News
On September 29, Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow (08-09), Margot Gerritsen, writes "To Love or Not to Love the Tar Sands" on SmartEnergy.com. The post includes a podcast from an oil town and features government officials, industry and environmental organizations. "In terms of oil, we are more dependent on Canada than on Saudi-Arabia. 20% of our oil imports comes from Canada, and more than half of that is produced from the oil sands in the Albertan boreal forest." Professor Gerritsen appears on Stanford's FaceBook Open Office Hours. Watch this video as Professor Gerritsen discusses computational mathematics, smart energy and search algorithms.
We are pleased to announce that Naseem Zojwalla, MD, has joined the Clayman Institute Advisory Council. Naseem is a Senior Medical Director at ImClone Systems and is the medical lead for clinical trials for one of ImClone's late stage oncology pipeline products. She maintains an academic appointment as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Columbia University Medical Center. She also volunteers for Sakhi for South Asian Women, an anti-domestic violence organization. Naseem received a B.A. from Stanford University, an M. D. from Temple University School of Medicine, and completed her hematology/oncology fellowship training at Columbia University.
Another OpEd Project success! On September 22, LaDoris Cordell published an op-ed essay, "Baby, You Can't Drive Your Car. A judge's favorite punishment for drunken drivers - ignition-interlock" in Slate.com. LaDoris speaks both from personal experience as the victim of a drunk driver and as the first judge in the state of California to order the installation of the ignition-interlock systems. She advocates that the governor sign the bill requiring judges to order installation of the devices. LaDoris is a graduate of the Clayman Institute OpEd Project Seminar.
On September 18, BusinessWeek posted an article, "How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team - Whatever the source of the pessimism, the key to responding constructively is to focus on the impact of the individual's behavior." Featured in the article was the work of Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate Roderick Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before taking action to address negativity, Kramer recommends understanding the cause of the pessimism. "Some people are dispositional pessimists whose knee-jerk reaction is to see the negative in everything, while others may be expressing a pessimistic point of view based upon informed logic," Kramer says.
On September 16, Professor Pamela Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, were featured in a webcast titled, Keeping Faith and Looking Forward: a Discussion on Constitutional Interpretation. Professor Karlan, a Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate, co-authored the book, Keeping Faith with the Constitution (available for download here). The webcast looks at "the Constitution and methods of interpretation that apply the text and broad principles to the changing needs and conditions of our society."
Yoshiko Matsumoto, an associate professor of Japanese linguistics, dispels stereotypes of elderly women in her recent research. Professor Matsumoto, a Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate, "found that rather than conforming to the elderly stereotype, the women's demeanors ranged from being motherly and proper to tittering, chiding and gossiping like teenagers." An article about her research can be found at the Human Experience.
On September 8, Caroline Simard wrote, "Where is the VC Funding for Women Tech Entrepreneurs?" from her presentation at the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Also on the panel was former Clayman Institute research associate, Candy Ku. The post points to the findings, "In this universe of firms, male high tech entrepreneurs get 11% of total financing in formal equity, whereas women only get 1.6%." and the reasons, including: Women entrepreneurs tend to have smaller social networks, and their networks often lack the kind of breadth and diversity that yields most benefits.
Clayman Institute Director, Londa Schiebinger, presented “Buried histories, forgotten science and the gender politics of plants” at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas in July. The video offers a first-hand view of the talk, as Professor Schiebinger, the John L. Hinds John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, provides the Australian audience with a demonstration of agnotology—the study of ignorance, and of knowledge lost, suppressed or ignored.
On July 24, Clayman Institute Advisory Council member Sharon Meers published, “How to Excel at Your Job and Be Home for Dinner” in a BusinessWeek “Special Report.” The article includes five tips, from “measure what matters” to “trade Venus and Mars for common ground.” The common ground is good for all as “men and women who see all work as gender-neutral have an easier time adapting to new job and family realities, and so do their employers.” Meers was also featured in the New York Times blog, “Room for Debate,” answering the question: “Do Women Make Better Bosses?” Meers answers, “How to make the positive qualities we see in female managers more common in men—and more useful to all?”
