Friedberg, Hobson named Center for Advanced Study professors Two earn highest recognition campus bestows

By Andrea Lynn

Two UI faculty members were appointed professors in the university's Center
for Advanced Study by the UI Board of Trustees at its meeting June 8 in
Chicago.

The new CAS professors, both of them designated in 1987 as University
Scholars, are Maurice Friedberg, Slavic languages and literatures, and Ian
R. Hobson, music; their appointments are effective Aug. 21.

Professors in the center are chosen from among the most productive and
widely recognized scholars on the Urbana-Champaign campus. Appointment to a
professorship in the center is the highest recognition the campus bestows
on members of its faculty; the appointment is permanent.

The scholars were recommended for appointment to the center by the
chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus, upon recommendation by the dean
of the university's Graduate College and vice chancellor for research at
the Urbana-Champaign campus, in consultation with the director of the
Center for Advanced Study.

Friedberg is an international authority on Russian politics and culture.
Twice a winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and once a senior fellow at the
National Endowment for the Humanities, Friedberg also was elected an
adjunct fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and
International Studies, and an associate of the Russian Research Center at
Harvard University.

He is the author of six books - including "Russian Culture in the 1980s"
and "How Things Were Done in Odessa: Cultural and Intellectual Pursuits in
a Soviet City" - and about 100 articles, a great many of which have been
translated into a score of languages. For many years he had a regular
program on the Russian service of the Voice of America.

Frequently consulted by private and government agencies on matters of
politics and culture in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
Friedberg was summoned to the White House in 1988 to brief then-President
Ronald Reagan prior to his state visit to Russia.

At Illinois, Friedberg teaches Russian literature. Before joining the UI
faculty in 1975, Friedberg was in charge of the Russian Division at Hunter
College, City University of New York, and before that, he was director of
the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University in
Bloomington. He also has taught at Columbia University and at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and was a Fulbright Professor
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Hobson is a musician with an international reputation as a pianist,
conductor and teacher. He also is founder and music director of Sinfonia da
Camera, the professional chamber orchestra that performs under the auspices
of the UI at Urbana-Champaign in association with the School of Music and
the College of Fine and Applied Arts.

After studies at the Royal Academy of Music, Cambridge University and Yale
University, Hobson launched his international career by winning first prize
at the Leeds International Piano Competition. His repertoire spans the
centuries, demonstrating his command of style and vision as well as his
keyboard prowess. Hobson has performed with many major orchestras;
Arabesque Recordings has produced more than 20 releases of his work.

Before joining the UI faculty in 1975, Hobson earned his master's and
doctoral degrees at Yale University's School of Music. He was a faculty
member of the International Conservatory of Music in 1985 and artistic
director for the National Academy of Arts in 1985-86. Hobson has been a
jury member of several national and international piano competitions, and
has earned many honorary degrees, prizes and awards, such as National
Public Radio's Lucien Wilson Award in 1990 for the best performance as a
conductor of a large ensemble. In 1994-95, he performed as a soloist with
the American Composers' Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and as a soloist with
the American Symphony Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall.