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People

President Simmons has appointed Marisa A. Quinn, currently director of community and government relations, to serve as assistant to the President beginning Aug. 1.

Quinn succeeds David A. Greene, who is now serving as interim vice president for campus life and student services. She will continue to be closely involved with community and government relations until a successor is named.

“I am delighted to have Marisa Quinn joining our senior leadership team in this important position,” Simmons said. “Marisa brings to my office her skills and strengths in communications, project management and external relations. Additionally, her experience in Washington and locally will be particularly helpful in our work as Brown continues to develop and improve its partnerships with the City of Providence and the State of Rhode Island.”

As assistant to the President, Quinn will have primary responsibility for assisting the President in managing the daily demands of the office. She will work closely with the President and other senior officers to implement University goals and objectives and to provide timely and effective communications on behalf of the President’s Office.

Awards and Honors

The Program in Creative Writing and the Watson Institute for International Studies have announced the selection of the Iranian novelist Shahrnush Parsipur as the recipient of the first International Writers Project Fellowship for academic year 2003-04.

The fellowship, funded by a grant from the William H. Donner Foundation, provides support for established creative writers – fiction writers, playwrights and poets – who find it difficult to practice free expression in their home countries. The fellowship will be accompanied by a series of lectures, readings and other events that will highlight the national artistic and political culture of the writer and address the global issues of human rights and free expression. The new program will be launched at Brown in mid-September with an international freedom-of-expression symposium and literary festival.

Parsipur published her first novel, “The Dog and the Long Winter,” in 1974. While working as a producer for Iranian National Television and Radio, she resigned from her position in protest of the execution of two poets by the shah’s regime. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested by the shah's intelligence agency, SAVAK, and imprisoned. A year after her release, she traveled to France, where she completed her second book, “The Simple and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree” (1977), an erotic novel that continues the story of a character in “The Dog and the Long Winter.”

Following the 1979 revolution, Parsipur returned to Iran. She was soon arrested by the Islamic Republic and, although never officially charged with a crime, remained in prison for four years and seven months – an experience she has written about in her “Prison Memoirs.” While in prison, Parsipur wrote the first part of “Touba and the Meaning of Night.” Published in Iran in 1989, the novel became a national bestseller. She later endured further arrests and detainments for discussing virginity on three occasions in her book “Women Without Men,” published in Iran in 1989. The first English-language edition of this book will be published in 2004 by the Feminist Press.

Parsipur fled Iran and now lives in the United States as a political refugee. She has published eight books of fiction, as well as “Prison Memoirs.” All of her works are banned in Iran.

Joseph V. Penn, M.D., was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC). Penn will represent the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), of which he is a member. The NCCHC mission is to improve the quality of health care in jails, prisons and juvenile confinement facilities, achieved through the support of major national organizations representing the fields of health, law and corrections. The AACAP is a supporting organization of the NCCHC.

In his new role, Penn will serve on the Committee on Juvenile Health and the Juvenile Standards Revision Task Force. The committee is charged with revising the NCCHC’s juvenile health standards, the minimum requirements for health services in juvenile detention and confinement facilities nationwide.

Penn is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior. He is director of child and adolescent forensic psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and serves as director of psychiatric services at the Rhode Island Training School.

Off the Shelf

Martin B. Keller, M.D., wrote the review, “Past, Present and Future Directions for Defining Optimal Treatment Outcome in Depression,” published in the June 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The issue was devoted to the topic of depression.

Keller analyzed and discussed research evidence that shows remission is the optimal outcome of treatment for depression. He also discussed impending directions in defining remission, concluding that future criteria include not only measures of symptom improvement and psychosocial functioning but assessments developed from neuro-imaging studies and genetic research.

Keller is the Mary E. Zucker professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. He is also executive psychiatrist in chief at the seven Brown-affiliated hospitals.

Roger W. Cobb, professor of political science, is co-author of “The Plane Truth.” The book, co-written with David Primo, assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester, examines the effect of plane crashes on airline transportation policy.

Plane crashes have a tremendous impact on public perceptions of air safety in the United States, yet flying remains an 20th century, but nearly three times as many people lose their lives in automobile accidents every year.

Studying the airline crashes of the 1990s, the authors reveal how particular features of an accident correspond to the level of media attention it receives. Three accidents are considered in detail: USAir flight 427 of September 1994, ValuJet flight 592 of May 1996, and TWA flight 800 of July 1996. Cobb and Primo show how airline disasters affect subsequent actions by the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, and others. The authors then discuss how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks turned attention away from safety and toward security.

Cobb and Primo make several policy recommendations, calling on lawmakers and regulators to avoid reactive regulation and focus instead on systemic problems in airline safety, like the antiquated air traffic control system. Concerned that aviation security is eclipsing aviation safety in the wake of Sept. 11, they encourage federal agencies to strike a better balance between the two. Finally, in order to address the FAA’s poor track record in balancing airline safety regulation with its other duties, they recommend the creation of a new federal agency that is solely responsible for aviation safety.

The book is published by Brookings Institution Press.