A Professor's Death Ripples Outward - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Tracy Flemming
May 23, 2012, 8:28:48 AM5/23/12
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http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Death-Ripples/131926/?sid=&utm_source=&utm_medium=en
On a winter evening at Emory University's campus here, CNN aimed its cameras as about 900 professors, students, and local residents filed into an auditorium. They came to see a panel of journalists and activists engage in a spirited discussion about political uprisings in the Arab world, part of a series of forums on civic and international issues that Mr. Byrd, an Emory professor for two decades, had created.
--
Tracy Flemming, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
African/African-American Studies
Grand Valley State University
107 Lake Ontario Hall
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, Michigan 49401-9403
USA
Ofc: 616/331-8150
Dept: 616/331-8110
Fax: 616/331-8111
E-mail: flem...@gvsu.edu
On a winter evening at Emory University's campus here, CNN aimed its cameras as about 900 professors, students, and local residents filed into an auditorium. They came to see a panel of journalists and activists engage in a spirited discussion about political uprisings in the Arab world, part of a series of forums on civic and international issues that Mr. Byrd, an Emory professor for two decades, had created.
--
Tracy Flemming, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
African/African-American Studies
Grand Valley State University
107 Lake Ontario Hall
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, Michigan 49401-9403
USA
Ofc: 616/331-8150
Dept: 616/331-8110
Fax: 616/331-8111
E-mail: flem...@gvsu.edu
Tracy Flemming
May 23, 2012, 1:24:13 PM5/23/12
to yoruba...@googlegroups.com
May 20, 2012
A Professor's Death Ripples Outward
When a star professor at Emory University died, his department had to regroup as it mourned.
A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 1
Emory Photo
Rudolph Bryd (left), a scholar of American and African-American literature, the civil-rights movement, and gender studies at Emory U., organized forums, advised dissertation students, and wrote letters of recommendation right up until his death, in October 2011.
By Audrey Williams June
Atlanta
The stage was set, thanks to Rudolph P. Byrd.
On a winter evening at Emory University's campus here, CNN aimed its cameras as about 900 professors, students, and local residents filed into an auditorium. They came to see a panel of journalists and activists engage in a spirited discussion about political uprisings in the Arab world, part of a series of forums on civic and international issues that Mr. Byrd, an Emory professor for two decades, had created.
But on this day, Mr. Byrd, a scholar of American and African-American literature, the civil-rights movement, and gender studies, wasn't there.
Enlarge Image A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 2
Kendrick Brinson for The Chronicle
Mark Sanders, chair of the African-American-studies department, organized a team to teach Rudolph Byrd's courses while he was on medical leave.
Enlarge Image A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 3
Kendrick Brinson for The Chronicle
The CNN Dialogues, brainchild of Rudolph Byrd, continued after he died. The February forum was moderated by Hala Gorani (center) of CNN.
Almost four months earlier, in October, Mr. Byrd had died of multiple myeloma. He was 58.
Mr. Byrd had conceived of the forums-which, like much of his work, have brought national attention to Emory and its department of African-American studies. He was intimately involved in planning the first in the series, held last August. He took part in dozens of conference calls, vetted the wording of the program, and weighed in frequently on plans to promote the event.
Some of his colleagues now find themselves taking care of those meticulous details, and the many other projects Mr. Byrd had in progress. And they don't want to make any missteps in carrying out his efforts to weave African-American history and culture into the very fabric of Emory. Mr. Byrd's death, his colleagues say, has magnified the extent of his work and his influence at Emory and beyond.
The identity of Emory's African-American-studies department has been intertwined with the prominent scholar for so long, but now its future will rest in others' hands.
Two faculty members and an interim dean in the graduate school stepped up to teach out a graduate course Mr. Byrd began last fall. The three freshmen and two graduate students he once advised have been assigned to other faculty members. Johnnetta B. Cole, a former president of Spelman College, is slated to deliver a series of lectures on race and sexuality, written by Mr. Byrd just before his death, at Harvard University.
His other unfinished projects include a biography of the author Ernest J. Gaines, a monograph on the early novels of Alice Walker, and an anthology of African-American poetry that he was working on with Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black-studies scholar at Harvard. Those projects, for now, are on hold.
"There's just a presence that he had that we're missing now," says Mark A. Sanders, chair of the African-American-studies department and a professor of English and African-American studies at Emory. "All of us have lost colleagues, but this one really hit home for a lot of us."