On July 21, Clayman Faculty Research Fellow Vinod Menon’s work was featured in “From Child to Young Adult, the Brain Changes Its Connections” in PLOS Biology. “A business may have to change its organizational flow chart as it matures in order to accommodate new challenges or weed out unprofitable sectors. Is the same true for brains? Do the networks of communication within the brain change as the brain matures?” Professor Menon and his colleages address this in their work.
On July 20, Gina Bianchini, CEO and co-founder of Ning, published a blog post in “Fortune Brainstorm Tech”: “Aww, social networking is growing up. A brief history of social technology, and what it means to you.” In this grown-up stage, people have greater access to express themselves as individuals. “As online networking continues to evolve, you will see more social technologies working together to allow you to be the multi-faceted person you truly are and to nurture and fulfill of all your interests and desires for more information and new people with whom you can connect.” Bianchini is a Stanford alumna and member of the Clayman Institute Advisory Council.
Professor Fredi Kronenberg’s book, Botanical Medicine: From Bench to Bedside, is hot off the press. “This book is an important and significant contribution to the field of botanical medicine. A stellar group of authors presents examples of high quality research that will help physicians, allied health practitioners, and investigators, who require greater confidence in the quality of botanical preparations and their clinical benefits.” —Andrew Weil, M.D. Director, Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine University of Arizona. Watch for a book launch event this fall at the Clayman Institute. Kronenberg is a Stanford alumna and Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow.
The Anita Borg Institute (ABI) published a report in June titled, Obstacles and Solutions for Underrepresented Minorities in Technology. The report author, Caroline Simard, Ph.D., ABI Research Director and Stanford alumna, also co-authored a report for the Clayman Institute-ABI titled, Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Information Technology. Both reports recommend that companies invest in career advancement training and providing flexible work to create workplace where underrepresented technical workers thrive. Good news from the ABI survey: “Underrepresented technical employees are more likely to perceive themselves as possessing the key attributes of success when it comes to being assertive, entrepreneurial, risk-taking, and working long hours.”
“How to Succeed by Failing” from the BusinessWeek blog on July 6, 2009, asserts “Your talent as a manager grows with persistence and effort, so think of failure as an opportunity to improve yourself”. The blog features the work of Carol Dweck, Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate and the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology; her work points to the mindset of failure—if one thinks ability is inborn, then failure is to be avoided as it reinforces one’s limitations. “Here's the good news: you can change your success by changing your mindset. When Dweck trained children to view themselves as capable of growing their intelligence, they worked harder, more persistently, and with greater success on math problems they had previously abandoned as unsolvable.”
On July 5, Clayman Institute Senior Scholar Marilyn Yalom commented on The New York Times blog: “The Clueless Wives Club”. The blog questions Ruth Madoff’s statement that she did not know of her husband’s fraud: “Assuming these women didn’t know, were they particularly blinkered, or do these cases show the limits of knowing another person, even in the most intimate and long-term relationships? Or is this simply how partnerships are set up in this culture?” In her response: “Colluding on a Hidden Life”, Yalom writes, “To what extent do these spouses collude in keeping the hidden life hidden? There is often, I think, some degree of consciousness that one’s partner is ‘cheating.’” She also answers, “A true mate is someone to whom you can confess mistakes, even those that violate the norms of marriage.”
Clayman Institute Advisory Council member, Kamy Wicoff, launches She Writes, a new social networking site for women writers. Wicoff's site is consistent with the Clayman Institute's mission to promote gender equality by "Fixing the Numbers" - or increasing the number of women participating in the public discourse. We are looking forward to seeing more women publish as a result of participating in She Writes!
Another op-ed success by Professor Priya Satia! On July 1, Satia published an op-ed piece in the Financial Times titled, Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an 'invisible' occupation. In the essay, Professor Satia covers the US Troop withdrawal plans and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's comparison to the "great victory" against the British in 1920. She points to the Iraqis' history of seeing through the ruse of false "independence". Satia ends with, "In 1932 as now, rhetoric about withdrawal was aimed at global as much as Iraqi opinion. Instead of attending only to appearances, stoking the fears of a people familiar with nominal independence, the US and Iraqi governments should deliver the reality Iraqis and Americans want: 'Yes for independence.'"
