Man on a mission

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Dan Strandjord, Lab’69, has become a familiar fixture on 58th and Ellis. On a mission to prevent the Hospitals from performing circumcisions, he’s been standing near the institution’s Ellis Avenue entrance, next to the University bookstore, for about two hours most weekdays since mid-June. “Circumcision is not at the forefront of medicine,” he says, referencing the motto of the Hospitals, where he says his father, the late Nels Strandjord, MD’46, had worked.

Bearing a large, conspicuous placard with a photograph of two infants, he speaks enthusiastically and candidly to interested passers-by, and hands out cards explaining his anti-circumcision platform. “Circumcising a child is a violation of human rights,” Strandjord says. Confident that listeners are getting his message, he says, “About 90 percent of the people who talk to me agree with me.”

By Phoebe Maltz, ’05

February 18, 2005