On this edition of Focus In Sound, we bring you a special treat. In May 2015, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund celebrated its 60th anniversary with a series of events at the Fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. On May 20th, the Fund welcomed approximately 100 guests to a dinner held out in the building’s courtyard. After that dinner, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. George Langford from Syracuse University, who has been a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Board since 2008.
Transcription of “Interview with George Langford”
00;00;07;24 – 00;00;33;25
Ernie Hood
Welcome to Focus In Sound Podcast Series from a Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. On this edition of Focus In Sound, we bring you a special treat. In May 2015, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund celebrates its 60th anniversary with a series of events at the fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
00;00;34;09 – 00;01;05;04
Ernie Hood
On May 20th, the Fund welcomed approximately 100 guests to a dinner held out in the building’s courtyard. After that dinner, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. George Langford from Syracuse University, who has been a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund board since 2008. We were outdoors, so you will hear the gentle sounds of the nearby fountain, some resident birds, and at one point some very vocal bullfrogs make their presence known.
00;01;05;18 – 00;01;34;28
Ernie Hood
We hope you enjoy this compelling interview with George Langford. Let me tell you just a little bit about Dr. George Langford. He is a native North Carolinian and he grew up in a tiny northeastern North Carolina town called Petite Casey, which went to great pains to be able to pronounce it correctly. Not far from Roanoke Rapids, which you’re probably familiar with, he joined the Burroughs Wellcome Fund board in February 2008.
00;01;35;25 – 00;01;52;25
Ernie Hood
Until recently, George was the dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and distinguished professor of Biology at Syracuse University. Is now on sabbatical and will be resuming his teaching duties, I guess, in the fall.
00;01;52;25 – 00;01;54;05
George Langford
In the fall. Okay, very.
00;01;54;05 – 00;02;25;15
Ernie Hood
Good. George is a cell biologist and a neuroscientist, and in doing so, he studies cellular mechanisms of learning and memory. His research program seeks to understand how the brain remembers and how that process is impaired by Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. In 1998, he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the National Science Board, the governing board of the National Science Foundation, to advise the president and Congress on national science policy.
00;02;26;03 – 00;02;49;21
Ernie Hood
He served on the NAACP from 1998 to 2004. Please join me in welcoming Dr. George Langford to The Verge. As I mentioned in my introduction, you were born and raised right here in North Carolina. How did that upbringing shape your later career and later life in general?
00;02;51;03 – 00;03;10;26
George Langford
Wow. A great question to start. But before I answer, let me just say what a wonderful opportunity this is to participate in the 60th anniversary celebration of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. And I really thank Dr. Burroughs for inviting me to be the in the spotlight tonight.
00;03;11;05 – 00;03;12;02
Ernie Hood
To share.
00;03;12;22 – 00;03;45;06
George Langford
Some ideas with you about my background and perspective on science. So, yes, I have very deep roots in North Carolina and very, very proud of the fact that I was born in Northampton County in this very, very small town of Rkc. And I went to elementary school there. I went to high school in the neighboring town of Red Square, and then I stayed in the state to go to undergraduate school at Federal State University there in North Carolina.
00;03;45;06 – 00;04;10;25
George Langford
So I really have had very strong roots in the in this state. And we actually traced my family history a little bit. And so I just wanted to tell you a little bit about just how deep the roots are in North Carolina. My great great grandfather was born in 1805. At that time it was slavery and he was born a slave.
00;04;12;10 – 00;04;37;27
George Langford
We don’t know very much about his parents, but we do know that he learned how to read and write. And this is quite extraordinary because, as you know, during the period of slavery was against the law to teach a slave how to read and write. So we don’t know whether he did this through his own self-taught mechanism or whether he was actually taught by someone else.
00;04;38;19 – 00;05;09;02
George Langford
But what was extraordinary is that he was able, even though he couldn’t teach his own children, how to read and write, he was hired by the local white farmers to tutor their kids to earn enough money to actually buy his freedom. So in 1850, he was a free man. And after he bought his freedom, he was able to buy the freedom of his wife and his children.
00;05;09;25 – 00;05;37;21
George Langford
And he purchased land and actually donated plots to the little community where I grew up to build a church and a school. So that’s the school and the church that I went to. Five generations in that little small town. And the other extraordinary thing about this is that he had been bought his freedom in 1850. It was 50 years before the end of the Civil War.
