Sat 8 Sep 2007
Convocation is today.
Thomas Payzant ‘62, professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will be the featured speaker at Williams College’s Convocation, Saturday, September 8. The event will be held in Chapin Hall, beginning at 11 a.m. Professor Payzant is the former superintendent for the Boston Public Schools.
Convocation is the traditional celebration of the new year at Williams, when the Class of 2008 is recognized as they begin their senior year. The public is cordially invited to attend what is considered a highlight of the college’s academic year.
The event is also the occasion to award the college’s Bicentennial Medals to alumnae/ni of distinction, as a way for students to see the important ways in which Williams graduates contribute to their world.
In addition to Professor Payzant, those receiving medals will be Margaret Kim ‘91, award-winning director of historical programming for The History Channel; Reed Zars ‘77, environmental lawyer; Steve Lewis ‘60, president emeritus of Carleton College; H. Ward Marston IV ‘73, Grammy award-winning musician and pioneer in the field of audio restoration; and Alice P. Albright ‘83, who pioneered finance mechanisms to deliver vaccines and immunizations to the world’s poorest countries.
EphBlog readers know Lewis and Marston. The merit of some of the other awardees is a bit more hidden.
Now, in keeping with the new and gentler EphBlog, I ought to tone down my comments a bit. Some might say that my past complaints on the topic have been out of line.
But let us start today with looking at both what is seen (the awardees) and what is unseen (the Ephs who could have been so honored but weren’t). For example, my classmates Mark Solan and Rich Gardella have both won Emmys. Pretty impressive! Did the College decide to award them Bicentennial Medals? No. Instead, an award goes to Margaret Kim ‘91, whose main claim to fame is that she was nominated for an Emmy.
Now, maybe Kim was selected because she is a helpful alum and has a friend on the committee. Maybe the committee wanted to find a woman. Maybe they wanted an Asian-American. Maybe the committee did not know that there were other Eph Emmy winners. But there is simply no way that the main selection criteria was achievement in the media business.
And that is OK! There is nothing particularly objectionable about the College selecting Bicentennial Medal winners with an eye toward how much, as a group, they “look like Williams.” But rather than giving awards to Emmy-nominated women instead of to Emmy-winning men, the College ought to think more broadly about what categories it honors. More on that later.
September 8th, 2007 at 6:51 am
I think Steve Lewis’ and Tom Payzant’s Bicentennial Medals are long overdue. Not sure if it eased the way towards getting a medal, but Alice Albright is the daughter of Madeline Albright, a former Secretary of State and a former Williams College Trustee.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
First off all David, you’re wrong (emphasis mine)
Kim has won an Emmy
She’s also won a (possibly more prestigious) Peabody award for a piece on the Rwandan genocide.
Second, the comparison to your classmates is apples and oranges: Kim is director of historical programming and executive producer on the shows she works on. Your first friend does set design; the second guy won his Emmy as part of a large production team in a new category of awards for business news only created in 2004. Not to diminish their accomplishments, but Kim is (I mean this in both senses) in a different league. So, “no way?”… not exactly.
Like too many EphBlog posts, this one makes me sad. A liberal education could have given you the skills to question, scrutinize, and discover knowledge. Instead, you seem to have learned how to start with what you think is the case and string together speculations until you reach the proposition you started from. And all too often, that proposition is false (c.f., the smack-down debuking of your attempted debunking of the Lancet studies over on Deltoid ).
Cheers,
PCE
ps. While we’re at it, my picks for awards would have been Al-Jazeera anchor Dave Maresh, and (if they can be awarded posthumously–he just passed away this week) former Fed board member Ned Gramlich.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:13 am
“whose main claim to fame is that she was nominated for an Emmy.”
But one of the links you provide shows that there is a lot more to Ms. Kim’s achievements than one nomination for one award:
“Ms. Kim’s work has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards. Most recently, she received the 2004 Peabody Award for Rwanda: Do Scars Ever Fade?, which also garnered two Emmy nominations, and won the 2005 IDA Award, the United Nations Dept. of Information’s Bronze Award for excellence, and the Cine Golden Eagle Award among others. (…) In 2004, she was honored with a News & Documentary Emmy Award for LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons, and an IDA award for Inside Pol Pot’s Secret Prison, which also received two Emmy nominations in 2003.”
