Neil Shubin '82 Brings out the Fish in All of Us
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ANDRES ALONSO ’79 5 MINUTES WITH … CHARLES ARDAI ’91 REFORMS BALTIMORE’S HISTORY PROFESSOR BRINGS PULP FICTION SCHOOL BUREAUCRACY MAE NGAI ’98 GSAS TO TODAY’S READERS PAGE 22 PAGE 11 PAGE 24 Columbia College March/April 2011 TODAY Neil Shubin ’82 Brings Out the Fish in All of Us Shubin, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, co-led a team that discovered evidence of the pivotal shift from aquatic to terrestrial life. ust another J membership perk. Meet. Dine. Entertain. Join the Columbia Club and access state-of-the-art meeting rooms for your conferences and events. For more information or to apply, visit www.columbiaclub.org or call (212) 719-0380. The Columbia University Club of New York in residence at 15 West 43 St. New York, N Y 10036 Columbia’s SocialIntellectualCulturalRecreationalProfessional Resource in Midtown. Columbia College Today Contents 22 12 24 7 56 18 COVER STORY ALUMNI NEWS DEPARTMENTS G O FISH 27 O BITUARIES 2 LETTERS TO THE 12 Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin 27 Joseph D. Coffee Jr. ’41 EDITOR ’82 brings out the fish in all of us. 28 Garland E. Wood ’65 3 ITHIN THE AMILY By Nathalie Alonso ’08 W F 30 B OOKSHEL F 4 AROUND THE QUADS FEATURES Featured: Adam Gidwitz ’04 4 turns classic folklore on its Northwest Corner Building Opens COLUMBIA FORUM ear with his new children’s 18 book, A Tale Dark & Grimm. 5 Rose, Jones Join In an excerpt from his book How Soccer Explains the College Senior Staff World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin 32 LASS OTES 6 Creed To Deliver Foer ’96 explains how one soccer club’s destiny was C N A LUMNI PRO F ILES Class Day Address shaped by European anti-Semitism. 6 49 Robert Wisdom ’76 Web Exhibit Celebrates The Varsity Show E F ORM C HOOL 51 R S Erik Friedlander ’82 7 22 Andres Alonso ’79 has shaken up Baltimore’s Roar, Lion, Roar 56 Nina Willdorf ’99 dysfunctional educational bureaucracy. 7 Dean’s Scholarship Reception By Alex Kingsbury ’04J 64 LUMNI ORNER A C 8 Student Spotlight: Hannah Selinger ’02 writes Mollie Andreae ’11 24 PUL P FI C TION about her father, Neil Selin- Author and publisher Charles Ardai ’91 brings lost noir ger ’75, and his life after 31 10 Alumni in the News classics and new crime novels to today’s audiences. years as a successful, but 11 5 Minutes with … By Grace Laidlaw ’11 never totally happy, lawyer. Mae Ngai Web Exclusives at college.columbia.edu/cct A CAM P US MYSTERY Read the first two chapters of Charles Ardai ’91’s novel Songs of Innocence, some of which takes place on campus. OUT IN THE FIELD View a slideshow of Neil Shubin ’82 in the field digging for fossils. WISDOM AS BUNNY Watch Robert Wisdom ’76, as Bunny Colvin, lecture police officers on the acclaimed HBO showThe Wire. AN EARLY LISTEN Hear a track from Erik Friedlander ’82’s album Bonebridge, which will be released in June. FIVE MORE MINUTES FRONT COVER: JOHN WEINSTEIN Mae Ngai ’98 GSAS discusses the fascinating family spotlighted in her latest book, The Lucky Ones: BACK COVER: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America. COLIN SULLIVAN ’11 COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Letters to the Editor Thank You, Mr. Kluge Volume 38 Number 4 I remember John Kluge ’37 not as a March/April 2011 beneficiary of a scholarship but as the EDITOR AND PUBLISHER recipient of an act of kindness that Alex Sachare ’71 changed my life. I met Mr. Kluge at MANAGING EDITOR Lisa Palladino a function at Columbia in fall 1958. When he heard of my interest in ASSOCIATE EDITOR Ethan Rouen ’04J WKCR he offered an invitation to FORUM EDITOR visit “my” radio station, WNEW, and Rose Kernochan ’82 Barnard to tell them that John Kluge sent me. CONTRIBUTING WRITER When a group of WKCR people ar- Shira Boss ’93, ’97J, ’98 SIPA rived and told the receptionist that EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS John Kluge sent us, the general man- treasures and give them life. Samantha Jean-Baptiste ’13 ager of the No. 1 station in New York per- Atti Viragh ’12 GS It was uplifting to see these vibrant young sonally conducted the tour. ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ADVERTISING people perform with such dignity, grace Taren Cowan, 212-851-7967 A thank-you note I wrote to the general and skill. It is inspiring to see that the clas- ADVERTISING CONSULTANT manager resulted in the offer of a job writ- sical music repertoire is being embraced Bruce Ellerstein, 917-226-7716 ing traffic reports on weekends. I held that by new generations and that that embrace DESIGN CONSULTANT job and summer jobs covering vacations in can include liturgical works not often Jean-Claude Suarès the news and production departments un- heard. I am grateful that political correct- ART DIRECTOR til my third year of medical school, when ness did not limit the repertoire to the likes Gates Sisters Studio I no longer had time to do it. It also led to of Jingle Bells and that the University sup- CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS the media portion of my medical career, Eileen Barroso ports such a muscular music program. Diane Bondareff which included a stint as medical reporter I did not grow up in a classical music for Channel 9 news in Los Angeles and as household but was fortunately introduced Published six times a year by the on-air medical editor and anchor on Phy- to classical music when I worked for a Columbia College Office of sicians’ Journal Update on Lifetime Medical summer for the then-president of Barnard, Alumni Affairs and Development for Television. alumni, students, faculty, parents and Millicent McIntosh. The family was very friends of Columbia College. When I left WNEW I was able to pass much enamored of classical music. It im- Address all correspondence to: along the job to a succession of Columbia mediately resonated with me and contin- Columbia College Today students, some of whom parlayed that job ues to do so. Exposure to classical music Columbia Alumni Center into outstanding media and broadcasting and appreciation of it are not gifts given to 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530 careers as they continued the tradition of New York, NY 10025 everybody. I have the University to thank 212-851-7852 passing the job on to a successor WKCR for bringing me to a long arch of musical E-mail (editorial): [email protected]; member. enjoyment, yesteryear and today. (advertising): [email protected]. I wish I could have told Mr. Kluge how Arthur E. Lavis ’61, ’65 Business Online: college.columbia.edu/cct many Columbia students benefited from MONTVALE , N.J. ISSN 0572-7820 his kind act. Thank you, Mr. Kluge. Opinions expressed are those of the Dr. Arthur L. Wisot ’61 authors and do not reflect official ORMER PROGRAM DIRECTOR O F positions of Columbia College F WKCR or Columbia University. ROLLING HILLS ESTATES , CALI F . © 2011 Columbia College Today How Sweet the Sound Manage Your All rights reserved. My wife and I attended the sold-out annual Barnard-Columbia Candlelight Concert at Subscription the Union Theological Seminary chapel on f you prefer reading CCT online, December 11. I am a College graduate and you can help us go green and save my wife is a Barnard graduate. The per- I money by opting out of the print formance far exceeded our expectations; edition. Click “Manage Your Subscrip- it was truly magnificent. It led off with my tion” at college.columbia.edu/cct and favorite carol, Veni Emmanuel, followed by follow the domestic instructions. We CCT welcomes letters from readers about a Mozart solemn vesper and a Beethoven articles in the magazine but cannot will continue to notify you by e-mail print or personally respond to all letters mass, and concluded with an organ perfor- when each issue is posted online. You received. Letters express the views of mance by masterful conductor Gail Archer. the writers and not CCT, the College or may be reinstated to receive the print the University. Please keep letters to 250 To the best of my knowledge of the classical words or fewer. All letters are subject to music canon, these works are relatively ob- edition at any time by sending a note editing for space and clarity. Please direct scure and rarely presented. How adventur- to [email protected]. letters for publication “TO THE EDITOR .” ous of Ms. Archer to dust off these neglected MARCH/APRIL 2011 2 COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY W ITHIN THE FAMILY A Bridge of a Building resident Lee C. Bollinger has are accepting that invitation each week. on the core rectangle to what will be- called it “a bridge — both From there, an escalator leads up to come the Manhattanville campus, hence across areas of scientific a spacious campus-level lobby, 35 feet Bollinger’s “bridge from our history to knowledge and from our his- above the street and opening onto our future.” Just as the Northwest Cor- tory to our future at Colum- Pupin Plaza. All these spaces are open ner Building was opening, excavation Pbia.” He thus has set a lofty agenda for to the public and send a far friendlier and construction in Manhattanville was the new Northwest Corner Building, message of access than the walls and heating up. In a few years, there will be the interdisciplinary science center that gates that had been there. This is rein- a steady stream of people making the rises 14 stories above Broadway and forced by a broad staircase to the east 5–10 minute walk from this new inter- West 120th Street.