A Sense of Purpose
When death comes to a department, it is always disruptive. Sorrowful colleagues are left to grieve while finding a way to keep doing their jobs in an environment that constantly reminds them of their loss. And like any personnel change, the personality of a department shifts whenever a new member arrives, quite possibly with scholarship or a teaching style that doesn't mirror that of the predecessor.
But when a star like Mr. Byrd dies, the shifts in departmental dynamics are likely to be even more pronounced.
A glance at the prolific career of Rudolph P. Byrd suggests the extent of the department's loss. He was the author or editor of 11 books, including a critical edition of Jean Toomer's Cane, released last year. He was hired in 1991 to direct what was then an African-American-studies program at Emory. He is credited with hiring top faculty members, redesigning the undergraduate curriculum, and creating study-abroad opportunities in a move that paved the way for the program's transition to a full-fledged department.
Mr. Byrd's brainchild, the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (now the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference), has elevated Emory's national standing among scholars who study the modern civil-rights movement. He established and directed a well-known undergraduate fellowship program at Emory that is designed to groom the next generation of the professoriate.
Mr. Byrd's friendship with Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and his status as a leading scholar of her work, played a key role in Ms. Walker's decision to donate her papers to Emory-a coup for the university's manuscript, archives, and rare-book library.
"The first order of principle with Rudolph was: Be the best," says Earl Lewis, Emory's provost and a professor of American history and African-American studies. "Rudolph had his way of making sure that details were taken care of. He could definitely be persistent, but I loved his sense of purpose and drive."
That sense of purpose was never more pronounced than when, in 2000, Mr. Byrd was told he had cancer, a disease he ended up battling for more than half of his years at Emory. Mr. Byrd's colleagues say it seemed as if he had set out to cram a career's worth of work into whatever time he had left.
Even as his health declined, Mr. Byrd last fall began teaching his graduate seminar, "Call and Response: Theorizing Culture, Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Racial Formations." But it proved to be more difficult than he thought.
"He called me over the weekend after his third class," says Mr. Sanders, "and said he didn't think he'd be able to finish, although he really wanted to."
Mr. Byrd was relieved, Mr. Sanders says, when he learned that a team would teach the once-a-week course while he was on medical leave. Mr. Sanders tapped two others to help-his wife, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, an associate professor in Emory's Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and director of graduate studies, and Carolyn Denard, interim assistant dean of student affairs in Emory's graduate school and an adjunct associate professor in the African-American-studies department.
"I really thought of it as a gift to Rudolph," says Mr. Sanders, a close friend of Mr. Byrd's who spoke about him at a campus memorial service in November. "He was so happy that students weren't going to lose the course."
Mr. Byrd, who held a joint appointment in Emory's Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, continued to guide the graduate seminar while he was on medical leave.
"When Dr. Sanders came in every week, he had notes from Dr. Byrd that were fresh off the press until the last week of his life," says Jacinta R. Saffold, who just graduated with a major in African-American studies and educational studies, and will be a doctoral student in African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the fall. "I didn't know that Dr. Byrd was that sick. We were all operating under the assumption that he was coming back."
But Mr. Byrd was also quietly preparing some of his students to succeed without him. Michael R. Hall remembers when Mr. Byrd turned what the graduate student thought would be a meeting to discuss final revisions he had made in his research prospectus into something more serious.
"We sat there for two and a half hours talking through my whole dissertation, chapter by chapter," says Mr. Hall, who came to Emory in 2008 after earning a master's degree from Cornell University, and was the last graduate student Mr. Byrd took on. His dissertation examines the impact of travel and tourism on the African-American imagination from the late 19th century through the civil-rights era of the 1960s. "I went through everything I planned to write as best as I could," says Mr. Hall of that day in late May. "I realize now that he was setting me up to finish that project without his guidance, but in a way that his hand would still be in it."
Mr. Hall, who is on track to finish his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies in culture and society/American studies as early as next spring, says it is impossible not to notice the void left by his mentor. "You can see it in the spaces that people are grappling to fill," says Mr. Hall.
One key role Mr. Byrd played in Mr. Hall's life cannot be easily shifted to someone else. Mr. Byrd was openly gay, with a partner of 30 years when he died. Mr. Hall says Mr. Byrd's career and his scholarship expanded his own view of the possibilities for students like him. "It meant everything to me to both see and benefit from his successes in life and love," Mr. Hall says.