Professor Dick Zare finds a quicker, cheaper way to sort isotopes and is featured in the Stanford Report. Isotopes are special chemical markers that tell scientists about molecules, but research has been complex and costly. Professor Zare worked on a new method to make isotope analyses easier and less expensive. The findings were published June 29, in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
On June 24, Professor Benn Barres' research was featured in a Forbes Magazine article titled, "What Brain Researchers Forgot: Progress in treating diseases like Alzheimer's may be tied to long-ignored brain cells called glia". Barres is Chair of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate.
Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Clayman Faculty Affiliate, published a new book entitled Feminist Engagements: Forays into American Literature and Culture. Praise for the book includes: "Feminist Engagements is enormously valuable and great fun to read." - Erica Jong, poet and novelist.
Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around? The fault, dear Darwin, lies not in our ancestors, but in ourselves. On June 20, Clayman Affiliate Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Sciences and of Geophysics, was quoted in response to the argument that rape was a genetic advantage in the Pleistocene epoch and passed down to present-day man. She called this argument "the latest 'evolution made me do it' excuse for criminal behavior from evolutionary psychologists."
On June 18 Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate Professor Shelley Correll's work was featured in a Wall Street Journal Blog, The "'Motherhood Penalty:' The Pay Gap Between Working Moms and Childless Women". The post referred to the study Correll co-authored, "Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty," published in the American Journal of Sociology.
On June 15, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article titled, Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers. The article references the study, "Stanford Study of Writing," a five-year study of the writing lives of Stanford students. The article quotes Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate and the study's director, professor of English Andrea A. Lunsford.
In a Los Angeles Times blog, Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate Professor Lera Boroditsky was cited in a post titled "Does Language Shape Our Thinking?"
On June 10th, Deborah Rhode, former Clayman Institute Director and Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, published an op-ed essay titled "In a 'Different' Voice. What does the research about how gender influences judging actually say?" in both Slate.com and the new spin-off from Slate: DoubleX.com. Professor Rhode's essay addresses Judge Sotamayor's remark about "a wise Latina woman."
Professor Dick Zare, Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow, was named Priestly Medalist for lifetime of scientific achievement and service to chemistry. The announcement quotes Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach, “His research is wonderfully innovative, immensely fruitful, and of amazing scope. His teaching, mentoring, and public service are likewise extraordinary.”
Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, co-authored a paper titled, “Program Spending to Increase Adherence: South African Cervical Cancer Screening”. In the paper, they “sought to determine the relationship between investment in community health worker (CHW) home visits and increased attendance at cervical cancer screening appointments in Cape Town, South Africa.”
On June 10th, Laura Carstensen, former Clayman Institute Director and Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy, was quoted in an article "Can Memory Loss Be Prevented?" from the NYT blog, “The New Old Age”. In answer to a question about supplements and software programs, Professor Carstensen warned, “There's a lot of snake oil out there.” What to do? “Get moving”.
The work of Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow, Dick Zare, was recently featured in a WMOT radio interview of Preston MacDougall. In the interview, MacDougall talks about Professor Zare's article on Title IX. Zare is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford University with an appointment in the Department of Chemistry and a courtesy appointment in the Department of Physics.
We are pleased to announce that Gina Bianchini has joined the Clayman Institute Advisory Council! Gina is Co-Founder and CEO of Ning, Inc., an online platform for people to create, discover and join social networks. Since its inception in 2004, Ning has signed up over 1 million social networks. Prior to co-founding Ning, Gina was President and Co-founder of Harmonic Communications which was acquired by Dentsu and worked at CKS Group and Goldman Sachs & Co. Gina has a B.A. and an M.B.A from Stanford.
Another success from the OpEd Project! Priya Satia, Assistant Professor of modern British history and a graduate of our March OpED seminar, published an op-ed essay in the March 21st Financial Times titled "The shadow of history passes over Pakistan." In her piece, Professor Satia looks at the human and political casualties of the drone policy and ends with a warning to heed requests to stop the attacks. A Clayman Institute Affiliate, Satia was also featured in the Alumni Magazine.
Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate Pamela Karlan, the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law, has worked on two new books, The Constitution in 2020 and Keeping Faith with the Constitution . The books, reviewed in the WSJ, "suggest how they would move from defending liberal precedents of the mid-20th century to advancing new constitutional approaches." The second book is available for free download here.
