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NOV/DEC 2010 ■ EDUCATION UPDATE ■ COLLEGES & GRADuate Schools 21City Tech Marks Kristallnacht, End of WWII AnniversariesSala Kirschner & Dr. Ann Kirschner Jerry Jacobs Dr. Gunter BlobelNew York City College of Technology markedthe 72nd anniversary of Kristallnacht and the65th anniversary of the end of World War IIrecently with Ann Kirschner, Ph.D., author of“Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story,”and the presentation of humanitarian awards toNobel Prize winner Günter Blobel, M.D., Ph.D.,and Interfaith Committee of Remembrancefounder and chairman Jerry Jacobs. The eventtook place in the college’s Atrium Amphitheaterin Downtown Brooklyn.Gary V. Ellis, M.D., co-founder and executivedirector of Brooklyn-based Inner ForceStudent Leadership Institute, introduced Dr.Kirschner. Joel Levy, director of developmentat the Vera Institute for Justice and former NewYork regional director at the Anti-DefamationLeague, presented the JFSA DistinguishedHumanitarian Award to Dr. Blobel and Mr.Jacobs. Borough President Marty Markowitzgave greetings and presented proclamations.Other dignitaries attending the event, whichis sponsored by City Tech’s Jewish Faculty& Staff Association, included Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, New York Consul General of Poland,and Dr. Horst Freitag, New York Consul Generalof Germany.Günter Blobel, M.D., Ph.D., is the John D.Rockefeller, Jr. Professor and an investigatorat the Howard Hughes Medical Institute(Laboratory of Cell Biology) at RockefellerUniversity. Dr. Blobel was the 1999 recipientof the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicinefor his discovery that proteins have intrinsicsignals that govern their transport and localizationin the cell. He also received the King FaisalInternational Prize in 1996, the Albert LaskerAward for Basic Medical Research in 1993,the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1989 andthe Gairdner Foundation International Awardin 1982.Dr. Blobel is a member of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, the AmericanPhilosophical Society, the Pontifical Academyof Sciences and the German Order of Merit.Born in a small Silesian village in what wasthen the eastern part of Germany, Dr. Blobelfounded (in 1994) Friends of Dresden, Inc., acharitable organization with the goal of raisingfunds to support the reconstruction of thatGerman city decimated during World War II.He donated the entire sum of his Nobel Prize tosupport the rebuilding of Dresden, including theFrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), built in the18th century, and the building of a new synagoguein the city. The synagogue was destroyedon Kristallnacht in 1938.Dr. Kirschner, City University of New Yorkdean of Macaulay Honors College, says in herbook, “For nearly fifty years, my mother kept asecret. After surviving five years of Nazi slavelabor camps, Sala Garncarz Kirschner came toAmerica as a war bride and raised our familywithout ever speaking of her wartime experiences.I grew up in a happy and safe home, andbecame a scholar, writer, and a mother myself,but always wondered about the black hole in mymother’s past.”Among the topics Dr. Kirschner covered isthe role of public education and what it hasmeant to her family. “New York City schoolsnot only educated me, but my mother, too,”she explained. “And my family has a closeCUNY connection.”Dr. Kirschner began her career as a lecturerin Victorian literature at Princeton University,where she earned a Ph.D. in English. Her subsequentcareer as an entrepreneur in media andtechnology included the creation of Internetbusinesses for the National Football League andColumbia University. She is a frequent contributorto conferences and publications on highereducation and interactive media.Jerry Jacobs is founder and chairman ofthe Interfaith Committee of Remembrance andexecutive producer of the annual InterfaithHolocaust Remembrance Concerts at theCathedral of St. John the Divine. The son of aviolist and assistant conductor of the pre-warLodz Symphony who died in the Holocaust,Jacobs was a child survivor of Auschwitz andBuchenwald. #Harvard Makes Case for Closing Gender GapNew and compelling evidence documentingthe economic benefits of gender equality tookcenter stage at a recent two-day conference atHarvard University. “Closing the Gender Gap:The Business Case for Organizations, Politics andSociety,” hosted by the Women and Public PolicyProgram (WAPPP) at the John F. Kennedy Schoolof Government in collaboration with the WorldEconomic Forum and the Council of WomenWorld Leaders, brought together scholars andbusiness leaders from across the globe.“Unequal rights to work, political participation,education and health violate human rights and mayalso negatively affect societal development, politicaloutcomes and corporate performance,” saidIris Bohnet, professor of public policy at HarvardKennedy School and director of WAPPP. “WAPPPis defining a new research agenda based on theeconomic value of gender diversity. An efficiencylens opens a new perspective on the issue — it isno longer only about constraints but also aboutmissed opportunities; not only about rights butalso about returns; not only about sameness aboutalso about difference, benefitting from women’sand men’s comparative advantages that can makeeveryone better off.”Conferees presented evidence on a range oftopics to advance the business case for closinggender gaps. Some of the more compelling findingsincluded:• Development: The returns on investment inwomen can be higher than investments in menbecause women tend to have preferences andmake choices more aligned with general developmentgoals, such as decreasing the number ofchildren or spending income on children’s nutrition,Mayra Buvinic of the World Bank showed. Atthe same time, Professor Abhijit Banerjee of MITreminded the audience that microfinance has likelybeen overrated in its impact on poverty alleviationand the empowerment of women.• Politics: Women politicians provide more publicgoods that women care about and that are alsoaligned with general development goals, ProfessorEsther Duflo of MIT argued. For example, womenvillage leaders in India focused more on the provisionof clean water than men.• Education: The gender gap in education hasreversed with women now being better educatedthan men in many countries. Thus, the opportunitycost of not hiring and retaining talented womenhas increased. Business has more incentives thanever to design organizational practices inclusiveof women. For example, Ricardo Hausmann,professor of the practice of economic developmentat the Harvard Kennedy School, discussedevidence on the impacts of the reversal of thegender gap in Latin America on women’s laborforce participation and other societal developments,such as marriage patterns. In particular, hehighlighted the need for making work compatiblewith motherhood.• Demography: Due to demographic change,the current fertility rates in developed countriesin particular imply that the labor force is shrinking.Competition for talent is stiffer than ever, andclosing gender gaps in economic opportunity isparamount to replenishing the labor force. LaraWarner of Credit Suisse and the Harvard KennedySchool’s Women’s Leadership Board described thedemographic change as a “demographic tsunami.”• Diversity: There is strong evidence for adiversity premium, with diverse teams performingbetter than homogenous teams, research byProfessor Scott Page of the University of Michigandemonstrates. However, diverse teams also “meanwork,” as Associate Professor Katherine Philipsof the Kellogg School of Management remindedthe conference participants. Remarks offeredby representatives of Carlson, Credit Suisse,Daimler, Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Heidrick & Struggles,McDonald’s, Pfizer, and Temin and Companyemphasized that corporations increasingly takethese benefits seriously and create organizationalstructures to enable diverse teams to live up totheir potential. Indeed, diversity in senior managementis related to organizational performance, theresearch by Assistant Professor David Ross ofColumbia Business School showed. Gender equalitynudges, a concept developed by Bohnet, helporganizations become more diverse. #