Academic Affairs and Personnel

UC San Francisco and UC Los Angeles Professors Honored with
2019-2020 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award

To: All Faculty

The 2019-2020 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award honoring Emeriti Professors in the University of California system has been awarded to Professor Emerita of Sociology Carroll Estes (UC San Francisco) and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Law Herbert Morris (UC Los Angeles).

UC Emeriti Professors Estes and Morris are the forty-fourth and forty-fifth recipients of the Constantine Panunzio Award. Both awardees have especially long and notable records of research, teaching, and service to the University of California, their disciplines, and their communities. The late Dr. Panunzio, a Professor of Sociology at UCLA for many years, has been described as the architect of the UC Retirement System and was particularly active in improving pensions and stipends for his fellow Emeriti. The award bearing his name was established in 1983 and includes a $5,000 prize.

Herbert Morris, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus Morris has had a long association with UCLA prior to his retirement in 1994. He received his B.A. from UCLA in 1951, an LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1954, his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1956, and then served on the UCLA faculty for thirty-nine years (1956-1994) as a professor in both the Philosophy Department and the Law School, and as Dean of Humanities (1983-1992). During his career at UCLA, Professor Morris did distinguished work in philosophy and legal theory, writing transformative essays on issues of punishment and guilt. In the years since his retirement, he has continued to produce distinguished research – publishing scholarly papers, which developed themes from his earlier research career, as well as some astonishing papers on completely new themes. Professor Morris also has never stopped teaching, and in his 61st year, he continues to teach with wisdom, humor, and passion. He has offered small seminars in the Law School and has contributed to the Philosophy Department by teaching his lower-division Philosophy 5 (Philosophy and Literature), to about 200 undergraduates. The most exceptional aspect of Professor Morris’ post retirement contribution has been his move into new areas of scholarship. In 2009, he produced a brilliant essay, “Artists in Evil: An Essay on Evil and Redemption in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.” Here he takes on a question about sadism, ritual, and artistic creation through a meticulous reading of a compelling and confusing passage in Proust. What Professor Morris reveals for us, is Proust’s exquisite vision of costs: in the willed suffering, the contortion of life, and the regrets for unavoidable harms. Professor Morris argues that, if Proust finds a path to redemption it is through the role of imagination in art and the art of living. In 2019, his ninetieth year, he published a new essay entitled, “On the Soul,” in the prestigious journal Philosophy. It is a breathtaking study of one of the oldest ideas in world culture, the concept and focus on the soul, brought forward into the center of current evaluative thinking in the broadest sense – provoking deeper questions on how does the notion fit with our moral sensibility, our sense of value, or of a life worth living? Professor Morris’ essay is a report on a kind of wisdom acquired from a long life of serious reflection on what matters. He has made profound contributions to knowledge, highlighting intersections of scholarship, and has transformed into a highly regarded critic of literature and the visual arts. Professor Emeritus Morris’ intellectual range, rigor and mature wisdom are incomparable, and truly the embodiment of UCLA’s motto, Fiat Lux, “let there be light.”

Carroll Estes, UC San Francisco, Since retirement in 2007, Professor Emerita Estes has continued research and policy contributions on aging, in scholarly writings, provided lectures and presentations, and held national leadership roles in key aging and gerontology organizations. She continued remarkable productivity in the areas at the intersection of academic gerontology, public policy analysis, advocacy, and the training of future generations of scholars. Professor Estes became a full professor of Sociology in the UCSF School of Nursing in 1979, served as chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, founded and directed the Aging Health Policy Center, which became the Institute for Health & Aging. As a founding scholar in the field of the “political economy of aging,” Dr. Estes has devoted herself to improving the health and economic security of vulnerable and underserved populations, particularly older people, women, LGBTQ, people of color, and people with disabilities. For this work, she received the 2019 Robert M. Ball Award for outstanding achievements in social insurance from the National Academy of Social Insurance. One of her most recent achievements is a publication entitled Aging A-Z: Concepts Toward Emancipatory Gerontology (with N. B. DiCarlo, 2019). The book examines multiple dimensions of persistent and hotly debated topics around aging, the life course, the roles of power, politics and partisanship, culture, economics, and communications. Since retirement, she has continued training post-doctoral fellows, teaching, dissertation advising, and has a formal role in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Postdoctoral Program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Additionally, Professor Estes contributed extensively to professional and community service programs, receiving numerous awards and honors, including the UCSF Chancellor's Award for the Advancement of Women and the Mentor of the Year Award in the School of Nursing in 2007, and the 2014 UCSF Medal, its highest honor, for advancing health worldwide.

Please join all of us on the Committee in congratulating Emeriti Professors Carroll Estes and Herbert Morris on receiving the 2019-2020 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award.

Sincerely,

Michael S. Levine

Chair, Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award Selection Committee

Vice Chancellor, Academic Personnel