At the 2024 Silfen Forum, former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad and former Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich spoke about dialogue and diplomacy in the Middle East. Michele Kelemen, a diplomatic correspondent for NPR and an alumna of the College of Arts & Sciences, moderated the 90-minute conversation.
The Office of the Vice Provost for Research established the Penn AI Council, a five-faculty-member group that will lead the effort to map and strengthen Penn’s AI community. Senior Vice Provost for Research Dawn Bonnell expressed gratitude and optimism in making the announcement. “As we look forward in the face of a rapidly changing landscape, with impact across almost all of our academic endeavors, we are positioned to enable our community to define the frontiers of AI-related research and education,” said Bonnell.
This past spring, the University was one of 10 colleges and universities that participated in a survey about sexual misconduct on campus. The confidential survey was administered by Westat, a social science research firm, to 24,316 enrolled Penn students between March 19 and April 16. “We note that prevalence rates have declined since 2019,” Interim President J. Larry Jameson and Provost John L. Jackson Jr. wrote in a University-wide message about the survey. “However, we are deeply disturbed by the fact that high rates of sexual misconduct continue. Even one instance is too many.”
Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Michael Mann has been named Penn’s inaugural vice provost for climate science, policy, and action, effective Nov. 1. The appointment is a step in implementing In Principle and Practice. “As vice provost, he will continue his essential work while partnering across campus to bring together the wide range of work already being done at Penn, leading innovations and catalyzing new collaborations,” said Provost John L. Jackson Jr.
Timothy Rommen, the Davidson Kennedy Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of music and Africana studies in the School of Arts & Sciences, was named Penn’s inaugural vice provost for the arts, effective Jan. 1, 2025. “Tim Rommen is the ideal colleague to serve as Penn’s first vice provost for the arts,” said Provost John L. Jackson Jr. “He is widely respected as a collaborative and consultative leader who is strongly committed to scholarship and teaching, to our diverse arts communities on campus and in Philadelphia, and to the goals of In Principle and Practice, the University’s strategic framework, which he played a key role in developing as a member of the Red and Blue Advisory Committee.”
Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. Roberts is the George A. Weiss Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and a professor of Africana studies. “The transformative scholarship of Dorothy Roberts focuses on some of the most pressing issues facing our society, addressing issues of inequality, social justice, and race,” says Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “As a scholar, award-winning author, and now MacArthur Fellow, she exemplifies Penn’s commitment to impactful, interdisciplinary, creative pursuits.” (Image: Courtesy of MacArthur Fellows Program)
During Climate Week at Penn, faculty and postdocs from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Weitzman School of Design presented innovative strategies to combat the causes and effects of climate change. Participants included, among others, Dorit Aviv and Masoud Akbarzadeh of the Weitzman School, whose work explores structural efficiency, and Jen Wilcox of SEAS, who is a leading expert in carbon capture. (Image: Felice Macera)
Penn Global announced the Penn Global Middle East Distinguished Visiting Scholar Initiative, and the appointment of the inaugural Distinguished Visiting Scholars. Scholars will bring expertise and experiences that enable a critical examination of the charged and complex issues shaping events in the Middle East. Inaugural scholars include modern Middle East historian Shay Hazkani, political scientist Amal Jamal, and public opinion expert Dahlia Scheindlin.
The School of Dental Medicine and the Graduate School of Education co-sponsored the symposium Balancing Voices: The Intersection of Free Speech and Racism in Academia, featuring six panelists from across Penn and Anita Allen, the Henry R. Silverman professor of law and a professor of philosophy, as keynote speaker. The panel had a wide-ranging conversation about their experiences dealing with difficult topics in and out of the classroom, how they navigated racism in their own lives, and reflections on free speech.
Penn Libraries has acquired the collection of David K. O’Neil, a former operations manager at Reading Terminal Market, who had four centuries of blueprints, business records, postcards, photographs, buttons, bags, and more related to public markets. “There’s an incredible range of detail that I don’t think anyone else has assembled besides David,” Mitch Fraas of Penn Libraries says. “It’s just an amazing variety of things.”
Six experts from Penn have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the nation’s highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. They bring Penn membership in the group to 114.
Each year, hundreds of students approach the Weingarten Center’s Disability Services, seeking counseling, learning support, or accommodations. About 1,622 students registered with disability services through Weingarten in 2023, triple the number of students from 20 years ago. “For a long time, there were people who were afraid to self-disclose they had a disability,” says Jane Holahan, executive director of Weingarten. “A lot of people did not know their rights, but now there’s better education. There’s less of a stigma in coming forward to ask for accommodations.” (Image: Jeffrey Totaro)
In the lab of De’Broski Herbert, a professor of pathobiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine, a team of researchers have shed light on how a parasitic worm can sneak into the human body by evading the itch response, which is the body’s way of detecting threats like skin infections. “We wanted to figure out how they do it. What are the molecular mechanisms underlying how they turn off such an essential sensory alarm? And what can this teach us about the sensory apparatus that drives us to scratch a pesky itch?” says postdoctoral researcher Juan Inclan-Rico. (Image: Courtesy of Camila Napuri)
Penn Libraries conservators worked to conduct historical analysis of a pair of gloves mythologized by some to have belonged to William Shakespeare. The analysis found that, while there remains doubt they belonged to Shakespeare, there is evidence they “at least are plausibly 17th century gloves,” says Zach Lesser, a Shakespearean scholar and professor of English. Penn Libraries holds one of the world’s largest Shakespeare collections.
Mary Frances Berry, the emeritus Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, spoke about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on its 60th anniversary. She spoke of the Act’s significance while also noting how it’s fallen short of her hopes. “I thought—all of us thought—well, this is great,” Berry said, “and I used to make speeches about how some of us got through ‘the window of opportunity.’ What has happened since is the opportunity has been steadily closed, and we haven’t been aware of all the ways in which it has been closed,” she said. “People have not been sensitive to things sliding.” (Image: Tyrone Bullock Jr.)
Timed with the 300th birthday of Immanuel Kant, Liliane Weissberg, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts & Sciences, curated “What is Enlightenment? Questions for the 18th Century” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. She presents the Enlightenment as a dialogue between differing ideas. “The demands of the Enlightenment—equality, human rights, emancipation, democracy—were not being fulfilled then but are also still in discussion now,” Weissberg says. (Image: David von Becker/Deutsches Historisches Museum)