Congratulations to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on its 25th Anniversary!

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard is truly a very special place. I had the great honor of being a Science Fellow in 2005-2006, just a few years after its founding in 1999. It was an incredible year for me with wonderful new friendships made, the writing of my Supply Chain Network Economics book, and many experiences plus collaborations, including with the now Dean of SEAS, David Parkes. Radcliffe also supported my collaborator Patrizia Daniele of Catania, Italy, and she wrote her Dynamic Networks book while at Radcliffe. She also worked with me and Parkes. The Science Fellows were housed at Putnam House and there were engineers, physicists, mathematicians, and computational linguists with us. Radcliffe, at that time, had several buildings for the Fellows. We joined one another for delicious lunches and talks as well as receptions and special events. Since that fabulous year, I have been back to visit many times, and have been a Summer Fellow at Radcliffe twice. I also co-organized with David Parkes an Exploratory Radcliffe Seminar focusing on dynamic networks. Radcliffe now has its own quad and all Fellows are housed in the same building. I love the garden and fountain and there are also often art exhibits.

So, when I heard that Radcliffe would be celebrating its 25th anniversary on September 26 and 27, I had to join, despite a busy teaching schedule, office hours, hosting of  a speaker, and also an All School Meeting of the Isenberg School! To-date, there have been about 1,200 Radcliffe Fellows. 

On September 26, Radcliffe, to kick off its 25th anniversary, hosted an outstanding panel. The session began with introductory remarks by Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who shared some of the history of the Radcliffe Institute and also noted her predecessors as Dean. When I was at Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust was the Radcliffe Dean, and I told her that she would become the next President of Harvard and she did the year after my Fellowship year! The Science Dean my year was the outstanding, very inspiring computer scientist Barbara Grosz.  Brown-Nagin also shared a terrific video of an astronomy discovery by Radcliffe Fellows, which included Alyssa Goodman, whom I have met.

The panel, consisting of two Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences, Claudia Goldin and Oliver Hart, both of whom had been Radcliffe Fellows,  was moderated by the present President of Harvard, Alan Garber. Claudia was a Radcliffe Fellow the same year that I was and here you can see the full 2005-2006 list: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/06/radcliffe-names-2005-06-fellows/

President Garber was an outstanding moderator and I was very impressed by his delightful sense of humor! He reminisced about carrying punch cards across campus, as a student, and always being worried about dropping them. When Claudia spoke, she brought back so many memories of that magical year. She mentioned Geraldine Brooks and her husband Tony Horwitz (who sadly passed away not that long ago) and said that Claudia Olivetti became her best friend. Coincidentally, Claudia is Italian as is my collaborator, Patrizia Daniele. I recall fondly many conversations over lunch together about Berlusconi. Claudia spoke beautifully about what economics is and noted that there are too few females majoring in economics. Male undergrads think econ is finance, so they major in it whereas females also think that econ is finance, so they shy away from it. She emphasized that economics is about people! That reminded me of the essay that I wrote for ORMS Today: In the End, It's All About People!   Oliver Hart, when asked about the influence of technology on his work, said that, as a theoretical economist, he just needs a yellow pad and pencil. He said that he does use technology to communicate with his collaborators but misses the trips that he would take to collaborate face to face. Claudia said that having access to AI would have saved her lots of drudgery type work.

Both Claudia and Oliver are so passionate about their research and that was incredibly energizing and inspiring to hear. 

Information on the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and its Fellowship Program can be found here.

And here is a post on the 10th anniversary of Radcliffe in which I have several photos from our Fellowship year and in the photos are several individuals noted above.

Visiting Fellows 50th Anniversary Celebration at All Souls College at Oxford University

Yesterday was a truly a historic day in Britain. We woke up in Oxford, England to brilliant sunshine and then were shocked with the news that Britain  had voted to leave the European Union, so Brexit had become a reality.  Living now in a college town - that of Oxford - where intellectual freedom and the movement of ideas and people are essential to research and innovation - the news was shocking and stunning.The repercussions are reverberating around the world.

Yesterday was also the day that we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Visiting Fellowships Program at All Souls College at Oxford University. I am now a Visiting Fellow (VF) at All Souls College for the Trinity term. I had received an invitation to attend this full day of celebrations while I was in Amherst months ago and was thrilled to take part yesterday and my husband did as well.

The program is below.

We began with registration and a welcome by the Warden, Sir John Vickers, who is an economist.

Mr. Edward Mortimer, who is a Fellow at All Souls College, provided us with background and the history of the Visiting Fellowship Program, which began in 1966 with the college deciding on November 6, 1965 to admit Visiting Fellows. All Souls College is a unique college at Oxford University in that it does not admit undergraduates.

Edward Mortimer, whom I have mentioned in my blog before, worked at the United Nations and wrote speeches for the former Secretary general, Kofi Annan.

I was delighted to hear Sir John Vickers say that we were celebrating "one of the best things that has happened to All Souls College." He said that the VF Program provides internationalization of the college and to-date there have been 800 Visiting Fellows from 40 different countries. The first female Visiting Fellow Dr. Janet Morgan, now known as Lady Balfour of Burleigh, was a VF in 1982, while she was also studying the BBC, upon the invitation of the PM,  spoke yesterday morning and I was delighted to see her.

 I also very much enjoyed hearing Sir Roger Braithwaite, who is an expert on negotiating with Russians, and is featured in the photo below. He was UK's ambassador to Russia and also its representative at the embassy in the US where he focused on commercial policy and was very successful.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the first Visiting Fellows were invited.

About 130 Visiting Fellows attended the celebration yesterday.

 
After the morning session we were treated to a delicious lunch in our elegant Codrington Library.

The menu is below.

Then it was time for tea and coffee before additional panels ands sessions followed by tea and a concert!

I enjoyed meeting former VFs from Berkeley and Illinois and was thrilled to see Professor Carol Heim of the Economics department at UMass Amherst, who had been a VF at Oxford a few years ago.

 Many thanks to Sir John Vickers and to the Dean of Visiting Fellows, Professor Simon Hornblower, for such a pleasant and very memorable celebration of the the great Visiting Fellowship Program at All Souls College Many thanks also to the staff for the exquisite hospitality, food, and organization.

It has been a marvelous experience being a Visiting Fellow at Oxford and the support, intellectual freedom, fellowship with our Fellows, have all been extraordinary. All Souls College is a unique institution and very special.