Valerie Jarrett is a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and one of the most articulate advocates for the White House.
Dr. James E. Bowman, a widely recognized expert in inherited blood diseases and population genetics, was the first tenured African-American professor in the University of Chicago’s Biological Sciences Division.
On Thursday, Jarrett recalled that in all the times she played chess with her father, she won only once — he never let her win just to boost her ego.
“The first time I beat him in chess, I felt like I’d really earned it,” Jarrett said. “And that’s what he wanted me to feel. He wanted me to know that life is hard, you have to work really hard in order to achieve. He didn’t believe in shortcuts.”
He took a similar approach to at the U. of C.’s Pritzker School of Medicine, where he was an assistant dean for minority affairs at the U. of C.’s Biological Sciences Division.
“His goal was try to increase the number of underrepresented minority students who came to Pritzker, but he really wanted to emphasize that they had to be excellent,” said William McDade, deputy provost for research and minority issues at the University of Chicago. “He didn’t want to see different standards for minority students, he just wanted to have the most excellent minority students that we can train.”
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