00;05;38;10 – 00;06;04;25
George Langford
So it gave him a head start in learning how to be a free man, to gather resources and to develop a social network to exist when slavery was over. And so that Head Start allowed him to do a lot of wonderful things in the town because, you know, after the war, there was a very short period of time of reconstruct.
00;06;05;17 – 00;06;22;01
George Langford
And at the end of that, you know, segregation started the Jim Crow laws. And so it was very difficult to acquire resources after that. So very different here in the States. You know, more than five generations of us in that small town in Northampton town.
00;06;22;01 – 00;06;37;12
Ernie Hood
And that’s just a fascinating history of yourself as a young African American growing up in the Jim Crow era, what types of obstacles did you face growing up and how did you deal with those types of barriers?
00;06;38;28 – 00;07;08;26
George Langford
Greg Well, there were obstacles. I mean, it was a period of segregation. And so we hear stories today, you know, after the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore of parents who say, you know, black parents would say, we have to tell our children how they should behave if they were ever encountered. The police, you know, its hands up, it’s don’t say anything to provoke that would start a bad situation.
00;07;09;18 – 00;07;33;17
George Langford
Well, growing up in the South at that time, you had to be careful with every white person that you ran into. You know, you your parents really had to tell you that, you know, you must always make sure that you don’t say something or do something that could provoke a bad accident. So I was totally cocooned in my village.
00;07;33;21 – 00;08;04;19
George Langford
You know, my parents didn’t really allow me to have a lot of interactions outside of the community because of that potential. And this was a difficult thing for me as a teenager. I, I wanted to do our jobs like mow lawns and do other things. But because of the fear that someone would say something inappropriate or do things that would rob one of one’s own self-esteem, parents were very shy about allowing kids to do it.
00;08;05;01 – 00;08;37;16
George Langford
And so I didn’t have the swimming chains to buy my favorite shirt, how to go to the movies, or do the things that other teenagers wanted to do. So that was definitely one of those the drawbacks of growing up in that era of segregation. But there are other kinds of barriers as well. You know, it was difficult as we grew up, you know, going off to college, we participated in a lot of the protest marches and sit ins.
00;08;37;16 – 00;08;48;04
George Langford
And so those were additional things that we fought against to make sure that we had the opportunities that others in this country have.
00;08;48;28 – 00;08;54;09
Ernie Hood
Sure. Well, the civil rights movement was, I assume, at its height about when you were an undergraduate.
00;08;54;17 – 00;09;29;12
George Langford
That’s absolutely true. I mean, I was there in the sixties when John F Kennedy was assassinated. I was a sophomore in high school. The Bill of Rights was passed during the time that I was in college. And, you know, it was a time that we participated very actively in the protest movement. Jesse Jackson at the time was a student at L.A. University, and of course, he was sort of the the leader of many of the sit ins and demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina.
00;09;29;13 – 00;09;59;15
George Langford
So when I got to college, we sort of followed that pattern. But there was an interesting thing that happened in my senior year. I was elected president of the student government. And the student government came up with this interesting idea to write to General Westmoreland, who was in charge of the troops in Vietnam, to say that the soldiers who the armed forces were integrated at this time.
00;09;59;15 – 00;10;32;21
George Langford
But when soldiers returned to Fort Bragg, which is located right there next to Farmville, they were not able to black soldiers were not able to go to the restaurants in the theater and the shops in downtown Fayetteville. And so the idea was to write to General Westmoreland and to employ him to help us to say that, you know, if the armed forces were integrated, these soldiers should have the right to to participate in those activities when they got back into this country.
00;10;33;09 – 00;10;52;20
George Langford
Never thought that I would get a response from General Westmoreland, but within a very short period of time, he wrote back and informed us that he, in fact, had written a letter to the mayor of Fayetteville to say that if those shops were not integrated, then not only the black but the white soldiers would be off limits to Fayetteville.
00;10;53;04 – 00;11;04;20
George Langford
And within a few months, Fayetteville was integrated. So we didn’t have the long period of time that a lot of the other towns in North Carolina had to to achieve integration.
00;11;04;26 – 00;11;20;00
Ernie Hood
I see. Well, that’s a wonderful story. Thanks for sharing that. Well, George, you exhibited a proclivity for science and mathematics from a very early age. How did you end up specializing in cell biology?
