SSD alumni news
Alumni: Submit your updates to Nina B. Herbst in SSD at nherbst@uchicago.eduor 773.834.9067.
James Alcorn Knight, PhD'88 (Anthropology), was appointed ambassador to Chad in April. Knight, a longtime member of the Senior Foreign Service who has spent the majority of his career working in Africa, first became an ambassador in 2009, when President Obama appointed him to serve to the West African nation of Benin. In December 2012 he was named assistant chief of mission at the embassy in Baghdad. From 2007 to 2009, Knight served as director of the Office of East African Affairs in Washington, DC.
Kathryn Cruz-Uribe, AM'80, PhD'87 (Anthropology), became Indiana University East's first female chancellor in February. Cruz-Uribe, who begins the post on July 1 in Richmond, IN, was previously provost and vice president for academic affairs of California State University, Monterey Bay. There she oversaw a ten-year strategic plan that, now halfway completed, has demonstrated growth in freshmen retention rates from 65 to 79 percent. Earlier she was at Northern Arizona University from 1989 to 2007, serving for four years as dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
David Steven Altshuler, AM'94, PhD'01 (Anthropology), was named consultant of the year by Money Management Intelligence. Part of the publication's 12th annual Public Pension Fund Awards for Excellence, held in March, the honor recognizes consultants for performance, innovative investment strategy, and outstanding service. In 2012 Altschuler, senior vice president and infrastructure leader at Boston-based Meketa Investment Group, worked with the California Public Employees Retirement System to overcome impediments to pension-fund investments in infrastructure, transportation, water, and energy.
Michael S. Bassis, AM'68, PhD'74 (Education), has joined the international advisory board of Global Maximum Educational Opportunities, a company that provides innovative study-abroad programs in China for American undergraduates. Bassis, president emeritus of Westminster College, has more than 40 years of experience in higher education, including positions as professor, scholar, and administrator. Before joining Westminster, Bassis served as executive vice president and provost at Antioch University, CEO of New College of Florida, and president of Olivet College in Michigan.
In a December 2012-January 2013 exhibition at California Lutheran University's Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture, Paul L. Hanson, PhD'85 (History), displayed photos he took while traveling through Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh, India, this past spring. Hanson, a history professor and a past winner of CLU’s President's Award for Teaching Excellence, has incorporated his photography into the world history classes he teaches there. Twice a Fulbright Scholar in India, Hanson studies Islamic history in South Asia. A former codirector of CLU's international studies major and coordinator of the Global Studies Program, he previously taught at St. Olaf College and Agra University in India. Hanson is a founding board member of the CLU South Asian Studies Association.
Ashley Joachim Tellis, AM'89, PhD'94 (Political Science), gave a public lecture this past December at his alma mater, St. Xavier's College in Kolkata, on India's relation to the world. As an adviser from 2005-08 to Nicholas Burns, the American undersecretary of state for political affairs, Tellis helped to negotiate the civil nuclear agreement with India, which he first proposed in a 2005 Carnegie report, India as a New Global Power. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before his government service, he was senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School.
Moshe Z. Marvit, AM'06, joined the Century Foundation as a fellow this January. Founded in 1919, the Century Foundation is one of America's oldest think tanks; there Marvit joins a roster of more than 20 policy experts on issues ranging from social insurance programs to economic and foreign policy. Marvit practices law in Pittsburgh and, with Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, coauthored Why Labor Organizing Should be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice (Century Foundation Press, 2012). He has worked at the National Labor Relations Board and was an editor at the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal. His research focuses on labor organizations, excluded workers, employment, and civil rights.
Stephen S. Beitler, X'78, became the first CEO of Chicago's Infrastructure Trust in February. Beitler, a former Green Beret, has also worked at Sears Roebuck and Company, the former Helene Curtis Industries, and as a managing partner at Trident Capital. Beitler, a former chair of the Illinois Venture Capital Association, serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Booth School of Business and is active in the Special Operations Warriors Foundation, a charity that helps the families of Special Operations personnel killed in action. The Infrastructure Trust brings additional sources of capital to city projects and spreads some repayment risk to private investors.
Stephen J. Morewitz, PhD'83 (Sociology), a lecturer in the Department of Nursing and Health Sciences at California State University, East Bay, was profiled in the Winter 2013 issue of that institution's alumni magazine. The article focuses on his publications on the topic of children's mental and physical health. Morewitz, a forensic sociologist for 20 years, has published eight books, including Handbook of Forensic Sociology and Psychology (with Mark L. Goldstein, Springer, 2013), and a play, Steamship Quanza (with Susan Lieberman). A 2012 exhibition at CSU's library showcased Morewitz's published works, with books covering death threats, sexual harassment, and medical malpractice.
Marcia A. Walker, AM'07, PhD'12 (History), was the subject of a March Chicago Tribune article about her work as a guest curator of Faith in the Struggle: Reverend Addie Wyatt's Fight for Labor, Civil Rights, and Women's Rights, an exhibit at the Chicago Public Library's Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection. Walker is an instructor in the history department at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, where she studies and teaches African American history, labor history, women's history, and public history. She is working on a biography of civil rights activist Reverend Addie Wyatt.
Kathleen Crowley Schwartzman, PhD'85 (Sociology), published an e-book, The Chicken Trail: Following Workers, Migrants, and Corporations Across the Americas (Cornell University Press, 2013). In the book Schwartzman examines the effects of globalization--and of NAFTA in particular--on the North American poultry industry, focusing on the displacement of African American workers in the southeastern United States and of workers in Mexico. Schwartzman, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, is the author of The Social Origins of Democratic Collapse: The First Portuguese Republic in the Global Economy (University Press Of Kansas, 1989).
Yue-man Yeung, PhD'72 (Geography), published From Local to Global and Back: Memoir of a Hong Konger (Commercial Press, 2012). Yeung, emeritus professor of geography at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is a research consultant at the central policy unit at the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and a consultant to the Shenzhen Social Science Academy. Former director of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, head of Shaw College, and university registrar of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yeung has published 44 books and numerous book chapters and articles in international refereed journals.
Jonathan Sperber, AM'74, PhD'80 (History), appeared this April on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to discuss his novel Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (Liveright, 2013). Sperber began teaching history at the University of Missouri in 1984, serving as department chair from 2005 to 2010. His teaching experience helped him write about Marx. "I have been teaching 19th-century European and German history almost every single year since I started working at MU," Sperber told the MU Maneater in April. "It has given me lots of opportunities to think about the political and intellectual context of Marx's life." Visit The Daily Show website to watch the full interview.