Shazia Rafi ’79, the secretary-general of Parliamentarians for Global Action, has been appointed to serve on the United Nations Democracy Fund Advisory Board. The UNDEF advisory board is composed of 13 UN member states, two international civil-society organizations, and three individual members:  Rafi will serve as an individual member for the period of 2012-13. UNDEF […]

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research alumna Jill B. Jones, Ph.D. ’97, has co-authored a new study of women who work in the gambling industry. Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places, published by Cornell University Press, is based on “extensive interviews with maids, cocktail waitresses, cooks, laundry workers, dealers, pit bosses, managers, and vice […]

Diana Putman ’78, Ph.D.  ’85, was sworn in as the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission director to the Democratic Republic of Congo in late July. “Putman will oversee a $306 million program that focuses on bolstering peace and stability; protecting civilians; strengthening governance institutions; and supporting economic recovery, growth, and the provision of basic […]

Trustee Cheryl Holland ’80, the president of the financial-advising firm Abacus Planning Group, has been named one of the top 50 women in wealth management by AdvisorOne. It’s not the first time Holland has been celebrated by the press: she has appeared on Barron’s Top 100, Wealth Manager magazine’s list of 50 distinguished women in financial […]

Sociomedical scientist Rebecca Jordan-Young ’86, an associate professor of women’s studies at Barnard College, recently published Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences, a study of the scientific research underlying the claim that sex differences are biologically determined or “hardwired into the brain” by fetal exposure to sex hormones. The book has […]

The Atatürk Society of America has bestowed its Republicanism Award on Suna Kili, A.B. ’48, M.A. ’49, Ph.D. ’53. Kili, a professor of political science and constitutional law at  Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, has published extensively on political theory, models of development, and modernization, especially in the context of the Turkish Revolution. She has lectured […]

The recently published Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, written by Gail Steketee, M.S.S. ’72 and Ph.D. ’87, and Smith College Professor Randy Frost, has been featured in Newsweek, The New York Times, Salon, Time, The Wall Street Journal,  and The Washington Post, and NPR’s Fresh Air, among other media outlets. Steketee is a professor […]

Sidney de Shazo Callahan ’55 will receive a doctor of humane letters degree from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., at the university’s commencement exercises on May 16. Callahan is an author, lecturer, professor and psychologist. In 2002-2003, she held the Paul J. McKeever Chair of Moral Theology, St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., and […]

The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers, recently published by philosopher and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman ’73, is described as “essential reading” in  a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Sherman, a University Professor at Georgetown University, served as the Inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U. S. Naval Academy. Trained […]

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Business Week are among the many media outlets to report on the naming of Alice Rivlin ’52, a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington and visiting professor at Georgetown University, to serve on a commission on […]