YAM September/October 2003

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September/October 2003

Since the Yale Glee Club doesn't get a new director every day -- there have been only seven in its 142-year history -- students and alumni treat the appointment with almost papal significance, as Jeffrey Douma is learning. Douma, a choral conductor at Carroll College and the Interlochen National Arts Camp, was appointed to the job in June. "I've been contacted by so many alumni and students since the announcement," says Douma. "So many people have such strong feelings about this club." Asked if he could imagine a tenure as long as Marshall Bartholomew's (32 years) or Fenno Heath's (39), the 31-year-old Douma was optimistic: "I'm hopeful that things will work out well enough that I will be here for a very long time."

In memoriam: Patricia Goldman-Rakic, a pioneer in the study of the higher brain functions, died on July 31. Goldman-Rakic, 66, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Neurobiology, studied the mechanisms involved in working memory and the brain's frontal lobes. The function of this area was poorly understood when she began work in the 1970s; she showed that it houses the executive center responsible for reasoning, planning, and insight. Two years ago, Time magazine and CNN named Goldman-Rakic the top neurobiologist in the nation. Her discoveries will continue to help scientists understand and develop treatments for schizophrenia and other psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Unlike last year's controversial race between Maya Lin and the Rev. David Lee, this year's election of an alumni fellow to the Yale Corporation unfolded as usual -- in the U.S. mail, not in the media. The alumni chose Jeffrey P. Koplan '66, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over Angela McBride '64MSN and Pauline Schneider '77JD. (Koplan succeeds Benjamin Carson '73.) Koplan, who is vice president for academic health affairs at Emory University, earned his M.D. at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and a master's degree in public health from Harvard. A member of the CDC team that eradicated smallpox, he has worked around the world to stamp out polio, control AIDS, and prevent cancer.

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In Memoriam

No one who knew Burke Marshall '44, '51LLB, who died on June 2 at the age of 80, would describe him as a firebrand. But despite his soft-spoken, reserved manner -- or perhaps because of it -- Marshall helped desegregate the South while working in the Justice Department under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. "You have to harness your passion to succeed in law," says Akhil Reed Amar '80, '84JD, who was Marshall's student and later faculty colleague at the Yale Law School. "He never discouraged my passion, but he taught me how to harness it."

Marshall, a native of New Jersey, joined the Justice Department as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the beginning of the Kennedy administration in 1961. "It was obvious that this was going to be the most interesting lawyers' work going on in the country," he recalled later. But even he did not know how interesting. Over the next two years, he was in the thick of crises, negotiation, litigation, and legislation as schools and public accommodations in the South were desegregated. He traveled to Birmingham to negotiate during the riots of 1963, and he helped craft the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Marshall left government in 1964. After a stint as an attorney for IBM, he came to the Law School in 1970 as a professor and deputy dean. He continued to teach there until his death, and was treasured by students and faculty for his generosity and wisdom. Former president Bill Clinton and Senator Edward Kennedy were among the speakers at Marshall's memorial service on June 18 at the Yale Club of New York City.

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