About a week before Mr. Byrd died, he had a talk with Mr. Lewis, the provost, about his institute and other projects, to make sure they would be turned over to people he trusted. "It was an emotional conversation," Mr. Lewis says. "But he wanted to have it because he didn't want to leave any loose ends."
And during the last weeks of his life, Mr. Byrd was still writing letters of recommendations for his students.
Picking Up the Pieces
Several months after Mr. Byrd's death, many who knew him were still navigating the raw reality of his absence. When his colleagues, in casual conversation, talked about Mr. Byrd's effect on Emory or recalled two of his trademark characteristics-how he was always formal in his demeanor and dapper in his attire-some of them would refer to Mr. Byrd in the past and present tenses within the same sentence. Well into the winter, some of the remarks about Mr. Byrd at his campus memorial service in the fall were still fresh enough in some people's minds that they could recite, almost verbatim, bits of the heartfelt tributes they had heard.
By February, Emory officials had finished the task of assigning people to take over programs that had long been linked to a single scholar. The African-American-studies department has nine core faculty members, with 19 other affiliated professors.
Mr. Lewis, who will be leaving Emory at the end of the year to lead the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, asked Carol Anderson, an associate professor of African-American studies, to serve as interim director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute's signature visiting-scholars program. The institute, founded in 2007 and named for a pioneer in the civil-rights movement who was also an author, is known for that program, which is paid for through 2014 by a $659,029 grant from the Mellon Foundation. The money provides up to five fellowships for professors to come to Emory and complete research projects on the civil-rights movement since 1905. The scholars, who are at Emory for an academic year, are paired with senior professors, and they must also teach one undergraduate or graduate course.
Ms. Anderson, who became the senior civil-rights scholar at Emory after Mr. Byrd's death, is also a one-time academic administrator; she is familiar with the amount of work such residential programs require. Yet she says, "I am in awe of what it takes to run just one of the things that he had his hand in. You realize right away that you have an enormous responsibility."
She has settled into her new role, which has been a blur of meetings with scholars in the program, selecting next year's cohort, and securing faculty hosts for them, among other things. All the while, she kept teaching and served on three senior-thesis and three dissertation committees, while advising seven Ph.D. students.
"The institute was his passion," Ms. Anderson says. "I want to do what I can to make sure his legacy lives on."
Several months before Mr. Byrd's death, the Johnson Institute won a $235,030 grant from the Arcus Foundation to assemble a group of scholars and experts to explore the intersection of civil rights and the black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer-rights movements. The group, formerly led by Mr. Byrd, is now guided by two people: Leslie Harris, an associate professor of history and African-American studies, and Dona Yarbrough, director of Emory University's Center for Women.
"Rudolph set the standard for how you move through pain and how you move through challenges," Ms. Anderson says. "People have been willing to step up and do what needs to be done out of respect for him."
And for that collegiality, Calinda N. Lee, associate director for programs and development at the Johnson Institute, is thankful. "We have some fabulous colleagues who have added some things to their plate, or put some things aside to take on these ongoing projects," says Ms. Lee, who worked closely with Mr. Byrd to fine-tune his idea of the community forums, known as the "CNN Dialogues." "Right now," she says, "we're all rolling up our sleeves and filling in the gaps."
Some of Mr. Byrd's colleagues say it will be tough to duplicate the hands-on mentorship for which Mr. Byrd was known. And many students say that even as Mr. Byrd pushed them to meet his exacting standards, it was clear that he was dedicated to their success. "Dr. Byrd, literally to the last drop of his ability, gave to his students," says Diana Louis, a Ph.D. student in the English department whom Mr. Byrd mentored.
Dianne M. Diakité, an associate professor of religion and African-American studies, says she shared with Mr. Byrd a commitment of "nurturing students from the ground up." Indeed, in 2008, Mr. Byrd turned the coordination of the Mellon Mays undergraduate fellowship program he developed at Emory over to her.
"I absolutely want to see this program continue to flourish here at Emory," Ms. Diakité says. "He really cared about the intellectual development of the students."
Jeffrey Leak, Mr. Byrd's first graduate student and now an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, recalls how the passage of time blurred the formal barriers between student and teacher, and evolved into a long-lasting friendship. Mr. Byrd was best man in Mr. Leak's wedding, and he even rode in a U-Haul truck with Mr. Leak from Atlanta to the University of Vermont, where the then-graduate student had accepted a dissertation fellowship at his mentor's urging. "He operated with a laserlike intensity on his scholarship, but also in terms of having Emory institutionalize African-American studies," Mr. Leak says. "That's his legacy. You really can't imitate him."
