Spring
1998
Soundings is a publication of the School of Humanities and Social Science at MIT
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Bullets & Bytes
Heinz Family
Foundation honors John Harbison
Music Professor John Harbison, one of America's leading composers, was awarded a $225,000 Heinz Family Foundation Award for civic and academic distinction. A member of the MIT music faculty since 1969, Harbison won a Pulitzer Prize for his composition, The Flight Into Egypt, in 1987, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989. He also was the recipient of the 1994-95 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award and was named Institute Professor in 1995.
Peter A. Diamond
named Institute Professor
One of the world's leading
economic theorists, whose deftness and depth in model-building is legendary,
Peter A. Diamond was named Institute Professor, a recognition awarded
to a highly select group of MIT faculty. Recognized for enhancing our
understanding of modern public finance, financial markets, and the role
of fiscal policy in a growing economy, Diamond is also well known as a
key player in the Social Security reform debate. He was cited by the nominating
panel as a leader who "helps bring clarity and rigor to a debate that
could otherwise degenerate into a competition between buzzwords." The
panel also noted that Diamond, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics,
"is revered by both students and colleagues and has clearly become the
intellectual and moral leader of the MIT economics department."
The Institute Professorship is awarded to no more than 12 faculty at any
given time. It is a singular accolade reserved for individuals whose leadership,
contribution, and service enhance the scholarly and general intellectual
life of MIT and the wider community. Diamond joins two other Institute
Professors in the School of Humanities and Social Science: Noam Chomsky
in Linguistics and Philosophy and John Harbison in Music and Theater Arts.
On learning of his selection, Diamond asked, "Can I show this to my mother?" (We presume he has by now received a maternal nod.)
Susan
Slyomovics accepts women's studies chair
Professor Susan Slyomovics joins the faculty of the School of Humanities and Social Science as the Geneviève McMillan-Reba Stewart Professor of the Study of Women in the Developing World, a newly-established position. Arriving from Brown University, where she had a joint appointment in the departments of comparative literature and theater, speech and dance, Slyomovics will be teaching a variety of courses, ranging from ‘Women in the Middle East' to ‘Storytelling' and ‘Photography and Truth.' "I'm interested in training students in how we in the West have discovered and translated the Middle East and North Africa. In that effort, I pay attention to the performance, oral literature, and verbal and video art that emerges from the Middle East and North Africa," says Slyomovics.
Women's issues, particularly as they relate to the developing world, are of special interest to Geneviève McMillan, a Cambridge intellectual, business woman, and art patron, who established the McMillan-Stewart Chair. Originally from France, McMillan named the chair in honor of her friend Reba Stewart, a young American painter who died while practicing her art in Africa. McMillan is also sponsoring a lecture series on women in the developing world, which Professor Slyomovics will direct, to be held at the Graduate Consortium of Women's Studies at Radcliffe College. In adition, McMillan sponsors an annual lecture series on African studies at Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research.
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