November 2, 2012 – 8:12 am
In the fourth of five posts, I’ll look at one more force faced by public universities, as described by Hunter Rawlings during his recent talk at Carolina. Rawlings is president of the American Association of Universities. You can watch his presentation at the end of this post. The next force cited by Rawlings was ‘ideological [...]
October 8, 2012 – 2:44 pm
On October 7, 2012, I was honored to make some remarks at a gathering to remember and honor Doris Betts, beloved writer, teacher and public servant. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Thank you, Bland (Simpson), for allowing me to be with you today. Today is an important celebration. I’m pleased to be able to welcome you all on behalf [...]
October 10, 2011 – 9:13 am
On Friday, we unveiled the portrait of Chancellor James Moeser that will hang in the lobby of Wilson Library along with portraits of his eight predecessors. The portrait is a wonderful likeness of Chancellor Moeser and the spectacular Carolina blue robe that he, Michael Hooker, Paul Hardin, Bill McCoy and I have worn since it [...]
August 3, 2011 – 11:30 am
Last week, Charlie Rose was in town to moderate a debate on the debt ceiling. I have always been such a huge fan of his show, so I was excited about getting the chance to meet him. We talked a lot about news, science, and how being a talk show host is like working at [...]
This post was originally published in the Chapel Hill Herald on August 31, 2011. A successful democracy depends on an educated citizenry. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With freedom comes responsibility,” and chief among voters’ responsibilities is keeping themselves informed on the issues. Last week, the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University [...]
E.O. Wilson was in town to give the commencement address a couple of weeks ago. Ed Wilson is one of America’s great thinkers about the environment and about the application of evolution to human behavior. In his commencement speech, he said, “This country and the rest of the world needs university-trained young people prepared not [...]
In just two weeks, the Class of 2011 will be graduating in Kenan Stadium. Anyone who has been to Carolina knows what an impact this institution and the surrounding community make on an individual. But I sometimes wonder if people outside the campus realize what an impact our students make on their community during their [...]
I had the opportunity to spend time more time learning about medicine from Mike Cohen. Last time, we were in an AIDS clinic in Malawi. This time, we were on the infectious diseases ward here in Chapel Hill. There were a lot of differences between the two experiences, but there were a lot of similarities, [...]
February 10, 2011 – 10:13 am
Yesterday, I had the privilege of serving on a panel on Jobs and the Economy, which was done by The Atlantic (formerly The Atlantic Monthly). There was a great lineup of speakers and we had our students asking questions by video conference. There was another group at Miami University also asking questions. Carolina’s students did [...]
November 8, 2010 – 9:18 am
In talking about our book, Engines of Innovation, one thing that Buck Goldstein and I have been stressing is that a liberal arts education is the best way to train innovators. We talked about that a lot in our Inside Higher Ed column and in many of the talks we’ve given. People resonate with this [...]