Emerging Leadership
Meleia Willis-Starbuck '07
A sociology and African and African American studies double major,
Willis-Starbuck had a profound concern for others' needs and for social justice
at Dartmouth, in her home community, and throughout the world. As a high school
sophomore, she traveled to Cuba to study its health care and education systems,
and to deliver donated medicine, books, and clothes. Willis-Starbuck also
traveled to Vietnam, where she cultivated strong beliefs regarding the need for
tolerance and diversity. In high school, she volunteered at a meal program for
the homeless and worked at Berkeley Youth Alternatives, where she led a
nutrition class for low income youth.
Willis-Starbuck died on July 17, 2005, at age 19 in her hometown of
Berkeley, California. She was the victim of a shooting near a dormitory at the
University of California at Berkeley. Willis-Starbuck was spending the summer
volunteering at Berkeley's Women's Daytime Drop-in Center (WDDC) through the
Dartmouth Partners in Community Service (DPCS) program.
Willis-Starbuck sought to establish a long-term relationship between
Dartmouth and WDDC. In her DPCS application, she discussed the acute domestic
need for aid. "Students frequently travel abroad to do volunteer work.
However, it is important to remember that there are so many people that are in
need of basic resources in our own communities," she wrote.
In response to the news of her death, President James Wright said, "In
just two years at Dartmouth, Meleia had already contributed so much to making
the world a better place." She had found her niche at Dartmouth as a
leader in the Afro-American Society, a mentor in the Dartmouth Alliance for
Children of Color, and a member of the Dartmouth Greens.
Ongoing Commitment
Matthew Wilson '83
Matthew Wilson '83 got his start in politics as a Tucker Fellow in 1981.
Through the program, Wilson interned at the Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy. He is now the National Field Director of Grassroots Campaigns, Inc.
(GCI), a political consulting firm that provides field operations for
progressive causes, political candidates, public interest campaigns, and
non-profit organizations.
Wilson became the Director of the Toxics Action Center in 1989, an
organization that assists communities facing pollution and public health
issues. Under his leadership, the group helped more than 500 neighborhoods
oppose hazardous waste sites, landfill proposals, toxic emissions, and
unnecessary spraying of pesticides. Wilson cites Martin Luther King, Jr. as an
inspiration and model in guiding his own work to improve the quality of life
for Americans.
Ongoing Commitment
Thokozani Xaba '89
Thokozani Xaba has dedicated his life and research to redeveloping South
Africa through institution building and capacity development. Since the first
non-racial elections were held in 1994, the major challenge for the government
of South Africa has been rebuilding infrastructure and extending it to
rural areas.
Xaba, acting head of the School of Social Work and Community Development at
the University of KwaZulu-Natal, recently completed a project aimed at making
the rural government structure more representative. Using studies from the
multi-country Traditional Authority Applied Research Network, Xaba and
colleagues worked to transform Traditional Authorities-the traditional rural
government structure dominated by older men appointed by the traditional
leader-into Traditional Councils, constituted of elected and appointed
community members. Thirty percent of the members of the new Traditional
Councils will be women.
Xaba also works to establish the causes, nature, and effect of conflict and
violence between rural communities with the goal of creating lasting solutions
through reconciliation.
Xaba is co-founder and director of McIntosh, Xaba, and Associates (MXA), a
company that works on development projects including local economic
development, the restructuring of local government, environmental design and
management, and tourism.
A government and sociology major at Dartmouth, Xaba holds a Ph.D. in
sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests
include power and authority in rural development, youth politics, migration,
unemployment stemming from HIV/AIDS, and community development.
The Lester B. Granger '18 Award for Lifetime Achievement
Nick Kotz '55
As a reporter for the Des Moines Register, Nick Kotz won the 1968 Pulitzer
Prize for his national reporting on the conditions in meat packing plants. The
articles, including the disclosure of a 1962 government report, led to the
passage of the Federal Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 and the Meat Safety
Inspection Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson. Kotz has won many other
journalism awards during his time as a reporter for the Washington Post and as
a freelance writer, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award (1966) for stories on
political patronage in a War on Poverty program.
Kotz has written five books on politics, social justice, and the civil
rights movement. His Wild Blue Yonder: Money, Politics, and the B-1 Bomber
(1989), about the military-industrial complex in the purchase of multibillion
dollar weapons systems, won the Olive Branch Award for outstanding work on
issues of war and peace. His latest book, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America (2005), is a
definitive account of the relationship between these two American leaders
during the Civil Rights movement. The book has already won the Iowa Book
Award. Kotz's other books include Let Them Eat Promises: the Politics of Hunger
in America (1969); The Unions (1972), coauthored with Pulitzer Prize-winner
Haynes Johnson; and A Passion For Equality: George Wiley and the Movement
(1977) on the social reformer George Alvin Wiley, coauthored with his wife,
Mary Lynn Kotz.
