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Derrick Harriell, an associate professor of African American studies and English at the University of Mississippi, is the new director of the university’s African American studies program. Dr. Harriell served as director of the master of fine arts in creative writing program at the university from 2014 to 2022.
A native of Milwaukee, Dr. Harriell holds a master’s of fine arts degree in creative writing from Chicago State University. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Crista Johnson-Agbakwu, a professor of obstetrics & gynecology and population & quantitative health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, has been appointed the inaugural executive director of the medical school’s Collaborative in Health Equity. She was the founding director of the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic and director of the Office of Refugee Health in the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at Arizona State University.
Dr. Johnson-Agbakwu is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she majored in biology. She earned her medical degree at Cornell University.
Duane Watson, the Frank W. Mayborn Professor and professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has been named associate provost for faculty development for the university. He has been serving as associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion for Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development.
Professor Watson, who joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 2016 after teaching at the University of Illinois, is a graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, where he majored in psychology. He earned a Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Phylicia Rashad, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Howard University in Washington, D.C., has been named the inaugural holder of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities at the university. The chair was funded by a $3 million endowment that was part of a $40 million gift to the university in 2020 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
An accomplished actor and stage director, Rashad is perhaps best known for her role as Claire Huxtable on the long-running television hit “The Cosby Show.” Dean Rashad is a graduate of Howard University and holds honorary doctorates from more than a dozen colleges and universities.
Misty De Berry was hired as an assistant professor of performance studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University beginning in the 2023-24 academic year. Dr. De Berry is currently a senior lecturer in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College.
Dr. De Berry is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Columbia College in Chicago and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Mississippi State University received a $347,959 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for development of a hands-on, research field school for students to help preserve a historic Black cemetery near campus. The cemetery was used by the Black community in Starkville from the late 1800s to the mid-1950s, with the oldest marker dated 1882. Students will learn Geographic Information System and Ground-Penetrating Radar analysis while also delving into archival searches and oral histories within the community. The project is under the direction of Jordon Lynton Cox, an assistant professor of anthropology
Coppin State University, the historically Black educational institution in Baltimore received a $2 million grant from Truist Financial Corporation to establish the Truist Hub for Black Economic Mobility. The hub will enhance the quality of advising, programming, and technology related to educational opportunities and career pathways for Coppin students. The $2 million grant is the largest corporate commitment in Coppin’s history.
Historically Black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina received nearly $400,000 from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to enhance the Collegiate Recovery Community Program. The funding will create the Bystander and Mental Health First Aid training programs, enhance alcohol/drug-free social activities for students, and increase involvement of student groups and peer mentorship.
Saint Augustine’s University, the historically Black educational institution in Raleigh, North Carolina, received a $490,000 federal grant to fund the Public Health Education Center at the university. The Public Health Education Center will support health and wellness education, student research regarding the long-term effects of COVID-19, and related programs. Funding will also support faculty, establish smart classrooms for students, and purchase research and lab equipment.
The University of Georgia received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development for the implementation of a program entitled Higher Education Conservation Activity in the Republic of Liberia in Africa. The program aims to strengthen forest management and conservation in Liberia through education, training, and technical assistance.
Historically Black Morgan State University in Baltimore was awarded a $420,000 grant by the Army Research Office to conduct pioneering, interdisciplinary research integrating mathematics with computational science, mechanical engineering, and medical research in the study of respiratory conditions and other lung diseases. Using high-performance computing, including mathematical equations, and lung geometry, researchers in the School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences will pursue simulations of respiratory mechanics that can replicate the condition of lungs, and provide knowledge about respiratory patterns and rates that lead to pulmonary fibrosis, as well as asthmatic, chronic breathing conditions.
Joshua Quinn Tucker was appointed the inaugural assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
Dr. Tucker earned dual bachelor’s degrees in political science and business administration at the University of Mississippi in 2017. He earned a juris doctorate from the university’s law school in 2020 and then earned a doctorate from the School of Education in 2022.
Lita Little Giddins was appointed associate vice president in the Office of Belonging at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Prior to this appointment, Little Giddins worked as the coordinator of diversity, collaboration, and inclusion in the College of Family, Home, and Social Science at the university.
Little Giddins holds a bachelor’s degree in sociocultural anthropology and a master of social work degree from Brigham Young University.
Steven Kniffley Jr., an expert on the treatment of race-based stress and trauma, has been named senior associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, effective May 8. Dr. Kniffley currently serves as chief diversity officer at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, where he is an associate professor in its School of Professional Psychology.
