WINTER 2019-20 4.19 COVER.Indd 1 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE MAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU WINTER 2019-20 a PERFECT GIFT
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WINTER 2019-20 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU WINTER 2019-20 4.19_COVER.indd 1 11/12/19 3:48 PM A PERFECT GIFT New YorkYork TimesTimes Bestseller WhatWhat It TakesTakes FromFrom thethe Chairman,Chairman, CEO,CEO, andand Co-FounderCo-Founder ofof BlackstoneBlackstone “A playbookplaybook fforor ssuccessuccess iinn aanyny fifield.”eld.” “A must-read, inspirational account.” — JOHN KERRY — JANET YELLEN “Filled with fresh insights and “The real story of what it takes personal experiences that everyone from a man who could turn dreams will relate to and learn from.” into realities.” — JACK WELCH — RAY DALIO “A series of thoughtful reflections “This story literally has what it takes: derived from the author’s the anecdotes, the insights and, most extraordinary life.” of all, the values.” — HENRY A. KISSINGER — MARK CARNEY “This book reveals how he has “Steve challenges us all to be achieved the rarest kind of leverage in better leaders, better citizens, multiple fields.” better people.” — ERIC SCHMIDT — MARY BARRA ORDER NOW: ReadWhatItTakes.com ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK AND AN AUDIOBOOK 4.19_Contents.indd 1 11/12/19 10:17 AM WINTER 2019-20 PAGE 32 CONTENTS FEATURES 14 MICROBIAL RAINBOWS Biomedical engineer Tal Danino explores the miraculous beauty and medical potential of ordinary bacteria By Paul Hond 22 IN DEFENSE OF HUMANKIND How Franz Boas, a maverick Columbia professor, created the fi eld of cultural anthropology By Charles King 26 A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE These fi ve ambitious alumnae are using their ingenuity and goodwill to make meaningful change around the globe By Julia Joy 32 MAJESTIC SHRED Merge Records cofounder Mac McCaughan ’90CC has spent thirty years putting out the best of American indie rock By Michael Azerrad ’83CC 38 RETHINKING GLOBALIZATION A Q&A with Joseph E. Stiglitz on why the US–China trade war is unwise and unwinnable By David J. Craig COVER ILLUSTRATION BY TIM O’BRIEN ADAM GOLDBERG ADAM COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 1 4.19_Contents.indd 1 11/13/19 5:58 PM COLUMBIA CONTENTS MAGAZINE DEPARTMENTS Executive Vice President, 3 University Development & Alumni Relations FEEDBACK Amelia Alverson Deputy Vice President for Strategic Communications 8 Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS COLLEGE WALK The Conversion of St. Paul’s \ The Short List \ When Lions Become Vegans \ The Writing Editor in Chief Sally Lee on the Wall \ The River Less Traveled \ Patient Storytellers Art Director Len Small 42 Managing Editor EXPLORATIONS Rebecca Shapiro PAGE It’s snowing ... plastic! \ Our amazing bones \ 8 Senior Editors A new type of social currency \ The latest David J. Craig, Paul Hond on vaping risks \ Our immortal partners \ Copy Chief Why economists downplay climate risks \ Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN Does the US transplant system waste Digital Editor too many kidneys? \ An elevator to the Julia Joy moon \ Study Hall 48 NETWORK Time to Talk about Tampons \ 3 Podcasts Senior Director for Strategic Communications for History Lovers \ Ask an Alum: So You Tracy Quinn ’14SPS Think You Can Write a Memoir? \ Your Director for Marketing Research Last-Minute Gift Guide \ Advocate for Linda Ury Greenberg Accessibility \ The Borscht Identity \ Isn’t it PAGE ironic, don’t you think? \ Newsmakers 26 Communications Offi cer Ra Hearne 54 BULLETIN Subscriptions: University news and views Address and subscription assistance [email protected] 58 To update your address online, visit BOOKS alumni.columbia.edu/directory, The Illness Lesson, by Clare Beams \ or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). In Jerusalem, by Lis Harris \ Broke, by Jodie Advertising: Adams Kirshner \ Plus, Azra Raza discusses [email protected] The First Cell Letters to the editor: [email protected] 64 RARE FINDS PAGE Columbia Magazine is published for 38 alumni and friends of Columbia by the YANG TIBEBU; JAMES LEN SMALL; DAWIT TOP: FROM Rewired for Sound Offi ce of Alumni and Development. © 2019 by the Trustees of Columbia University Visit our website for the latest: in the City of New York MAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU @ColumbiaMag @columbiamag @columbiamagazine 2 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 4.19_Contents.indd 2 11/13/19 5:58 PM FEEDBACK MOST POPULAR STORIES ONLINE IN 2019 OBAMA ORAL critics of the administration. sing his praises. But serious HISTORY But it pulls its punches when historians should be willing Nothing would have delineating topics of interest. to interview at least some delighted my father — As someone who knocked people who can shed light 1. “Radical Solutions Allan Nevins ’60HON, on doors in Ohio for the on Obama’s Stalin-like use for Baldness” who