Stephen J. Morewitz, PhD’83 (Sociology), a lecturer in the Department of Nursing and Health Sciences at California State University, East Bay, and in the Sociology Department at San Jose State University, had a solo exhibit, Dr. Stephen J. Morewitz: A Retrospective, at the CSU East Bay Library, June 11–September 1, 2012. The exhibit showcased eight books and one play by the award-winning author. In August Eva Kahana, PhD’68 (Comparative Human Development), a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, was named a Distinguished University Professor. According to a press release, the honor is “a permanent, honorific title that acknowledges the outstanding contributions of full-time, tenured professors with a distinguished academic record of extraordinary research, scholarship, teaching, and service.” Kahana, who teaches humanities and sociology, has contributed to the understanding of resilience among the elderly and the disabled.  June Carter Perry, AM’67 (History), is the Cyrus Vance Visiting Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. Former US ambassador to Sierra Leone and Lesotho, she commutes weekly from Washington, DC, to teach a seminar, the Changing Role of Diplomacy. A recipient of the President’s Meritorious Service Award for Advancing US Foreign Policy, Perry retired from more than 25 years in the Foreign Service in 2010. She directs several organizations, including Africare and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Andrew Harlem, AM’97, PhD’02 (Psychology), was appointed to the California Board of Psychology by Governor Jerry Brown. An associate professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies, Harlem previously served as president of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. He is in private practice in San Francisco and Oakland, serves on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and lives in Marin County with wife Pamela Harlem, MBA’99, and their two children. The paintings and textiles of artist Judith Weinshall Liberman, AM’53 (Political Science), JD’54, are on display through January 20, 2013, at the Florida Holocaust Museum. The exhibit, Reflections on Man’s Fate: The Art of Judith Weinshall Liberman, focuses on the relentlessness and enormity of the Holocaust.  

Sociology diaries

Dialogo received a note from Harvey Choldin, AB’60, AM’63, PhD’65, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois, about his memories working with sociologist James Davis. Davis is principal investigator emeritus of the General Social Survey (GSS) at NORC at the University of Chicago and visiting professor in the Department of Sociology. At NORC in 1972, Davis developed the GSS, the second-most frequently used source of social-science data behind the US Census. In addition to UChicago, Davis has taught at Yale, Dartmouth, and Harvard. He won the 2010 Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research. Choldin is the author of Looking for the Last Percent: The Controversy Over Census Undercounts (Rutgers University Press, 1994) and Cities and Suburbs: An Introduction to Urban Sociology (McGraw Hill Company, 1985). His papers are archived at the University of Illinois. I had the good fortune to be in two of Jim Davis’s classes in the 1959–60 academic year, Sociological Research Methods and Social Psychology. I was a fourth-year in the College, majoring in sociology. Each of those undergraduate classes was team taught: Elihu Katz plus Jim Davis. The department faculty must have undergone a great turnover in the ’50s because there were only two old-timers, Everett Hughes and Philip Hauser, the chair. Most of the faculty were young and had been trained on the East Coast, at Columbia and Harvard. They included Katz, Davis, Peter Rossi, and Peter Blau.  In the research-methods class we had a respectable tour through the different methods of the day, but we focused on how to construct and interpret a two-by-two table of results from a social survey. That was our central task. Remember that we were being taught before the advent of computers or calculators. Regression analysis was beginning to come into vogue, but that was for more advanced students.  I had a part-time job that year: I was a night watchman at the National Opinion Research Center, which occupied a large old house on Woodlawn Avenue near 57th Street. NORC hired a watchman because they had lost several calculating machines and electronic typewriters. I got to know the advanced graduate students and other staff members working on NORC surveys. Jim had the title of senior study director, which meant he was in charge of one or more surveys. At that early point in his career, he had already completed a series of surveys, some of which had been published as books. Everyone respected him, but in addition to that, we appreciated his ready smile and approachability. On campus, while others of us were schlepping briefcases, Jim was recognizable for always having a green book bag slung over his shoulder. 

SSD alumni pass on lessons learned at UChicago

Dialogo received news from Karen Kapner Hyman, AB’82, AM’88, about a project led by three fellow alumni with connections to the Division: Many of our divisional alumni friends will recognize the teaching philosophy that Amy Kass, AB’62, former senior lecturer in the humanities, and Leon Kass, U-High’54, SB’58, MD’62, the Addie Clark Harding Professor Emeritus in Social Thought, articulate in the introduction to The Meaning of America: A New Approach to Civic Education, their new online curriculum for civic education, based on their 2011 anthology What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song, coedited by Loyola associate professor Diana Schaub, AM’83, PhD’92: “The Meaning of America aims to demonstrate concretely how short stories can illuminate the meaning of American identity, character, and citizenship, and to do so by displaying and promoting learning not through lecturing but through genuine inquiry and searching conversation,” the Kasses write. “The Meaning of America reflects our own long experience in teaching and the principles derived from that practice: be serious; speak up, not down, to students; ask them genuine questions; and encourage them in thoughtful reflection and honest conversation. Students treated in this fashion more often than not will rise to the occasion and vindicate your trust in their capacity to learn and grow—in mind, in heart, and in soul.” For many UChicago alumni, the urgent questions and the great works of literature first presented to us by our teachers here remain vital, pressing, and critical. These issues and these works animate our conversations with friends; they shape our practical thoughts and our thoughtful practices. In our lives now as parents, educators, civic and alumni leaders, and engaged citizens, we return to the texts and teachings of our Chicago education for wisdom on critical civic matters. Lived experience, obligations to our own communities, and national challenges all make the questions that began our education more urgent.  In leading iFoundry (the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education), my colleagues and I have found that the Meaning of America curriculum helps to foster a richer, deeper, and broader education for undergraduate engineers beyond the technical and mathematical material that so often dominates their education. The anthology and online material offer a set of resources and questions to share with our students. Longer videos on the original site (40–45 minutes in length) have also been shortened into two- to three-minute segments on particular questions or topics that, ah, it needs to be said, are perfect for the YouTube generation. Amy and Leon have both commented on their astonishment to find themselves involved with e-books, online learning, and, yes friends, Facebook “likes” and promotions for the text and resources. “Mirabile dictu,” said Leon, of their online efforts to create a thoughtful, practical, and effective curriculum for civic educators, teachers, and engaged citizens. For me, it is a wonder to behold and appreciate these outstanding resources, and it is no accident that Amy, Leon, and Diana, with their partners at the American Enterprise Institute, have married the power of the Internet and electronic books to revitalize and diffuse these texts.  In the Ethics, another focus of Leon’s fundamentals and social thought classes, we read Aristotle’s assertion that “the beginning is more than half of the whole.” I have sometimes recollected that this mathematically improbable assertion is spiritually true for so many of us and sums up the depth of emotion and gratitude felt toward our education. Our beginnings at Chicago, where teachers of this caliber challenged us to take seriously these writers, their questions, and their practical import, have created for us the better part of a whole, rich, and deeply engaging life and opportunities to give back and to teach the rising generation of future citizens. I invite readers of Dialogo and other interested alumni to return to their Chicago beginnings, through the online riches of WhatSoProudlyWeHail.org and The Meaning of America curriculum.  What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song, Editors Amy A. Kass, Leon R. Kass, and Diana Schaub (ISI Books) Project for Civic Education e-learning resources: WhatSoProudlyWeHail.org National Endowment for the Humanities website, highlighting this project.  