00;11;21;09 – 00;11;58;03
George Langford
I was always interested in science, and I think growing up in North Carolina on a farm, you know, was sort of the trigger for me that I really wanted to understand nature. And so science was a great interest. And I had the good fortune of having great teachers in high school who really directly toward the sciences. We didn’t have very good facilities, but we had teachers teaching, you know, at that time was a great professor because it was one of the few professions that Black could actually pursue.
00;11;58;08 – 00;12;25;22
George Langford
And so we really had very, very bright individuals who were serving as our teachers. And so they really encouraged me to to to pursue science and after I graduated from college, my professors encouraged me to continue to go to graduate school. And I happened to be at the Illinois Student Technology when they hired an eminent cell biologist to build a cell biology program.
00;12;26;03 – 00;12;57;19
George Langford
And I t and it was Terry Hayashi, a long standing member of the Columbia faculty who came to I.T. And of course has a long standing relationship with the Marine Biological Laboratory. And it was really Terry Hayashi who pointed me in the direction of cell biology. It was an emerging field at the time. The Americans inside of a cell biology was started in 1960 and I was there in the late sixties and 66 or 68 when I actually came.
00;12;57;19 – 00;13;08;01
George Langford
And so it was really the field, the field to go into, and it was very, very exciting at the time. So I owe that to my dear friend Taylor Swift.
00;13;08;07 – 00;13;31;22
Ernie Hood
Indeed. Well, I’m here I’d like to hear a little bit more about your educational background. As you’ve mentioned, you attended Fayetteville State University as an undergraduate, and did your graduate studies toward your M.S., Ph.D., at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and you did your post-doc at university of Pennsylvania, right. Those are two seemed to be very different institutions.
00;13;32;17 – 00;13;34;16
Ernie Hood
How did that evolve in that direction?
00;13;35;06 – 00;14;07;21
George Langford
There are very different institutions. Again, I feel very fortunate to have had the HBCU experience, the historically black university and college experience. The the experience there was very affirming. It was a warm experience for the faculty who cared deeply about the students and provide a lot of guidance and and support. So when I graduated, the question was where would I go to graduate school?
00;14;08;06 – 00;14;38;21
George Langford
And if I were to continue in the normal path of where blacks tended to go for graduate training, it would have been a university in Atlanta or Howard University. But luckily, because of the civil rights movement, historically white institutions were beginning to accept black students in their graduate programs. So I was part of that wave of students who were the first to attend majority white institutions.
00;14;39;11 – 00;15;05;17
George Langford
And so going from this very affirming experience that stands out to the Institute of Technology, where there were actually no supports for minority students at the time, there was no Office of Multicultural Affairs, there is now director of Equity and inclusion. You know, there were no advisors. You were just you were just there. You know, it was sink or swim.
00;15;06;02 – 00;15;30;10
George Langford
So it was a very, very difficult transition. And there were no other black students in my class. So it turns out I had a I built a social network with students from Nigeria and Kenya and Ethiopia. So that was the way I sort of got through it. Social. But then I had professors like Taylor, who I say, who was very, very supportive.
00;15;31;17 – 00;16;10;03
George Langford
And then when I got to Penn for the post-doc, this was another big shock because I was going from, you know, I.T is a wonderful place known for its architecture and engineering but did not have a high profile in biology to Penn that was this very elite, very high intensity, very competitive research institution in biology. And so there, you know, it was a difficult transition because we now have a term for this is called microaggression.
00;16;10;09 – 00;16;33;11
George Langford
Yeah. This the graduate students in the postdocs were a little bit concerned about why I was there. You know, I had gotten a nice postdoctoral fellowship, but they were concerned about was I really a postdoc or a trainee and where did I actually do my undergraduate work? You know, and I would say federal saying, this is why I’ve never heard of this.
00;16;33;16 – 00;17;06;00
George Langford
Ha ha. So we know about these things. You know, there are terms, you know, when you are reminded of that you belong to a marginalized group. You know, there are there are kinds of questions that come out. So it was it was it was a challenging time. But, you know, again, you have good mentors. I had a great postdoctoral mentor and I began going to the Marine Biological Laboratory at the time, which was also a terrific place for me and a great support during that period.
