Scholars, Experts, and Policymakers Lead Three University Forums

By Leigh DuPuy

To enhance inaugural festivities, UMass Boston highlighted its commitment to public policy dialogue by inviting leading experts, top scholars, and prominent policymakers to lead three university forums held on September 26. Offering a wide range of topics, the forums drew large crowds and inspired provocative discussions in the community at large.

Over 200 people attended the first forum of the series “The Role of Media in Public Policy Formulation,” which featured industry experts offering their perspectives on the complicated relationship between media coverage and policymaking. Panelists Martin Baron, editor of the Boston Globe; Ray Howell, president of Howell Communications and former press secretary to Governor Weld; and Ellen Hume, media analyst and former executive director of the PBS Democracy Project, analyzed the differences “between what the role of media should be…and what is is.”

“At its best, the media should maintain an independence, a critical accountability to the common person. And it should be representative, bringing other voices to the table,” said Hume during the panel.

Later in the afternoon, top policymakers Robert Durand and Kathie Olsen led the forum “Science and Environment” before a packed auditorium in the Science Center. Durand, secretary of environmental affairs for the Commonwealth and Massachusetts, and Olsen, associate director for science with the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President, offered local and national perspectives on such current issues as environmental sustainability and the importance of environmental education.

Durand praised the resources UMass Boston’s science faculty and centers offer the community. “Our ability to tap the centers of UMass Boston is critically important,” Durand said. “We need to educate, engage, and empower future generations.”

Olsen mirrored Durand’s emphasis on the importance of environmental education. “Events like [the forum] highlight the incredible value education and research gives to our lives and our future. If we invest in research and development, we better our lives, we better our environment, we better our jobs, and we better our homes,” she said.

The final forum featured Chinua Achebe, the internationally acclaimed writer of Things Fall Apart and other works which have shaped modern African literature. He discussed “diversity and literature” in the Science Center’s Lipke Auditorium.

Introduced as a “formidable champion of diversity” by Africana Studies professor Chukwuma Azuonye, Achebe received a standing ovation from an auditorium filled with over 500 people. Achebe read from one of his short stories and offered insights on the critical need for diversity in education. He spoke of his own teaching at Bard College, where he is the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature. His courses include many works of African literature unknown to his American students. “Why do I do it? Rather I hope that it will kindle in them the desire to grow out of themselves, to encounter a world without fear… ”

Go to menu