UCLA’s Richard Abel, Ivan Berend and Dr. James Cherry have each been selected to receive the 2018–2019 Edward A. Dickson emeritus professorship award to honor their outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching and service performed by an emeritus or emerita professor since retirement.
The Dickson emeritus professorship award, which includes a prize of $5,000, is funded from a gift endowment established by the late Edward Dickson, regent of the University of California.
Richard Abel, Michael J. Connell distinguished research professor of law, has been internationally recognized for his scholarship on legal sociology and the legal profession. With a doctorate and a bachelor of laws, he was a pioneer in public interest law and one of the founders of the field of law and society. He has written 20 books and edited eight others. Since his retirement in 2009 he has been especially productive on human rights law and the “law of terror.” Abel published two complementary books in 2018 with the Cambridge University Press: “Law’s Wars: The Fate of the Rule of Law in the US ‘War on Terror,’” and a companion book, “Law’s Trials: The Performance of Legal Institutions in the US ‘War on Terror.’” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of law at UC Berkeley, called the latter “the most comprehensive book yet” on the legal consequences of 9/11. In January 2019, Abel was awarded the 2019 outstanding scholar award by the American Bar Foundation. Typically, this annual prize is given by the leaders of the legal profession to a distinguished colleague at the height of his or her career, so it is exceptional that he has been honored for scholarship produced after a decade of retirement. As an emeritus, he has remained an engaged member of the UCLA law school and has taught on recall multiple times while still mentoring younger colleagues and lecturing around the world on legal sociology and human rights.
Ivan Berend, distinguished research professor of history, has been internationally renowned for more than six decades for his scholarship on European history. Born in Budapest in 1930, he was interned at the age of 14 at the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. Ivan later became professor of economic history at Budapest University, rector of that university and president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Of his 35 authored books, 14 have been published since Berend’s arrival at UCLA in 1990 and his books have been translated into 14 languages. While at UCLA, Berend served as the director of the Center for European and Eurasian Studies for 12 years. He has been elected to 10 national academies and received multiple honorary doctorates. On his retirement in 2015, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since his retirement in 2015, he has continued teaching on recall and has four books published or in press. They include, “A History of the European Union: A New Perspective;” “Against European Integration. The European Union and its Discontents;” and “Populist Demagogues in Modern European Politics, 1910-2018.” His broad historical knowledge, his masterful teaching, and his administrative skills have all contributed greatly to the UCLA academic community.
Dr. James Cherry, distinguished research professor of pediatrics, has had an exemplary career at UCLA for 40 years as a physician, teacher, research scientist and academic administrator. He garnered international acclaim for his research and teaching in the field of pediatric infectious diseases. Since his retirement in 2013, Cherry has remained productive as a scholar and an international spokesman on vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases and has given invited lectures at 13 national and international meetings. He has been chief editor of “Feigen and Cherry’s Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases,” the most comprehensive textbook on the subject ever written. In retirement, Cherry has been the author or co-author of 16 peer-reviewed research papers, with important contributions to the study of pertussis in infants. In addition, he has played an important role in studies of the Zika virus in pregnant women as well as taking a leading public role in the measles outbreak in 2015, when he gave more than 100 media interviews to spread awareness and encourage vaccination. In 2018, Cherry received the lifetime achievement award for infectious disease education from the American Academy of Pediatrics.