Jake and I will be speaking today on a panel hosted by Johns Hopkins and Motion Picture Enterprises here in Manhattan. We will be speaking to mostly undergrads and recent grads who are looking to get into the entertainment industry in one form or another. There are many notable Hopkins alumni who are superstars in the business (and who would be much better suited for today’s panel discussion)–including Walter Murch, Jeffrey Blitz, Wes Craven and many others. Neal R. Pilzer, who founded Motion Picture Enterprises and is the publisher of the ubiquitous yellow Motion Picture TV and Theatre Directory is also an alum.
But our film is about Boy Scouts and both Jake and I have been amazed at the number of connections between Boy Scouts and Hopkins. These include:
- Mike Bloomberg, Distinguished Eagle Scout, alum, and Mayor of the greatest city on earth
- Dr. Peter Agre, Distinguished Eagle Scout, Nobel Laureate and head of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute
- As a graduate student at JHU in 1978, Carolyn Ditte Wagner wrote a thesis titled The Boy Scouts of America : a model and mirror of American society This thesis is one of the most often cited works by serious authors writing about the Boy Scouts.
- In February, 2008 Homewood campus hosted an academic event that drew scholars from around the world called Scouting: A Centennial History Symposium at Johns Hopkins. Ron Walters, a professor I studied with, gave the welcome address and the conference was organized in part by Nelson Block, an alumni and author of a biography of the founder of the Order of the Arrow called A Thing of the Spirit: The Life of E. Urner Goodman and Scouting Frontiers: Youth and Scout Movements First Century.
Obviously there are tons of other connections between Hopkins and Scouting but I find these particularly interesting.
