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Fund and Lectureship Honor Poussaint
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Fund and Lectureship Honor Poussaint
On Feb. 12, Bill Cosby, James Taylor, hundreds of former and current students, and others gathered at the Westin Copley Place Hotel to celebrate Alvin Poussaint, faculty associate dean for student affairs and professor of psychiatry at HMS.
From left, Caroline Smedvig Taylor, James Taylor, Alvin Poussaint, and Tina Young Poussaint attend the dinner that followed the inaugural Alvin F. Poussaint lectureship honoring Poussaint's contributions to HMS. (Photo © Jeff Thiebauth 2005)
The crowd first came for the inaugural lectureship named for Poussaint at HMS and later to a dinner in his honor at the Westin. At the tribute dinner, a parade of former students and current luminaries offered testimonials to Poussaint’s support and leadership.
Poussaint was hired to head the new Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs during the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. More than 35 years later, HMS is one of the most diverse major medical schools in the country, and the affirmative action program Poussaint helped found now offers tutoring and mentoring programs, prep courses for the national boards, and community service programs in which all students can take part.
In addition to his work for HMS, Poussaint has consulted for television, most prominently The Cosby Show; written books on black parenting and mental health; and written columns for Ebony, one of them a groundbreaking article on homosexuality and the black community.
Addressing Poussaint, current student Risha Irby said, “The greatest feat is not only that a rainbow of colors now exists within Harvard Medical School, but that you have fostered a spirit of cultural respect and understanding that has made us all one step closer to Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.”
The annual Alvin F. Poussaint lecture fund is intended to bring underrepresented minority alumni back to HMS to speak. Joseph Hurd Jr., president of the Harvard Medical Alumni Association, said that the fund and lectureship “will be an opportunity for students of all races in succeeding generations to study the impact that a dedicated physician, in the largest sense, can have on the world.”
—Rebecca Tinkelman