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FEATURES 34 Forum: Making Credit Safer The case for regulating financial products and services— on consumers’ behalf, and industry’s by Elizabeth Warren JIM HARRISON page 57 38 Vita: George Bancroft DEPARTMENTS Brief life of a public historian: 1800-1891 by Yonatan Eyal 4 Cambridge 02138 Communications from our readers 11 Right Now 40 Shedding Light on Life Decoding “junk” DNA, Using new optical microscopes, scientists probe ancient urbanism, aging molecular and cellular processes as they occur dims cerebral connections, Courtney Humphries oceans absorb greenhouse by page 34 gases, flocking to finance 21 Montage 48 Home of the Humanities DAVID PLUNKERT A screenwriter’s sleuth novel, Dumbarton Oaks thrives as a cross-disciplinary center for remembering childhood and Byzantine, pre-Columbian, and landscape studies—and baseball, orchestral milestone, underground art, a biography of invites the public to explore its treasures free speech, sundial sculptor by Elizabeth Gudrais MARK STEELE 32A Commencement and page 65 Reunion Guide Face-to-face reunions in a virtual age, 57 John Harvard’s Journal graduates’ career choices, brunch best High-flying athlete, Harvard Medical International’s new partner, photographer bets, a calendar of events, and more with a scientific bent, art museums’ reconstruction renderings, opening 78 The Alumni worldwide access to faculty research, the new College dean, genetic perspectives Pursuing fossil fish with links to on race, medical-area musicians, land, Boston club centennial, Overseer and Alumni Association colorful Square characters, interdisci- candidates, and more plinary social science, China 84 The College Pump contradictions and Crimson connec- The Lowell House bells head home tions, taking action on greenhouse-gas 96 Treasure emissions, the “Undergraduate” moves Sea creatures, scrubbed up uneasily between Harvard and 85 Crimson Classifieds home, questions about basketball On the cover: “Brainbow” neurons. recruiting, and a summary of strong

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Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin Managing Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw 02138 Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert Associate Editor: Elizabeth Gudrais Cambridge Production and New Media Manager: Mark Felton Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown Green energy options, foreign policy, medical errors, military jurist Staff Writer: Paul Gleason Associate Web Developer: Blaise Freeman

Art Director: Jennifer Carling

LAKSHMINARAYANAN MAHADEVAN Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows Re “The Physics of the Familiar” (by Samuel Bjork, Liz Goodwin Jonathan Shaw, March-April, page 46): Editorial Intern: Mountains, valleys are wrinkled earth. Ashton R. Lattimore Glossy grapes shrink into raisins. Maps of life illustrate old faces— Contributing Editors Because skin folds to ﬁt. John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam Neurons bend toward memories. Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Harbour Fraser Hodder, Christopher S. Johnson, He thinks, therefore we learn. E. James Lieberman, M.P.H. ’63 Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, Christopher Reed, Deborah Smullyan, Potomac, Md. Mark Steele, Janet Tassel

COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Editorial and Business O≠ice I am writing regarding “Trail of Tears, 7 Ware Street, and Hope” (by Craig Lambert, March- Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 April, page 39). I applaud the magazine Website: www.harvardmagazine.com for focusing on this important issue and Reader services: for highlighting the promising work of My own experience with Northern 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499 Sousan Abadian. All too often the hard- Plains and Saskatchewan First Nations ships imposed upon indigenous people, in leads me to emphasize the paternalistic HARVARD MAGAZINE INC. President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, the United States and in other countries, policies that destroyed a large number of Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98. Directors: Richard are overlooked or seen as ancient history, First Nations communities a century ago: H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83, Leslie E. and this article does a great job of calling by allotting parcels of land in severalty to Greis ’80, Alex S. Jones, NF ’82, Bill attention to the present consequences of break up communal holdings and, after Kovach, NF ’89, Tamara Elliott the often shameful treatment of Native World War II, by moving families to tract Rogers ’74, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, peoples since contact. housing in agency towns, purportedly to A. Clayton Spencer, A.M. ’82, Richard Tuck Yet one aspect of the article that I think facilitate access to schools. There are no Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bimonthly by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit corporation, 7 deserves clarification is its implicit idea places in these tightly clustered subdivi- Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, phone 617- 495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by that the wrongs indigenous peoples have sions for children to roam and play, so reader contributions and subscriptions, advertising rev- suffered are purely historical. As a telling they sit watching television (in English, enue, and a subvention from Harvard University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of the editors. Periodi- example, the main countries discussed in losing their own languages). Unemploy- cals postage paid at Boston, Mass., and additional mailing the article, the United States and Canada, ment is high because the reservations o≠ices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cam- together with Australia and New were deliberately placed away from trans- bridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 Canada and Mexico, $75 other Zealand, are the only countries that re- portation to “protect” the Indians from foreign. (Allow up to 10 weeks for first delivery.) Sub- cently voted against the United Nations exploitation by incoming whites. Indians scription orders and customer service inquiries should be sent to the Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous have not been able to develop businesses Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617- 495-5746 or 800-648-4499, or e-mail addresschanges@har- Peoples. The collective trauma of many because they have no collateral for loans, vard.edu. Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and Native peoples is made worse by the their lands being in trust or highly di- handling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include harms that continue to this day. vided among multiple heirs. On Northern stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript re- Ezra Rosser, J.D. ’03 Plains reservations, most of the economi- turn. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for Assistant professor of law cally viable land has been leased in large permission. Address inquiries to Catherine A. Chute, publisher, at the address given above. Washington College of Law, American University sections to white ranching families, some Copyright © 2008 Harvard Magazine Inc. Washington, D.C. with five generations on these leased

4 May - June 2008

LETTERS properties. Because of these intractable shameful situation at the Graduate governmental policies, Indian people School of Education (GSE), where the quite rightly feel helpless. typical master’s student graduates May I urge you to do another article $45,000 in debt. Do they then go on to that forgoes the feel-good New Age heal- $200,000 jobs as do the Business School Publisher: Catherine A. Chute ing jargon and instead…[focuses on] why and Law School alumni? Of course not. Finance and Administrative Manager: “healing” will come with economic devel- They go into the lowest-paying—but Irina Kuksin opment created by First Nations them- most important to society—jobs of teach- Director of Circulation and Fundraising: selves, from which will come political ing our youth, at salaries below what your Felecia Carter freedom from stifling imposed practices. plumber makes. Director of Marketing Alice B. Kehoe, Ph.D. ’64 President Faust: Wake up! This is a pri- Cara Ferragamo Murray Director of Advertising ority. Every student at the GSE should be Professor of anthropology emerita Robert D. Fitta Marquette University tuition-free. Advertising Account Manager Charles Resnick ’48, LL.B. ’50 Milwaukee Myha Nguyen Longboat Key, Fla. Production/Design Associate FINANCIAL-AID FOCUS Jennifer Beaumont I was gratified to see the progress HYBRID CARS AND WIND POWER Classified Advertising Manager made in making [the situation of] Har- Professor Michael B. McElroy brings a Gretchen Bostr0m vard undergrads essentially tuition-free, welcome dash of realism to the national Circulation and Fundraising and that Ph.D. students are also doing discussion on energy sources for future Manager: Lucia Whalen well (“Boosting College Financial Aid” transportation in the United States (“Sav- Office Manager: Sylvie Papazian and “Gains for Graduate Students,” ing Money, Oil, and the Climate,” March- Gift Processor: Sarha J. Caraballo March-April, pages 54 and 58). April, page 30). He is certainly right that Business Intern: Lia Poin But there was not a word about the electricity is the key, and that plug-in hy- IVY LEAGUE MAGAZINE NETWORK brid vehicles provide the technological Tel. 617-496-7207 Associate Publisher, Sales ON LINE: COMMENCEMENT, bridge to reduced fossil-fuel dependence. Lawrence J. Brittan, Tel. 631-754-4264 WEB EXTRAS, PUZZLES REDUX Here, “plug-in” is the vital feature that is perennially limited by lagging energy- New York Advertising Sales The magazine’s website, www.har- storage (battery) technology. I feel he was Beth Bernstein, Tel. 908-654-5050 Mary Anne MacLean, Tel. 631-367-1988 vardmagazine.com, will again feature optimistic in emphasizing the 60-mile- Travel Advertising Sales real-time coverage of Commencement range dream for automobiles on battery Northeast Media Inc., Tel. 203-255-8800 week, including breaking news re- alone. Has he examined the cost to the Midwest Advertising Sales ports, audiovisual recordings of the buyer of such a vehicle? I suspect it will Nugent Media Group, Tel. 773-755-9051 principal events, and speech texts, be within the economic range primarily of Detroit Advertising Sales beginning June 2. Our annual Com- full professors of environmentalism. Heth Media mencement and Reunion Guide, with a Concerning the air-pollutionless at- Tel. 248-318-9489 comprehensive calendar of happen- tainment of the needed electricity, I was Southwest Advertising Sales ings, is available on the website now. less pleased by his exposition. The two Daniel Kellner, Tel. 972-529-9687 West Coast Advertising Sales As noted in the March- available routes are wind and nuclear. Virtus Media Sales, Tel. 310-478-3833 April issue, the “HM Extra” Possibly because of his own research in- West Coast Travel Advertising Sales icon in magazine articles interests, he seems biased toward wind tur- The Holleran Group, Tel. 707-935-9296 dicates the presence of complementary bines. I find it somewhat appalling that multimedia content on the website. In an environmentalist would unreservedly Board of Incorporators This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was this issue, look for such features ac- endorse these monstrous, flailing bird- founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- companying an account of new archae- killers—huge mechanical contrivances tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s gover- nance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. Bailey, ological discoveries (page 12); intro- with all their associated aesthetic and AMP ’94; Je≠rey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Bennett ’62, ductions to the Harvard-Radcliffe and maintenance penalties. My impression is M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; Fox Butterfield ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98, Jonathan S. Cohn ’91; Longwood Symphony Orchestras that, like ethanol, which he rightly recog- Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cuevas ’52; Casimir (pages 23 and 65); and the visually nizes as a scam, wind power would not de Rham ’46, J.D. ’49; James F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadi- man ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. stunning exploration of biomedical get off the ground without taxpayer sub- Giles, Nf ’66; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; James Glass- imaging (page 40). sidies. man ’69; Adam K. Goodheart ’92; Max Hall, Nf ’50; Finally, it is a great pleasure to an- In contrast, with an easing of the fear- Philip C. Haughey ’57, Brian R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Bla≠er Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, Nf ’82; nounce that the clever creations of mongering campaign against all things Bill Kovach, Nf ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Anthony Lewis puzzlemaker John de Cuevas ’52, a con- “nuclear,” the latter power source would ’48, Nf ’57; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D./M.B.A. ’83; Lisa L. Mar- tin, Ph.D. ’90; David McClintick ’62; John P. Reardon Jr. tributing editor, are returning; you can unquestionably have the potential to ’60; Christopher Reed; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry now download archival puzzles and a meet all national electric power needs Rosovsky, Jf ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; new Harvard Puzzle from harvard- indefinitely, without killing one bird or Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; William O. Taylor mag.com/puzzles offending one aesthete, and without sub- ’54; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; sidies. I have no doubt that hundreds of Elizabeth Winship ’43; Jan Ziolkowski.

6 May - June 2008 LETTERS our citizens, if not thousands, have died to give us coal power, while exactly zero have died to give us nuclear power. Yet what is the national image of the relative “safety” of these two power sources? Surely it is the job of professional envi- “ You can do ronmentalists, if they wish to be judged kindly by history, to restore some balance. Our government has given nuclear well and do good power nothing but a hard time. No help has come, only an endless series of safety regulations that have indeed pushed costs through the sky. Environmentalists have at the same played their part in this. Is it not time for a change of heart? Must fear govern everything we do? Should national policy time. With our be dictated by worst-case scenarios? Thomas E. Phipps Jr. ’46, Ph.D. ’51 Urbana, Ill. Harvard CRT,

Mcelroy’s article on using non-fossil energy for our vehicles reminded me of if the endowment my efforts to move in that direction. About six months ago I hoped to get rid of my gasoline car (about 28 mpg) and get grows, so does an all-electric, plug-in car. I had hoped to use the electric for driving around the city, and to rent a car for the occasional our income and Give and receive. longer-distance trip. I discovered to my dismay that it is impossible to get auto insurance for such a car unless it is one’s our gift.” second vehicle. I checked with four major Make a insurers and they all had the same restric- tion. Perhaps McElroy and others with Glenn Lee AB ’57, MD ’61 and more clout than a single consumer can planned gift. make the insurance companies help re- Wendy Lee duce our carbon footprint by encouraging the use of electric and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). David Barnhouse ’49 Santa Barbara, Calif.

Mcelroy’s article made the claim that energy savings could be made by utilizing For more information, plug-in rather than standard HEVs. This please contact: is not sustainable from an engineering point of view, and is suicidal from an eco- Anne McClintock logical point of view. This is the initial impetus for the hy- Alasdair Halliday brid vehicle: If the energy dissipated in John Christel slowing down can be recovered and rein- Ericka Webb troduced during acceleration, overall en- University Planned Giving ergy consumption can be decreased. Ini- PHONE (800) 446-1277 Harvard University tial and steady-state energy consumption take a hit due to the added weight of the FAX (617) 495-8130 124 Mount Auburn Street electric motors and energy storage de- EMAIL [email protected] Cambridge, MA vices (currently NiMH batteries). If WEB post.harvard.edu/pgo 02138-5795 enough energy is recovered during decel- eration and fed back during acceleration,

Harvard Magazine 7 LETTERS The Harvard Chair! there is a net decrease in energy con- I was surprised that there was no men- sumption. As usual, this is a complex en- tion of the concept of “CO2-to-algae-to- A Coop Exclusive! gineering trade-off. You want minimal biofuels.” My own patent-pending tech- Used by generations of battery weight to minimize energy con- nology, as well as those of my competitors Harvard students and alumni sumption in steady state and accelerating in this field, enables this process to hap- conditions and su∞cient battery capacity pen economically and profitably in the to recover an optimum amount of energy. southern half of the country where there Different companies decide on different is su∞cient sunlight and warmth. optimization strategies, but it appears Given the ease and low cost of convert- that the maximum amount of energy that ing our existing fuel-distribution infra- can be recovered by coasting down a long structure for biofuels, and also the extra hill and stopping is the method utilized radiation risks of increasing our use of to establish the battery capacity. electricity to power vehicles, it is unfor- Because the battery is a very ine∞cient tunate that the concept of using photo- method of storing energy, especially when synthetic algae to sequester CO2 and then Finished in gleaming black with rosewood compared with gasoline, sizing the battery produce biofuels like ethanol and arms in your choice of school or house seal. Reg. $425/Member Price $38250 in excess of expected recovery require- biodiesel seems to get less media atten- ments leads to excess energy consumption tion—not to mention academic focus— Choose crimson or black seat cushion. overall. But some people are enamored of than other technologies like the hybrid 60 Reg. $44/Member Price $39 the concept of electric-vehicle operation. engines being promoted by McElroy. Is Each chair sale supports the Harvard The usual idea is to add battery capacity to this yet another case of “liberal media Alumni Association. allow for pure electric operation for bias” in the Northeast, or simply an hon- around 40 miles or 60 kilometers. In round est oversight??? k figures, the additional batteries needed to Jonathan L. Gal ’89 Medallion Collection provide this capacity add roughly 20 per- President, Texas Clean Fuels Book Ends! cent to the vehicle weight. At lower Royse City, Tex. speeds, this leads to an increase in energy consumption (whether from gasoline I applaud McElroy’s initiative, but at burned by the engine or the kilowatt hours the risk of nitpicking, I have to complain, consumed from the electric grid) of “Why the obsession with wind?” As a 27- roughly 20 percent also, with this percent- year veteran of the international power- age decreasing as the speeds increase. generation industry, my ardor for climate- Proponents of plug-ins trumpet gaso- change solutions is governed by Our hardwood Bookend set features medallion line mileage figures of 80 mpg, 120 mpg, hard-earned experience and an apprecia- “Veritas” seal. Includes a metal base to even 150 and more mpg. Incredible! They tion for e∞cient solutions. McElroy is support large books. 6 5/8” x 4 ½” x 3 ¾”. are going to save the world! However, headed in the right direction—plug-in 50 Reg. $85/ Member Price $76 they neglect to take into account the en- hybrid cars charged with electricity made S & H $14.00 within continental USA–2-3 ergy consumed in generating the electric- from renewable energy. And he’s correct weeks delivery. ity consumed in the battery. The real that the greenhouse-gas problem in the [mileage] figure is much less. electricity sector cannot be addressed k There are even more substantial prob- without taking coal head-on. But wind is Members are also eligible for lems using grid electricity. The electric not the answer. Most people look reflex- a rebate on their purchases. industry is not only capacity-limited at ively to wind because the technology is Last Year Members received a times, but is converting as quickly as pos- commercially available and we’ve been 8% rebate on their purchases. sible from highly polluting forms of gen- led to believe that it is competitive, or It pays to shop at the Coop! erating electricity such as coal and nu- nearly so, with conventional forms of clear to less polluting forms such as solar, electricity. Yet wind’s intermittency and wind, geothermal, tide, or other potential its very poor average utilization rate (a forms. Thus we can assume any kilowatt national fleet of wind turbines of the scale hours used by plug-ins come from the proposed would operate on average at most highly polluting forms of energy less than 30 percent capacity) make it generation. Thus a plug-in exports pollu- woefully incapable of replacing coal-fired tion from its source (where the car is dri- generation. The almost flip suggestion ving) downstream, beyond the area that we need to get to work building where the electricity is generated (where transmission to interconnect all of these the population and environment have no wind farms to the grid highlights the voice in the pollution generated). other problem, but also points to the so- David W. Harralson lution. Hollywood, Calif. If we’re willing to consider blanketing

8 May - June 2008 The Way To Live

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SPEAK UP, PLEASE Harvard Magazine welcomes letters You on its contents. Please write to “Let- ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, expected Cambridge 02138, send comments by e-mail to [email protected], use to soak up our website, www.harvardmagazine.- the sun. com, or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may be edited to ﬁt the available space.

the countryside with wind turbines, stringing thousands of new transmission lines in order to connect them to the grid, and building hundreds of new nuclear, gas- or (God forbid) coal-ﬁred plants to stabilize the production of so much inter- mittent wind, should we not ask if there are any less draconian and more economically attractive alternatives? A promising one is solar thermal with thermal storage. We could accomplish with fewer than 10,000 square miles in the desert South- west (about 9 percent of the federal lands in Nevada) what would take literally millions of wind turbines to produce, even if you could somehow site them. And rather than thousands of new transmission lines, perhaps a dozen large high-voltage direct current corridors running to existing major transmission hubs would be su∞cient to interconnect the capacity to the national grid. Perhaps the technology You got is few years away, but it makes far more sense than rushing headlong to invest in a SUN technology that is accessible and feasible at the margins, but quite clearly not ap- POISONING propriate to the larger task proposed by McElroy. Michael Hogan, M.B.A. ’88 Boston Prepare for the Unexpected FIXING FOREIGN POLICY Reading Joseph Nye’s essay (“Toward a Ou t d o o r a c t i v i t i e s a r e o f t e n p a r t o f t h e t r a v e l e x p e r i e n c e , b u t w h a t i f y o u g e t Liberal Realist Foreign Policy,” March- h u r t o r g e t s u n p o i s o n i n g ? Developed in partnership with Harvard Medical April, page 36), I do not see the fresh de- International, MEDEX’s 360ºm Global Medical Monitor tells you what parture from our failed unilateralist, neo- precautions to take and where to go for the best treatment – before you conservative foreign policy that your leave home. From lost passports to emergency medical evacuations, readership is awaiting. Indeed, this apple you can count on MEDEX to be with you every step of the way – every has not fallen very far from the tree— day and every hour. For information on our medical insurance, medical somewhere within the Beltway. evacuations and security services, contact us at: Nye has limited his objectives to “how.” 1-888-442-5889 All he is saying is that he can ensure U.S. www.MEDEXassist.com/harvardmag hegemony better than the neocons. He is not their intellectual opponent, questioning the framing of the questions. In his priorities, and most particularly the identiﬁed major threats we face—terror- ism and political (please turn to page 93)

10 May - June 2008 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

JUNK BUNK Treasure in the Genome’s Trash he broad institute of MIT of a marsupial: the short-tailed opossum, Marsupial babies, unlike the young of pla- and Harvard often grabs head- Monodelphis domestica (the findings were cental mammals, develop primarily in a Tlines for its discoveries about the detailed last year maternal pouch, rather than in a genetics underlying such dis- in Nature). womb. The DNA of this small eases as cancer, heart problems, mammal has given scientists a autism, and diabetes. But window into evolutionary alongside this high- history since the time, profile medical re- around 180 million years search, the institute ago, when placental mam- also funds a team mals split from marsupi- that is working als—and has provided a steadily to se- surprising new view of quence the ge- the role of so-called junk nomes of mam- DNA in evolution. mals large and Lindblad-Toh explains small, from the that just 5 percent of the African elephant DNA in mammalian ge- to the tree shrew. nomes is thought to be func- “It’s very easy to tional, and of that fraction, think that [this less than half actually serves project] doesn’t as a blueprint to make matter because proteins. The rest of the it’s not purely 5 percent consists of biomedical,” says regulatory elements: Kirsten Lindblad- DNA sequences that Toh, who leads turn genes on and the Mammalian o≠. That appear- Genome Project. ed to leave the vast In fact, she ex- majority of the ge- plains, the genome as junk DNA, nomes of other with no known animals hold a function. Now the wealth of infor- comparative biol- mation about how ogy made possible our own evolved. by the opossum ge- The Broad team was nome sequence suggests first to sequence the genome otherwise.

Illustration by Stanford Kay Harvard Magazine 11 RIGHT NOW To compare genomes of human beings groups are found in the regulatory se- biosis,” she suggests. “[Transposons] are and other mammals, scientists rely on an quences. In fact, 20 percent of the regula- allowed to move around and propagate,” ancient common ancestor as a reference tory elements in the genomes of placental while their host gains an engine of inno- point—and previously, our nearest se- mammals are recent innovations that vation that may help it evolve. quenced ancestral relative was the took place after the split from marsupials. Mikkelsen says that junk DNA might chicken. Tarjei Mikkelsen, a graduate Even more surprising is the source of be less a wasteland and more like a junk- student at the Broad and the paper’s first this novelty. Many of the changes in regu- yard of old parts: DNA sequences that can author, notes that it’s di∞cult to com- latory controls seem to have their origin be reused and recycled to generate inno- pare genomes of mammals with those of in repetitive sequences of junk DNA. vation. In this sense, the sequencing of birds or reptiles: the sequences have Lindblad-Toh explains that most junk the genome is broadening scientists’ en- changed so much that similar areas of the DNA is composed of “transposons,” small tire view of what genetic material is and genome are unrecognizable. Marsupials, pieces of DNA that can move from place how it functions—revealing a much more on the other hand, fill a gap in the evolu- to place and propagate themselves inside complex and scientifically interesting tionary tree. “What the opossum genome the genome, similar to the way that a view of DNA, genes, and cell regulation allowed,” he says, “was a look at a mid- virus or parasite behaves. The study sug- than prevailed only a few years ago. In point” between mammals and their more gests that this seemingly selfish behavior Mikkelsen’s words, “Junk DNA seems to distant ancestors. might actually have an important func- be a very good substrate for creating new The genes of marsupial and placental tion in the genome, because when trans- things.” courtney humphries mammals turn out to be surprisingly sim- posons move or copy themselves, they in- ilar. Most of the evolutionary changes troduce new variations that may be mammalian genome project web page: that have occurred between the two beneficial to their host. “It’s a bit of sym- www.broad.mit.edu/mammals

IN SHERDS, A TELL been digging up Tell Brak’s secrets since the 1930s. Thousands of years of human history lie buried under the artiﬁcial Outside-In Ur-banism mound that protrudes some 40 meters— roughly 10 stories—into the air from the he most fascinating thing apparently expanded when settlements center of the otherwise ﬂat 2-by-1.5 kilo- about the suburbanites living outside its borders slowly grew into it. meter site. (“Tell” derives from tall, Arabic Taround the ancient Mesopotam- “Near Eastern archaeologists have this for “hillock.”) A group of Cambridge Uni- ian settlement of Tell Brak isn’t idea that the origins of cities are based on versity scholars began excavating the who they were, according to archaeologist the power of a single man, or centralized mound in the late 1970s, burrowing down Jason Ur, but how they joined the city. political power,” says Ur. But around Tell While studying the site in what is Brak, the immigrants (which is what Ur today northeastern Syria, a few hundred believes they were) kept “some autonomy miles north of Gilgamesh’s Uruk (Tell from the preexisting community. Which Brak’s most celebrated contemporary), is not the prevailing model.” the assistant professor of anthropology Archaeologists including Max Mal- discovered something surprising: instead lowan (better known as the husband of of growing from the inside out, Tell Brak mystery writer Agatha Christie) have

Above: Jason Ur in Turkey. Left: The high central mound of Tell Brak, formed by generations of mud structures built on top of one another, rises out of the alluvial plain. RIGHT NOW through the strata of the third and fourth, and finally the fifth, millennium b.c. Ur—whose colleagues jokingly accuse him of using a stage name—joined the Cambridge team in 2002. Besides digging, the excavation project was also surveying the wider region for distant neighbors, but Ur proposed to study the area right around the mound. After gaining the local landowners’ permission, he spent three seasons (which last from May to Septem- ber) doubled over, walking back and forth across the site. He began each day as soon as it was light enough to see, took a siesta in the afternoon when the temperature crept above 100 degrees, and continued in the early evening while the sun went down. It wasn’t always fun “walking through farmers’ fields and being chased by the dogs and kicking sheep dung o≠ the surface, looking for tiny potsherds.” Potsherds are the ancient debris of daily life, bits of earthen storage vessels and cooking pots that lit- ter the ground—Ur estimates there may be something like 10 million pieces on the site. Every year the farmers’ plows turn up more. Simply by looking at their char- acteristics, such as decorative patterns or coloration (which panded naturally, a finding he published varies according to kiln heat), Ur can date in an August 2007 issue of Science maga- them. (He likens it to dating cars by their zine. “This pattern,” he wrote, “suggests fins, hand cranks, or hybrid engines.) For a greater role for non-centralized Clockwise from the top: the farm- land around Tell Brak’s high central mound, example, in the early fourth millennium processes in the initial growth of Brak ceramic sherds collected for study, and b.c., Mesopotamians tempered their clay and lesser importance for centralized sherds as they turn up on the ground. with sand. Later, they replaced the sand authority.” Perhaps the immigrants with vegetable matter, such as ground-up couldn’t forcibly integrate themselves ern Mesopotamia. The assumption is cha≠, impressions of which remained on into the city—or possibly the city- that the dozen or so settlements in Iraq the finished pottery after firing. dwellers lacked the strength to kick follow the Gilgamesh model: a strong Ur found small, concen- them out altogether. In either case, Ur central leader. But whenever archaeolo- trated pockets of sherds HM says, there was a balance, rather than a gists return to these sites, Ur suspects from the late fifth millen- monopoly, of power: a distinct contrast they may find something more compli- nium some 1,000 meters to Visit harvard- to the older hypothesis based on the fa- cated. “I shouldn’t say that what we find mag.com/extras the southwest and 500 to hear Jason Ur mous king of Uruk who, according to at Brak disproves this inward-outward meters to the north and discuss Tell Brak the Epic of Gilgamesh, had the literal and growth model,” he says. “But it certainly east of the central mound. as it was then political muscle to build a wall around suggests, at the minimum, that there Around these three areas and is today. the city and stood alone as a “mighty were multiple paths to urbanism.” he found much larger numbers of sherds net, protector of his people.” paul gleason that date from the middle of the fourth For nearly 20 years, the political situa- millennium. He concluded that satellite tion in Iraq has made it next to impossi- jason ur e-mail address: communities had sprung up and ex- ble to study the ancient cities of south- [email protected]

Photographs courtesy of Jason Ur Harvard Magazine 13 RIGHT NOW MUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE and the attention network, used when we’re focusing on a specific task, such as word processing or math problems. The Aging Brain The scientists found that among young people (in this case, those under 35), the euroscientists have long in the journal Neuron). Though other in- brain regions that make up each distinct used damaged brains as a way vestigators had hypothesized that discon- network were largely in sync with one Nto understand normal brain nections might occur in the ebb and flow another—when one region was activated functions. But doing the oppo- of signals between regions, it wasn’t easy by the task, the other was, too. But among site also works. A group of researchers at to measure this until the introduction in adults over 60, the brain scans revealed a Harvard recently looked at the e≠ects of the early 1990s of functional magnetic res- lot of variation. Some participants’ scans aging on healthy people’s brains and onance imaging (fMRI), a scanning tech- showed almost the same level of syn- found that as we get older, communica- nique that measures blood flow. chrony as those of their younger counter- tion between di≠erent brain regions Andrews-Hanna and her colleagues parts, but others’ had dropped to zero. breaks down. This discovery could even- looked at data collected by researchers at When the researchers then used a more tually help scientists better characterize Washington University in St. Louis who direct test to measure communication be- and detect neurodegenerative diseases, studied 93 healthy adults between the tween regions, they found that those including Alzheimer’s, which a≠ects ages of 18 and 93. (All were prescreened older adults whose brain networks were more than 5 million Americans. for Alzheimer’s and other neurological out of sync also showed a degradation in Until recently, most scientists looking diseases.) While lying in an fMRI scan- their white matter, the nerve tissue insu- at the aging brain focused on individual ner, the subjects classified single words lating the brain circuits that support regions, especially those in the frontal on a screen as referring either to living or communication. In particular, they no- lobe, which may shrink or lose activity non-living objects. Andrews-Hanna then ticed, communication lines between the even in the absence of disease, says Jessica looked at neural activity during the task front and back of the brain within the de- Andrews-Hanna, a doctoral student in in two large-scale networks that span the fault network (which we also use to day- psychology at Harvard’s Center for Brain brain: the default network, used when dream) degrade more in older adults than Science and the lead author on the we’re worrying, thinking of the past and those in the attention network. group’s paper (published last December future, or imagining people in our lives; “What was really surprising to us was

