The 2007 AANS Annual Meeting returns members to the city where the organization began for celebration of 75 years of education and inspiration. It was in Washington, D.C., that Temple Fay, Eustace Semmes, Glen Spurling and William Van Wagenen met on Oct. 10, 1931, and founded the Harvey Cushing Society, now the AANS.
Seventy-five years of contributions by many participants in the neurosurgical community will be honored at the AANS’ Diamond Jubilee meeting, April 14–19, 2007, in Washington, D.C.
“This diamond jubilee year is a time to honor the venerable ideals of the AANS founders, ideals which have remained unchanged since the inception of the organization,” said AANS President Donald O. Quest, MD. “I invite you to join me in recognizing 75 years of achievement and to step into the future, beginning with the AANS diamond jubilee celebration in April.”
The festive event is taking shape under the direction of Annual Meeting Chair Mitchel Berger, MD. The event’s focus, however, will be on contemporary science in a stimulating scientific program chaired by Timothy Mapstone, MD.
The scientific program features many new practical clinics, breakfast seminars, and scientific sessions. New socioeconomic presentations will focus on practice management and legal issues as well as topics of current interest such as pay for performance and the Medicare physician payment system.
Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and a three-time Pulitzer-Prize awardee, will share his global perspective in delivery of the Cushing oration.
General meeting registration and housing reservations open Oct. 13 exclusively to AANS members. On Oct. 27, general meeting registration and housing reservations open for everyone. The advance registration and housing deadline is Friday, March 9, 2007.
Additional information regarding the 2007 AANS Annual Meeting, including registration and housing reservations, is available at www.aans.org/annual/2007.
Cushing Orator Thomas L. Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, is one of the world’s
preeminent commentators on international affairs.
In the months following Sept. 11, 2001, his Op-Ed page column for The New York Times provided the clarifying, evenhanded assessments that were so urgently sought. In awarding him his third Pulitzer Prize (the 2002 award for Distinguished Commentary), the Pulitzer Board cited his “clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.”
Friedman has covered many of the monumental stories of recent decades, from the return of Hong Kong to China and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His tireless reporting skills and innate knack for obtaining the right information from the right people earned him Pulitzer Prizes in 1983 and 1988 for International Reporting (for his coverage of Israel and Lebanon).
Friedman’s New York Times bestseller, Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism, traces his post-9/11 journey from Afghanistan to Israel, Europe, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia to meet with the regions’ leaders, thinkers and citizens. Filled with emotional reactions and reasoned analysis, the book also includes a collection of his Pulitzer Prize-winning columns.
His bestseller, From Beirut to Jerusalem, serves as a basic text on the Middle East in many colleges and universities nationwide. It won both the National Book Award and Overseas Press Club Award in 1989. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which was also a bestseller and was translated into 20 languages, explains globalization’s effect on the politics, culture and economics of an increasingly interwoven global community. Kirkus Reviews called it “simply the best book written on globalization.”
In 1981 Friedman joined The New York Times as a business reporter, specializing in OPEC and oil-related news. He was quickly named Beirut bureau chief (just six weeks before the Israeli invasion). He also has served as Israel bureau chief, Washington chief diplomatic correspondent, chief White House correspondent and chief economics correspondent.
Friedman appears in his own segment, “Tom’s Journal,” on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, talking about his most recent trips abroad. He is also a frequent guest on programs such as Face the Nation and Charlie Rose. His TV documentaries, “Searching for the Roots of 9/11,” “The Other Side of Outsourcing” and “Straddling the Fence” (on the impact of the wall separating Palestinians and Israelis), have aired on the Discovery Channel.
Friedman’s new book on globalization and geopolitics is The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.