NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ How does investigating the roots of crime change a
vacant lot into a community garden? Harvard public health researcher
Felton Earls will discuss his findings that change can be as simple as
"taking action, making an effort" as part of the Vanderbilt Martin
Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture Series Thursday, Jan. 22, at 4
p.m. at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development.
Earls is a professor of social medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Trained as a neurophysiologist, Earls left the lab and shifted his
focus to helping children and addressing societal problems after King’s
assassination in 1968.
During his lecture "Exposure to Violence: The Science and Some Personal
Reflections," Earls will discuss his research into the causes and
consequences of children’s exposure to community and family violence.
For the past 10 years, Earls has directed the Project on Human
Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a major interdisciplinary study
examining the physical health, educational and occupational
achievement, and social relationships of children from birth to
adulthood. The project is one of the largest and most comprehensive
studies of child and youth development and criminology ever undertaken.
The willingness of neighbors to help one another, particularly when
their actions benefit children, is the most important influence in
decreasing crime, Earls and his colleagues have found.
Former director of the National Institute of Justice Jeremy Travis is
quoted in the Jan. 6, 2004, New York Times as saying Earls’ work is
"the most important research insight of the last decade." In the same
article, Francis T. Cullen, immediate past president of the American
Society of Criminology, described Earls’ research as "perhaps the most
important research undertaking ever embarked upon in the study of the
development of criminal behavior."
Inspired by two meetings with Nelson Mandela, Earls also heads up the
Harvard South Africa Fellowship Program, which works with South
Africans denied access to advanced education due to apartheid.
Past projects have taken Earls and his wife, neurophysiologist Mary
Carlson, around the world to assess and monitor psychosocial effects of
the HIV/AIDS pandemic on children. Their collaborative work is aimed at
devising more effective community-based interventions to support
children.
Earls is a member of the Committee for Human Rights at the National
Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of the National Academies of
Science Institute of Medicine and is a fellow of the American
Association of Arts and Sciences.
Earls’ lecture will take place at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center/ MRL
Building Room 241. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center is a national center for research on
development and developmental disabilities. For more information, visit http://kc.vanderbilt.edu or contact Stephanie Comer (615) 322-8240.
Media Contact: Melanie Catania, (615) 322-7970
melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu