2006-2007
Professor Douglas M. Haynes
Department of History
The path that brought me to UCI is similar to others. My curiosity about the past was encouraged by my parents. Their accounts of growing up in Redding, California and Longview, Texas opened doors to distant times and places and spurred questions about causality and chronology. The migration of my father from Longview after World War II to Chico followed other African Americans who sought a better life in California. The path of my father through San Diego crossed with the birthplace of my maternal grandfather, Guadelupe Martinez Carrillo. In retrospect, a trip to Spain as a teenager with my family was a turning point. Although it required a year or more of saving, it was worth it. Learning about the connections between Spain and Mexico opened a new horizon of history: Europe. Feeding my interest in the past, my school teachers in San Francisco and professors at Pomona College broadened and deepened my appreciation of the connections between people and places and power and politics. Study at Oxford University during my senior year of college accelerated a process that continues to this day: critically interrogating the past to understand the varied dimensions of human society. After Pomona College I pursued a doctoral degree at UC Berkeley in modern European History. Here I developed research interests that focused on the relationship of modern medicine to structures and fault-lines of power. Since joining the faculty in the Department of History, I have published widely on British medicine and imperialism and have recently expanded the scope of my research to examine the relationship of sexual and racial politics in the development of the profession of medicine in the United States.
Senate Award Statement - The Meaning of Service
At first sight, the meaning of service is sufficiently transparent as not to warrant too much attention. When faculty refer to the structure of labor and reward, service is included in the triumvirate along with research and teaching. But, repetition is not a substitute for understanding. As a graduate student, I do recall research seminars, teaching assistant training sessions, and job search workshops, but next to nothing about service. The unspoken message of the recruitment process was blunt: scholars are hired to teach but promoted on the basis of quantity and quality of research. All faculty, whether they are newly appointed or above scale, are aware of the advice of well meaning colleagues about the perils of service to one’s prospects for promotion. Service, as such, is referred to as needed though uncompensated labor on campus and university communities, in professional associations, and for the wider community.
In truth, service means much more than this narrow definition. Working together for a common purpose can be transformative. It connects us as individuals and enriches our appreciation of the welfare and value of all the constituencies that make up our campus community. As a land grant university, these relationships are important in grounding the decisions that we make as educators, scholars and researchers, and performers in terms of the challenge and promise of the state of California. Service--together with research and teaching--enables us to respond to disparities that impair educational achievement, health status and economic productivity while harnessing new technologies, modes of thought and creative processes to make an even more prosperous and just society. In accepting this award, I therefore regard it as recognition for the labors of my colleagues as much as my own in advancing excellence through diversity while building a culture of inclusion at UCI.
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