11/12/19 3:48 PM WINTER 2019-20 4.19_COVER.indd 1 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE MAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU WINTER 2019-20 A PERFECT GIFT

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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 FROM TOP: LEN SMALL; DAWIT TIBEBU; JAMES YANG Rewired for Sound Offi ce of Alumni and Development.

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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. Without it, the rumors in political science and grad- Readers,” Fall 2019). But tion that allowed for larger will just start all over again! uated with his class.” — Ed. it is my opinion that all or research samples. Unfortu- Paul O’Conor ’71BUS Milton, MA KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS CODE SCHOOL Rumors that Barack Obama CODE SCHOOL BC Barnard College NRS School of Nursing never attended Columbia BUS Graduate School of Business OPT School of Optometry began with his candidacy CC Columbia College PH Mailman School of Public Health DM for president in 2007, along College of Dental Medicine PHRM School of Pharmaceutical Sciences GS School of General Studies PS Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

with demands that he release GSAPP Graduate School of Architecture, SEAS Fu Foundation School of Engineering and COURTESY OF DWIGHT CLEVELAND his college transcript. The Planning, and Preservation Applied Science GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Sciences SIPA School of International and Public Affairs University released an o cial HON (Honorary degree) SOA School of the Arts statement at that time, which JRN Graduate School of Journalism SPS School of Professional Studies JTS SW we recently reconfirmed. Jewish Theological Seminary School of Social Work KC King’s College TC Teachers College It reads: “Barack Obama LAW School of Law UTS Union Theological Seminary applied for and was granted LS School of Library Service

4 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_FEEDBACK.indd 4 11/13/19 11:57 AM 4.19_FEEDBACK.indd 5 212.854.1200 ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL &FACULTY HOUSE CREDITS GO HERE the Brink,” Fall 2019). When of biodiversity loss(“Lifeon the issueswefaceasaresult a great jobofhighlighting Environmental Biology, does of Ecology, Evolution, and of Columbia’s Department with ShahidNaeem, thechair David J. Craig’s interview WORD SPREADING THE books. the history isnowin rest The studies. X-ray andneutron-di raction where Ispentmy timein haven National Laboratory, because ImovedtoBrook- experiments, his exciting story, track Ilost ofhimand nately forthepurposeofthis Ivan ’63GSAS Bernal ) [email protected] Houston, TX Fall inlove in ourhistoriclandmarkbuildings. Celebrate your day andcreateeverlasting campusmemories Mitts’s researchintothedata and readaboutTamar tion itneeds. to bringtheissueatten- theirliveswillbegin impacts loss ofbiodiversity directly day how peopleunderstand I thinkthat helpingevery- day Thunberg), (thinkGreta issuesofour of theprimary elevated climate change toone the globalcommunity has way that broadlyeducating In agriculturalists. thesame beyond can beextended cation canmake adi erence scale. and onanindustrial those offarmers,bothlocally changing behaviors —namely oneducation and focuses asked aboutsolutions,Naeem with When Iturnedthepage I thinktheideathat edu- columbia ) FACULTYHOUSE.COLUMBIA.EDU fight to preserve what eco- fight topreserve the globalcommunity to ISIS, couldonealsoconvince needs cancausethemtojoin promising fulfillmentofbasic a social-mediacampaign the threat’s immediacy. If making peopleunderstand challenge is The ecosystems. from thelossofspeciesand the threat theworldfaces make peopleunderstand to exercise straightforward ple aboutbiodiversity. be appliedtoeducating peo- from thisresearchthat might were lessonstobedrawn tomethat there occurred Explorations, Fall 2019), it really recruitsitsmembers,” on socialmedia(“How ISIS behind ISISrecruitment I thinkit’s arelatively all overagain! ) working against? Yes,working against? there peoplethat weare the very helpeducatesuch studies publicizing theresultsof However,e ective. doesn’t use andwhicharethemost messages that radical groups ofsocial-media acteristics need toresearchthechar- the understand can certainly ISIS recruitmentstrategies, I Tamarscientist Mitts into led byColumbiapolitical aboutresearch tions article Regarding yourExplora- saving theplanet. behavior holdtheanswerto science, andhumansocial Maybe socialmedia,data canbesaved? still systems Haig Buchakjian’17BUS @FACULTYHOUSECU Franklin NJ Lakes, 11/14/19 9:54 AM FEEDBACK

is freedom of speech. But I who had education and am sure there is information direct experience in social much less sensitive than this work, who understood its that is being kept out of the real-world complexities well public domain. enough to prepare me for Ed Gerstenhaber ’68SEAS the road ahead. This exper- Murrysville, PA tise can only come from having trained and worked This sixteenth-century script suggests a male author. Tamar Mitts responds: as a social worker. This is an important ethical Maxine L. Angell ’84SW MAN USCRIPT GRAMMAR consideration. Propaganda Saint Helena, CA The Fall 2019 issue was a SCHOOLED has long been the focus of wonderful read as always! Each season I look forward academic research, but there Kudos from a disinterested to the thoughtful and engag- is also a compelling public- rival alum. One quick ques- ing articles in Columbia policy justifi cation for tion about the College Walk Magazine. This past issue studying the e ectiveness article “Try Burnt Oysters,” felt like a special surprise, of ISIS online propaganda. about an e ort by Colum- because when I read the Governments and technology bia’s Making and Knowing Feedback section, I was companies are currently Project (based in the Center treated to a full half-page grappling with what sort for Science and Society) to rebuttal by the editor regard- of content to prohibit on publish a digital edition of an ing the decision to go with a social-media platforms. anonymous French artisan’s singular verb rather than a Policymakers have primarily manuscript from around the plural one in a sentence on focused on violent content year 1500: if the name of the prior issue’s cover. or content produced by the artisan is unknown, how Not only was the response extremist actors that might did the researchers discern entertaining, but it was edu- incite o ine violence. Our that the person was male? cational as well, with myriad research highlights the need MELVILLE’S Weren’t many of the prepar- examples. It also revealed to consider other types of FRESHMAN YEAR ers and handlers of artistic the depth of care that goes appeals, as these seem to be Thank you for your article materials at that time female into producing the maga- no less (and possibly even about Herman Melville household or hired workers? zine. People will get worked more) e ective at attracting and the part that Columbia Barbara Irving up over the silliest things, support for extremist groups. English instructor Raymond Monsey, NY but your thoughtful answer Weaver played in rescuing his was a useful reminder that EXPERIENCE reputation (“Melville at 200,” Naomi Rosenkranz, often the best response is a REQUIRED? College Walk, Fall 2019). assistant director of the thorough one. I was perplexed about why You may be interested to Making and Knowing Tzvi Sherman ’17GS Columbia’s administration learn that there is another Project, responds: New York, NY would select a candidate to Melville connection to During this period, men lead the School of Social Work Columbia: the scholar and women were taught who has neither an advanced John P. Runden wrote an di erent scripts; the specifi c QUESTIONS? degree in social work nor article for Melville Society Middle French script used TOP: FRENCH NATIONAL LIBRARY; CENTER: AUDREY HAWKINS extensive experience in the Extracts in 1981 that estab- in the document is a male COMMENTS? fi eld (“Melissa Begg named lished that the author, along script. Additionally, details, dean of School of Social with his brother Gansevoort, descriptions, and references WE WELCOME THEM ALL! given in the manuscript Work,” Bulletin, Fall 2019). attended Columbia Grammar E-MAIL US AT: I graduated from the School for a year beginning strongly suggest that the [email protected] School of Social Work in in 1829, when he was ten author-practitioner was traveling across parts OR WRITE TO US: 1984 and spent the subse- years old. According to Columbia Magazine quent decades in a variety of school records, he was pupil of Europe. Travel of this Columbia Alumni Center positions in the fi eld. What number 162. kind would have been 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 I valued at Columbia was Arthur Fell ’68LAW highly unlikely for a the mentorship of professors Montpellier, France woman at this time. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.

6 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_FEEDBACK.indd 6 11/13/19 11:57 AM If nothing else, when you do “ make a charitable gift, start with your most appreciated securities.”

—JOOYUN “JULIE” OH YBARRA ’98BUS, 1754 SOCIETY MEMBER

A savvy businesswoman plans for the future

Julie saw her Apple stock surge from $13 to $170 a share. Instead of cashing it in, she used it to fund a charitable gift annuity at Columbia. This let her avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation — and make a bigger gift. She also deferred receiving the annuity payments, ensuring future income at a more attractive rate.

Are you choosing the best assets to support the causes you value? Call the Office of Gift Planning at 800-338-3294 or email us at [email protected]. Learn how you can join the 1754 Society with a tax-advantaged gift that supports Columbia students and secures a future income stream for you and/or a loved one.

giving.columbia.edu/Ybarra1754mag 800-338-3294 • [email protected]

4.19_FEEDBACK.indd 7 11/13/19 11:57 AM COLLEGE WALK

NOTES FROM 116TH STREET AND BEYOND

e Conversion of St. Paul’s Scaffolding around Columbia’s most breathtaking structure comes down — and all eyes look up

t. Paul’s Chapel, designed by Elizabeth Ramsey ’10SPS and Sung “Sunny” I. N. Phelps Stokes in a mix of Kim, project managers for historic preserva- SByzantine and Italian Renaissance tion at Columbia. Eorescence — the residue styles, was dedicated in 1907 and was of evaporated moisture — indicated a leaky one of the first buildings in New York to be roof and potential structural damage. With landmarked. Stained-glass scenes of the apostle the weight of the chapel’s history on their Paul preaching in Athens, by the painter John shoulders, Ramsey and Kim began what La Farge, adorn the apse; cherub heads by became a two-year restoration. sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who later designed “The laying of a terra cotta roof is intri- Mount Rushmore, greet visitors from atop the cate and methodical,” says Ramsey, “and we columns of the portico. More than a century knew it would take time, especially given the of homilies and melodies have echoed beneath steepness of the dome.” They knew, too, on the chapel’s ninety-one-foot-tall tiled vault, account of the building’s curves and angles, often accompanied by the breathy rumbling of that encasing St. Paul’s in scaolding would the pipe organ (since 1938 an Aeolian-Skinner). be a costly, labor-intensive aair. They The decades have seen dozens of professors wanted to take advantage of this rare access. honored and hundreds of couples wed. “We thought, ‘If we’re spending this time and The chapel, welcoming and nondenom- eort to scaold, let’s see what else we can inational, is cherished space. But with the do,’” says Kim. On the roof, they discovered terra cotta roof long past its seventy-five-year more features in need of care: the sixteen

expected lifespan, white streaks of salt, called stained-glass windows encircling the dome. LEN SMALL eorescence, had appeared on the tile walls These panels, which honor such luminaries of the interior. The sight raised alarms for as DeWitt Clinton 1786CC, a New York

8 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_CW.indd 8 11/12/19 3:36 PM governor and US senator, and removed shortly after the build- Philip Van Cortlandt 1758KC, a ing opened. Now the Columbia Revolutionary War commander team saw a chance to revive the and New York congressman, were initial design. Fortunately, Stokes’s THE SHORT LIST faded and thick with soot. plans were in the archives of the And so the project was Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Miller Theatre expanded to include the windows Library, along with notes LISTENLISTEN goes for and the tiled vault. The chairs thatthat helpedhelped determinedetermine thethe baroquebaroque wwithith BBachach ffromrom tthehe PPiano,iano, in the nave were moved aside to precise shade of green a concertconcert seriesseries presentedpresented byby accommodate another sca old that had graced the roof celebratedcelebrated pianistpianist Simone that ascended vertiginously to in 1907. “And Ludowici DinnersteinDinnerstein. Hear a selection the upper dome. Workers took was still in business,” ofof sonatassonatas onon JanuaryJanuary 30,30, breaks during religious services, says Kim. “They even concertosconcertos onon FebruaryFebruary 13,13, andand but other chapel business — had the original mold.” otherother highlightshighlights fromfrom Bach’sBach’s lunchtime concerts, fellowship This past fall, the canoncanon oonn MMarcharch 112.2. millertheatre.com meetings, visitor tours — went sca sca oldingolding camecame down.down. InIn /event-series/bach-from-the-piano/event-series/bach-from-the-piano on as artisans cleaned the ceiling, the nave, visitors looked up at replaced fl awed tiles, and removed the refreshed ceiling tiles and the the sixteen windows, the stained- vibrant stained-glass windows and Published a glass fragments of which were could see, at the dome’s highest PROMOTE book? Submit dislodged from their lead frames point, the oculus — a circular win- the news to the Alumni Bookshelf, an online and spirited to Pennsylvania to be dow surrounded by fi ligree that index of fi ction, nonfi ction, and poetry from scrubbed and delicately recolored. was black before the restoration. Columbia authors. alumni.columbia.edu “Instead of painting on top of the “We cleaned the fi ligree and had /content/alumni-bookshelf-home-page original glass, they laminated a it regilded,” says Ramsey. “Now very thin piece of new glass, then when the light comes through, it applied it, so they didn’t touch the kind of glows; it gives a fi nishing Because you can’t original paint,” says Ramsey. touch that you couldn’t see before.” STREAM be at every campus Choosing the roof tiles was a That glow will fall on generations event, visit the Columbia Alumni YouTube project unto itself. The original of guests, worshippers, and cele- channel to watch speeches from the latest tiles, made by Ludowici Roof Tile brants. Full activities have resumed, Columbia Alumni Leaders Weekend and more. in Ohio, had fared poorly through and four weddings are already youtube.com/user/ColumbiaAlumni/videos the freeze–thaw cycle and were planned for 2020. — Paul Hond

A striking wall installation by SEE mixed-media artist Adama Delphine Fawundu ’18SOA is on display in Miller Theatre’s lobby through June 2020. The work, titled Tales from the Mano River, is inspired by Fawundu’s ancestral homeland of Sierra Leone. millertheatre.com/about /news/tales-from-the-mano-river

Scholars, APPRENEZ Francophiles, and history geeks are encouraged to attend “New Political Economies of the French Empire, 19th–20th Centuries,” a seminar on the socioeconomic legacies of French colonialism. Free and open to the public at Columbia’s Maison Française on February 28.

TOP: LISA MARIE MAZZUCCO; BOTTOM: LEN SMALL BOTTOM: MARIE MAZZUCCO; LISA TOP: heymancenter.org/events/

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 9

4.19_CW.indd 9 11/12/19 3:36 PM COLLEGE WALK

together, share stories, ask questions, and debate. Elison, the moderator, wanted to know: what sort of challenging com- ments do vegans hear? “How do you get protein?” a woman in a Columbia sweatshirt volunteered, to knowing chuckles. “When you’re vegan,” she said, “everyone wants to be your dietitian.” A Barnard first-year suggested comic Ellen DeGeneres’s rebuttal: “What do you care where I get my protein from? Where do you get your riboflavin?” Students from Italy, Romania, and Ukraine described the incomprehension of folks back home, who viewed a plant- based diet as an aront to tradition. Students from Nebraska, Mississippi, and Wisconsin could relate. But in New York, where veganism is well-established, Columbia students have plenty of options, on campus and o. “Columbia and Barnard have stepped it up,” said Barnard sophomore Sorah Park, who has written a down- loadable guidebook to dining halls and area eateries called Your Guide to Vegan When Lions Become Vegans Bites at Barnumbia. Park loves the curry with tofu at the Diana Center, the The Columbia Vegan Society says you can have your dairy- no-cheese bruschetta pizza at Ferris, free, egg-free cake and protect the planet, too and the vegan pho she once had at John Jay. “John Jay’s vegan station is ree food is probably the best way consumption, Burger King’s debut of a pretty good,” said Elison. “They have to get a student’s attention, and plant-based Whopper, and a New York a big salad bar with lots of grains and FZoe Elison’s bait was brownies. Times column, written by an omnivore, vegetables. Non-vegans eat at the vegan As president of the Columbia titled “Stop Mocking Vegans” (“They’re station all the time — they have Beyond Vegan Society, Elison, a sophomore, right about ethics and the environ- Sausage, and people like the plant- TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY LEN SMALL; ORIGINAL IMAGES VIA SHUTTERSTOCK; BOTTOM: LEN SMALL had baked enough of the dairy-free, ment”) — people were eager to get based stu more than the meat.” egg-free treats to withstand the crush At the meeting, students loaded up on of Activities Day, and after four hours brownies and oat-milk ice cream using behind a brownie-stacked table, Elison bowls and spoons brought from home saw more than two hundred people — (Elison, who studies computer science vegans, vegetarians, and the vegan- and sustainable engineering, tries to avoid curious — sign her e-mail list. That was disposables). There would be a catered a record, and a week later, as the club’s vegan-cheese night later in the semester first meeting overflowed with dozens of — an event that stirred great anticipation, students, it was clear that food wasn’t since for many aspiring vegans, cheese the only attraction. is the hardest habit to kick. While vegan Energized by the wave of world events cheeses don’t contain the milk protein that rolled in with the academic year — casein, which produces opiate-like eects, the burning of the Amazon rainforest cheesemakers using cashews, almonds, for cattle ranching, a UN climate report coconut, and potatoes are concocting calling on humans to reduce meat Zoe Elison and Sorah Park equally addictive alternatives light years

10 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_CW.indd 10 11/12/19 3:36 PM beyond the soy cheddar of yore. One student mentioned the brand Miyoko’s, which drew murmurs of approval. “I’m picky with my cheese,” said the Wisconsinite, “but that one slaps.” Elison solicited ideas for future discussion topics. “What about dating a meat- eater?” one student said. “Deal-breaker,” said another. The Nebraskan said, “Short- term, yes. Long-term, no.” A woman stirring her melted ice cream announced that condoms aren’t vegan, since they are processed with casein to make them smoother. Interesting news, but someone said that vegan condoms exist. No one could o er a product review. How about vaccines? “I don’t mess around when it comes to medicine,” said the Nebraskan, standing firmly on the side of the flu shot. Most everyone stood with him. And hunting? That one pitted a sustainability vegan (“I wouldn’t do it personally, but if hunting is done sustainably and the meat is used to feed people, I have no problem with it”) against an anti-cru- elty vegan (“Why kill an animal if you don’t need to?”). This was big-tent veganism. The Writing on the Wall The brownies dwindled, and the meeting adjourned. For her forthcoming book Do Not Erase, Harris prefers the old limestone-on- The next day, the students photographer Jessica Wynne shot the slate technology to whiteboards (“I don’t would fuel up at the vegan- blackboards of dozens of scholars, including much like the smell of the markers”) and friendly stations in John Columbia mathematics professor Michael electronic boards (“They have a tendency Jay and Ferris or at the Harris and physics student Sahar Khan. to crash, in my experience”). “I know of no local venues highlighted in The formulas on Harris’s board (bottom) better way to share and discuss compli- Sorah Park’s guidebook. The belong to a branch of number theory called cated information,” he says. zeitgeist, they knew, was at automorphic forms and were the response But he does not claim the visual flair of their backs. As Park, plant- to a problem posed by a graduate student. colleagues whose boards “can be enjoyed based since age eighteen and Khan’s board (top) shows mathematical for their pictorial qualities by viewers a varsity swimmer in high objects called knots, used in string theory. For who know nothing about mathematics. school, put it, “If you want to Khan, drawing on chalkboards is “a process of I have never been artistically inclined,” be vegan, now is the time.” understanding or eliminating my own miscon- Harris says. “My use of the blackboard is — Paul Hond ceptions or suspicions about a topic,” she says. purely functional.” JESSICA WYNNE JESSICA

