Duke Professional News, March 26, 2004

Robert Califf, M.D., director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, was presented with the American College of Cardiology's Distinguished Scientist Award for clinical research during the organization's annual convocation ceremony March 9th.

Each year the college acknowledges two scientists, one in the clinical domain and one in the basic domain, who have made major contributions to the advancement of cardiology. The award was presented to Califf by Carl Pepine, president of the college.

To be eligible for the award, one must be a fellow of the college and nominated by a colleague.

Robert Korstad's book, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South (UNC Press, 2003), has been selected co-winner of the 2004 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award. Korstad is associate professor of history and public policy studies in the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. The award is scheduled to be presented at the March 27 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in Boston. The award honors the best book on any historical aspect of the struggle for civil rights in the United States from the nation's founding to the present. Also, the March-April 2004 issue of Duke Magazine features "Striking Out Against Big: Tobacco," an interview with Korstad and discussion of the book.

Gerda Lerner, one of the pioneers in the field of women's history and a visiting professor of history at Duke, has been awarded an honorary degree by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Lerner, who is a University of Wisconsin professor emerita, has written numerous books on the female experience in this country. She is credited with establishing the country's first graduate program in women's history, at Sarah Lawrence College in 1972 and has edited more than 20 volumes, all on women's history or related topics.

Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, she was forced into exile in 1938 after the rise of the Nazis.

In granting the degree, the president and rector of The Hebrew University said, "For many young people, your remarkable academic career, achieved despite the harrowing experiences suffered during the Nazi era in Europe, provides a model of what may be accomplished in the face of adversity." The honorary degree ceremony will take place June 6.

Margaret Humphreys, M.D., has been awarded a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars.

Humphreys, who is the Josiah Charles Trent Associate Professor of Medical Humanities, will spend the 2004-2005 academic year at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park.

She will research the impact of the Civil War on American medicine. The American Council of Learned Societies holds the competition for the fellowships, which were created to support scholars in the humanities and social sciences pursue long-term, unusually ambitious projects. Except in unusual cases, fellows spend an academic year at one of nine humanities centers.

The Frederick Burkhardt Fellowships are named for Frederick Burkhardt, President Emeritus of ACLS.

Gail Goestenkors, women's basketball coach at Duke, has been selected to serve as assistant coach on the 2004 U.S. Women's Olympic Team. The selection was made by the USA Basketball Women's Senior National Team Committee. She will be one of three coaches to assist the team's head coach, Van Chancellor of the WNBA.

The XXVIII Olympic Games women's basketball competition will feature national teams from 12 nations competing in Athens, Greece, Aug. 14-28.

James Siedow, vice provost for research and professor of biology, has been named to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blue Ribbon Panel on Conflict of Interest Policies. The panel held its first meeting March 1-2.

The panel's charge is to review and make recommendations for improving the existing rules and procedures under which NIH currently operates regarding real and apparent financial conflict of interest of NIH staff and requirements and policies for the reporting of NIH staff's financial interests.

John French, professor of history, gave a lecture on the Brazilian labor movement this week at Northern Illinois University.

The public lecture was titled "Another World Is Possible: The Rise of the Brazilian Workers' Party and the Prospects for Lula's Government." The discussion focus ed former union chief Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who in 2002 became Brazil's first working-class president.