You yourself answer your “objection” when you state: “But there is simply no way that the main selection criteria was achievement in the media business.”
And I don’t believe, in this case, that it’s a question of preference for “Emmy-nominated women” over “Emmy-winning men.”
September 8th, 2007 at 11:13 am
seriously, david, seriously? Maybe it was her work with history and documentary that put her over the edge in terms of picking a bicentennial medal and not her near emmy? Convenient how that’s left out in your list of “maybe”s? Maybe they like her history channel programs and documentaries?
You have absolutely no idea that her medal award has anything to do with a desire for the bicentennial winners to “look like Williams”. It’s disrespectful to her impressive resume of work. Your point is that you have two classmantes you hope would win medals. Fine. But that’s a separate question from: does she deserve it?
September 8th, 2007 at 11:15 am
(Sorry for the cross-post with PCE.)
September 8th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I think Kane owes Ms. Kim a public apology after he just got bitch-slapped by Rory and PinkoCommieEph.
But while we are on the topic, I would once again like to suggest R.A. Montgomery, co-creator of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
September 8th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Ditto Jeff, on both counts.
September 8th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I love our commentators. They are warm and cuddly and trusting, just like the 3rd graders on my daughter’s soccer team. And about as sophisticated! (At least today.) When the College tells them that 2005 Bicentennial Winner Marisa E. Reddy Randazzo’s ‘89
these trusting readers want to believe it. They really, really do. And that’s charming! Adorable! My 3rd graders want to believe in all sorts of stuff too! And, much of the time, I let them. But our commentators should be held to a higher standard, being College graduates and all.
They want to believe that:
Unfortunately, this is not true! Kim has never one an Emmy. Don’t believe me! Check the official announcement.
Now, given how freely Emmys are handed out, I have no doubt that Kim will win one someday. I am also certain that she is a smart, talented, accomplished Eph. I celebrate her achievements, just as I do those of Randazzo and those of every other Eph, male or female. But if you think that, on average, the standards are the same for male and female Bicentennial Medal winners, then you don’t know what you are talking about. (Again, I do not know if Randazzo and Kim won because they are women. It could just as easily be that they had buddies on the committee.)
Also, apologies for the directness of these posts. Perhaps EphBlog should be like the the College’s Office of Public Affairs: no bad news, nothing but wonderfulness in the land of the Ephs, all our graduates are A double plus excellent. Other authors may do as the wish on this score, but one of my main purposes is to point out true things that others don’t notice or don’t want to notice. Don’t like it? Don’t read my posts! The most excellent thing about EphBlog is that there are other great posts to read.
September 8th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
David,
You’re cherry-picking and talking condescendingly when you shouldn’t (somewhat like the deltoid conversations…). First, the commentator who mentioned the emmy MORE IMPORTANTLY pointed to the Peabody, a much higher praise for documentary workers.
Further, and no disrespect towards your classmates who sound like impressive individuals, you yourself write, “given how freely Emmys are handed out…”. Normally, I let inane backtracking slide, but you being a williams grad, I expect more. The only proof you offer for the worthiness of your two recommended bicentennial winner is…winning emmys! Is it easy to try to have your cake and eat it too?
My original point, again, is valid. In your list of “maybes” has yet to be “maybe they have done impressive work”. Have you considered that? She’s won a peabody, been nominated for four emmys, and all for work that is documentary and educational in nature. Couldn’t it just be that that is good enough for a bicentennial and that the situation is not that she didn’t deserve it, but that the committee is making subjective decisions between a large pool of accomplished and impressive alumni?
Finally, none of the comments has come close to complaining about your posting style or “directness of these posts”. That, David, is a bs strawman. You do owe Kim an apology, because a search for “margaret kim” and either “eph” or “williams” includes this page within the first five links. That’s wrong, considering the baseless claims about her worthiness of an award that you make.