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4.19_CW.indd 11 11/13/19 10:53 AM COLLEGE WALK THE RIVER LESS TRAVELED A class encounters Manhattan’s neglected waterway

n a recent Wednesday, Scot Rivers. As a result of the construction, Bridge, built during the Colonial period. McFarlane, a Columbia doc- Marble Hill, once attached to Manhattan, “During the War of Independence the Otoral candidate in history who is now on the Bronx side of the canal — King’s Bridge, which connected Marble teaches a course called Rivers, “the only part of Manhattan that’s on the Hill to the mainland, was the major Politics, and Power in the United States, mainland,” Bailey-Castro said. artery for the American fighters in Man- shepherded ten undergrads onto the Bailey-Castro showed drawings and hattan to escape from the British,” Bailey- number 1 train headed uptown. The photos of the eight-mile-long Harlem Castro said. “On November 25, 1783 — train emerged above ground in Inwood, River, which branches from the East the day the British evacuated Manhattan rattled across the Broadway Bridge, and River at Randall’s Island, curves along — George Washington returned to New discharged McFarlane’s class at 225th the tapering horn of Upper Manhattan, York City across that bridge.” Street in Marble Hill, the first stop on and bends westward at the island’s tip in As the class walked back to Manhattan the other side of the Harlem River. The an almost horizontal path to the Hudson. over the Broadway Bridge, McFarlane students were met by Duane Bailey- As a commuter train shrieked in the dis- spoke of the rivers of his formative years: Castro ’17TC, a teacher and photogra- tance, Bailey-Castro held up a 1905 tour- the Concord in Massachusetts and the pher whose Instagram photos of Harlem ist postcard of New York’s most wondrous Trinity in Texas, the latter of which is the River bridges had caught McFarlane’s sights: the Statue of Liberty, St. Patrick’s subject of McFarlane’s dissertation. “The eye. McFarlane had asked Bailey-Castro Cathedral, the Flatiron Building, and — Trinity flows from Dallas–Fort Worth to lead the group on a tour. the High Bridge? “The High Bridge is through a rural part of the state into the Wearing a white shirt, dark tie, glasses, the oldest surviving bridge in New York,” Gulf of Mexico,” McFarlane said. “The and a bulging knapsack, Bailey-Castro, Bailey-Castro said. “It was completed in growth of the cities made the river towns who grew up in the South Bronx, took the 1848, part of the Roman-style Croton downstream harder places to live because class to the nearby Metro-North platform, Aqueduct, and was the Brooklyn Bridge of pollution and also flooding from runo. which aorded a view, on the opposite of its day — an engineering marvel as In my work I think about the connection bank, of Columbia’s Baker Athletics Com- well as a tourist attraction.” between rivers and the history of both plex. Bailey-Castro explained that this Reopened in 2015 as a pedestrian urbanization and slavery: the Trinity part of the waterway had been unnaviga- walkway, the High Bridge was down- starts in the city and flows through former ble until the late nineteenth century, when river, out of view. But it reminded plantations. And of course rivers facili- the Harlem River Ship Canal was created Bailey-Castro of another Harlem River tated the slave trade and also provided to fully link the Hudson and Harlem crossing, long vanished: the King’s escape routes for people fleeing slavery.” Like all rivers, McFarlane said, the Harlem River reflects larger political dynamics. “In the twentieth century, Harlem and the Bronx became home to Black and Latino communities, and the river was neglected, while the Hudson was opened up for recreation. It’s useful to think about these dierences and what they say about inequality and the history of racism in New York City.” The group headed back to the subway. But McFarlane wasn’t finished with the mighty Harlem. “Next week, we’ll do a canoe trip,” he said. “To understand the

river, we have to experience it. We’ll put DUANE BAILEY-CASTRO in at Roberto Clemente State Park in the Bronx and go about a mile upriver. “It’s a short trip, but it will give a sense The High Bridge. of the river’s strength.” — Paul Hond

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4.19_CW.indd 12 11/12/19 3:37 PM medicine — the first of its stories have power and value. kind in the nation, and the Pushing back against imper- model for academic pro- sonal norms of health care, she grams at other universities. created what would become a Narrative medicine new discipline, one that exam- teaches that health care is ines how clinicians, patients, strengthened when prac- and those touched by illness — titioners listen to patients’ inevitably, all of us — can use personal stories and validate narrative tools to improve care the complicated feelings and nurture empathy. Charon, who wrote her dissertation on Henry James, recalled the first time she “strayed from medical routine.”

their illnesses bring up. To Listening to and sharing illustrate the problem that stories of sickness defies narrative medicine seeks to the often hurried, harried address, Charon projected world of medicine, Charon two pictures on a screen. The said. But the method has first was of Earth floating in proved so promising that all outer space. The second was first-year Columbia medical of a human cell. That huge students must now take one chasm between the macro narrative-medicine course. and the micro, the general Outside the lecture hall, Patient Storytellers and the specific, is why Knoles, the English pro- A narrative-medicine workshop teaches medicine needs the human- fessor, explained why she the art of radical listening ities, she said. “In medicine, was at the workshop, which we got very good at talking included talks, small-group about the human body,” seminars, writing exercises, eople need on the rising field of Charon told the crowd. “But close readings of short a way to tell narrative medicine. we got dumber and dumber stories, and discussions of “P and listen Participants filtered about paying attention to paintings and photographs. to stories at through the lobby, coee the individual.” “Just after college, not having the most di cult points in hand, and into a lecture Charon, who wrote her a clue what to do with my of their lives,” said Lucia hall, where physician and dissertation on Henry James, life, I spoke with a therapist. Knoles, an English professor literary scholar Rita Charon recalled the first time she He told me to remember two at Assumption College in ’99GSAS, a Columbia profes- “strayed from medical routine,” things. One, you can’t solve Worcester, Massachusetts. sor of medicine, expounded as she put it. “I asked a patient, everyone’s problems. Two, Knoles was one of over on the virtues of what she what do I need to know about everyone you love will suer.” a hundred people from terms “radical listening.” you?” Charon said. “He tells She paused, finishing around the country and Charon, who is the inaugu- me quickly about being sexu- her coee. the world — doctors, ral chair of the Department ally assaulted as a child, and “But he never taught me social workers, therapists, of Medical Humanities he’s weeping. I ask him why, the third thing: how to ease writers, chaplains — who and Ethics, established the and he says, ‘No one’s ever let the suering of others I’ve journeyed to the Columbia field of narrative medicine me do this before.’” learned the best way to do University Irving Medical at Columbia in 2000 and That moment of connec- that is to bear witness to peo- Center campus in October directs the University’s mas- tion would inspire Charon to ple’s stories. To be with them.” — Rebecca Kelliher ’13BC ANNA PARINI for a three-day workshop ter’s program in narrative explore the idea that patients’

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4.19_CW.indd 13 11/12/19 3:37 PM MICROBIAL

4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 14 11/14/19 9:48 AM 4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 15

CREDITS GO HERE Biomedical engineerTalBiomedical Danino explores the miraculous potential beauty andmedical of ordinary bacteria By Paul Hond RAINBOWS 11/11/19 2:53 PM John James Audubon drew birds, Georgia O’Kee e ’71HON painted skulls, Damien Hirst pinned butterfl ies to canvas. But Tal Danino’s art cuts even closer to nature’s core: his palette is alive, his paint made of the oldest, smallest, most abundant creatures on earth. In a laboratory in the Northwest Corner tions about what these little things mean and how Building, Danino, an assistant professor of bio- they connect to our lives.” medical engineering, is growing bacteria. Danino Having evolved over billions of years, and works on the frontiers of synthetic biology, a having, among other exploits, furnished the young discipline in which biological systems are planet’s atmosphere with oxygen, these “little genetically redesigned to perform useful tasks. things” are a very big deal. Countless and perva- Combining the remarkable abilities of bacteria sive, bacteria live in forests and deserts, homes and the power of genetic engineering, Danino and schools, hospitals and restaurants, on the is targeting cancer — specifi cally, he is pro- surface of ponds and at the bottom of oceans, in gramming microbes to release medicine inside sand and soil, in volcanoes and under ice sheets. tumors. But for Danino, bacteria are not just sol- Subtle variations in DNA make it impossible diers in a war on illness; they are also singularly to know how many discrete species exist. All beautiful, expressive, and meaningful life forms. told, bacteria are more numerous than the stars

As the heroes of his bacterial “paintings,” which in the universe, and in our bodies, where they PREVIOUS SPREAD: MICROBIAL RAINBOW (DETAIL), 2018–; PORTRAIT: DIANE BONDAREFF; OPPOSITE: COEXISTENCE (DETAIL), 2019; ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF TAL DANINO UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED have hung in galleries in New York, Beijing, thrive by the trillions, they perform functions Seoul, and Abu Dhabi, these microbes give new essential to our survival, like making vitamins meaning to “still life.” and coating our guts to prevent illness. Danino typically begins his art pieces with a But some microbes can make us sick, a PR pipette of bacteria and a petri dish coated with problem that has obscured bacteria’s benefi ts, real agar, a growth medium derived from algae. With and prospective, to human health. Danino, both the help of researcher Soonhee Moon, he deposits as an artist and as director of Columbia’s Syn- precise droplets, each containing a few thousand thetic Biological Systems Laboratory, is helping to bacteria, onto the agar. The bacteria quickly rep- change that. “Though bacteria are single-celled, licate, dividing themselves and spreading out in they are incredibly sophisticated,” he says. “They patterns resembling intense starbursts, delicate reproduce asexually, they have tails called fl agella blossoms, eyeballs, corals, sprawling continents, that allow them to swim, they mutate to adapt to and cross sections of agate stone. Using chemical their environment, and they ‘talk’ to each other dyes to bring out the intricate motifs formed by through a chemical communication process called the proliferating microbes, Danino takes poin- ‘quorum sensing,’ in which bacteria reach a certain tillism to its irreducible limit: images made of density and then perform tasks collectively, such millions and millions of microscopic cells. as express genes needed for bioluminescence.” “I’ve found that the visual component is an The qualities that make bacteria such dynamic extremely powerful way to communicate science,” painters — the ability to multiply rapidly and says Danino. “My overall theme is that the medium act synchronously — also make them, in Danino’s — in this case, bacteria — is the message.” That hands, ideal agents for medicine. This past sum- message asks us to consider life and health at the mer, Danino, with Columbia immunologist Nich- most fundamental level. “We evolved from olas Arpaia and colleagues at the Massachusetts bacteria,” Danino says. “It’s amazing when Institute of Technology and Massachu- you think about it: they are our ances- setts General Hospital, published a tors, and they also live inside us.” paper in Nature Medicine showing At Liberty Science Center in that by harnessing the mecha- Jersey City, Danino’s petri-dish nism of quorum sensing, they images greet visitors at the could program bacteria to shrink Microbes Rule! exhibit. “People tumors in mice. seeing the work ask, ‘What is Their experiments focused on that? What is it made of? What is CD47, a protein that is present its signifi cance?’” says Danino. “For on the surface of many cells. This me, the art is about provoking ques- protein, a kind of “don’t eat me” signal,

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4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 16 11/12/19 1:03 PM 4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 17 11/11/19 2:53 PM Microuniverse, 2018, at Liberty Science Center, Jersey City.

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4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 18 11/11/19 2:53 PM Fossils, 2019, at Zürcher Gallery, New York.

, 2014, at Koch Institute Public Galleries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

OPPOSITE: JUAN ROQUE JUAN OPPOSITE: Supernova

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4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 19 11/12/19 1:04 PM Microbial Rainbow (detail), 2018–.

4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 20 11/11/19 2:53 PM tells the immune system that the cell is innocu- made by bacteria and his e orts to mimic and ous, encouraging white blood cells to move along, augment these processes in his lab. since no immune-system action is required. As “Art inspires a lot of the science that we do,” cells age, they lose CD47, allowing the immune Danino says. “Artists are really good at exploring, system to eliminate failing cells, clearing the way whereas scientists tend to be more conservative. for new ones. But in a cancer cell, CD47 can be The scientific enterprise is based on coming up erroneously turned on, planting the “don’t eat with a hypothesis and then rigorously testing it. me” flag and tricking the immune system into When you write a grant, it has to be as un-crazy- ignoring the malignancy. sounding as possible in order to get funded. Danino and his colleagues wanted to find a Art isn’t like that: it’s more subjective and less way to turn o the CD47 signal, while avoiding methodical, more based on intuition and trying the side e ects of antibody immunotherapy, a crazy ideas. That mindset allows me to jump into form of cancer treatment that rallies the body’s the science and develop the story as I go along.” natural defenses. “If you inject the CD47 antibody Danino undertook his first attempts to pro- into the bloodstream, you will see a reduction in gram bacteria in grad school at the University red-blood-cell counts or platelet counts,” Danino of California San Diego, where he merged his says. “That’s what causes adverse side e ects.” interest in computers and math with biology. So instead, the team injected genetically repro- He became interested in using microbes to grammed bacteria directly into tumors — improve human health as a postdoc at MIT, bacteria built to release, on cue, and began exploring ways to geneti- a payload of CD47 antibodies. cally manipulate bacteria to treat Getting the bacteria to do cancer. A few of his collabora- this required heavy problem- “Artists are really tive artworks from that era solving. Because bacteria can’t hang in his oce. For them, produce complex antibodies, good at exploring, Danino grew cancer cells on Danino had to direct them whereas scientists a plastic surface, which was to generate simpler anti- then photographed by the body-like proteins, called tend to be more Brazilian artist Vik Muniz. nanobodies, which en masse One of these photolitho- could stimulate the immune sys- conservative.” graphs, HeLa Pattern 1, shows tem in the same way. Using DNA an ornate design made up of the customized in his lab, and a non- cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, an pathogenic strain of E. coli (which lives in our intes- African-American woman who died in 1951, and tines), Danino devised what he calls a “medicinal whose unusually hardy cells were harvested with- Trojan horse.” Once introduced into a tumor, the out her consent. HeLa cells represent the most engineered bacteria begin replicating until they commonly used “immortalized” human cell line, reach a minimal threshold (or quorum) of den- meaning that the cells, due to a mutation, keep sity. This triggers them to burst and discharge the dividing indefinitely, making them invaluable nanobodies. These nanobodies attach to the CD47 to science. “Virtually every lab in the world that proteins in the tumor, hiding the faulty “don’t eat works on cancer has HeLa cells,” says Danino. me” signs and permitting the immune system to “Billions and billions of cells, alive and used identify and consume the bad cells. In the recent today for research.” experiments on mice, the tumors shrank. Danino is The idea of an eternal organism never fails working on translating this technology to humans to fire Danino’s imagination. Like Lacks’s cells, and hopes to begin trials within three years. bacteria keep multiplying: a single bacterium can Danino grew up in Los Angeles, the son of become millions within hours. For Danino, the Israeli immigrants. His father, who had studied implications, too, are endless. electrical engineering, fostered his love of com- “A decaying human body causes more life for puters, and his mother, an artist, engaged him microorganisms,” he says. “So there’s an interest- with art projects — a favorite involved shaving ing connection there between our life cycle and wax crayons onto paper, folding the paper, iron- that of bacteria. Our lifespan is finite, but bacte- ing it until the shavings melted, and then opening ria just keep dividing. They’re immortal, in a way. the paper to reveal a dazzling snowflake pattern. It’s a di erent way to think about life.” This presaged his interest in the elaborate figures And art.

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4.19_FEAT_Danino.indd 21 11/11/19 2:53 PM in defense

of humankind

franz boas at columbia CREDITS GO HERE Boas reenacts a Kwakiutl ceremonial dance to assist Smithsonian Institution sculptors building a diorama.

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4.19_FEAT_Boas-F2.indd 22 11/7/19 1:54 PM A century ago, when people believed that intelligence, empathy, and human potential were determined by race and gender, Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. In this excerpt from the new book Gods of the Upper Air, Charles King profiles the maverick Columbia professor who created the field of cultural anthropology.

fter his appointment at Columbia, He was soon on his way to California, where Boas’s connections with the American he set up the new anthropology department AMuseum of Natural History 1 began to at Berkeley. Robert Lowie, an Austrian émigré fade. He had a habit of making him- and budding expert on the Plains Indians, self more respected than liked. His time at graduated in 1908 and later joined Kroeber the museum had produced new research and on the West Coast. Edward Sapir, a Jewish exhibitions but also disappointments, pro- immigrant from the Russian Empire, finished fessional disagreements, and hurt feelings his degree under Boas’s direction in 1909 among his colleagues, who found him confi- with a dissertation on the languages of the dent to a fault, ocious, and given to pique. Pacific Northwest. He soon moved to Ottawa When he formally resigned his curatorship in to head up the Canadian government’s geo- 1905, no one begged him to stay. logical survey. Alexander Goldenweiser and The move to full-time work at the univer- Paul Radin, Jewish immigrants from Kiev sity gave Boas the opportunity to build his and Łódź, finished in 1910 and 1911, with 1 own team of researchers. “Neither Berlin work on anthropological theory and Native Boas worked at the American Museum of Natural History with its five anthropological professorships, American ethnology. “It is gratifying to note in New York City from 1896 to nor Paris with its anthropological school, nor that the demand for graduates of the Anthro- 1905. He organized expeditions Holland with its colonial school, could give pological Department of Columbia Univer- to document the vanishing a proper training to the observers whom we sity has always been such that practically all tribes of the American West need,” he wrote to a colleague in 1901. He the young men in anthropological museums and gathered artifacts such as totem poles and a sixty-three- reorganized the department’s coursework to and colleges are those who have either grad- foot-long canoe, which were include training in linguistics and ethnol- uated here or studied a considerable number displayed in the Northwest 2 ogy, not just the traditional anthropometry. of years in this Department,” Boas bragged to Coast Hall, opened in 1899. “With archaeology represented,” he told President Butler. the university’s president, Nicholas Murray Within only a few years, however, that early Butler, “we should be able to train anthropol- momentum seemed to stall. Butler frowned on

ogists in all directions.” teachers’ spending so much time on research 2 Boas had decamped with Marie and the rather than in the lecture hall. He informed Anthropometry is the study of the measurements and children to a rambling house across the Hud- Boas that no increases in appropriations for proportions of the human son River in Grantwood, New Jersey. It soon anthropology would be made. There was no body. The general theory was became an informal gathering place for a money for teaching materials. There were too that physical dierences might growing coterie of graduate students. Many few lecturers to cover all the fields of study. account for dierences across were already making names for themselves Things were in “a pitiable condition,” Boas social groups. as well-rounded scholars with knowledge of wrote to Kroeber at the beginning of 1908, ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and phys- “and … for the time being all our former hopes ical anthropology, the four distinct fields that and aspirations have gone to pieces.” The Boas had come to see as the foundation of a only solution was to try to find new sources proper discipline of anthropology. The first of of income, even “a complete change of inter- these to complete the doctorate at Columbia, ests,” he added, which might provide a more in 1901, was Alfred Kroeber, another member stable financial footing for the fieldwork that

COURTESY OF SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ARCHIVES INSTITUTION OF SMITHSONIAN COURTESY of New York’s German immigrant community. he hoped to continue.

