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SPRING 2013 MAGAZINE Myname is Benjamin Todd baddest, “ boldest, Jealous and I am most hated, president mostdebated, and CEO most of the notorious, and most NAACP, victorious the nation’s oldest, civil rights largest, organization.” CONTENTS Spring 2013 40 22 14 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 3 Letters 14 Justice’s Son By Paul Hond 8 College Walk The NAACP’s Benjamin Jealous has become Mr. Bond goes to Hollywood . Mr. Wright goes one of America’s most forceful and infl uential to Avery . A healing memoir . Not-so-secret progressive voices. So what does he want? agents (and writers) . “On Marriage”: a poem (And when does he want it?) 40 In the City of New York 22 Looking for the Telltale Gene Did you thank a sanitation worker today? By Claudia Kalb Anthropologist and garbologist Robin Nagle Science can now forecast the health risks opens our eyes to what she calls “the most of children before they are born. Are we ready important uniformed force on the street.” for that knowledge? 46 News 30 A Shot in the Light New Yorker journalist Steve Coll named By Douglas Quenqua J-school dean . Global Centers open in Columbia researchers help send a telescope Nairobi, Rio . Ivies share language courses . skyward to glimpse the oldest, most distant Manhattanville rising . CAA undertakes thing imaginable: light from the Big Bang. new alumni survey . Lessons from Liberia 36 We Call on Spring: A Short Story 51 Newsmakers By Belinda McKeon As her mother’s illness sets in, a young 52 Explorations married woman tries to cope. Columbia engineers work to protect the US electric grid from catastrophic attack. 54 Reviews 62 Classifi eds 64 Finals Cover photograph of Benjamin Jealous by Jörg Meyer. Quote by Jealous from a February 17, 2013 sermon at Brooklyn’s Nazarene Congregational Church. IN THIS ISSUE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Executive Vice President for University Development and Alumni Relations Fred Van Sickle Moira Egan ’92SOA has published four poetry collections. Publisher Her fi fth, Hot Flash Sonnets, will be published this spring. Tim McGowan She lives in Rome. >> Page 13 Chief Editorial Adviser Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS Editor in Chief Michael B. Shavelson Managing Editor Rebecca Shapiro Senior Editor Belinda McKeon ’10SOA is the author of the novel Solace, David J. Craig which won the 2011 Best Irish Newcomer award at the Irish Associate Editor Book Awards and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. McKeon Paul Hond is also a playwright, and an arts writer for the Irish Times. Copy Chief >> Page 36 Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN Contributing Editor Eric McHenry Art Director Eson Chan Assistant to the Editor Amber Miller is a professor of physics at Columbia, Julia Heitner where she also leads the Experimental Cosmology group. Editorial Assistants She serves as dean of science for the Faculty of Arts Deaton Jones, Michelle Marchese, and Sciences. >> Page 30 Elisabeth Sherman Mailing Address Columbia Magazine Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 Tel. 212-851-4155 Fax 212-851-1950 [email protected] Jeremy Smerd ’03JRN is the managing editor of www.magazine.columbia.edu Crain’s New York Business, which he joined as a political Address and Archive Assistance writer in 2010. He has also written for the New York Times [email protected] and the New York Observer. >> Page 10 212-851-4155 To update your address online, visit alumni.columbia.edu/directory, BUCK ENNIS or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). Advertising: Publisher’s Representative Bruce Ellerstein 917-226-7716 Colm Tóibín is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman To download our advertising brochure or Professor of the Humanities at Columbia and the author submit a classifi ed advertisement online, of six novels, including The Blackwater Lightship, visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise. The Master, and Brooklyn. He has twice been shortlisted Columbia Magazine is published for for the Man Booker Prize. >> Page 58 alumni and friends of Columbia by the Offi ce of Alumni and Development. © 2013 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 2 Columbia Spring 2013 letters SURGE PROTECTION East River tunnels. That’s before the added BEAT THE RAP In “Sandy’s Wake,” in the Winter 2012–13 impact of sea-level rise or climate change or I am grateful to David Krajicek for acquaint- issue, civil-engineering professor George more-frequent extreme storms. And, as your ing me with Lucien Carr and his central role Deodatis describes an option to defend the article describes, there were also plenty of in the formation of the Beat literary