Emory Historian

Emory Historian This page shares my occasional blog posts as the institutional historian for Emory University. You can also access the blog at emoryhistorian.org.

As another academic year picks up steam, last week brought both good news and bad news from Emory University. The good n...
09/08/2025

As another academic year picks up steam, last week brought both good news and bad news from Emory University. The good news is that the Hon. Leah Ward Sears began her term as interim president on September 1. An alumna of Emory Law School, she adds to a number of distinguished firsts in her résumé the distinction of being the first African American to lead Emory and only the second woman to do so....

As another academic year picks up steam, last week brought both good news and bad news from Emory University. The good news is that the Hon. Leah Ward Sears began her term as interim president on S…

Prompted by the protests and arrests on the Emory Quadrangle in April 2024, the Interdisciplinary Workshop in Colonial a...
11/20/2024

Prompted by the protests and arrests on the Emory Quadrangle in April 2024, the Interdisciplinary Workshop in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies this autumn presented a series of monthly seminars on "The University and Democracy." The series intended to explore three questions: What is a university? Who makes up the university? What do recent developments at Emory tell us about the challenge to democracy—in academia and beyond?...

Prompted by the protests and arrests on the Emory Quadrangle in April 2024, the Interdisciplinary Workshop in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies this autumn presented a series of monthly seminars on…

by Cynthia Patterson, Professor of History Emerita, Emory University Note: A somewhat longer version of this text was pr...
05/01/2024

by Cynthia Patterson, Professor of History Emerita, Emory University Note: A somewhat longer version of this text was presented as a lecture to the Emory University Emeritus College on March 18, 2024. Gary Hauk The significant and direct involvement of Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum with the antiquities market over the past twenty-five years has resulted in collections that startle visitors with their quality and have pushed the Carlos into the upper echelons of U.S....

by Cynthia Patterson, Professor of History Emerita, Emory University Note: A somewhat longer version of this text was presented as a lecture to the Emory University Emeritus College on March 18, 20…

Presented to Emory University Emeritus College, January 29, 2024 Gary S. Hauk Students and faculty members often are sur...
04/22/2024

Presented to Emory University Emeritus College, January 29, 2024 Gary S. Hauk Students and faculty members often are surprised to learn that Emory University has an affiliation with the United Methodist Church. The university so closely resembles its fellow members in the Association of American Universities that it often appears indistinguishable in mission, character, and culture from sometimes larger and better known research universities like the Ivies and the great state universities....

Presented to Emory University Emeritus College, January 29, 2024 Gary S. Hauk Students and faculty members often are surprised to learn that Emory University has an affiliation with the United Meth…

It is sometimes said that all it takes to create a tradition at Emory University is to do something for four years in a ...
03/11/2024

It is sometimes said that all it takes to create a tradition at Emory University is to do something for four years in a row. After the first students who experienced the “tradition” have graduated, few will remember when it began, and the activity then passes into custom and lore. The point of traditions, after all, is the perpetuation of rites of passage or rituals of membership or markers of institutional identity whose origins are lost in the mist of a time long ago—or at least a time before anyone can quite remember....

It is sometimes said that all it takes to create a tradition at Emory University is to do something for four years in a row. After the first students who experienced the “tradition” have graduated,…

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev on August 30 made me recall his visit to Emory University thirty years ago.
09/15/2022

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev on August 30 made me recall his visit to Emory University thirty years ago.

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev on August 30 made me recall his visit to Emory University thirty years ago. It was May 11, 1992, and fifteen thousand graduates, friends, and family members filled th…

A new Emory History Minute just went live today, August 22, 2022. Thanks to Emory videographers Corey Broman-Fulks and S...
08/22/2022

A new Emory History Minute just went live today, August 22, 2022. Thanks to Emory videographers Corey Broman-Fulks and Stephen Nowland for their excellent work. You can see more of these brief history videos by googling "Emory History Minutes" for the entire playlist of 28 videos that Corey and I did for the 175th anniversary of Emory back in 2011. Gary Hauk, Emory University Historian Emeritus

A new Emory History Minute just went live today, August 22, 2022. Thanks to Emory videographers Corey Broman-Fulks and Stephen Nowland for their excellent work. You can see more of these brief hist…

As Emory prepares to host a major conference on slavery and the dispossession of Native American lands, I turn to Mark A...
09/27/2021

As Emory prepares to host a major conference on slavery and the dispossession of Native American lands, I turn to Mark Auslander for this latest post on Emory history. Mark is a former faculty member at Oxford College and is now a research scholar in anthropology at Brandeis University and visiting associate professor at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst....

As Emory prepares to host a major conference on slavery and the dispossession of Native American lands, I turn to Mark Auslander for this latest post on Emory history. Mark is a former faculty memb…

"When the cultural pendulum eventually swings and campuses again resemble a 1970s Grateful Dead concert, Emory students ...
03/26/2021

"When the cultural pendulum eventually swings and campuses again resemble a 1970s Grateful Dead concert, Emory students will say that they have the most freakin’ awesome mascot ever. And they will be right.”

To the best of my recollection, this is how the the statue of Dooley came to Emory. The initial idea belonged to Lance Henry, an economics and music major who graduated from Emory College in 2007. …

The death of Hank Aaron on January 22 reminded me of his receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Emory at Comme...
01/23/2021

The death of Hank Aaron on January 22 reminded me of his receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Emory at Commencement in 1995. When the University celebrated the man who broke racial barriers along with Babe Ruth's home run record, the occasion seemed to call for the citation writer -- me -- to swing for the fences too. And if I couldn't hit the ball over the fence with my words, at least I could summon an echo of poetry....

The death of Hank Aaron on January 22 reminded me of his receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Emory at Commencement in 1995. When the University celebrated the man who broke racial barr…

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, many questions have come up about the impact of the 1918...
11/18/2020

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, many questions have come up about the impact of the 1918-20 pandemic on Emory. How did that terrible influenza more than a hundred years ago affect life on campus for students, faculty, and staff? What role did Emory's new medical school play in battling the pandemic, if any? How did Wesley Memorial Hospital (later Emory University Hospital) respond in its location in downtown Atlanta?...

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, many questions have come up about the impact of the 1918-20 pandemic on Emory. How did that terrible influenza more than a hundred ye…

John Lewis's death on July 17 marked the passing of a great American and a good friend to Emory. He was our representati...
07/20/2020

John Lewis's death on July 17 marked the passing of a great American and a good friend to Emory. He was our representative in Congress and a frequent visitor to campus, where he delivered the Commencement address in 2014 and the Oxford Commencement address in 2019. An endowed chair in the law school honors him. His leaving us prompted me to dig out the citation I wrote when he received the Emory President's Medal in 1999. [ 446 more words ]

John Lewis’s death on July 17 marked the passing of a great American and a good friend to Emory. He was our representative in Congress and a frequent visitor to campus, where he delivered the…

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