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the degree of the e≠ect,” says Andrews- unknown. She’s also hoping to do follow- Hanna. “We thought there would be a up studies to look at whether daydreaming di≠erence in correlation between young declines with age. and old adults, but we had absolutely no The correlation approach that idea that it would diminish to zero.” She Andrews-Hanna used for the says the implications of the ﬁnding study could also be used to aren’t clear. In the study, several of explore how Alzheimer’s the older adults also took tests a≠ects di≠erent brain re- measuring gions, she says. Scientists have typically focused on one region, the hip- pocampus, but as technology improves, they’re dis- JESSICA ANDREWS-HANNA covering that the disease a≠ects many parts of the brain—and perhaps the relationships among them. Certainly, having a clear picture of the normal aging brain could prove useful for its own sake. Andrews- their memory, ab- Hanna suggests a rehabilitation ap- stract reasoning pow- proach: perhaps, she says, we could some- ers, and processing day disrupt the e≠ects of natural aging by speed and, not surpris- playing mental games that encourage ingly, those who performed best communication between brain regions. were also those whose brain regions were katharine dunn The younger brain, below, shows more most in sync. Andrews-Hanna is interested synchronized activity than in further exploring the default network, jessica andrews-hanna e-mail address: the older brain, above. whose functions she says are still largely [email protected]

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Harvard Magazine 15 RIGHT NOW NOT EASY BEING GREEN researchers imagine building the plants at geothermally active coastal sites remote from human population centers. Climate Change Solutions? “We don’t want to release any CO2, because that defeats the purpose,” House hanks in part to photographs bearing alkaline solution that eventually explains. “Geothermal energy from vol- of shrinking glaciers, news re- flows into the ocean, which functions as a canoes is very cheap and clean [and avail- Tports on the devastation caused vast “carbon sink.” Unfortunately, this able], since we don’t build cities on vol- by fierce storms, and the Nobel natural cycle, known as “weathering,” is canoes.” The surrounding volcanic rock Committee, most Americans now accept very slow—and the rate at which carbon also provides the right material to neu- the alarming possibility of global climate moves from the atmosphere to the ocean tralize the hydrochloric acid. change caused by rising levels of carbon is being overwhelmed by human CO2 Previous researchers considered adding dioxide. Given the seeming improbability emissions. (The atmosphere now holds an alkaline material to the ocean directly to of reining in worldwide fossil-fuel con- estimated 380 parts per million [ppm] of boost CO2 absorption, but a large supply sumption, scientists have begun propos- CO2, compared to 280 ppm in the pre-in- of such substances is hard to find. While ing novel engineering solutions to the dustrial age, and that figure is increasing jogging along the Charles River in the win- problem, like the one devised by geochem- by about 2 ppm of CO2 a year.) ter of 2006, House suddenly realized that it istry doctoral student Kurt Zenz House. House proposes using a much stronger would be simpler to remove acid from the In a paper published last fall in Environ- acid to speed up the weathering cycle ocean. At a conference a few months later, mental Science and Technology, House and his and enhance the ocean’s carbon-absorb- he discussed the idea with his brother coauthors—including McKay professor of ing capacity. The goal is to make the Christopher, a geology professor at Penn- materials science Michael Aziz and Daniel ocean more alkaline, increasing its ability sylvania State University: “I told him what Schrag, professor of earth and planetary to suck CO2 from the air. Such a process, I was thinking and we started doodling on sciences and of environmental science and eventually, could soak up an additional napkins.” (Christopher eventually served engineering, who directs Harvard’s Cen- 3.7 billion tons of CO2 a year, about 10 as a coauthor of the paper.) ter for the Environment—suggest a new percent of total annual emissions, Aziz Part of the idea’s appeal is that it ad- CO2 mitigation strategy modeled on says. In one scenario, this would involve dresses all sources of CO2, not just power Earth’s natural ability to absorb carbon 100 industrial plants—each comparable plants. It might also, in theory, benefit dioxide. Rainwater and rivers collect CO2 in water-handling capacity to a large coral reefs. The rise in CO2 levels has made from the atmosphere, creating a weak acid urban sewage-treatment facility—where the oceans more acidic, a that gradually dissolves any silicate rock it electric current would be used to remove condition that harms washes over. This produces a carbon- hydrochloric acid from seawater. The the reefs and acid would then be poured on igneous rocks, dissolving them to create a pH- neutral solution that could be returned to the ocean. To power this process, the

Electrochemical weathering involves four steps. First, an electric cur- bicarbonate (NaHCO3)—commonly known as baking soda. Third, the rent is applied to seawater, causing it to separate into an acidic HCl must be neutralized. One way to neutralize the acid is to cause solution—primarily hydrochloric acid (HCl)—and a basic solution— it to react with volcanic rock—thereby triggering the formation of salt, primarily sodium hydroxide (NaOH): a process called “salt splitting.” sand, and water, all of which can then be returned to the ocean. The Second, the separated NaOH is used to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) final step involves the CO2 that has been added to the ocean. Over from the atmosphere. That can occur either in a spray tower or in the time, that CO2 will react with calcium in the ocean and precipitate as surface ocean. Either way, the NaOH reacts with CO2 to form sodium calcium carbonate—commonly known as limestone.

16 May - June 2008 Graphic courtesy of Kurt House

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5&)+ )#. 06)#1 #$ 8 ,%". *"&&* )0-"%.'& 9 89 :88 RIGHT NOW organisms with shells. Controlling ocean about mucking with ocean chemistry,” pH with this process might help. House says. The process mirrors a nat- Discover House is used to thinking in innovative ural phenomenon, but accelerating it so Luxury Living on ways about the CO2 problem: he previ- drastically is “almost certain to cause the Carolina Coast. ously collaborated with his adviser, some damage.” (He adds, however, that Schrag, on a plan to capture CO2 directly rising CO2 levels mean “we’re already from power plants and bury it deep in the mucking with ocean chemistry. We’re “If everything works out, this process

. 1 E I | NO VOLUM OAST LINA C E CARO ON TH LIVING LUXURY could possibly deal with 10 percent of the carbon problem, maximum. And even that’s optimistic.”

earth or in sediments at the bottom of the just doing it in a less conscious way.”) ocean. But when this latest paper ap- Furthermore, some of the technologies peared, and news outlets around the required to drive the process, including world reported its potential benefits, the machines to electrolyze seawater, and a coverage made House and his coauthors hydrogen-chlorine fuel cell, are insu∞- uneasy; they warn against seeing their ciently developed. Aziz believes a pilot proposal as a silver bullet for global warm- plant could be five years o≠, even in the ing. “If everything works out, this process best circumstances. could possibly deal with 10 percent of the Schrag, less optimistic, believes the idea carbon problem, maximum,” Aziz says. is impressively clever, but faces “serious “And even that’s optimistic.” challenges that may prove insurmount- Part of the problem is expense. It’s hard able. The scale of the experiment we’re to arrive at accurate figures without fur- doing on the atmosphere by burning so ther study, House says, but rough calcula- much fossil fuel is enormous,” he says, “so tions suggest that the process would cost trying to engineer a solution by accelerat- at least $100 per ton of CO2 removed, ing natural processes turns out to be ex- compared with $50 to $60 per ton in other tremely challenging. But we have to keep CO2 sequestration techniques. Schrag is thinking of ideas like this one in case there Sell To Us. also concerned that increasing the alkalin- is a good solution.” erin o’donnell ity of seawater could trigger the precipita- tion of carbon as calcium carbonate; he michael aziz web page: DIAMONDS believes this would return half the carbon seas.harvard.edu/matsci/people/aziz/ dioxide to the atmosphere, making the aziz.html PRECIOUS STONES process twice as expensive. kurt zenz house web page: Another potential drawback is the www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~khouse/ FINE JEWELRY possible harm to marine life created by home.htm the highly alkaline solution that would daniel schrag web page: www.eps.harvard.edu/people/ See us last for the best price. exist in seawater around the plants. “We should be very clear that we’re talking faculty/schrag

MERCEDES RULE Flocking to Finance ecent graduates may take for Lawrence F. Katz—Lee professor of eco- granted the migration of one-fifth nomics and Allison professor of economics, R of their classmates into finance- respectively—found that the percentage of sector jobs, but things haven’t al- graduates who choose to work in finance 232 BOYLSTON STREET (ROUTE 9) ways been this way. In a survey of 6,500 has increased drastically over time. CHESTNUT HILL, MA 02467 Harvard graduates from selected classes Among those who graduated around 617.969.6262 • 1.800.328.4326 www.davidandcompany.com between 1969 and 1992, Claudia Goldin and 1970, 22 percent of the men were in finance

18 May - June 2008 or management 15 years later. Among those who graduated around 1990, the figure was 38 percent. The proportion of male graduates working in finance alone increased from 5 percent to 15 percent during the same period. And a Har- vard Crimson survey last year found that among graduating seniors heading straight to work—roughly three- quarters of the class of 2007 —58 percent of the men were headed for finance or consulting, and more than 20 percent of all men for investment banks. Similar changes were apparent for women, but in smaller numbers. It was these gender differences that Katz and Goldin set out to study with their survey, dubbed “Harvard and Beyond,” con- percent between the two cohorts. Al- economic trends—such as the opening of ducted in 2006 and 2007. Men still com- though some of those employed in world markets—so the fields won’t shrink mand higher salaries, on average, than finance have M.B.A.s, many of the jobs, unless those trends reverse themselves. women with the same educational attain- unlike those in law and medicine, require Goldin says this is a familiar story being ment, and even in some cases with the no advanced degree. repeated with a new set of characters. “If same type of job; this appears to be due to This pattern among Harvard gradu- we were discussing this 100 years ago,” she women’s preference for family-friendly ates reflects a similar pattern in the says, “we would be talking about the rela- jobs and employers (see “Girl Power: wider society. The finance sector’s con- tive decline of the clergy, and we would be What’s Changed for Women and What tribution to the U.S. gross domestic lamenting the fact that our best students Hasn’t,” January-February, page 34). product swelled from 4.4 percent in 1977 weren’t going into it. After all, this institu- Goldin is the author of Understanding the to 7.7 percent, or roughly $950 billion, in tion was founded on preparing men for Gender Gap: An Economic History of American 2005, according to a report on the survey the clergy. We would be throwing names Women, and the two previously collabo- by Wall Street Journal columnist David like Carnegie and Rockefeller around, and rated on a study of the role of the birth- Wessel. One of every 13 dollars of em- we would be saying, ‘This is a world of control pill vis-à-vis women’s decisions ployee compensation in the United greed! Where’s the salvation?’” regarding career and marriage. States today goes to people working in More remarkable than the growth of fi- But the new survey also turned up finance, the column noted, and in 2004, nance, Katz and Goldin say, is the fact that plenty of other things, including the size the combined income of the top 25 Harvard graduates, with all the options of the shift into finance, and the reason hedge-fund managers exceeded the com- open to them, still decide to pursue ca- for that shift. For the entire respondent bined income of the CEOs of all Stan- reers in the arts, the nonprofit sector, and pool, across all occupations, the median dard & Poor’s 500 companies. academia. “We can only infer,” says Katz, income for men was $162,000, and for Wessel concluded that the astronom- “that lots of people, by making the choice women $90,000; graduates working in ical rise in finance-sector salaries has not to do one thing, even though that finance earned nearly three times that fueled income inequality in the United thing has a very high pecuniary return, median, in a pool of people already paid States. He also diagnosed a finance-sector put enormous value on something else.” far more than average. (Among the gen- salary bubble, akin to the tech-stock bub- elizabeth gudrais eral U.S. population in 2006, men’s me- ble and the housing-price bubble. Bub- dian income was just over $42,000, and bles, of course, inevitably burst. lawrence katz e-mail address: women’s was under $33,000.) Katz and Goldin are less certain about a [email protected] Finance’s extremely high compensa- correction. The field cannot sustain the claudia goldin e-mail address: tion has lured Harvard graduates who rate of growth it’s experienced in the last [email protected] might otherwise have pursued law or three decades, but neither is it going to re- “harvard and beyond” project web page: medicine: the prevalence of those fields, turn to its 1980 state, Katz says. He says http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/ combined, declined from 39 percent to 30 the growth was, in part, a consequence of ~goldin/harvardandbeyond.html

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Sleuths in Love

Screenwriter turned novelist Eric Lerner finds his voice. In Pinkerton’s Secret, play ever again.” author Lerner creates Screenplays, he by CRAIG LAMBERT a romantic backstory for the famous detec- reports, “are enor- tive (above, at left). mously confining: lattened by a cold in 1998, me? She spends two years with him in the story is there, Eric Lerner ’71, then a Hollywood Washington, D.C., while he is away from but there is no voice in a movie. As a writer, I screenwriter, picked up a biogra- his family. He is at her bedside when she missed my own voice. I always loved the phy of Allan Pinkerton, founder of dies, and she is buried next to him. Rumors?” voice in a novel, the storyteller.” the first detective agency in the Within two days, Lerner was proposing So Lerner decided to “clear the decks, FUnited States. Three men were already a movie about Pinkerton and Warne to a close the blinds, and start writing a working for Pinkerton in Chicago in 1856 studio. “They bought it on a phone pitch,” novel.” He took the Pinkerton material, when he hired Kate Warne as perhaps the he says. He got paid to write the screenplay, did prodigious historical research—rang- first-ever female private eye. “The biogra- but, in one of Hollywood’s familiar pat- ing from Warne’s logbooks to details of pher dismissed rumors of a romantic rela- terns, “Before I finished the first draft, Abraham Lincoln’s childhood—and wrote tionship between Warne and Pinkerton,” everyone was fired. It sat in a drawer for Pinkerton’s Secret, his first novel, published says Lerner. “I literally dropped the book seven years before the rights reverted to me. by Henry Holt this spring. It’s styled as a and laughed out loud—are you kidding By that time I didn’t want to write a screen- memoir by Pinkerton, set in the period

Portrait by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 21 Archival photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress MONTAGE around the Civil War, and narrates the de- A memoir can break tective’s work with the Underground OPEN BOOK your heart. An exquis- Railroad and John Brown’s radical anti- itely detailed new exam- slavery crusade. At the heart of the story is ple of the genre, The the clandestine love a≠air between A Scatter of Crowd Sounds Happy: A Pinkerton, a married family man, and Story of Love, Madness, Warne; in one climactic moment, the de- Acorns and Baseball (Pantheon, tective-lovers save Abraham Lincoln’s life. $24.95), by Nicholas Lerner has always loved history, and all Dawidoff ’85, describes a childhood of privation shadowed by his parents’ divorce the major events in his story are histori- and his father’s mental illness.The spare opening chapter sets the scene. cally accurate. But the narrator’s voice in Pinkerton’s Secret did not immediately de- grew up in a city of dying elms called familiar swelling murmur of onrushing clare itself. After drafting a few chapters the Elm City, on a street with no wil- rubber—it was like nearing a riverbank of a third-person narrative, “I looked at Ilows named Willow Street. Uncele- through parted woods—and…the night the stu≠ and said, ‘You’re writing a brated trees shaded our part of the detonated in a cry of brakes and tremen- screenplay—there’s no voice,’” Lerner road, sturdy oaks and mature maples, dous thudding impact.…I’d tug the blan- says. Shortly thereafter, one night at 3 their branches so thick with leaves that kets over my face as my bedroom filled a.m., he “sat bolt upright in bed and heard they created a blind curve just before with the hiss of punctured radiators and this voice, Pinkerton’s voice, speaking as an the intersection where the street revolving flashes of hot red light.…My older man; late in his career, he su≠ered a straightened past our house and made room felt remote, bigger than usual, and stroke and was paralyzed. ‘Most people its hard line for the highway. Cars trav- every shadow playing along the ceiling think being paralyzed doesn’t hurt be- eled at a clip down Willow Street, espe- terrified me. By morning, when I went cause when they stick pins in you, you cially at night, and because of the curve it outside for a look, all remnants of the ac- can’t feel anything,’ the voice said. ‘But as was impossible to see them until they’d cident would have been swept away so I’ve made abundantly clear, most people nearly reached the streetlight glowing that I might have doubted that anything are goddamn morons.’ Pinkerton was a out beyond my bedroom window. Yet had truly happened were it not for the combative lunatic. He kept talking to me: lying awake under the covers I could chips of headlight glass or the laciniated the voice didn’t go away. Once I let him tell hear those cars coming, and never more chunk of engine grille that I’d find in the the story, it started rolling.” distinctly than on rainy fall evenings gutter with the acorns. Holt editor Jack Macrae III ’54 (“One of when the wind had blown a scatter of But before any of those investigations, the few guys left in publishing who consid- acorns across the pavement. I’d be there were hours of the night still to go, ers himself a real text editor,” Lerner says) tensed against my pillow, listening to the and as I tried to calm myself with less up- pushed the author through multiple drafts. whoosh of tires closing fast over wet as- setting thoughts, invariably my mind “I felt like I was writing with invisible ink phalt, and then, an instant later, a brief, turned to my favorite baseball team, the when I worked in Hollywood, because be- vivid flurry of noise, the rapid, popping Boston Red Sox. There in the dark I eval- fore the words were dry on the page they eruptions of a dozen flattened acorns, uated the feats and virtues of the players would be changed—by me, at the request before the whoosh I liked best. This was and direction of others,” Lerner says. receded into trace- the early and mid- “When I moved to novels, I hoped to live less silence as some- 1970s…. We had no much more fully in an imaginative realm of one else hurried out television, did not my own, where I could plummet to a depth of town. Long be- subscribe to the that I knew existed. Ironically, my manu- fore I knew that I newspaper, and my script wound up in the hands of the ﬁrst came from a place bedtime was not long genuine editor I had ever met, and it was my people wanted to after the evening Hollywood training that enabled me to leave, I saw how broadcasts of games work so closely with him.” eager they were to began on the radio, Today, Lerner views his two decades in get away. so I knew very little screenwriting as a detour of sorts, albeit a Every so often a about the Red Sox.… lucrative one, from his original literary call- car wouldn’t make it Yet my desire for fa- ing. At 16 he was writing ﬁction and plays to the highway. From miliarity with them in high school in White Plains, New York, my bed I’d hear the was intense, and I ar- and as a Harvard freshman, he saw one of Nicholas Dawidoff, rived at strong im- his dramas produced in the Loeb Experi- in uniform here with pressions, most of mental Theatre. Academically, he changed bat at the ready at which placed pecu- his concentration from History and Litera- the age of 11, des- liar emphasis on the ture to Sanskrit and Indian studies follow- cribes his devotion COURTESY OF NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF to the Red Sox in a players’ own boy- ing a year of travel in India, Burma, and new memoir. hoods. Nepal; after graduation, he spent several more years traveling and living in Buddhist

22 May - June 2008 MONTAGE monasteries in Asia and Some researchers suggest Mel Gibson. Yet, as Lerner notes, “I spent America: his 1976 book, that the figure standing the next decade trying to explain to peo- Jour- behind Pinkerton in this ney of Insight Meditation, de- image is Kate Warne. ple what I wrote, and what was dumped scribes these experiences. on top of what I wrote. Maybe my time in In 1978, he moved to the covered that I was in the monastery helped me develop the Mount Baldy Zen Center, possession of the key cast-iron stomach to deal with working located 8,000 feet above sea piece of currency for a conditions in Hollywood. Walking bare- level on Mount San Anto- Hollywood screen- foot through snow at three in the morn- nio in the San Gabriel writer: the ability to ing was nothing compared to a story Mountains outside Los An- quickly imagine a full- meeting at Paramount.” geles. “It was as rigorous as blown story with a Today, Lerner says he’s quite content you could get in the United beginning, middle, with the semi-solitary working routine of States, like a nineteenth- and end,” he says. “I “an old-fashioned novelist.” At his Boston century monastery, a real went to Southern Cal- home, he starts writing each day at 5 a.m. boot camp,” he recalls. “But ifornia to live in a Zen The voice of his second novel is that of I’m a writer, I’m used to monastery and stayed Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, who seeks austere conditions.” And he to write screenplays.” after 2,000 years to clear her name of the never stopped writing; in By 1983, Lerner had charges—from Tacitus to Robert Graves—

L.A., he edited the Buddhist LIBRARY OF CONGRESS begun a career as a that she was a scheming poisoner. “I’ve journal Zero. One afternoon, after meeting screenwriter that kept him continuously ﬁnally embarked on the life in ﬁction I was a prospective contributor, Lerner bumped employed for the next two decades. His looking for at age 19,” he says, “when I into a high-school friend, Linda Obst, who biggest hit was the 1990 romantic comedy walked into a bookstore on Mount Auburn had become a Hollywood producer. “I dis- Bird on a Wire, starring Goldie Hawn and Street and bought my copy of Ulysses.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra assistant prin- Two Centuries of Sound cipal cellist (and Boston Pops principal) Martha Babcock ’70 played in the orchestra Celebrating a fabled orchestra’s origins in 1966-’67 before joining the Montreal RICHARD DYER Symphony. “The HRO experience opened by a whole new world for me and raised my standards,” she says. “Some of the pieces we n march 6, 1808, six men of Certainly the sodality was the first uni- played, like Stravinsky’s Petrushka, I had Harvard formed the Pierian versity symphony orchestra in America, and never heard before. I didn’t really have a dis- Sodality: the direct ancestor for a long time the largest. It began to tour tinct career path yet, but this turned out to of the Harvard-Radcli≠e Or- in 1908 and, starting in the 1960s, traveled be the prelude to a satisfying musical life.” Ochestra, which this season celebrates its to Europe, South America, or Asia at least two-hundredth anniversary. once in every student generation. In 1936, Senior lecturer on music James Yan- Whether this makes the HRO the oldest women from Radcli≠e College were in- natos—known to generations of students orchestra in America, as it proudly claims, vited to participate as guest performers, as “Dr. Y”—became the orchestra’s music may be subject to debate, because that 1808 and in 1942 the ensemble formally became director in 1964. His 44-season tenure has fellowship of admirers of the Muses wasn’t the Harvard-Radcli≠e Orchestra. seen many fluctuations and changes: in the an orchestra—it was a convivial associa- Its alumni have late 1960s, for ex- tion built around liquor, cigars, “perform- included doctors, ample, some musi- ing music for the enjoyment of others,” and lawyers, academics, cians felt the or- “serenading young women in the square.” a Speaker of the chestra represented The sodality went through good years and U.S. House of Rep- “the establishment” bad patches. In 1832, Henry Gassett was its resentatives, the and left for other only member; he kept it alive by paying new music director ensembles; some dues to himself, holding meetings, and of the New York years have seen no playing flute solos, thereby becoming a Philharmonic, and vacancies for cer- hero to subsequent generations of Pierians. many players active tain instruments, By the 1870s, however, the organization in major orchestras. while an entire sec- had indeed become an orchestra; its mis- tion may graduate sion to advance music had led to the cre- This early 1970s in others; mean- ation of the Harvard Glee Club, the Har- poster for an HRO while, the players concert advertises a vard music department, the Harvard guest appearance themselves reflect Musical Association, and even the Boston by a young cellist Harvard’s increas- named Yo-Yo Ma. Symphony Orchestra. HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ing diversity. MONTAGE

GALLERY Underground Party

Commuters making their way through the underground corridors of the sprawling Times Square subway station in Manhat- tan now have some extraordinary companions, with Jane Dickson’s New Year’s Eve Revelers—of the completion in March of all ages—now decorate the walls of the Times Square subway station in Manhattan. New Year’s Eve Revelers, a permanent mosaic mural adorning the pedestrian back to Pompeii. Dickson describes the passageways between the mural as “luminescent glass, often backed Port Authority Bus Termi- with silver and gold leaf.” nal and Times Square. The Revelers now inhabit the site be- New York City artist neath the world-famous New Year’s Eve Jane Dickson ’75 created celebration that climaxes with the illumi- Revelers, which consists of nated ball dropping at One Times Square. 70 life-size partygoers of The figures appear “in a maze of passages all ages and backgrounds, where everyone is each composed of hun- hurrying by, hop- dreds of pieces of Venetian smalti. (Often used in mo- ing to catch the saics, smalti comes from a glass paste or glaze of silica next train,” Dick- melted with sodium or potassium carbonate to produce son says. “The im- brightly colored translucent glass that is then broken into ages are meant to small pieces.) Some of these figures, scattered along the be enjoyed at a walls of the walkways below 41st Street, make their way glance—the fig- toward the celebration. In the lower Seventh Avenue ures’ animation mezzanine, multicolored merrymakers wearing party hats enhanced by the and waving blowers kiss, jump, and dance to cheer in the viewers’ rush.” New Year. Up the stairs stands a stationary, solitary Dickson came man—gray-haired Father Time, checking his watch. to Harvard after a year at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A Such festivity represents a departure from Dickson’s previous graduate seminar with John Coolidge, former director of the work, examples of which belong to the collections of the Metro- Fogg Art Museum,“gave me an incredible insight into the profes- politan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney sional art world,” she says. She focused on painting at Harvard Museum of American Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in and later spent two years at the School of the Museum of Fine London. Many of her paintings depict the emptiness of the Ameri- Arts in Boston. “I paint to examine the uncanny,” she wrote in can landscape, from nighttime highways and deserted rest stops to 2001,“defined by Freud as ‘the familiar grown strange.’ ” the garishness of suburbia. Urban life also informs Dickson’s art: The familiar grew enduringly strange on September 11, throughout the 1980s, she painted nocturnal views of Times 2001; the attackers struck close to the Tribeca home where Square, where she lived between 1978 and 1993, and still keeps a Dickson lives with her husband, the filmmaker Charlie Ahearn, studio. Her new Revelers, commissioned by the Metropolitan Trans- and their two now-college-age children. Since then, “The portation Authority (MTA) Arts for Transit program, are cousins of whole world has become uncanny, especially the city,” she says, a similar series she painted in the 1990s. “They were monochro- “and even more so, the subway. We don’t need to be reminded matic,” she says of the earlier work. “Much darker.” not to be complacent anymore. I feel the challenge now is to Too dark, she realized, for the Times Square setting. Dickson be as affirming as possible, to assert the continuity of life in this designed Revelers in the wake of the 2005 London subway anxiety-charged locale.” susan hodara bombings, and determined to imbue it with hope and humanity. To execute her sketches, she hired Miotto Mosaics, a Carmel, Susan Hodara ’75 is a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared New York-based mosaic-building company that in turn hired ar- in the New York Times and other publications. tisans in Spilimbergo, a small town in the Friuli region north of On May 22-24, at the Times Square subway station, the Metropolitan Venice, to assemble the figures using techniques whose roots go Transportation Authority celebrates the completion of Jane Dickson’s mural.

24 May - June 2008 Photographs by Thierry Gourjon MONTAGE The orchestra rehearses six hours each week, on Tuesday and Thursday nights, in Sanders Theatre. Even as a concert ap- proaches, Yannatos keeps the atmosphere light without compromising the necessary 0.&*"..,-+,+.(.$-+0, painstaking attention to detail; the play- )""/&*$.*! %+0-!4. ers work hard but seem to be having fun. 2"'*+22%"-"4+0-" +)&*$ Co-concertmaster Julia Glenn ’11 has #-+)*!2"'*+2%+2/+ been in orchestras since sixth grade. “My $"/4+02%"-"4+02*//+ " goal has always been to be a professional violinist,” she says, “but even if that changes, I know music is always going to play a big &* " +))+*2"(/% part in my life. With other orchestras I’ve +-(!2&!"%.,-+1&!"! already played a specialized repertoire, but "3 ",/&+*( %0##"0-"! this season the HRO is playing standard /-*.,+-//&+*."-1& ".#+- pieces I should have covered already, but 2&!"--4+#!&. -&)&*/&*$ never had the chance to. I also love the so- (&"*/"("&* (0!&*$"3" 0/&1". cial aspect. There is not a competitive, cut- ,-+#"..+-.,-&1/"&- -#/ throat atmosphere…I am with people who ,.."*$"-.*!%+/"($0"./. bring their problem sets to rehearsal and work on them during the break. This gives +))+*2"(/%+-(!2&!" the experience a totally (030-4 %0##"-"!/-*.,+-//&+* di≠erent feel. They are more HM -"!"#&*"!&*+./+*"2+-' excited about being there, *!-+0*!/%"$(+ " not just doing the things Visit harvardmag.com/extra that a musician does as a to hear the matter of course.’’ Harvard-Radcliffe "."-1"4+0-*"3/,-")&"- +-,+-/"*!"1"*//-1"(2&/% Clarinetist Giancarlo Orchestra’s 2002 +))+*2"(/%+-(!2&!"%0##"0-"! Garcia ’08 may go on in performance of Gustav Mahler's -*.,+-//&+**!"3,"-&"* "/%" music or pursue mechanical Fifth Symphony. engineering. “I haven’t fully 2-!2&**&*$."-1& "4+0!"."-1" decided,” he says, “but music at Harvard and the HRO have been a huge inﬂuence in my life, and music and engineering have advocated for each other. The discipline of going to rehearsals, of playing together and in tune with 100 other people—that’s really important.” -+0!(4."-1&*$"2+-'+./+**!/%"2+-(! In his early years, Yannatos balanced standard works with repertory few stu- 2&**"-+#+,./"./-+2&*$ dent orchestras were playing: Mahler’s **"-&/4+),*&".&*/%"* $5&*" Das Lied von der Erde, for example, or Bar- tók’s Concerto for Orchestra, which was on the program of the very ﬁrst HRO concert he led (the virtuoso piece was only 21 years old). That unpredictability continues: programs today range from classics to works by talented Harvard students. Are you a Harvard alum and a business owner? And while celebrated performers may ap- Do you like to support other Harvard alums? pear as guests, most often the soloists are outstanding Harvard musicians, some of whom, like cellist Yo-Yo Ma ’76, D.Mus. ’91, later become celebrities. Turn to page 88 On March 7, a day after the actual bicen- and check out tennial, Yannatos provided another surprising program that sandwiched Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer between Gershwin’s An Harvard-In-Business American in Paris and Bernstein’s Symphonic our listing of alumni-owned and -operated businesses Dances from West Side Story. The reason: assis-

Harvard Magazine 25 MONTAGE tant conductor John Kapusta ’09, who ways being told to ‘Sing this like a violin’— nity that surrounds it. opened the concert by leading a ﬁery per- and violinists are told you have to play like “There are several or- The Harvard- formance of Brahms’s Tragic Overture, is also a singer. I am trying to take advantage of chestras and many other Radcli≠e Orchestra a baritone who had won the orchestra’s an- this opportunity to experience music from musical organizations at formally celebrates its nual concerto competition by singing the every side. To learn how an orchestra Harvard that exist at bicentennial locally Mahler songs. For this unprecedented works, what to expect, is an informative, di≠erent levels and for during Arts First double-header, Kapusta got a night o≠ from fulﬁlling, and invaluable experience.” di≠erent reasons,” he weekend, joining the his usual duties in the trumpet section—al- Many alumni agree, demonstrating says. “What the HRO Harvard-Radcli≠e though he did write his own program note, their a≠ection through the Harvard Pier- does is stand at the top Chorus for a perfor- urging the audience not to read program ian Foundation—which came into being of the pyramid, because mance of Brahms’s notes. Before and after both performances, in 1962 when the orchestra was stranded of its history, its size, and German Requiem audience and orchestra members greeted while on tour in Mexico and turned to the commitment it re- on May 2, and over- him like a rock star with whoops, whistles, alumni for help. Former bassoonist Mary quires of its members. seas with a “200th cheers, and the stomping of feet. Ellen Moir ’79, who now works in the No matter how talented Anniversary Season “I want to focus on singing,’’ says Ka- software industry, has spent more than 20 they are, [its] members Tour to Korea” on pusta, “but in an ideal future I would like years on the foundation’s board. “We are willing to…invest an June 12-19 (see www.- to both sing and conduct. Singers are al- meet regularly and support the orchestra enormous amount of hcs.harvard.edu/~hro). both monetarily and with good advice,” time working together she says. “I wish I could say that I played to achieve a high technical and artistic level; the bassoon more than once or twice a the orchestra inserts the students into year,” she adds. “But if you play music, something beyond themselves. The result is you can enjoy it all the more when you lis- that the HRO has a developed a substantial ten to it. There are so many things a life- following at Harvard and in the commu- long love of music can do for you.” nity.…It represents a major way that Har- Knafel professor of music Thomas For- vard greets and serves the community. And rest Kelly, an ex o∞cio member of the foun- that’s a great thing.” dation, emphasizes the HRO’s importance An HRO rehearsal in the early 1950s not only to individual players and alumni, Richard Dyer, A.M. ’64, wrote about classical

HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES but also to the University and the commu- music for the Boston Globe for 33 years.

