People

Volume 36, No. 7 July/August 2005

Table of contents

People
Print version: page 126

In April, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the winners of its 2005 fellowships. Among the 185 winners were four psychologists:

• Kent Berridge, PhD, of the University of Michigan, will work on the psychology and neurobiology of rewards.

• Marc D. Hauser, PhD, of Harvard University, will work on the evolution of a moral instinct.

• John A. Lucy, PhD, of the University of Chicago, will work on how language development affects intellectual development.

• Carl O. Pabo, PhD, of Stanford University, will work on theories of thought.

Guggenheim Fellowships are six- to 12-month grants that provide fellows with blocks of time to work with as much creative freedom as possible. Fellows can spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work.

The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Alumni Association presented APA fellow Julian C. Stanley Jr., EdD, with the association's Heritage Award in June. Stanley won the award for, among other achievements, creating the JHU Center for Talented Youths, which provides summer residential programs, distance education and conferences for academically gifted second- through eighth-graders. Stanley is a psychology professor and emeritus director of the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth at the University of West Georgia.

The University of California, Davis, selected Steven Pinker, PhD, a Harvard University psychologist and author of "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" (Penguin, 2003), to speak at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 1 as part of the university's Distinguished Speakers Series.

Pinker, an APA fellow and one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World Today, will argue against the notion that an infant's mind is a blank slate, stating that human beings have an inherited universal structure shaped by demands made upon the species for survival, albeit with plenty of room for cultural and individual variation.

Also scheduled to speak as part of the series are former Sen. John Edwards and Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed by Don Cheadle in the movie "Hotel Rwanda."

Smith College researchers interviewed psychologist Henry David, PhD, for more than four hours for the College's Population and Reproductive Health Oral History Project.

The project, which began in 2001, aims to capture the stories of international leaders in the field of birth control and population. To date, the collection has archived more than 40 interviews.

The collection is housed at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and will be available to the public by 2006.

The University of Illinois at Chicago hired eight new faculty to join the university's Institute for Juvenile Research. Among the new recruits were two psychologists: Mark Stein, PhD, a clinical psychologist who specializes in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Lauren Wakschlag, PhD, a clinical and developmental child psychologist who will launch a preschool behavioral problems clinic at the institute.

Founded in 1909, the Institute for Juvenile Research was the first child-guidance clinic and the second organized psychology-training program in the nation.

--Z. STAMBOR

1971 APA President Kenneth B. Clark dies

Psychologist and educator Kenneth B. Clark, PhD, died on May 1 at the age of 90.

Clark spent his life working for racial integration and improving education for black children. His pioneering social science statement, "The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation," which he co-authored with Isidor Chein, PhD, and Stuart W. Cook, PhD, was an appendix to the appellant's briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court's historic 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

"Dr. Clark's research is one of the most visible examples of how psychological science could speak to and help resolve complex issues facing society," says APA CEO Norman B. Anderson, PhD. "I have always been proud of the fact that, through Dr. Clark's work, psychology contributed to removing the stranglehold of segregation on the United States. As psychologists and Americans, we owe him our sincere gratitude."

Clark was the first black professor to gain tenure at the City University of New York and was a distinguished professor emeritus at City College of New York. He also taught as a visiting or guest professor at Harvard University, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Beginning in the late 1930s, Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, PhD, conducted a series of studies that showed that when given the option between playing with white or black dolls, black children preferred playing with white dolls, saying they looked "nice" and that the black dolls looked "bad."

The Clarks then asked the black children which doll they most resembled. While some children responded that they looked the most like the white doll, other children refused to answer or burst into tears. In doing so, the Clarks showed that black children in segregated schools were more likely to see themselves as inferior than white students.

The studies also showed that school segregation marred the development of white as well as black students-- a finding that was later cited in the Supreme Court's appendix to the appellant's briefs in its unanimous 1954 decision.

Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that separating black children from white "solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."

Throughout APA, Clark will be missed, says APA President Ronald F. Levant, EdD.

"We join the Clark family and the entire psychology family in mourning the death of Dr. Kenneth Clark," says Levant, who delivered a eulogy on behalf of APA at Clark's funeral on May 9 (see page 5). "Dr. Clark was one of the foremost psychologists of the 20th century. His groundbreaking research and the role it played in the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision exemplifies psychology's critical role in promoting sound public policy and in advancing human welfare."

Mamie Phipps Clark died in 1983. She and her husband are survived by their two children.

--Z. STAMBOR

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