Dr. Robert Michael Franklin ’75 is the tenth president of Morehouse College, the nation’s largest private, four-year liberal arts college for men.

Prior to Morehouse, Franklin was a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at Emory University, where he provided leadership for a university-wide initiative titled “Confronting the Human Condition and the Human Experience” and was a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the law school.

He provides commentary for the National Public Radio (NPR) program, “All Things Considered,” and weekly commentary for Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasting Television.

Franklin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Morehouse in 1975 with a degree in political science and religion. He continued his education at Harvard Divinity School, earning a master of divinity degree in Christian social ethics and pastoral care in 1978, and the University of Chicago, earning a doctorate in ethics and society, and religion and the social sciences in 1985. He also undertook international study at the University of Durham, UK, as a 1973 English Speaking Union Scholar. His major fields of study include social ethics, psychology and African American religion.

An insightful educator, Franklin has served on the faculties of the University of Chicago, Harvard Divinity School, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School and at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, where he gained a national reputation as director of Black Church Studies.

He also has served as program officer in Human Rights and Social Justice at the Ford Foundation, and as an adviser to the foundation’s president on future funding for religion and public life initiatives. Franklin also was invited by American film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to prepare an online study guide for the congregational use of The Prince of Egypt, a DreamWorks film (1999).

In 1997, Franklin assumed the presidency of the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), the graduate theological seminary of the Atlanta University Center consortium. He served as the Chautauqua Institution’s Theologian in Residence for the 2005 season.

Franklin is the author of three books: Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities (2007); Another Day’s Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis (1997); and Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African American Thought (1990). He has co-authored (Don S. Browning, et. al.) a volume titled From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate (2001). He is the co-editor of the forthcoming The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther King Jr., published by Cambridge University Press.

Active in a range of organizations, Franklin is a former trustee of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund (Jacksonville) and a member of the Atlanta Rotary Club, the Kappa Boule of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity and the 1999 class of Leadership Atlanta. He has served on the boards of the Community Foundation of Metro Atlanta, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Character Education Partnership, Congress of National Black Churches, Public Broadcasting of Atlanta, Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasting, Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, FaithTrust Institute (formerly the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence) and the Fund for Theological Education. He is the past chairman of the board of the Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta. In 2000, Mayor Bill Campbell appointed him co-chair of Atlanta 2000, the city’s official coordinating committee for Y2K activities and celebrations.

A seasoned traveler, Franklin has studied seven languages and visited Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. He is the recipient of a Ford Foundation grant to examine religion in public life in Asia and produced NPR commentaries based on this research. Since 2003, he has served as a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

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Raolat Abdulia - Photo by Justin D. Knight

Howard University Hospital opened free medical treatment clinic for low-income, uninsured patients on Thursday, June 18, on the first floor of the hospital.

The New Freedmen’s Clinic is run, staffed and funded by medical students from the Howard University College of Medicine and is open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. every Thursday.

Each Thursday, four medical students, overseen by two Howard University Hospital physicians, will treat patients by appointment and those referred to them by the hospital’s Emergency Department.

The clinic is largely the culmination of the dream of one student, Raolat Abdulai, a third year medical student who began the effort more than a year and will serve as the clinic’s director. Abdulai, 27, from Silver Spring, Md., got the idea for a free clinic in an email from instructor Dr. Christopher DeGannes that told her of a course being offered in Portland, Ore., on how to organize student-run clinics.

She attended the course and found overwhelming support for a free clinic when she returned to Howard.

“When we had a meeting to see who might be interested, more than 100 students showed up, and there were some faculty members as well,” Abdulai said.

She later was selected from more than 3,000 women who applied to a joint project between,O, The Oprah Magazine and The White House Project, a national nonprofit organization working to advance women’s leadership. The initiative, entitled Women Rule!, provided training for a select group of women leaders to bring their dreams to fruition.

Abdulai and 79 other women were selected to attend the three-day leadership-training workshop in New York City run by The White House Project. The women learned to write a business plan, to negotiate, build teams and organize themselves and others.

She and other students later visited and observed the workings of a student-run free clinic at Bread for the City, a non profit agency that provides food, clothing, medical care, legal and social services for low-income Washington residents.

“That’s when I really learned how much effort has to go into a project like this,” Abdulai said. “We needed attending physicians. We needed a space. We needed to learn lab skills and perfect our clinical skills in order to serve the patients. And I really learned it’s a hectic pace at these kinds of clinics.”

Undeterred by those obstacles, she and fellow students applied to the Association of American Medical Colleges for funding and received a $30,000 grant.

“After we got the grant, we finally realized that our dream would come true,” she said. “I’m so excited. I’m ecstatic. I can’t wait until opening day.”

Dr. Charles Mouton, chair of Department of Community and Family Medicine at the College of Medicine and advisor to the clinic, said the students’ efforts reflect the medical school’s mission.

“Howard University College of Medicine’s mission is to serve the underserved populations and reduce health care disparities,” Mouton said. “Our students are driven by that mission. That’s why they came here, because they want to serve people.”

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