Zheutlin (Union Square tucky, offers an “unordained memoir of a Press, $19.95). Graboys, a preacher’s daughter,” complete with 25- Off the Shelf cardiologist, recounts his life cent baptism stands and “cleansings” of “the with Parkinson’s disease and Sinful, the Embarrassing, the Tacky, and the Recent books with Harvard connections dementia—when the “rush of Used-Up” (yard sales). feeling able-bodied” comes Yeltsin: A Life, by Timothy J. Colton, Feld- only in dreams. Music, Language, and the Brain, by berg professor of government and Russian Aniruddh D. Patel, Ph.D. ’96 (Oxford, studies (Basic Books, $35). A monumental Richard Rorty: The Making of an Ameri- $59.95). Patel, a neuroscientist, argues that biography of the flawed, but democratic, can Philosopher, by Neil Gross, assistant instrumental music and language are Russian president. professor of sociology (University of processed similarly in the brain, offering Chicago, $32.50). An academic life and common paths to discoveries about Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, analysis of the controversial public human cognition. and Survival in the Congo, by Kate Jack- philosopher, whose final illness last year son, Ph.D. ’02 (Harvard, $27.95).A journal kept him from receiving an honorary de- Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the from an amphibian- and reptile-collecting gree at the 2007 Commencement. Battle over Our Ancient Heritage, by expedition in swamp forests, sans anti- James Cuno, Ph.D. ’85 (Princeton, $24.95, venom (no refrigeration). The au- Trespassers Will Be Bap- paper). Amid controversies over repatria- thor was profiled tized, by Elizabeth Han- tion, the president of the Art Institute of in this magazine’s cock ’00 (Center Street/- Chicago, formerly director of the Harvard March-April 2006 Hachette, $21.99). Han- University Art Museums, addresses “the issue. cock, who grew up Bap- question of unprovenanced antiquities” tist in eastern Ken- and the issue of access to evidence of “the Life in the Balance, world’s common ancient heritage.” Elizabeth Hancock by Thomas Graboys, hoped to be an Acteen clinical professor of Queen like her mom The Dismal Science, by Stephen A. Mar- medicine, and Peter (left, at right). glin, Barker professor of economics (Har-

26 May - June 2008 Freeing Speech How judge-made law gave meaning to the First Amendment by RICHARD H. FALLON

nthony lewis’s Freedom for the events are presented Thought That We Hate: A Biography as teaching by ex- of the First Amendment o≠ers a ample—sometimes lucid and engaging overview of positive and some- AAmerican free-speech law. The former Nie- times negative ex- man Fellow has twice won the Pulitzer ample. He begins by Prize, and this volume puts the skills that sketching the hated earned him those accolades much on dis- traditions of British play. Again and again, he brings to life the censorship against Eugene V. Debs The ﬁrst Congress thus drafted and the in leading cases, plucks which the American delivers an antiwar states ratiﬁed a Bill of Rights, the First dramatis personae speech in Canton, out moving or telling quotations, and ideals of free speech Ohio, in June 1918. Amendment of which guarantees that

explains who won and who lost in or- developed. By the He would soon be “Congress shall make no law…abridging ©BETTMANN/CORBIS der to provide a clear late eighteenth cen- imprisoned. the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Anthony Lewis ’48, introduction to First tury, various state Interestingly, however, there is consid- NF ’57, Freedom for the Amendment doctrine. constitutions included guarantees of free- erable uncertainty about what the Thought That We Hate: Lewis ’48, NF ’57, dom of the press. When the Constitution Framers and ratiﬁers of the First Amend- A Biography of the First styles the book “a bi- of the United States that emerged from the ment understood it to protect. Accord- Amendment (Basic ography.” In fact, it is Philadelphia Convention contained no bill ingly, in Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, Books, $25) more nearly a history of rights, there was widespread sentiment Lewis scrupulously avoids claiming that in which unfolding that the omission needed to be rectiﬁed. the “original understanding” of the First

vard, $35). The author teaches Social $27.95). A pair of political journalists, bi- Santiago’s Children: What I Learned about Analysis 72, “Economics: A Critical Ap- ographers of Ronald Reagan and Karl Life at an Orphanage in Chile, by Steve proach,” an alternative to the mainstream Rove, respectively, put the “troubled Reifenberg (University of Texas, $55 hard- Ec (now Social Analysis) 10. Here he ex- quest” of George W. Bush, M.B.A. ’75, cover, $24.95 paperback). The director of plores, as the subtitle says, “how thinking “for a presidential legacy” in perspective. the Chile office of Harvard’s David Rocke- like an economist undermines commu- Reagan, they find, “was practical, in ways feller Center for Latin American Studies re- nity.” that George Bush was not.” calls his life-changing work in an underclass orphanage during the political and economic Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Sci- Resurrection: The Power of God for traumas of the Pinochet dic- ence, and Industry, by Leo Beranek, S.D. Christians and Jews, by Kevin J. Madigan, tatorship. Presley professor ’40, AMP ’65 (MIT, $24.95).The acoustical professor of the history of Christianity, of social medicine Paul scientist and entrepreneur was involved in and Jon D. Levenson, List professor of Jew- Farmer contributed the telephony, the Tanglewood Music Shed, ish studies (Yale, $30). An examination of foreword. and the precursor to the Internet. the belief in life after death in the two re- In Reagan’s Disciple, ligious traditions. a father-son team The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, by explores the way Bush The Greatest Game: 43 has sought to Noah Feldman, professor of law (Prince- emulate not his ton, $22.95). After long reflection on con- The Yankees, the Red father, but Bush stitutional change in the Islamic world, Sox, and the Playoff 41’s predecessor Feldman observes that “the Islamists con- of ’78, by Richard instead. tinue to promise justice and the rule of Bradley, A.M. ’90 (Free law”—and that trying to deny them Press, $25). Some 257 power will likely backfire. pages, plus notes, on the moment of maximum Reagan’s Disciple, by Lou Cannon and baseball ecstasy (New York) Carl M. Cannon, a 2007 spring fellow at and agony (Boston). Of the Institute of Politics (Public Affairs, course, that was then.

MANDEL NGAN/GETTY IMAGES RM/ © CORBIS

Harvard Magazine 27 MONTAGE Amendment’s reach resolves contested never have occurred, nor might much con- cases that have come before the Supreme temporary discussion of the Iraq War. But Court. First Amendment law, Lewis em- the Court’s easy tolerance for the repres- phasizes, is almost exclusively judge- sion of speech proved short-lived. made law, nearly all fashioned in the past The foundations for modern doc- 90 years. trine—under which Americans are, in Because early Congresses seldom Lewis’s words, “freer…to say what we passed laws attempting to punish speech, think than any other people, and freer the Supreme Court never decided a case today than in the past”—began to take invoking the Free Speech clause before shape only when Justice Holmes, who World War I. But once the coun- 5 try had entered the conflict, Con- gress enacted an Espionage Act Reasons to visit that banned speech tending to harvardmagazine.com cause resistance to the draft or to military authority. Startlingly, from a modern perspective, the Supreme Court upheld the con- victions of dissident speakers in 1. Test Your Knowledge all the Espionage Act cases that Try our bi-monthly Harvard came before it. In the first of those cases, in the majority opin- crossword puzzle by contributing ion by Justice Oliver Wendell editor John de Cuevas ’52. harvardmagazine.com/puzzles Holmes Jr., A.B. 1861, LL.B. ’66, LL.D. ’95, the Court began by establishing that the First Amend- 2. Experience ment could not possibly protect Commencement 2008! all speech. “The most stringent Come to our site early for a protection of free speech would calendar of events, and log on not protect a man in falsely on June 5 for J. K. Rowling’s shouting fire in a crowded the-

live address. ater and causing a panic,” Holmes ©BETTMANN/CORBIS harvardmagazine.com/commencement wrote. With absolute protection Free-speech law in wrote the opinion upholding the United States for all speech thus untenable, the owes much to a Debs’s conviction, appears to 3. Tell Us Your News Court held in 1919 that speech change of heart by have had an almost immedi- Submit your news or see what would receive no protection Justice Oliver ate change of heart. Although your classmates are up to. under the First Amendment if it Wendell Holmes Jr. he claimed that his position harvardmagazine.com/classnotes posed a “clear and present dan- was consistent throughout, ger” of instigating serious harms. after the Court’s 1919 summer recess he 4. Keep Up with Harvard Although the “clear and present dan- abandoned his prior emphasis on “the Check back weekly for links ger” test sounds as if it might have con- natural and intended e≠ect” of radical to stories about Harvard faculty ferred substantial protections on critics protests in provoking resistance to gov- and alumni newsmakers. of the United States’s involvement in ernment policies and emphasized instead, harvardmagazine.com/web World War I, early cases required almost in a dissenting opinion in the fall, that no evidence concerning what danger the “Congress certainly cannot forbid all 5. and More... defendants’ utterances posed. In one no- e≠ort to change the mind of the country.” torious case, the well-known radical po- He continued, Click on Web Extras for a litical leader and former presidential can- Persecution for the expression of recording of the Harvard- didate Eugene V. Debs was sent to jail opinions seems to me perfectly logi- Radcliffe Orchestra and a based on a political speech that he gave cal. If you have no doubt of your slideshow by archaeologist to a Socialist convention on a Sunday af- premises or your power and want a Jason Ur. ternoon. Given that Debs’s audience certain result with all your heart you harvardmagazine.com/extras might have been persuaded by his naturally express your wishes in law denunciations of war, the Court reasoned and sweep away all opposition….But that his speech’s “natural and intended when men have realized that time e≠ect would be to obstruct recruiting.” has upset many ﬁghting faiths, they harvardmagazine.com Had this approach prevailed, the kinds may come to believe even more than Learn. Connect. Access. of criticisms that ultimately helped turn they believe the very foundations of the public against the Vietnam War might their own conduct that the ultimate

28 May - June 2008 MONTAGE good desired is better reached by ple do not think the First Amendment free trade in ideas—that the best does or should protect blatantly false ad- test of truth is the power of the vertising (even if it protects billboards ad- thought to get itself accepted in the vertising cigarettes), or verbal threats, or competition of the market….That at speech o≠ering bribes. The Supreme Court any rate is the theory of our Consti- has also allowed the Federal Communica- tution. It is an experiment, as all life tions Commission to ban “indecent” is an experiment. speech on the radio and in broadcast During the next decade, he and his col- (rather than cable) television—as illus- league Louis Brandeis, LL.B. 1877—writ- trated by the steep fine that followed Janet ing mostly in dissenting or concurring Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during opinions—provided vital intellectual and her halftime performance at the 2004 Super rhetorical foundations for contemporary Bowl. Whatever one may think about First Amendment doctrine, which pro- these examples, the Supreme Court clearly vides more “freedom for the thought that needs to draw lines. But where? we hate” than the law of any other nation To provide a general theory indicating in the world. For example, almost every where lines between protected and un- Our Vacation other western democracy has signed in- protected speech should be drawn is a ternational treaties that call for signato- central ambition of academic theorists ries to prohibit and punish speech that who write about the First Amendment. A truly unique experience – incites racial hatred. In the United States, Some of their writing is brilliantly 6 all-inclusive nights in by stark contrast, most if not all speech provocative. Some is turgid nearly beyond preaching racial hatred is protected by belief. Lewis quotes a few of the best the- total luxury – Gourmet the First Amendment. “Freedom for the orists, but only very briefly, near the end cuisine and grand cru wines thought that we hate” is freedom for of his book. Otherwise, he avoids the- Nazis brandishing swastikas to march in ory—or the e≠ort to provide general Jewish neighborhoods—indeed, in the fa- principles explaining which kinds of mous Skokie case, to march through a vil- speech should be protected and which lage populated largely by Holocaust sur- should not—almost entirely. vivors—and for members of the Ku Klux Instead, what his book does well, even Klan to use vicious epithets in advocating superbly, is to explain how the law has de- the suppression of African Americans. veloped historically in a number of doctri- The Supreme Court has also held that nal areas, including those governing the cigarette companies have a right under the rights of radical protesters, of dissemina- First Amendment to place advertising bill- tors of sexually explicit speech, and of boards in close proximity to schools and media outlets that want to disclose facts playgrounds—even though tobacco is an that intrude on people’s privacy. Like most addictive product on which most smokers biographers or historians, Lewis drops in become hooked while still of school age. A his own opinions, but he does not identify large pornography industry also thrives the theory, if any, that underlies them. under the First Amendment. Although the As a former reporter and columnist for Supreme Court has held that “obscenity” the New York Times, Lewis has especially enjoys no constitutional protection, it has interesting opinions about Supreme defined obscenity so narrowly that “adult” Court decisions involving the press. He films, magazines, and pictures are a staple lavishes perhaps his highest praise on New of contemporary American culture. York Times v. Sullivan (the subject of his 1991 Luxury Hotel Barge Cruises book, Make No Law), which holds that the For information, call Is this state of affairs an occasion press cannot be sued for criticizing public for American pride in protecting free o∞cials, even when reporters and editors 1-800-222-1236 or visit speech, or is it “freedom for the thought make factual mistakes that damage www.fcwl.com/ILN that we hate” run riot? And what frame- o∞cials’ reputations, unless the reporters work should we use in answering this and editors acted with “reckless disre- and similar questions? gard” for the truth. And although it is These questions have enduring currency hardly news when a journalist praises a because, although freedom of speech in the decision expanding journalists’ rights, United States is very broad, even today no Lewis is impressively evenhanded in as- one thinks that absolutely all speech sessing the protections that the First should be protected. Going beyond false Amendment should give to the press. For cries of fire in crowded theaters, most peo- example, he debunks claims that the First

Harvard Magazine 29 MONTAGE Amendment should be read to create a “reporters’ privilege” that would invariably shield journalists from having to reveal the identity of their sources to juries and grand juries. For the most part, Lewis’s style of o≠ering opinionated commentary without laying out any systematic framework for thinking about First Amendment issues serves his readers well. Occasion- ally, however, the comments in one part of the book seem hard to square with the critical observations in another. For example, he criticizes Supreme Court decisions upholding the punishment of radical dissenters from past

eras who preached the desirability ©BETTMANN/CORBIS of law-breaking and even violence American Nazi not help observing that Free- of the law has not been logic; it has been Frank Collin reports as a tool of political change: Bol- the cancellation of a dom for the Thought That We Hate experience.” sheviks during World War I, planned march in makes scant e≠ort to answer History and experience lie at the center criminal syndicalists in the 1920s, Skokie, Illinois, in such questions, or a number of Lewis’s narrative, and he makes them and Communists in the Mc- June 1978 because of similar questions that arise come vividly alive in Freedom for the Thought his group has won Carthy era. Moving to the pre- the right to demon- when Lewis says that the That We Hate. After picking up the book on sent, however, Lewis criticizes a strate in Chicago’s press should have some pro- a winter afternoon, I read on into the 1969 Supreme Court decision that Marquette Park. tections but not others. evening, not wanting to put it down. he thinks could protect a devotee But I can guess quite of radical Islam who advocated terrorist conﬁdently how Lewis might respond Richard H. Fallon, who joined the Harvard Law violence unless the speech was likely to to this gently barbed observation. He School faculty in 1982, is Tyler professor in consti- trigger “imminent lawless action.” He would, I imagine, recall some well- tutional law. He is the author of The Dynamic writes, “I think we should be able to pun- known words of Justice Holmes, whose Constitution: An Introduction to Ameri- ish speech that urges terrorist violence to pithy observations he repeatedly quotes can Constitutional Law (2004). an audience some of whose members are with clear approbation. Holmes famously ready to act on the urging.” wrote that “[g]eneral principles do not Editor’s note: Anthony Lewis is an incorporator But how, I wonder, is the case of terror- decide concrete cases” and that “[t]he life and former director of Harvard Magazine Inc. ists’ speech today any di≠erent in principle from cases involving past advocacy of lawless violence in the 1920s or the 1950s? It is true, of course, that both the public Solar Sculptor and the judiciaries of those eras overesti- mated the threat that violence would ac- Michael Kapetan’s sundials don’t do “clock time.” tually occur. And the danger that speech CARA FEINBERG will actually spur violent action may be by greater now than it was before. But we cannot know today how great the threat n the front lawn of the of red granite markers 10 feet from its cen- actually is—nor could those of earlier U.S. vice-presidential resi- tral stone. eras know with certainty how the future dence in Washington, D.C., But for designer Michael R. Kapetan ’69, would unfold. Thus the questions: Is less than 150 yards from the a sculptor and teacher at the University of there really a di≠erence of principle Onation’s most precise clock, sits another Michigan School of Art and Design, keep- among the cases? And if so, what is the type of timepiece. Its measurements are ing exact time has little to do with his art. governing principle? approximate, its hour hands are absent, “We are all too caught up in clock time,” he Perhaps self-evidently, these are the ques- its polished granite time markers are use- says from his converted one-car-garage stu- tions of a law professor who craves a general less when the sky is overcast. It can’t tick dio in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “I coined the theory that would explain why some kinds o≠ nanoseconds like the atomic Master term ‘solar sculpture’ to get away from the of speech should be on the protected and Clock at the neighboring U.S. Naval Ob- traditional garden artifacts that mark the others on the unprotected side of the First servatory; the sundial’s hour hand appears hours, and get to a broader idea of art that Amendment line. Given this craving, I can- only as a shadow cast toward the crescent addresses the sun, the seasons, and time.”

30 May - June 2008 MONTAGE Hewn in stone, steel, and concrete, Kapetan’s solar sculptures are original artistic visions, he says, “arranged accord- Kpjo!Vt ing to the laws of nature.” Carefully aligned by solar observations to the rota- bu!uiftf!dpnjoh!fwfout! tional axis of the earth, or “true north,” gps!uif!Gsjfoet!pg!Ibswbse!Nbhb{jof and precisely calibrated for latitude (the vice-presidential sundial’s alignment was Nbz!26ui! conﬁrmed by a naval o∞cer and an as- B!qfsgpsnbodf!pg!Dbsefojp-!b!ofx!njetvnnfs!dpnfez!pg!mpwf! tronomer brought in by Kapetan), his creations keep accurate solar time by mea- Ñ!cbtfe!po!b!mptu!qmbz!cz!Xjmmjbn!Tiblftqfbsf/!B!ubml!cz!! suring, in shadows, the apparent motion dp.qmbzxsjhiu!Tufqifo!Hsffocmbuu-!Dphbo!Vojwfstjuz!Qspgfttps!! of the sun. (With no adjustments for lon- bu!Ibswbse!Vojwfstjuz-!xjmm!qsfdfef!uijt!xpsme!qsfnjfsf/ gitude, however, his dials can depart from BNFSJDBO!SFQFSUPSZ!UIFBUSF-!DBNCSJEHF standard 24-hour clock time by an hour on a daily basis, or as many as two during daylight savings time, depending on the Nbz!32tu sculptures’ locations.) B!sfdfqujpo!boe!cppl!tjhojoh!xjui!Ofx!Zpsl!Ujnft!! His solar structures have twice nfusp!sfqpsufs!Kfoojgfs!9/!Mff!Ö::-!bvuips!pg!! taken the form of unconventional giant Uif!Gpsuvof!Dppljf!Dispojdmft;!Bewfouvsft!jo!uif!Xpsme!pg!Dijoftf!Gppe/ IBSWBSE!DMVC!PG!OFX!ZPSL!DJUZ

Gps!npsf!jogpsnbujpo!bcpvu!uif!Gsjfoet!pg!Ibswbse!Nbhb{jof-!qmfbtf!dpoubdu! Gfmfdjb!Dbsufs!bu!728.5:7.77:5!ps!wjtju!vt!bu!ibswbsenbhb{jof/dpn0gsjfoet

This seasonal sundial sundials like the at the Emerson vice president’s, School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, works only where a person at high noon on a standing on the solstice or equinox. ﬂat central stone, not the work itself, becomes the “gnomon,” or shadow caster. But Kapetan has also explored other timepiece formats. For more than two decades, at an elementary school in Michigan, students have gathered around his nearly seven-foot-tall, stainless-steel, I-beam-like sculpture on the solstices and equinoxes to witness the ﬂeeting moment when a ray of sunlight shines through one of its three elliptical apertures and appears on the appropri-

Photographs courtesy of Michael Kapetan Harvard Magazine 31 MONTAGE sixth in progress; his wood and stone liturgical work—a 10-foot-wide tree of life carved in relief on a synagogue wall, a child’s-height chiseled sculpture of Saint Thomas à Becket in a Catholic church, two nine-foot-wide altar doors adorned with sheaves of wheat and life-size doves in an Eastern Orthodox sanctuary—are among 40 commissions displayed in 34 churches and synagogues across the country, including the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In 1994, Kapetan spent a year as the cathedral’s artist in residence and, as luck would have it, he worked around the corner from the vice-presidential residence, then occupied by his former college roommate, Albert Gore Jr. ’69, LL.D. ’94. On a visit to the residence, Kapetan and the Gores discussed the idea of a front-lawn ate ground target as a bright white disk. The vice-presiden- sundial; three years later Kapetan Kapetan’s sundial fascination began, he tial, analemmatic installed the work. sundial above says, with a television special he watched requires a human “Without a person in it, the as a teenager about the prehistoric site gnomon to work. [vice-presidential] sundial re- Stonehenge, in England. “It wasn’t a sculp- Kapetan calls the verts to being an alluring con- equatorial sundial ture, temple, or observatory, yet it was a at right his most catenation of form—an intrinsi- strange combination of all three,” he ex- traditional. cally beautiful arrangement that plains, still reverent as he describes the can hold its own alongside any early timepiece decades later. “I am struck the University of man-made object,” Kapetan says, by the beauty of scientiﬁc instruments, Michigan in 1978, he describing the sculpture’s arc of and preoccupied with the connections pursued a career creating both abstract hour markers. “However, when one steps among science, art, and spirituality.” and liturgical sculpture. Although his into its embrace, it comes alive like no The son of a precision grinder in the solar timepieces are among his most im- other kind of sculpture and tells you not aerospace industry, Kapetan grew up tin- pressive works, his commissions for them only where, but when, you stand.” kering in his dad’s workshop in Wayne, are sparse in comparison to his liturgical Michigan, and after earning an art history carvings. To date, he’s completed four Cara Feinberg is the senior writer for Boston degree from Harvard and an M.F.A. from sundials in two states, with a ﬁfth and College Magazine.

Michael Comenetz asks if the “…where were you?” (March- phrase “Galloping Gordon,” some- April). Neil Averitt cited Job 38:4 times applied to British prime Chapter & Verse (“Where wast thou when I laid minister Gordon Brown, origi- Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words the foundations of the earth?”). nated with the line from a 1950s But half-remembered poems can advertising jingle for Cheerios: trick the memory.The query’s ref- “Galloping Gordon sets the pace.” Daniel Greenfield requests a source for erence to Mark van Doren prompted M. J. “carving nature at her joints”—referring Porter to send in “Farewell and Thanksgiv- Nat Kuhn would like to know who said to accurate scientific understanding of the ing,” a brief van Doren work in which the or wrote, "The task of the Christian is to mechanism of normal and abnormal bio- fourth line of 10 reads, “You were always hold opposites in the heart until the Third logical events and the anatomy and struc- there….” Porter characterized the sugges- Thing comes." He recalls hearing the ture of biological entities. tion as “Close, but no cigar,” but it turned statement in the early 1980s, when it was out to be the poem our reader sought. attributed to a female theologian. Michelle Coughlin seeks the author of a short poem beginning “Wentworth, sure/ Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter David Keyes asks for the source of t’was some stranger” and ending “Scorched and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware “Mathematics is the music of the mind. by a fever / he refined his breath, /and paid Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to Music is the mathematics of the soul.” that stated/ homage unto death.” [email protected].

32 May - June 2008 HARVARD MAGAZINE’S CommencementCommencementHARVARD MAGAZINE’S && ReunionReunion GUIDEGUIDE 20082008

• On the Career Carousel • “All the world’s a school...” • Sunday Indulgences • Commencement Calendar

A Reunion of One’s Own Connecting in the digital age • by Ellen Reeves

hen i arrived at Har- no cell phones or voice mail; “text” was checking each other out on MySpace.com vard in 1979, one of the still something you read, not something or hi5.com. They are already “friends” campus wonders was the you did. with their roommates and their room- Science Center, shaped, Fast-forward 29 years. The Science mates’ “friends” on facebook.com—a “so- Waccording to legend, like a Polaroid Land Center still stands, but its innards have cial utility” in the terminology of today’s camera. Imagine: a camera that produced innovated; now it is wireless, as are all the technology. Once on campus, they can use pictures on the spot—memories captured dorms and Houses. Freshmen enter with H-Link, a Web application that connects instantly, in color even! In the basement laptops, cell phones, and an fas.harvard their courses and classmates with their lived the Main Frame and its terminals; address; many sport iPhones and Black- Facebook accounts. Thanks to Facebook’s techno-geeks trekked across campus to berrys. There is no need to wait for the inventor, Mark Zuckerberg (who might use them, while the rest of us wrote our Freshman Register: most students have con- have commenced with his class of 2006 term papers on typewriters. There were nected virtually even before they arrive, mates had he not followed in Bill Gates’s

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 32A

Reprinted from Harvard Mag azine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 COMMENCEMENT & REUNION GUIDE

Ellen Reeves, secretary of the class of 1983, paid a pre-twenty-ﬁfth- reunion visit to the Yard in March.

understand this behavior to be atypical; my sister Caroline ’84 is more representative. I had to sign her up for her own fifth reunion, which she had no intention of attending. I paid for her registration, I ordered her sweatshirt, and I even made her fly back from China. She had a surprisingly good time, and went on to serve on her own twentieth-reunion committee. But for those who can’t or won’t leave home for Cambridge, the virtues of the vir- footsteps and dropped out), Harvard stu- rain, without being trampled by parents tual are many. Harvard at Home (www.at- dents these days are all connected—at desperate for a glimpse of their child’s home.harvard.edu) “brings the best of Har- least technologically—for life. $180,000 head. You can tour the campus vard to you”; courses like Michael Sandel’s By my fifteenth and twentieth reun- virtually—even using the Wikipedia link celebrated “Justice” are now being o≠ered ions, technology had caught up with our to discover all the people who ever lived in on line; Crimson Compass (http://post.har- class: we had a reunion website and e- your freshman room—and impress your vard.edu/alumni/html/crimsoncompass.- mail had replaced “snail mail.” But in this, family without buying a lot of expensive shtml) is Harvard’s on-line career network- our twenty-fifth-reunion year, we under- plane tickets. Camped in front of your ing service. Without waiting five years for a went a technological makeover. Class-re- computer, it doesn’t matter what you reunion, you can connect immediately with port entries could be submitted on line; wear, where you sit, or with whom. You like-minded alumni, thanks to the Harvard we had our own blog. When a Class of can avoid the trophy wives, the genius Alumni Association’s Shared Interest Groups 1983 Reunion Facebook group sprang up, children, and the humble Pulitzer and (SIGs), class websites, and list servers within 24 hours I had dozens of “friends” Nobel Prize winners. You will not risk (www.haa.harvard.edu). You can reach out and began catching up with people I had- being remembered for things you aren’t with ease across classes and Houses, geo- n’t talked to for years. I saw pictures of anymore. When you think about it that graphical barriers and time zones. them, their partners, and their pets. I way, who would ever go back? The emotional obligations of on-line found out that one of my roommates was I would. I have never missed a reunion. friendships are fewer; it’s a circumscribed divorced, one had gone blonde, another But I should admit that I am the class sec- relationship. “Reunions used to be an event gray. I knew what they were reading, retary, the one who, for some reason, be- but now they’re an environment,” notes where they were traveling, what music lieved as a senior that I wanted to help writer R.D. Rosen ’71. “You don’t just para- they liked now. People I hadn’t thought connect classmates to each other and to chute in and it’s over. You can almost not about since graduation found me on line Harvard for life. Since graduation, I have show up and have a better time. There’s a and said hello. I was having a reunion, and served on every reunion committee, all of tacit understanding that you’re not it was only February. my local Harvard Club boards, and count- strangers but you’re not friends. You don’t I began to wonder: in the digital age, do less Harvard and Radcli≠e Alumni Asso- have to feel rude or regret that you have to we need real reunions? Why bother com- ciation committees. I helped form a Rad- tear yourself away from a conversation: ing back to Cambridge at all? You can cli≠e Shared Interest Group when the with e-mail you just stop; no hard feelings.” watch Commencement on screen, with- Radcli≠e Alumnae Association disap- Given the convenience of 24-hour-a- out su≠ering in the blazing sun or pouring peared along with Radcli≠e College. I day, year-round, virtual connections, why

32B May - June 2008 Photograph by Fred Field

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Reprinted from Harvard Mag azine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Southgate at COMMENCEMENT & REUNION GUIDE Shrewsbury life is a narrative, Continuing Care Most of us return to reconnect— subject to analy- Retirement Community sis. Revisiting to be together, and to rewrite or your life through the people who reconfirm our internal narratives. once populated it, who may see do thousands of alumni still ﬂock back to you more clearly than members of your campus each year? Some return enthusi- own family, is a privilege. At a recent re- astically, others reluctantly, convinced union, several classmates told me things only by a close friend willing to be a secu- they remembered about me—and I didn’t rity blanket. They come to wear lobster recall any of them. The story of my life be- bibs, to shake hands with the president, came a little clearer to me.” to recapture the intellectual exhilaration While the wonders of the Web abound, of old times. Some come to spouse- or there is simply no substitute for partaking job-hunt, or to show o≠ their new or in person of the best the University has to well-preserved physiques, Rogaine o≠er as it struts its stu≠ for you on a glori- -FTTUIBOIPVSGSPN#PTUPOt manes, burgeoning bank accounts, and ous June day. “Facebook and other social 4FBUUIFBUSFt)FBMUIDMVCt*OEPPS o≠spring. This year, some may be drawn, networking sites have revolutionized the TXJNNJOHQPPMt'PVSMBOFCPXMJOH no doubt, by the presence of J.K. Rowling, notion of ‘connecting,’” a∞rms Nancy BMMFZt8PPEXPSLJOHTIPQt'JOF who has created a universe at least as Sinsabaugh ’76, M.B.A. ’78, chair of the BOEDBTVBMEJOJOH'PSBCSPDIVSF compelling as cyberspace. HAA’s Classes and Reunions Committee. QMFBTFDBMM But most of us return to reconnect—to “But nothing will ever replace the thrill of be together, the way we used to be, and to walking into the Yard, running into a 30 Julio Drive, Shrewsbury, MA 01545 rewrite or reconﬁrm our internal narra- classmate you haven’t seen in decades, and www. southgateatshrewsbury.com tives. Rosen, who coined the term psycho- giving them a hug and feeling the years babble, considers it “a moral imperative” to melt away so that you feel, once again, like connect with his former self and to inter- a student at Harvard.” act with “witnesses” to his past. “I feel— Physical reunions have spawned socially maybe because I’m a writer—that your productive encounters in all senses of the

Retirement Community Assisted Living Crimson Digital Alumni associations everywhere are jumping on the virtual bandwagon. A recent What Do Harvard Alumni “webinar” on “Understanding the On-Line Social Medium” for development profes- Have in Common? sionals bears this out: the agenda included overviews of how Facebook, MySpace, Flickr,YouTube, LinkedIn,Wiki, blogs, and other social-networking and media-sharing Cadbury Commons websites can enhance the alumni experience. “Without technology, personal and An Uncommon Senior Residence professional alumni networking would not have taken off so dramatically nor spanned the globe so effectively as we see today,” says Sally Williams-Allen, M.A.T. ’65, a Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) adviser and the former director of alumni The Harvard alumni who relations at the international business school INSEAD, who is now a global consul- chose Cadbury Commons tant in alumni engagement and international community-building. And virtual con- may have retired from nection becomes increasingly important as Harvard’s student and alumni bodies be- work, but not from life. The come more international. difference is people–those Philip Lovejoy, deputy executive director of the HAA, says the redesigned post.har- who live here and the vard.edu site, to be rolled out in 2009,“takes the best features of the best social-net- staff that serves them. Our working sites and applies them to the alumni experience... so you can interact with and connect to the Harvard communities you choose: a class, SIG [shared interest programs will engage your group], Club, region, graduate school.What’s radically different is that you’ll be able interests, our professional to customize the way you relate to your classmates, fellow alumni, and the Univer- staff is sensitive to your needs. sity.” Alumni can have personalized home pages with a calendar of local Harvard events, their alumni contacts, and their choice of photographs. Reunion sites will be Call (617) 868-0575 to arrange a personal tour, or visit www.cadburycommons.com revamped; instead of static lists of who’s coming and who’s waffling, alumni will be able to click on names and pictures and convince old friends to come back. 66 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 • (617)868-0575

32D May - June 2008

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Anyone can give advice about investing. We suggest investing in advice.

