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University People Race in a Genetic World

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University People Race in a Genetic World JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL sabbatical; an advisory committee is be- Just a month before FAS acted, the Na- ing formed to assist in the decanal search. tional Institutes of Health (NIH) an- University People nounced that it would become the first Overseer Leaders major research funder with an OA man- College Dean Designated Roger W. Ferguson Jr. ’73, J.D. ’79, Ph.D. date. Its previous voluntary policy led to Rosenkrantz professor of the history of ’81, former vice chairman of the Federal participation rates that hovered “between science and of African and African Reserve Board of Governors, will preside 4 and 7 percent,” explains Alexa McCray, American studies Evelynn M. Ham- over the Board of Overseers for the 2008- deputy director of Harvard Medical monds, Ph.D. ’93, will become dean of 2009 academic year. He succeeds former School’s Countway Library. (Because the Harvard College on June 1, succeeding Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson, NIH doesn’t make grants to individuals Ford professor of human Ph.D. ’73. Pauline Yu ’71, except through their institutions, the in- evolution David Pilbeam, president of the American stitutions will be responsible for tracking who has served on an in- Council of Learned Soci- authors’ compliance with the new pol- terim basis. Since 2005, eties, becomes vice chair of icy.) That policy requires that publicly Hammonds has been se- the Overseers’ executive funded papers be placed in PubMedCen- nior vice provost for fac- committee, succeeding at- tral, an OA repository of full-text articles, ulty development and di- torney William F. Lee ’72. says McCray. She adds that pending legis- versity, gaining a Univer- lation would require all federal funding sity-wide perspective on Development(s) agencies with grant budgets in excess of faculty recruiting and sup- Paul Keenan ’85 has been $100 million to adopt a policy similar to port for faculty, graduate ROSE LINCOLN/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE appointed senior associate NIH’s—making the Harvard move seem students, and postdocs Evelynn M. Hammonds dean and director of devel- prescient indeed. struggling to balance work and family opment for the Faculty of Arts and Sci- The director of MIT’s library, Anne obligations. “Those issues will always be ences (FAS). He succeeds Scott Abell Wolpert, calls the FAS open-access policy a focus for me,” she says. “I just won’t be ’72, dean for FAS development, who is “bold and visionary”—a collective action doing them for central administration.” retiring at the end of the academic year. that “allows Harvard to support its fac- Her new job has two major projects teed Linda Fates becomes associate dean for ulty.” Under the current system of schol- up: renewing the undergraduate Houses resource development for the School of arly publishing, she says, faculty mem- (see Brevia, page 69) and launching a new Engineering and Applied Sciences. And bers’ intellectual content is “freely general-education curriculum to replace a quartet of senior development o∞cers donated to private ownership.” the Core. She also wants to enrich the has been formed into a new high-level College’s arts offerings—curricular and University Principal Gifts Team: Roger otherwise—and undergraduates’ science Cheever ’67, M.L.A. ’77, associate vice Race in a education and research opportunities. president; Charles Collier, M.T.S. ’73, senior philanthropic adviser; Joe Dono- Genetic World Engineering Deanship Ends van ’72, director; and Shirley Peppers, School of Engineering and Applied Sci- director. “I am an African American,” says Duana ences (SEAS) dean Venkatesh Narayana- Fullwiley, “but in Africa, I am white.” To murti announced on February 15 that he Currier do fieldwork as a medical anthropologist would relinquish the post in September, Captains in Senegal, she says, “I take a plane to concluding a decade of service. He had in- An expert on France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My tended to step down in 2006, but stayed primate be- race changes as I cross the Atlantic. on during transitions in University and havior and COURTESY OF RICHARD WRANGHAM There, I say, ‘Je suis noire,’ and they say, ‘Oh, Faculty of Arts and Sciences leadership to human evo- Elizabeth Ross and okay—métisse—you are mixed.’ Then I fly Richard Wrangham oversee the elevation of his unit’s status lution, Rich- another six to seven hours to Senegal, and from a division to a school (see “‘First Day ard Wrangham, Moore professor of an- I am white. In the space of a day, I can of School’ for Engineer- thropology, and Elizabeth Ross have change from African American, to métisse, ing,” November-Decem- been appointed master and co-master, to tubaab [Wolof for “white/European”]. ber 2007, page 74). SEAS respectively, of Currier House, e≠ective This is not a joke, or something to laugh faculty ranks increased July 1. The couple, who have three chil- at, or to take lightly. It is the kind of social by 50 percent during his dren, have worked extensively in recognition that even two-year-olds who tenure; graduate-stu- Uganda, where Wrangham founded the can barely speak understand. ‘Tubaab,’ dent enrollment surged. Kibale Chimpanzee Project and Ross is they say when they greet me.” STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HARVARD.NEWS OFFICE Venkatesh Narayanamurti will re- executive director of the Kasiisi Project, Is race, then, purely a social construct? Narayanamurti turn to teaching after a which supports primary schooling. The fact that racial categories change from one society to another might suggest it is. 62 May - June 2008 But now, says Fullwiley, assistant profes- DNA: the paternally inherited Y sex chro- for known Mendelian traits or conditions sor of anthropology and of African and mosome that only men carry, and mito- (such as Huntington’s disease) only a African American studies, genetic meth- chondrial DNA, which is passed exclu- fraction of people with a gene variant ods, with their precision and implied accu- sively from mothers to their children. linked to a disease actually become ill. racy, are being used in the same way that Scientists favor these markers with good Lost in the discussion about genes, she physical appearance has historically been reason: because only one parent can pass fears, are “epigenetic” influences: factors used: “to build—to literally construct—cer- them to o≠spring, they are not subject to that a≠ect gene expression but are not part tain ideas about why race matters.” recombination, the reshu±ing of genetic of one’s genetic code, such as prenatal nu- Genetic science has revolutionized biol- data that normally occurs in each genera- trition (which may influence rates of heart ogy and medicine, and even rewritten our tion. But they represent less than 1 percent disease late in life). Such biosocial fac- understanding of human history. But the of a subject’s DNA, and each tells about tors—environmental, cultural, and eco- fact that human beings are 99.9 percent only one ancestor per generation. Two nomic—can sometimes be more influential identical genetically, as Francis Collins and generations back, a customer might learn than genes. Fullwiley questions, for exam- Craig Venter jointly announced at the about one of four grandparents; three gen- Duana Fullwiley White House on June 26, 2000, when the erations back, about one of eight great- rough draft of the human genome was re- grandparents; and by 10 generations back leased, risks being lost, some scholars fear, (roughly 250 years ago), such genetic tests in an emphasis on human genetic di≠er- reference just one of the 1,024 ancestors in ence. Both in federally funded scientific re- that generation. It doesn’t take long to search and in increasingly popular prac- reach the point when, mathematically, a tice—such as ancestry testing, which often person’s ancestors start to outnumber the purports to prove or disprove membership sum total of all people who have ever lived. in a particular race, group, or tribe—ge- Nor can genetic tests verify a person’s netic testing has appeared to lend scientific race or ethnicity. Genes that a≠ect skin credence to the idea that there is a biologi- pigmentation or blood proteins involved in cal basis for racial categories. malarial resistance, the authors note, may In fact, “There is no genetic basis for not measure direct and unique ancestry race,” says Fullwiley, who has studied the (for example, a founder e≠ect), but reflect ethical, legal, and social implications of instead an evolutionary response to the human genome project with sociolo- “shared environmental exposures.” Fur- gist Troy Duster at UC, Berkeley. She thermore, the tests are based on compar- sometimes quotes Richard Lewontin, now isons to databases of DNA from living pop- professor of biology and Agassiz professor ulations, and are therefore vulnerable to of zoology emeritus, who said much the “systematic bias” because of “incomplete same thing in 1972, when he discovered geographic sampling” or the fact that “pre- that of all human genetic variation (which sent-day patterns of residence are rarely we now know to be just 0.1 percent of all identical to what existed in the past.” One genetic material), 85 percent occurs within testing company even uses an underlying geographically distinct groups, while 15 model that “reinforces the archaic racial percent or less occurs between them. The view that four discrete ‘parental’ popula- issue today, Fullwiley says, is that many tions (Africans, Europeans, East Asians, ple, if the prevalence of diabetes among Na- scientists are mining that 15 percent in and Native Americans) existed in the past” tive Americans on reservations, or of search of human di≠erences by continent. even though “there is little evidence that asthma among U.S.
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