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4.19_FEAT_Boas-F2.indd 23 11/7/19 1:54 PM Boas began sending out letters to virtually In March 1908 the commission contacted any source he could think of, proposing grand Boas with the idea of preparing a report on research projects that might somehow attract “the immigration of di erent races into this new funding. He contacted his old colleagues country” and asked what thoughts he might at the Bureau of American Ethnology 3 with the have on how it could be carried out. Boas idea of creating a handbook of American Indian wasted no time in responding. He proposed languages, which he hoped would provide to examine physical changes among immi- additional travel money for his students and grants who had recently arrived in the United coworkers. In the 1907–08 academic year, he States. After all, if immigration was in fact hav- broadened the course o erings, including a new ing an e ect on American society, its clearest class on “The Negro Problem.” “I am endeav- results were likely to be seen in the bodies of the oring to organize certain scientific work on newest Americans: the immigrants’ children. the Negro race which I believe will be of great Were they assimilating to some common practical value in modifying the views of our American type? Or were the hereditary traits people in regard to the Negro problem,” he told common to the several races of Europe so Booker T. Washington. Aware that more bodies powerful that they would survive across time in the classroom meant more reason for Presi- and distance, to be passed on to children who

3 dent Butler to increase the department’s budget, were the products of marriage across racial or Just as the US Geological Survey investigated the he also pushed to open classes for undergradu- ethnic lines? Might those conserved traits, the physical wealth of the Western ates. Then in the spring of 1908, a special new vestiges of ancient races and subraces, throw territories, the Bureau of opportunity came Boas’s way that promised to up natural barriers to what was being called American Ethnology studied resolve a host of diculties at once. America’s “melting pot” ideal? the people who lived there. A year earlier the US Congress had estab- “The importance of this question can hardly This image from 1916 shows ethnologist Frances Densmore lished a special commission to study the rise be overestimated,” Boas wrote to the commis- and Mountain Chief, in immigration and its practical e ects on sion sta , “and the development of modern a Blackfoot leader. the United States. Rumors had circulated anthropological methods makes it perfectly that foreign governments were willfully send- feasible to give a definite answer to the prob- ing over criminals and the infirm as a way lem that presents itself to us.” He proposed a of ridding themselves of undesirables and, budget of nearly $20,000,5 which would pay 4 Madison Grant, an 1890 in the process, weakening American society. for a team of observers to measure heads, take graduate of Columbia Law School, expressed concern that Chaired by Senator William P. Dillingham, family histories, and compile the gargantuan immigrants were polluting a Vermont Republican, the commissioners statistical data set that would be required to American stock. He helped eventually included such luminaries as Henry answer the questions he had posed. “I believe craft immigration restrictions Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts Republican I can assure you that the practical results of and anti-miscegenation laws and immigration opponent, and LeRoy Percy, this investigation will be important in so far in the United States and in 1916 wrote The Passing of the a Mississippi Democrat and prominent Delta as they will settle once and for all the ques- Great Race, a book Adolf Hitler planter. Decked out in straw boaters and linen tion of whether the immigrants from southern referred to as “my bible.” suits, this distinguished group of commission- Europe and from eastern Europe are and can ers set out on a steamship journey to Naples, be assimilated by our people.” The commission Marseilles, and Hamburg, among other Euro- balked at the price tag but agreed to fund the pean ports. There they found squalid deten- preliminary study. That fall the government tion camps full of Italians, Greeks, and Syri- agreed to expand the work into a full-scale ans, all willing to pay unscrupulous captains research project. 5 This was a huge sum. It would whatever they might charge for passage across Boas’s graduate students, Columbia col- be worth more than half a million dollars today. the Atlantic. They uncovered no evidence leagues, and hired assistants soon fanned out of a conspiracy to dilute the “great race,” as across the city. They lugged along many of the Madison Grant 4 would soon term it. Still, same measuring devices Boas had used at the when they returned, they decided to organize Chicago world’s fair, plus a set of glass marbles a series of working groups to study the over- specially crafted by a New York optician for

all problem of immigration, assemble statis- comparing eye color. They measured the heads LIBRARY OF CONGRESS tical data, and issue detailed recommenda- of the students in Jewish schools on the Lower tions toward creating a more rational policy East Side. They distributed questionnaires to for dealing with the waves of foreigners now Italian families in Chatham Square and Yon- crashing on American shores. kers. They queried Bohemians in their neigh-

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4.19_FEAT_Boas-F2.indd 24 11/7/19 1:54 PM borhoods on the East Side, between Third and a “Jew,” a “Pole,” or a “Slovak,” if one judged First Avenues and East 70th and 84th Streets. by the bodies of the children of fi rst-genera- They chased down Hungarians, Poles, and tion immigrants. The conditions of life, from Slovaks in Brooklyn. They stood on the docks diet to environment, were having a quick and at Ellis Island, calipers and eye-color meters measurable e ect on head forms that were in hand, as people waited for medical inspec- thought to be fi xed, inheritable, and indica- tions. At reform schools and juvenile asylums, tive of one’s essential type. at parochial and private schools, at the Young Races were unstable, Boas concluded. And Men’s Hebrew Association and the YMCA, if they didn’t exist as physical realities in our some 17,821 people subjected themselves to present moment, then neither could they have Boas’s scales and measuring tapes. Nothing like existed in the past — which meant in turn that it had ever been attempted before, certainly not any history of humanity that presented itself under the auspices of an o cial government as a battle royale of races was essentially false. commission whose charge was to understand If there was no physical permanence to the precisely how immigrants were a ecting the concept of race, at least as it had been popu- literal body politic of their new country. In the larly defi ned, then there could be no clustering spring of 1910, Boas wrote to colleagues at the of other traits around it, such as intelligence, Bureau of American Ethnology to tell them physical ability, collective fi tness, or aptitude

any history of humanity that presented

6 itself as a battle royale of races Boas sailed to Ba n Island in 1883. He had become was essentially false. fascinated by the Inuits’ capacity to move across vast distances, survive in a di cult environment, and make sense of a landscape that could that his work was producing “entirely unex- for civilizational advancement. “These results appear, to outsiders, bleak pected results, and [makes] the whole problem are so defi nite that, while heretofore we had the and formless. appear in an entirely new light.” right to assume that human types are stable,” After countless hours of data collection, he wrote, “all the evidence is now in favor of analysis, and write-up, the conclusions a great plasticity of human types, and the per- were fi nally published in 1911 as Changes in manence of types in new surroundings appears Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants, rather as the exception than as the rule.” part of the Dillingham Commission’s o cial Boas had been working up to this conclu- record. Boas expressed his main conclusion sion since his days on Ba n Island,6 but he in a simple sentence on the second page: now had more than simple intuition to back “The adaptability of the immigrant seems to up his claims. He had data, masses of it, all be very much greater than we had a right to pointing toward a revolutionary — and to suppose before our investigations were insti- many, discomfi ting — conclusion: that the tuted.” Children born in the United States “peoples” he had been helping to document had more in common with other US-born in museums and exhibitions since his own children than with the national group — or immigration to the United States were not race, as Grant would have termed it — repre- natural varieties of humankind. There was no sented by their parents. Round-headed Jews reason to believe that a person of one racial became long-headed ones. The long heads of or national category was more of a drain on From the book Gods of the Sicilians compressed into shorter heads. The society, more prone to criminality, or more Upper Air, by Charles King, wide faces of Neapolitans narrowed to match di cult to assimilate than any other. What published by Doubleday Books, an imprint of the those of the immigrants by whom they were people did, rather than who they were, ought Knopf Doubleday Publishing surrounded, not those of their racial brethren to be the starting point for a legitimate sci- Group, a division of Penguin in the old country. There was, in other words, ence of society and, by extension, the basis for Random House LLC.

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY PHILOSOPHICAL THE AMERICAN no such thing — in purely physical terms — as government policy on immigration. © 2019 by Charles King.

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4.19_FEAT_Boas-F2.indd 25 11/7/19 1:54 PM A World of Difference These five ambitious alumnae are using their ingenuity and goodwill to make meaningful change around the globe By Julia Joy MOUNTAIN RESILIENCY PROJECT

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 26 11/13/19 3:54 PM Tsechu Dolma Helping mountain communities adapt to climate change

igh in the Himalayas along the border between Nepal and China, thousands of Tibetan refugees, most of them state- Hless and without legal documentation, live in struggling farming communities. Isolated physically, economically, and politically, many families go hungry. Literacy rates are low, and human tra cking is on the rise. And now those farmers have another significant challenge to add to their list: climate change. They ended up in Queens and lived in “Temperatures in the Himalayas are warming at approximately public housing. “Growing up, I didn’t think twice the global rate,” says Tsechu Dolma ’14BC, ’15SIPA, who is about college,” says Dolma, whose parents helping Tibetans in Nepal improve their livelihoods through her have no formal education. “But eventually nonprofit, the Mountain Resiliency Project (MRP). “Glaciers are I learned about a school called Columbia melting, and weather patterns are erratic. Farmers face flash floods, that was just a subway ride away.” She got a shortened growing seasons, and unreliable access to water.” full scholarship to Barnard and, while still MRP, an economic- and community-development organization, an undergraduate student, began a master’s works with refugee farmers in the Himalayas to grow, harvest, and program at Columbia’s School of Interna- sell crops, such as mushrooms, that thrive in greenhouses regardless tional and Public Aairs. A grant from the of changing weather conditions, and to produce honey from native University enabled Dolma to launch MRP bees. “We’re strengthening the food security in the region so that in 2012 as part of her thesis project. “I never agriculture will continue to be a huge percentage of the local GDP,” thought it would lead to a thriving startup says Dolma. MRP also runs educational workshops for local women with a full-time sta of fifteen,” she says. on topics including sexual health and financial empowerment. Since then, MRP has partnered with aid For Dolma, the problems in the mountains are deeply personal. organizations such the US State Depart- Tsechu Dolma She spent the first ten years of her life in a refugee settlement in surveys a group of ment’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Nepal before her family found political asylum in the United States. Tibetan refugees. Migration to help fifteen thousand Tibetan farmers, many of them women, become economically self-su cient. The nonprofit has also improved infrastructure in the mountains: after a devastating earthquake hit Nepal in 2015, MRP helped construct two hundred new homes. Dolma is now taking a one-year hiatus from running the organization to pursue an MBA at the University of Oxford as a Skoll Scholar (a program for social entrepreneurs). After years of doing fieldwork, she says she wants to become a better international businesswoman and broaden her humani- tarian outreach beyond the Himalayas. “To really make systemic change we have to think big, and thinking big means stepping out of Nepal,” says Dolma. “My dream, my family’s dream, my community’s dream, is to build a global network of climate-vulnerable refu- gees who can support each other by starting

TOP: LEN SMALL; BOTTOM: MOUNTAIN RESILIENCY PROJECT RESILIENCY MOUNTAIN LEN SMALL; BOTTOM: TOP: their own sustainable business ventures.”

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 27 11/13/19 3:54 PM set on humanitarian work. “I realized I had to use my influence for something impactful,” she says. She came up with the idea for Seeds of Africa and collaborated with her family and professional contacts to open the school. “The beauty of working in fashion is I met a lot of philanthropic peo- ple, and they believed in me,” says Worku. A few years after starting the organization, Worku got a degree in sustainability man- agement from Columbia’s School of General Studies. “My classes helped me make connections between Ethiopia’s problems and global issues surrounding poverty, climate change, and women’s and children’s rights,” she says. Along with improving education, Worku wants to advocate for socioeconomic reform in Ethiopia. Seeds of Africa recently Atti Worku launched a microfinancing program that has helped more than two hundred local Adama women — many of them single Educating the next generation mothers — open bread shops, farm stands, of Ethiopians hair-braiding salons, and other businesses. “We see at least a 50 percent increase in rowing up in Adama, Ethiopia, Atti Worku ’14GS under- stood that she was di erent from other kids. Her mother Gand father were educated and middle-class; other families could barely a ord food. Worku had access to books and was sent to private school, not the overcrowded public schools that were short on teachers and resources. And while Worku finished high school, most of the poorer kids in Adama dropped out — to work or simply because they couldn’t a ord uniforms and school supplies. “I always wanted to do something about the problems I saw, but I didn’t know how,” Worku says. Two decades later, Worku is developing her own solution to the social inequalities she witnessed as a kid. As the founder and CEO of Seeds of Africa, an education and economic-development nonprofit, household income,” Worku says. “That she operates a free, high-quality K–12 school in Adama for children means a family could potentially have three whose parents earn less than the equivalent of around $1.50 a day. meals a day instead of two.” Loan sizes The school provides nutritious meals, health-care services, uniforms, average around three hundred US dollars, and school supplies for all students. “When children have challenges and more than 96 percent are paid back at home, education on its own is not going to make a di erence,” says within a year. Worku. “So we provide the things that allow them to stay in school, Worku stresses the importance of truly graduate, and have a better life.” understanding a community’s needs before Worku had an unconventional route to entrepreneurship. She trying to intervene. “Part of the reason so studied computer science in Addis Ababa and briefly worked as a many aid endeavors have failed in Africa is network engineer before leaving college to pursue modeling. She that a lot of well-intentioned people haven’t moved to South Africa, competed in beauty pageants throughout the addressed the deep-rooted problems, just continent, and in 2005 represented Ethiopia at the Miss Universe the symptoms,” she says. “We take a holistic competition in Bangkok, where she advocated for expanding access approach, working with entire communities to technology in her home country. to ensure that more children and women DAWIT TIBEBU After Miss Universe, Worku moved to the United States and settled benefit from the type of support system that in New York City. Though she continued to model, her sights were I’ve been lucky to have.”

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 28 11/13/19 3:54 PM Sara, who was born in New York City to Lebanese immigrants and grew up speaking English and French, decided to do something to help. She teamed up with her Columbia peer Aline Sara Reza Rahnema ’14SIPA and launched NaTakallam (Arabic for “we speak”), an online language-learning and cultural-exchange Connecting foreign- program that hires refugees as freelance contractors. Sara runs the for-profit company from the Columbia Startup Lab in New York language students City, while Rahnema, the COO, heads operations from a Paris oce. NaTakallam connects language students with refugees from the with refugee tutors Middle East, Latin America, and Francophone Africa for con- versation practice over Skype. For fifteen dollars an hour, anyone can sign up for a session in Arabic, Persian, Spanish, or French, though the company gets most of its business through organi- zations. More than twenty universities — including Columbia and Yale — have partnered with NaTakallam to incorporate conversation practice into their foreign-language programs, and NaTakallam has helped more than two hundred K–12 schools to bring refugees into their classrooms (also through Skype) as virtual guest speakers. A social-studies class, for example, can invite a migrant from Venezuela to talk to students about the human impact of the country’s economic collapse. NaTakallam, which also oers translation and transcription services, strives to pay contractors at least the minimum wage in their host countries. Sara says that the company has distributed some $600,000 to 150 displaced individuals. But the impact goes beyond financial. In facilitating face-to-face interaction, NaTakallam promotes empathy for refugees and combats nega- tive stereotypes. “We try to bring awareness to the fact that there are all kinds of people in refugee populations, because the media line Sara ’14SIPA, a former jour- tends to give a very negative image,” says Sara, who adds that nalist who spent several years in some of NaTakallam’s tutors have found more work and even ABeirut covering the Arab Spring, opportunities for resettlement through their students. was applying for humanitarian “Being a refugee is isolating,” Sara says. “A lot of social enter- jobs in the Middle East and trying to brush prises will hire displaced people to do artisan work or data entry up on her Arabic when she had the “aha” An Iraq-based behind a computer. Those jobs are important because they gen- moment that would lead to an ambitious Syrian refugee erate income, but they’re still isolating. Human connection and speaks at a business venture. “What if there were a NaTakallam warmth have ripple eects, and what we’re doing is creating new, startup that helped you learn Arabic, and event. empathy-filled virtual networks.” your tutor was a Syrian refugee who really needed income?” she asked herself. The year was 2014, and more than a mil- lion Syrian refugees had migrated to Leb- anon to flee the civil war and ISIS. Denied work visas by the Lebanese government, most had no way of earning a living. “When refugees cross borders, the vast majority, especially the educated middle class — the doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers — have a very slim chance of finding work,” Sara explains. “Just imagine: you’ve watched your country crumble, you’ve likely lived through trauma — loss, incarceration, near- death experiences — and then you escape to

TOP: VINCENT COLIN; BOTTOM: NATAKALLAM BOTTOM: VINCENT COLIN; TOP: a place where you can’t restart your life.”