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word. When Dan Rothstein ’77 spoke at a mon: on our reunion committee alone, are a place of possibility, where the rules twenty-fifth-reunion symposium about Marianne Delpo Kulow met her husband, of daily interaction are temporarily sus- the idea of microdemocracy—bringing David Kulow, at our fifteenth reunion, and pended, where the unpredictable and more low-income citizens into the demo- cochair Tony Hollenberg met his wife, Judy unexpected reign. There are brief yet in- cratic mainstream and into the voting Levenfeld, serving on our fifth-reunion tense encounters with people you may booth—several audience members took committee. “I am happy to say that I never see again: the depth and immedi- action. Melissa Berman, of Rockefeller would have not met my wife via Face- acy of the bond arising from knowing Philanthropy Advisors, put him in touch book. I would not have stood up to the each other over time and place a long with an interested funder, and other class- two-dimensional scrutiny,” quips Hollen- time ago, an instant intimacy created out mates hosted events to spread the idea. At berg. “The technology connections are of context. our fifteenth reunion, when I thought to great at providing a good opening act for a Cyberspace is an interesting place, but introduce two doctor friends—an en- reunion, but let’s hope we are still inter- I remain a fan of the pheromone, thanks esting enough to E.O. Wilson. I want to come back to Reunions are a place of possibility, to make the campus and dance with the guys I danced real reunions with, and those I didn’t. I want to be at where the rules of daily interaction the place to Pinocchio’s with friends, telling the truth be.” to each other late into the night. This are temporarily suspended... Would Tony time I will bring my digital camera, but I and Judy have also want the immediate gratification of docrinologist and a neurobiologist—they met on a conference call? I think not. I moments captured and developed on the discovered overlapping research interests feel reunions exist in a sacred space like spot—in color even. and ended up writing a paper together. Delphi, as classics professor Gregory (They were the only two guys I knew who Nagy would say, where mystical and im- Ellen Gordon Reeves ’83, Ed.M ’86, is a teacher, worked with transgenic mice.) portant things happen if only you make writer, and editor based on the East Coast and in Romantic connections are also com- the journey and the sacrifice. Reunions Paris.

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32F May - June 2008

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 COMMENCEMENT & REUNION GUIDE

On the Career Carousel College students prepare for life after graduation • by Paul Gleason

Mary Ellen Stebbins sits under the lights in the New College Theatre. ployees are also eager to land newly minted graduates: their hiring rose by 12 percent. In general, most Har- vard seniors (55 to 65 percent) during the last decade have expected to work at a job soon after leaving the College, although a quarter of the class enrolls in graduate or professional schools instead, according to annual surveys conducted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The balance of young alumni report that they plan to do volunteer work, travel, join the military—or ary ellen stebbins ’08 less of her chosen field. According to admit they don’t quite know what’s next. studied classics and linguis- Philip Gardner, director of the Collegiate Last year, the Crimson probed more tics for four years in college, Employment Research Institute at Michi- deeply, asking the class of 2007 where they but what she enjoyed most gan State University, the job market for would work. Fifty-five percent of seniors Mwas designing lighting for plays. In her se- new college graduates, which dipped responded. Of those, 58 percent of the nior year she decided to turn that hobby alarmingly after the dot-com bust in 2001, men, and 43 percent of the women, re- into a career, and applied for an intern- has grown steadily since. Even this year, ported plans to enter the financial world, ship at Harvard’s American Repertory amid fears of a recession, Gardner’s an- gravitating toward high-paying jobs with Theatre, and to the master’s program in nual survey found that companies were investment banks or consulting firms. lighting design at Boston University planning to hire 7 percent more new (The respondents based their answers on (BU). But, she hastens to add, eventually graduates this year than last. “The real plans, not definite work o≠ers.) she plans to pursue a doctoral degree in thing that’s keeping the college labor Undergraduates seeking those jobs archaeology. And oh, she’d also like to market above water is retirement,” he don’t have to travel very far; the O∞ce of work with kids. “I’m not the kind of per- says. Companies are scrambling to hire Career Services (OCS) orchestrates the son who doesn’t know what she wants to and train new workers before the baby visits of around 250 companies to Cam- do,” she protests. “I just happen to want boomers exit the workforce. Firms with bridge each year. Although the recruiters to do too many things.” more than 3,900 employees are doing the represent a total of 25 industries, the ma- The good news for Stebbins and other bulk of the hiring, with plans to take on 9 jority are from financial giants like Bank Harvard seniors is that she will have percent more bachelor’s-degree-holders of America and consulting firms like ample opportunities to explore, regard- in 2008. Firms with fewer than 100 em- McKinsey & Company. The big-name

Photographs by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 32G

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firms line up to woo seniors as early as the first day of classes. “The whole recruiting process started the moment we stepped on campus this year,” says Josh Reilly ’08. His interest in This finance began at an early age, and at Har- vard he joined radio station WHRB’s sales and business teams, becoming the head of both departments by the end of summer, his sophomore year. He has spent the last two years selling on-air advertising to Boston musical groups and preparing financial statements for the station’s Harvard board of trustees. OCS’s recruiting program was the next logical step. Employ- Join a vibrant community of motivated students ers gave presentations early in Septem- and distinguished faculty at Harvard Summer School. ber and held meet-and-greets. Reilly then applied for jobs at the firms of his • 8– and 4–week sessions choice through an on-line intermediary, • Courses on campus and online experience.com. (Had he wished, he • Programs for high school and college students, and adults could have entered the recruitment program during his junior or even sopho- HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL more year; banks frequently take on www.summer.harvard.edu scores of summer interns, many of whom they eventually hire.) The whole process moved quickly. By the middle of October he was sitting in a small room in Harvard Square waiting, along with a dozen of his classmates, for his interviews. “There were people stu≠ed in there like a fish tank,” he recalls. “It’s a little nerve-racking.” The next week, three companies bought him plane tickets to New York City, and a fourth flew him to Chicago. Each New York firm put him through four additional interviews. At William Blair & Company, the Chicago investment bank, he endured eight interviews in a single morning. “That was brutal,” he says. “That was intense. I remember doing the first four and feeling like I’d got through it, then remembering I had to do it all over again.” The grueling e≠ort paid o≠, though, when the company o≠ered him a job as a corporate financial analyst in early No- vember. He took the o≠er because he believed that William Blair, as a smaller firm, would entrust him with more responsibility and o≠er more chances to work directly with clients than the larger banks in New York. His quick decision made his senior year easier. “It took a lot of the pressure o≠,” he admits. “I got to relax a bit. I’ve been able to think about what kind of apartment I want to get.”

32H May - June 2008

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Vice President GAIL ROBERTS 1730 Massachusetts Ave & TEAM Cambridge, MA 02138 617 245-4044

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Reprinted from Harvard Mag azine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 news postings ness (DICA) in February. STOP member to undergradu- Dhaval Chadha ’08 and others were ini- ates as well as tially skeptical that OCS would want to members. help them, but were happily surprised. “In OCS doesn’t some ways they saved the event during the have to go out in last weeks,” Chadha says: OCS provided search of suitors funding, sta≠, advertising, and even from the finan- helped corral a few last-minute panelists cial world. “They when some of the confirmed participants find us,” reports backed out. The event included discus- Lisa Bloomberg Wright-Swadel. sions on education, media and the arts, combined her love of literature and medicine in a Goldman Sachs, science and technology, government, and thesis on Henry James. for example, is public health. There was also an informal one of the top career fair, where students could hear In other popular fields, the Crimson sur- recruiters on campus, measured by the about how to break into fields without vey found, more women than men (14 number of students it eventually hires. obvious career paths. “DICA is trying to percent to 8 percent) planned to work in More interesting, perhaps, is that the reach out and say, ‘Hey! This is what it education, and the proportion was even nonprofit Teach for America is also takes in these sectors. No one’s going to more skewed between women and men among the most successful recruiters on come and chase you,’” explains Chadha. (9 percent to 3 percent) planning to work campus. It, too, has a recruiting engine: Guests included representatives from the in government or public service. teachers return to campuses across the Boston Medical Center, the William J. country to meet and enlist new members. Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative, Whatever Harvard seniors want to do, Unfortunately, most of “the public-ser- and Project Hip-Hop, a civil-rights group. OCS aims to help them. Director Bill vice world doesn’t work that way at all,” Wright-Swadel notes that there are 16 says Wright-Swadel. “They hire people at Among those seniors who choose to sta≠ members who provide some form of point of need.” But because his o∞ce continue their schooling, the Crimson sur- career counseling, along with workshops hosts so many financial firms, he says he vey revealed that medical school was the throughout the year on résumé writing constantly battles the perception that most popular option, claiming 21 percent and interviewing skills. They schedule OCS is “too corporate.” of respondents. Another 20 percent around 500 half-hour appointments a To counteract this, he tries to o≠er stu- planned to pursue doctoral programs; month, and the counselors with special dents a more diverse array of options master’s programs and law school came expertise in such areas as business, medi- through 15 specialized e-mail lists—cov- next, with 18 percent and 17 percent, re- cine, and public service hold weekly ering the arts, international opportunities, spectively. Bringing up the rear was busi- drop-in hours to advise students inter- education, and media, among other ness school, which attracted 4 percent of ested in those fields. OCS also e-mails fields—that detail everything from job graduate school-bound seniors. (Business student subscribers a biweekly newslet- postings to conferences. OCS also part- schools typically expect candidates to ter with information on forthcoming nered with the student-run group STOP have a few years of real-world experience events, and reminders about recruiting (Students Taking on Poverty) to host a before applying.) and fellowship deadlines. conference on Diversity in Career Aware- Uncertainty about life after graduation The o∞ce actively promotes the Har- vard Alumni Association’s Crimson Com- Josh Reilly pass, a University-wide networking sys- takes a breather from selling ads tem with a database of around 15,000 and preparing alumni profiles; undergraduates looking financial for a mentor can search by state, city, job statements for WHRB. title, employer, specialty, or industry. Some of the HAA’s “shared interest groups” (SIGs; alumni organizations based on a∞nities, rather than graduating class, geographic proximity, or Harvard club membership) can also be used as career networks. Harvardwood (harvardwood.com), for example, a group of alumni with jobs in the entertainment industry, o≠ers summer internships and workshops, career counseling, and job and

32J May - June 2008

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Extension School Harvard University

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can continue into the second senior semester. In late February, Lisa Bloomberg ’08 still didn’t know which medical school she’d be attending in the fall, even though she had begun the application process—sending out her transcripts, test scores, and personal statements to 16 schools—last August. Bloomberg knew throughout her college career that she would eventually wind up in medicine, but she decided to concentrate in English. “These are the two things I want to be doing,” she says. “It’s been restrictive, but not in a frustrating way.” She even briefly considered At Brookhaven shelving medical school and doing academic research instead. “But the more I lifecare living is as good as it looks. thought about it, the more I wanted an Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for active career,” she explains. “I’m more in- intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents terested in people, specifically, than in ab- share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. stract research.” She ultimately found ways to marry these potentially distant Call today for a tour of our model apartment and newly renovated Commons! fields: her thesis focused on sick women, A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community nurses, and doctors in Henry James’s www.aboutbrookhaven.org mammoth late novel The Wings of the Dove. (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 Its due date (March 14) inconveniently fell during the same week she had interviews with medical schools at the Univer- Designers and Manufacturers of Quality Custom Homes sity of Minnesota and the University of Trusted Legacy:60 Years Experience – 20,000 Homes Chicago-Illinois. Of the 2007 graduates who planned to work right after school, half did not have a job at the time of the Crimson’s early June survey. That may be fairly typical, but for Mary Ellen Stebbins, waiting to hear from ACORN HOMES graduate programs, it was hard to keep that fact in mind. “Even though it feels like Versatile Contemporary Comfort everyone around me has already decided— it feels like I’m the only one on the non- plan plan—it’s not really true,” she says. She’ll have plenty of company if she ends up at BU or the American Repertory The- atre: some 21 percent of last year’s seniors DECK HOUSE said they planned to stay in the Boston area, according to the Crimson survey. New Natural Living Spaces York City was the intended destination of more than a quarter of the class; Washing- ton, D.C., was also a big draw—and 8 percent of the respondents said they were heading west to San Francisco. For Lisa Bloomberg, who was waiting to hear from Harvard Medical School, Modern Lifestyle Designs staying put in Cambridge wouldn’t be a bad option, either. “Much like under- SM 800.727.3325 by INTERNATIONAL grad,” she says, “if Harvard decided to say www.EmpyreanInt.com Sustainable Home Building Systems yes to me, it would be hard to say no.”

32L May - June 2008

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This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm, This Harvard Part Three

All the world’s a school, It’s Earth and Planetary Sciences, And all the men and women merely students; And whether we shall save our global home, They have their passes and their failures, too. This borrowed wonder. The last field of all, And one mind in its time takes many classes, That ends this strange eventful course of study: Its concentrations being seven. Literature Philosophy, or Folklore and Mythology, Comes first, a storybook upon a mother’s lap. When final graduation brings reunion. Then Mathematics, measuring the day, The janitor comes in, turns out the lights, Numbering friends and adding up the inches. Ends dreams, ends tests, ends thoughts, ends everything. Chemistry next comes, with love reactions alison carey And drugs that speed the heart.Then Social Studies, Where Economics, History, Anthropology, For her twenty-fifth reunion last year, playwright Alison Carey ’82 And Government combine to make adults. devised this variant of the famous speech from act ii, scene 7, of Next is Biology, when reproduction As You Like It as part of a trilogy of Harvard-specific adaptations Might make us kids and parents both, between, of Shakespearean excerpts. Classmate Courtney B. Vance performed And, oh, the bodies change.The sixth, not chosen, the entire work at the Class of 1982 Entertainment Night, on the Instead is a requirement for us. evening of Commencement day.

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Harvard Magazine 32M

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Join the Harvard Club of Boston. For over a century,we’ve kept the Harvard spirit alive for alumni in town and throughout the world. Here’s what our members are doing today:

The world’s leading experts on every Where else in Boston can you imaginable subject visit us to share get together after work with your their ideas and answer our questions. friends and classmates? Our two Harvard President Drew Faust spoke Boston clubhouses are conveniently with us in March. Tom Brokaw located, newly renovated, and both visited in December. Many other have on-site parking. After all, distinguished guests stop by for Harvard isn’t just about academics, dinner gatherings, large and small. and neither are we.

The Harvard Club’s experienced When we say we’re your home culinary staff is among the best in away from home, we mean it. Our Boston. Our casual and fine dining Main Clubhouse features more than programs have helped us earn 40 overnight guest rooms, as warm “Platinum Club of America” and welcoming as any you’ll find in status as one of the country’s town, with reasonable rates for our finest private clubs. members and their guests.

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Sunday Indulgences Brunch, as you like it

erhaps what you in 2006 for brunch “with a require on a Sunday rambunctious brood,” noting morning is dim light that “your kids will find and hushed voices, plenty of pint-sized company Pbut you’ll get over it. If what at this brunch extravaganza, you want instead is a sense of where children under five eat gaiety, festivity, and well- free and the six-to-twelve set being, go to an establishment gets half o≠.” whose stated mission is to A larger-than-life sculpture provide these things, and of Henrietta herself—a jolly which does so amply: go to pig—greets you at the en- brunch at UpStairs on the trance. You’ll find oysters on Square (91 Winthrop Street, the half shell and shrimp; Cambridge; 617-864-1933; salmon and other smoked www.upstairsonthesquare.- fishes; cheeses, pâtés, and com; 10 a.m.-3 p.m.). You order terrines; a roast meat of the o≠ the menu: perhaps that day; hot fish, meat, and poul- standby of brunches, eggs try entrées with side dishes; Benedict, here with pancetta omelettes; wa±es; and vari- and tarragon hollandaise ous desserts. ($14), perhaps tagliatelle The restaurant bustles. You with “crab fondue,” toma- may alternatively take your toes, brioche, and hollandaise nourishment outdoors, in the ($18). And by all means, have hotel courtyard under um- a mimosa. That will help. brellas on Henrietta’s Porch. Formerly UpStairs at the Lauded as well for “best Pudding, this cheerful enter- brunch” in recent years by prise now occupies what was several protectors of the pub- once the Pi Eta, an all-male lic tastebuds is that longtime social club. The restaurant’s solid citizen of local dining, décor is exuberantly whimsi- Harvest (44 Brattle Street, cal, and many patrons get a Cambridge; 617-868-2255; charge out of the look of the www.harvestcambridge.com; place, but you can eat your 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.). “The brunch alfresco if you prefer Outside at UpStairs on the Square brunch spot of choice for and nature smiles. Winthrop Cambridge cognoscenti,” de- Street has recently been given to pedestri- fixed in my mind at age 19, so how inter- clared Travel & Leisure. The interior of the ans and sidewalk diners during most esting to see them at 45!” restaurant is done in earth tones with pas- hours of the day. If you or yours have stomachs of the bot- toral art, soothing and elegant on a Sun- “We always have the Harvard Kroko- tomless-pit variety, you could do no better day morning. The Garden Terrace out- diloes come around 1 p.m. to sing to our than to go to Henrietta’s Table (One Ben- doors, shaded by linden trees, is agreeable brunch guests, and we have done so for 26 nett Street, Cambridge, in the Charles on a fine day. The menu is a three-course, years,” says co-owner Mary-Catherine Hotel; 617-661-5005; www.henriettas- prix-fixe a≠air at $33. Among the appetiz- Diebel. “In fact, it was fun to have all of table.com; noon-3 p.m.) for an all-you-can- ers is a tasty goat-cheese tart. Entrées them come to brunch at their sixtieth an- eat bu≠et ($42 per adult). Boston Magazine range from poached eggs and corned-beef niversary two years ago. They’re always designated Henrietta’s as “Best of Boston” hash to a grilled shrimp BLT club. For

Photograph courtesy of UpStairs on the Square Harvard Magazine 32O

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dessert, have a Key lime semifreddo (a word legalseafoods.com; 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.) for a round grill, where the grill master cooks you know; you are a cognoscente), or per- lobster, goat cheese, and chive omelette them for you. At brunch, management haps a fruit cobbler. A brunch very worth ($17.95), washed down with a “Legal Red augments the usual market with break- your while. Tide,” a bloody mary made with tequila fast items to go into oversized omelettes Ah, but you are visiting Cambridge from and a cocktail shrimp ($7.75). You may eat or gigantic pancakes. The process has en- an interior homeland and crave New Eng- outdoors and wave at the folks on Henri- tertainment value, and if the result of land seafood from a noted source. Go back etta’s Porch across the courtyard. your selections disappoints you, you have to the Charles Hotel courtyard and find a Casablanca (40 Brattle Street, Cam- mostly yourself to blame. How could you branch of Legal Sea Foods (20 University bridge; 617-876-0999; www.casablanca- have thought to put shrimp and blueber- Road, Cambridge; 617-491-9400; www.- restaurant.com; 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.) plays on ries into a pancake? The price is right: and on, with its Humphrey Bogart & Co. $13.95 for unlimited trips to the grill. The Garden Terrace at Harvest eponymous décor and very good food, often of a Mediterranean persuasion. Venturing outside the halo of Harvard How about scrambled eggs with the Square, you might choose Changsho (1712 flavorful cured meat called basturma ($11)? Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, a bit Or flat bread with roast pears and blue beyond the Law School; 617-547-6565; cheese ($11)? Or grilled shrimp and fried www.lotuscuisine.com; 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.) plantains ($13)? Or duck hash ($13)? for a popular bu≠et featuring dim sum (all For an improvisational brunch, step you can eat for $17.95). Changsho is large around the corner to FiRE+iCE (50 and attractive, and the TV show Phantom Church Street, Cambridge; 617-547-9007; Gourmet has designated it “incredibly www.fire-ice.com; 10 a.m.-2 p.m.). The clean”—in fact, brags Changsho, “the modus operandi here is to go to the cleanest restaurant in Massachusetts.” If restaurant’s “market,” select ingredients you crave dim sum in vast variety, involv-

HARVEST you desire, and take them to a large, ing steamed chicken feet, head to Boston’s Locke-Ober T radition The only way to make graduating from Harvard more memorable, is to share your joy with others Boston over spectacular French food. Reservations for lunch and dinner now being accepted 8 Holyoke St., Cambridge MA t (617) 497-5300

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32P May - June 2008

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Chinatown, to the China Pearl Restau- find, of course, the www.fourseasons. Henrietta’s Table awaits. rant (9 Tyler Street, Boston; 617-426-4338) “Inferno,” a combust- com; 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.) and expect crowds, a long wait, noise, ing bloody mary, as serves a breakfast communal tables, and satisfaction. well as a three-course bu≠et that costs $38 If you seek good food and a≠ordability prix-fixe menu ($20). for adults and $19 for in simple surroundings, go for longtime fa- The hotel is on the children 3 to 12. You’ll vorite S & S Restaurant in Inman Square, Charles River, and find eggs and bacon less than a mile from Harvard Square (1334 Dante’s patio a≠ords certainly, as well as Cambridge Street, Cambridge; 617-354- pleasant views of the smoked seafood, sal- 0777; www.sandsrestaurant.com; both Boston skyline. ads, fresh fruit, and Saturday and Sunday, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.). The Of the multitude cheeses. A luncheon extensive brunch menu lets you comfort of brunch spots menu of light fare yourself with a deli specialty (matzo ball across the river in is also available. The soup, $4.95), or put on the dog (petit filet Boston, here are two HENRIETTA’S TABLE clam chowder is a mignon with poached eggs on potato pan- to consider. At Tremont 647 (647 delicious indictment of most chowders cakes topped with hollandaise, with fresh Tremont Street, in Boston’s playful South dished up in New England, which are li- fruit, a bagel, and cream cheese, $12.95), End; 617-266-4600; www.tremont647.com; brary paste. Both you and your stomach washed down with a spot of Veuve Clic- 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m.), management encourages will feel very well treated in this gracious quot ($47.95 a bottle). There’s a takeout patrons to come in their pajamas. (Other place. The big ground-floor windows menu as well. S&S has been in business garb is permitted.) Brunch is à la carte, look out on the verdant Public Garden for almost 90 years—by doing plenty right with such delicacies as “Too Stinky and, at its edge, a statue of the patrician and being friendly about it. Cheeses” ($12), with black-tru±e honey, Wendell Phillips, A.B. 1831, LL.B. 1834, the Many of the items on the S&S menu are jams and jellies, and toast. great orator, abolitionist, and temperance also available at jazz club Ryles (212 The Bristol (200 Boylston Street, in the fighter. He might not have had a mimosa Hampshire Street, Cambridge; 617-876- Four Seasons Hotel, Boston; 617-338-4400; with his brunch. c.r. 9330; www.rylesjazz.com; 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m.). Under S&S ownership, Ryles serves brunch and live jazz for those who like their quiche Lorraine ($9.95) with tunes. You can jazz up your tastebuds with a raw oyster swimming in a bloody-mary shot at the nearby East Coast Grill and Raw Bar (1271 Cambridge Street, Cam- bridge; 617-491-6568; www.eastcoast- grill.net; 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), co-owned by chef and cookbook writer Chris Schlesinger. The place takes Inman Square south of the border. “Amilcar’s” omelette comes packed with avocado, black beans, cheese, and salsa ($8.75), and even the French toast is cornbread crusted ($8.75). Watch out for the banana stu≠ed with smoked pork and homemade “Inner Beauty Hot Sauce” ($6). Muy caliente!!! Do not give to unsupervised children. For a first-rate bu≠et at The Blue Room Leavitt & Peirce (One Kendall Square, Cambridge; 617-494- 9034; www.theblueroom.net), you must Harvard College recap- John Harvard Bookends. book either the 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. seating. The tured in this famous Ter- Antiqued brass over zinc. 7” h x tab is $23 for anyone over 12, $12 for others. centenary map by Edwin J. 4”w x 6”d. Over 5 pounds each. The fare ranges from eggs to octopus salad. Schruers ’28. Painstakingly $150.00 per statuette (plus reproduced on quality $7.00 S&H), $295.00 per You could feast on the desserts alone. “antique” stock (33 5/8” pair (plus $10.00 S&H). At Restaurant Dante (in the Sonesta x 24 1/4”). $39.95 (plus U.S.A. – made and Hotel, 40 Edwin H. Land Boulevard, $7.00 S&H), unframed. exclusively designed for Leavitt & Peirce. Cambridge; 617-497-4200; www.restau- a.m. p.m. rantdante.com; 11 -2 ), you will 1316 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138 • 617-547-0576

Harvard Magazine 32Q

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The Events of the Week

Kennedy School Class Day Awards Ceremony, 1-4. Kennedy Forum. Senior Class Family Dinner and Party, at 6. Reservations and tickets required. Next to the Palmer Dixon Courts. Harvard Extension School Alumni Banquet, cocktail reception at 6; dinner and program at 7. Reservations required. Quincy House.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4 50th Reunion Memorial Service, 9:30 in Memorial Church, followed by class picture, at 11:15, Widener steps. ROTC Commissioning Ceremony, at 11. Speaker to be announced. Ter- centenary Theatre.

STU ROSNER Senior Class Day Luncheon, at noon. Res- he many rituals of graduation TUESDAY, JUNE 3 ervations required. The Old Yard. peak on Commencement day, which 50th Reunion Symposiums. At 10, “Allston Divinity School Luncheon, 12-1:30, with Tthis year includes addresses by Presi- Initiative and Harvard Architecture”; at keynote address by Dean William A. Gra- dent Drew Faust and by Harry Potter’s 1:30, “Societal Change and Climate Change”; ham. Andover Lawn. creator, J.K. Rowling. For details and up- at 3:15, “The Longest Revolution: The Girls 50th Reunion Symposiums. At 1:30, dates, visit www.harvardmagazine.com or We Left Behind and the Women We Be- “Journalism and the Public Interest”; at 3:15, www.commencemento∞ce.harvard.edu. came—Lessons for Our Granddaughters.” “Educating Physicians, Educating Pa- Science Center B. tients.” Sanders Theatre. MONDAY, JUNE 2 Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises, at 11, Senior Class Day Exercises, at 2, with 50th Reunion Symposiums. At 1:30, “Un- with physicist and Nobel laureate Steven the Harvard and Ivy Orations and a guest dergraduate Life”; at 3:15, “University Gov- Weinberg as orator, and poet Carl Phillips. speaker to be announced. Tercentenary ernance.” Sanders Theatre. Sanders Theatre. Theatre. 50th Reunion Dinner, at 6, with re- 50th Reunion Lunch, at noon. Science Kennedy School Commencement Ad- marks by President Drew Faust and dean Center tent. dress, at 2, by Liberian president Ellen of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael Baccalaureate Service for the Class of Johnson Sirleaf, M.P.A. ’71. Kennedy Forum. D. Smith. Murr Center. 2008 and their families, at 2. Tercentenary Law School Class Day, 2:30, with Harvard Kennedy School Class of 2008 Theatre, followed by senior class picture, speaker Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, Picnic, 4-7. HKS courtyard. at 4, Widener steps. New Jersey. Holmes Field.

