In Brief
• Brian Cantwell Smith, computer scientist, philosopher,
and a former principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
in California, has been named the first Kimberly J. Jenkins University
Professor of New Technologies and Society. He has conducted research
into artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, and meta-level
architectures, and is increasingly focusing on foundational issues
related to the philosophy of computing and human cognition. Smith
will have a primary appointment in philosophy and a secondary appointment
in computer science, with possible involvement in research programs
at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and the law school. He is
working on The Age of Significance: An Essay on the Foundations of
Computation and Intentionality, a six-volume series meant to reconstruct
the foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive
science, forthcoming from MIT Press. The series will be released on
the Web, one chapter per month during the next five years. After studying
at Oberlin College, Smith earned his bachelor’s, master’s,
and doctorate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones M.Div. ’85,
Ph.D. ’88 has been appointed to a second five-year term. During
his first term as dean, beginning in 1997, twelve members were appointed
to the Divinity School faculty, and the university founded the Duke
Institute on Care at the End of Life, an interdisciplinary program
based at the Divinity School to improve care for the suffering and
dying. The Divinity School has launched the Learned Clergy Initiative
to help develop a new generation of strong pastors, and Pulpit &
Pew, a research program to strengthen the quality of clergy and lay
leaders in churches. The school has formed a partnership with Durham’s
Walltown Neighborhood Ministries, a five-church coalition working
to strengthen the quality of life in the Walltown community off Duke’s
East Campus. Before moving to Duke, Jones was chair of the theology
department at Loyola College in Baltimore.
• Gilbert Merkx, director of the Latin American and
Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque,
has been appointed vice provost for international affairs. Merkx,
also professor of the practice of sociology, succeeds Bruce Kuniholm,
who will return to the faculty of the Sanford Institute of Public
Policy. Merkx joined the University of New Mexico faculty in 1968
and was named to a full professorship in sociology in 1981. He also
has held faculty appointments at Yale and Gothenburg University in
Sweden. He served as editor of the Latin American Research Review.
• Alma Blount has been named director of the Hart
Leadership Program at Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public
Policy. Blount had been a lecturer in public policy studies and director
of the HLP’s Service Opportunities in Leadership Program, a leadership
mentoring initiative for undergraduates. She has held leadership positions
in international human-rights organizations in the United States and
Central America, and is the former photo editor of The Independent
newspaper in Durham. She succeeds Robert Korstad, associate professor
of public policy studies and history, who will continue to teach in
the program. Korstad also directs the B.N. Duke Scholars Program and
will oversee a faculty initiative between the history and public policy
departments.
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