Robert C. Wood Visiting Professorship in Public and Urban Affairs
About the Visiting Professorship
Each year, the Robert C. Wood Professorship brings a distinguished public leader to campus for a lecture and conversation to engage students, faculty, and community members in discussions of public policy and public service.
The Robert C. Wood Visiting Professorship in Public and Urban Affairs was established in 1998 at the now John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Conceived as a vehicle for bringing distinguished public leaders to lecture and engage on topics such as race, education, and government efficiency, the professorship links the scholarly pursuits of the McCormack Graduate School with practical problems and policies of the larger society. The selection of each year’s speaker is tailored to objectives developed by the McCormack Graduate School in consultation with the honoree, faculty, staff, and others.
The lectureship is named for Robert Wood, who served as president of the UMass System for seven years and was one of the nation's leading public intellectuals in the last half of the 20th century. His multifaceted career in public service also included was also a senior fellow and professor at the McCormack Institute, secretary of housing and urban development in the Lyndon Johnson administration, head of the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, Superintendent of Schools in Boston, and General Manager of the MBTA. He wrote and edited several books on topics related to politics and public policy, the presidency, and local affairs.
Following is a list of the Wood Visiting Professors beginning from the program's inception. Their titles are those which they held at the time of their appointed professorship.
Wood Professorship Committee Members
- Erin O'Brien, Professor, Political Science
- Michael Johnson, Special Assistant to the Chancellor, Public Policy & Public Affairs
- Rita Edozie, Professor, Conflict Resolution, Human Security & Governance
- Susan Crandall, Director/Center for Social Policy, Center for Social Policy
Wood Professorship Lectures
Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH is a practicing physician and renown global and national leading voice on pandemics and public health. He was in 2022 appointed the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator. He is also the Dean of The School of Public Health and Professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University.
Lecture Title: The Role of Public Service in Transitioning to a Post-COVID Era
Yamiche Alcindor is an American journalist who is the White House correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and a political contributor to NBC News and MSNBC. In the past, she has worked as a reporter for USA Today and The New York Times. Alcindor writes mainly about politics and social issues.
Lecture Title: Reporting Truth Amid a Pandemic and Racial Reckoning
Media Coverage: UMB News
Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Founding Partner, Global Optimism, and Convener, Mission 2020
Lecture Title: The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis in the Age of COVID-19
Media Coverage: Nature Book Review
Reuben E. Brigety, II, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
Lecture Title: America, Heal Thyself: Political Polarization and the Rebuilding of American Soft Power
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Peniel E. Joseph, Professor of Public Affairs and Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas Austin
Lecture Title: The Struggle for Black Dignity in the Age of Trump and the Era of Black Lives Matter
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Maggie Hassan, Governor of New Hampshire, Daughter of Robert Wood, and Current Junior United States Senator from New Hampshire
Lecture Title: What I Learned from my Father about Public Service
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University
Lecture Title: Reflections on Issues of Race and Class in the 21st Century: Revisiting Arguments Advanced in The Declining Significance of Race (1978)
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Paul Grogan, President and CEO of The Boston Foundation
Lecture Title: Where Boston Can Lead: The Urban Education Crisis and What To Do About It
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Garrison Nelson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont and Author of John W. McCormack, A Political Biography
Lecture Title: Promises Kept: John McCormack, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Shelley Metzenbaum, Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management at the White House Office of Management and Budget
Lecture Title: Performance: Delivering Effective, Accountable, Trusted Government
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Gordon A. Martin, Jr., Adjunct Professor of Law at New England School of Law and former judge and chief of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
Lecture Title: The Right to Vote: Access to the Polls from the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to the Elections of 2012
Media Coverage: UMass Boston News
Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University
Lecture Title: Barack Obama and American Politics
Barbara Nelson, Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Founder of The Concord Project
Lecture Title: Building Social Capital in Divided Societies: Lessons from The Concord’s Work in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the United States
Keith Wailoo, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University and Author of Dying in the City of Blues and Drawing Blood
Lecture Title: How Cancer Crossed the Red Line: Race and Disease in America
Alejandro Portes, Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University
Lecture Title: No Margin for Error: Disadvantage and Success in the Immigrant Second Generation
Gerald Torres, Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law
Lecture Title: Democracy Means the People Make the Law
James Morone, Professor of Political Science at Brown University
Lecture Title: Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in America
Michael Keith
Lecture Title: Globalizing Culture: Multicultural Cities and the Future of Racism
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Edi Rama, Mayor of Tirana, capital of Albania
Lecture Title: Artful Democracy: Urban Government and Planning After Communism
Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, and Former Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Lecture Title: Homeland Defense, Economic Security, and Civil Rights in the U.S.
Xavier de Souza Briggs, Vice President for US programs of the Ford Foundation
Lecture Title: Community Building: The New (and Old) Politics of Urban Problem Solving in the New Century
Charles Hamilton
Lecture Title: The Role of Government – the Perennial Debate
Kick-off Lecture at UMass Boston and Dinner at JFK Library
Lecture Title: Bob Wood as a Public Intellectual
McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies
McCormack Hall, 3rd Floor, Room 625
617.287.5550
617.287.5544
mccormack.gradschool@umb.edu