00;17;06;14 – 00;17;41;29
Ernie Hood
See? Well, since 1973, you’ve been following your career path in academia as a researcher, teacher and ultimately as faculty administrator serving at Howard UMass, USC, Chapel Hill, Dartmouth, UMass Amherst and since 2008 at Syracuse. And welcome to the agency, by the way. Ha ha ha ha. Great. How has that that particular track evolved? It sounds like you’ve accumulated a wide variety of experiences through the years.
00;17;42;18 – 00;18;44;23
George Langford
It has been a lot of different institutions. And when I when I finished my postdoc at Penn, I talked to my professors in a way about my first faculty position and what I realized is that after that experience, even that was terrific. Scientifically. It was very difficult emotionally. And so I needed time to be at a place that would be supportive and would allow a period of recovery, because I still wanted to pursue an academic research career, but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen immediately and so I took the job at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and then at Howard, both smaller institutions, less competitive, but a place where it provided some
00;18;44;23 – 00;19;12;07
George Langford
emotional support and a time to sort of reflect and think about the next phase of my career. So I felt I was ready when the opportunity at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine came along. And so I was able to pursue that opportunity. And it was one of the great phases of my career, you know, to be on the faculty in the Department of Physiology at USC Medical School.
00;19;13;14 – 00;19;41;09
George Langford
And then I was very happy there. I was there. My kids grew up here in North Carolina, so they sort of feel that this is home. I was looking for a place to move, but Dartmouth College had established an endowed professorship to honor the memory of Ernest Everett just and just was one of those most distinguished African-American scientists of the early 20th century.
00;19;41;09 – 00;20;12;07
George Langford
And I thought it would be, you know, a tremendous honor to be the first holder of the Ernest Average professorship. So that was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. And so I moved to to Dartmouth to take on that position. And so, as you mentioned in the introduction, I was I was actually invited and appointed to the National Science Board by President Clinton.
00;20;13;17 – 00;20;46;28
George Langford
The National Science Board is the governing board of the National Science Foundation. And that was an extraordinary experience because it gave me an opportunity to see science broadly across all of the disciplines of science. And it was a time in which there was a strong interest in integrating sciences, building interdisciplinary programs. So biology was going through the period of really integrating the quantitative, computational and the physical sciences with the biological sciences.
00;20;47;17 – 00;21;11;10
George Langford
And I because of that experience, I felt that I wanted to broaden beyond my own individual research program to try to build interdisciplinary programs. And so I decided that I would be interested in taking an administrative position as dean of a college to do that. And so I transitioned into the leadership at UMass Amherst and then now at Syracuse University.
00;21;11;23 – 00;21;19;13
George Langford
So it was it was because of wanting to build something broader than my individual research program.
00;21;19;23 – 00;21;39;29
Ernie Hood
Well, speaking of your individual research program there, we can’t let the opportunity pass by without getting a little taste of the science. I know this is asking a lot, but could you kind of give us a thumbnail sketch of your scientific accomplishments as a cell biologist and neuroscientist?
00;21;39;29 – 00;22;21;06
George Langford
And so I really can’t say enough about the value of the Marine Biological laboratory to my scientific career. I really learned to be a scientist at the MDL. I didn’t really learn that in graduate school. I didn’t learn that in as a post-doc. It was really when I got to the middle and I saw the the kind of atmosphere there, the ability to talk to scientists, to see how they think about designing experiments and how they carry out their experiments in their laboratory, This was really a unique experience.
00;22;21;06 – 00;23;01;03
George Langford
And so I started going to the NBL in 72, and I continue there as a summer investigator until I transitioned into administration. So it was at the NBL that I really made my most important discovery. Two of my major mentors, my postdoctoral mentors, and in a way and Robert Allen simultaneously developed the technique of video microscopy and this was a revolution in cell biology because it permitted us to actually detect structures that were below the resolution of the light microscope.
00;23;01;03 – 00;23;34;11
George Langford
And there are preparations at the NBL, the squid giant Axon, for example, that we used to actually first isolate the molecular motor kinesin and which is a motor that carries vesicles on microtubules. And at the time there was a lot of new work being done on myosin motors that were thought also to be Vesicle Motors, but no one had ever visualized vegetables moving on actin film as in animal cells.
00;23;34;23 – 00;24;10;09
George Langford
And so it was using the technique that Rob Robert Allen had developed to visualize using the squid giant axon vesicles moving on actin filaments. So we were actually the first laboratory to discover the actin dependent movement of cycle. So it was known that they move on microtubules, but we showed that they also move on and actin filaments. And so we developed this dual filament transport model in which vesicles move over long distances on microtubules and they transition to move on short distances on acting filaments.
