Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 21, 2008|Volume 36, Number 22

Role of scholar activists to be examined
at annual Bouchet Conference

The role of scholars and researchers in the public sphere will be explored during the fifth annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education, which will be held Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29.

The title of this year’s conference is “Public Intellectuals and Scholar Activists: Negotiating the Boundaries of Academia, Identity and Civic Responsibility.” It will address such concerns as the responsibility of scholars to “merge their research or the discourse it provokes with the pressing cultural, political or intellectual issues of our time,” according to conference organizers. The conference will also explore the training of graduate students in increasingly diverse academic communities, and the role of the university in the development of graduate students as both scholars and citizens.

Registration for the event is required. The fee is $110 for faculty, administrators and professionals; $65 for post-baccalaureates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; and $30 for undergraduates. For information, call (203) 432-0763 or e-mail grad.diversity@yale.edu.

Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore, Maryland, and current dean of the Howard University School of Law, will be the keynote speaker. His talk, which is free and open to the public, is titled “A New Hundred Years War? The Compelling Need To Reform National Drug Control Policy.” It will take place at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday in the Yale Law School’s Levinson Auditorium, 127 Wall St.

Schmoke, a 1971 graduate of Yale College, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and then earned a law degree from Harvard University. As Baltimore’s mayor for 12 years, he initiated programs to improve housing, education, public health and economic development in the city. For his efforts in promoting adult literacy, President George H.W. Bush awarded him the National Literacy Award in 1992. President Bill Clinton named Baltimore one of six cities to receive the Empowerment Zone designation in 1994 in recognition of Schmoke’s initiatives. Schmoke served as a member of the Yale Corporation 1989-2002. A trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a former trustee of Tuskegee University, Loyola College (Baltimore) and other educational institutions, he has received a dozen honorary doctoral degrees.

Approximately 150 scholars and students from Yale and other universities will attend the Bouchet Conference. Organizers are Yale graduate students Kenise Lyons (Italian), Amina El-Annan (American studies), Shanta Whitaker (microbiology) and Anjelica Bernal (political science); as well as Curtis Patton, professor emeritus of epidemiology; and Pat Cabral, senior administrative assistant for the Graduate School’s Office of Diversity of Equal Opportunity. Most events take place at the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.

Named for Edward A. Bouchet, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. degree in the United States (in physics in 1876, from Yale), the conference will include several concurrent sessions divided by academic discipline. Faculty, administrators and students from Yale and other universities will give scholarly talks, run workshops, present posters and participate in panel discussions that explore the theme from both scholarly and practical approaches.

More information on the Bouchet Conference is available at www.yale.edu/graduateschool/diversity/news1.html.

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