Mr. Lewis, the provost, says Emory won't try. He expects to name a new director of the Johnson Institute in June.
"Whoever comes next will not be another Rudolph Byrd, and they shouldn't be saddled with trying to be him," says Mr. Lewis. "But it will be someone who has the values of scholarship, teaching, and institution building. That's a must."
--
Tracy Flemming, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
African/African-American Studies
Grand Valley State University
107 Lake Ontario Hall
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, Michigan 49401-9403
USA
Ofc: 616/331-8150
Dept: 616/331-8110
Fax: 616/331-8111
E-mail: flem...@gvsu.edu
--
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A Professor's Death Ripples Outward
When a star professor at Emory University died, his department had to regroup as it mourned.
A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 1
Emory Photo
Rudolph Bryd (left), a scholar of American and African-American literature, the civil-rights movement, and gender studies at Emory U., organized forums, advised dissertation students, and wrote letters of recommendation right up until his death, in October 2011.
By Audrey Williams June
Atlanta
The stage was set, thanks to Rudolph P. Byrd.
On a winter evening at Emory University's campus here, CNN aimed its cameras as about 900 professors, students, and local residents filed into an auditorium. They came to see a panel of journalists and activists engage in a spirited discussion about political uprisings in the Arab world, part of a series of forums on civic and international issues that Mr. Byrd, an Emory professor for two decades, had created.
Enlarge Image A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 2
Kendrick Brinson for The Chronicle
Mark Sanders, chair of the African-American-studies department, organized a team to teach Rudolph Byrd's courses while he was on medical leave.
Enlarge Image A Professor's Death Ripples Outward 3
Kendrick Brinson for The Chronicle
The CNN Dialogues, brainchild of Rudolph Byrd, continued after he died. The February forum was moderated by Hala Gorani (center) of CNN.
Almost four months earlier, in October, Mr. Byrd had died of multiple myeloma. He was 58.
Mr. Byrd had conceived of the forums-which, like much of his work, have brought national attention to Emory and its department of African-American studies. He was intimately involved in planning the first in the series, held last August. He took part in dozens of conference calls, vetted the wording of the program, and weighed in frequently on plans to promote the event.
Some of his colleagues now find themselves taking care of those meticulous details, and the many other projects Mr. Byrd had in progress. And they don't want to make any missteps in carrying out his efforts to weave African-American history and culture into the very fabric of Emory. Mr. Byrd's death, his colleagues say, has magnified the extent of his work and his influence at Emory and beyond.
The identity of Emory's African-American-studies department has been intertwined with the prominent scholar for so long, but now its future will rest in others' hands.
Two faculty members and an interim dean in the graduate school stepped up to teach out a graduate course Mr. Byrd began last fall. The three freshmen and two graduate students he once advised have been assigned to other faculty members. Johnnetta B. Cole, a former president of Spelman College, is slated to deliver a series of lectures on race and sexuality, written by Mr. Byrd just before his death, at Harvard University.
His other unfinished projects include a biography of the author Ernest J. Gaines, a monograph on the early novels of Alice Walker, and an anthology of African-American poetry that he was working on with Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black-studies scholar at Harvard. Those projects, for now, are on hold.
"There's just a presence that he had that we're missing now," says Mark A. Sanders, chair of the African-American-studies department and a professor of English and African-American studies at Emory. "All of us have lost colleagues, but this one really hit home for a lot of us."
A Sense of Purpose
When death comes to a department, it is always disruptive. Sorrowful colleagues are left to grieve while finding a way to keep doing their jobs in an environment that constantly reminds them of their loss. And like any personnel change, the personality of a department shifts whenever a new member arrives, quite possibly with scholarship or a teaching style that doesn't mirror that of the predecessor.
But when a star like Mr. Byrd dies, the shifts in departmental dynamics are likely to be even more pronounced.
A glance at the prolific career of Rudolph P. Byrd suggests the extent of the department's loss. He was the author or editor of 11 books, including a critical edition of Jean Toomer's Cane, released last year. He was hired in 1991 to direct what was then an African-American-studies program at Emory. He is credited with hiring top faculty members, redesigning the undergraduate curriculum, and creating study-abroad opportunities in a move that paved the way for the program's transition to a full-fledged department.
