CRIMINOLOGY
Now
on Trial: Justice in Smart Vs. Dumb 
In
the American criminal-justice
system,
the figure of Justicia is usually depicted wearing a blindfold. While
that may symbolize an admirable impartiality, says Dr. Lawrence Sherman,
it may also indicate an unwillingness to learn—and to take into account
human emotions: of victims, of criminal-justice officials, and of criminals.
Continued...
Illustration
by William Sulit
APPOINTMENTS
New
Dental Dean Appointed
As
the Gazette was going to
press
last month, we learned that Dr. Marjorie K. Jeffcoat, assistant dean of
research and professor and chair of the periodontics department at the
University of Alabama School of Dentistry, has been appointed dean of
the School of Dental Medicine. She will assume her new position at Penn
this summer, replacing Dr. Raymond Fonseca, who has led the school for
the past 15 years. Continued...
GIFTS
REVISITED Penn
and Health Care Trust
Dissolve Agreement
Last
March, the University
and
the Philadelphia Health Care Trust (PHCT) announced an agreement to transfer
the trust’s assets to Penn Medicine, the governing body of the University’s
Health System, by 2009 [“Gazetteer,” May/June]. Given that those assets
were then estimated to be worth about $100 million, it seemed quite a
coup for Penn. Continued...
SYMPOSIUM
Where
the Wild Things Were
“What’s
wrong with this picture?”
asks Dr. Ross MacPhee, pointing to a projected image. It’s an Ice Age
scene, depicting several hunters chucking spears at monstrous woolly mammoths
in the middle of a blizzard—like something out of an old issue of Boy’s
Life. A rumble of laughter rolls through the University Museum’s Harrison
Auditorium. MacPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum
of Natural History, has made his point: As with The Flintstones,
the entertaining but historically flawed cartoon, much of the hunting
illustration is simply preposterous. Continued...
LIFELONG
LEARNING Emeritus
Professor, Emerging Painter
There
is a telling parenthetical description
on Dr. Rosemary Stevens’ University letterhead. Right after her title—Stanley
I. Sheerr Endowed Term Professor in Arts and Sciences, Emeritus —is
a single word: (Active). Continued...
FACULTY
AND THE LAW Court
Orders Penn to Pay Up
The
Pennsylvania Supreme Court
has ordered the University to pay $2.9 million to Dr. Jorge Ferrer, professor
of microbiology and director of clinical studies at the School of Veterinary
Medicine, for violating his employment contract and destroying his cancer-research
program. Continued...
ARCHAEOLOGY
The
Magic of Birth and Bricks
Sometime
in the 18th century B.C.,
in the southern Egyptian town of Abydos, a young mother in her final agony
of labor cries out to the cow-headed goddess whose image hangs on a pole
beside her: Come to me, O Hathor, at my moment of trial! And as
her new baby squeezes out of her body and into the light, the mother herself
becomes one with the goddess. Or so it was believed. Continued...
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© 2003 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 02/28/03
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BRICKS
AND MORTAR
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A New Home for Early American Studies The McNeil Center for Early American Studies will get a new home in a new building, to be located on the east side of 34th Street, between Hill Field and Walnut Street. The building will be funded by a $6 million gift by the Barra Foundation and Robert L. McNeil Jr., the foundation’s chairman. “This financial support will provide us with a fabulous facility,” said Dr. Daniel K. Richter, the professor of history who serves as the center’s director. “For many years to come, we will be able to serve the academic community interested in the early American period and to expand our role as the nation’s premier incubator of young scholars doing innovative research on the people of early America.” The McNeil Center was founded in 1978 by Dr. Richard S. Dunn, emeritus professor of American history. It specializes in the histories and cultures of North America before 1850, with an emphasis on the mid-Atlantic region and on promoting the scholarly use of the Philadelphia area’s rich research collections. It offers pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, a seminar series, and national symposia on specialized topics. The center has also teamed up with the University of Pennsylvania Press to publish a book series and Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the first issue of which will appear this spring. Noting that the center has provided an “important interdisciplinary venue to highlight the critical role the study of our nation’s past plays in understanding and shaping our future,” Penn President Judith Rodin CW’66 said that the “generous funding” by the Barra Foundation and McNeil “recognizes [Penn’s] role as a national leader in research and scholarship on early American studies.” |