Center for the Study of Values in Public Life Names New Fellows

September 16, 1999

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The Divinity School’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life has named five new fellows for the 1999-00 academic year.

The fellows are as follows:

Mary Jo Bane is the Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy School of Government. Bane spent three and a half years working on welfare policy and its implementation for the Clinton Administration before returning to the Kennedy School in 1997. Among her numerous books and articles on welfare policy are Welfare Realities: From Rhetoric to Reform (1994), with David Ellwood, and Gender and Public Policy: Cases and Comments (1992), edited with Kenneth Winston. Bane will be studying how Catholic congregations minister to the poor, engage in serious dialogue about social justice, and build social capital.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the founder and chair of the board of the National Parenting Association, an organization dedicated to building a nationwide parents’ movement across racial and class lines. She has been on the faculty at both Barnard College and Columbia University, and for several years she was the executive director of the Economic Policy Council in New York. Hewlett is the author of The War Against Parents (1998), with Cornel West, When the Bough Breaks (1991), and A Lesser Life (1986). She will spend her year at the Center writing Giving Heft to a Voice of Care, a sequel to The War Against Parents that will focus on crafting a new alliance between progressive groups on issues of nurturing.

YoungHoon Kwaak, one of the leading urban planners and architects in South Korea, is the chief of World City Network, an organization dedicated to developing "world cities," in which holistic concepts drive urban planning. At the Center, Kwaak, who was responsible for the Olympic Park at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, will work on a peace plan for the 21st century, which will function as the philosophical base for World City Network.

Samuel M. Kobia is the executive director of the Cluster on Issues and Themes at the World Council of Churches. His earlier work as the general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Kenya was critical to the 1992 amendment of the constitution in Kenya that re-introduced a multiparty political system. Currently Kobia is overseeing pilot projects focused on combating urban violence in cities on five continents. He will spend the spring term at the Center analyzing the religious and social values that form the basis of the churches’ involvement in the democratization process in Africa.

Lucie White is a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Her numerous publications on the relationships among race, gender, and poverty include Hard Labor: Poor Women and Work in the Post-Welfare Era (1989), edited with Joel Handler, and Planning and Developing a Shared Living Project (1977). White’s past work includes participating in the city of Cambridge Welfare Reform Task Force, serving as a consultant to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, and serving as an adviser to the Black Lawyers Association of South Africa. At the Center, she will be finishing Listening for the Ground Note, a book that analyzes the troubled interplay between race, social welfare policy, and women’s lives. She will also design a program that enables faculty and students to work as partners with municipal officials, nonprofit organizations, employers, and low-income women on enhancing women’s inclusion in public life.