PBHA Panel Inspires Life-Long Volunteerism

At the second annual "Make Room for Service" dinner and discussion last night at the Kennedy School of Government, teachers and students gathered to discuss how to integrate public service into everyday lives.

The conference, sponsored by the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), included two Harvard professors and two students who shared their views on how public service has shaped their life.

Jason Q. Purnell '99, former PBHA vice president, gave an emotional appeal, saying, "The meaning of our lives is love, and the way to apply that love is to serve...Service is the call to live love."

The discussion was an attempt to bring the two groups, students and faculty, together to share their views on the issue. Each student in the audience was supposed to bring a guest, most of who were teaching fellows or professors. In all, several dozen people attended.

The panelists centered their presentations on their work in public service and how they found time for this work in their academic careers and their hectic everyday lives.

Panelist Jennifer Leaning, an assistant professor in the Harvard Medical School and founding member of the Physicians Board for Human Rights, talked about making time for public service.

"The difficulty in having a service life, a professional life and an academic life is that you can get distracted," Leaning said.

But Leaning said she felt that everyone should take the time to make service a part of their lives.

Speaking about the balance between the different facets of her life, she said, "They all, at the end of the day or at the end of the month, come together and begin to make sense to me."

David H. Maybury-Lewis '66, professor of anthropology and the founder of Cultural Survival--a group which helps protect indigenous peoples in Brazil--spoke about the difficulty in juggling many repsonsibilities.

"It is a constant struggle to do it all," Maybury-Lewis said. "I can never do it all."

Maybury-Lewis said selective involvement with issues was the key to not getting overly entangled. Frequently, he said, it was enough simply to advise another group working on a particular issue.

"We have found that our most important role is as what lawyers call `amicus curiae', or friend of the court," he said.

Gretchen A. Brion-Meisels '99, a past executive director of CityStep currently tutors middle school students, told the audience that she did not initially see herself in public service but changed her mind.

"In order to live with myself, I have to do work like this," she said. "I look around me and I see the places where social change needs to occur. We are here because we believe it is the right thing to be doing and not because someone tells you to do it."

Among those in attendance were Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and Mather House Master Sandra A. Naddaff'75.