Following a busy recruitment season for Dean Ascher and his colleagues, we look forward to welcoming 11 outstanding new faculty members in the departments of government, economics, literature, modern languages, philosophy, religious studies, and Joint Science. You will learn more about their accomplishments and interests in coming issues of CMC, and a summary of their backgrounds is featured in CMC online.

Especially illustrative of the teacher-scholar ideal to which we strive are three distinguished new chaired professors arriving in Claremont this year. Although from vastly different fields of study, they share a common bond of academic excellence and passion for teaching.

The new Otho M. Behr Chair in European Intellectual and Cultural History has been awarded to Gary Hamburg. Endowed by John V. Croul '49 in memory of his late father-in-law, the Behr Chair synthesizes separate yet complementary fields of study, including history, literature, religion, and culture, to enrich the overall educational experience.

A prominent expert in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Professor Hamburg is a graduate of Stanford University, where he was a Sloan Scholar, and has studied in Leningrad and Moscow. He is the author of several books, more than 50 reviews and essays, and has contributed to more than 20 scholarly works. He joins the College from the University of Notre Dame, where he received the Kaneb Teaching Award in recognition of excellence—particularly noteworthy from an institution for which the teaching excellence of its faculty is paramount.

The structure of the new Behr Chair encourages a synthesis of traditional Western intellectual history with an interest in the contradictions and moments of contact between a number of related areas. The history of Russia, for example, may be viewed through multiple prisms including Islam, Christianity, literature, and the intellectual history of women and feminism. This cutting-edge model of academic connectivity is a hallmark of the nations' very top liberal arts colleges, and complements the vision of the first chair endowed by Jack Croul at CMC, the John V. Croul Chair of European History.

Adding further heft to the College's strong international reputation in the leadership field is the new Kravis Research Chair in Leadership Studies, endowed by CMC Trustee Henry R. Kravis '67. Jay Conger, a renowned scholar of leadership studies and organizational behavior, is the inaugural Kravis Professor and will join the College next spring. Past chairman and executive director of The Leadership Institute at USC's Marshall School of Business, Professor Conger serves as professor of organizational behavior at the London Business School, and senior research scientist at USC's Center for Effective Organizations. He received a doctorate in business administration from Harvard University, an MBA from the University of Virginia, and was a Rufus Choate Scholar at Dartmouth College during his undergraduate years. Professor Conger is the author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly articles and 10 books, including Shared Leadership: Reframing the How's and Why's of Leading Others, Corporate Boards: New Strategies for Adding Value at the Top, and The Leader's Change Handbook.

In its 40th anniversary year, the Joint Science department welcomes a new chaired professor, John G. Milton, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in Computational Neuroscience. Dr. Milton, a 15-year member of the University of Chicago neurology faculty, holds medical and doctorate degrees from McGill University, and his clinical interests focus on the treatment and management of patients with medically intractable epilepsy. In addition, he is involved in the development of treatment strategies to improve the quality of life of mentally challenged individuals who have epilepsy, and their caregivers.

The position in computational neuroscience at The Claremont Colleges grew out of a developing intercollegiate neuroscience program that involves undergraduate students and faculty in departments of biology, psychology, philosophy, and engineering. The Kenan Chair was established in 1977 by a gift from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust to the Claremont University Consortium to benefit all undergraduate Claremont Colleges. Born in 1872 in Wilmington, N.C., Kenan was an internationally recognized scientist and philanthropist. He noted in his autobiography that he was shaped by the great professors who taught him, and sought as his goal the enrichment of future generations by assisting colleges and universities in attracting the finest faculty. A century later, that goal is still shared.

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Pamela Brooks Gann, President