Books

Nancy Segal, Born Together—Reared Apart

Nancy Segal, AM’74, PhD’82 (Behavioral Sciences), published Born Together–Reared Apart (Harvard University Press, 2012). Segal, who served as a postdoc and then assistant director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research, chronicles this landmark investigation of identical twins raised in different households. The general finding of the study, Segal said in a Magazine interview, was “that genes are much more pervasive than anyone would have ever imagined,” a controversial idea when the data were first released in 1981. Segal is a psychology professor and founder of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton.

José Angel Hernández, Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century

José Angel Hernández, PhD’08 (History), an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, published Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The book examines Mexico’s struggle to secure its northern border with repatriates from the United States in the aftermath of the 1846–48 Mexican American War.

Thomas S. Coleman, Quantitative Risk Management: A Practical Guide to Financial Risk

Thomas S. Coleman, AM’81, PhD’84 (Economics), executive director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, published Quantitative Risk Management: A Practical Guide to Financial Risk (Wiley, May 2012). The book updates techniques and tools used to measure and monitor risk, providing a guide to risk management for financial firms and managers in the postcrisis world. Coleman also explains how risk is measured in today’s complex financial markets.

John P. McCarthy, Twenty-First Century Ireland: A View from America

John P. McCarthy, AM’62 (History), professor emeritus of history at Fordham University, published Twenty-First Century Ireland: A View from America (Academica Press, 2012). The former director of Fordham’s Institute of Irish Studies, McCarthy gives a critical account of recent Irish history and its implications for the country’s future. Covering the past decade, McCarthy examines political, economic, and social issues, analyzing increased church-state confrontations and the weakening of the once-dominant political party Fianna Fáil.

Chris McNickle, The Power of the Mayor: David Dinkins, 1990–1993

In November Chris McNickle, AM’85, PhD’89 (History), published The Power of the Mayor: David Dinkins, 1990–1993 (Transaction Publishers, 2012), which recounts the election and term of the former New York City mayor. McNickle argues that despite successes in the city’s budget, crime, education, and health care, Dinkins’s personal style made him the wrong leader at the wrong time. His failure to bring racial harmony to the city overshadowed his policy achievements. 

Ben Rawlence, Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War

In June Ben Rawlence, AM’99 (International Relations), a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, published Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War (Oneworld Publications, 2012). In his first book, Rawlence gathers typically unreported stories of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He traveled by foot, bike, and boat, introducing readers to people starting new lives after the war.

Action Anthropology and Sol Tax in 2012: The Final Word?

Action Anthropology and Sol Tax in 2012: The Final Word? (Northwest Anthropology, 2012) examines the influence of late UChicago faculty member Sol Tax, PhD’35, who helped pioneer action anthropology, in which researchers work to solve social problems. Edited by Darby C. Stapp, the book features commentaries from several social-sciences alumni: Joan Ablon, AM’58, PhD’63 (Anthropology); Al Wahrhaftig, AM’60, PhD’75 (Anthropology); Robert Hinshaw, AM’63, PhD’66 (Anthropology); and Tax’s daughters Marianna Tax Choldin, U-High’59, AB’62, AM’67 (Slavic Languages and Literatures), PhD’79 (Library), and Susan Tax Freeman, U-High’54, AB’58 (Anthropology). 

Richard Kurin, Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men, and Hope

Under secretary for history, art, and culture at the Smithsonian and director emeritus of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Richard Kurin, AM'74, PhD'81, published Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men, and Hope (Smithsonian Books, 2012). Kurin rediscovers the scandalous, romantic, and ultimately sad life of showgirl and headline grabber May Yohe (1866-1939), nicknamed Madcap May. Once married to an English Lord who owned the fabled Hope diamond, she had at least two other husbands and drew both praise and rebuke from George Bernard Shaw. She later ran a Singapore rubber plantation, a New Hampshire hotel, and a Los Angeles chicken farm; faced numerous maternity claims; and escaped from a mental institution. Kurin assembled May’s story from her writings and interviews, archival records, newspaper stories, scrapbooks, photographs, playbills, theatrical reviews, and silent film.