September 8th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
the above was me. sorry.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Rory asks (reasonably)
Yes, it could be. But I doubt it! Again, Kim is an impressive individual (I love all the war stuff on the History Channel!), but the College is, at a minimum, guilty of portraying her as an Emmy winner when she is not. And lots of smart Ephs have been fooled, conned into thinking that I have been — What’s that word? — “bitch-slapped” by inaccurate comments. So, the first step is to explain to people what the actual facts are. Kim is not an Emmy winner. John Noble at OCC ought to correct his website.
Now that we have the facts straight, we can examine the question of how the College decides who to honor. I think that it is beyond dispute that things beside “merit” enter the picture in a big way. At some point, when I am in an ornery mood, I will provide all sorts of examples.
Yet, let’s step away from the orneriness for a moment. How should the College award medals? It seems obvious to me that the College should, first, divide human accomplishment into broad categories: (arts, the law, medicine, scholarship, humanitarian work and so on). Second, figure out which Ephs are at the top of those categories. Third, pick out a selection of the top ones each year.
{Side note: The big change I would make is expand the categories to include: a) military service and b) family life. That is, I would like one medal each year to go to one of our Ephs in combat and one to go to someone (often, this will be a woman) who has done an amazing job in the small scale, unheralded job of nurturing a family and working at the smallest scale level in her community. But leave those crazy ideas to one side for today.)
In the case of Kim, there is no doubt that you could design a category for which she is the most accomplished Eph, say “producers at the History channel.” But in any broader category, say, “media”, I doubt that she is at the top. She has not (yet) one an Emmy. Mark Solan has. Why her and not him?
Of course, I am no expert in the world of the documentary. You seem to think that winning a Peabody is a big deal. Perhaps! But something tells me that I could find some older, whiter male Ephs who have won Peabodys and yet not been awarded a Bicentennial Medal.
Question: How many Ephs have won a Peabody?
Moreover, as PCE points out, there are Ephs like Ned Gremlich who are highly accomplished who have not been awarded Bicentennial Medals. Gremlich was on the board of the Federal Reserve! There are few higher places that an economist interested in policy can go. Why wasn’t he awarded one?
It seems obvious (to me) that the College does not sit around and really try to compare categories like documentary producer (Kim) and policy maker (Gremlich) and figure out which category is more important. Instead, they get a bunch of names and then pick out cool looking people, especially a group that looks like Williams. That’s fine. Just don’t pretend that the process is something that it isn’t.
September 8th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
On the question of Kim’s (non-) Emmy award, I stand corrected. I hope that the Williams folks will correct their error (and I assume it is their error, and not due to Kim!)
But I still believe that her impressive career merits recognition as a distinguished alumna… and does not not merit ridiculous, speculative drivel like this
Let’s put it this way David: how would your daughters like it when all of their (genuine) future accomplishments are dismissed by guys like you?
September 8th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Kane, what exactly is your argument? The college should give every alum who has accomplished something an award … all at the same time? I don’t get it.
What is your beef with the decision to award a Bicentennial Medal to Margaret Kim instead of your friends? Are you really arguing that the committee was wrong to acknowledge an accomplished documentary director? Do you believe it is grave injustice that they didn’t give it to a set designer you know? Or one of three producers of a news report on Iraqi businesses? I’m sure your friends are good at what they do and maybe some day the college will honor them, but I fail to see the cause of the outrage.
But perhaps I am a simple 3rd grader who believes that Morty sneaks under my pillow and leaves snack bar points.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
PCE asks:
Margaret Kim is accomplished. We all agree. I have “dismissed” nothing. But is she as accomplished as other Ephs who have not been awarded Bicentennial Medals? Note that on average less than 1% of all graduates will be so honored. Is Kim in that top 1%? Is Marisa E. Reddy Randazzo ‘89? Opinions differ! And that’s why we have EphBlog. If you are looking for a place that does not second-guess College decisions, look elsewhere.
How would PCE prefer that I phrase my point that there were probably other more qualified Ephs that the College could have selected instead of Kim but did not? Suggestions welcome.
(d)avid asks a bunch of question.
