79 JFK AND BEYOND

Newsmakers

Nasreen Sideek-Barwari MPA 1999 was recently named minister of public works in Iraq’s new government.

MPP 2004 Brooke Ellison’s life story, chronicled in Miracles Happen: One Mother, One Daughter, One Journey, in which she describes her experience as the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard, will be the subject of an A&E cable TV movie directed by Christopher Reeve.

Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has been named co-director of the school’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government and co-faculty director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. Glaeser, who assumed his new posts on July 1, will partner with Alan Altshuler, who has served as director of the Taubman Center since its founding in 1988, and faculty director of the Rappaport Institute since its founding in 2000.

Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Whitman College in Washington. He also served as Whitman’s commencement speaker.

Christopher Jencks, professor of social policy, was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Robert Putnam, professor of public policy and director of the Saguaro Seminar, was awarded the honor of Commendatore in the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity for 2004, by the president of Italy, and was invited to be an editorial board member for American Sociological Review.