September 7, 2010

Provost’s Lecture Series fall lineup announced

China expert and noted author David Lampton will kick off the fall schedule of the new Provost’s Lecture Series, launched this spring to spread the wealth of academic excellence at Johns Hopkins among its campuses.

The 2010–2011 academic year will be the first full year for the series, which this fall will feature speakers representing four university divisions. The inaugural lecture, held in April, was given at Homewood by Nobel Prize winner Carol Greider, the Daniel Nathans Professor and director of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences in East Baltimore.

The fall lineup, in addition to Lampton’s lecture at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, includes sociologist Andrew Cherlin at SAIS, domestic violence expert Jacquelyn Campbell at Homewood and reproductive health authority Ronald Gray at the Carey Business School.

Provost Lloyd B. Minor said that his chief aim for establishing the series was to bring outstanding faculty from one campus to another and make a “geographically distributed” university feel that much smaller.

“These lectures, which will traverse multiple campuses, will provide opportunities to share the remarkable talent of Johns Hopkins faculty and professional staff across the divisions of the university,” Minor said. “It is my hope that these opportunities will inspire the creative processes in each of us and encourage the ongoing development of interdisciplinary programs and collaborations.”

Lampton, the George and Sadie Hyman Professor and director of China Studies at SAIS, will discuss the prospect of development “failure” in China and its global implications. With so much attention given to China’s growth and increasing strength and reach in the world, Lampton said he wants to examine the notion of a China downturn, its probability and consequences. The event will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 19, in the Bloomberg School’s Sheldon Hall.

Lampton, also the dean of faculty at SAIS, is one of the country’s leading China scholars. From 1988 to 1997, he was president of the National Committee on United States–China Relations. He also was founding director of the China Policy Program at the American Enterprise Institute and of the Nixon Center’s Chinese Studies Program. He is currently a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He has authored numerous books and articles on Chinese domestic and foreign affairs, testified before congressional committees and is a frequent commentator on national talk shows and news broadcasts. His most recent book, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money and Minds, was published in 2008 by the University of California Press and the following year in Chinese by Xinhua Publishing.

Andrew Cherlin, the Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Sociology and Public Policy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, will give a lecture titled “The Marriage-Go-Round: How and Why Family Life Is Different in the United States Than in Other Wealthy Nations” from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 25, in SAIS’s Kenney Auditorium.

Cherlin is a past president of the Population Association of America, the research association of the nation’s demographers. He is also past chair of both the Population and Family sections of the American Sociological Association. His books include The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (2009) and Public and Private Families: An Introduction (2007).

The third lecture will be given by Jacquelyn C. Campbell, the Anna D. Wolf Professor in the School of Nursing with a joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Campbell will give a lecture titled “We Must Do Better: Three Decades of Research, Collaboration and Mentorship to Improve the Safety and Health of Abused Women” from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 11, in Hodson Hall Auditorium on the Homewood campus.

Campbell has been engaged in advocacy policy work and has conducted research in the areas of family violence and health disparities related to trauma since 1980. She has published more than 220 articles and seven books on violence against women and was a member of the congressionally appointed U.S. Department of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence. She currently chairs the board of directors of the Family Violence Prevention Fund.

Ronald Gray, the William G. Robertson Professor in Population and Family Planning at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, will close out the fall lineup with a lecture titled “Male Circumcision: The Short Cut to Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention” from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 7, in the Carey Business School’s Legg Mason Conference Center.

Since 1994, Gray has been co–principal investigator of the Rakai Health Sciences Program in Uganda, which focuses primarily on HIV prevention and care. He was principal investigator of the trial on male circumcision for HIV prevention that demonstrated efficacy of circumcision for prevention of HIV, herpes virus and human papillomavirus in men. In addition to his research with the Rakai Program, Gray has been principal investigator on numerous international and domestic studies of reproductive and perinatal health, family planning and occupational reproductive hazards.

Each lecture will be followed by a Q&A segment and reception.

The series will continue this spring with details announced at a later date.

For more information on the series, go to www.jhu.edu/provost/lectures.