Sociologist Named to Chaired Professorship at Smith

Myron P. Glazer, professor of sociology and a member of the Smith College faculty since 1965, has been named the first Barbara Richmond Professor in the Social Sciences. The appointment, which takes effect July 1, was announced by the college's board of trustees at its spring meeting.

The professorship reflects a generous gift to the college by the late Barbara Richmond, an alumna and lifelong resident of nearby Easthampton whom friends remember as quietly philanthropic and a longtime supporter of education. During her lifetime, Richmond not only gave generously to Smith but also financed the education of about a dozen people worldwide.

Richmond's $2.8 million bequest, among the largest in the college's history, will also make possible an endowed chair in the humanities.

Glazer, who is also director of the Project on Women and Social Change at Smith and a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Massachusetts, has written extensively on the sociology of activism, environmental protest, and ethics in research and business. He is co-author with his wife, Penina Migdal Glazer, a professor of history at Hampshire College, of the acclaimed 1989 book "The Whistleblowers: Exposing Corruption in Government and Industry." The couple's latest book is "The Environmental Crusaders: Confronting Disaster and Mobilizing Community," an exploration of the personalities and social makeup of "citizen crusaders" in the United States, Israel and Czechoslovakia who risk personal harm and ostracism to speak out against threats to the environment and to their communities.

Richmond, who died in 1995, was a descendent of one of the Northampton area's oldest families. After graduating from the Northampton School for Girls, now the Williston Northampton School, she came to Smith and majored in history, graduating in 1940. She later served as an American Red Cross volunteer in Hawaii during World War II.

May 12, 1999