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 29 11/13/19 3:54 PM and diagnostic services, and since opening in 2017 has served twenty-five thousand people. The average doctor visit in Bangladesh lasts forty-eight seconds, but Praava’s patients are guaranteed fifteen minutes, says Sinha, who relocated from New York City to Dhaka in 2015. “If you invest in doctor-patient relationships, you get better health outcomes.” The for-profit company, which charges significantly less than other private facilities, has the nation’s first molecular-diagnostics lab to detect cancer, and its most sophisticated hospital information system. “This is a country where people carry around their medical records in bags,” says Sinha. “We store everything electronically in one place. Patients can access their records and book appointments online.” Counterfeit drugs are ubiquitous in Bangladesh, so Praava also has an in-house pharmacy that sources all medications directly from manufacturers. Before she became an entrepreneur, Sinha, who studied law at Columbia and international development at Harvard, worked as a policy adviser to then senator Barack Obama ’83CC. In 2008 she moved to Afghanistan, where she worked on development and legal-reform projects. Though Sinha originally planned a government Sylvana career in foreign policy after returning to the United States, she saw more opportunity for social impact in the private sector. “I wanted to make people’s lives better, and I felt like participating in politics Q. Sinha wouldn’t allow me to do that in the way I craved,” she says. The health-care industry presented an attractive challenge. “I think Improving health what’s exciting about health care is that nobody has really figured it out,” says Sinha. Her goals for Praava are ambitious, but with ten care in Bangladesh new facilities scheduled to open in the next three years, she’s making progress. “We’re building the best health-care company in Bangla- ylvana Q. Sinha ’04LAW, an inter- desh,” she says. “There are 170 million people in the country, so we national lawyer and foreign-policy have big dreams, and we hope to serve a broader segment of the Sexpert, never planned on becoming population over time. We’re planning to launch a nonprofit that will a health-care executive. But in 2010, reduce financial barriers for patients, improve skills for care provid- after her mother su ered from serious ers, and support research. We’re just getting started!” complications after an appendectomy at one of Bangladesh’s top hospitals, Sinha set her ambitions on improving the medical-care options in her parents’ home country. “Every day, thousands of middle-class Bangladeshis — people who can barely a ord to travel — go to India for medical treatment,” says Sinha, who grew up in Virginia but developed a strong personal connection to Bangladesh and its culture. TOP: RITA CHANG, AFTER GLOBAL; BOTTOM: PRAAVA HEALTH “People have lost trust in the health-care system. I have some family members who have been falsely diagnosed with cancer, or they had cancer but it wasn’t diagnosed.” Sinha founded Praava Health in 2014 to help the country’s growing middle class access high-quality, a ordable treatment A Praava close to home. Its ten-story outpatient clinic nurse tests a patient’s in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital and largest blood during city, o ers a wide range of family-health a home visit.

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 30 11/13/19 3:54 PM Sabrina Natasha Habib Expanding access to quality childcare in Kenya their infants and toddlers at a Kidogo center, where skilled caretakers lead structured play and learning activities. “You enter one of our centers after walking through the slums, past awful smells and poor infrastructure, and it’s like an oasis of happy, playful children,” says Habib, who adds that Kidogo also provides healthy meals and works closely with parents to teach them about nutrition and hygiene. In addition to its own centers, the orga- nization also runs a training program that helps owners of local day cares overhaul their businesses and brand them as Kidogo franchises. “They’re able to attract more clients and improve their profits,” says Habib. The owners, whom the organization calls “mamapreneurs,” are also taught financial n 2011, Sabrina Natasha Habib ’16SIPA was in Kenya completing literacy and how to make the most of limited a fellowship in maternal and child health when she stumbled resources. “We show them how to create toys I— literally — upon what she calls East Africa’s “childcare crisis.” from locally available recycled materials, like As Habib recalls, she walked into a day-care center in a Nairobi toilet-paper rolls and cartons,” Habib explains. slum and almost tripped over an infant. “The room was dark and Between Kidogo’s three flagship centers and crowded, and I couldn’t even see where I was walking,” says Habib, seventy-six locations run by mamapreneurs, now the cofounder and CEO of Kidogo, a network of high-quality the nonprofit serves almost two thousand day-care centers in Nairobi. Struck by the unsafe, unsanitary condi- children. Habib, who has collaborated with tions, Habib began to look deeper into the problem of childcare in Columbia’s Tamer Center for Social Enter- East Africa’s low-income urban communities. prise since earning her MPA at the School “In Nairobi alone, there are approximately three thousand informal of International and Public Aairs, hopes to day cares, many in corrugated-metal shacks,” says Habib, who was expand the organization throughout Kenya born and raised in Toronto but whose parents are from Tanzania. by 2021 and eventually to neighboring coun- “There’s little stimulation. They’re just awful for a child’s development.” tries. “Our vision is to be the leading network Mothers here, most of whom earn money through informal jobs — of high-quality, aordable childcare centers washing clothes or selling produce on the street, for example — are in East Africa,” she says. forced to return to work directly after giving birth, explains Habib: The farthest-reaching impacts of Kidogo’s “There’s no such thing as maternity leave for these women. Parents work will materialize in years to come. “With have few choices. They leave their babies home alone, sometimes tied childcare, you often don’t see the fruits of to furniture, or with an older sibling — usually a girl — who has been your labor until the kids are teenagers and pulled out of school, or, if they can scrape together the cost, in some adults, when they have better high-school type of day care.” completion rates and are more likely to go to Habib, who lives in Nairobi with her husband and Kidogo cofounder, college,” says Habib. “We’ll see the true bene- Afzal, started the nonprofit in 2014 to provide families with safe, stimu- fits decades from now, when our Kidogo kids lating, and aordable places to leave their kids. For less than one dollar are contributing members of society and

LEFT: KIDOGO; RIGHT: JOOP RUBENS KIDOGO; RIGHT: LEFT: a day — a comparable price to other day cares — parents can drop o doing incredible things.”

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4.19_FEAT_Global-Innovators.indd 31 11/13/19 3:55 PM It’s a sunny afternoon in Durham, North Carolina,

and at a picnic table outside a bar downtown, talents of Bruce Springsteen with those Mac McCaughan ’90CC is nursing a lager of his original A&R person, the legendary and fondly reminiscing about the Butthole John Hammond, and you’d have something Surfers, the legendarily anarchic Texas band. approximating Mac’s gifts. He’s an exuberant A half dozen of McCaughan’s employees, performer and accomplished tunesmith all twentysomethings, lean in and listen who has a knack for being able to discern with amusement. But McCaughan isn’t just greatness in its raw form.” another boss buying a round after work. At the next table over, a middle-aged customer erge is headquartered not recognizes him and points him out to a in some sleek, anonymous buddy: “Well, looks like we have a bona fi de Mo ce park but in a two-story rock star in our midst.” yellow-brick storefront sand- McCaughan, a slight, energetic fi fty-two- wiched between a furniture store and year-old, is a rock star in the eyes of many. a hair salon that serves wine. Thanks The singer, guitarist, and leader of the band to successful albums by the Magnetic Superchunk, which has released eleven Fields and Neutral Milk Hotel, albums since the late 1980s, McCaughan McCaughan and Ballance were pioneered a brand of smart, heartfelt, and able to buy the building in 2001. melodic punk-inspired music that has Back then, Durham wasn’t the become a beloved part of the American “it” town it is today. Now, hip indie scene. restaurants, boutique hotels, and But his infl uence extends far beyond Super- galleries are crammed into its three- chunk. Merge Records, which McCaughan quarter-square-mile downtown, and cofounded with his bandmate Laura Ballance the employees of tech companies and in 1989, is one of the longest-running success startups occupy luxury lofts installed in stories in the American independent-music the former tobacco warehouses nearby. industry: a small business with an outsize McCaughan’s o ce is packed with knick- cultural impact. The label’s roster reads like knacks and memorabilia from his thirty-year a who’s who of indie rock: Arcade Fire, the career. Sunlight fl its through the trees just ILLUSTRATIONI L BY LEN SMALL; ORIGINAL IMAGE BY JASON MOORE / ZUMAPRESS.COM

Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel, Wye outside the second-story window; framed U S T R A

Oak, Spoon, Bob Mould, She & Him, the posters, show fl iers, and album art cover the T I O N B Mountain Goats, and Waxahatchee, as well as walls, and piles of vinyl records cover much Y L E N S M A ; O R I G a slew of other great bands. of the fl oor. As music writer Steven Hyden once put it, “It happened so gradually that I don’t “You can’t talk about the history of American think there was any one moment where it indie rock without mentioning the name was like, oh, now we have a record label,”

Mac McCaughan.” McCaughan says. “We’re just doing a G E B

“The better-known Merge artists repre- slightly more professional version of what Y J A S sent the most accomplished songwriters of we’ve always been doing.” O N M R E / Z U A P their generation,” says Jonathan Poneman, As a kid growing up in the seventies, cofounder of Seattle’s Sub Pop label, a con- McCaughan was into the popular hard temporary of Merge’s. rock of the time — bands like Van Halen, S “This is a grandiose comparison,” Poneman the Who, and AC/DC. But in 1981, when S . C continues, “but think of combining the he was thirteen, his family moved from O M

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4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 32 11/11/19 3:26 PM MAJESTIC SHRED

Merge Records cofounder Mac McCaughan ’90CC has spent thirty years putting out the best of American indie rock

By Michael Azerrad ’83CC

4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 33 11/11/19 3:26 PM Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Durham after his father got a job as an attorney for Duke University. When McCaughan saw a couple of hardcore-punk bands at the Duke Co eehouse, a light went on: it was much more fun to see music up close than in vast arenas, music that was made not by otherworldly rock stars but by people who were pretty much like him.

hen it came time for college, McCaughan W applied to Columbia at the urging of a family friend; he remembers being eager to get to New York, a music mecca. During his freshman year, in 1985, he met Nashville transplant Laura Cantrell ’89CC. “He was this wiry-looking punk-rock kid with shaggy hair,” Cantrell recalls. “And he had Superchunk circa 2001: Jim Wilbur, Jon Wurster, Mac McCaughan, and Laura Ballance. more records in his room than anybody else in his dorm. He was already kind of a band called Bricks with Cantrell and his ulative,” Ballance says with a laugh, “but standout by the time I met him.” friends Andrew Webster ’90CC and Josh with him, it’s sort of liberating.” McCaughan and Cantrell started a Phillips ’91CC. Because they rehearsed in Thanks to a $300 loan from a friend folk-country duo called Potter’s Field that McCaughan’s apartment on West 108th of McCaughan’s, Chunk recorded its first played the old Ferris Booth Hall café, Street, playing a drum set was out of the single the same summer; it came out that the Furnald Folk Fest, and the Postcrypt question, so for percussion they used December on the newly minted Merge Co eehouse, in the basement of St. Paul’s suitcases, cardboard boxes, and plastic Records. “It just seemed easy, so we figured Chapel. But McCaughan was a punk containers filled with rice. McCaughan set why not?” says McCaughan, who knew rocker at heart and soon tracked down some ambitious goals for Bricks: release some of the mechanics of manufactur- other punk fans at school. Students from a seven-inch single and a cassette-only ing and distribution from working at cities like Boston or Washington often let album and play CB’s Gallery downtown — the beloved store Schoolkids Records in their friends’ bands sleep on their dorm- all of which they achieved. Chapel Hill. “We certainly weren’t thinking room floors when they played gigs in New “He wanted to have his own band,” says it would be our job.” Soon they were releas- York, and through them, McCaughan Cantrell. “It wasn’t a question of whether ing singles by their friends’ bands, too. was soon connected to the exploding he could or not — he’d already decided: Back at Columbia for his senior year, mid-eighties indie underground. I’m going to do this.” It was a key inspira- McCaughan would take the PATH train McCaughan majored in history, a tion for Cantrell, who was just beginning to Hoboken to drop o Merge releases subject he still loves, and he says his edu- to realize her own identity as a musician. at the famous record store Pier Platters. cation imparted a key lesson: “I learned “He just made it seem possible,” she says. Ballance, in her spare room in Chapel how to think critically at Columbia,” he Sure enough, Cantrell would become an Hill, quietly did the accounting, stored says. “I use that every day.” As an under- outstanding country singer-songwriter the inventory, and packaged up records graduate, McCaughan also studied studio (Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello are fans), to be shipped, all while studying at the art with Nicholas Sperakis, an experience with five albums to her credit (see University of North Carolina and holding that had a di erent kind of influence on Columbia Magazine’s profile of Cantrell down two jobs. When they found out his career — McCaughan’s woodcuts have in the Fall 2012 issue). another band already had the name since adorned several Superchunk album Back in Chapel Hill the summer before Chunk, McCaughan’s mom suggested a covers, from its self-titled 1990 debut to his senior year, McCaughan started a new name: Superchunk. its most recent release. band called Chunk. He convinced his McCaughan graduated in May 1990, COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS After taking a year o to play in bands then girlfriend Laura Ballance to play around the time Merge released Super- in Chapel Hill, the college town a few bass, though she was shy and reluctant to chunk’s single “Slack Motherfucker,” miles down the road from Durham, perform onstage. “He can persuade you which quickly became one of the defin- McCaughan returned to Columbia in to do things that you might not want to ing anthems of nineties indie rock. It’s a 1988 for his junior year and formed a do. Some people would call that manip- joyous shout-along featuring perhaps the

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4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 34 11/11/19 3:26 PM A Merge Records worst cuss word available — “I’m work- provided a fi nancial and critical windfall ing / But I’m not working for you / Slack for Merge, especially after the band’s Listening Party motherfucker” — but it’s also a stirring third album, The Suburbs, debuted at declaration of one of the indie commu- number one on the Billboard charts and nity’s most defi ning qualities: diligence. went on to win three Grammy Awards. Superchunk “At the time it was just a declaration of McCaughan still keeps his ear to the Tossing Seeds annoyance with people you’re working ground. He buys lots of records — he (Singles 89–91) with at Kinko’s,” McCaughan says. “But it discovered the London-based Afro- (1992) Merge’s takes on larger meaning as you go along.” dance-pop band Ibibio Sound Machine very fi rst CD The song still regularly closes out Super- because he liked their album cover. He release contained McCaughan’s chunk shows. listens to the radio (his favorite stations Gen-X anthem Superchunk released its debut album in are Duke’s WXDU and the University of “Slack Motherfucker.” September 1990. Merge didn’t yet have the North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s WXYC). ability to properly promote, publicize, mar- And he trawls the Web. But by now, the ket, and distribute a twelve-inch album, so music world is also beating a path to The Magnetic they released it through the fl edgling Mat- Merge’s door. “There are a lot of di erent Fields ador Records, soon to be an indie power- ways to fi nd out about music, to the point 69 Love Songs house itself. Raves from the internationally that it’s a little bit overwhelming,” says (1999) Stephin Merritt McCaughan. “But frankly a lot of it is infl uential British music press and dogged wrote this three- touring of its galvanic live show soon made just talking to people who work here or volume set of tunes Superchunk a big favorite of the indie- friends you see out at a show.” as his interpretation rock community. By 1993, Chapel Hill’s The label’s quality-control process is of the American alternative-rock scene had exploded. simple: “When people ask, ‘How do you songbook. Entertainment Weekly speculated that decide which artists you want to work Chapel Hill might be “the next Seattle.” with?’ the answer has always been: artists Spoon Rolling Stone suggested that Superchunk that we like,” McCaughan says. “There Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga could be “the next Nirvana.” But the band are no criteria beyond that.” (2007) With this album, indie-rock resisted the inevitable o ers from major Thanks to McCaughan’s good instincts legend Spoon labels, opting for artistic freedom and sus- and Ballance’s conscientious business fi nally broke into tainability, a philosophy both Superchunk stewardship (not to mention a little luck), the mainstream and Merge have embraced ever since. the label’s reputation is so strong that fans while holding on While touring with Superchunk, buy records simply because they’re from to its experimental minimalistic pop. McCaughan met other bands and Merge. Lately, though, streaming has cut started to put out their albums as well. into the music industry’s bottom line, In the mid-nineties, Merge released and Merge is not completely immune. Arcade Fire the Magnetic Fields’ The Charm of the “Our budgets are smaller,” McCaughan The Suburbs Highway Strip and Neutral Milk Hotel’s acknowledges. “You look for ways to save (2010) The classic debut album On Avery Island, money everywhere you can. But we’ve Canadian-American as well as several other indie favorites, always been pretty good at that anyway.” group’s ode to the suburbs became fi rmly establishing it as an artist-friendly Merge Records’ label. McCaughan talent-scouted for the s we spoke, McCaughan was fi rst number-one label using his encyclopedically deep preparing to hit the road with album on the social network. In 1992, his Columbia A Superchunk on the occasion Billboard charts. friend Jonathan Marx ’90CC told him of its new acoustic reworking about a sprawling, motley Nashville band of 1994’s Foolish album. Even after all She & Him that he played clarinet with. The band these years, McCaughan, now married Volume Two was Lambchop, which has since recorded and a father of two kids (ages twelve and (2010) The duo fi fteen highly acclaimed albums, all with sixteen), is still up for the adventure of of M. Ward and Merge. Fourteen years later, an old friend touring. And onstage, Superchunk plays actress Zooey and Superchunk fan named Howard at — or at least astonishingly near — the Deschanel banked another top-ten Bilerman told McCaughan about a same high energy level it did when it hit for Merge with Montreal band he was playing drums started. “We’re playing a twenty-fi ve-year- this album, a in. That band was Arcade Fire, which old’s music as fi fty-one-year-olds — is that favorite of baristas became a massive global success and ridiculous?” says McCaughan. “But you everywhere.

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4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 35 11/14/19 9:50 AM “It wasn’t a question of whether he could or not — he’d already decided: I’m going to do this.”

see people who are able to do that in a you can respond to the ongoing disaster block, and they’ve invested in local busi- way that still feels vital.” in a productive way.” One productive nesses. Whether it’s his community activ- In recent years, Superchunk has way the band responded was to send ities, his business, or his diverse musical also been galvanized with new energy, proceeds from various singles to Planned projects, there’s one thing that unites all particularly after the 2016 presidential Parenthood South Atlantic, the envi- of McCaughan’s pursuits, according to election, which prompted McCaughan ronmental nonprofit 350.org, and the his old friend Laura Cantrell. to dash o a batch of furious but catchy Southern Poverty Law Center. “There’s this basic core spirit of ‘I do this songs. They appear on the band’s latest McCaughan’s political music is part of because I enjoy it,’” she says. “It’s an enthu- album, the raging, politically charged a general philosophy about his responsi- siasm and a love for music and a curiosity What a Time to Be Alive, recorded just bilities as an artist and a businessperson. that I still recognize from the guy who had weeks after the inauguration. Super- “As cool as it is having a record label and all the records and the crazy hair.” chunk had never made such political being in a band, sometimes you think, Still taking his cue from those every- music before, but “in the aftermath of but what are we really adding here to man hardcore bands back at the Duke a would-be fascist dictator becoming make things better?” says McCaughan. Co eehouse, McCaughan says that, president, it would be weird to write a “Part of what we try to do is be part whether he’s playing it or packaging it, he record about anything else — for me, of the community.” And so Merge has sees music as a job to be done diligently, anyway,” says McCaughan. What a Time cosponsored Durham’s Full Frame Doc- unlike the self-indulgent, preening arena to Be Alive has its share of invective, but umentary Film Festival, and McCaughan rockers of yore. Rock music, he says, is the album also addresses ways to cope has served as a board member at Duke “something you work hard at, as opposed with political anger. “Break the Glass,” University’s Nasher Museum of Art. In to something you do to get famous.” And

McCaughan has said, “is a song about the late 2000s, he and Ballance bought that is Mac McCaughan: a rock star, JADE WILSON realizing you are in an emergency situ- and renovated another building a few maybe, but really just a guy who works ation and trying to not lose your shit so doors down from Merge to improve the hard at what he loves.