Mr. Byrd's brainchild, the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (now the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference), has elevated Emory's national standing among scholars who study the modern civil-rights movement. He established and directed a well-known undergraduate fellowship program at Emory that is designed to groom the next generation of the professoriate.
Mr. Byrd's friendship with Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and his status as a leading scholar of her work, played a key role in Ms. Walker's decision to donate her papers to Emory-a coup for the university's manuscript, archives, and rare-book library.
"The first order of principle with Rudolph was: Be the best," says Earl Lewis, Emory's provost and a professor of American history and African-American studies. "Rudolph had his way of making sure that details were taken care of. He could definitely be persistent, but I loved his sense of purpose and drive."
That sense of purpose was never more pronounced than when, in 2000, Mr. Byrd was told he had cancer, a disease he ended up battling for more than half of his years at Emory. Mr. Byrd's colleagues say it seemed as if he had set out to cram a career's worth of work into whatever time he had left.
Even as his health declined, Mr. Byrd last fall began teaching his graduate seminar, "Call and Response: Theorizing Culture, Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Racial Formations." But it proved to be more difficult than he thought.
"He called me over the weekend after his third class," says Mr. Sanders, "and said he didn't think he'd be able to finish, although he really wanted to."
Mr. Byrd was relieved, Mr. Sanders says, when he learned that a team would teach the once-a-week course while he was on medical leave. Mr. Sanders tapped two others to help-his wife, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, an associate professor in Emory's Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and director of graduate studies, and Carolyn Denard, interim assistant dean of student affairs in Emory's graduate school and an adjunct associate professor in the African-American-studies department.
"I really thought of it as a gift to Rudolph," says Mr. Sanders, a close friend of Mr. Byrd's who spoke about him at a campus memorial service in November. "He was so happy that students weren't going to lose the course."
Mr. Byrd, who held a joint appointment in Emory's Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, continued to guide the graduate seminar while he was on medical leave.
"When Dr. Sanders came in every week, he had notes from Dr. Byrd that were fresh off the press until the last week of his life," says Jacinta R. Saffold, who just graduated with a major in African-American studies and educational studies, and will be a doctoral student in African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the fall. "I didn't know that Dr. Byrd was that sick. We were all operating under the assumption that he was coming back."
But Mr. Byrd was also quietly preparing some of his students to succeed without him. Michael R. Hall remembers when Mr. Byrd turned what the graduate student thought would be a meeting to discuss final revisions he had made in his research prospectus into something more serious.
"We sat there for two and a half hours talking through my whole dissertation, chapter by chapter," says Mr. Hall, who came to Emory in 2008 after earning a master's degree from Cornell University, and was the last graduate student Mr. Byrd took on. His dissertation examines the impact of travel and tourism on the African-American imagination from the late 19th century through the civil-rights era of the 1960s. "I went through everything I planned to write as best as I could," says Mr. Hall of that day in late May. "I realize now that he was setting me up to finish that project without his guidance, but in a way that his hand would still be in it."
Mr. Hall, who is on track to finish his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies in culture and society/American studies as early as next spring, says it is impossible not to notice the void left by his mentor. "You can see it in the spaces that people are grappling to fill," says Mr. Hall.
One key role Mr. Byrd played in Mr. Hall's life cannot be easily shifted to someone else. Mr. Byrd was openly gay, with a partner of 30 years when he died. Mr. Hall says Mr. Byrd's career and his scholarship expanded his own view of the possibilities for students like him. "It meant everything to me to both see and benefit from his successes in life and love," Mr. Hall says.
About a week before Mr. Byrd died, he had a talk with Mr. Lewis, the provost, about his institute and other projects, to make sure they would be turned over to people he trusted. "It was an emotional conversation," Mr. Lewis says. "But he wanted to have it because he didn't want to leave any loose ends."
And during the last weeks of his life, Mr. Byrd was still writing letters of recommendations for his students.
Picking Up the Pieces
Several months after Mr. Byrd's death, many who knew him were still navigating the raw reality of his absence. When his colleagues, in casual conversation, talked about Mr. Byrd's effect on Emory or recalled two of his trademark characteristics-how he was always formal in his demeanor and dapper in his attire-some of them would refer to Mr. Byrd in the past and present tenses within the same sentence. Well into the winter, some of the remarks about Mr. Byrd at his campus memorial service in the fall were still fresh enough in some people's minds that they could recite, almost verbatim, bits of the heartfelt tributes they had heard.