Dr. Kniffley is a graduate of the University of Louisville, where he majored in psychology. He holds a master of public administration degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a master’s degree and a doctorate in psychology from Spaulding University.
Alicia Richardson has been named the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging officer at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. Previously, Richardson had a 13-year career with SUNY Schenectady County Community College, for which she has been serving as interim chief diversity officer since September 2021.
Richardson is a graduate of the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she majored in English language and literature. She holds a master’s degree in Africana studies from the University at Albany of the State University of New York System.
Bob Dylan. Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CCO 2.0.
This week, the Review is publishing a series of short reflections on love songs, broadly defined.
Someone once accused me of being unrealistic about love’s aftermath. This was in the middle of an interminable argument, one in a long series of interminable arguments. I am not really someone prone to interminable arguments, which probably should have told me something about this person and myself sooner than it did, but at the time I was experiencing a new experience and not every aspect of it was entirely unpleasant. What he said was something like this: “You think there are never any consequences! You think you can go around hurting people, and that everyone you hurt will still want to be in the same room as you, having a drink!” I thought about this for a second. It wasn’t true but it wasn’t not true either. Then I said something stupid, which was, “Do you know the Bob Dylan song ‘Mississippi’?”
Is “Mississippi” a love song? Yes and no. I think it is among the most romantic songs ever written and also among the most ambiguous, which are not disconnected qualities. It is not even clearly about a romantic relationship—some people hear it as a sociopolitical song about the state of America, which isn’t wrong. It might be about a guy who has literally stayed in Mississippi a day too long. Yet it contains, I think, every important kernel of wisdom about love and the loss of it; it hits every note that matters. Is that too much to believe about a single song? “Mississippi”—and I am talking about the Love and Theft version, the heart likes what it likes—is about the love that outlasts love. I think often of the line: “I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me.” And I think, Yes, that’s how I feel! This is true!
Of course, it isn’t true. It isn’t any more true for me than it is for anyone who harbors their own bitternesses toward me. I have plenty of things besides affection—wells of pain, streaks of anger, pain and anger about things so long past you would think they would have disappeared rather than calcified. And yet when I hear that line I think about everyone I have ever loved and everyone who has ever loved me—I think of us on a boat together, maybe drinking martinis. But it’s almost like we are ghosts, like the dead children in the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia, because I know this is a wild, impossible fantasy of the past and the present colliding. Still, it’s beautiful and in its own way even comforting.
But then there is the sadder part of this song, which I can’t ignore. There are those heartbreaking lines, “I know you’re sorry / I’m sorry too”—and who isn’t sorry too? Then: “Last night I knew you / tonight I don’t.” Dylan sings those lines in a kind of mournful howl that in certain moods can bring tears to my eyes. After all, more often than not, we become strangers to each other. These lines are truer, probably, than my fantasy of undying affection, though they coexist with it; these things are not mutually exclusive but in fact inextricable. The magic of the song is its ability to contain all of this.
“Mississippi” is a song about longing—overlapping and conflicting kinds of longing. So I suppose what I was asking when I asked this person if they knew the song “Mississippi” was: Do you not understand that I can want everything all at once, even things that contradict each other? Do you not understand that these conflicts and tensions are at the heart of romantic love? And do you not believe, as I do, that love’s shadow extends long past these bitter arguments, and that is what makes it worthwhile and also why it is making us suffer? But I didn’t say those things; instead, I found myself talking about a song. The argument ended in exhaustion, and not too long afterward, we parted ways for good. But what is for good? The past is ticker tape running underneath the present. There are those other perfect lines from the song: “I was thinking about the things that Rosie said / I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed.”
Sophie Haigney is the web editor of The Paris Review.
Misha G. Cornelius was appointed director of public relations in the Office of University Communications at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Cornelius has been a member of Howard University’s public relations team for over four years, serving in roles of increasing responsibility since 2018, most recently serving as the interim director of public relations.
Cornelius earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from San Francisco State University. She is currently a doctoral student in political science at Howard University.
Zac Selmon was appointed director of athletics at Mississippi State University. He was the deputy athletics director for external engagement and advancement at the University of Oklahoma. Earlier he was senior associate athletics director for administration and development at the University of Oklahoma.
Selmon was a four-year starter at tight end for the football team at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was a dean’s list scholar graduating in 2007 with a degree in religion and international studies. He holds a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in intercollegiate athletics administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Anne Edwards was named director of the Black Cultural Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She was director of the Center for Black Studies at Northern Illinois University. Previously, she served for six years in the Office of Career Services at Northern Illinois University.
Dr. Edwards holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in hospitality management from Purdue University. She earned an MBA at Valparaiso University in Indiana and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Northern Illinois University.
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