32R May - June 2002

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Business School Class Day Ceremony, 50th Reunion Cocktails and Dinner, tion required. Tosteson Medical Education 2:30, with speaker Ann S. Moore, M.B.A. 6:15. Beren Tennis Center. Center. ’78, chairman and CEO of Time Inc., fol- 35th Reunion Welcome Cocktails and Medical School Class of 1983 Reunion lowed by a reception at 4. Baker Lawn. Dinner, 6:30. Winthrop House Courtyard. Symposium, 9-noon. “Twenty-five Years— Masters’ Receptions (time varies by 25th Reunion Welcome Pub Night, at 7. Medicine and Service: Then and Now.” House) for members of the senior class and Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub. Tosteson Medical Center. guests. The Undergraduate Houses. Harvard University Band, Harvard The 357th Commencement Exercises, Graduate School of Design Class Day Glee Club, and Radcli≠e Choral Society 9:45. Tercentenary Theatre. Speaker, at 4, reception to follow. Speaker Concert, at 8. Free and open to the public. Divinity School Diploma Ceremonies to be announced. Gund Hall. Tercentenary Theatre. at noon. Memorial Church. Lunch at 1, An- dover Lawn. THURSDAY, JUNE 5 Business School Luncheon, 11:30, for COMMENCEMENT DAY graduates and their guests. Tickets re- Yard Gates open at 6:45. quired. Shad Auditorium and tent. Law School Breakfast, at 7. Jarvis Field Senior Luncheon and Diploma Cer- tent. emonies, 11:30. The Undergraduate Houses. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences The General Alumni Spread, 11:30. Tick- Breakfast, at 7. Lawn behind Perkins Hall. ets required. The Old Yard. Senior Chapel Service, at 8. Memorial The Tree Spread, for College classes of Church. 1918-1957, 11:30. Alumni are guests of the Academic and Alumni Procession, 8:30. College; all others must reserve a ticket. The Old Yard. Holden Quadrangle. Medical School Faculty Symposiums, Law School Luncheon and Diploma 9-4:30. “Neurodegenerative Disease: New Ceremony, 11:30. Holmes Field.

JIM HARRISON Developments and New Hopes.” Registra- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

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Ph.D. Diploma Ceremony, 11:45, in Sanders Business School Diploma Ceremony, Theatre, followed by champagne reception 12:30. Baker Lawn. and luncheon on the lawn behind Perkins Extension School Diploma Ceremony Hall. at noon. Loeb Drama Center. Kennedy School Diploma Ceremony, at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 12:15, followed by luncheon. By ticket only. Master’s Diploma Ceremony, 1:15, Science JFK Park. Center Lecture Hall C, followed by cham-

Graduate School of Design Diploma pagne reception and luncheon on the lawn JIM HARRISON Ceremony, at noon. A luncheon follows. behind Perkins Hall. Medical and Dental Schools Class Day Gund Hall. Alumni Parade, 1:45. The Old Yard, in Ceremony, at 2, with speaker Jeffrey Flier, Graduate School of Education Diploma front of Harvard Hall. dean of the Faculty of Medicine. HMS Ceremony, 12:30-2. Radcli≠e Yard. The Annual Meeting of the Harvard Quadrangle. Alumni Association, 2:30, with Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus An- speeches by President Drew Faust nual Commencement Dinner. Cocktails at and J.K. Rowling. Tercentenary The- 5, followed by dinner and guest speaker atre. Brian Graden, M.B.A. ’89, president of En- Business School Reception for tertainment, MTV Networks Music graduates and guests, 3-4:30. Shad Group, and Logo, MTV’s LGBT network. Auditorium tent. Lowell House. Reservations required for School of Public Health Diploma the dinner. For further details, visit Ceremony, 2:30. Academic proces- http://hglc.org/dinner.html. sion, followed by an address by Harvey V. Fineberg, president of FRIDAY, JUNE 6 the Institute of Medicine. Kresge 35th Reunion Symposiums. At 8:30,

JIM HARRISON Courtyard. “Game Theory”; at 10:15, “Health: How to

Congratulations Seniors! BENJAMIN EISLER MEGAN MERRITT Congratulations, Benny, on your graduation from Harvard! Congratulations! This is a wonderful achievement. We are so very proud of you! You bring sunshine and joy to all of those around you. Keep following We are extremely proud of your success. your heart and may all your dreams come true. Now get a job!

Love, Mom, Dad, Kim, Anya, Lucci, Love, and Grandmas and Grandpas. Mom, Dad, Kelly, Christopher, and Katie

JENNIFER Q. WONG BRITTNY-JADE SAUNDERS Congratulations, Britt! Congratulations, Passion, motivation, hard work. on your graduation from Harvard! With these, you accomplished your dream. We are proud of your successful achievement! Now you will help others achieve theirs. We wish you a wonderful life! Enjoy your success! We are very proud of you! Love and Happiness, Love always, Mom, Dad, and Grandparents Mom, Dad, & Krista

32T November - December 2000

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D.P.H. ’75, president of Amicus Inc. Har- vard Dental School.

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 Dental School Alumni Weekend Sym- posium, Luncheon, and Awards Cere- mony, 11:30. “Tooth and Bone—Gone Today, Here Again Tomorrow.” Harvard Dental School. 25th Reunion Memorial Service, at 11, in Memorial Church, followed by class picture, at noon, Widener steps.

For updates on Harvard reunions and events for graduating seniors, contact the

STU ROSNER Harvard Alumni Association, 124 Mount Live to 100.” Location to be announced. Second Annual Harvardwood Reunion Auburn Street, 6th floor, Cambridge 02138, 25th Reunion Symposiums, at 9. “Sav- Mixer, 2-5. Alumni, faculty, and staff in at 617-495-2555; [email protected]; or ing the Earth by Our Thirtieth Reunion: arts, media, and entertainment are invited www.haa.harvard.edu. What We Must Do To Stop Global to mingle at Tommy Doyle’s, Cambridge. To For information on Radcli≠e reunions, Warming”; “News and Entertainment: R.S.V.P., call 617-864-0655 or visit www.- visit www.radcliffe.edu/alumnae/45.aspx, Drawing the Line”; “Searching for Well- harvardwood.org. call the HAA at 617-496-5301; or e-mail ness: Exploring the Frontiers of Physical 25th Reunion Symposiums and Life [email protected]. and Personal Well-Being in the 21st Cen- Dialogues, at 2. “Protecting Our Future: For Medical Area symposiums and tury.” Science Center. Changing the Lives of a Generation at other events, visit www.hms.harvard.- Radcli≠e Commemorative Service, at 9. Risk.” Science Center. edu/alumni/events_week.html, or contact Karen Klein ’58 leads the service; Ellen 35th Reunion Memorial Service, 2:30, in Anne Benware at 617-384-8519/20 or Gordon Reeves ’83, Ed.M. ’85, is the Memorial Church, followed by the class [email protected]. speaker. Memorial Church. picture, at 4, Widener steps. The Harvard Information Center, Holy- Medical School Alumni Day, 9-12. The Dental School Celebration Dinner, 6:30. oke Center, is open every day but Sunday, 9 HMS Alumni Association’s annual meet- With speaker Jack Silversin, D.M.D. ’72, to 5. Telephone: 617-495-1573. ing is followed by a presentation on “Practical Issues in Medical Ethics.” HMS Quad- A Special Notice Regarding Commencement Exercises rangle. Thursday, June 5, 2008 Radcli≠e Awards Sympo- sium, 10:15-12:30. “What Are the Morning Exercises Challenges, Risks, and Obliga- To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the fol- tions for Women in 2008 and Be- lowing guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning: • Degree candidates will receive a limited number of tickets to Commencement. Parents and guests of degree yond?” with alumnae panelists. candidates must have tickets, which they will be required to show at the gates in order to enter Tercentenary With presentation of Distin- Theatre. Seating capacity is limited; however, there is standing room on the Widener steps and at the rear and guished Service Awards, Alum- sides of the Theatre for viewing the exercises. nae Recognition Awards, the Note: A ticket allows admission into the Theatre, but does not guarantee a seat. The sale of Commencement Graduate Society Medal, and the tickets is prohibited. • Alumni/ae attending their major reunions (25th, 35th, 50th) will receive tickets at their reunions. Alumni/ae in Jane Rainie Opel ’50 Young classes beyond the 50th may obtain tickets from the Classes and Reunions O∞ce, 124 Mount Auburn Street, sixth Alumna Award. Loeb Drama floor, Cambridge. Center. • For alumni/ae from non-major reunion years and their spouses, there is televised viewing of the Morning Ex- Radcli≠e Institute Annual ercises in the Science Center, and at designated locations in most of the undergraduate Houses and professional schools. These locations provide ample seating, and tickets are not required. Luncheon, 12:45, with an ad- • A very limited supply of tickets will be made available to all other alumni/ae on a first-come, first-served dress by Donna E. Shalala, presi- basis through the Harvard Alumni Association, 124 Mount Auburn Street, sixth floor, Cambridge 02138. dent of the University of Miami, Afternoon Exercises former U.S. Secretary of Health The Harvard Alumni Association’s Annual Meeting convenes in Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement after- and Human Services, and win- noon. All alumni and alumnae, faculty, students, parents, and guests are invited to attend and hear President Drew ner of the 2008 Radcliffe Insti- Faust and the Commencement Speaker, J.K. Rowling, deliver their addresses. Tickets for the afternoon ceremony tute Medal. Registration re- will be available through the Harvard Alumni Association, 124 Mount Auburn Street, sixth floor, Cambridge 02138. quired. Radcli≠e Yard. Jacqueline A. O’Neill, University Marshal

32V May - June 2008

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Site Seeing What’s up, what’s down, and what’s under construction

names in time.) Which has a fairer claim to the current name? The science building was begun first, and is by far the larger. But techni- cally, the Law School’s entry is farther northwest. In an argument, the legal eagle could best you on a technicality like that. Best not to argue with a lawyer. The Northwest Science Build- ing, with about 210,000 square feet of above-ground space (and another 260,000 square feet below, plus additional room for a deep parking garage) contains academic space for 30 faculty scientists and their laboratories, techni- cians, students, post-doctoral fellows, and administrative sta≠s. Not including faculty and students, there will be about 320 other people working there. The space was designed by an experienced hand, Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill- San Francisco, who consulted on the plans with neighbors on Ham- mond Street and to the north to pace. The final frontiers—the last corner of the Law School cam- The Northwest ensure that the transition from major developable parcels owned pus. But if you ask a biophysi- Science Building campus to residential streetscapes was designed by Harvard in Cambridge—will cist waiting eagerly for the to foster inter- would be a pleasing one for all soon have new buildings on them completion of her wet lab disciplinary concerned. In fact, the original de- Swith all manner of space for faculty and space, she will reply that the collaboration sign included low structures that among 30 sta≠ members and students. Soon Harvard Northwest Building lies on researchers, ran parallel to Hammond Street, will look to a future in Allston. Site work Hammond Street at the inter- their laborato- forming an enclosed courtyard. has already begun across the river for the section of Oxford Street, in the ries, and staffs. The neighbors understood, but largest building Harvard has ever put up. block just north of the Harvard said, “Open the space to us, so we What follows is a guide to the construc- Museum of Natural History. don’t feel walled out.” Hartman turned tion underway on frontiers old and new. Both your well-meaning guides would and reconfigured the building. Lighted In Cambridge, if you ask to see the be right. To distinguish between the two, walkways now connect the neighborhood Northwest Building, you may be directed explains a helpful philologist on his way to what will become a green open space to one of two projects. If you query a legal to Widener Library, you must be specific: designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh As- eagle outside Langdell Hall, he will tell the Northwest Corner Building is at the sociates, the noted landscape architecture you about a vast new edifice rising at the Law School; the other is called the North- firm that guided the replanting of Harvard intersection of Massachusetts Avenue west Science Building. (Perhaps generous Yard more than a decade ago. Soon neigh- and Everett Street, at the northwesterly donors will lend them more distinctive bors and occupants alike will traverse

32X May - June 2008

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open spaces that once were bounded by a courage the formation of interdisciplinary Below grade, the place The brick-and- high metal fence topped with barbed- clusters of related research groups. Neuro- will hum with activ- glass Northwest Science Building wire, a legacy of the Cold War era when scientists like Joshua Sanes and Je≠ Licht- ity of a di≠erent sort. wends its way Harvard’s cyclotron represented cutting- man are expected to move in; but there An electrical substa- among existing edge atomic physics. will also be astro- and particle- and bio- tion will be located structures along Hammond In addition to laboratories, some con- physicists—the place will fairly ﬁzz with there, and a chilled- and Oxford ﬁgured especially for teaching, the North- them. Engineers and applied physicists water plant will pro- streets. west Science Building will have class- will work with molecular and cellular bi- vide cooling capabil- rooms and seminar rooms and collection ologists on problems in areas such as tis- ity to surrounding buildings. space. No single department will move sue engineering, biological imaging (see In early April, the temporary yet im- there. The interior space is designed to en- page 40), and biomechanical devices. posingly tall fences that had been erected

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Left: Pre-work has begun for the science complex in Allston, where the Harvard Stem Cell Institute will eventually be housed. ments into position prior to construction above grade. Last year’s demolition of the Everett Street parking garage was accomplished with elegant precision. Jets of water had arced across the site, directed at the dust that would otherwise have choked the scene. From a huge, crawling machine emerged a boom tipped with an enormous metal pick. One couldn’t help but be reminded of a bad day at the den- tist as it pecked discerningly at the drip- ping tangle of exposed rebar and concrete. Now the site is level and clear, the pain in the jaw has passed, and one may erect in the mind’s eye a building that will be as venerable as it is fresh from the day it three years ago to mitigate the e≠ects of washed. Signs of growth and renewal opens. That is a specialty of the architect construction on the neighborhood began were everywhere. Robert A. M. Stern, who also designed the to come down. Trees appeared. Inside, But what of the other northwest build- Business School’s Spangler Student Cen- workmen put the ﬁnal interior touches in ing? There, north of the law school’s ter. This one, at 250,000 square feet in size, place, installing lights, applying paint, Pound Hall, cranes dominate the land- will have classrooms as well as space for and laying ﬂoors. Windows were being scape, placing massive load-bearing ele- student activity and recreation, and a cen-

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32Z May - June 2008

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The largest of the many buildings that there is nowhere left to go but down when make up the project, clad in red brick and building in Cambridge. glass, was designed by Kyu Sung Woo Ar- That is true of Allston, too, where a new chitects, and overlooks Memorial Drive science complex of four buildings is about and the river. Here again, Michael Van Cranes dominate the future site of the Law Valkenburgh Associates are providing School’s Northwest Corner Building. landscape design. An adjacent park, once leased to a garden center, came about as the result of negotiations with neighbors, who valued the open space at that location. Three smaller, wood-frame buildings were designed by Elkus/Manfredi Architects, LTD. They are also the design- Two views of the ter for clinical legal ers of six wood-frame build- Kyu Sung Woo- programs, the fertile ings on Grant Street, and one designed graduate- student housing educational ground on Cowperthwaite, built to now rising on where theory and de-emphasize the scale of an Memorial Drive practice meet. adjacent brick-and-glass Meanwhile, down apartment house that went by the Charles River, 300 units of new up on the site of a surface housing (with 500 beds), primarily for parking lot. Now the parking graduate students, are nearing completion. is underground. Increasingly

Shepley Bulﬁnch Richardson & Abbott Architecture / Planning / Interiors / Est. 1874 / www.sbra.com

Shepley Bulfinch designing sustainably for Harvard University

The Gallatin Hall renovation is targeting LEED certification at the Gold level

Harvard Magazine 32AA

Reprinted from Harvard Mag azine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 COMMENCEMENT & REUNION GUIDE

to rise above an underground parking garage with perhaps 600 or more spaces. The building, designed by Behnisch Architects, and a million square feet in all, will be green—not in hue, but in terms of energy consumption and waste (see “An Allston Metamorphosis?” No- vember-December 2006, page 66). Plan- ners have considered all kinds of modern engineering to make it as energy e∞cent as possible: a black, solar chimney to suck warm air from the building on sunny days in summer, and an all-season geothermal heating and cooling system. On one site across the Charles, a geothermal well designed for fresh water served up brine.

Over 45 years of service to Harvard University

465 Medford Street Boston, MA 02129 HaleyAldrich.com Harvard engineers A new wood- have found that the ge- frame building on Cowper- ology of the area is thwaite Street not so well understood softens the as they once thought. proﬁle of a six- story brick-and- On one site across the glass apartment Charles, a geothermal complex. well more than 600 feet deep, designed for fresh water, served up brine. Not a happy outcome from the standpoint of corrosion, but valuable infor-

©Alan Karchmer/Esto mation that Allston planners will no doubt Leers Weinzapfel Associates put to use many times in the decades ahead Architects of the New College Theatre as they build a new campus—perhaps 10

75 Kneeland Street www.lwa-architects.com million square feet, and counting. Boston, MA 02111 t: 617.423.5711

32AB May - June 2008

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ,*.$/!, , !%%*+1'-*+$ *.*$-%&!++'!,!'&

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t is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five an epithet in Washington since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the chance of bursting into flames and burning down your “R-word” supports a booming market in tangible consumer house. But it is possible to refinance your home with a goods. Nearly every product sold in America has passed basic mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting safety regulations well in advance of being put on store your family out on the street—and the mortgage won’t shelves—but credit products are regulated by a tattered patch- even carry a disclosure of that fact. Similarly, it’s impossi- work of federal and state laws that have failed to adapt to chang- Ible for the seller to change the price on a toaster once you have pur- ing markets. Moreover, thanks to e≠ective regulation, innovation chased it. But long after the credit-card slip has been signed, your in the market for physical products has led to more safety and credit-card company can triple the price of the credit you used to cutting-edge features—but innovation in financial products has finance your purchase, even if you meet all the credit terms. Why produced incomprehensible terms and sharp practices that have are consumers safe when they purchase tangible products with left families at the mercy of those who write the contracts. cash, but left at the mercy of their creditors when they sign up for Sometimes consumer trust in a creditor is well placed. Credit routine financial products like mortgages and credit cards? has provided real value for millions of households, permitting the The di≠erence between the two mar- purchase of homes that can add to fam- kets is regulation. Although considered by ELIZABETH WARREN ily wealth accumulation and cars that

34 May - June 2008 Illustrations by David Plunkert can expand job opportunities. Credit can also provide a critical feel about their inability to pay their bills? In 2005, the National safety net, a chance for a family to borrow against a better to- Opinion Research Council asked families about negative life morrow when they confront layo≠s or medical problems today. events: the death of a child and being forced to live on the street Life insurance and annuities also can greatly enhance a family’s or in a shelter topped the list, but filing for bankruptcy ranked security. Consumers may not spend hours poring over the details close behind, more serious than the death of a close friend or sep- of their credit-card terms or understand every paper they sign at arating from a spouse. Of those who file for bankruptcy, 85 per- a real-estate closing, but many of those financial products are cent struggle to hide the fact from families, friends, or neighbors. o≠ered on fair terms that benefit both seller and customer. Why do people get into debt in the first place? People know But for a growing number of families steered into over-priced that credit cards are dangerous, all the more so if they carry a bal- credit products and misleading insurance plans, trust in a credi- ance. Any consumer who signed mortgage papers without read- tor proves costly. And for families tangled up with truly danger- ing carefully or seeking legal assistance should not be surprised if ous financial products, the result can be wiped-out savings, lost terms come to light later that are unfavorable to the consumer. homes, costlier car insurance, job rejections, troubled marriages, Payday lenders have a bad reputation for taking advantage of peo- bleak retirements, and broken lives. ple; no one should expect to be well treated by them. Car lenders, Consumers entering the market to buy financial products should check-cashing outlets, overdraft protection—the point can be re- enjoy the same protection as those buying household appliances. peated again and again: Financial products are dangerous, and Just as the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) protects any consumer who is not careful is inviting trouble. And yet, dan- buyers of goods and supports a competitive market, a new regula- gerous or not, millions of Americans engage in billions of credit tory agency is needed to protect consumers who use financial transactions adding up to trillions of dollars every year. products. The time has come to recognize that regulation can often support and advance e∞cient and more dynamic markets. SETTING THE SNARE Some americans claim that their neighbors are drowning in AN EPIDEMIC OF CREDIT PROBLEMS debt because they are heedless of the risk—and there can be no Americans are drowning in debt. One in every four fami- doubt that some portion of the credit crisis is the result of fool- lies reports worries about how to pay credit-card bills this ishness and profligacy. But that is not the whole story. Lenders month. Nearly half of all credit-card holders missed payments in have deliberately built tricks and traps into some credit products 2006 (the latest year for which data are available), and an addi- so they can ensnare families in a cycle of high-cost debt. tional 2.1 million families missed at least one mortgage payment. Creating safer marketplaces is about making certain that the In 2006, a then-record 1.3 million families received foreclosure products themselves don’t become the source of trouble. This notices, followed by another 2.2 million families who were in means that terms hidden in the fine print or obscured with in- foreclosure in 2007. comprehensible language, reservation of all power to the seller Families’ troubles are compounded by substantial changes in with nothing left for the buyer, and similar tricks have no place the credit market that have made debt far riskier for consumers in a well-functioning market. today than a generation ago. The e≠ective deregulation of interest How did financial products get so dangerous? Part of the prob- rates, coupled with innovations in credit charges—including lem is that disclosure has become a way to obfuscate rather than teaser rates, negative amortization, increased use of fees, cross- to inform. In the early 1980s, the typical credit-card contract was default clauses, and penalty interest rates—have turned ordinary a page long; by the early 2000s, that contract had grown to more credit transactions into devilishly complex undertakings. Aggres- than 30 pages of incomprehensible text. The additional language sive marketing compounds the di∞culty, shaping consumer de- was designed in large part to add unexpected—and unreadable— mand in unexpected and costly directions. Yet consumers’ time language that favors the card companies. Mortgage-loan docu- and expertise have not expanded to meet the demands of a ments, payday-loan papers, car-loan terms, and other lending changing credit marketplace. Instead, consumers sign on to credit products are often equally incomprehensible. And this is not the products with only a vague understanding of the terms. subjective claim of consumer advocates. In a recent memo aimed Credit cards o≠er a glimpse at the costs imposed by a rapidly at bank executives, the vice president of the consulting firm Booz growing credit industry. In 2006, for example, Americans turned Allen Hamilton observed that most bank products are “too com- over $89 billion in fees, interest payments, added costs on pur- plex for the average consumer to understand.” chases, and other charges associated with their credit cards. Creditors sometimes explain away their long contracts with the That is $89 billion out of the pockets of ordinary middle-class claim that they need to protect themselves from litigation. This ig- families, people with jobs, kids in school, and groceries to buy. nores the fact that creditors have found many other e≠ective ways That is also $89 billion that didn’t go to new cars, new shoes, or to insulate themselves from liability. Arbitration clauses, for exam- any other goods or services. To be sure, the money kept plenty of ple, may look benign to the customer, but their point is often to bank employees working full time, and it helped make debt col- permit the lender to escape the reach of class-action lawsuits. This lection one of the fastest-growing occupations in the economy. means the lender can break the law, but if the amounts at stake are Not all costs associated with debt are measured in dollars. small, few customers would ever bother to sue. Anxiety and shame have become constant companions for Ameri- Legal protection is only a small part of the proliferating ver- cans struggling with debt. Since 2000, families have filed nearly 10 biage. For those willing to wade through terms like “LIBOR” and million petitions for bankruptcy. Today about one in every seven “Cash Equivalent Transactions,” lenders have built in enough families is dealing with a debt collector. Mortgage foreclosures surprises in some credit contracts that even successful e≠orts to and credit defaults sweep in millions more families. How do they understand and assess risk will still be erased. For example, after

Harvard Magazine 35 those who were sold ruinous subprime mortgages would have qualified for prime-rate loans. A study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development revealed that one in nine middle-income families (and one in 14 upper-income families) who re- financed a mortgage ended up with a high-fee, high-interest, subprime loan. Of course, YSPs are not confined to subprime mortgages. Pushing a family that qualifies for a 6.5 percent loan into a higher-cost loan and pocketing the di≠erence will cost the family tens of thousands of dollars—but it will not show up in anyone’s statistics on subprime lending. Other creditors have their own techniques for fleecing borrowers. Payday lenders o≠er consumers a friendly hand when they are short of cash. But buried back in a page of dis- 47 lines of text explaining how interest rates will be calculated, closures for one lender (rather than on the fee page, where the one prominent credit-card company concludes, “We reserve the customer might expect to see it) was the note that the interest right to change the terms at any time for any reason.” Evidently, rate on the loan was 485.450 percent. In transactions recently all that convoluted language was there only to obscure the bot- documented by the Center on Responsible Lending, a $300 loan tom line: The company will charge whatever it wants. In e≠ect, cost one family $2,700, while another borrowed $400, paid back lenders won’t be bound by any term or price that becomes incon- $3,000, and was being hounded by the payday lender for $1,200 venient for them, but they will expect their customers to be per month when they gave up and filed for bankruptcy. In total, bound by whatever terms the lenders want to enforce—and to the cost to American families of payday lending is estimated to have the courts back them up. be $4.2 billion a year. The Department of Defense identified pay- Even worse, consumers wary of creditor tricks may look for day lending as such a serious problem for those in military ser- help, only to rush headlong into the waiting arms of someone vice that it noted that the industry “impaired military readi- else who will fleece them—and then hand them over to the cred- ness.” Congress has now banned all companies from charging itors for further fleecing. For example, consumers may respond military people more than 36 percent interest, while leaving all to advertisements for “a friend to help you find the best possible other families subject to the same predatory practices. mortgage,” “someone on your side,” and “access to thousands of For some, Shakespeare’s injunction “Neither a borrower nor a mortgages with a single phone call—do all your comparison lender be” seems to be good policy. But no one advocates that shopping here.” When they call a mortgage broker, they may be- people who don’t want their homes burned down should stay lieve he or she will provide wise advice to guide them through a away from toasters, or that those who don’t want their fingers dangerous thicket—and some brokers do just that. But con- and toes cut o≠ should give up mowing the lawn. To say that sumers are just as likely to encounter brokers who are working credit markets should follow a caveat emptor model is to ignore only for themselves, taking what amounts to a bribe from a mort- the success of the consumer-goods market—and the pain inflict- gage company to steer a family into a high-cost teaser-rate mort- ed by dangerous credit products. gage, for example, rather than a 6.5 percent fixed-rate, 30-year Indeed, the pain imposed by a dangerous credit product is mortgage—because the broker can pocket a fee (a “yield service even more insidious than that inflicted by a malfunctioning premium,” or YSP) from the company to place the higher-priced kitchen appliance. Wealthy families can ignore the traps associ- loan. High YSPs helped drive the wild selling that led to the ated with credit-card debt: their savings will protect them from meltdown in the subprime mortgage market. medical expenses that exceed their insurance coverage or the Despite the characterization of YSPs by one Fannie Mae Foun- e≠ects of an unexpected car repair. Working- and middle-class dation vice president as “lender kickbacks,” Congress and the families are far less insulated. For those closer to the economic regulatory agencies have generally approved of these fees under margin, a credit card with an interest rate that unexpectedly es- pressure from the mortgage-broker industry. In fact, mortgage calates to 29.99 percent or misplaced trust in a broker who rec- brokers face few regulatory restrictions—a critical problem given ommends a high-priced mortgage can trigger a downward eco- that they originate more than half of all mortgage loans, particu- nomic spiral from which a family may never recover. larly at the low end of the credit market. (YSPs are present in 85 percent to 90 percent of subprime mortgages, implying that bro- INSUFFICIENT REMEDIES kers needlessly push clients into more expensive products.) The Credit transactions have in fact been regulated by statute costs are staggering: Fannie Mae estimates that fully 50 percent of or common law since the founding of the Republic. Traditionally

36 May - June 2008 states bore the primary responsibility for protecting their citi- the most basic e≠orts are blocked from becoming law. A decade zens from unscrupulous lenders, imposing usury caps and other ago, for example, mortgage-lender abuses were rare. Today, ex- credit regulations on all companies doing business locally. Al- perts estimate that fraud and deception stripped $9.1 billion in though states still play some role, particularly in the regulation equity from homeowners, particularly from elderly and working- of real-estate transactions, their primary tool—interest-rate reg- class families, even before the subprime crisis got into full swing. ulation—has been e≠ectively destroyed by federal legislation. A few hardy souls have repeatedly introduced legislation to halt Today, any lender that gets a federal bank charter can locate its such practices, but those bills never make it out of committee. operations in a state with high usury rates (e.g., South Dakota or Even after a change in control of Congress in 2006, e≠orts to rein Delaware) and then export that state’s interest-rate caps (or no in lenders have made little headway. caps at all) to customers located all over the country. As a result, Beyond Congress, some regulation of financial products oc- and with no public debate, interest rates have been e≠ectively curs indirectly through the Federal Reserve Board, the O∞ce of deregulated across the country. In April 2007, the Supreme Court the Comptroller of the Currency, and the O∞ce of Thrift Super- took another step in the same direction in Watters v. Wachovia, giv- vision—each of which has some power to control certain forms of predatory lending. But their main mis- Today, experts estimate that fraud and sion is to protect the stability of banks and other financial institutions, not to deception stripped $9.1 billion in equity protect consumers. As a result, they focus intently on bank profitability, and far less from homeowners even before the subprime on the financial impact on customers of many of the products the banks sell. crisis got into full swing. The regulatory jumble creates another problem: consumer financial products are ing federal regulators the power to shut down state e≠orts to regulated based principally on the identity of the issuer, not on the regulate mortgage lenders—without providing e≠ective federal nature of the product. The subprime-mortgage market provides a regulation in turn. stunning example of the resulting fractured oversight. In 2006, Local laws su≠er from another problem. As lenders have con- for example, 23 percent of such mortgages were issued by regu- solidated and credit markets have become national, a plethora of lated thrifts and banks, and another 25 percent by bank holding state regulations drives up costs for lenders, forcing them to in- companies (subject to di≠erent federal oversight)—but 52 per- clude repetitive disclosures and meaningless exceptions even as it cent originated with companies with no federal supervision at also leaves regulatory gaps. During the 1970s and early 1980s, for all, primarily stand-alone mortgage brokers and finance compa- example, Congress moved the regulation of some aspects of con- nies. This division also triggers a kind of regulatory arbitrage. sumer credit from the state to the federal level through a series of Regulators are acutely aware that if they push financial institu- landmark bills that included Truth-in-Lending (TIL), Fair Credit tions too hard, those firms will simply reincorporate in another Reporting, and anti-discrimination regulations. These statutes form under the umbrella of a di≠erent regulatory agency—or tend to be highly specific: TIL specifies the information that must none at all. Indeed, in recent years a number of credit unions be revealed in a credit transaction, including the size of the type- have dissolved and reincorporated as state or national banks, face that must be used and how interest rates must be stated. But precisely to fit under a regulatory (please turn to page 94) the specificity of these laws works against their e≠ectiveness, in- hibiting some beneficial innovations (e.g., new ways of informing consumers) while failing to regulate dangerous innovations (e.g., no discussion of negative amortization). What’s more, these generation-old regulations completely miss most of the new features of credit products such as universal default (increasing interest rates even when customers are meeting all the terms of their credit agreements) and double- cycle billing (charging interest on money that was repaid). Any e≠ort to increase or reform regulation of financial products is met by a powerful industry lobby that is not balanced by an equally e≠ective consumer lobby, so even VITA George Bancroft Brief life of a public historian: 1800-1891 by yonatan eyal

n mid-nineteenth-century America, George Bancroft’s ordered American forces ashore to capture California during the

