|
|
|
|
|
|
|
David Ho
AIDS Research Pioneer
David Ho: I think genuine scientific disagreement is healthy. That's how we move science forward. And, yes there are certain people who would disagree with me about how, say, the lymphocytes are specifically destroyed by HIV, so the mechanistic issues. It's a very controversial area. I have my views and others don't agree with those views, but each one of us are involved with experiments trying to prove our case or in fact sometimes disproving ourselves. So, that is good and that is what science should be.
View Interview with David Ho
View Biography of David Ho
View Profile of David Ho
View Photo Gallery of David Ho
|
|
|
David Ho
AIDS Research Pioneer
David Ho: You have to go with your beliefs. One can't be hypocritical about it. And, I think I wanted to send a strong message to the Journal that it's much more complicated than what we have discussed so far. I mean, if the Journal had a particular view, the best approach is to talk to the people involved, to have a dialogue with the U.S. scientists, with the African scientists and with the subjects that are enrolling and get a true understanding at the grass root level, rather than pontificate from the ivory tower of Harvard University or, you know, the New England Journal. I think that kind of approach is not appropriate.
View Interview with David Ho
View Biography of David Ho
View Profile of David Ho
View Photo Gallery of David Ho
|
|
|
Susan Hockfield
President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
College was fine, but it was really in graduate school that I found my life's work. And I found my life's work -- I discovered how to push myself beyond the limits that I thought I had, I learned new ways of relating to people, I learned new ways of learning. It really was probably the most formative period of my life, very important, and I value it highly. When I was at Yale University as a professor, another extraordinary privilege, the graduate students --many graduate students -- weren't having that kind of sense of this being the most important part of their education. And I worried, because golly, I didn't enjoy the privilege of going to a graduate school like Yale! It's a spectacular educational environment. And it made me very sad that we weren't utilizing the potential of the Yale graduate experience, and the students weren't feeling the kind of acceleration and exhilaration that I had. And when the president of Yale, Rick Levin, invited me to be Dean of the graduate school, there were some things that I thought I might be able to help. And it was really a sense of service, a sense of giving back. My graduate experience had been so important to me. It was my responsibility now to help make the graduate experience for the Yale graduate students as rich and fulfilling as I had experienced. So I agreed to do it, but I had assumed it would be a very short service -- three years, perhaps four years. But what I discovered, once I was actually Dean of the graduate school, was just how interesting, important, exhilarating this other kind of service to the world can be.
View Interview with Susan Hockfield
View Biography of Susan Hockfield
View Profile of Susan Hockfield
View Photo Gallery of Susan Hockfield
|
|
|
Khaled Hosseini
Afghanistan's Tumultuous History
Khaled Hosseini: It felt more like I was capitalizing on something that was suddenly of intense interest, and just because it was in the news and everybody was talking about it, and then here comes a guy with a book -- you know. I said to Roya, I said that, "Good timing is a good thing, but this feels like I'm capitalizing on this." And besides, quite misguidedly, I thought, "We're the pariah now and nobody wants to benefit me by reading my book. I'm from the country that " But it was really kind of naive and really short-changing people and not giving them enough credit. People were, as I said, people have been incredibly kind and gracious. So Roya said, "No, you're being really silly. You have to finish this book. A: You have to go back to writing it, and B: you have to submit it, because it will help readers appreciate a different side of Afghanistan that they are not getting, especially now. All that we are hearing is Taliban, Bin Laden, war, Taliban, Bin Laden, war, Taliban, Bin Laden, war. And your story is about family. It's about friendship. It's about love and forgiveness and very, very human, simple human things. And your book can at least give people a glimpse of something other than the usual things that we hear about Afghanistan." And so, as I said, she was an attorney, and she made her case, and I listened to her, and I eventually submitted the novel in June of 2002.
View Interview with Khaled Hosseini
View Biography of Khaled Hosseini
View Profile of Khaled Hosseini
View Photo Gallery of Khaled Hosseini
|
|
|
Khaled Hosseini
Afghanistan's Tumultuous History
Certainly there was a sense of survivor's guilt about my life in the U.S. when I went back to Kabul in '03 finally. Went back there as a 38-year-old doctor, and I had left an 11-year-old boy. And I saw what my life could have been. I saw these Afghans were living there, and I realized the reason I'm not there and my life is -- I have a 401K at home, and I have a home with children and everything, is sheer dumb luck. That's really all it is. So there is a sense of you that questions whether you made the most of what you were given and whether you deserve to be where you are. And that's a kind of guilt that I think a lot of people that are refugees from states that are in conflict have. And then you go through a phase where you kind of get over that, and you think, "Well, how do I turn that into something a little bit more positive, more productive? How do I turn that -- instead of turning you inside, how do you turn it back out and externalize and do something useful with it? And so I reached that stage as well." And part of the reason why that happened is because people began contacting me because my books became quite well read, and I had credible organizations that wanted to work with me and give me an opportunity. To use a tired old phrase: "to give back" -- and to kind of segue my literary success into something, hopefully a little bit more meaningful.
View Interview with Khaled Hosseini
View Biography of Khaled Hosseini
View Profile of Khaled Hosseini
View Photo Gallery of Khaled Hosseini
|
|
|
Khaled Hosseini
Afghanistan's Tumultuous History
Khaled Hosseini: I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word of it. I think to be a writer, you have to write. You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it, whether you don't, and be stubborn. And you also have to read a lot. Read the kinds of things you want to write, read the kinds of things you would never write. I find I learn something from everybody. I would never say I've been influenced directly by a given writer, but I feel like I've learned something from every writer that I have read. And I read with kind of a different -- I read to pay attention to the voice. I pay attention to how they write dialogue. I pay attention to how they resolve conflict, how they form structure, the rhythm of a story. Sometimes with a critical eye, often with an admiring eye with really great writers. And so keep writing and -- probably the best advice that I can give is to write for an audience of one, and that is yourself. The minute you start writing for an outside audience, that immediately taints the entire creative process. I wrote both of these books because I was telling myself a story. I really wanted to find out what happens to Amir after he betrays his friend. Why does he go to Afghanistan? What does he find there? I wanted to find out for myself how the relationship between these two women changed. You really have to tell it to yourself, and then when you are done with it, hope that other people will enjoy it, and just shut everybody else out during the writing process and put yourself in a mental bunker.
View Interview with Khaled Hosseini
View Biography of Khaled Hosseini
View Profile of Khaled Hosseini
View Photo Gallery of Khaled Hosseini
|
| |
|