Kotz is a distinguished adjunct professor at the American University School
of Communications, where he was honored with an award for outstanding
teaching. Graduating magna cum laude from Dartmouth, Kotz did his
graduate study in international relations at the London School of Economics,
and later served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.
The Lester B. Granger '18 Award for Lifetime Achievement
Grace Paley '98H
Writer Grace Paley is active in antiwar, feminist and antinuclear movements.
During the 1960s and 70s, she was secretary of the Greenwich Village Peace
Center and traveled to Hanoi and Moscow as a member of peace delegations. In
1978, she was arrested as one of "The White House Eleven" for
unfurling an antinuclear banner on the White House lawn and has been arrested
on subsequent occasions for nonviolent civil disobedience. She has
described herself as a "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative
anarchist."
Paley was born in the Bronx to Ukrainian emigrant parents. Her first
collection, The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), features stories of New York
life and introduces a semi-autobiographical character who appears in her later
collections, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day
(1985). All three books were gathered in Collected Stories (1994), which was
nominated for a National Book Award. Paley has taught at Sarah Lawrence
College, Columbia and Syracuse Universities, and the City College of New
York.
She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction (1961), the
Edith Wharton Award (1983), the Rea Award for the Short Story (1993), and the
Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1993). Elected to the
National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1989, she was later made the first
official New York State Writer.
In selecting Paley for the 1993 Rea Award, jurors said, "Grace Paley is
a pure short story writer, a natural to the form in the way that rarely gifted
athletes are said to be naturals." Paley received an honorary degree from
Dartmouth in 1998, was in residence as a Montgomery Fellow in 2005, along with
her husband, the writer Robert Nichols, and was a Brownstone Visiting Professor
of Jewish Studies in 2000. Vermont's fifth Poet Laureate, she is a resident of
Thetford, Vt. and a familiar figure in the Upper Valley.
Student Groups
Darfur Action Group
The Darfur Action Group (DAG) was founded to educate the community about the
ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. DAG has been active in
fundraising for the Genocide Intervention Fund and has urged students to get
involved on political and economic fronts. Members of the group, led by Anne
Bellows '06, Janet Smith '08, Niral Shah '08, and Kelsey Noonan '08, have
worked closely with Amnesty International to circulate petitions and write
letters to the U.S. government in support of stronger action on the genocide.
Hoping to counter economic support for the genocide and the moral complicity of
American investors in that support, they have assisted the state of Vermont in
its efforts to divest state pension funds from corporations active in
Sudan.
The Dartmouth Board of Trustees at its November meeting, based on
recommendations by DAG, the board's Investment Committee, and the College's
Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, voted to direct the College's
Investment Office to avoid investments in six companies -in which the College
does not currently hold stock-deemed to be directly complicit in genocide in
Darfur. DAG hopes that the success of the campaign at Dartmouth will compel
other institutions to re-evaluate their own investment policies, thereby
pressuring Sudanese governments to take action against the genocide.
Engineers Without Borders
Dartmouth's student chapter of the national organization Engineers Without
Borders (D-EWB) is one of only 26 student chapters in the United States. In
2003, a group of engineering students led by Tico Blumenthal '02 established
the chapter to integrate their service learning into the engineering curriculum
and to apply engineering skills to problems in the developing world.
The most recent project completed by D-EWB took place in Nyamilu in the
Migori district of Kenya this past summer. The community of Nyamilu relies on
rain water and water collected from streams for drinking, cooking, and washing.
Outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and
diarrhea are common there. In response to the need for clean drinking water and
water for small-scale agricultural irrigation, D-EWB designed and installed a
machine-dug well and installed a solar pump that will draw water from deep in
the well.
D-EWB was recently approached by an engineer in Ascutney, Vt. to help on a
project organized by the Urban Institute to design a water system in
Tajikistan. Comprised of non-engineering and engineering students and both
undergraduate and graduate students, D-EWB is focused on improving water
systems throughout the world-an issue that doctors believe is critical to
global health efforts.
Outdoor Leadership Experience
The Tucker Foundation's Outdoor Leadership Experience (OLE) is a mentoring
program for regional youths that teaches self-reliance, teamwork and respect
through outdoor challenges. Piloted by Rachel Goldwasser '01 and Camilla
Campbell '01 in West Lebanon, NH at the Lebanon Housing Authority in 1999, OLE
moved to the Indian River Middle School in Canaan, NH in 2001 and expanded to
Mascoma High School this year.
By teaching outdoor skills in a safe space, OLE seeks to build self-esteem,
foster group dynamics, and develop leadership skills. Over 100 Dartmouth
students are involved in OLE, where they share outstanding qualities in
creativity, outdoor experience, and education, teach hiking, cross country
skiing, canoeing, fire building, shelter building, and outdoor cooking. Last
year Dartmouth students led hiking trips on Gile Mountain, skating on Occom
Pond, and trips to the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vt.
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