The San Francisco Chronicle gave Clayman Institute Senior Scholar Edith Gelles a glowing review of her most recent book, Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage. The reviewer writes, “In a crowded field, Gelles’ work stands out as a sympathetic yet balanced portrait of a marriage that is unique in the annals of American political history.” You can view Gelles’ lecture on C-Span2’s Book TV.
On May 21st, The Huffington Post reviewed Clayman Institute Advisory Council member, Sharon Meers, and Joanna Strober's book, Getting to 50/50 in an article titled, Bringing an Obama-like Attitude to the Mommy Wars. In addition to writing about the can-do attitude, "It's hard not be inspired by Obama's tenacious optimism that, by working together, we can make things better", author Rachel Pasten reveals a personal fact, that Meers went to the same school as Obama's children!
A May 18th article of the National Law Journal covers a panel titled, "Economic crisis brings pro bono to crossroads." Featured panelist and former Clayman Institute Director, Deborah Rhode, said, "I will tell you once again that money has done a lot of good things for me in my life, but there's nothing more satisfying than being able to send a message with your own resources. So if we want lawyers to take professional responsibility seriously, then we all have a personal responsibility to model it in our conduct and our priorities."
On May 4, the San Francisco Chronicle published a piece titled, "Being penny-wise and justice-foolish" by LaDoris Cordell, a graduate of our OpEd Project seminar, and Clayman Institute Faculty Affiliate, Barbara Babcock. The op-ed piece starts with the 1963 case of Gideon vs. Wainwright, in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the state must provide lawyers for those charged with serious crimes who cannot afford them. Gideon marked the culmination of a long legal struggle that had its origins in California when the first female lawyer in the state, Clara Foltz, proposed establishing the position of public defender. The piece ends with a call to action: oppose proposed SF budget cuts to the Office of Public Protection.
On May 2, the New York Times published an article, "Wider World of Choices to Fill Souter's Vacancy", citing former Clayman Institute director, Deborah Rhode. The article begins with the history of Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment in 1981 as an obscure state judge to today where Obama can choose from dozens of women holding influential positions in courts, law schools and political offices. "The legal landscape has been totally transformed," said Deborah Rhode, a Stanford University law professor whose research includes gender issues related to the legal profession. "Obama has a lot of possibilities."
The Clayman Institute is pleased to welcome Katherine August-deWilde to our Advisory Council. Katherine is President and Chief Operating Officer of First Republic Bank. Prior to joining First Republic, she was Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of PMI Group. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goucher College in Maryland and an MBA from Stanford University.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the country's oldest honorary learned societies, announced April 20 the election of 210 new fellows, including 11 Stanford faculty members. Included as a fellow is Professor Deborah Rhode, former Clayman Institute Director. Professor Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law, and a widely acclaimed scholar in the fields of legal ethics and gender, law, and public policy. She is the author of 20 books, including Women and Leadership and Moral Leadership. Congratulations to Deborah!
On April 24th, Mayor Richard Dailey of Chicago proclaimed May 11th to be Nutrition and Health Day in Chicago. This is in conjunction with the sixth annual Nutrition & Health Conference, with course directors Andrew Weil, MD, and Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow, Professor Fredi Kronenberg. In addition to presenting the opening remarks with Dr. Weill, Professor Kronenberg will be moderating a panel on Nutrition and Cancer.
On April 1, Cynthia Haven of The Stanford Report published an article on the Op Ed Project seminar at the Clayman Institute titled, The Project seeks to inspire more women to write op-ed pieces. The article details the experiences of Priya Satia, assistant professor of history and Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of psychology who participated in the program. Michelle Cale, then associate director of the Clayman Institute, sums up the program, "(The) project was 'very much in tune with goals of the Clayman Institute,' said Cale, who also saw op-ed pages as 'a key place to influence public discourse.'"
Karen Offen, Clayman Institute Senior Scholar, provides historical content and inspiring commentary on her blog, Clio Talks Back. Karen's blog accompanies the International Museum of Women's current exhibit, Women, Power and Politics. The online exhibit asks the question, What Difference Do Women Make?