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4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 36 11/11/19 3:26 PM 4.19_FEAT_Mac.indd 37 11/11/19 3:26 PM THE BIG IDEA Rethinking Globalization A Nobel laureate explains the hidden weaknesses of the American economy and why the US-China trade war is unwise and unwinnable

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a University Professor trade deals, the second seeks to Yet most economists still argue that at Columbia, former chief economist renegotiate existing ones more in globalization, with its promotion of of the World Bank, and recipient of the America’s favor. free trade and the easy movement of 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, spoke There is a grain of truth in some of goods, money, and information, is the to Columbia Magazine about the ideas the criticisms of globalization. The key to growth and prosperity. in his latest book, People, Power, and deals were largely shaped by corporate It’s true that international trade can con- Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an interests, the potential gains were exag- tribute to economic growth by allowing Age of Discontent. gerated, and insu cient attention was greater e ciencies. But the real keys to paid to the impact on America’s grow- growth and prosperity are education, In People, Power, and Profits, ing inequality. The response, however, scientific breakthroughs, and advances you say that America is at war should not be the kind of trade wars in our understanding of how to organize Q with itself over globalization. that Donald Trump is waging — there large groups of people so that they might What do you mean by that? are likely to be no winners from those cooperate better. Economies that are It is clear that people have very polar- — but a better-managed globalization, guided by the rule of law and democra- ized views about globalization. Some including a better management of the cies based on the separation of powers see it as part of America’s strength. economic and social consequences. are examples of profound achievements They attribute to globalization much of Some countries have done a much in social organization. The main reason the country’s increase in standards of better job than the US at helping their standards of living are so much higher living and its global economic domi- citizens transition to a more globally today than they were, say, 250 years ago nance in recent decades. Others blame integrated economy. Sweden and is that we have built stable institutions globalization for many of America’s Norway, for example, have instituted that promote human creativity and problems, particularly because it has industrial policies that ensure that new enable people to live up to their potential. exposed domestic workers to increased jobs get created when old jobs disap- The real threat of our current political foreign competition. So while the first pear, and they’ve invested heavily in moment in the United States is the attack group searches for ever wider new retraining programs for workers. against truth and our truth-assessing

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4.19_BigIdea_STIGLITZ.indd 38 11/7/19 3:54 PM institutions, against our universities, and tariffs and other restrictive trade poli- provide the solutions that discontented against science more broadly. cies. What is at the root of this trend? people are looking for. It will not restore There are a number of factors involved, manufacturing jobs or coal-mining jobs. You write that the US government but surely one powerful force is that large The trade war with China won’t even should spend more on education, segments of the populations of many bring manufacturing back to the US: if scientific research, and infrastructure. advanced countries, including the US, taris placed on Chinese goods make One of the fundamental issues I raise in have not done very well recently. While them significantly more expensive here, People, Power, and Profits is that we’ve citizens at the top have seen their incomes corporations will simply move their fac- lost the balance between the private soar, those in the middle have largely tories to other developing countries. To sector, the public sector, and institutions seen stagnation, and those at the bottom the extent that any “onshoring” occurs, that include not-for-profits, cooper- have fared even worse. A middle-class production may largely be robotized. The atives, foundations, civil society, and life seems to be growing out of reach for jobs created will require dierent skills universities. Scientific and technological many families. Of course, we shouldn’t than those possessed by the workers advances are at the heart of economic allow our vision to be clouded by nos- who have lost their jobs, and they will success, and underlying these advances talgia. It is easy to look back on a glossy be located in dierent regions of the US. is basic research, almost all of which is version of the past, skipping over the Countries that shut themselves o from supported by the government. We’ve realities of widespread racial and gender trade also close themselves o to new underinvested in basic research as well discrimination. Besides, the arrow of time ideas and resulting innovations. as in education and infrastructure. All moves in one direction: we can’t go back of this undermines future standards of to the decades after World War II. The US–China tariff war will soon enter living and American competitiveness. its third year. Can you put this dispute Do you think tariffs have any role in in context — why is it so thorny? We’ve seen a resurgence of economic today’s global economy? At the end of the Cold War, there was a nationalism lately, with President Closing ourselves o from others through hope that all countries would converge to Trump and other world leaders enacting JAMES YANG JAMES taris and other trade barriers will not be liberal democracies with free-market

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4.19_BigIdea_STIGLITZ.indd 39 11/7/19 3:54 PM economies, and that in doing so everyone would prosper. Those hopes have now been dashed. Growth in many democ- racies has slowed, and the increase in wealth has been mainly at the top. Mean- while, China’s economy — a complex sys- tem combining markets with strong state intervention — has done very well. Some 750 million Chinese people have moved out of poverty, and incomes have risen more than tenfold since our engagement with China began, some fifty years ago. Back then, no one could have imag- ined that this country with a per capita annual income of around $150 would by 2015 have a larger GDP than that of the US when measured in the standard way economists make such comparisons, by considering the two populations’ Joseph E. Stiglitz purchasing power in local contexts. American firms could not have conceived of Chinese firms as rivals. China was it helps a country like China close the The Trump administration is attempt- viewed as a gold mine — a vast market gap in knowledge between it and more ing to erode the international rules-based for American goods and a place where advanced countries. trade regime by refusing to support the our firms could make large investments The question facing both the US and appointment of new WTO judges, by and get large returns. But in the inter- China is how to find a way to reap some engaging in trade wars rather than turning vening years, Chinese companies have of the gains from trade while recognizing to the WTO to resolve disputes, by focus- increased in strength, wages have risen, that, for the foreseeable future, there will ing on bilateral agreements, and by refus- and regulations have been tightened. remain large dierences in our economic ing in its bilateral discussions to promise So even many of the corporations that and political systems. We will pay a high not to engage in discriminatory practices. served as China’s cheerleaders in the US price if we try to de-link our economies. When combined with the unilateral have lost their enthusiasm. abrogation of the Iran nuclear agreement, Though it is wrong to view the world There seems to be a growing feeling the betrayal of long-term allies in Syria, through a zero-sum lens, in which within this administration that the and other such actions taken by the Trump increased prosperity for China comes US should handle trade disputes administration, the US is looking even to at the expense of the US, this is the lens with other nations directly, rather many of its friends like a rogue country. through which Trump and many eco- than working through the World nomic nationalists see our relations. Trade Organization. Has the WTO You write that the US economy is Of course, there are some things that lost its teeth? Or is the US guilty essentially broken. Some observers China does that are contrary to our inter- of self-aggrandizement? might find that assessment overly ests, just as there are some things we do The US played a pivotal role in creating harsh, given America’s relatively high that are contrary to China’s. But some the WTO, and now it is the principal GDP and strong stock market. What of the accusations thrown around have country trying to undermine it. Just as would they be missing? little merit. For instance, China has been the rule of law must underlie a well- There are many aspects of the US econ- accused of manipulating its currency, functioning domestic economy, so too omy that are truly impressive. Over the keeping its value low in order to export must it underlie commerce across years, it has given rise to many important

goods more easily, even though it has borders. Any international trade system innovations — from the transistor to the DANIEL BAUD AND SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE not been doing this for years. China has has to have a mechanism for adjudicat- laser to the Internet — that benefit not also been criticized for requiring foreign ing disputes, and the WTO appellate only Americans but people around the firms that invest there to enter joint body has shown itself to be eective and world. But America’s economic model ventures, and often to share their intel- fair. (The dean of Columbia’s School of today is not sustainable economically, lectual property, with local companies. International and Public Aairs, Merit socially, or environmentally. Large But many economists think that this is Janow ’88LAW, has served as a WTO segments of our society have not been a good developmental policy, because appellate judge.) doing well. Our life expectancy is on the

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4.19_BigIdea_STIGLITZ.indd 40 11/7/19 3:54 PM decline — remarkable for a country that few firms, so government regulation is You advocate for “progressive is at the forefront of medical research. required to ensure that corporations act capitalism.” What does that mean? Our carbon emissions per capita are ethically and that capitalism works as I use the term first to emphasize the among the highest in the world. The intended and competition thrives. importance of progress — to say that US economy experienced a “sugar high” change is possible, that we can have higher after the tax cuts of December 2017 and You’ve railed against laissez-faire standards of living and a more enlightened the corporate-expenditure increases of economics as overly simplistic and society, with, for example, greater equality January 2018, but that was short-lived. short-sighted. Why do so many and respect for human rights. But we need Most forecasts see growth in 2020 at well Americans still consider low taxes a new social contract, one that achieves below 2 percent — even though we are and unregulated markets essential a better balance between the market and likely to be running a $1 trillion deficit. for economic growth? government. I say “capitalism” to remind We’ve had four decades of propaganda us that the market — better regulated Would government regulation solve saying as much. But the promises of and better governed — will have to be an any of these problems? supply-side economics were never important part of this new social contract. We need to have more regulation to realized. Inequality grew, growth slowed, prevent another financial crisis of the large parts of the country faced stag- People have called you an idealist. kind we had in 2008, to stave o cli- nation or worse, and life expectancy, as Has your optimism been shaken? mate change’s devastating eects, and I observed earlier, is now in decline. I What’s happened in the last couple of to ensure that our economy remains wrote my new book partly to disabuse years is enough to shake anyone’s opti- dynamic and that our corporations people of this persistent myth. We’ve mism. Still, I am constantly heartened don’t exploit people — think of the had four decades of this experiment in by the grassroots movements across the opioid crisis, the epidemic of childhood country after country, and in country country, and especially by our students, obesity and diabetes, and Volkswagen’s after country it has failed. It’s time to who know that another world is possible “dieselgate.” Large parts of the US recognize this and to look for another and who seem determined to fight for it. economy are now dominated by just a economic model. — David J. Craig

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4.19_BigIdea_STIGLITZ.indd 41 11/7/19 3:55 PM EXPLORATIONS

FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

It’s snowing ... plastic!

icroscopic shards of plastic from Tedesco says that the new initiative, called degraded water bottles, shop- PlastiX-Snow, was inspired by a number ping bags, synthetic clothing, of studies that over the past few years have and other waste are floating detected plastic in precipitation in such M disparate locations as Denver, Paris, Tehran, in the atmosphere and falling back to earth in raindrops and snowflakes, say recent studies. and Dongguan, China. Last spring, scientists In an eort to determine the levels of micro- found plastic fragments in snowfall in the Arc- plastics in New York State’s precipitation, a tic — evidence that the fragments are capable group of researchers led by Marco Tedesco, a of traveling vast distances on wind currents. climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty “We are not sure how these plastic frag- Earth Observatory, is soliciting the help of ments are getting into the air,” says Tedesco. ordinary citizens. This winter, Tedesco’s team “Are they blown o the surface of water is recruiting dozens of New York residents to bodies? Or are they being lifted o the ground collect fresh snow samples, remove any tiny bits by wind at landfills or industrial sites? If so, of plastic from the snow using special filtering which ones? By assessing the types of plastic kits, and then mail the extracted materials to that are deposited by snowstorms at particular Columbia for chemical analysis. times and locations, we aim to learn more.” “We want to know exactly what kinds of And then there are the health ramifications. plastic are prevalent in snowfall in dierent Scientists have for years warned that microplas- parts of the state,” says Tedesco. “Then we’ll tics could eventually find their way into our food look for clues to where the plastic originates.” and water supply. By assessing the concentra- The eort, which is scheduled to begin in tion of microplastics in precipitation across New mid-January, is part of a larger citizen-science York, PlastiX-Snow may help public-health project that Tedesco launched in 2018 called ocials identify areas where crops, reservoirs, X-Snow. For an earlier phase of the project, and aquifers should be tested for polymers. scores of New Yorkers volunteered to regularly The Columbia team will also be investigat- measure the depth of snow near where they ing whether plastic pollution aects the speed live and to evaluate its other physical qualities, at which snow melts. This is an important such as relative fluness or slushiness. This question, Tedesco says, because snow reflects

information will help scientists improve the a tremendous amount of sunlight back into EILEEN BARROSO remote-sensing techniques they use to esti- the atmosphere and thus plays a critical role mate the depth of snow around the world and in regulating the earth’s climate. the rate at which it’s melting. To learn more, visit plastiXsnow.com.

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4.19_EXPL.indd 42 11/7/19 2:10 PM Our amazing bones Research suggests we have underrated the skeleton’s role in maintaining good health

verver thethe pastpast decadedecade andand a half,half, researchersresearchers iinn tthehe llaboratoryaboratory ofof GerardGerard Karsenty,Karsenty, thethe BRAIN DEVELOPMENT cchairhair ooff tthehe ggeneticsenetics andand developmentdevelopment Karsenty and his team have Oddepartmentepartment atat Columbia’sColumbia’s VagelosVagelos shown that when female mice CollegeCollege ofof PhysiciansPhysicians andand Surgeons,Surgeons, havehave are genetically altered to produce discovereddiscovered thatthat bonesbones playplay a surprisinglysurprisingly low levels of osteocalcin, they activeactive rolerole inin ourour physiologyphysiology andand health.health. give birth to offspring with “Until“Until a fewfew yearsyears ago,ago, eveneven biologistsbiologists regardedregarded abnormally small brains. bonesbones asas largelylargely inert,”inert,” sayssays Karsenty.Karsenty. “But“But wewe nownow knowknow thatthat they’rethey’re constantlyconstantly communicatingcommunicating withwith organsorgans andand tissuestissues throughoutthroughout thethe body.”body.” TheThe mostmost inflinfl uentialuential studiesstudies toto comecome outout ofof MEMORY Karsenty’sKarsenty’s researchresearch havehave focusedfocused onon a bone-generatedbone-generated Older mice that exhibit signs proteinprotein calledcalled osteocalcin,osteocalcin, whichwhich turnsturns calciumcalcium intointo of mental decline have been bonebone mass.mass. KarsentyKarsenty andand hishis colleaguescolleagues havehave shown to reclaim their youthful shownshown thatthat osteocalcinosteocalcin hashas a widewide cognitive abilities after receiving varietyvariety ofof biologicalbiological functionsfunctions thatthat infusions of osteocalcin, a fi nding werewere previouslypreviously unrecognized.unrecognized. that could have implications for treating age-related memory loss in humans. ACUTE STRESS RESPONSE Karsenty’s most recent breakthrough, published this year in the journal Cell Metabolism, shows that the so-called fi ght-or-fl ight response is kick-started not METABOLISM by the hormone adrenaline, Osteocalcin tells the pancreas as scientists have long when to increase production thought, but by osteocalcin. of insulin, a hormone that is responsible for converting blood sugars into energy. Karsenty’s research is informing the development of experimental new drugs for type 2 diabetes.

SEXUALITY A healthy male libido is dependent on bones, since osteocalcin helps to stimulate the production of testosterone. SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI SEBASTIAN

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4.19_EXPL.indd 43 11/7/19 1:02 PM EXPLORATIONS

An alternative currency created by Columbia professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner is exchanged in Humacao, Puerto Rico. A new type of social currency

hat do you value the “The goal is to get people talking bills to be exchanged for food, child most?” reads the about what they value in their com- care, and other essentials. She hopes prompt on the screen. munities, about what changes they’d that by demonstrating how alternative “W “My family,” says like to see occur, and about how they currencies can work, Valor y Cambio a middle-aged Puerto Rican man, might contribute to those changes,” says will cause people to see the untapped speaking into a video recorder that’s Negrón-Muntaner, who was born and potential of the sharing economy in attached to a special ATM in the lobby raised in San Juan. their own communities. of El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem. The bills are certainly conversation “This is especially important right After answering a few questions about starters. Designed by the artist Sarabel now in Puerto Rico, where people are what he thinks could be done to improve Santos-Negrón in collaboration with suddenly demanding more of their his community, he receives a handful of Negrón-Muntaner (the two are not government and social institutions,” colorful bills that are accepted at select related), they feature portraits of says Negrón-Muntaner. Puerto Ricans’ local establishments, including cafés, Puerto Rican historical figures known heightened sense of political awareness theaters, and museums. for promoting social justice — like is exemplified, she says, by the mass This refurbished ATM, and the alter- abolitionist physician Ramón Emeterio protests that forced the resignation of native currency it dispenses, is part of Betances and feminist labor organizer former governor Ricardo Rosselló. an interactive art project called Valor y Luisa Capetillo. To amplify the voices of those who Cambio (Value and Change) that Frances “Businesses have been eager to have participated in Valor y Cambio, Negrón-Muntaner, a Columbia professor participate,” says Negrón-Muntaner. Negrón-Muntaner plans to showcase of English and comparative literature, Convincing people to spend the pesos the ATM testimonials in a series of art launched in Puerto Rico in February is another matter. “Many people seem exhibitions in San Juan and New York 2019. Negrón-Muntaner, who is best to value them too much as art objects, City, in an academic report, and in a known as a cultural critic and documen- or for what they consider to be their documentary film. tary filmmaker, has hauled her uniquely cultural or political significance, to “There are so many stories that

inquisitive three-hundred-pound cash part with them.” people have shared with us about their FRANCES NEGRÓN-MUNTANER machine to more than twenty locations Valor y Cambio was inspired, Negrón- values and their visions for the future, on the island and around New York Muntaner says, by the ingenuity of and we want to tell as many of them as City, distributing “pesos of Puerto Rico” people in many impoverished parts we can,” she says. to nearly three thousand people in of the world who, having little access To see video, visit magazine.columbia. exchange for their stories and views. to ocial currencies, create their own edu/valorycambio.