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS was a household name in polite, middle-class society. Genera- Mexican War, thus “taking possession of the wilderness.” Al- tions of families purchased his multivolume History of the United though “we have got into a little war,” he euphemized, western IStates to understand the origins and trajectory of their young re- soil naturally belonged to the United States. (He also established public. With his flair for grand, triumphalist storytelling, Bancroft, what became the U.S. naval academy, to make sailors “as distin- A.B. 1817, A.M. 1818, aided his fellow citizens’ nation-building by guished for culture as they have been for gallant conduct.”) providing a comforting, usable narrative. Yet his own estrange- Meanwhile, liberal unrest in Europe vied for his attention along ment from Boston and his alma mater gave him as well a lifelong with domestic a≠airs. As he wrote several years later, “Has the outsider’s perspective on both past and contemporary politics. echo of American Democracy which you now hear from France, & The farmer’s son from Worcester, Massachusetts, joined the re- Austria & Prussia & all Old Germany, no power to stir up the gional elite by graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy and en- hearts of the American people to new achievements?” He gladly tering Harvard College at 13. There he came under the influence of accepted Polk’s o≠er of the ambassadorship to England and, dur- President John Thornton Kirkland, who encouraged him to con- ing his three years in London, secured mutual free-trade agree- tinue his studies abroad. At Kirkland’s behest, he sailed for Ger- ments, collected documents for future volumes of his History, and many in 1818 to obtain a doctorate in philology. cheered attempts to dethrone Continental monarchies in favor of The university at Göttingen opened his eyes to a world of re- republican forms of government. In 1847 he visited Paris and met search scholarship then rarely seen in Anglophone institutions, “citizen king” Louis Philippe, who shrugged o≠ signs of an im- especially in America, and once back in Boston, in 1822, he felt his pending revolution; after the 1848 uprising, Bancroft reported, “If novel degree entitled him to privileged treatment. During a two- France succeeds, there will not be a crown left in Europe in week visit to Cambridge, he lectured both Kirkland and senior twenty years, except in Russia.” People were not meant to be “the professors on German-style college reform and his right to a fac- slaves of a dynasty,” and the United States held the moral obliga- ulty position. His insulted mentors, virtually none of whom held tion to democratize the world by both deed and example. “Let the doctorates themselves, o≠ered him only a temporary lectureship. young aspirant after glory scatter the seeds of truth,” he urged. He soon resigned—Harvard was “a sick and wearisome place” When the Whig administration of Zachary Taylor turned him —and co-founded a progressive primary school in Northampton. out of o∞ce in 1849, Bancroft settled in New York and Washington In 1827, his marriage to the wealthy Sarah Dwight enabled him to and focused primarily on historical research and writing. Out of pursue an independent intellectual life, and in 1834 he released the power, he watched with horror as his subject, the United States, first volume of his monumental History. Financial freedom also left disintegrated. His argument that God had uniquely guided Amer- time for political involvement. Though courted by both Demo- ica away from turmoil and toward increasing glory su≠ered a crats and Whigs, Bancroft eventually allied himself with the for- major setback with the onset of the Civil War, and he hoped that mer, writing in his History that “our government…is necessarily “our little domestic strife is no more than a momentary distur- identified with the interests of the people.” Like most Democrats, bance.” Though he supported Lincoln’s energetic prosecution of a he hailed “the masses of mankind themselves awakening to the war for the Union (and later against slavery), he grew disillusioned knowledge and the care of their own interests.” Early campaign with northern factionalism and southern intransigence alike. failures did little to dampen his enthusiasm for politics or his Stubbornly, his optimism survived both the crisis of the Union scholarly belief in popular sovereignty as the fount of American and the corruptions of the Gilded Age. Since a±iction stood as uniqueness in the world. Neither did the opprobrium of his native the “instrument of Divine providence,” strengthening the nation Whig-dominated New England, which considered his Democra- by testing it, America’s growing pains served merely as preludes tic political loyalties a wounding betrayal. to the success he still believed forthcoming. One need only “fol- Bancroft entered national politics in 1844, canvassing vigorously low the steps by which a favoring Providence…has conducted the for Democratic presidential candidate James K. Polk. In aligning country to its present happiness and glory.” himself with the “young Democracy” theme of that campaign, he also entered the “Young America” circle, a cluster of expansionist Yonatan Eyal, Ph.D. ’05, is the author of The Young America Movement Democrats who wished to “liberate” North America and republi- and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861 (Cam- canize Old Europe. Later, as Polk’s new secretary of the navy, he bridge University Press, 2007), in which Bancroft figures.

38 May - June 2008 Above: Detail from the cover of “The Young America Schottisch” (1855), composed by Francis H. Brown. Opposite: An engraving based on a portrait of Bancroft by Gustav Richter HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Shedding Light on Life

Advances in optical microscopy reveal biological processes as they unfold.

by Courtney Humphries

he scenes are familiar from biology textbooks. A possible to see structures and events that have never before been long string of DNA is copied to form a matching seen in the context of living cells and organisms. New discoveries strand. A virus infects a cell by stealing through its are emerging at many scales of life, from the activation of a single membrane. Two white blood cells meet and confer be- gene in DNA to the development of disease in an organ. fore launching an immune attack. TIn textbooks, all these processes that are so fundamental to PUSHING MICROSCOPES FURTHER the lives of cells are typically depicted in drawings or static At the molecular scale, Xiaowei Zhuang, professor of snapshots captured by powerful electron microscopes. But that’s chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, is pushing the changing. A growing revolution in imaging is making it possible boundaries of what light microscopes can capture. A typical for biologists to watch small-scale events as they unfold in living light microscope can easily image a single cell and some internal cells and tissues. structures, but most other objects—viruses, clusters of proteins, “The human brain is vision-focused,” says professor of molecular DNA—cannot be seen in great detail. That’s because these and cellular biology Je≠ Lichtman. “If we see things, then we think smaller details lie within light’s di≠raction limit—the point at we know what they mean.” To be able finally to see events that which light waves begin to interfere with one another, blurring were known only in theory is incredibly satisfying for scientists. the image. The question of how individual molecules in cells in- Even more important, this revolution also opens up the possibility teract is fundamental in biology, but for the most part these in- of learning things about life that could never be studied before. teractions lie beyond the reach of light microscopes. Zhuang’s Ironically, the technology enabling much of this change is the lab has been working on a new “super-resolution” optical imag- same one that launched the study of modern biology centuries ing method that uses clever tricks to image objects a tenth the ago: the light or optical microscope. A congruence of factors has size possible using normal light microscopy. shuttled these instruments back into the forefront of biology in Like many new optical imaging techniques, Zhuang’s takes ad- recent years, after almost a half-century during which they were vantage of small fluorescent molecules called fluorophores to overshadowed by more powerful techniques such as electron mi- create an image. Scientists can determine the location of a single croscopy and x-ray crystallography, which are able to create im- fluorophore under a microscope with great precision, even ages on the level of single molecules. though it is much tinier than a microscope’s resolution. Light New technologies—more sophisticated imaging techniques, emitted from the molecule will produce a blurry image, but the fluorescent molecules that act as beacons of light in the cell, and center of this blur indicates where the actual molecule resides. the computing power to gather and stitch together multiple im- The problem, Zhuang says, is that in most biological contexts a ages and create videos from high-powered microscopes—make it scientist would not be imaging a lone fluorophore but many at possible to harness one of light’s key advantages: gentleness. Un- once, and if these tiny lights are too close together, resolving them like higher-resolution techniques, light microscopes can image bi- is impossible. Her solution is a technique called STORM (sto- ological structures without killing them or chemically fixing chastic reconstruction optical microscopy), first reported in 2006, them. At Harvard, the resurgence of light microscopy is making it which involves switching on only a small number of fluorophores

40 May - June 2008 Portraits by Fred Field COURTESY OF XIAOWEI ZHUANG LABORATORY Xiaowei Zhuang with a STORM microscope setup she and her team recently built. On this page and opposite, conventional immunofluorescence images (labeled A) are paired with three-dimensional STORM images (labeled B) of different intracellular structures. Opposite page: A pairing of microtubules, with details (C,D, and E) showing three different cross-sections of the boxed area in image B. Above: Microtubules (green) and clathrin-coated pits (red). The pits are indentations in a cell’s surface that mediate certain extracellular interactions. Right: Clathrin-coated pits are much clearer using the STORM technique (B). And by combining two STORM cross-sections, a single pit (B inset), can be seen in three dimensions, revealing its half-spherical, cage-like structure.

at a time, then iterating the process until the position of each spot piece of DNA or part of the cell’s inner skeleton; she says it will has been separately determined. Last August, her team was able take some work to make STORM broadly applicable for imaging to use the technique to produce multi-colored images, making it more dynamic events. “The method doesn’t just give you high res- possible to view several di≠erent types of molecules in the cell olution for free—what is sacriﬁced is speed,” she explains. and watch how they interact. More recently, her team was able to STORM uses the dimension of time to isolate di≠erent parts of an use STORM to produce three-dimensional images—essential for image and then stitch them together. Currently the technique knowing the exact location of a molecule. “We don’t live in a two- takes tens of seconds to capture a high-resolution image, whereas dimensional world,” she says. “If we want to see how molecules many cellular processes occur within seconds or fractions of sec- interact unambiguously, we have to have the third dimension.” onds. But Zhuang’s technique, despite its limitations, has gener- So far, Zhuang’s team has imaged static structures such as a ated excitement, and she has been overwhelmed with requests

Harvard Magazine 41 for collaborations. For instance, in collaboration with Catherine Dulac’s lab (in the department of molecular and cellular biology), her team is beginning a project to look at chemical communication that takes place in the synapses between nerve cells. “The synapse itself is just about the size of a di≠raction-limited spot,” Zhuang says. A closer look “really calls for higher resolution.”

ONE MOLECULE AT A TIME Zhuang tackles the resolution problem by switching on fluorophores one at a time, but professor of chemistry and chemical biology X. Sunney Xie focuses on molecules that are naturally isolated from others of their kind. He says that many questions in biology can be answered only on the level of single molecules. An example is the process of gene expression—how the DNA template of a gene is turned into messenger RNA and then into proteins. A given cell may contain only one or two copies of a given gene, and only a few copies of the messenger RNAs created from each gene. Because imaging is the best way to study singular events, it serves as the cornerstone of a growing field of “single-molecule” studies, which investigate how individual molecules and groups of molecules behave and interact. The unique features of DNA molecules are ideal for a strategy COURTESY OF JEFF LICHTMAN LABORATORY Above: Color-coded neural circuits in the brains of mice allow Jeff Lichtman (below, in his lab) to trace the fate of individual nerve cells over time and across distances. Left: Neurons compete for territory and connections. In this five-day sequence, begun on an 11-day-old mouse, yellow and blue axons compete for a red target area. Over several days, the yellow axons take over the blue axons’ territory, and the latter retract. that Xie developed Hg lamp called “detection by localization.” If a Shutter fluorescent molecule Cover slip appears only in one Condenser Growth media place, it can easily be Bacteria Temperature-controlled detected over the sample strong background Cover slip 3D translational Immersion oil stage of fluorescence that Objective PC lens

cells naturally emit, COURTESY OF GENE-WEI LI, HARVARD UNIVERSITY especially if the molecule is attached to a relatively stationary structure such as 514 nm DNA or the cell’s outer membrane. Ion laser 458-568 nm CW 568 nm Because di≠erent pieces of DNA have Shutter Prism unique sequences, Xie’s group cre- Above left: Sunney Xie combines a transmission image ates fluorescent molecules that ap- COURTESY OF YUICHI TANIGUCHI, HARVARD UNIVERSITY of bacteria (blue) with a fluorescence image of EM CCD pear only at a single spot on the molecules (yellow) binding to sites on the bacteria’s genome. Isolated, these fluorophores DNA in order to create a complete picture of the can be located more precisely. interaction. Above: A schematic of the fluorescence microscope system that Xie uses Previous single-molecule experi- ments relied on molecules taken out of cells, but Xie’s group has been imaging events related to gene they can collect images in milliseconds, creating real-time expression in live bacterial cells. For instance, his group has been movies. Although vesicles are smaller than the resolution of the able to visualize the behavior of a type of protein called a repres- microscopes he uses, Kirchhausen says it’s enough to be able to sor, which regulates gene expression. The transcription factor it- detect the presence of each one when it is lit up with fluorescent self is kept inactive by a protein called a repressor. By labeling a molecules: “We cannot see the actual shape of the object, but we repressor with fluorescence, the team could observe it binding to can see its properties—where it is, where it goes, when it forms, a unique target among vast stretches of DNA. But when they and when it disappears.” By pairing the dynamic nature of light added a chemical signal that prevents such proteins from binding microscopy with the detail of higher-resolution methods, his to DNA, they quickly dispersed into the cell. When the signal team can now answer questions that confounded them in the was removed, the repressor found its target again in about a past, such as how di≠erent chemicals or genetic alterations a≠ect minute through a process of trial and error. After proving they vesicle tra∞c. The movement of cellular cargo is fundamental for could use these tools to study singular events in the cell, Xie’s a cell’s survival and communication, but it also underlies viral in- group is applying the technique to investigate other steps in gene fections, cancer, and neurological diseases. expression, as well as DNA replication and the repair of muta- tions in the genetic code. CELLS IN CONTEXT Zooming out to the scale of cells, new imaging techniques are MOLECULES IN MOTION helping scientists see how these building blocks behave in their High-resolution microscopes are enabling scientists who natural context—within tissues in the living body. This is partic- have long studied cellular processes to put static pictures of cel- ularly important in the brain, where billions of neurons gather lular structures into motion. Tomas Kirchhausen, professor of together in an intricately connected web. It is impossible to cell biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), has for decades know how the brain works by studying neurons in a culture studied how things get in and out of cells, from viruses and bac- dish; their relationship to neighboring cells in the brain dictates teria to small molecules and hormones. This cargo, whether in- their function. truders or simply chemical signals from surrounding cells, is Je≠ Lichtman’s laboratory has developed techniques for observ- captured and taken into the cell by capsules called vesicles. ing the web of connections in the living brain and watching how Kirchhausen’s lab has performed a great deal of work to un- they change over time. Lichtman studies how connections among derstand the precise structure and function of clathrin, a protein neurons form in early life. In humans and other mammals, neu- that helps deform the cell membrane as it forms the outer coat of rons send out many branches to other cells early in the nervous vesicles. Other imaging methods yielded detailed pictures of system’s development, but then, Lichtman says, “a lot of the con- clathrin and the lattice-like coats it forms, but these were only nections that were made are pruned away.” He likens the process snapshots, he says, whereas “light microscopy allows you to to a massive competition for territory and connections among in- figure out how things are happening.” In the past few years, his dividual nerve cells. “When you have this pruning going on,” he team has begun to capture movies of vesicles as they form at the says, “many branches from di≠erent nerve cells connect to the cell membrane and capture incoming cargo, then break o≠ from same target, and then they compete with each other.” the membrane and dance into the cell interior. If every nerve cell emits the same color of fluorescence, he When they first began collecting images, Kirchhausen and his notes, “you’re kind of lost. You can’t trace them all back.” In part- colleagues could capture only one frame every few seconds; now nership with the lab of professor of molecular and cellular biology

Harvard Magazine 43 Joshua Sanes, Lichtman’s team was able to engineer mice with How do networks of interconnected neurons work once neurons that glow with an array of di≠erent fluorescent colors. A they’re in place? In the past, neuroscientists studied the activity genetic technique randomly shu±es di≠erent combinations of of neurons in the brain by measuring their electrical activity. R. fluorescent proteins in red, green, and blue to give each cell a Clay Reid, professor of neurobiology at HMS, who studies the unique hue. The approach is akin to color-coding electrical wires, brain’s visual system, said that until five years ago, imaging was so each one is identifiable in a tangle. With these “Brainbow” mice, not even a major part of his work. “We used to put tiny wires Lichtman and his team can trace the fate of a single nerve cell over into living brains to eavesdrop on one or two or maybe 10 living time and across distances. Lichtman’s goal is to use these mice cells,” he says. When cells were active, they “fired” an electrical along with higher-resolution electron microscopy to trace the de- signal that could be measured. velopment of entire networks of neurons, beginning with the rela- It was through this sort of painstaking measurement that neu- tively simple peripheral nerves that project to muscles in the neck. roscientists mapped out the function of di≠erent areas of the

Most fluorescent molecules require blue light to excite them, Light Makes a Comeback but blue light is easily scattered by tissue and can damage cells. Multiphoton microscopes get around the problem with a trick: Today’s high-powered light microscopes bear little re- when two photons from lower-energy light hit the same semblance to the iconic instruments of high-school biology fluorophore nearly simultaneously, they cause it to fluoresce as labs. This revolution began in the 1950s with the development it would in response to a single beam of light that had double of confocal microscopes. Rather than flooding an object with the energy. These microscopes therefore use red or near infrared light and viewing its surface, confocal microscopes use a light in brief, intense pulses focused on a small point at a time. highly focused laser beam to quickly scan an object in one The light is not as damaging to tissues and can travel deeper— plane. By collecting information only from a single “slice” of a about 500 hundred microns deep, which is just the width of five sample at a time, confocal microscopes reduce the e≠ect of human hairs but represents dozens of layers of cells into a tissue. surrounding visual noise. Scientists can gather many of these The third factor that has made dynamic, live imaging possi- slices at di≠erent depths to give a three-dimensional picture. ble is computing power. The colorful images produced by Equally important to the new wave of microscopy are the these techniques result from collecting and interpreting large fluorophores that tag molecules and cells with di≠erent col- amounts of data, which was not possible until recently. ors. A green fluorescent protein (GFP) was first introduced in Scientists are also working on new imaging techniques labs in the early 1990s. Since then, fluorescence imaging has that do not rely on fluorescence, since the use of fluorescent become a ubiquitous technology in biology, and species from molecules in humans raises logistical and safety concerns (no fish to pigs are genetically engineered with cells and proteins human will ever be genetically engineered to fluoresce, and that glow green. In addition to genetically engineering fluorescent probes are making their way into the clinic but fluorescence into animals, scientists can attach fluorescent may not be practical for many applications). Sunney Xie’s molecules to “probes” that stick to a protein of interest. Ralph group, for example, has developed a technique called CARS Weissleder says that scientists are constantly uncovering new (coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering) microscopy that probes that emit light in a rainbow of colors. Many come from can image specific molecules in living cells and organisms newly-discovered species in the ocean, while others are syn- based on their ability to vibrate at unique frequencies. CARS thesized in the lab. has so far been useful for visualizing the distribution of drugs Sunney Xie and his team use CARS microscopy to show how omega-3 fatty in tissues and fats in cells—a recent study, for in- acids in liver cells help break down fat. In A, fat labeled with deuterium (blue) stance, showed in vibrant color how the presence of is shown to vibrate at a lower frequency than an omega-3 fatty acid (red). omega-3 fatty acids in liver cells helps them to break This allows the Xie group to create distinct images of the two kinds of fat in images B (deuterated fat) and C (omega-3 fatty acid). The final, composite down fats. Ideally, di≠erent imaging technologies image (D) shows that the blue and red fats are “digested” together (purple) can be used in parallel to gather many kinds of infor- within organelles (labeled in fluorescent green) that break down fat. mation at once. COURTESY OF WEI YANG, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

44 May - June 2008 FMT

Right: In order to make images of nanoparticles that cause inflammatory atherosclerosis, Ralph Weissleder uses both FMT and MRI (upper grouping). A fluorescent imaging molecule turned on by enzymatic root activity enables FMT imaging of inflamed carotid artery plaques (lower grouping). Below: A schematic of the FMT imager

arch MRI

pre post COURTESY OF RALPH WEISSLEDER AND THE CENTER FOR MOLECULAR IMAGING RESEARCH brain’s cortex. Reid explains that in the 1980s, for instance, Mar- plaque garet Livingstone, a professor of neurobiology at HMS, worked with Nobel laureate David Hubel, now Enders professor of neurobiology emeritus, to discover that certain regions in the visual carotid cortex are important for color vision. But during the past few artery years, light microscopy techniques have made it possible to monitor the activity of the individual brain cells within an entire region of the brain simultaneously. “Now we can actually see all of the cells,” Reid says. “It’s really exciting.” The key is calcium: when a neuron “fires,” calcium molecules rush into the cell. Using a fluorescent reporter that lights up with this calcium influx, scientists have a visible proxy for the brain’s electrical activity. Reid and the members of his laboratory can now watch the activity of thousands of cells at once, and they can also determine a single cell’s function with astounding MOUSE PATIENT precision. Two neighboring neurons may have branches that are tangled together, and yet respond to completely di≠erent visual signals. Reid’s team can isolate which cells, for instance, respond jectory of a bullet. For slower events, they use high-resolution when an animal views lines oriented in one direction versus an- two-photon microscopes that capture several frames per minute, other. He believes it will be possible someday to have a detailed which are then speeded up to make a time-lapse video. map of the entire circuitry of the visual system, and his group is These techniques let von Andrian’s team understand immune- teaming with Lichtman’s lab to explore ways to chart networks cell behavior better: for instance, how T cells are activated in rein large regions of the brain. sponse to a foreign particle or antigen. The vast majority of T cells circulating throughout the body are inactive, or “naïve”; CELLS ON THE MOVE they rouse into action only when they meet a very specific for- Light microscopes are particularly useful in capturing dy- eign antigen presented on the surface of another immune cell. As namic events, and perhaps no cells are as dynamic as blood cells. von Andrian explains, this process was thought to be fairly sta- Ulrich von Andrian has been tracking their behavior in the past tic—when the T cell met the right antigen, it would bind to the several years, focusing in particular on the 500 billion T cells of antigen-presenting cell for a number of hours, and eventually be- the immune system. Von Andrian, the Mallinckrodt professor of come active. In fact, his group found that T cells rove from one immunopathology at HMS, specializes in “intravital” mi- cell to another in a fashion he compares to bees moving from croscopy, which images events in living animals. The techniques flower to flower, rather than staying on the first cell they find. help track how these “immune cells” migrate throughout the A recent study o≠ers a possible explanation. T cells, he and his blood and lymph vessels of mice, and how they collect at periph- colleagues found, actually seem to sense how much of a particu- eral sites in the body—whether beneficially, in response to an in- lar antigen is present. The cell is “collecting information, and it jury or infection, or pathologically, as in the case of autoimmune somehow remembers what it has seen in the previous hours,” diseases. To capture very fast events such as the movements of von Andrian explains. Activation requires “a cumulative signal these blood cells, team members record videos under a strobo- from many di≠erent encounters,” and not just a single match. scope, just as photographers use strobe lights to capture the tra- Such nuances would be di∞cult to determine without seeing

Harvard Magazine 45 them directly. But von Andrian emphasizes that research does more useful for the clinic. There, most imaging methods, such as not end when a video is captured. “One danger of imaging is that MRI, CT, PET, and ultrasound, detect physical properties of tis- you just sort of stand in awe in front of the pretty pictures and sues in order to create images (see glossary below). But to track the beauty of it all,” he says. “It’s easy to forget about the mecha- and study specific molecules, light microscopy has the advan- nism and the ‘why’ of it all.” Von Andrian pairs imaging tech- tage, says Ralph Weissleder, professor of systems biology and ra- niques with the classic approach of a biologist: to come up with a diology at HMS. Weissleder oversees the CSB and the Center for hypothesis and test it, often through genetic or chemical manip- Molecular Imaging Research at MGH. “What we hope to do at ulations. Imaging lets scientists see how any change—a genetic the end of the day,” he says, “is to understand biology as it un- defect, a drug, an infection, or a wound—a≠ects the immune sys- folds in vivo rather than in snapshots.” tem at the level of its individual cells. His group works on developing new probes that have the ability to fit, like a key into a lock, into a pocket on the surface of a protein. IMAGING THE BODY A fluorescent molecule attached to the probe acts as a “reporter” Fluorescence microscopy o≠ers the opportunity not only to that lights up proteins for the microscope. Weissleder says that the track specific molecules in cells, but to see how those cells be- newest probes are constructed to fluoresce only when they have have in an entire organ or part of the body. Charles Lin, a member reached their targets, which results in a more distinct signal. of the Center for Systems Biology (CSB) and the Wellman Cen- Using this technique, scientists can study and monitor the ter for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital course of diseases in living animals. With cardiovascular disease, (MGH), develops novel methods and imaging equipment to fol- for instance, arteries become inflamed, which can eventually lead low cells that move throughout the body. “The holy grail is if you to a blood clot and a stroke. A probe specific for inflammatory en- could follow a single cell through the entire body, and its interac- zymes can light up areas where the risk of clotting is greatest. tion with the environment,” he says. These imaging tools could help scientists and clinicians monitor a His work, which he says was inspired by von Andrian’s intravi- disease and track whether a medication or other treatment is tal techniques, includes studying aspects of the immune system, working. cancer, and stem cells, and how they intersect. Why, for instance, Most microscopic techniques are limited by depth; looking do tumor cells begin to metastasize and migrate throughout the deeper into the body usually requires a surgical incision to gain ac- body? “If you figure out how cancer cells spread, and interfere cess because it’s impossible, at this point, to image fluorescence in with the signals of spreading, then you can reduce metastasis,” the entire body at once. But a recent technology developed at MGH Lin explains. Unlike most labs at the medical school, which rely makes it possible to do just that—at least in small animals like on ready-made equipment to pursue research, his group focuses mice. The technique, called fluorescence molecular tomography on developing new imaging devices for specific applications—to (FMT), creates a three-dimensional image of fluorescent proteins access a certain part of the body, for instance, or to find very rare inside a living animal. The technique uses light itself to gather in- cells such as blood stem cells after a bone marrow transplant. formation about the tissue and reconstruct an image, similar to the Lin says that, as a technology-focused group within a hospital, way hospital CT scanners use x-rays. An animal with a fluores- the center can help adapt new microscopic techniques, increas- cently marked object inside it, such as a tumor, is exposed to beams ingly making microscopes—those hallmarks of the laboratory— of focused light at varying angles. At the other side, a sensitive cam-

CAT scans to create a three-dimensional image of fluores- GLOSSARY cent molecules in the body. Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP): a protein originally found CARS microscopy: a technique for visualizing specific mol- in jellyfish that fluoresces green when exposed to blue light. ecules in cells based on their unique patterns of vibration Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): a diagnostic tech- when exposed to beams of laser light at specific frequencies. nique that uses a powerful magnetic field and radio waves to Computed (axial) tomography (CT, or CAT, scan): an generate detailed cross-sectional images of tissues in the body. imaging technique that uses x-rays at many angles to gener- Positron emission tomography (PET): a technique for ate cross-sections of the body, which a computer then detecting functional activity in tissues by introducing a stitches together into a three-dimensional image. small dose of radioactive chemical into the body and using a Di≠raction limit: a limit to a microscope’s resolution im- computer to transform the resulting gamma radiation sig- posed by the wavelength of the light used to illuminate a nals into three-dimensional images. specimen. At distances smaller than about half the light’s Optical or light microscopy: the use of visible light trans- wavelength, the light waves interfere with one another. mitted through or reflected from a sample and then passed Electron microscopy: a technique that uses electrons through lenses to provide a magnified view. rather than visible light to produce an image at up to a thou- Resolution: the minimum distance between two points sand times the magnification of light microscopes. that a microscope can distinguish. Fluorophore: a molecule that is able to fluoresce, i.e., to be- Ultrasound: a diagnostic tool that uses reflected high-fre- come excited by a particular wavelength of light and then emit quency sound waves to examine internal body structures. light at a longer wavelength as it returns to its normal state. X-ray crystallography: a method to determine the struc- Fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT): an emerg- ture of molecules by aiming a beam of x-rays at a crystallized ing technique that uses beams of light similar to x-rays in molecule and measuring how the rays scatter.

46 May - June 2008 Ulrich von Andrian uses “intravital” microscopes that can be placed inside the body to create images of immune- era records both the transmitted light and fluorescence system T cells (green and blue) inter- from inside the body. A computer can use information acting with dendritic cells (red) that about how the light beams are scattered by tissue to calcu- help trigger the immune response. late the depth and degree of the fluorescent signals. While there may never be a “whole-body” microscope that can daughters to illustrate the idea; they have identical genes, but scan a patient’s insides the way an MRI can, Weissleder believes distinct personalities. that techniques like FMT and fiber-optic microscopy will prove Being able to view singular events also gives scientists a new useful for specific applications. Thus FMT is being developed for point of view. In the Brainbow mice, for instance, it’s easier to vi- clinical use to visualize inflammation in the carotid artery in pa- sualize how each cell competes with others. “Each cell is an indi- tients with atherosclerosis. Weissleder says that the key barrier to vidual and each is trying to make a living,” Je≠ Lichtman says. bringing FMT and other microscopy techniques to the clinic is While the view of the singular is thrilling, scientists are equally getting the probes approved for use in humans, but he notes that excited by the ability to quantify many objects and probes are beginning to enter clinical trials. His group is also in- events at once. Cells and molecules labeled with HM vestigating nanoparticles that can be detected by di≠erent types fluorescence can be counted, which means that of imaging techniques, such as MRI and PET, as well as optical mi- scientists can see whether their numbers wax and Visit harvardmag.com/extras croscopy. He believes that optical methods won’t replace these wane as events unfold. Charles Lin explains that to see video standard techniques, which still o≠er the best way to see inside when studying whether a particular treatment of “in vivo” the entire body, but says they can add molecular information to keeps tumors from metastasizing, it’s important to imaging. that obtained from existing technologies. be able to count the number of cells traveling to other areas of the body to know if a therapy is working. The ability to put numbers SEEING SINGLE CELLS, COUNTING MASSES on results is a long-sought goal of biology, which has often been The resurgence in imaging excites biologists for two rea- seen as a descriptive science. sons: it allows them to see individuals, and it allows them to Tom Kirchhausen predicts that in the next few years, scien- count the masses. Being able to watch and track a single mole- tists will use imaging to better understand complex processes cule, cell, or process o≠ers a much more complete picture of how such as cell division and the paths that viruses take to cause in- life works. Traditionally, many processes were studied using fection. Like many of the biologists involved in imaging, he is en- large numbers of molecules or cells to get an average result. But raptured with what he’s been able to see in recent years. “Some- Sunney Xie points out that in events like gene expression, “you one in the lab had a good result yesterday, and I had trouble cannot synchronize the activities of each cell. It’s stochastic.” sleeping,” he admits. “It’s so exciting.” Stochastic events involve an element of chance—no two cells will be exactly the same. Xie points to a photograph of his twin Courtney Humphries is a freelance science writer.