What I wrote. Which part did you not understand? Kim was awarded a Bicentennial Medal for some reason beyond just “distinguished achievement in any field of endeavor.” We can know this because we know of other Ephs in the media field who have not been so honored. I would be willing to bet that I will be able to find more, that there is a (male) Eph Peabody winner out there without a Bicentennial Medal. Care to take the other side of that bet?
No. That would be stupid. The Bicentennial Medals are an excellent idea and the College gives out a reasonable number. The criteria is good too. See above for my suggested improvements.
Other Ephs have won Emmys. Kim has not. Why was she chosen instead of them?
The Committee made a choice. It could have picked someone else. We must examine both what is seen and what is unseen.
There is no “outrage.” I am just explaining how the world works to our readers. Many of them seem to not understand the facts of life, seem to want to believe that Kim is in the top 1%. She isn’t. (Neither am I!) That doesn’t make her (or me) a bad person. But those are the facts.
In the world of TV, Emmys, money, power and viewership are the measures of “achievement” (not necessarily in that order). Kim has had a fine career. (It is not clear what she is doing now.) But is it as successful as, say, Mark Solan’s? No.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
David, it is YOU who are responsible for deceiving your readers because of your reflexive assumption that white males are always getting shafted by Williams. Let’s look at the comparison you make. Your buddy Rich is one of three people BELOW FOUR OTHERS on the production totem pole of an emmy award winning production team of a news segment (see paste below my comments). Ms. Kim is THE executive producer of one Peabody-award-winning and several Emmy nominated productions. I’d argue that the topics she has worked on are far more substantial, substantive, in-depth, and intellectually and morally compelling than a nightly news segment on Haliburton, but even placing that argument aside, you are essentially opining that the college should reward a practice squad member of a Super Bowl champion over the starting quarterback of a playoff team. (I think an even more apt analogy in this case would be to a practice squad member of an Arena League champion, but, despite my all-too-familiar level of fluency with the TV medium, I recognize my limitations as a qualitative judge of TV excellence, limitations which you, apparently, are blissfully free of).
Hopefully this post satisfies your need for readers to perform critical analysis, rather than just looking at your contention and, prima facie, recognizing it as ridiculous. But honestly, I didn’t even feel the need in this instance, because when it comes to creating a diversity agenda bogeyman, your track record speaks volumes and I pretty much just assume you are talking out your a– at this point. If even one time in the last five years you had ever contended that a white man was the recipient of equal or better treatment than a minority woman in any life arena (and I bet your readers could somehow drum up one or two examples), I might pause for consideration, but at this point, my mistrust of your agenda in this arena is just as reflexive a reaction as your agenda itself. Please leave uncovering diversity craziness in the academy (of which, of course, there is plenty) to people, like KC Johnson, with a little more credibility, who do their homework and choose targets worthy of scorn, like the Group of 88 at Duke. Instead, you periodically feel the need to diminish the very real accomplishments of diversity female Ephs (sometimes prospectives, sometimes current students, sometimes alums) to make a broader point, without any supporting evidence whatsoever. Even if you had such evidence (you do not), it seems petty and mean to rain on the parade of, once again, someone who appears to my layman’s eyes to have substantial intellectually and morally praise-worthy accomplishments. Personally, I’d rather see Williams award someone instrumental in creating a well-regarded documentary helping to shed light on a genocide that is often ignored by the mainstream media, than a relative bit player in yet another news story on Haliburton.
One more point. I love that you are now, as someone who works in finance, somehow the arbiter of what should measure “achievement” in television. If three of your four criteria are in fact money, power, and viewership, I thank the Lord that (a) you are not on the bicentennial selection committee and (b) that none of Jerry Springer, the real world cast, the creators of “girls gone wild”, or the brain trust behind Red Shoe Diaries are Williams alums, lest we have an honoree list truly worthy of complaint. (Although, an Eph did WIN (no mere nominations here!) “beauty and the geek” last year? Perhaps you should submit his name to the committee). And on second thought, I retract my last statement … if an Eph is in any way responsible (even as a lowly line producer) for any Skinemax series, we must heretofore make it Ephblog’s mission that this individual receive the accolades they so richly deserve.