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4.19_EXPL.indd 44 11/7/19 2:11 PM e latest on evolution. Possessing one of the oldest vaping risks and most rudimentary nervous systems, it provides a valuable window into the s public-health fundamental mechanisms of the brain. ocials across Researchers in the laboratory of the US struggle Rafael Yuste are studying the hydra Ato determine why to learn how neural circuits store and hundreds of people have communicate information. But the become seriously ill after hydra has another claim to fame: it is using e-cigarettes, a team of said to be immortal, because its body researchers led by Markus is constantly renewing itself with fresh Hilpert and Norman Kleiman stem cells. “The hydra’s regenerative of Columbia’s Mailman Our immortal powers are so incredible that if you School of Public Health are break it up into individual cells and investigating whether poten- partners collect the cells in a test tube, they will tially toxic metals found reconfigure themselves into a proper in e-cigarettes’ component olumbia neuroscientists have animal within a few days,” says Jon- parts — including the heat- access to some of the most athan Lovas, a graduate student in ing coils that turn vaping advanced technology in the Yuste’s lab who is currently conduct- oils into an aerosol — might Cworld, but sometimes they learn ing experiments on the organism. “By be contributing to reported from the simplest creatures. The hydra, observing how its nervous system reas- lung injuries. a half-inch-long relative of the jellyfish, sembles itself, we hope to achieve new belongs to a group of aquatic organisms insights into the growth and develop- that first appeared some 750 million ment of nervous systems in more com- years ago, in the earliest stages of life’s plex organisms, including mammals.”

Why economists downplay climate risks

n international because many of the threats heat and humidity, intense group of climate posed by climate change are floods and droughts, and scientists, policy so novel, economists have loss of biodiversity. The team’s preliminary Aexperts, and econ- yet to devise reliable meth- “The lack of firm quantifica- findings indicate that dan- omists have issued a report ods of studying them and tions is not a reason to ignore gerous amounts of nickel warning that world leaders therefore tend to be conser- these risks,” the researchers and chromium break loose are being misled about the vative when predicting their write. “When the missing risks from the heating coils and long-term economic costs of disruptive potential. are taken into account, the enter the vapors that users climate change. Among the clear threats case for strong and urgent inhale. “We suspect that these The report’s authors, who to industry that are routinely action to reduce greenhouse metals could be interacting include Columbia faculty downplayed by economists gas emissions becomes even in dangerous ways with vari- Ruth deFries, Alex Halliday, are rising sea levels, extreme more compelling.” ous chemicals found in the Geoffrey Heal, Michael e-liquids,” says Kleiman. Puma ’98SEAS, ’99SIPA, In experiments on mice, Alexander Ruane, and Marco the researchers have also Tedesco, say that top policy- found that inhaled particles makers and business leaders of nickel and chromium can have for years been receiving become lodged in the brain. economic assessments They say that this poses long- “omitting or grossly under- term health risks, especially estimating” some of the biggest risks. They say that TOP: JOHN SZYMANSKI; CENTER: EVGENIY KLEYMENOV / SHUTTERSTOCK; BOTTOM: KENT WEAKLEY / SHUTTERSTOCK KENT WEAKLEY BOTTOM: / SHUTTERSTOCK; KLEYMENOV CENTER: EVGENIY JOHN SZYMANSKI; TOP: for young people.

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4.19_EXPL.indd 45 11/7/19 1:02 PM EXPLORATIONS Does the US transplant system waste too many kidneys?

‘organ or donor quality’ in recommend that the Centers declining the o ers,” says for Medicare and Medicaid Mohan, who notes that few Services update its evalua- organs were rejected for tion and rating system. They being bad immunological also suggest that better com- matches. “Yet ultimately the munication between patients kidneys were accepted for and transplant centers is transplant in other patients.” needed. Currently, Mohan (While Mohan and his says, transplant centers don’t coauthors were not able to ask patients how selective track the outcomes of those they want their physicians to subsequent transplants, they be when scrutinizing avail- note that past research has able kidneys, nor do they shown that the number of typically disclose to patients times a kidney is declined when organs are declined, does not a ect a transplant’s or why. chance of success.) “Physicians must act Mohan and his coauthors quickly when deciding say part of the problem whether to accept particu- is that the US Centers for lar organs, so they cannot Medicare and Medicaid consult with patients in real Services, which evaluates time,” he says. “However, and publicly rates kidney- there’s no reason doctors transplant centers, places can’t discuss in advance too much emphasis on the how cautious or aggressive fraction of transplants that patients want their trans- each center executes suc- plant team to be in making very year, thousands approximately twenty-six cessfully and too little on the these decisions. Does a of Americans die thousand patients who died number of patients served. patient want to accept the while awaiting a while awaiting a kidney Transplant centers are there- next available kidney? Or Ekidney transplant transplant between 2008 and fore rewarded for performing does she prefer to hold out — a fate that’s usually 2015. It found that the vast operations that they know for an organ from a young, blamed on a shortage of majority of these patients will go smoothly and avoiding healthy donor? A patient donated organs. But a had multiple opportunities slightly riskier operations should have a say in that.” new study by Columbia to receive a transplant but that, if performed more Giving patients the option researchers reveals that that the available organs were frequently, would save lives. of instructing doctors to many patients with declined by their transplant According to Mohan, use a more liberal standard chronic renal disease miss teams — typically without the whose paper appears in in accepting kidneys poses out on getting a donated patients’ knowledge — and the online journal JAMA few risks, Mohan insists, kidney because transplant subsequently given to people Network Open, the apparent because all donated kidneys centers demand organs of with less-critical needs. On risk aversion helps to explain taken into the nation’s organ- unnecessarily high quality. average, the study found, why the US discards nearly allocation system are of DAVID TADEVOSIAN / SHUTTERSTOCK The study, led by Sumit each deceased patient’s team 20 percent of all donated relatively high quality. Mohan, an associate profes- was o ered sixteen kidneys kidneys — a much higher “The bottom line is that it’s sor of medicine and epidemi- that were deemed unsuitable. rate than other countries. often better to get a less-than- ology at Columbia University “In 93 percent of these To make the US trans- perfect kidney sooner than to Irving Medical Center, instances, the transplant plant system more ecient, wait for the perfect kidney to examined the histories of teams cited concerns about Mohan and his colleagues come along,” he says.

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4.19_EXPL.indd 46 11/7/19 1:02 PM STUDY Breathing easy in the Empire State A sharp reduction in air HALL pollution in New York State has RESEARCH prevented thousands of premature BRIEFS deaths since 2002, according to a study led by Xiaomeng Jin, a PhD student in atmospheric chemistry at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The cleaner air is largely the result of stricter limits on vehicle and power-plant emissions.

Left in the coal dust Coal consumption in America is likely to drop by 25 percent over the next decade, jeopardizing the economies of dozens of counties that are almost wholly dependent on coal mining, according to researchers at SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

A new take on addiction Gay women are four times as likely as straight women to use marijuana on a daily basis, and for bisexual women the factor rises to seven, An elevator to the moon according to a study by Morgan M. Philbin, Pia M. Mauro, Emily R. Greene ’17PH, and Silvia S. Martins of Columbia’s ong before rocket ships were invented, stargazers Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers suspect dreamed of building a tower to the heavens. In 1895, that many gay and bisexual women are self-medicating to ease the stigma of being in a sexual minority. the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky went so far as to draft plans for a forty-thousand-kilometer- L Mealtime for mutants A team of evolutionary high “celestial castle” inspired by the Ei el Tower. biologists led by Columbia professor Peter Andolfatto Now Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford, two Columbia have determined that the monarch butterfly evolved astronomy PhD candidates, have proposed a modern twist on to be able to eat milkweed, which is deadly to most the idea. In a paper posted in the online research repository insects, by accumulating a suite of genetic mutations arXiv, they suggest that a cable made of an ultra-strong mate- in a precise order. The scientists demonstrated this by rial like graphene or Kevlar could be strung between the earth painstakingly introducing the same mutations, one by and the moon, forming the backbone of a “space elevator” one, in fruit flies, enabling them to eat milkweed too. that would ferry travelers and supplies back and forth. The cable, anchored to the moon’s surface and dangling just above Starlight, not so bright A star in the constellation the earth’s atmosphere, would be held taut by our planet’s Cygnus known as Tabby’s Star has long baffled scientists gravitational pull. Space travelers would ride a rocket up to a by periodically dimming for days or weeks at a time. Now loading dock at the base of the elevator and from there take a Columbia astronomers Brian D. Metzger, Miguel A. S. solar-powered vehicle to the moon. Martinez ’19CC, and Nicholas C. Stone have proposed “The two-hundred-thousand-mile voyage would take a few an explanation: they hypothesize that an exomoon is weeks to a few months,” says Penoyre. orbiting the star and slowly breaking apart, causing an Other research groups have proposed various types of cable- ever-expanding cloud of debris to obscure the star’s light. based aerial lifts to the moon before, but Penoyre and Sand- Born to sing Sarah M. N. Woolley, a neuroscientist at ford present an unusually detailed analysis of the concept’s Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, along with postdoc- technical and financial feasibility. They say that their system, toral researcher Jordan Moore, has successfully mapped which they call the Spaceline, could be built for a few billion the neural circuits that enable young songbirds to learn dollars using current technology and that it would lower the the complex patterns of trills, peeps, and warbles sung cost of moon voyages by reducing the need for gas-guzzling by their parents. According to Woolley, the study offers rockets. Penoyre and Sandford say that this could facilitate insights into children’s ability to acquire language. more frequent scientific expeditions to the moon and possibly even industrial ventures, such as the mining of rare minerals Epilepsy relief in a laser? Columbia engineer that are abundant on the lunar surface. P. James Schuck has developed a microscopic laser — “The Spaceline would become a piece of infrastructure, whose width is just one thousandth that of a human much like an early railroad, allowing for the easy movement hair — intended to be implanted in the brain and used to treat neurological disorders such as epilepsy. ILLUSTRATION BY LEN SMALL; ORIGINAL IMAGES BY VOVAN / SHUTTERSTOCK, JOKER1991 / SHUTTERSTOCK / SHUTTERSTOCK, VOVAN BY LEN SMALL; ORIGINAL IMAGES BY ILLUSTRATION of people and supplies in outer space,” says Penoyre.

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4.19_EXPL.indd 47 11/7/19 1:02 PM NETWORK

YOUR ALUMNI CONNECTION

Time to Talk about Tampons

hen Jordana Kier ’14BUS first the assumption that she would return to that decided to launch Lola, a line field. But while at Columbia Business School, of organic feminine-care prod- Kier became interested in entrepreneurship Wucts, she didn’t know much and started thinking about areas where she, about what went into making a tampon. And, as a consumer, was dissatisfied. Feminine- she realized, neither did anyone else. The hygiene products were at the top of her list. FDA does not require manufacturers of tam- Kier teamed up with a friend, Alexandra pons to disclose product ingredients, which Friedman, and together they started Lola, means, she says, that “many women are which oers three distinct solutions to putting synthetic fabrics, dyes, and fragrances problems Kier identified in the feminine-care into their bodies every month without even industry. First, Lola tampons, pads, and knowing it. liners are all made from organic cotton, with “There was basically no transparency no synthetic additives. Second, Lola works on around an incredibly intimate product. I a subscription model, which allows people to knew that we could do better. And when I did customize their orders by product, number, start to give it some thought, it felt like the and frequency according to their specific entire business model was antiquated.” needs. As Kier says, “Everyone’s period is Kier, a classically trained pianist and dierent, and when you’re buying a generic undergraduate music major, never imagined box from the drugstore, you’re not necessarily that she would end up working in women’s getting what works best for you.” And, third, health. She spent her post-college years in Lola helps destigmatize the issue of menstru- arts administration and began her MBA with ation and gets women talking about their

48 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_NETWORK.indd 48 11/12/19 2:56 PM own experiences by holding products. “I was shocked community events and edu- to learn that you can’t use 3 Podcasts for cational forums. food stamps to buy these “When we started the com- extremely necessary prod- History Lovers pany, in 2014, we discovered ucts,” she says. Lola donates how much misinformation a portion of its profi ts to a there was out there,” Kier variety of women’s health The Secret History says. “We were often pitch- charities and also works of the Future ing to groups of men who with the nonprofi t organi- Seth Stevenson ’11JRN didn’t even understand why zation I Support the Girls (Knight-Bagehot Fellow), tampons came in di erent to supply Lola products to cohost and cowriter sizes. The conversation is not women in need. A joint production of where we want it to be yet, In June, Lola also teamed Slate and the Economist, but we’re making strides.” up with the advocacy orga- where hosts Seth Despite some uncomfort- nization Period Equity to Stevenson and Tom able pitches, Lola raised launch a national campaign Standage work respectively, the podcast explores over $35 million in funding, to end sales tax on menstrual how the past is prologue when it comes to modern and the company recently products, often called the technology. Episodes seek answers to such intriguing expanded its line of products tampon tax. “Half of the questions as “What can Victorian-era polar exploration to include Cramp Care — an population has a period, teach us about space travel?” and “Could we go back essential-oil blend and daily yet thirty-three states to wind-powered ships?” multivitamin designed to still tax these products as reduce period pain — and luxury items,” Kier says. The Bowery Boys a fi rst-period kit. Lola also The campaign will include Tom Meyers ’97CC, cohost o ers a line of sexual- educational e orts to make This biweekly podcast wellness products, such as people aware of the problem from history buffs condoms, lubricant, and and, eventually, legal action Tom Meyers and Greg cleansing wipes. “We really against states that have not Young delves into the want to be with our custom- repealed the tax. little-known lore of ers from their fi rst period “The tampon tax is not New York City. Recent through their fi rst hot fl ash,” just a fi nancial issue; it’s dis- episodes explore the says Kier. crimination,” Kier says. “We Tombs, Manhattan’s legendary prison; explain how the Kier says that when she see Lola as part of a bigger bagel became New York’s iconic food; and introduce us started Lola, she became fi ght about gender equity to Steve Brodie, a nineteenth-century daredevil who attuned to the fact that and about not marginalizing claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and millions of American women women’s health. ” lived to tell the tale. lack access to feminine-care — Rebecca Shapiro Making Gay History Eric Marcus ’84JRN, ’03GSAPP, founder and host Author Eric Marcus (known for cowriting Olympic diving cham- pion Greg Louganis’s best-selling memoir) has spent the last several decades conducting interviews for a comprehensive oral history of the LGBTQ civil- rights movement. In his podcast, he shares some of this extensive audio archive, which, as he puts it, “brings our history to life through the voices of the people who lived it.”

CENTER RIGHT: BENJAMIN STONE PHOTOGRAPHY; BOTTOM RIGHT: JORDAN MATTER JORDAN RIGHT: BOTTOM PHOTOGRAPHY; STONE BENJAMIN CENTER RIGHT: — Gary Shapiro ’93LAW

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 49

4.19_NETWORK.indd 49 11/12/19 2:56 PM NETWORK ASK AN ALUM: SO YOU THINK YOU CAN WRITE A MEMOIR? Lilly Dancyger ’12JRN edits personal essays and memoirs for two online publications and a literary press, and she teaches classes on memoir writing. She is the editor of Burn It Down, a new anthology of essays on women’s anger, and is working on her own memoir, Negative Space.

Tell us a little about your as a way to cement their writing classes. legacies. That’s not true any- I teach classes for writers more, though celebrity mem- from di erent backgrounds oirs still hold strong on the and at all levels. One of my bestseller lists — Michelle favorites is a class for writers Obama’s Becoming has sold with a book project already more than ten million copies underway. We dig into how so far. But if you’re not a to shape personal experience celebrity, you have to rely on into narrative, and the ways artistry to drum up the inter- to elucidate something uni- We want to know how in which a story can start to est that’s inherent in stories versal. Westover describes a memoir writers — including take on its own life. of famous people’s exploits. childhood most readers can’t all of the ones I listed above The non-celebrity literary relate to directly. She’s kept — made it out OK. Writing So what makes a memoir is as much about out of school for her entire about traumatic experiences great memoir? exceptional storytelling and childhood, burying guns and can also be deeply healing for It’s all about that alchemy of craft as it is about having an canned peaches to prepare a writer, but there’s more to it transforming the raw mate- interesting life. for the apocalypse. But than that. As an editor I see rial of experience into some- while the circumstances a lot of personal essays that thing special. It’s important Can you name recent she describes — in vivid, seem entirely motivated to have a good story to tell, memoirs that exemplify gripping detail — may be by the writer’s need to but there has to be more to the best of the genre? foreign, the feelings at the document and share their it than merely recounting There are so many to core of the story are uni- pain. The writer revels in the events of your life. A choose from. Tara Westover’s versal: her desire to believe the catharsis of writing but big part of my job is telling Educated, about being raised the best of her parents; hasn’t taken the necessary people that the worst or most by survivalists and not her ambition to escape her next steps of processing that powerful thing that ever setting foot in a classroom circumstances; her loyalty experience and turning it happened to them sounds until the age of seventeen; to family that she often puts into something universal. boring. I don’t say it to be Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart ahead of her own well-being. When writers come to me mean! But I often find myself Berries, about growing up In Maid, Land’s struggle to with their raw personal explaining that just having on a reservation; Stephanie make the smallest amount of experiences, I understand an experience — no matter Land’s Maid, about her time progress toward a more stable the weight of the trust they’re how shocking or unusual — is working as a house cleaner life is more common than putting in me, and I push not enough. A great memoir and struggling to provide for many realize. It resonated them hard to shape those articulates something about her daughter; and Kiese Lay- with readers who saw their experiences into essays that being human and it will res- mon’s Heavy, about a Black experience, or their mothers’ transcend the events they’re onate with readers regardless boy growing up in the South experience, reflected in liter- based on. I remind them that of whether their lives look and grappling with weight, ature for the first time. “what happened” is a lump anything like the writer’s. trauma, and societal failings, of clay for them to sculpt, are a few that come to mind. Trauma seems to be a and it’s up to them to shape You don’t have to be famous recurring feature in it into something beautiful.

to write a memoir, right? Why do these stories literary memoirs. As an editor and a writer, I’m O’MALLEY STUDIOS No! Memoir used to be resonate with readers? Yes — the hardest stories always pushing for the bigger almost exclusively written by Because the writers use are often the most gripping, story buried under the sur- famous, influential people their personal experiences because the stakes are higher. face of personal experience.