By February, Emory officials had finished the task of assigning people to take over programs that had long been linked to a single scholar. The African-American-studies department has nine core faculty members, with 19 other affiliated professors.
Mr. Lewis, who will be leaving Emory at the end of the year to lead the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, asked Carol Anderson, an associate professor of African-American studies, to serve as interim director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute's signature visiting-scholars program. The institute, founded in 2007 and named for a pioneer in the civil-rights movement who was also an author, is known for that program, which is paid for through 2014 by a $659,029 grant from the Mellon Foundation. The money provides up to five fellowships for professors to come to Emory and complete research projects on the civil-rights movement since 1905. The scholars, who are at Emory for an academic year, are paired with senior professors, and they must also teach one undergraduate or graduate course.
Ms. Anderson, who became the senior civil-rights scholar at Emory after Mr. Byrd's death, is also a one-time academic administrator; she is familiar with the amount of work such residential programs require. Yet she says, "I am in awe of what it takes to run just one of the things that he had his hand in. You realize right away that you have an enormous responsibility."
She has settled into her new role, which has been a blur of meetings with scholars in the program, selecting next year's cohort, and securing faculty hosts for them, among other things. All the while, she kept teaching and served on three senior-thesis and three dissertation committees, while advising seven Ph.D. students.
"The institute was his passion," Ms. Anderson says. "I want to do what I can to make sure his legacy lives on."
Several months before Mr. Byrd's death, the Johnson Institute won a $235,030 grant from the Arcus Foundation to assemble a group of scholars and experts to explore the intersection of civil rights and the black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer-rights movements. The group, formerly led by Mr. Byrd, is now guided by two people: Leslie Harris, an associate professor of history and African-American studies, and Dona Yarbrough, director of Emory University's Center for Women.
"Rudolph set the standard for how you move through pain and how you move through challenges," Ms. Anderson says. "People have been willing to step up and do what needs to be done out of respect for him."
And for that collegiality, Calinda N. Lee, associate director for programs and development at the Johnson Institute, is thankful. "We have some fabulous colleagues who have added some things to their plate, or put some things aside to take on these ongoing projects," says Ms. Lee, who worked closely with Mr. Byrd to fine-tune his idea of the community forums, known as the "CNN Dialogues." "Right now," she says, "we're all rolling up our sleeves and filling in the gaps."
Some of Mr. Byrd's colleagues say it will be tough to duplicate the hands-on mentorship for which Mr. Byrd was known. And many students say that even as Mr. Byrd pushed them to meet his exacting standards, it was clear that he was dedicated to their success. "Dr. Byrd, literally to the last drop of his ability, gave to his students," says Diana Louis, a Ph.D. student in the English department whom Mr. Byrd mentored.
Dianne M. Diakité, an associate professor of religion and African-American studies, says she shared with Mr. Byrd a commitment of "nurturing students from the ground up." Indeed, in 2008, Mr. Byrd turned the coordination of the Mellon Mays undergraduate fellowship program he developed at Emory over to her.
"I absolutely want to see this program continue to flourish here at Emory," Ms. Diakité says. "He really cared about the intellectual development of the students."
Jeffrey Leak, Mr. Byrd's first graduate student and now an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, recalls how the passage of time blurred the formal barriers between student and teacher, and evolved into a long-lasting friendship. Mr. Byrd was best man in Mr. Leak's wedding, and he even rode in a U-Haul truck with Mr. Leak from Atlanta to the University of Vermont, where the then-graduate student had accepted a dissertation fellowship at his mentor's urging. "He operated with a laserlike intensity on his scholarship, but also in terms of having Emory institutionalize African-American studies," Mr. Leak says. "That's his legacy. You really can't imitate him."
Mr. Lewis, the provost, says Emory won't try. He expects to name a new director of the Johnson Institute in June.
"Whoever comes next will not be another Rudolph Byrd, and they shouldn't be saddled with trying to be him," says Mr. Lewis. "But it will be someone who has the values of scholarship, teaching, and institution building. That's a must."
--
Tracy Flemming, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
African/African-American Studies
Grand Valley State University
107 Lake Ontario Hall
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, Michigan 49401-9403
USA
Ofc: 616/331-8150
Dept: 616/331-8110
Fax: 616/331-8111
E-mail: flem...@gvsu.edu
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