Carnegie Commission Chair Delivers Julius B. Richmond Lecture
David Hamburg has spent the better part of his adult life trying to make the world less violent. In recognition of his work, the Division of Public Health Practice invited Hamburg to be the keynote speaker at the Fourth Annual Julius B. Richmond Lecture and Dinner at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston on November 1.
Hamburg is co-chair of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. In 1997, he helped craft a comprehensive report on violent conflict in which he urged governments, especially those of wealthier countries, to make stronger efforts to prevent armed conflicts. The report encouraged the UN Security Council to establish a force of troops that could react rapidly to violence and called for governments to support the establishment of a permanent international criminal court.
Hamburg
devoted his speech at the Richmond dinner to the topic of violence, placing
it in an evolutionary and historical framework. He described approaches
to curtail prejudice through education and community action.
"We must find a basis for fundamental human identification across a diversity of cultures in the face of conflict," said Hamburg. "We are a single, interdependent, meaningfully attached, worldwide species."
Hamburg is also a visiting professor of social medicine at HU and president emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He currently serves as a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology.
In the past, Hamburg has been the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. In 1996, he received the White House Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to a civilian in the US.
The Julius B. Richmond Lecture and Dinner is named for a current professor
of health policy at HSPH. Richmond is recognized for years of work improving
the lives of children in the US and abroad. He served as US Surgeon General
and was the first national director of the Head Start Program.