50 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_NETWORK.indd 50 11/12/19 2:57 PM YourYour Last-MinuteLast-Minnuute GiftGift GuideGuide BuyBuy alumni,alumni, forfor alumnialumni

CBD-infused honey, salt, or olive oil from Alto Essentials, Rib-knit scarf from Grete, cofounded by Jonah Reider ’16CC. founded by Paulina Dougherty $19 for a box of ten single ’18BUS. $40. grete.com servings. altoessentials.com

Farfalle earrings cast in resin with natural pearls from Chefanie, founded by Stephanie Nass ’13CC. $185. chefanie.com

Home gardening kit from Monogrammed bathrobe Urban Leaf, cofounded by from Weezie, cofounded by Nate Littlewood ’17BUS and Lindsey Johnson ’18BUS. $190. Rob Elliott ’15SEAS. $22. weezietowels.com geturbanleaf.com

Cooking-class gift card from CocuSocial, founded by Billy Guan ’15SEAS. cocusocial.com Jerky-of-the-month subscription from SlantShack, founded by Josh Kace ’07SEAS. Starting at $34.99 a month. slantshack.com

Moisturizing stubble cream and oil from Fur, cofounded by Laura Schubert ’11BUS and Lillian Tung ’11BUS. Bundle pack: $61. furyou.com Ann Arbor Blues Festival vinyl albums, co-produced by Parker Fishel ’10CC. Audio preservation done at Columbia’s WKCR-FM by Fishel and Ben Young ’92CC. $60 for volumes 1 and 2. thirdmanstore.com

Suitcase from Away, founded by Steph Korey ’15BUS. Carry-on size: $225. awaytravel.com

Nail polish from Sundays, Watermelon Glow Sleeping founded by Amy Ling Lin ’16BUS. Mask from Glow Recipe skin care, Wellness Gift Box: $55. cofounded by Christine Chang dearsundays.com ’10GSAS. $22–45. glowrecipe.com

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 51

4.19_NETWORK.indd 51 11/12/19 3:03 PM NETWORK Advocate for Accessibility

ennitah Ghati parliament. One of Kenya’s ’04SW smiles as few lawmakers with a disabil- she steers her ity, she advocates for greater Dwheelchair along accessibility in buildings and the sidewalk, across Broad- on sidewalks, inclusivity in way, and up a ramp that leads schools and workplaces, and to the entrance of the Colum- increased cultural acceptance bia Alumni Center. When she for the disabled. hits the button that makes “In Kenya, having a dis- the two front doors swing ability is stigmatized. People open, she breaks out into a see it as a curse on the wide grin. family,” she says. “It’s deeply “New Yorkers may take ingrained, but I believe we these little things for granted,” can change that.” Dennitah Ghati speaks to constituents in Kenya. she says. “But where I come Ghati always knew that she from, this is exactly the kind wanted to go into public ser- equal rights for women and disabled. In addition, she is of access we’re striving for.” vice. Born able-bodied in Ken- girls. She studied social work spearheading a campaign to Ghati comes from Nairobi, ya’s rural Migori County, near at Columbia, and after gradu- make sure that people with where she is serving her sec- Lake Victoria, she spent most ating in 2004 she returned to disabilities are included in ond term as a member of of her early career working for Kenya and founded an NGO Kenya’s next census, which that helps victims of domestic will be taken in 2020. and gender-based violence. “Traditionally, families In 2013, Ghati became would hide disabled people the first woman ever elected during the census, because to parliament from Migori they are ashamed,” she says. County. But just a year “But if we don’t know how VILLAS later, she was riding in a car many people need resources heading back to Nairobi from and where they are, it’s impos- her home district when a tire sible to meet those needs.” burst. The car flipped over, Ghati is particularly and Ghati damaged her spinal committed to advocating on cord. For the last five years, behalf of women and girls she has used a wheelchair. with disabilities, a group that “Of course, people have she views as Kenya’s most empathy, but I think until vulnerable population. In you or a family member are Kenya, women with disabil- disabled, it’s impossible to ities are far more likely to be really understand the needs victims of violent crime and of that community,” she says. of brutal practices like female When Kenya ratified a genital mutilation, Ghati says. new constitution in 2010, “I’m continuing the work the country adopted UN that I did before the acci- standards that establish dent, but for a segment of ITALY • FRANCE • SPAIN • GREECE • CARIBBEAN equal rights for people the population that needs COURTESY OF DENNITAH GHATI The ultimate portfolio of hand-picked vacation rental homes. with disabilities, and Ghati me the most,” she says. “The spends much of her time accident might have taken +1 855 468 5555 ensuring that the country is away my ability to walk, but compliant. She travels widely it didn’t take away my drive redsavannah.com to learn how other countries to move forward.” address the needs of the — Rebecca Shapiro

52 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_NETWORK.indd 52 11/12/19 2:57 PM NEWSMAKERS

e Borscht Identity O Two Columbia alumni and one professor were recipients of 2019 MacArthur Fellowships, also known as “genius grants.” Writer Valeria ood plays a starring role in almost every part of Luiselli ’15GSAS was honored for “challenging Jewish culture. There would be no Passover with- conventional notions of authorship in fi ction, out matzo-ball soup, no Rosh Hashanah without essays, and inventive hybrids of the two.” (See Fapples and honey, and no visit to a Jewish mother our review of her recent novel Lost Children without a meal — or three. Archive in the Winter 2018–19 issue of Colum- But which foods and recipes best bia Magazine.) Urban designer Emmanuel representrepresent “the“the rhythmsrhythms ofof thethe JewishJewish Pratt ’03GSAPP won for his work transforming calendar and the contingencies abandoned buildings and vacant lots on Chica- of the Jewish experience”? go’s South Side into sustainable farms through That is “highly debatable,” the Sweet Water Foundation. And Columbia says Alana Newhouse professor Saidiya Hartman, a member of the ’00BC, ’02JRN, the Department of English and Comparative Liter- founder and ature, won for her work tracing the aftermath of editor in chief of slavery in modern American society. Tablet, an online O Claudia López ’03SIPA was elected mayor of magazine of Bogotá, Colombia. She will be the fi rst female Jewish news and mayor of Bogotá and the fi rst lesbian to lead any ideas. Still, in her Latin American city. Many are hailing her victory new book, The 100 as a step forward in a country where the LBGTQ Most Jewish Foods, community still faces signifi cant persecution. she summons a cadre of voices to create a fun O Supreme Court associate justice Ruth Bader list of everything you might Ginsburg ’59LAW won the prestigious fi nd on Bubbe’s table, from the traditional Berggruen Prize, given annually to a thinker (bialys, chopped liver, brisket) to the slightly more whose ideas “have profoundly shaped human unconventional (Sweet’N Low packets, Bazooka bubble self-understanding and advancement in a gum) to the downright irreverent (bacon). For Hanukkah, rapidly changing world.” Ginsburg is the fi rst with its emphasis on fried foods, justice to receive the $1 million prize; all Newhouse shares legendary Jewish- previous winners have been philosophers. cookbook author Joan Nathan’s O Three Columbians received a 2019 Carnegie recipe for sufganiyot — jelly-stu ed Medal of Philanthropy, which recognizes doughnuts (fi nd the recipe online people who have dedicated their private wealth at magazine.columbia.edu/donuts). to public good. Henry R. Kravis ’69BUS and his And to mark Christmas in the best wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, won for their work Jewish way, turn to the entry on supporting education, community develop- Chinese food — writer Marc Tracy ment, and the arts; Robert F. Smith ’94BUS ’07CC argues that a holiday Peking was honored for supporting underrepresented duck is “a prayer you can eat.” minorities in higher education and the work- force, as well as working to preserve and share stories of the African-American experience; Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? and Leonard Tow ’60GSAS, ’87BUS won for the work that his foundation does in education, medicine, and criminal-justice reform. Jagged Little Pill, a new Broadway O musical directed by Diane Paulus Columbia professor Haruo Shirane ’74CC, ’97SOA, recently opened at the Broad- ’83GSAS was selected as the inaugural recip- hurst Theatre. The show, based on the ient of the International Prize in Japanese 1995 Alanis Morissette album of the Studies from Japan’s National Institutes for the same name, features arrangements by Humanities (NIHU). NIHU is a consortium of six research institutes related to Japanese music supervisor Tom Kitt ’96CC. BY ALANA NEWHOUSE (ARTISAN BOOKS), © 2019 BOOKS), (ARTISAN ALANA NEWHOUSE BY JEWISH FOODS, THE 100 MOST FROM FECKS, NOAH language, history, and culture.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 53

4.19_NETWORK.indd 53 11/12/19 2:57 PM BULLETIN

UNIVERSITY NEWS AND VIEWS

AMY HUNGERFORD TO LEAD ARTS AND SCIENCES

my Hungerford, a longtime Yale professor School of Professional Studies, and the Gradu- Aand academic administrator, has been ate School of Arts and Sciences. appointed executive vice president for Arts and “Amy’s career has combined notable schol- Sciences and dean of the Faculty of Arts and arship and tireless mentoring with a wealth Sciences. Her appointment begins January 1. of experience in administering core academic A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first- programs,” said President Lee C. Bollinger. century American literature, Hungerford comes “Her oversight of twenty-three humanities to Columbia after leading Yale’s humanities departments and programs at Yale has demon- division since 2016. In that role, she oversaw strated a talent for eective stewardship of a major capital project to create a central hub resources and for the recruitment, hiring, and for humanities on Yale’s campus and eorts to advancement of the highest-caliber faculty.” increase cross-school collaborations. Hungerford succeeds Maya Tolstoy, a As head of Columbia’s Faculty of Arts and marine geophysicist who has served as Sciences, Hungerford will oversee the twenty- interim executive vice president for Arts and eight departments whose members teach Sciences since September 2018, when statis- students at Columbia College, the School of tics professor David Madigan stepped down General Studies, the School of the Arts, the after five years in the position. TOP: COURTESY OF AMY HUNGERFORD; BOTTOM: MARYAM HASSAN / COLUMBIA ATHLETICS

POWER OF THREE he women’s cross-country Tteam claimed its third straight Ivy title this fall, with seniors Katie Wasserman, Emily Acker, and Bianca Alonzo, junior Allie Hays, and sophomore Sofia Camacho all achieving top-twenty finishes in the league championship race. On the men’s side, senior Kenny Vasbinder won the individual title for Columbia.

54 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_BULLETIN.indd 54 11/13/19 3:56 PM MUHTAR KENT DONATES $6M FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION PROGRAM

he former chairman and TCEO of the Coca-Cola Company, Muhtar Kent, has donated $6 million to the School of International and Public A airs to establish a new confl ict- resolution program. The centerpiece of the Kent Global Leadership BUSINESS SCHOOL’S NEW HOME TAKES SHAPE Program on Confl ict Reso- lution will be an intensive his past fall, Columbia administrators and faculty members joined construction workers weeklong training course for Tat a “topping out” ceremony to mark the completion of the steel superstructure of the professionals from govern- Ronald O. Perelman Center for Business Innovation. Together with the Henry R. Kravis ments and intergovernmen- Building, which topped out over the summer, this will become Columbia Business School’s tal institutions to be held new home in Manhattanville. The school’s two new buildings will open in 2022, provid- annually in New York City ing the school nearly twice as much space as it currently occupies in Uris Hall and several beginning next summer. The satellite locations. “We are creating a new future,” said Dean Costis Maglaras. “We can now Kent Global Leadership Pro- pursue our ambitions. We can provide a better education.” gram will also fund research at SIPA, an annual visiting professorship, fellowships for outstanding graduate stu- GIVING DAY dents, and campus events. $22.0M BREAKS RECORDS Edward C. Luck ’72SIPA, ’01GSAS, the Arnold A. $20.1M olumbia Giving Day, an Saltzman Professor of Pro- Cannual twenty-four-hour fessional Practice in Inter- $15.6M fundraising initiative that brings national and Public A airs, $14.5M together alumni, parents, faculty, will serve as the program’s $12.8M sta , students, and friends from inaugural director. Luck also $11.1M across the University, raised a directs SIPA’s international record-breaking $22 million this confl ict-resolution program. year. Donors around the world Kent, who stepped down $7.8M $6.8M contributed a total of 18,622 gifts as Coca-Cola’s chairman this in support of Columbia’s global past April after four decades mission of research, teaching, with the company, received patient care, and partnerships SIPA’s Global Leadership that address the pressing Award in 2019 in recognition challenges of our time. of his contributions to the

TOP LEFT: EILEEN BARROSO; TOP RIGHT: COURTESY OF COCA-COLA; BOTTOM: JULIE WINEGARD / COLUMBIA CREATIVE / COLUMBIA JULIE WINEGARD BOTTOM: OF COCA-COLA; COURTESY RIGHT: TOP EILEEN BARROSO; LEFT: TOP 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 public good.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 55

4.19_BULLETIN.indd 55 11/13/19 3:56 PM BULLETIN PLATO’S GOT COMPANY AND MAYBE COMPETITION

group of Columbia and Barnard stu- Adents, working with Columbia Uni- versity Libraries, created a banner bearing the names of eight women authors that hung on the façade of Butler Library for the fall semester. The authors — Maya Angelou ’03HON, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Diana Chang ’49BC, Zora Neale Hurston ’28BC, Toni Morrison, A. Revathi, Ntozake Shange ’70BC, and Leslie Marmon Silko — were also the focus of an exhibition inside the library. Among the artifacts on display was a similar banner that Laura Hotchkiss Brown ’89GS attempted to unfurl during The eight names on the new banner from every walk of life and write about the 1989 University Commencement, only were selected by a student committee, topics ranging from queer theory to to be thwarted by security. (Brown’s based partly on the results of an under- black motherhood. Women, especially banner ultimately hung on the Butler graduate survey. In a mission statement, those from marginalized identities, are façade for two months that fall, with the the committee says its intent was to often left out of the Western canon, support of the libraries and the Institute emphasize the need for diverse perspec- along with the complex and important for Research on Women and Gender.) tives on campus. “[These women] come themes they write about.”

COLUMBIA WORLD PROJECTS TO LAUNCH INITIATIVES IN GHANA, UGANDA

olumbia World Projects, an initiative that helps academics Cconnect with outside organizations to solve real-world problems, has announced two new programs aimed at improv- ing public health and energy access in Africa. The first, led by Columbia public-health professor Darby Jack in collabo- ration with researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the government of Ghana, will promote the use of clean-burning stoves in parts of Ghana where most people still cook over polluting open fires. The second, led by Columbia engineering professor Vijay Modi and colleagues from the School of International and Public Aairs,

will design new TOP: EILEEN BARROSO; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF DARBY JACK data-driven meth- ods of mapping energy demand in Uganda. The team’s research will guide UN eorts to expand access to sustainable energy throughout Ghanaians install a low-emissions stove. the country.

56 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_BULLETIN.indd 56 11/13/19 10:52 AM HOUSING GETS A BOOST

he Graduate School of TArchitecture, Planning, and Preservation has launched the Columbia GSAPP Housing Lab, a new interdisciplinary research initiative to encourage the design and development of innovative, sustainable, and a ordable housing around the world.

HOMECOMING TRIUMPH he Columbia Lions notched their largest homecoming victory ever this past fall, Ttrouncing the Penn Quakers 44–6 at Robert K. Kraft Field on October 19. Led by sophomore quarterback Ty Lenhart, who threw for 158 yards and rushed for nine- The initiative is supported ty-five more, the Lions were dominant from the start, scoring forty-four unanswered by a donation of more than points before the Quakers finally put a touchdown on the board in the fourth quarter. $2 million from the IDC “We picked a good time to play our best football of the year,” said Columbia head Foundation, which grew out coach Al Bagnoli. “I’m happy for our players, happy for the program … We’ll use this of the now-closed Institute as a springboard to just keep pushing it forward and keep improving.” of Design and Construction, in Brooklyn. The gift will also fund a new endowed NEW CENTER FOR QUANTUM PHYSICS LAUNCHED professorship — the IDC Foundation Professorship of Housing Design — and olumbia University has joined forces use in next-generation computing, sensing, financial-aid and student- Cwith New York City’s Flatiron Institute and cryptography technologies. research programs. and Germany’s Max Planck Society to estab- The center will draw on Columbia scien- The Housing Lab will lish a new center for research in quantum tists’ expertise in designing and conducting be led by GSAPP dean physics, or the study of nature at the atomic laboratory experiments and their colleagues’ Amale Andraos. and subatomic scales. theoretical and computational skills. Hilary Sample, an archi- The Center for Nonequilibrium Quantum “We are all working on a common theme tect who has helped oversee Phenomena aims to understand and control using complementary methods,” says Dmitri GSAPP’s housing-design the properties of chemical elements and ele- Basov, a Columbia physics professor who curriculum since 2011, will be mentary particles for a wide range of practi- helped organize the center. “The idea of the inaugural recipient of the cal applications. Specifically, researchers at combining forces seemed so natural, given

TOP LEFT: ALEXANDROS HOWARD PRINCE-WRIGHT AND YOONWON KANG; TOP RIGHT: MIKE MCLAUGHLIN, MARYAM HASSAN, AND STEVE RYAN AND STEVE HASSAN, MARYAM MIKE MCLAUGHLIN, RIGHT: TOP KANG; AND YOONWON PRINCE-WRIGHT HOWARD ALEXANDROS LEFT: TOP endowed professorship. the center hope to create new materials for the substance of our research projects.”

