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Alfred H. Bloom is an American psychologist and
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
. He was the executive vice chancellor of
Duke Kunshan University Duke Kunshan University (DKU) is a Wuhan University– Duke University joint venture, independently accredited university in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China. In 2018, Duke Kunshan University welcomed their first inaugural undergraduate class. Hi ...
from 2020 to 2021. Before that, he was the vice chancellor of
New York University Abu Dhabi New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD, ar, جامعة نيويورك أبوظبي) is a degree granting, portal campus of New York University serving as a private, liberal arts college, located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Together with ...
from 2008 to 2019 and the president of Swarthmore College from 1991 to 2009.


Life

Bloom joined NYU Abu Dhabi from Swarthmore College, where he completed an 18-year tenure as president in 2009. Under Bloom, Swarthmore assumed a position of broadly recognized leadership in American liberal arts education. During Bloom's tenure, the College revitalized its academically rigorous Honors Program, undertook extensive renovation and creation of academic buildings, broadened its multicultural curriculum, expanded foreign study, and established the Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. He also oversaw the controversial elimination of the college's football program. During the Bloom presidency, the College dramatically increased its diversity, with the proportion of students of color in the entering class rising from 16 percent to 39 percent. The college also achieved a significant increase in admissions applications and selectivity, most recently with more than 6,200 applications of extraordinary quality for approximately 375 places in the Class of 2012. Swarthmore's endowment grew from $400 million in 1991 to $1.4 billion in 2009. In addition, the College raised more than $362 million in gifts during that period. The college also expanded its commitment to financial aid, eliminating loans from students' financial aid packages, and ensuring that aid covered all foreign study. In 2000, Bloom and Swarthmore's Board of Managers, in a controversial decision, eliminated the college's football program. Prior to assuming the presidency at Swarthmore, Bloom served as executive vice president of Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Previously, he was vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty at Pitzer. He was appointed as an assistant professor of psychology and linguistics at Swarthmore in 1974, and named associate provost in 1985. In 1967, Bloom received his
B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
, '' summa cum laude'' in
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
and
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
an
civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). ...
from
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
. That year, he studied in
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
as a Fulbright-Hays fellow. In 1974, he received his
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in psychology and
social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
. The concept of "ethical intelligence,” which has gained currency within and outside of higher education, was introduced by Bloom who first expressed it in his inaugural address as president of Swarthmore in 1991 and has since amplified its meaning in numerous writings and speeches. Bloom's research brings together psychology and linguistics, particularly with respect to how they help us to understand cross-cultural continuities and differences in thought and moral understanding and the reciprocal impact of language on thought and thought on language. He is the author of "The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study of the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West" (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981) and Moral Behavior in Chinese Society (Praeger Publishers, 1981) as well as numerous articles including "The Privileging of Experience in Chinese Practical Reasoning," Journal of Chinese Philosophy; "Psychological Ingredients of High-Level Moral Thinking: A Critique of the Kohlberg-Gilligan Paradigm," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour; and "Caution - The words you use may affect what you say," Cognition. Bloom is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the
University of Richmond The University of Richmond (UR or U of R) is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia. It is a primarily undergraduate, residential institution with approximately 4,350 undergraduate and graduate students in five schools: the School ...
and Swarthmore College. Bloom served as the vice chancellor of
New York University Abu Dhabi New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD, ar, جامعة نيويورك أبوظبي) is a degree granting, portal campus of New York University serving as a private, liberal arts college, located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Together with ...
from 2008 to 2019. Bloom was named executive vice chancellor of
Duke Kunshan University Duke Kunshan University (DKU) is a Wuhan University– Duke University joint venture, independently accredited university in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China. In 2018, Duke Kunshan University welcomed their first inaugural undergraduate class. Hi ...
(DKU) in China in May 2020, and served until 2021.


Research

Bloom's research has focused on the comparative study of languages, especially between
Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
and
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
. Bloom has argued for a weak version of the so-called linguistic relativity hypothesis, which postulates an influence of language on the way speakers conceptualize and arrange the
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
; he has tried to show this through his most widely known experiment. He selected two different groups of subjects, one composed of native English speakers and the other composed of Chinese speakers; the subjects were shown a text written in their own respective languages, and their task was to read that text and, afterwards, give an answer to the question whether or not what it told had actually happened. The text, which had been initially written in English and later on translated into Chinese in a literal way, reported a set of counterfactual events that were told by using the subjunctive, a verb mood that is nowhere found in the Sinitic languages. In the end, Chinese speakers gave a much higher percentage of wrong answers than the English group. Therefore, Bloom's conclusion was the impossibility to translate literally between languages: Chinese and English express different thoughts, even when they are telling the same story. This experiment has been disputed by several authors. Au, for example, conducted an extended version of the same experiment: he used different versions of the Chinese text. In those cases in which the translation was not too literal, the text became more intelligible to its readers, and therefore they were able to understand what it reported. Pinker, following Au, has also criticized Bloom's results.


Sources

* Au, T. K. F. (1983), “Chinese and English counterfactuals: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revisited”. Cognition, 15(1), 155–187. * Bloom, A. H. (1984), “Caution – the Words You Use May Affect what You Say: a Response to Au”. Cognition, 17, 275–287. * Bloom, A. H. (1981), The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study on the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West, New York, Psychology Press. * Bloom, A. H. (1979). "The Impact of Chinese Linguistic Structure on Cognitive Style." Current Anthropology 20(3). * Swarthmore College Bulletin http://media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/?p=210 * NYU Abu Dhabi Vice Chancellor's Welcome https://web.archive.org/web/20120701183144/http://nyuad.nyu.edu/about/message.html


References


External links


Alfred H. Bloom, 1991–2009
, Swarthmore College {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloom, Alfred 1946 births Living people Scientists from New York City Princeton University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Swarthmore College faculty Presidents of Swarthmore College American psychologists New York University Abu Dhabi faculty