Harvard Magazine 47 Home of the Humanities At a serene Harvard outpost, scholars ﬁnd fertile ground for Byzantine, pre-Columbian, and landscape studies.

by ELIZABETH GUDRAIS

On a wintry Wednesday evening, Maria Mavroudi is delivering a lecture on Byzantine science. Using evidence from texts and artifacts, she sketches an alter- nate history, one that competes with the common account that the Byzantine empire’s inhabitants were less advanced than their contemporaries in their use and understanding of the sciences. Mavroudi reports that Ptolemy’s Geography, which was produced in Roman Egypt in the second century A.D. and describes a system of coordinates similar to modern latitude and longitude, survives in 54 Greek manuscripts. She argues that the typical explanation of why the text was reproduced—merely to preserve it for Ofuture generations—is wrong, and makes a case that the real purpose was to produce a manual for contemporary use. She cites texts that describe the richness of Constantinople’s libraries, and others that mention wooden astrolabes; time and the elements, she says, may have erased the evidence of Byzantium’s use of scientiﬁc in- Byzantine studies, per se, from Harvard; four di≠erent depart- struments made from this perishable material. Byzantine science, ments—history, classics, art history, and Near Eastern studies— she says, has gone unacknowledged not because it did not exist, were involved. And the setting for her lecture is the world’s fore- but because studying it requires such diverse expertise: knowledge most center of Byzantine scholarship: Dumbarton Oaks, an estate of languages, of Byzantine history, of the history of science. in Washington, D.C., which Harvard has owned since 1940, when This research requires a particular breed of scholar. Mavroudi, Robert Woods Bliss, A.B. 1900, and his wife, Mildred Barnes Bliss, Ph.D. ’98, who holds faculty appointments at Berkeley and Prince- donated their Georgetown property to the University. ton, is one of them. She was the ﬁrst person to earn a doctorate in But it is not just in Byzantine studies that Dumbarton Oaks

48 May - June 2008 All images courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks; photographs of art objects courtesy of the Research Library and Collections Scenes from Dumbarton Oaks: a garden wall (opposite), the main house (above)

excels. It also has fellowship programs in pre-Columbian stud- But to the disapproving Europeans, unaware that their own ies—focused on Latin America before Europeans arrived—and brand of religion was the product of a similar process, the pagan in garden and landscape studies. elements of Maya Catholicism looked foreign. “It’s interesting The scholarly institute, with its research library, museum, and how, whenever there’s this meeting of two worlds, the one that public gardens, encompasses such disparate academic pursuits becomes more powerful depicts the other one in a very simplified by design. In the preamble to her last will and testament, Mil- fashion,” Graham says. “I don’t think most of us realize that when dred Bliss wrote that the estate was to be preserved as a “home we look at early records. We take them literally.” She sees paral- of the Humanities, not a mere aggregation of books and objects lels to this egotistical simplification of other cultures in various of art.” The place manages to incorporate the natural environ- periods throughout history, including the contemporary world. ment and the built environment; concepts of art and religion; The project of another pre-Columbian fellow, Timothy cultural studies; and considerations of conquest and empire. It is Beach—a Georgetown University professor who teaches courses a window into the past, but it reflects on the present. on climatology, hydrology, soils, geomorphology, and geoarchae- ology—incorporates garden and landscape studies: he is investi- hese three seemingly unrelated fields do not gating Maya agriculture and its impact on the environment. just coexist at Dumbarton Oaks; they coalesce. Fellows Beach earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, and says Ttoil in solitude in their o∞ces, but they also emerge to dis- the changes caused there by early European settlers are not un- cuss their projects with other fellows, and they discover paral- like the e≠ects of Maya agriculture: German farmers weren’t lels between fields. One past symposium investigated Byzantine used to the steeper inclines and fast, hard rainstorms of their garden culture; several current fellows’ projects have benefited new home, and they took no precautions against erosion. In both from such cross-pollination. central Minnesota and Guatemala, entire towns For example, one of this year’s pre-Columbian fel- were buried under layers of eroded sediment. lows, University College London archaeologist Eliza- Inquiries like these, in a sense, simply couldn’t beth Graham, is writing about the encounter be- take place without Dumbar- tween Europeans and the Maya, using evidence from This jade figurine from ton Oaks. The Renaissance the Olmec culture, excavations of the sites of two churches from the six- which flourished from brought a renewed interest teenth and early seventeenth centuries, both in mod- about 1200 B.C. to 400 in the Classical period; for a ern-day Belize. In conversations with Byzantine fel- B.C. along the Gulf time, the millennia in be- Coast of Mexico, lows, she has been struck by the similarities between was the first pre- tween were forgotten, ig- early Christianity and the Maya version of Catholi- Columbian object nored. By bringing the cism. “There’s no question that pre-Christian ideas Robert Bliss acquired. Byzantine period to the have been incorporated into Catholicism,” says Gra- It appears in an exhib- forefront, the Blisses created it about the Blisses ham. “It seems to me the Maya are just doing what all that was installed for a place for the study of all the European Christians did—they incorporate local the museums’ grand the periods, and of the major culture with Christian sacred space.” reopening in April. themes of human history.

Harvard Magazine 49 By bringing the Byzantine period to the forefront, the Blisses created a place for the study of all the periods, and of the major themes of human history.

ies. Dumbarton Oaks welcomed its first Byz- antine fellows in 1941, well before the field was widely recognized as a worthy academic pursuit. Alice-Mary Talbot ’60, who directs the Byzantine studies program, says that when she was studying classics in college, focusing on the medieval period “would have been unthinkable.” Today, she notes, the chair of the Harvard classics department is a Byzan- tinist; the previous chair, and current Dumb- arton Oaks director, Jan M. Ziolkowski, also studies the medieval period. Talbot notes, with delight, that Maria Mavroudi won a MacArthur fellowship in 2005—a sign that the field has truly arrived. The list of former fellows reads like a “who’s who” of Byzantine studies, and people tend not to come just once—Dumbarton Oaks keeps beckoning them back. Mavroudi’s first visit was in 1995, as a junior fellow, someone still working on a Ph.D. Her project was analyzing a Byzantine Greek book on dream interpretation The Blisses spent just seven years at Dumbarton Oaks after Robert Bliss retired from the and that book’s Arabic sources. In 2001, she re- Foreign Service in 1933; they gave their estate to Harvard in 1940. This photograph shows them in 1938 in the music room, which they designed as a setting for chamber-music turned to research bilingualism in Greek and performances and spared no expense in decorating—the sixteenth-century mantelpiece of Arabic in the Middle Ages. Mavroudi says these carved limestone came from a chateau in France’s Dordogne region. Today, the room is the stints “proved formative for everything I did af- setting for a monthly concert series presented in accordance with the Blisses’ wishes. terwards.” Talbot, too, has kept coming back. She first ornelia horn, a professor in the theological studies fell in love with Byzantium during a fellowship in Greece, and a department at St. Louis University and a current Byzan- Ph.D. program in Byzantine history at Columbia brought her to Ctine fellow, is trying to trace the transmission history of Dumbarton Oaks for the first time, for a symposium in 1963. She apocryphal Christian texts during the seventh century. The na- spent a year there on a fellowship in 1966, and returned in 1984 to tivity story appears not only in the Bible, but also in the Koran help edit the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, a project whose editor- and in other texts that were not ultimately incorporated into ial home base was Dumbarton Oaks. When that project con- these holy books. Horn’s project compares details in the di≠erent cluded, then-Dumbarton Oaks director Angeliki Laiou, whose versions of the story in an attempt to get at which versions circu- professorship in Byzantine history at Harvard was endowed by lated when, where, and how widely. It is a study of a specific the Blisses, appointed Talbot director of Byzantine studies. story’s evolution, but also of how Christianity and Islam Today, Talbot’s o∞ce is in one of the Blisses’ guest bedrooms; the influenced one another. walls are lined with titles such as The Crusades from the Perspective of Geographically, the Byzantine empire was ideally situated to Byzantium and the Muslim World; Byzantine Court Culture; Consent and Co- illuminate concerns that remain relevant today: interactions ercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies; and Byzantine between world powers, for instance, or between religious tra- Magic. All were published by Dumbarton Oaks; the in-house press ditions. A former Dumbarton Oaks di- has helped shape Byzantine studies by issu- rector, medievalist Giles Constable, ing important texts and by supporting the once said a stint there should be writing of others with its fellowships. Dum- mandatory for all barton Oaks commissioned the translation U.S. ambassadors An openwork of 19 hagiographies, never before translated silver lamp, one of sent to the Medi- many items in the into a modern Western language, and is terranean and the Byzantine collection publishing them as a series. Ziolkowski says Middle East. from the “Sion he would like to see the press create a series The Blisses were Treasure,” liturgical of English translations of Byzantine texts, objects and church prescient in realiz- furnishings from a with the original Greek on facing pages, ing the importance sixth-century church similar to the Loeb Classical Library and the of Byzantine stud- site found in Turkey Villa I Tatti Renaissance Library—both

50 May - June 2008 published by Harvard University Press, which produces, markets, at the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg, is creating a comprehensive and distributes Dumbarton Oaks publications. catalog of that collection, incorporating information from recent Several current fellows are working on projects that will be- analysis of the icons using new technical methods. come resources for future scholars. Nadezhda Kavrus-Ho≠mann, Dumbarton Oaks also underwrites the development of Byzan- an independent scholar from New York who was a fellow last tine scholarship directly. Eustratios Papaioannou, another former fall, is creating the very ﬁrst catalog of Greek manuscripts from fellow now translating the letters of Byzantine historian and the Byzantine period in the United States: traveling among the philosopher Michael Psellos, is Dumbarton Oaks assistant profes- libraries that hold the manuscripts and in some cases discover- sor of Byzantine studies in the classics department at Brown Uni- ing texts whose existence had escaped notice. Current fellow versity. The appointment is jointly funded by the two entities, en- Yuri Pyatnitsky, senior curator for the Byzantine icon collection abling Papaioannou to spend two years teaching at Brown and

sold to di≠erent owners over the years; the Blisses reassem- bled several parcels into their own 53-acre plot. Visionary Donors They made their gift to Harvard sooner than they had originally planned. In 1940, as World War II consumed Europe and obert bliss died in 1962, Mildred Bliss in 1969, threatened to draw in the United States, they turned over to but the benefactors of Dumbarton Oaks still cast a the University 16 acres, including the main house, gardens, R long shadow over their former home. It’s not just and their collections and library. “Dumbarton Oaks is now that the Blisses left behind their home and all their belongings. ready to increase its contribution to the intellectual life of the The estate’s later caretakers have inscribed their words on nation,” Robert Bliss told the Washington Times-Herald. They also plaques; sta≠ members mention their names frequently; and gave 27 acres to the National Park Service, which made the people occasionally report seeing Mrs. Bliss walking about in land into Dumbarton Oaks Park, and sold 10 acres to the Dan- the gardens. Indeed, the estate’s very name comes from the ish government for an embassy complex. They had lived at the Blisses, who combined its first recorded name—taken from estate only since 1933, and for just 10 years in all, having the Rock of Dumbarton in Scotland, the homeland of early bought it while Robert Bliss was on a domestic posting, before owner Ninian Beall—and a name from a later period, when it being sent to Sweden and Argentina. was called simply “The Oaks.” With the gift, Harvard received 1,200 Byzantine objects, as Robert Woods Bliss, A.B. 1900, a career diplomat, and Mil- well as 17,000 Byzantine coins and 800 pieces of pre- dred Barnes Bliss, heiress to a laxative fortune and the niece Columbian art. The Blisses “had no aspiration to be scholars, of Edith Wharton, had spent two decades overseas during his but they had quite good taste,” says Dumbarton Oaks director postings to Venice, St. Pe- Jan M. Ziolkowski. “Col- tersburg, Brussels, Buenos lecting was a serious busi- Aires, Paris, and the Hague. ness for them.” In 1920, they were looking Many have noted similar- for a home base in Wash- ities to I Tatti, the estate ington, but they also had near Florence that was left grand aspirations for their to Harvard in 1959 by Ber- estate. They envisioned a nard Berenson, A.B. 1887, as place for scholarly studies a center for Renaissance and musical performances, studies. Besides a research and a home for the fine art library, that estate o≠ers and ancient artifacts they artworks, gardens, and olive had assiduously collected. groves—a set of resources And they had notions of for well-rounded scholars of eventually giving all of it to the humanities. The I Tatti Harvard. gardens feature pebble mo- A history of Dumbarton saics; Mildred Bliss con- Oaks records Robert Bliss’s verted a former tennis court words upon seeing the at Dumbarton Oaks into a property for the first time: pebble mosaic in 1961. And “though it had no particular just as the Blisses’ ashes are charm and the grounds interred in the Dumbarton were unkempt and in places Oaks gardens, Berenson and much overgrown, the beau- his wife are buried in a tiful trees gave promise of chapel at I Tatti. The simi- Robert and Mildred Bliss, possibilities to a gardener.” during his diplomatic larities are not coincidental: Beall’s Georgetown estate posting to Sweden the Blisses and the Beren- had been divided up and in the 1920s sons were friends.

Harvard Magazine 51 Although savoring his role as director, Ziolkowski admits he “wasn’t prepared for just how active the place is.”

This watercolor gives an aerial view of the 53 acres the Blisses assembled to house art, scholarship, and memorable gardens. For many years, it hung over the fireplace in the music room. A copy hangs there now; the original is in storage to protect it from light—and other—damage. The painting was smudged, the story goes, when someone wiped a sponge down one side to clean it, not realizing that the colors would smear. Close observers will notice that, despite restoration, part of the left side of the image is less finely detailed than the rest.

two years at Dumbarton Oaks conducting research. The Blisses’ in the last two years include a book on the medieval precursors to gift has provided seed money for 11 tenure-track positions in fairy tales; one on the musical notation printed alongside the text Byzantine studies at nine U.S. universities during the past three of some medieval Latin poems; translations of a ribald story from decades. Dumbarton Oaks has also provided the thirteenth century and of letters by the me- ﬁnancial support for excavations and for the dieval French philosopher Peter Abélard, best restoration of frescoes in a church in Cyprus. known for his legendary love a≠air with Héloïse; And it was at Dumbarton Oaks that the key to A bust of the and an 1,128-page volume dating Byzantine coins was discovered. Maya maize god, titled The Virgilian Tradition: from the late seventh The First Fifteen Hundred orter professor of medieval Latin or early eighth century, appears in a Years. Jan Ziolkowski began his tenure as di- display about Maya “I like to think of myself P rector in September. Like the institute religion in the pre- as being a humanist who itself, he has diverse interests. His publications Columbian wing. likes to work on the Mid-

52 May - June 2008 dle Ages and on literature, but who This Byzantine Pellegrino water and Amontillado sherry are served dur- has other interests,” says Zi- reliquary from the ing the fellows’ Monday-afternoon research reports. thirteenth century, olkowski. Medieval Latin texts are crafted of gold and The estate also owns an apartment building 10 min- the starting point, but, he says, “I try cloisonné, utes from the campus, where the fellows live, to connect them in as many ways as I was made and the campus includes a refectory where to hold a can to other literatures within Eu- fragment of they can eat breakfast and lunch daily, on rope, and to other areas of study.” wood from china that may have belonged to the Blisses, He has also chaired several interdis- the cross underneath a watchful portrait of Mrs. Bliss ciplinary entities within the Faculty on which Jesus herself. “It was very important to the Bliss- was crucified. of Arts and Sciences, including the es…that scholars be unencumbered by practical con- Committee on Medieval Studies and the Committee on De- cerns,” says Joanne Pillsbury, director of the pre- grees in Folklore and Mythology. “A large part of my agenda Columbian studies program. in the first 25 years of my career,” he says, “was to try to figure Their mission, broadly conceived, was “to bring together out how to intersect with the work of as many colleagues as intellectuals,” Ziolkowski says. “Their focus was mainly on possible.” scholars, but they didn’t use that term to mean solely Ziolkowski is only the seventh director in seven decades. Ph.D.-bearing researchers.…They wanted them to come to- (The appointment, which lasts for five years, is renewable.) gether in a context that would be beautiful, that would be aes- Because directors are expected to spend one day a week in Cam- thetically satisfying. They wanted people literally to step outside bridge, and to teach one class a semester, he is in a cab to the air- and smell the roses.” port by 6 a.m. every Tuesday. Over lunch in December, he confessed he was “running on va- n the nine decades since the Blisses first contem- pors.” Although savoring his new role, he said, “I wasn’t prepared plated making their gift to Harvard, Dumbarton Oaks for just how active the place is.” Already that week, there had Ihas gone from a building to a campus with a sta≠ of close been a research report by a garden and landscape fellow on Monday afternoon; a concert on Monday night; a Dumbarton Oaks director Byzantine seminar presentation by Papaioannou on Tues- Jan M. Ziolkowski day afternoon; co≠ee hour for the pre-Columbian fellows on Wednesday afternoon; and Mavroudi’s lecture on Wednesday evening. On Thursday evening, Ziolkowski was scheduled to give a talk himself on “The Juggler of Notre Dame,” a medieval folk tale about an entertainer who grows weary of his life, enters a monastery, and develops a juggling routine to perform before a statue of the Virgin because he doesn’t know how else to express his devotion. The tale—in which the juggler is scorned by his fellow monks-in-training, dies from the exertion of per- forming his routine, and ascends to heaven after a fight between the devils representing his tawdry past and the angels of his pious end—has found its way, in various forms, into nineteenth-century short-story collections, a W.H. Auden poem, and a short film narrated by Boris Karlo≠. A painting depicting the juggler, belonging to Zi- olkowski, hangs in the director’s residence. The estate owns that residence, a house across the street from the main campus that once belonged to Eliza- beth Taylor. It has more bathrooms than Taylor has had husbands (nine and seven, respectively) and its extensive basement includes a film screening room, a minibar, and a children’s playroom decked out in zebra print. (There are also safes, which one would need if one planned on storing the 33-carat Krupp diamond and the 69-carat Taylor- Burton diamond.) Ziolkowski hosted a dinner there for the fellows last fall, two days after he moved in. He thought it would be nice to do something casual, maybe pizza in the backyard. But tradition called for something grander, so Ziolkowski assented to a starched-tablecloth, waiters-in-tails a≠air, in keeping with the general ambiance of Dumbarton Oaks—teacups and tea are always in close proximity, and

Harvard Magazine 53 to 100. The Blisses’ endowment has enabled this to happen volumes in Byzantine studies have grown to 150,000, plus half a without any fundraising; their original $5-million gift had million images of various sizes and formats. The pre-Columbian grown to nearly $500 million in 2001, the last time it was sepa- collection now numbers 32,000 volumes, up from the 2,000 col- rately reported in University financial statements. lected by Robert Bliss. And the garden and landscape library, The Blisses had the foresight to realize they could not predict first curated by Mildred Bliss, grew from 5,000 volumes at the every eventuality, and they wrote the gift documents to give time of the Blisses’ conveyance to 27,000 today. The holdings of their estate’s future custodians discretion. This has allowed the the library as a whole grow by 3,000 to 4,000 volumes a year. institute to sell, over the years, all but the most precious hold- Its home, a new building that opened in 2005, is a dramatic im- ings from the “house collection”—art the Blisses collected that provement: previously, books were kept in the main house, “liter- fits into neither the Byzantine nor the pre-Columbian cate- ally shelved in closets and under stairs,” says library director gory—and plow the proceeds back into programs, publications, Sheila Klos. “Every time the fire marshal came through, he said, salaries, and library acquisitions. ‘You shouldn’t have books here.’ We said, ‘Just a little longer.’... The Dumbarton Oaks library, originally assembled to make We were shelved on eight di≠erent levels, four of which had no sense of the Blisses’ collections and their gardens, has grown into elevator or book-lift access, so everything was carried.” a staple of scholarship for all three research fields. Their 10,000 The library holds many rare and important resources, includ-

One has the constant feeling of going where one isn’t supposed to go—a place this beautiful just can’t be open to the public. Garden Refuge But it is. The 10-acre garden opens from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the winter, and 2 to 6 in the summer. Admission during the morn- he dumbarton oaks gardens—formal gardens ing and early afternoon is restricted to the fellows to give them in the European tradition, but with a distinctively a chance to “rest their eyes, expand their vision, and ponder the TAmerican ﬂavor that acknowledges their setting—are subjects they’re working on,” in the words of Joanne Pillsbury, laid out as a series of “garden rooms,” with walls formed by director of the pre-Columbian studies program. trees in some cases, by terraces in others, with the result that These are gardens rich with references. A stone plaque in the something new lurks around each twist of the winding paths. wisteria arbor bears an Italian inscription: Quelli chanticamente

54 May - June 2008 ing the Princeton Index of Iconographic Art, one of only five an hour!—within the building to go from one book to the next. If copies of this card catalog in the world. Brandeis University an- you are playing with an idea in your mind, maybe the idea is not thropologist Charles Golden, a pre-Columbian fellow this year, the same by the time you reach the book. At Dumbarton Oaks, says the library’s excavation reports have been particularly use- it’s just one floor up. It’s an immediate satisfaction of curiosity ful for his e≠ort to understand why the Maya destroyed a royal that allows one’s mind to work faster.” palace after a sixth-century military defeat and rebuilt it, in di≠erent form, on the same site half a century later. The project hile many are unaware of Dumbarton Oaks’ requires “a shovelful-by-shovelful description of what came out existence, even fewer know of the breadth of its of the ground and how it came out of the ground,” says Golden. Wo≠erings. Klos recalls a recent conversation with a book “The only place to find that is the original excavation reports. dealer who said, “Oh, Dumbarton Oaks, you do pre-Columbian.” Not all libraries are willing to buy them for the use of just a few Klos’s reply: “No, no, there’s so much more!” scholars, but Dumbarton Oaks has them.” To members of the general public, the estate’s name may be fa- And the fellows find that the library’s small size and ease of miliar in the context of international relations: late in World navigation make for productive research. “At Widener,” says War II, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, the Mavroudi, “you have to walk several minutes—sometimes half Soviet Union, and nationalist China gathered there to hammer

The Dumbarton Oaks gardens were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and by earlier garden styles from France and Italy. They are closed to the public in the morning to allow the fellows exclusive use, but in the afternoon, anyone may enter for a small fee—and from November to mid March, for free. The pebble terrace, left, was created in 1962 from a former tennis court. Its designer was Ruth Havey, rather than Beatrix Farrand, who designed most of the gardens’ elements. The wheat- sheaf motif visible at lower right in the image forms part of both the Woods and the Bliss coats of arms. The terrace was meant to be covered by a thin sheet of water; though subterranean mortar problems interfere at present, it will one day regain its original appearance.

poetaro leta dell oro/ & suo stat felice forse in parnaso esto loco sognaro, a quotation from Dante’s Purgatorio, translated by Charles Eliot Norton, A.B. 1846, as “Those who in old time sang of the Golden Age, and of its happy state, perchance, upon Parnassus, dreamed of this place.” In the “star garden,” with its zodiac- signs motif, the pavement is inscribed with a passage from Chaucer’s translation of Consolation of Philosophy, by the sixth-century philosopher Boethius (who was executed by a Roman emperor for allegedly conspir- ing with the Byzantine empire): “O Thou Maker of the Whele that Bereth the Sterres, and tornest the Hevene with a ravisshing sweigh.” The crypt in the rose garden, containing the ashes of donors Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss, is marked by a plaque bearing only their names, dates of birth and death, and the Latin maxim Quod severis metes—As you sow, so shall you reap. The Blisses commissioned Beatrix Farrand in 1921 to design the gardens as a setting for humanistic in- quiry and reﬂection. Thus began an intense process that spanned four decades and involved full-size mock-ups of many elements as well as a vigorous back-and- other way around. She structured the gardens to “devolve” forth recorded in correspondence between Farrand and Mil- from formal and structured to progressively less so as one dred Bliss. moves downhill from the main house. As one enters the Mrs. Bliss took inspiration from the gardens she’d seen in “wild,” less landscaped portion, stone paths trail o≠ France and Italy. Farrand had also toured European gardens abruptly into dirt or lawn. In Dumbarton Oaks: Garden into Art, extensively, but she was known for her love of endemic, historian Susan Tamulevich judges the result successful: rather than exotic, plants, and she designed with an eye to- “The garden,” she writes, “feels as if it had always been ward adapting the garden to its natural setting, not the there—born, not made.”

Harvard Magazine 55 Objects’ settings in the museum suggest their original uses. A mosaic from a Roman bathhouse floor adorns the entrance lobby, even though the constant foot traffic is a nightmare from a preservation standpoint.

some on the gardens, some on one museum collection, often with Alice-Mary Talbot, images in black and white or no illustrations at all.) director of the A recent wave of renovations will also help. The new library Byzantine studies program building cost $18 million and comprises 43,000 square feet. The museums, closed for renovations since December 2005, were scheduled to reopen in April. And renovations to the Blisses’ former residence—which their sundry additions expanded to an awe-inspiring 77,000 square feet—were completed last year. (The building comprises o∞ces for sta≠ and fellows, rooms for concerts and lectures, the museum galleries and storage, the publications department, and a rare book room that was the only part of the library to stay behind after the new building’s construction. The holdings, all from the Blisses’ collection, include a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a signed copy of Leaves of Grass, and a fifteenth- century illustrated manual of medicinal plants.) The new museum galleries—the first update since initial instal- lation in the 1960s—attempt to integrate the collections and make them more user-friendly: for example, by adding new labels and educational display formats. One case holds a map of the Byzan- tine Empire, which serves to educate viewers but also to display Byzantine coins, arranged according to where they were minted. The exhibits aim to be succinct, not exhaustive. “If you want the person to stop and look closer, then you have to cut back on the number of objects in one case,” says Bühl. But, she says, “It hurts. You want to show what you have.” Objects will rotate in and out of displays, while a new study space in the basement allows scholars to view objects from storage by appointment. Bühl tries to use objects’ settings to suggest their original uses. “Most of these objects were never meant to be independent pieces of art,” she says. Floor mosaics, for example, were walked on—and so a mosaic from a Roman bathhouse floor adorns the museum’s entrance lobby, even though the constant foot tra∞c is a nightmare from a preservation standpoint. But the displays stop short of wholesale reconstruction. One out the details of the United Nations. Washington, D.C., resi- case contains early Byzantine liturgical instruments, including a dents may know the gardens (unlisted in many guidebooks), but reconstructed altar with a tabletop, chalices, a flabellum (a fan even they often don’t realize that the museums are open to the used during services to keep flies away from the communion public. (For visiting information, see www.doaks.org.) host), and a liturgical book cover. It is significant, says Bühl, that Both Ziolkowski and museum director Gudrun Bühl are eager this altar diorama appears inside a case, rather than in a full-scale to increase the estate’s public profile. Bühl edited Dumbarton Oaks: reproduction of a chapel: “People should always know that these The Collections, a 380-page book being published this spring under objects are lost to the original context.” the Dumbarton Oaks imprint. With The pre-Columbian collection photographs of, and descriptive es- resides in a distinctive honeycomb- says about, more than 170 objects shaped structure, designed by the from the Byzantine, pre-Columbian, architect Philip Johnson ’27, B.Arch. and house collections, it is the first ’43, that was added as a wing of the attempt to represent the holdings, main house in 1963. The holdings in color, in all their breadth. focus on Mexico and areas south. (Among the smattering of previous The post-renovation orientation of books, some fo- An ivory triptych the displays is geographic, and each cused on the es- from late-tenth-cen- gallery also has a theme. One—fea- tate’s history, tury Constantinople turing objects (please turn to page 95)

56 May - June 2008 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Junior Becky Christensen— all-American, winner of the indoor Heptagonal Championships—redefines altitude. Beginning on page 75, she explains the art of jumping high.

