Towards a Model of Equity in Graduate Education
Time: Oct. 5, 2023, 5:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.
Location: Watson Theater
Kashi and Kameshwar C. Wali Lectures in the Sciences and Humanities
Mary Schmidt Campbell (Spelman College)
Members of the Wali family and the Department of Physics, in annual partnership with the Syracuse University Humanities Center, are delighted to welcome Dr. Campbell to campus this fall!
Dr. Schmidt Campbell received her B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College and earned her master’s in art history as well as her Ph.D. in humanities from Syracuse University.
"Thinking back to graduate school years at Syracuse University, I marvel at the differences between campus vocabularies, now and fifty years ago," says Schmidt Campbell. "Then, we rarely encountered the words diversity and inclusiveness. No one spoke of safe spaces, belonging or critical race theory. As a country, we were still battling decades of this nation’s de facto and de jure segregation deeply rooted in virtually all aspects of our lives."
She continues, "Battling this separatism in higher education in those days meant determining how to identify, acknowledge and support academic excellence, wherever it resided. This ideal, of acknowledging and supporting excellence, regardless of race, gender and social class, was deeply held by many of the professors I encountered at Syracuse University." In her Wali Lecture, Dr. Schmidt Campbell considers the expectations, assumptions and practices she and her spouse both encountered on the Syracuse campus, which encouraged them to perform academically at the highest level.
View or download a printable poster.
About Kameshwar C. Wali (1927-2022)
Wali was the Steele Professor of Physics Emeritus in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences. He was internationally recognized as a theorist for his research on the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions, and, as an author, for his books “Cremona Violins: A Physicist’s Quest for the Secrets of Stradivari” (World Scientific, 2010) and “Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar” (University of Chicago Press, 1991) among many other books.
A Syracuse faculty member since 1969, Wali also held positions at Harvard and Northwestern universities, the University of Chicago, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (France), and the International Center for Theoretical Physics (Italy). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, whose India Chapter named him Scientist of the Year, and is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Citation at Syracuse for exceptional academic achievement. He was one of the founding members of the University Lecture Series.
The Kashi and Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture in the Sciences and Humanities was established in 2008 by his daughters, Alaka, Achala, and Monona as an expression of their admiration and gratitude for their vision, leadership, and dedication to the University and the greater community.
Additional supporters:
- African American Studies
- Art and Music Histories
- College of Arts and Sciences
- English
- Physics
- S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
- Syracuse University Art Museum
- Syracuse University Humanities Center
- Syracuse University Libraries