{"id":841013,"date":"2026-09-08T21:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T21:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/841013\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T21:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T21:24:11","slug":"environmentalist-photographer-kicks-off-a-d-white-professors-at-large-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/841013\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalist photographer kicks off A.D. White Professors-at-Large series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Environmentalist photographer James Balog will launch a series of visits this fall from the A.D. White Professors-at-Large<\/a> program, with a lecture about his work documenting the rapid retreat of glaciers around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Named for Cornell\u2019s first president, the program sponsors visits from scholars and public intellectuals in the life sciences, physical sciences, humanities, social sciences and the arts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other A.D. White Professors-at-Large visits this semester:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dawn Upshaw (arts): Oct. 19-23;\u00a0Palagummi Sainath (social sciences): Nov. 2-6;\u00a0Ellen Rothenberg (life sciences): Nov. 16-20; and\u00a0Kotchakorn Voraakohm (social sciences): Nov. 23-24.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Balog<\/a>, an A.D. White Professor whose appointment ended in spring 2026, is the first to return to campus, Sept. 16-17, as part of a new component of the program, which welcomes former A.D. White professors back to Cornell to further connect with the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Balog\u2019s lecture, \u201cChasing Ice on a Changing Planet,\u201d<\/a> is scheduled for Sept. 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall\u2019s Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium. He\u2019ll discuss the Extreme Ice Survey, a project he started in 2007 that deployed time-lapse cameras to capture the effects of climate change on glaciers around the world. To date, the survey is the largest of its kind. The lecture will be livestreamed.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

His talk marks the opening of the Cornell University Library exhibition \u201cRivers of Ice: Three Centuries of Glacial Science,\u201d<\/a> which features Balog\u2019s images as well as books, maps and other visual materials related to the study of glaciers and the Earth\u2019s shifting climate, drawn from the library\u2019s Rare and Manuscripts Collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Upshaw<\/a>, a soprano who has won five Grammy Awards and sings opera, art song and contemporary music, will speak at \u201cAn Evening with Dawn Upshaw,\u201d Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Barnes Hall. Cornell students will perform at the event; admission is free.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first vocalist to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, in 2007, Upshaw specializes in the music of Mozart, as well as Stravinsky, Poulenc and Messiaen. She also has championed contemporary works and American vernacular traditions. Upshaw is a professor in the practice of music at Yale University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In November, the program will welcome three PALs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sainath<\/a> is an investigative journalist, educator, photographer and public advocate based in Mumbai, India. His work foregrounds the rural experience of people in India and interrogates the urban and elite biases embedded in dominant media narratives. Sainath founded the People\u2019s Archive of Rural India, an independent multimedia platform that integrates journalism, archival documentation, photography, oral history and translation focusing on rural India.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rothenberg<\/a> is a molecular immunologist whose research explains how blood stem cells develop into T-cells in the immune system. Her research reveals how networks of genes, regulatory proteins and cellular signals work together, often at the level of individual cells, to guide critical developmental decisions that shape immune function. Her research has provided a unifying framework for understanding how cells make stable developmental choices within complex biological systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voraakohm<\/a> is a landscape architect who uses urban design as a tool to restore ecological function, empower communities and create equitable, climate-resilient cities. Her signature \u201cporous city\u201d approach in Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park integrates a constructed wetland, rain garden and million-gallon retention system to provide public green space while mitigating seasonal flooding in some of Bangkok\u2019s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Her work illustrates how thoughtful landscape design can deliver both ecological resilience and social benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voraakohm is one of six new professors-at-large with 2026-32 terms. The others:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jeff Chang<\/a> (social sciences), an American journalist and music critic, writes about hip-hop\u2019s cultural and political evolution. His book, \u201cCan\u2019t Stop Won\u2019t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation,\u201d won the American Book Award in 2005. In 2008, he gave the keynote address for the Cornell Hip Hop Collection<\/a> opening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Greg Graffin,<\/a> Ph.D. \u201903, (humanities, life sciences) co-founded the punk band Bad Religion in 1980, and champions free thinking and challenging norms. He has lectured on ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell<\/a> and has written several books that examine the intersections of scientific reasoning, religious belief, artistic expression and identity. He combines evolutionary research with interdisciplinary inquiry and public outreach through music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Agricultural ecologist David Lobell<\/a> (life sciences) has done pioneering work that has shaped our understanding of how climate change impacts crop production and global food security. He is the Benjamin M. Page Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science and directs the Center on Food Security and the Environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Somini Sengupta<\/a> (social sciences) has been the New York Times\u2019 international climate correspondent for more than 30 years. She writes about climate change, human migration and political conflict, with storytelling focused on people impacted by these forces. In 2023, she won the National Press Club Award for newsletter journalism for her \u201cClimate Forward\u201d series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Historian and theorist Dorceta Taylor<\/a> (social sciences) focuses on justice\u2011centered environmental research. Her scholarship reconceptualizes environmentalism as a power-saturated social formation shaped by race, class, gender and privilege. She integrates academic analysis with community-based mobilization, illuminating the lived realities of marginalized communities. She is the Wangari Maathai Professor of Environmental Justice at Yale University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twice during their six-year terms, A.D. White Professors-at-Large visit campus for about a week while classes are in session to interact with students and faculty to enliven the intellectual and cultural life of the campus and community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previous A.D. White Professors-at-Large include Pulitzer-Prize winner Toni Morrison, M.A. \u201955; Nobel laureate and geneticist Barbara McClintock, B.S. \u201923, M.A. \u201925, Ph.D. \u201927; primatologist Jane Goodall; writer and actor John Cleese; and jazz musician and educator Wynton Marsalis.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Environmentalist photographer James Balog will launch a series of visits this fall from the A.D. White Professors-at-Large program,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-841013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}