00;24;10;21 – 00;24;33;05
George Langford
And that was because of these, you know, that the ability to collaborate with scientists. I collaborated with scientists from Germany as well as with Bob Allen at the NBL and the preparation, the Squid giant Axon and the video microscope that was developed right there that allowed the discovery to take place.
00;24;33;23 – 00;24;36;04
Ernie Hood
It sounds like you had a lot of fun at Woods Hole.
00;24;37;12 – 00;24;39;08
George Langford
It’s a great place. It’s a great place.
00;24;39;17 – 00;25;00;05
Ernie Hood
Well, George, in your career, you’ve been both a highly effective advocate for cell biology and a role model, an activist for diversity in science. What kind of advice would you have for young people today, particularly young people of color, who might be considering a career in the sciences today?
00;25;01;17 – 00;25;32;12
George Langford
Yeah, I have always worked to develop programs to support underrepresented minorities in science, and I’ve done that at every institution that I’ve worked at. There are things that I would say to students today. It’s very interesting that 50 years later we still have to have programs designed to really increase participation of underrepresented minorities in science. So in many ways it’s disappointing that we still have to do this.
00;25;32;29 – 00;26;05;28
George Langford
But on the other hand, there is a body of literature now that comes out of the social sciences and the humanities that helps us to understand the kinds of issues that we need students to understand. So if I were able to help students, I would try to introduce them to these interesting, this interesting literature that helps them to overcome barriers in the sciences.
00;26;06;14 – 00;26;54;06
George Langford
So for example, I mentioned already microaggression. I think it’s just important for students to understand how that operates in the environment in which they would exist. There’s also stereotype threat. You know, this is another very, very important concept to understand for minority students because it really does rob them of their cognitive abilities to focus on their research because they’re constantly worrying about, you know, am I going to confirm for him, for someone, the fact that I am not able to perform well, You know, so that threat of confirming someone’s stereotype takes away your cognitive capacity to do your best in school.
00;26;54;20 – 00;27;26;12
George Langford
So students have to understand that there are strategies that you can work around that. And so there there’s a whole list of these implicit bias which operates you know, we know that it operates, you know, when grants are reviewed, for example, at the NIH, you know, there’s been studies that have shown that individuals with a name that’s recognized as African-American tends to get a lower score than someone who has a name that is recognized as white.
00;27;26;24 – 00;27;43;28
George Langford
So there’s implicit bias that goes on. So knowing these kinds of things, I think can help students. And at least we should make sure that institutions know about these and so that they can be better prepared to support minority students.
00;27;44;07 – 00;27;48;03
Ernie Hood
I’d say. Well, George, last question. And I think our cheering section here.
00;27;48;03 – 00;27;49;01
George Langford
Is ha ha ha.
00;27;49;01 – 00;28;01;29
Ernie Hood
Ha ha ha ha ha. Tell us about your involvement with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund itself. You’ve been a member of the board of Directors since 28. What has that experience been like for you?
00;28;02;23 – 00;28;47;14
George Langford
This is one of the greatest experiences being a part of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. So before I became a member of the board, actually served on one of the scientific advisory committees for the what was the Cabs program that is now CAMHS, and that experience of working with the foundation of really understanding the high standards, the high quality of the individuals that are supported and its commitment to the kids of North Carolina that I care about doing and diversity were all things that made it, you know, just a wonderful organization to be a part of.
00;28;47;29 – 00;29;05;03
George Langford
So it was a thrill when I received a phone call to ask if I would serve on the board. I was delighted to do that. I was delighted to serve as chair of the board for a couple of years before Diane took over. And in that process we have just established a new program is in its third year.
00;29;05;03 – 00;29;29;09
George Langford
The post-doctoral enrichment program, which we’ve really set up to increase the support for postdocs to enrich their experience so that they are more competitive for awards, research grants and for faculty positions. And so it’s just great being a part of an organization that has those kinds of values. And that’s been wonderful for me.
00;29;30;00 – 00;29;52;19
Ernie Hood
Wonderful. Well, George, thanks so much and thanks for sharing so much of your life story with us as well. Well, thank you. And we hope you’ve enjoyed this special edition of the Focus In Sound podcast. Until next time, this is Ernie Hood. Thanks for listening.
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