Here is the production team of the documentary Mr. Gardella is a part of. (I am sure, by the way, Mr. Gardella is a very talented man, unfortunately you have forced our hands into drawing these sort of comparisons in order to shoot down your frivolous argument):
Executive Producer
Steve Capus
Senior Broadcast Producer
John Reiss
Senior Producers
Albert Oetgen, Jim Popkin
Producers
Rich Gardella, Doug Pasternak, Aram Roston
Correspondent
Lisa Myers
September 9th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Why not be magnanimous about this whole damn thing - and everyone smile, nod knowingly, be unobtrusive and most importantly close his pie hole? Today is the medal winners’ day in the sun, not that of a gaggle of petty commentators.
September 9th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Kane, you haven’t provided an argument. You simply assert that Margaret Kim was (a) below the bar for a bicentennial medal and (b) she only received the award because she was a woman. I suppose you also insinuated that she received the award because she knew someone on the committee.
The “evidence” that you provide in support of your position is lame and irrelevant. The fact that two of your friends won Emmys is a red herring and has bearing on neither Kim’s qualifications for the award nor the reason she received the medal.
Do you honestly believe that Margaret Kim is not in the top 1% of her field? Take the number of people who are more powerful and accomplished that Kim (numerator) and divide it by the total number of jobs in the media industry (denominator). Do you want to take a side bet on the odds of Kim’s stature being better than 99 out of 100 randomly selected people who work in media? You’ll object, that she should only be compared to Ephs. Fine. I personally know 12 Ephs working in the media and none of them have Kim’s resume. Small sample, but I am willing to bet Kim looks impressive by any measure. You offer no evidence that she is somehow below the bar for receiving a medal.
You are a hack. You have an agenda that you want to advance, so you gather random factoids (most irrelevant — who cares what the OCC website says about Kim?) in support of your case. You want to answer the question of why Kim was a awarded a medal. Rather than honestly evaluating competing hypotheses, you jump to the conclusion that she benefited from affirmative action. You might be right (since Williams excluded women for most of its history, there are far fewer female alumnae), but there is no way of knowing.
I’ll offer two alternative hypotheses that are more parsimonious and supported by the data.
HA1: There are far more Ephs worthy of recognition than awards. Awards committees choose among those people who get on the radar screen. To get on the radar screen, you need to know someone (or know someone who knows someone) at a point in the decision making process. Margaret Kim is among the set of worthy people and somehow the awards committee became aware of her achievements.
HA2: Rwanda was one of the most appalling events in recent history. Kim moves to the head of the line because work on Rwanda is “hot.” Documentaries on Rwanda convey a gravitas and importance that business reporting, sketch comedy, game shows, or daytime dramas cannot. Rewarding serious work is something college awards committees like to do.
To recap: You simply assert without evidence. You jump to conclusions.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I knew Reed Zars when he went to Williams. Good for him. He was definately an outdoors type of grunge dude in College, hyper smart, and had the ability to work not only with his mind, but also with his hands. It fits.
Congratulations to him.
Speaking of Environmental Lawyers… I believe Carter in Vermont was an Eph environmentalist who did some time in the Vermont House and Senate, writing all kinds of protection laws and litigating against developers in the 70s, 80s, 90s and today. He still does some teaching at Williams once in a while, I believe. Another Eph I know.
Whatever happened to the days when townies and Ephs hung out together? When community meant more than a parking lot and a lighted field?
No one ever did, take me up on that drink.
Cheers.
Oh- and David, you should just admit that you made a mistake in reference to Kim. She obviously deserves the award.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:24 am
My impression at convocation last year was that the award winners were people who were devoted to public service in different areas, doing important and influential work, and I found all of their career paths unique and inspiring. Due to the Haystack anniversary, public service was explicitly the theme of the awards. That doesn’t seem so explicit this year, but it looks like it was at least an element, given the award winners, and that Kim’s work fits this pattern. Last year, that made convocation a lot more interesting and meaningful to me than if they had been selected on some kind of objective measure of “top 1% of achievement in their fields,” so I don’t even CARE about that argument. I think the combination of moral example and achievement that the awardees show make them pretty amazing role models for graduating Williams seniors, not just the achievement alone.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Oh dear, my comment didn’t show up. Shortened version: last year, the bicentennial medal winners were explicitly selected for their records in public service, and that looks like it may be an element this year as well. I think the combination of moral examples and achievements the medal winners show (including Kim, especially the Rwanda work) makes them more meaningful role models than people selected solely on the basis of some supposedly objective measure of the “top 1% of achievement in their fields”. It certainly made convocation more interesting and inspiring for me last year.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:45 am
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September 10th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
David,
your response only proves further how little credibility you have whenever the word “race” or the word “diversity” is involved in a topic at this point. That’s a shame.
In the latest example, you claim “many smart ephs have been fooled”. There is only evidence of that being true for all of two ephs (whoever posted that bio and PCE). Further…IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR POINT. It is a tangent, one that you try to use to avoid the fact that you’ve accused a fellow eph (yet again) of not being worthy of something that she is worthy of (it is always interesting when you decide to play the “how many have…?” game instead of doing some cursory examinations.
At some point in your ornery mood, you, a supposed statistician, will provide examples? So what? Of course you can find accomplished ephs…and, in all likelihood, you can find accomplished ephs who you think are more accomplished than an individual who won a bicentennial medal. That proves nothing about why an individual won. The pertinent question is, as I pointed out, not why person A instead of person B (an impossible question to answer, and an unfair one as well. Maybe person B was offered one but didn’t want it? Maybe person B is an asshole in person, etc.), but rather…was person A qualified? Kim clearly is. Your inability to include that as one of your “maybes” is a CLEAR insinuation that you do not believe that to be true. The comments have made it abundantly clear, and with little effort, that such an insinuation is completely out of the bounds of reality.
You continue, further, to try to have it both ways. Either an emmy is a good sign of accomplishment, or it isn’t (you land on both sides of that issue). Either you do know media (and can say that the peabody is impressive), or you don’t (again, both sides of that). Look…only 30 or so Peabodys are given in a year. Look at the wikipedia entry for the winners. It’s clear it is a serious award. Certainly more serious than the emmy (they give those to soap stars, don’t they?). Go to its website and think about it for a second. Do some damn work, don’t just insinuate things and then claim to be a layperson who doesn’t know the details. That’s crap.
You speak so authoritatively on things you don’t know sh*t about (yeah, I’m in an ornery mood). Emmys are how power is determined in the media? FOH. Is Kim trying to be powerful, or has she decided her niche is documentary work and so she does that, and does it well? If you assume power, viewership, etc. is the complete end-all, be-all of being in the media, then why aren’t all the williams professors trying to get hired at research 1 schools? Research funding and access to journals is the be-all and end-all of being a professor, aren’t they?
This is one of your worst posts in a while David. Honestly.
Finally, and no disrespect to the two emmy winners you mention as I’m sure they did excellent work, I trust the bicentennial award committee to decide which Ephs are more distinguished in their careers than I trust the Emmys to do a good job appreciating programming on the History channel. Look at how the Emmys have shafted The Wire, for goodness sake!
September 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
oh…and I know wikipedia isn’t a great source, but here’s what it says about the peabody:
“The Peabody Awards are generally regarded as the most prestigious awards honoring distinction and achievement within the fields of broadcast journalism, documentary making, educational programming, children’s programming, and entertainment.”.
here’s some more links to peruse, as you consider whether an emmy or a peabody is more impressive for a documentary producer:
http://www.lighthousestudio.org/pdf/PeabodyAward.pdf
here’s the BBC calling it the most prestigiouos award:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories//2005/04_april/13/peabody.shtml
here’s pbs doing the same thing:
http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20060726_pbshealthinitiative.html
September 11th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Let me give a military example.
A lot of people do not get battlefield awards even though their actions merit them. Does that make those that get them any less deserving? No. If a person merits and award and they get one, good on them.
You are wrong on this one, David.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
David,
Your comments are neither complimentary, witty, nor intelligent. Your “information,” in keeping with a long history of your posts, belies the character and accomplishments of innocent people. While I can constantly plead with you to “get your facts straight,” I feel that won’t do much for your slanderous insinuations and offensive and incorrect posts in the future.