From the issue dated March 26, 2004
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Georgetown U. Starts a Music Program; Young 'Genius' to Lead Humanities at U. of Chicago; Ex-President of Morris Brown College Returns
Instead of keying on "DWEM's" (dead white European males), the university will make American music its theme, says José Antonio Bowen, an associate professor of music. "In the nation's capital, doing American music seems logical," he says. Rufus Jones Jr., 35, who is finishing his doctorate in musical arts at Texas Tech University, will conduct Georgetown's student orchestra and teach courses on African-American music. "Who wouldn't want to be on the ground floor of something so new?" he asks. "We're opening up ears and making people aware there are significant composers born and raised in this country who produced great literature." The university has also hired a choral director, Gerard Yun, 42, who is an assistant professor of music at Southern Utah University. He plays a bamboo flute called the shakuhachi. Mr. Yun turned down an offer from Scripps College, in Claremont, Calif., to go to Georgetown, in part because of its "international connections and national visibility," he says. Both professors will begin in the fall. -- Robin Wilson *** YOUNG DEAN: The University of Chicago's most famous leader, Robert Maynard Hutchins, was just 30 years old when he assumed the presidency, in 1929. So it may not be surprising that the university has chosen as its new dean of humanities a woman who is only 32. Danielle S. Allen, a professor of classics and political science at the university since 1997, will be in charge of 15 departments under the humanities umbrella as of July 1. She is best known for her 2000 book, The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens. The professor will succeed Janel M. Mueller, 65, a literary scholar who has served as dean since 1999. "Humanities needs a very strong, clear-eyed spokesman, and I think she stands a chance of being that on the national level," says the provost, Richard P. Saller. Ms. Allen won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly known as a "genius" grant, in 2001 for her work in political theory. In September the University of Chicago Press will publish her second book, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education, which looks at the history of Little Rock, Ark., and other cities through the lens of Aristotle's Rhetoric. She plans to apply certain insights from that study to her job as dean. "I am working on connecting the humanities division to the work going on now with redevelopment of the South Side" of Chicago, she says. "People often think that humanities disciplines aren't very practical or relevant because we don't ask questions that have immediate consequences or obvious outcomes. In fact, from my point of view, that feature of humanistic scholarship is really crucial." Can one draw any conclusions from Ms. Allen's scholarship about how she will act in her new post? "My own view is that in a general sense, she has very good political instincts," says Mr. Saller, who is also a classicist. "The University of Chicago is not democratic Athens by any stretch of the imagination." -- David Glenn *** FAMILIAR FACE: Morris Brown College is betting that the key to its future lies in the past. Samuel D. Jolley Jr., a former president of the historically black institution in Atlanta, will go back to his old job. When he was president of Morris Brown, from 1993 to 1997, Mr. Jolley was credited with wiping out a $6.5-million deficit and helping the college get off probation with its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Now the accreditation has been stripped, in part because the college had piled up debts of more than $27-million. Morris Brown has been without a permanent president since last April, when Charles E. Taylor resigned after the college lost an appeal to regain its accreditation. Mr. Jolley has spent the past six years as executive director and chief executive of the Atlanta University Center, a soon-to-be-dissolved nonprofit consortium that manages programs and services for five black colleges in the city, including Morehouse and Spelman. -- Audrey Williams June http://chronicle.com Section: Short Subjects Volume 50, Issue 29, Page A8 |
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education