3/5/97
CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558
The problems of early adolescence and the prevention of deadly conflict were key themes of the Carnegie Corporation of New York during Dr. David Hamburg's 14-year tenure as its president. Now that foundation has decided to honor the former Stanford and Harvard professor of medicine by funding fellowships and symposia at Stanford in those two areas.
Hamburg, who helped create Stanford's highly regarded undergraduate program in human biology and personally negotiated the release of four of its students when they were kidnapped from a research field station in Tanzania 22 years ago, is retiring in June from Carnegie. During his tenure, Carnegie led efforts on behalf of several foundations to support studies in the prevention of nuclear war and more recently in the prevention of other types of deadly international conflicts, including substantial research support for Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control since it was founded in 1983.
Hamburg, who left Stanford in 1975 to become president of the National Academy of Medicine, also brought national attention to problems affecting the health and well-being of children and youth. He chaired the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, and last year Carnegie provided a substantial grant to found the Stanford Center on Adolescence, where researchers from different fields help shape public policy, training and research related to high-risk adolescent groups.
The newest $500,000 grant from Carnegie will support four "Hamburg Fellows" annually and an annual symposium for three years, to be coordinated by the Institute for International Studies. Three of each year's fellowships will go to advanced doctoral students writing dissertations in fields related to the prevention of deadly conflict and one each year in the field of adolescent studies. (Applications for the conflict prevention fellowships for the first year must be filed by March 14, and information is available from Barbara Platt at 723-9626; e-mail bplatt@leland.stanford.edu. Applications for the adolescence center fellowship are due May 1. For information, contact Kathy Guertin at 725-8205 or email hf.ddk@forsythe.stanford.edu.)
Hamburg, who has been a member of Stanford's Board of Trustees and who is currently a member of the Institute for International Studies' Board of Visitors, has remained active in the university's academic projects. As co-chair of Carnegie's Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, he convened a conference, co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control, in Moscow last March. Under the commission's auspices, the center also held a conference last summer on police reform in states under transition, and it started a joint research project with the Stanford Law School on mediation of international conflicts.
The new Center on Adolescence currently has four pre-doctoral fellows pursuing research on the relationship between children and the media, sex education and body image, gender difference factors in higher education success and failure, and on the application of interactive media to the prevention or early intervention in adolescent health disorders.
The first symposium to be hosted will be on conflict and violence prevention; the second, on adolescence; and the third, on how policies change when the focus is on prevention, rather than deterrence or management, of problem situations. Prevention, rather than deterrence, in national defense is the subject pursued by former secretary of defense and Stanford Professor William Perry, who is returning to campus this month.
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By Kathleen O'Toole