The February 27 Today Show featured Clayman Institute Advisory Council member Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober, daughter-in-law of Clayman Institute founding director, Myra Strober. These authors are spreading the word that working couples can have it all, with their book, Getting to 50/50. You can view the Today Show segment here. At a February 11th book launch event hosted at the Women's Community Center, a standing-room only crowd engaged in a lively conversation about successfully living a dual-career life.
After participating in the Op Ed Project seminar hosted at The Clayman Institute, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Associate Professor of Psychology, published an op-ed piece in the February 28 issue of the Los Angeles Times. The essay titled, Race and the ape image, responds to the controversial Post cartoon depicting two police officers standing over a dead chimp they shot dead. The successful publication of Professor Eberhardt's piece follows the publication of LaDoris Cordell's op-ed essay, titled Proposition 8 vs. black homophobia.
The Northern California Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC) has featured our report Dual-Careers Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know on their website. Nor Cal HERC supports the efforts of member institutions to recruit and retain outstanding faculty, administrators and staff. We're pleased to be listed as a resource in these efforts.
Michèle Teritilt, an assistant professor of economics and a Clayman Institute faculty affiliate, was chosen to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship. Professor Teritilt's work includes family economics and demography.
The January 19 issue of the New Yorker featured a piece on breastfeeding vs. the pump titled, "Baby Food. If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?" The Institute was pleased to see that Director Londa Schiebinger was referenced in the article for her work on the root of the word, Mammalia. You can read the entire article online here.
The Institute is delighted to welcome Lori Mackenzie as the new Associate Director. Lori assumed her role on December 2. She comes to us from the corporate world, where she has extensive experience in marketing and corporate strategy. Due to a change in family circumstances, Michelle Cale has decided to step back from paid employment but will continue to be around the Institute for the remainder of the academic year, continuing to lead the Graduate Dissertation Fellows program.
Louise Fortmann has a new book based on research undertaken during her time as a Research Fellow at the Institute. Participatory Research in Conservation and Rural Livelihoods, ed. Louise Fortmann, was published by Wiley-Blackwell in August 2008.
Marilyn Yalom and Irvin Yalom will be in conversation with Mark Gonnerman for the Aurora Forum's January event in the "Creative Couples Series." They will be speaking about their research and their lives as a dual-career academic couple.
The Clayman Institute welcomes Carrie A. McCabe as a member of our Advisory Council. Carrie is founder and CEO of Lasair Capital. Previously she was President and CEO of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management. She received an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard.
On August 20-21, the Clayman Institute hosted a two-day seminar in op-ed writing with Catherine Orenstein, founder of the Op-Ed Project. Co-sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of Public Affairs, Humanities Center and others, the seminar was attended by a dozen female faculty and staff from the schools of humanities and sciences, education, and medicine. The aim of the Op-Ed Project is to increase the number and diversity of voices in opinion columns in newspapers and other media outlets.
In April 2008, Londa Schiebinger chaired the first all female Ph.D. committee in Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. It was a global effort: Professor Gunilla Kreiss was patched into Shalini Krishnamurthy's defense via Skype from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden! Other committee members were Professor Kiran Pande, Professor Sally Benson, and Professor Margot Gerritsen.
Institute Graduate Dissertation Fellows Sarah Richardson and Valerie Jones have been awarded prestigious dissertation fellowships for 2008-09 by the Association of American University Women (AAUW).
Michelle R. Clayman has been awarded the GSB Alumni Association's New York Excellence in Leadership Award for 2008, which recognizes extraordinary contributions made by alumni in the Business School and the corporate world. The awards dinner will be held in New York on April 2.
The archives of the Career Action Center, which was a peer organization founded in 1973 and which closed its doors in 2002, have been accepted by the Stanford University Library. These papers will complement the archive of the Center for Research on Women (CROW). Jing Lyman, a long-time supporter of the Clayman Institute, was on the CAC's Board and former Stanford President Richard Lyman was a member of the CAC's Business Advisory Committee. The Clayman Institute was responsible for bringing together the former leaders of the CAC and the Stanford Library.
Gretchen Daily, Professor of Biology and Institute faculty affiliate, has won Norway's prestigious Sophie Prize for exploring the potential profits of protecting the environment. The jury cited "her involvement, knowledge and merits as one of the world's forerunners in the debate on sustainable development and conservation of biological diversity."