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 57

4.19_BULLETIN.indd 57 11/13/19 10:52 AM BOOKS e Illness Lesson By Clare Beams ’06SOA (Doubleday)

idway through The Illness the time — which feels important to Beams’s Lesson, the haunting new novel message. The misdeeds of the well-intentioned, Mfrom Clare Beams ’06SOA, a she seems to be saying, are often worse than group of young women at a any others. boarding school fall sick. Their ailments are Overseen by Samuel and a young disciple measurable and visible — fevers, seizures, named David, the school promises to teach and raised red rashes. Nonetheless, the girls classical languages and natural sciences, rather are ignored and their than societally appropriate subjects for women, complaints dismissed. like sewing and etiquette. Still, Caroline, who Their elders conclude that was home-schooled by her father, is relegated if there is anything wrong to teaching English literature: “Though Caro- with them, it is mental; line was meant to be a walking embodiment of they diagnose the girls not the school’s aims, that didn’t mean her femi- as sick but as “hysterical.” nine fi ngers belonged in its meatier pies.” Seeking relief from their Soon it appears that the birds (which fevers and attention from Caroline’s late mother had dramatically called those with power, they “trilling hearts”) have again brought bad leave their beds in the mid- news. A controversial student — the daugh- dle of the night to stand in ter of a former member of Samuel’s failed a snowstorm. In despera- community — joins the school, dredging up tion, one cries out, “Do you secrets from the past. Sexual tension crackles think we’re choosing this?” between Caroline and David, though he also The novel takes place in turns out to be duplicitous. And then, one by 1871, and there is much one, the girls’ bodies begin to betray them: about the horrifying treat- “They all said, I can’t control it. I’m not doing ment of women in it that is it. I don’t know how to make it stop.” specifi c to that time period. Eventually Samuel, desperate to curb the But the practice of gas- epidemic, summons an old friend, a phy- lighting women and denying their physical sician, who confi rms Samuel’s diagnosis of pain is age-old, little-discussed, and sadly still hysteria and proceeds to administer a ghastly relevant today. “treatment” to the girls — which, sickeningly, Beams sets her story on a farm in rural is based on a real procedure. And then Massachusetts — the site of a failed transcen- Samuel must watch again as a community dentalist community founded by a once- born from his ideas begins to crumble. famous philosopher named Samuel Hood. The Illness Lesson is Beams’s second book. Samuel still lives with his twenty-eight-year- Her fi rst, a story collection called We Show old unmarried daughter, the brilliant and What We Have Learned, was lauded for its complicated Caroline. When Caroline was rich imagination and use of the surreal. Like a young girl, the community was visited by her classmate Karen Russell ’06SOA, Beams an ominous fl ock of blood-red birds. Shortly has proved adept at conjuring a macabre, thereafter, her epileptic mother, Anna, died slightly o -kilter world. Those elements suddenly, and the community fell apart. are on display in this book, too, but it is Now, over twenty years later, the birds have unsettling to realize that the most troubling returned. But rather than seeing them as a details are rooted not in fi ction but historical harbinger of doom, Samuel takes them as a facts. Beams deals with them unfl inchingly, sign that he should launch his next project: creating a feminist parable that, while often a school for young women. The idea, and di cult to read, is deeply worthwhile. particularly the curriculum, is progressive for — Rebecca Shapiro

58 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_BOOKS.indd 58 11/13/19 6:09 PM In Jerusalem

By Lis Harris (Beacon Press)

the confl ict. The highlights of release. Her memory of the enjoy the comforts of emo- In Jerusalem are to be found Holocaust and her view of tional coherence and moral in our encounters with these Israel as a refuge from vio- clarity.” Still, Harris is clear- individuals and their collec- lence is juxtaposed with the sighted and fi rm in her own tive memories, which Harris experience of Niveen’s aunt. view that the Israeli govern- olumbia professor shares in careful, generous At twenty-one, Rasmea Odeh ment is more oppressor than Lis Harris grew up prose. The memory of the Pal- was accused of terrorism, victim. She does not condemn Cin a secular Jewish estinian village Lifta, which illegally tortured, and served the Palestinian people fi ghting family in the United was destroyed in the 1948 ten years at the Ramla prison to live in their occupied home States fully alert, she says, war, serves as a touchstone for before being released in a of East Jerusalem (but neither “to the wrongs done to the Niveen’s family’s sense of loss; prisoner-exchange program. will she excuse the violence beleaguered Jews across the the promise of a homeland Rasmea’s story is shocking, of Hamas). ocean,” but with little sense of free of oppression and based but the chapter devoted to it is In Jerusalem has been the “wrongs done to the on righteous Jewish ethics one of the book’s best. published at a critical time Palestinian people.” In her pervades Ruth’s primarily The implicit premise of in Israeli politics. Harris was latest work, the former New leftist family’s dreams. We In Jerusalem is that standard able to comment on President Yorker sta writer and the next meet Israeli and Palestinian top-down histories fail in their Trump’s rash recognition of chair of the School of the Arts’ family members from three distance from people’s every- Jerusalem as the capital of writing program challenges that common myopia — what she calls the “refl exively uncritical, loyalty-born view” of Israel — and asks us to look at the Israeli–Palestinian confl ict through a new lens. In Jerusalem grounds the history of the State of Israel, its wars and politics, in the personal stories of two fami- lies on either side of the con- Niveen Abuleil’s family (left) and Ruth HaCohen’s family. fl ict. In West Jerusalem, Har- ris spends time with Israeli generations and fi nd them all day lives. Harris works from Israel but not on Prime Minis- musicologist Ruth HaCohen. to be profoundly sympathetic, the ground up. She engages ter Benjamin Netanyahu’s Across the border wall in East loving, fearful, traumatized, deeply with both families and faltering power and new Jerusalem, she gets to know and hopeful. does all she can to understand allegations of corruption. Palestinian speech patholo- Two aunts best embody their views and represent Perhaps the subject will gist Niveen Abuleil. Harris, polarizing perspectives on them honestly. Recognizing always be timely, though. The who spent more than ten the confl ict. Hannah Urbach, the di culty of that task, confl ict seems intractable, and years gathering research and Ruth’s father’s sister, escaped she will sometimes allow her the suggestion that we might interviews for the book, also Nazi Germany, and her family subjects (most notably Ruth’s fi nd peace and reconciliation introduces us to the women’s found asylum in Mandatory right-leaning and religiously if we just look beyond the extended families. Palestine. Hannah’s father had conservative son, Yotam) to stereotypes strains belief. Yet Ruth and Niveen are been sent to Buchenwald, and speak for themselves. Harris somehow, through the people accomplished women. Along she remembers the trauma of understands that the rhetoric she comes to know in Israel with their family members, going to the Gestapo head- behind hard-line views can and Palestine, Lis Harris sees who include lawyers, doctors, quarters, “with its notorious be problematic. As she quotes hope, and this brave book and educators, they want cells and basement torture from a letter written by Ruth ultimately helps us see it too. — Henry Gi ord ’19GSAS THOMAS STRUTH THOMAS peace and a fair solution to rooms,” to try to secure his and her husband, “We do not

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4.19_BOOKS.indd 59 11/13/19 6:09 PM BOOKS Broke

By Jodie Adams Kirshner ’02JRN, ’06LAW (St. Martin’s)

utside of immigration, few interconnectedness of income and stances, can pull themselves up by their political or social issues housing inequality, urban fi scal policy, bootstraps and succeed. Nearly all of Oengender as much heated population decline, and tax-base Kirshner’s subjects demonstrate the debate as income inequality. erosion. But the heart of this book is falseness of the classic Horatio Alger For decades, the gap between the haves her powerful human-interest stories, narrative, and a theme of the book is and have-nots has been growing, and which are likely to have the most that hard work is not nearly enough today millions of Americans face a daily signifi cant impact on readers. to counter decades of poor — and struggle to maintain fi nancial solvency often racist — fi scal and social policies. and stable housing. Consider that in the 1950s, Detroit Countless newspaper and magazine o ered federally insured mortgages for articles, academic studies, and popular whites only, a policy that was in place books — a notable recent example of the for decades in many areas of the US; last category being Matthew Desmond’s or that, because of predatory banking Pulitzer Prize–winning Evicted — have practices and opportunistic developers, explored these issues. While most “between 2005 and 2015, mortgage of these texts aim to investigate the foreclosure turned 100,000 Detroit systemic problems that contribute homeowners into renters, eliminating to cyclical poverty, Broke, from Jodie wealth from local families and from Adams Kirshner ’02JRN, ’06LAW, the city”; or that “between 2000 and stands apart from the rest by focusing 2012 the number of employed Detroiters on one misguided policy response and fell by nearly 55 percent.” According to the resulting devastating consequences. Kirshner, all of these factors combine to She focuses solely on the city of Detroit create an atmosphere in which it’s nearly — most signifi cantly, on its uphill battle impossible to succeed and thousands of back from bankruptcy and how that has law-abiding, hard-working citizens are a ected tens of thousands of its most getting left behind. vulnerable citizens. Unfortunately, notes Kirshner, Kirshner claims that “bankruptcy and these circumstances are not unique the austerity it represents have become to Detroit. Similar situations plague a common ‘solution’ for struggling cities throughout the country, and American cities” — and Detroit, which Drawing on more than two hundred failing to address these problems at fi led for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in July interviews, Kirshner brings us an their root leads to further economic 2013, is the largest American munici- unforgettable cast of characters, and social degradation. pality ever to do so. As a well-regarded including Miles, a Black construction While bankruptcy protection expert in bankruptcy law, Kirshner, worker in his mid-forties fi ghting to might seem like a simple solution for who is currently a fellow at Columbia stay afl oat as mistakes from his past economically depressed cities, Kirshner Law School’s Center for Contract and threaten to derail his future; Robin, is clear in her belief that this is not the Economic Organization, is admirably a white developer in her late forties answer. While Detroit has exhibited equipped to examine the often misun- seeking fortune by fl ipping properties signs of resilience, and fl ashy headlines derstood concept of an entire city going in Detroit’s dilapidated and vacant and trendy social-media posts paint broke, and she proves herself an adept neighborhoods; and Lola, a twenty- a rosy picture of its “comeback,” guide to this complex situation. something, college-educated Black Kirshner’s portrait shows that the city But what does bankruptcy — and single mother looking for whatever and its residents are still struggling. the ensuing spending cuts — mean work she can fi nd. “The ingredients needed to produce for the residents of a city already In telling these stories, Kirshner is successful cities,” she writes, “are simply deeply plagued by economic decline? clear about her desire to expose the more complex than those needed to Kirshner provides plenty of statistics, myth of the American dream: the idea produce successful businesses.” which demonstrate with acuity the that all people, no matter their circum- — Eric Liebetrau

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4.19_BOOKS.indd 60 11/13/19 6:09 PM READING LIST New and noteworthy releases

THE SECOND FOUNDING BByy EEricric FFoneroner ’63CC,’63CC, ’69GSAS’69GSAS In the wake of the Civil War, Congress passed the TThirteenth,hirteenth, Fourteenth,Fourteenth, andand Fifteenth Amendments to tthehe UUSS Constitution.Constitution. KnownKnown as the Reconstruction aamendments,mendments, theythey abolishedabolished slavery, provided for birth- rrightight ccitizenship,itizenship, gguaranteeduaranteed equal protection under the law, and established suf- AMERICA IS IMMIGRANTS republic, if you can keep it.” deeper. In his latest book, frage for Black men. In his By Sara Nović ’14SOA As a lawyer and judge for he creates portraits of three fascinating new book, Eric America is a nation of immi- more than thirty years, and lesser-known Americans Foner — Columbia’s DeWitt grants, and in her timely now as an associate justice whose lives and work help Clinton Professor Emeritus new book, Sara Noviʶ helps of the US Supreme Court, illustrate the country’s shift of History — delves into us to understand exactly Neil Gorsuch writes that from “an institution-oriented the story of these ground- where we’d be without them. he is committed to preserv- to a transaction-oriented breaking amendments, The book is a collection of ing this vision — in other society” and give human the subsequent Supreme short biographies, all written words, with keeping it. context to the seemingly Court battles that essentially by Noviʶ (the author of the His latest book is a memoir inexorable fi nancialization of nullifi ed them for many award-winning novel Girl of his time in public o ce our culture. decades, and their enduring at War) and illustrated by and the experiences that yet fragile legacy. Alison Kolesar. Many of the have shaped his successful SHE SAID By Jodi Kantor names will be familiar — career. In it he refl ects on ’96CC and Megan Twohey LITTLE WEIRDS Madeleine Albright ’68SIPA, some of his core values — When journalists Jodi By Jenny Slate ’04CC ’76GSAS, ’95HON, Alfred particularly how he sees Kantor and Megan Twohey Actress, comedian, and Hitchcock ’72HON, Rihanna the role of a judge in today’s broke the story of Harvey former Saturday Night Live — but Noviʶ also includes society, the importance of Weinstein’s decades of cast member Jenny Slate lesser-known fi gures, such civic education and civil sexual harassment and fi rst demonstrated the as the brilliant Bangladeshi discourse, and why he abuse in the New York power of her unfi ltered engineer behind Chicago’s believes strongly in an Times, they never could imagination in the children’s Sears Tower and the ground- originalist interpretation have predicted what would Web series and bestselling breaking scientists — many of the Constitution. happen next. In the months book Marcel the Shell with of them refugees from that followed, hundreds Shoes On (both written with Nazi-occupied Europe — TRANSACTION MAN of women would come Dean Fleischer-Camp). who worked on the Manhat- By Nicholas Lemann forward to share their own In her new essay collection, tan Project. America has undergone stories of mistreatment, she applies her trademark signifi cant cultural change fueling outrage, activism, goofy wit to more-adult A REPUBLIC, IF YOU over the past generation, and the #MeToo movement. topics, including love, divorce, CAN KEEP IT but rather than looking to Now, in their new book, the and depression. But while By Neil Gorsuch ’89CC the usual suspects to explain Pulitzer Prize–winning there may be depth and At the Constitutional Con- “the rise of the deal and the team o ers a riveting gravity to her subjects, the vention of 1787, Benjamin decline of the American behind-the-scenes look at book is still pure Jenny Slate Franklin famously said that dream,” Columbia Journal- the perils, process, and pay- — quirky, a little bit wild, he and his fellow Found- ism School dean emeritus o of this extraordinary feat and endlessly fun. ing Fathers had built “a Nicholas Lemann digs of investigative journalism.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20 61

4.19_BOOKS.indd 61 11/13/19 6:09 PM BOOKTALK Stopping Cancer in Its Tracks Azra Raza, the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the director of its Myelodysplastic Syndrome Center, argues in her new book, The First Cell, that we need to radically rethink the “war on cancer”

CM: Your book accomplishes that last AR: I believe the tissues languishing goal beautifully, thanks to the powerful in its freezers may hold the answer to stories you share about your patients, fi nding the fi rst cell. Examining these including your late husband. His ordeal samples, we can identify the cells was particularly eye-opening. that are harbingers of cancer. The key AR: It was. As I say in the book, “I’d question is why some people get MDS. been treating cancer for two decades, If we sequence the DNA in the patients’ yet until I shared a bed with a cancer normal cells, we can determine the patient, I had no idea how unbearably genetic quirk, if any, that made them painful a disease it could be.” susceptible to MDS and subsequently to AML. (This is similar to the BRCA CM: You specialize in acute myeloid mutations that put some women at leukemia (AML), one of the deadliest high risk for breast or ovarian cancer.) blood cancers. How do you make peace Then we can go to the DNA banks and with the fact that so many of your compare my patients’ DNA with that Columbia Magazine: In The First Cell, patients die? of healthy individuals. Eventually, a you call for a fundamental shift in the AR: Basically, as the philosopher barcode of inherited mutations will be way we approach cancer research and Antonio Gramsci says, we must have used to pinpoint people with a genetic treatment. Can you explain this? pessimism of the intellect matched susceptibility to certain cancers and Azra Raza: For decades, our strategy by optimism of the will. That is, we allow targeted screenings. The future has been to try to kill every last cancer understand a situation’s gravity in all of early cancer detection is a constant cell, and in pursuit of that goal we have its profundity, yet we address it with screening of the human body as if it witnessed cycle after cycle of excite- positivity. My patients have taught me were a machine. ment, anticipation, a new magic bullet that there is no defi nitive despair or just around the corner, followed by hope. When a blood count is good, we CM: How will we fund these new crushing disappointment. I’m propos- high-fi ve and dance in the corridors. technologies? ing that instead of fi ghting the disease Two weeks later, the counts fall and AR: I generally don’t say a lot in favor at its most malignant, malevolent end we’re in despair. The despair heightens of capitalism, but it is very e ective at stage, we catch it early. I’m not saying the beauty of the happier moments. I providing incentives. We spent more we will literally fi nd the very fi rst cell, am deeply moved by the nobility of my than a billion dollars to sequence the but the idea is to identify problem patients’ endurance — the way they fi rst human genome; within fi fteen cells at the earliest point possible. By and their families rise to the challenges. years, the cost fell to a few hundred detecting the footprints of the disease I am so fortunate to see the best side of bucks, thanks to capitalism and com- — its biomarkers — we can eradicate humanity on a daily basis. petition. Friends worry that my book these cells before they have a chance to will provoke a backlash from phar- organize into an incurable disease. To CM: Since 1984, you have been building maceutical companies making huge be clear, I’m not calling for all current a one-of-a-kind repository of more than profi ts from cancer drugs. But right research to stop; patients with active sixty thousand blood and bone-marrow now those companies have perhaps ten disease need to be treated. But the sta- cells donated by your patients with million cancer patients and survivors tus quo is unsustainable and fi nancially myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), to treat. If they pursue the monitoring ruinous for individuals, institutions, a blood disorder that leads to acute of healthy people for the fi rst signs of and the nation’s health-care system. leukemia in about a third of cases. disease, they’ll have three hundred JONNY RUZZO Also, we must look at all this through How can this repository aid in early million subjects. the prism of patient anguish. cancer detection? — Lorraine Glennon

62 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

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4.19_BOOKS.indd 63 11/13/19 6:10 PM RARE FINDS

WHAT IS IT? Restored vintage Buchla synthesizer, 100 series

WHEN WAS IT MADE? Mid-1960s

WHERE CAN I FIND IT? Columbia’s Computer Music Center

Rewired for Sound

n 1964, in upstate New York, Robert Moog ’57SEAS says David Vallancourt ’81SEAS, a senior lecturer in unveiled the first modern synthesizer — or one Columbia’s electrical-engineering department. of the first. Around the same time, an audio Columbia acquired three Buchla 100s in the late Iengineer in California, Don Buchla, produced the 1960s. Two are gone; the other fell into disrepair. Buchla 100, which had no keyboard and resembled Last year, Vallancourt and Brad Garton, director a Mission Control switch panel. While Moog’s instru- of Columbia’s Computer Music Center, invited ment entered rock arenas, Buchla’s became the a group of student engineers and musicians to sonic wellspring for composers of electronic music. fix the machine’s corroded circuitry. The team Musicians twiddled its knobs and dials to produce painstakingly restored the old Buchla to its former an almost infinite soundscape of blips, beeps, chirruping glory. TIMOTHY LEE PHOTOGRAPHERS buzzes, warbles, wheezes, and whirs. One of the students, William Mauro ’19SEAS, did “Buchla wanted the performer and the composer to a thorough investigation of the period components. revel in the electronic nature of the sound and break “He tracked down every indicator, every original free from not only Western instruments but also the jack,” says Vallancourt. “There’s virtually no way to scale, and even the ideas of melody and harmony,” tell that this Buchla has been rebuilt.”

64 COLUMBIA WINTER 2019-20

4.19_RARE-FINDS.indd 64 11/7/19 2:02 PM 4.19_RARE-FINDS.indd 65 11/7/19 4:54 PM Columbia Alumni Center Non-Profi t Org. COLUMBIA 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 U.S. Postage Paid MAGAZINE New York, NY 10025 Columbia Magazine

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