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 [...]
March 30, 2012 – 12:19 pm
Ryan Allis was a student at Carolina who helped start the entrepreneurship club, a forerunner of many of the things we’re doing around innovation now. Ryan co-founded iContact, an email marketing company, which went from a small office upstairs on Franklin Street to an acquisition last month by Vocus. I had a chance to sit [...]
January 20, 2012 – 11:46 am
Earlier this week, Andrew Young was in town to give the Martin Luther King Jr. lecture. He was kind enough to sit down with me for a few minutes to talk about his life and his take on our complex world. There aren’t many people who worked with Dr. King on the civil rights movement, [...]
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 11, 2011 – 10:04 am
Got a great note from new Journalism and Mass Communication faculty member Terence Oliver. He was very appreciative of all we did to recognize Martin Luther King Day, and sent me this picture that he created. Here’s his description of the picture: “The Martin Luther King Jr. illustration was created for and was part of [...]
December 15, 2010 – 2:56 pm
What a day in Lilongwe. We started at the Bwaila antenatal clinic. This is where UNC led a famous study called BAN, which determined the best course for treating HIV-positive mothers to prevent transmission of the virus to their children. Thanks to the work of our researchers, the rate of transmission of HIV to babies [...]
November 29, 2010 – 9:28 am
One of the sad realities about a vibrant, exciting place like Chapel Hill is that not all of us can afford to live here. At Carolina, that means important members of our campus family – research assistants, clerical workers, health aides, housekeepers – are forced to commute long distances or live in substandard conditions. Those [...]
On May 12, BP finally released a 30-second video of the oil that had been spewing from its damaged well into the Gulf of Mexico for more than three weeks. A few days later, I got an email from two UNC professors, Richard McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa, who are experts in fluid dynamics. They and [...]
January 25, 2010 – 3:41 pm
Since I started this blog, I’ve discussed a few of Tom Friedman’s columns. One of the best email props I ever got was on something I wrote where a reader said I was “the funny Tom Friedman.” I printed that one and put it on my bulletin board. Friedman outdid himself this weekend in my [...]