founded Columbia’s 2008 Obama campaign and of the CIA, FBI, and IRS to SPRING 2019 Oral History Research O ce jumped for joy when he was wage war against his political in 1948 — more than the elected for precisely the enemies. The perspective of glorious news of the Colum- reasons you start the article former US attorney general bia Center for Oral History with — e.g., his historic Michael Mukasey ’63CC Research (CCOHR) under- candidacy and his rhetorical would be valuable. taking the Obama oral-history links to the civil-rights move- Objective historians project (“Lift Every Voice,” Fall ment — I hope the project should also probe Obama’s 2. “Plastic, Plastic Everywhere” 2019). It has to be, from all will address the administra- Benghazi narrative, his SUMMER 2019 standpoints, one of the richest tion’s heartbreaking conser- many arbitrary amendments and most complex areas of vatism and extremism in its to the so-called A ordable research in the past fi fty years. use of drones to kill people Care Act, his providing aid As an outlander (Barnard merely accused of crimes and comfort to Iran, and ’47) it was only by chance that (and in the case of Anwar his doubling of the national I came upon your excellent al-Awlaki, his teenage son as debt from $10 to $20 tril- article detailing this enter- well). I hope it will address lion in just eight years. prise. In it you make vividly the fact that Obama left It would also be fascinating 3. “Let’s Talk about Obama” clear the importance of oral o ce with the most spied-on to hear from any of Obama’s FALL 2019 history in preserving “memory, constituency in history, classmates and professors experience, and shifting which we know thanks to who may remember him. values,” to quote CCOHR Edward Snowden. I suggest What classes did he attend, director Mary Marshall Cornel West as a “narrator” to and what were his grades? Our next issue won’t Clark. Congratulations! describe such contradictions. Why doesn’t he release his be published until Meredith Nevins Mayer Joel Whitney ’02SOA transcript? Once a person May 2020. But no fear, ’47BC Brooklyn, NY has been elected president we’ll be posting fresh New York, NY twice, why would he care if articles every month at Most of the four hundred peo- the public learned that he magazine.columbia.edu Your article notes that the ple chosen to be interviewed fl unked geology in 1983? Obama oral-history project for the Obama oral-history Jim O’Brien ’66CC will include interviews with project will undoubtedly Maitland, FL COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 3 4.19_FEEDBACK.indd 3 11/13/19 4:58 PM FEEDBACK COMING most of the credit for the ATTRACTIONS invention of the concept and We just happened to be instrumentation of MRI headed to Palm Beach in belongs to Paul C. Lauterbur, late September when we who shared the Nobel Prize read the Fall 2019 issue of in Physiology or Medicine Columbia Magazine, with in 2003. the feature about Dwight My first university faculty Cleveland’s film-poster position was at the State collection, selections from University of New York which were on display at at Stony Brook, at whose the Norton Museum of Art brand-new campus Paul and (“Poster Pundit,” Network). I arrived simultaneously. How could we not go see it We had adjacent oces, and for ourselves? because we both worked It was wonderful! Thank on magnetic resonance (he you for printing the article in NMR and I in electron and turning us on to this spin resonance, or ESR), museum, and thanks to we shared a magnetically Dwight Cleveland for shielded laboratory room. his generosity. Therefore, we not only dis- Jeanne Guglielmo ’85NRS cussed the methodology he Brookline, MA had in mind at the time, but I saw him carry out some of MAGNETIC his earliest experiments on From the poster collection of Dwight Cleveland ’82CC, clockwise from left: INTELLECT biological tissues. Goldfinger (Japan, 1964), Rocky (Poland, 1976), and Born to Dance (US, 1936). As a graduate of Columbia Due to the size of the College, I am as eager as containers for samples to There has been some admission to Columbia anyone else to claim credit be studied with the NMR skepticism about President College as a transfer student for its faculty’s achieve- instruments of those days Obama’s time at Columbia. in 1981. He enrolled for the ments — as you did when (they were thin glass tubes), I think that interviews with fall term of that year as a you tied I. I. Rabi’s Nobel he was forced to use tiny his friends and professors political science major. With Prize–winning advances in creatures such as mosquitoes and the release of his the conclusion of the spring nuclear magnetic resonance, or whatever other varmints, transcript would put to rest semester of 1983, Obama or NMR, to the develop- or pieces thereof, were avail- lingering questions about completed the requirements ment of magnetic-resonance able. Later he designed and his past and where he came for a Bachelor of Arts degree imaging, or MRI (“The Mind built modified instrumenta- from.