move- city against future fl oods: the construction scientists already working on forecasts and ment (“The Last Beat,” Winter 2012–13). of three storm-surge barriers in the water- pressing city offi cials to prepare themselves I sense in that account a keen regret that ways surrounding New York City. But he and the public infrastructure. Carr did not amount to more. Surely a says that the “major investment” of $20 bil- I also agree with Klaus Jacob that 9/11 young man so untethered by convention, so lion or more “to protect a relatively small delayed action for years on addressing the worldly, and so brilliant was destined for lit- percentage of the population” will have to potential for natural disasters. I’m sure one erary greatness. That Carr had a sensational be debated. Considering that a few miles of could point to numerous reasons for this, murder under his belt before he turned barriers would protect hundreds of miles but one might be found in the references at twenty seems to make him even more a fi g- of exposed shoreline in New York City, the the back of my term paper. I cited an inter- ure of intrigue and dark promise. Hudson Valley, and nearby New Jersey, the view with an offi cial at the Mayor’s Offi ce of A young adulthood of public display and protected population does not seem that Emergency Management who was respon- manic angst, a creative fl urry culminating in a small. Considering that the MTA alone “got sible for preparing contingency plans for slim volume of elliptical, unruly poems, then hit for an estimated $5 billion of damage,” hurricanes and nor’easters and directing any on to madness and addiction, and fi nally, in $20 billion does not seem that major. evacuations. His offi ce and the emergency Act IV, a tragic exit by needle, bottle, or shot- Douglas Hill ’58SEAS, ’77SEAS control center were located on the twenty- gun’s oral rinse — perhaps this is the liter- Huntington, NY third fl oor of 7 World Trade Center. It ary trajectory we have been denied by Carr’s apparently had reinforced, hurricane-proof unfortunate “rehabilitation.” It somehow I had a feeling of déjà vu reading your article windows. I’d be interested to know where doesn’t seem enough that Carr, despite heavy about climate change and its impact on New the city’s emergency control center is now. drinking, had a long and distinguished career York’s transport infrastructure. In 1999, as a Hannah Budnitz ’01CC as a news editor, mentored many young sophomore, I wrote a term paper for Cynthia Senior Transport Planner journalists, married, and managed to raise Rosenzweig’s class about the potential for Reading Borough Council three children. (His son Caleb is a successful fl ooding in the New York City subway. Even Reading, UK author and military historian.) then there were plenty of sources indicat- It is worth noting that it is the critics who ing that, in certain circumstances, the storm The Offi ce of Emergency Management is most enjoy warming their hands around surge of a hurricane could fl ood the subway located at 165 Cadman Plaza East in Down- the bonfi re of self-immolation. For the system from the Battery to 14th Street and the town Brooklyn. — Ed. tortured artist, life is just that — torture, Spring 2013 Columbia 3 LETTERS particularly on the backside of the parab- man. He mentored scores of journalists in really did roar, and those of us lucky to ola. When, in the Orson Welles fi lm The his forty-seven years at UPI, and I was hon- work with him were the better for it. Third Man, Harry Lime sneers at the Swiss ored to have been among them, working Robin Greene Hagey ’76BC, — their fi ve hundred years of brotherly most closely with him during my time on ’80SIPA, ’81JRN love, democracy, and peace, and, yes, their UPI’s science desk from 1990 to 1993. His Thousand Oaks, CA cuckoo clock — it is well to remember that impeccable news judgment enabled him to Lime was no da Vinci. He was no Michel- help me shape crisp, clear health-policy or “The Last Beat” should have focused on angelo. He wasn’t even a Borgia. He was science stories on deadline. He maintained a more sinister aspect of the Lucien Carr just a petty crook. his role as a mentor and friend to many of story. The article claims that the thirty- We all cheered and laughed as Amy Wine- us right until the end. three-year-old former scoutmaster David house cried out “No, no, no” to rehab. Carr was incredibly low-key. Ginsberg Kammerer followed Carr for several years Then we wept as she was laid to rest. I salute and Burroughs were among the people who to various schools before Carr became a Lucien Carr for giving us all the fi nger, for phoned or visited Lou from time to time in the close friend of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Ker- choosing life.