu god Ganesha (published by Oxford UP) incensed some readers by offering a psychoanalytic reading of one part of the mythology.

The article connects the email threats and online petition against Courtright to recent attacks on other Hinduists. In November, University of Chicago scholar Wendy Doniger was “egged" in London but escaped injury. And in January a work by Macalester College Professor James Laine on an ancient Hindu King sparked an assault on one of his collaborators and on materials in an institute housing rare manuscripts in India.

Registered users may view the Post article by clicking here.

Click here to read Coutright's reflections on the charges against his work, threats against his person, and the challenges that this kind of attack poses for scholars, students, and scholarly associations, in the April edition of the Academic Exchange.

 

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