Using the bully pulpit
Joseph B. Martin has kept a journal since 1978. Some of the resultant leather-bound books hold minutiae — from records of lunch meetings to calls, musings, and spontaneous ideas. But other logbooks, deeply private, were never shared, so when he decided to write a memoir, he turned to the volumes in which he’d documented his life. His book “Alfalfa to Ivy: Memoir of a Harvard Medical School Dean” “began as a family memoir,” said Martin, former dean of Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor of Neurobiology. “My family … emigrated from Switzerland to Pennsylvania to Canada, but my parents never took Canadian citizenship,” he said. “So I was born a dual citizen, which was very convenient to move back and forth across the border. I call myself an American with Canadian roots.” “But as I kept writing, I started to develop thoughts about academic leadership —...