IN THIS ISSUE Good-bye to HMI There is a revolution afoot in interna- 59 Harvard Portrait 66 Scanning the Social Sciences tional healthcare. Wealthy foreigners still 60 Art of the Future? 67 Connecting with China come to the United States—to the Mayo 61 Open Access 69 Brevia Clinic, say, or to Harvard-a∞liated hospi- 62 University People 73 The Undergraduate tals in Boston—and pay full freight to be 62 Race in a Genetic World 75 Sports treated by the world’s top doctors. But 65 Prescription: Music 78 Alumni changes in U.S. visa policy, in light of Sep- 65 Yesterday’s News 84 The College Pump tember 11 and the Iraq war, have made such

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 57 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Some critics of HMI complained that it was unfocused, responding to client requests rather than setting its own agenda. Others said it looked bad for Harvard to make a proﬁt in coun- trips more di∞cult; consequently, these tries where the vast ma- patients increasingly seek world-class jority of people have no healthcare closer to home. access to the healthcare Harvard has had a booming business system. In the view of advising in the creation of such hospitals. Jorge I. Domínguez, the

Harvard Medical International (HMI), HARVARD MEDICAL INTERNATIONAL University’s vice provost created in 1994 to generate revenue for ences—engage in contract work each year for international a≠airs, HMI never Harvard Medical School (HMS), has pro- for HMI, whose 2007 operating budget should have been part of Harvard in the jects in 20 countries on five continents. was $21 million. (See hmi.hms.harvard.edu first place. “It is a consulting company, But just as demand is heating up, the Uni- for more information.) under the Harvard name and under the versity is pulling back. In February, it an- The 4-million-square-foot Dubai Health- Harvard tax exemption,” he says. “It nounced a provisional agreement to care City (www.dhcc.ae), the largest and doesn’t belong at an institution whose transfer HMI to Partners Healthcare, the in some ways the flagship project, will in- core mission is research and education.” parent organization for two of the largest clude hospitals, facilities for clinical and On entering some HMI-a∞liated hospi- Harvard-a∞liated teaching hospitals. commercial research, and a medical tals, adds Domínguez, “You get the feeling The announcement allows HMI to school. The goal is to draw patients from you just walked into a department of the come out of a holding pattern, freeing it India, North Africa, Moscow, and much of Harvard Medical School—the seal of the to enter new contracts. But Andrew A. Europe—all within easy flying distance. school broadly displayed, ‘Harvard’ some- Jeon, M.B.A. ’89, HMI’s president and Although other partners in the project in- times in bigger type and more prominent CEO since December 2007, says leaving clude the Mayo Clinic, Boston University, than the name of the local client.” Al- Harvard is beneficial for other reasons. As AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Wyeth, HMI though allowed within the contracts HMI University administrators also note, Part- is listed as the “key strategic collaborator.” signed, these uses are not consistent with ners operates hospitals, while HMS does Its contributions include strategic plan- broader University policy and principles, not. And as HMI has grown, it has found ning and helping to develop the system of says Provost Steven E. Hyman: “There’s itself in a Catch-22: the better it did at licensing and regulating doctors and nothing more precious to us than the Har- making money, the more questioning of healthcare facilities within the complex— vard name and what it stands for.…We’re its worth it faced in some quarters. and potentially beyond. (HMS will con- not looking for brand extension.” Through HMI, Harvard professors are tinue to operate the Harvard Medical Dissatisfaction reached critical mass in advising the design and operation of hos- School Dubai Center, which deals pitals and specialty clinics in India, with postgraduate and continuing Greece, Turkey, Thailand, and China; medical education, and the Dubai guiding the creation and reform of med- Harvard Foundation for Medical ical-school curricula in Germany, Japan, Research, which announced its Hong Kong, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, first research awards, for two Kuwait, Lebanon, and the Dominican Re- postdoctoral fellows from the public; and advising and sta∞ng continu- Middle East, last year.) ing-education pro- WOCKHARDT HOSPITALS grams for physicians around the globe. Top left: The Ibn Sina building in Dubai Roughly 250 faculty Healthcare City houses clinic space and med- members—mostly ical and administrative offices. Top right: an from HMS, but also artist’s rendering of the university hospital that will be part of the same complex; Har- from the Harvard vard Medical International (HMI) advised in School of Public designing the 400-bed facility, projected to be Health (HSPH), the completed in 2011. Below: HMI affiliates from the Wockhardt Hospitals system in Harvard Business India include (left) a facility in Mumbai with a School, and the Fac- planned addition (in an artist’s rendering), ulty of Arts and Sci- and another (above) in Bangalore.

58 May - June 2008 2006, as HMI was losing its champions within the University: HMS dean Joseph HARVARD PORTRAIT B. Martin announced plans to step down in October of that year, and the presidency of Lawrence H. Summers, an ar- dent supporter of the Dubai project in particular, came to an early end. Interim president Derek Bok brought to Massa- chusetts Hall a skeptical view of Har- vard’s involvement in commercial enter- prises—his books include Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education, which warns against allowing the proﬁt motive to compromise universities’ academic mission. And in the wake of huge federal ﬁnes against the Harvard Institute for Interna- tional Development (another Harvard- run provider of international consulting services) following alleged misconduct by leaders of its economic advising work in Russia, and the institute’s dissolution, University leaders reviewed controls over all overseas projects. Harvard vowed to evaluate all its freestanding “centers” on a regular basis and convened a task force that considered the University’s international priorities; Domínguez, Madero professor of Mexican and Latin American politics and economics, chaired this task force in 2004 and 2005. In July 2006, Domínguez joined the provost’s o∞ce, and a report on HMI from an external review committee— John Chervinsky comprising people from outside HMS, appointed by Martin—landed on his Like many people, John Chervinsky takes his work home. But what this lab engineer desk. The report judged HMI’s activities takes home may one day end up in a museum. In his second career,as a still-life photog- insufficiently academic, citing a number rapher, he places scientific bric-a-brac (a magnet, a tuning fork) alongside other objects of factors including, says Domínguez, the (a candle, a lily), aiming to ask a question or illustrate a problem.“The creative side of finding that HMI work did not count in good science comes from the same place in the mind as the creative side of making promotion and tenure considerations for art,” he says,“yet scientists and artists don’t interact with each other as much as they HMS. (Not everyone agrees with this as- should.” His own propensity to tinker, whether with photographs or lab equipment, sessment. Robert K. Crone, who was comes from his father, who was a machinist and factory foreman in Niagara Falls. In HMI’s president and CEO from 1994 until 1984, after earning a degree in electrical engineering, Chervinsky moved to Boston, 2007 and now works in the higher-educa- where in time he got a job as a lab technician with Rumsford professor of physics and tion practice of the Huron Consulting McKay professor of applied physics Jene Golovchenko, and also began experimenting Group in Boston, says work for HMI has with photography. (He still works with Golovchenko, now as the laboratory engineer factored into two promotions to full pro- for the Harvard Nanopore Group; see “A Personal Genome Machine?” March-April fessor at HMS in the past year alone.) The 2007, page 11.) When, all within a few weeks in 2001, his wife, Kirsten, became seri- external review committee’s findings led ously ill, the World Trade Center was attacked, and his friend and fellow photographer Harvard to commission McKinsey & Guy Pollard died unexpectedly, Chervinsky found himself retreating often to his attic Company to recommend “options” for studio. Photography,no longer merely a hobby,helped him deal with a life that then was HMI’s future, says Domínguez. The Mc- “just falling apart.” The work he did impressed the local arts community, and in 2005 Kinsey report, he says, provided addi- the Griffin Museum of Photography mounted his first solo exhibition. Since then, he’s tional justification for severing ties with shared his scientific still-lifes with gallery-goers from Santa Fe to New York City. HMI: it found that three-quarters of

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 59 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

HMI’s work could be classified as con- presence; Cornell has even opened a “That doesn’t seem to me to be such a sulting, not educational, activities. branch campus of its medical school in bad activity for the Harvard Medical By all accounts, when Walker profes- Qatar—students receive M.D. degrees School or for the University to engage sor of medicine Je≠rey S. Flier became from the university, just as they would if in.” Facilitating the delivery of top-notch HMS dean last September, HMI’s fate they attended the main campus in Man- healthcare, even to the relatively wealthy, had already been decided. (Flier declined hattan. The di≠erence, Domínguez and he says, raises the standard of care for to comment for this story, deferring to other administrators say, is that Harvard everyone in a given region, directly or in- Hyman.) And so, if the agreement be- does not own its teaching hospitals, and directly, through improving the quality comes o∞cial—as both parties said was so is not in a position to advise anyone on of facilities available and the education imminent at press time—HMI’s 60 em- how to operate hospitals. level of local doctors. ployees will become Partners employees, Much discussion has focused on What’s more, the model that says med- and the new organization will be known whether HMI loses or gains from the ical advances develop in the United as Partners-Harvard Medical Interna- transition, but this tabulation is missing States and ripple out to the rest of the tional (PHMI), for the purpose of new a factor, says Henry Rosovsky, Geyser world may be outdated. Those who have contracts, for the ﬁrst ﬁve years. (Admin- University Professor emeritus and former worked on HMI projects are apt to say istrators from the University and Part- dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, they gained as much knowledge as they ners give di≠erent answers regarding who held an ex o∞cio seat on the HMI imparted. This was the case for Thomas whether Partners will have the option to board of directors for 10 years as a mem- H. Lee Jr.—a Partners executive who negotiate using the Harvard name be- ber of the Harvard Corporation. “The holds teaching appointments in medicine yond that initial period.) PHMI would question may also be, does Harvard lose and health policy at HMS and HSPH— honor all existing contracts under their anything?” HMI “improved the quality of when HMI sent him to Japan to speak to original terms, and employees who have medicine in many parts of the world,” doctors about aspirin and heart disease. HMS a∞liations—such as Jeon, who is says Rosovsky (who is president of the American physicians recommend that an instructor in anaesthesia—would Harvard Magazine board of directors). people at risk for heart disease take as- keep them.

As harvard leaves this market, other universities are rushing in. Johns Hopkins has a robust international consulting

Art of the Future?

The Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Museums at 32 Quincy Street will close their doors on June 30 for five years (see “Art Mu- seum Two-Step,” January-February, page 62). But before they do, the Harvard Uni- versity Art Museums (HUAM) will preview the plans for renovation in a small exhibition hinting at the design approach unfolding in the offices of project architect Renzo Piano. All but the original 1927 Fogg building will be torn Architect Renzo Piano is noted for “spaces that defer to art” and down as part of the massive project. has a gift for combining controlled natural light with artificial light, says Thomas W. Lentz, director of the Art Museums. Lentz says Although the design is still evolving as HUAM consults with the architect’s buildings “always keep works of art front and cen- the Cambridge Historical Commission, the Massachusetts His- ter,” whether as a result of his “sense of proportion in gallery torical Commission, the Harvard Corporation, and Cambridge spaces,” or his “deep interest in materials and how they ‘live’ and neighbors, the exhibition, opening May 18, is expected to include interact.” Above, a gallery at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. a large model as well as sketch renderings of Piano’s plan. An- professors can use objects from the collections for teaching. choring the first-floor space will be the distinctive central court- What will be most apparent from the outside, emphasizes yard, with four separate galleries at the building’s corners. The Cabot director of the museums Thomas W. Lentz, is that there second floor will contain more gallery space, and the third will will no longer be front and back sides to the building: “We are include galleries as well an entrance to the study centers where adding [a formal] entrance to the building on Prescott Street.”

60 May - June 2008 Photograph by Michel Denancé/Renzo Piano Workshop pirin daily, but the Japanese doctors Lee Dubai and India on healthcare in their re- sia, using instead an epidural adminis- met protested that clogged arteries were spective regions. Twerdahl met a vascular tered above the level of the heart. These much less common in their patients than surgeon in Bangalore who has revised op- innovations sharply increase access to were hemorrhagic strokes caused by rup- erating room practice—for example, ster- care, but were unlikely to develop in the tured blood vessels—a condition that as- ilizing and reusing equipment, instead of United States, where the healthcare sys- pirin makes more likely. using disposable items—to cut the cost tem is much less responsive to cost. In During a summer internship with HMI per procedure. He met a cardiac surgeon this sense, says Twerdahl, “the days of last year, HMS student Eric Twerdahl rein Mumbai who has pioneered open- U.S. medicine thinking that it’s at the top searched the impact of HMI projects in heart surgery without general anaesthe- of the pile are numbered.”

edge,” said University provost Steven E. the new policy. Professors can make the ar- Open Access Hyman in a public statement. “At Har- ticles available to students in class, and In an historic vote, the Faculty of vard, where so much of our research is of readers worldwide can download copies. Arts and Sciences (FAS) moved to make global significance, we have an essential Peter Suber, principal drafter of the first the articles that its members publish in responsibility to distribute the fruits of major international statement on OA, the scholarly journals freely available to any- our scholarship as widely as possible.” Budapest Open Access Initiative of 2001, one, “disseminating the fruits of its re- Open access (OA) is generally achieved has described Harvard’s new policy as the search and scholarship as widely as possi- in two ways, through OA archives or OA first university mandate for open access ble.” The action acknowledged that the publishing. The latter, in which articles by default in the United States, and the intellectual wealth of the world increas- are peer-reviewed and vetted as usual but first to be adopted by a faculty, rather ingly lies at our fingertips. distributed freely over the Internet, has than implemented by administrative fiat. The Internet has made this possible, but had some success: of the roughly 20,000 Harvard’s policy is a “default,” rather than there is a disturbing countertrend: even as scholarly journals published today, about a true mandate, because it includes an some kinds of information become more 3,000 are OA. opt-out provision, or waiver—for in- readily available (public-domain books in Harvard’s new policy takes the archiv- stance, if the paper of a junior faculty Harvard’s libraries, for instance, through ing approach, by creating a searchable on- member is accepted at a major journal that collaborations with such projects as line repository. “Faculty members still re- doesn’t allow OA archiving. Either way, Google Books), other kinds of information tain copyright to scholarly articles they compliance is expected to be much higher are becoming more difficult to obtain. In write, but any transfer of copyright they at Harvard than at institutions where OA particular, scholarly articles conveying the make to a publisher will be subject to the archiving is optional, and where participa- latest breakthroughs in technology, sci- nonexclusive license to Harvard, which tion rates rarely exceed 15 percent, Suber ence, and medicine—the kind of informa- will retain its right to distribute the article says. His research also indicates that arti- tion those afflicted with a rare disease freely and openly,” explains Welch profes- cles available through OA enjoy increased might wish to access, and, as taxpayers, sor of computer science Stuart Shieber, visibility, retrievability, usage, and citation might even have funded—are locked up in chair of the provost’s committee on schol- impact—and aren’t incompatible with expensive journals (an institutional sub- arly publishing that drafted and presented for-profit publishing. scription to Brain Research, to cite an ex- treme example, is more than $22,000 a Stuart Shieber year), or are otherwise not easily accessible. The motion considered at the FAS meeting on February 12 at first seemed a minor sortie into copyright law. A “yes” vote would grant the University a non-exclusive, nonprofit license to faculty members’ scholarly articles, and require them to deposit a copy in an “open access” repository. But the motion, which passed unanimously, was, in fact, an important milestone in a much larger “open access” movement that aims to make all scientific and scholarly material, particularly articles published in peer-reviewed journals, freely available over the Internet. “The goal of university research is the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowl-

Photograph by Stu Rosner JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

sabbatical; an advisory committee is be- Just a month before FAS acted, the Na- ing formed to assist in the decanal search. tional Institutes of Health (NIH) an- University People nounced that it would become the first Overseer Leaders major research funder with an OA man- College Dean Designated Roger W. Ferguson Jr. ’73, J.D. ’79, Ph.D. date. Its previous voluntary policy led to Rosenkrantz professor of the history of ’81, former vice chairman of the Federal participation rates that hovered “between science and of African and African Reserve Board of Governors, will preside 4 and 7 percent,” explains Alexa McCray, American studies Evelynn M. Ham- over the Board of Overseers for the 2008- deputy director of Harvard Medical monds, Ph.D. ’93, will become dean of 2009 academic year. He succeeds former School’s Countway Library. (Because the Harvard College on June 1, succeeding Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson, NIH doesn’t make grants to individuals Ford professor of human Ph.D. ’73. Pauline Yu ’71, except through their institutions, the in- evolution David Pilbeam, president of the American stitutions will be responsible for tracking who has served on an in- Council of Learned Soci- authors’ compliance with the new pol- terim basis. Since 2005, eties, becomes vice chair of icy.) That policy requires that publicly Hammonds has been se- the Overseers’ executive funded papers be placed in PubMedCen- nior vice provost for fac- committee, succeeding at- tral, an OA repository of full-text articles, ulty development and di- torney William F. Lee ’72. says McCray. She adds that pending legis- versity, gaining a Univer- lation would require all federal funding sity-wide perspective on Development(s) agencies with grant budgets in excess of faculty recruiting and sup- Paul Keenan ’85 has been $100 million to adopt a policy similar to

port for faculty, graduate ROSE LINCOLN/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE appointed senior associate NIH’s—making the Harvard move seem students, and postdocs Evelynn M. Hammonds dean and director of devel- prescient indeed. struggling to balance work and family opment for the Faculty of Arts and Sci- The director of MIT’s library, Anne obligations. “Those issues will always be ences (FAS). He succeeds Scott Abell Wolpert, calls the FAS open-access policy a focus for me,” she says. “I just won’t be ’72, dean for FAS development, who is “bold and visionary”—a collective action doing them for central administration.” retiring at the end of the academic year. that “allows Harvard to support its fac- Her new job has two major projects teed Linda Fates becomes associate dean for ulty.” Under the current system of schol- up: renewing the undergraduate Houses resource development for the School of arly publishing, she says, faculty mem- (see Brevia, page 69) and launching a new Engineering and Applied Sciences. And bers’ intellectual content is “freely general-education curriculum to replace a quartet of senior development o∞cers donated to private ownership.” the Core. She also wants to enrich the has been formed into a new high-level College’s arts offerings—curricular and University Principal Gifts Team: Roger otherwise—and undergraduates’ science Cheever ’67, M.L.A. ’77, associate vice Race in a education and research opportunities. president; Charles Collier, M.T.S. ’73, senior philanthropic adviser; Joe Dono- Genetic World Engineering Deanship Ends van ’72, director; and Shirley Peppers, School of Engineering and Applied Sci- director. “I am an African American,” says Duana ences (SEAS) dean Venkatesh Narayana- Fullwiley, “but in Africa, I am white.” To murti announced on February 15 that he Currier do ﬁeldwork as a medical anthropologist would relinquish the post in September, Captains in Senegal, she says, “I take a plane to concluding a decade of service. He had in- An expert on France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My tended to step down in 2006, but stayed primate be- race changes as I cross the Atlantic.

on during transitions in University and havior and COURTESY OF RICHARD WRANGHAM There, I say, ‘Je suis noire,’ and they say, ‘Oh, Faculty of Arts and Sciences leadership to human evo- Elizabeth Ross and okay—métisse—you are mixed.’ Then I ﬂy Richard Wrangham oversee the elevation of his unit’s status lution, Rich- another six to seven hours to Senegal, and from a division to a school (see “‘First Day ard Wrangham, Moore professor of an- I am white. In the space of a day, I can of School’ for Engineer- thropology, and Elizabeth Ross have change from African American, to métisse, ing,” November-Decem- been appointed master and co-master, to tubaab [Wolof for “white/European”]. ber 2007, page 74). SEAS respectively, of Currier House, e≠ective This is not a joke, or something to laugh faculty ranks increased July 1. The couple, who have three chil- at, or to take lightly. It is the kind of social by 50 percent during his dren, have worked extensively in recognition that even two-year-olds who tenure; graduate-stu- Uganda, where Wrangham founded the can barely speak understand. ‘Tubaab,’ dent enrollment surged. Kibale Chimpanzee Project and Ross is they say when they greet me.” STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HARVARD.NEWS OFFICE Venkatesh Narayanamurti will re- executive director of the Kasiisi Project, Is race, then, purely a social construct? Narayanamurti turn to teaching after a which supports primary schooling. The fact that racial categories change from one society to another might suggest it is.

62 May - June 2008 But now, says Fullwiley, assistant profes- DNA: the paternally inherited Y sex chro- for known Mendelian traits or conditions sor of anthropology and of African and mosome that only men carry, and mito- (such as Huntington’s disease) only a African American studies, genetic meth- chondrial DNA, which is passed exclu- fraction of people with a gene variant ods, with their precision and implied accu- sively from mothers to their children. linked to a disease actually become ill. racy, are being used in the same way that Scientists favor these markers with good Lost in the discussion about genes, she physical appearance has historically been reason: because only one parent can pass fears, are “epigenetic” influences: factors used: “to build—to literally construct—cer- them to o≠spring, they are not subject to that a≠ect gene expression but are not part tain ideas about why race matters.” recombination, the reshu±ing of genetic of one’s genetic code, such as prenatal nu- Genetic science has revolutionized biol- data that normally occurs in each genera- trition (which may influence rates of heart ogy and medicine, and even rewritten our tion. But they represent less than 1 percent disease late in life). Such biosocial fac- understanding of human history. But the of a subject’s DNA, and each tells about tors—environmental, cultural, and eco- fact that human beings are 99.9 percent only one ancestor per generation. Two nomic—can sometimes be more influential identical genetically, as Francis Collins and generations back, a customer might learn than genes. Fullwiley questions, for exam- Craig Venter jointly announced at the about one of four grandparents; three gen- Duana Fullwiley White House on June 26, 2000, when the erations back, about one of eight great- rough draft of the human genome was re- grandparents; and by 10 generations back leased, risks being lost, some scholars fear, (roughly 250 years ago), such genetic tests in an emphasis on human genetic di≠er- reference just one of the 1,024 ancestors in ence. Both in federally funded scientific re- that generation. It doesn’t take long to search and in increasingly popular prac- reach the point when, mathematically, a tice—such as ancestry testing, which often person’s ancestors start to outnumber the purports to prove or disprove membership sum total of all people who have ever lived. in a particular race, group, or tribe—ge- Nor can genetic tests verify a person’s netic testing has appeared to lend scientific race or ethnicity. Genes that a≠ect skin credence to the idea that there is a biologi- pigmentation or blood proteins involved in cal basis for racial categories. malarial resistance, the authors note, may In fact, “There is no genetic basis for not measure direct and unique ancestry race,” says Fullwiley, who has studied the (for example, a founder e≠ect), but reflect ethical, legal, and social implications of instead an evolutionary response to the human genome project with sociolo- “shared environmental exposures.” Fur- gist Troy Duster at UC, Berkeley. She thermore, the tests are based on compar- sometimes quotes Richard Lewontin, now isons to databases of DNA from living pop- professor of biology and Agassiz professor ulations, and are therefore vulnerable to of zoology emeritus, who said much the “systematic bias” because of “incomplete same thing in 1972, when he discovered geographic sampling” or the fact that “pre- that of all human genetic variation (which sent-day patterns of residence are rarely we now know to be just 0.1 percent of all identical to what existed in the past.” One genetic material), 85 percent occurs within testing company even uses an underlying geographically distinct groups, while 15 model that “reinforces the archaic racial percent or less occurs between them. The view that four discrete ‘parental’ popula- issue today, Fullwiley says, is that many tions (Africans, Europeans, East Asians, ple, if the prevalence of diabetes among Na- scientists are mining that 15 percent in and Native Americans) existed in the past” tive Americans on reservations, or of search of human di≠erences by continent. even though “there is little evidence that asthma among U.S. Latinos, is only genetic. Last October, Fullwiley and colleagues four biologically discrete groups of hu- Her research in Senegal has reinforced that from 14 academic institutions around the mans ever existed….” doubt. Scientists have long searched for a country articulated some of their con- Recently, Fullwiley’s concerns have genetic di≠erence that would explain why cerns about ancestry testing in Science centered on a new kind of genetic testing. many Senegalese experience a relatively magazine. More than half a million people For a substantial fee, companies such as mild form of sickle cell disease. Fullwiley’s have paid between $100 and $900 for such 23andMe will “tell you what your pro- work suggests that many of them may in- tests, and for some—those seeking to es- pensity is for hypertension, schizophre- stead be mitigating their symptoms with a tablish membership in a Native American nia, breast cancer, lactose intolerance, and widespread cultural practice: phyto- tribe poised to open a lucrative casino, for high or low IQ,” she says. But the studies therapy—the ingestion of roots from a example—the stakes can be high. Unfor- that have established links between genes plant that, preliminary studies suggest, tunately, the Science authors noted, the and these outcomes are probabilistic, she triggers production of fetal hemoglobin, tests have serious limitations. says, and convey, like ancestry tests, what a blood-cell type that doesn’t sickle. Most tests focus on just two types of might be called a false precision. Except “When environmental history, or evolu-

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 63 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

gration out of Africa,” about some of the African-American DNA noted Wells. “You share testing companies purporting to trace you that with the Australian back to your ancient tribe.” Ancestry is aborigines.” An African- actually more complex for the average American student with an- African American, he says, not only be- cestors from East Africa cause people in West Africa (where most carried a genetic signature of the slave trade occurred) have moved characteristic of that re- around a lot in the last 500 years, but also gion. But an Asian-Ameri- because “group composition within Africa can student was surprised has changed over time.” Furthermore, be- to find that she carried al- cause only a small number of humans sur- most the same genetic vived the journey out of Africa some markers as a Mexican- 50,000 years ago (and the slave trade on American student. Wells that continent was relatively localized), explained, “There is only “there is more diversity in the average one change, but you are African village,” Wells notes, “than there fairly di≠erent because is outside of Africa combined.” your lines diverged a long tionary history, gets reduced to Spencer Wells tells time ago. Still, you are part When asked about the question of race, racial or ethnic di≠erence,” she student volunteers of the same branch of the Wells’s answer was unequivocal. “Racism of the Harvard says, “that’s a big mistake.” Foundation about their tree”: the Native Americans is not only socially divisive, but also sci- deep ancestors’ who populated the West- entifically incorrect. We are all descen- Not all genetics projects are so ancient migrations. ern Hemisphere originally dants of people who lived in Africa re- potentially divisive, however. In came from Asia. cently,” he says. “We are all Africans under February, Spencer Wells, Ph.D. ’94, a for- The Genographic Project aims to tell the skin.” The kinds of di≠erences that mer Lewontin student, came to Harvard people “where their ancestors were living people notice, such as skin pigmentation, to tell a story of human connectedness. as indigenous people” at di≠erent points limb length, or other adaptations are “ba- Wells, who heads the joint National Geo- in time, but can’t, for example, tell most sically surface features that have been se- graphic Society-IBM nonprofit Geno- African Americans precisely where in lected for in the environment. When you graphic Project, spent an afternoon with Africa they are from because, Wells ex- peer beneath the surface at the underlying student members of the Harvard Founda- plains, “the database isn’t quite there yet.” level of genetic variation, we are all much tion, which represents 72 student organi- Echoing Fullwiley’s reservations about all more similar than we appear to be. There zations “from the Albanian Society to the such tests, he says he’s “a bit concerned are no clear, sharp delineations.” Vietnamese Society,” says director S. Allen Counter. Wells had previously invited the students to participate in the Geno- Markers, Male and Female graphic Project by sending in cheek swabs with their DNA for analysis. “The idea,” Genetic tests have limits, even as tools for tracing ancient migrations. Because says Counter, “was to show a diverse men don’t move around as much as women do in patriarchal societies—contrary to group of students how they connect to popular belief, says Spencer Wells, Ph.D. ’94, who heads the joint National Geographic the rest of humanity.” Society-IBM Genographic Project—the Y chromosome is the best marker for charting Wells has created a human family tree migration patterns until it dead-ends about 60,000 to 90,000 years ago in one man who that traces “the journey of man” (as he ti- lived in Africa. To trace earlier migrations, scientists use mitochondrial DNA, which tled his 2002 book) in populating the entire passes exclusively from mother to child. That trail leads back 200,000 years to one planet from a homeland in Africa. The pro- woman. The striking di≠erence in the time frame, Wells notes, reflects the fact that, his- ject has used linguistic and genetic studies torically, “most women have an opportunity to reproduce, but only a few men do”— to guide its sampling of indigenous popula- and thus a more diverse sampling of the earliest female human lineages has survived. tions from around the globe—many of Wells says genetic evidence “tells us something about the who, the where, the them isolated and remote—and now has when. But to make sense of the how and the why (which is the fun part), you have the world’s largest and most representative to draw in archaeology, anthropology, paleoclimatology, linguistics—all these other anthropological database of human DNA. fields.” Climate shifts have been an important factor, though not the only one: he’s At Harvard, a Pakistani-American stu- recently turned up a genetic impact of the Crusades on the gene pool of the Middle dent whose family had always told her they East. “We can actually trace Christian lineages in Lebanon back to source popula- were originally from an area near the Ara- tions in Europe,” he says. “That sort of resolution has never been possible before be- bian Sea had this confirmed by her DNA re- cause we didn’t have a large enough sample size.” sult. “Your family was part of the first mi-

64 May - June 2008 Photograph by Romana Vysatova ©2008 National Geographic Fullwiley’s own ethnographic research among genetic scientists suggests that Yesterday’s News much of current medical genetics may re- From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine inforce ideas of racial di≠erence. Because certain diseases occur at higher frequen- 1928 Following Harvard’s first spring ceremonies that are conducted by cies in some populations (sickle cell ane- reading period, the College Library re- officials of other religions. mia in blacks, Tay-Sachs disease in Jews ports about 650 more visitors than in of eastern European ancestry), they have the previous year. 1963 What begins in the Winthrop become linked to the idea of race, even House courtyard as a prank by 20 or so when the disease does not result from 1933 In response to a New Yorker arti- Radcliffe students “hotly perpetrating common ancestry. Sickle cell trait, for ex- cle which “describes the lamentable de- the first Great B.V.D. Raid in Harvard ample, has arisen independently in sev- crease of hurdy-gurdies licensed by the history” (according to the Bulletin’s eral populations as an evolutionary re- city of New York,” the Bulletin’s editors undergraduate column) escalates into a sponse to malaria. The genetic change cite the welcome increase in street per- riotous event involving close to 2,000 appeared first in India and then in Africa; formers and the variety of street music undergraduates and onlookers by the it is also found in Greeks and Italians. But in Cambridge. time the action reaches Harvard Square. in the United States, Fullwiley says, The shouting, chanting masses finally dis- sickle cell trait is very much linked to 1938 After noting that Harvard appears perse at the Radcliffe Quad. No Radcliffe African-American racial identity through to be the first institution of higher learn- women are officially penalized, but five the history of medicine. ing to enter into a contract with a na- Harvard men spend the night in jail. She says the potential for racialization tional labor union, the Bulletin reports of medical genetics has been institutional- that nine employees’ units have partici- 1983 Student activists have set up “E ized because “you can’t get a grant from pated in perhaps the first official election for D,” the Endowment for Divestiture, the NIH unless you recruit in racial to determine the bargaining agent be- and are urging seniors and alumni to groups, label people by census category, tween a university and its workers. send their class-gift contributions to its and then report back the data in terms of escrow account rather than to Harvard outcomes by racial type.” The original in- 1958 Upon the recommendation of until the University adopts a policy of tent—to counter the widespread use of the chairman of the University’s Board complete divestiture of its South African the white male body as the working re- of Preachers, the Harvard Corporation holdings or until the UN lifts its eco- search norm—is “fine and good,” she says, has voted to permit Memorial Church nomic sanctions again that country’s but there “ought to be some flexibility to to be used on certain occasions for pri- apartheid regime. these race categories, and some thinking vate, non-Christian about what they mean. This new construction of race…is socially inflected— but it is not solely a social construct because biology is front and center.”

Prescription: Music Nowadays, no one from Faulkner Hospital bothers Stephen Wright ’64 on Thursday nights. But when he joined the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in 1993—before he became Faulkner’s chief of medicine and could pick his hours—he kept a pager on his belt during rehearsals. If it went off, he had to put down his bassoon and take the call. Sometimes, after the three-hour rehearsal, he went back to the hospital instead of going home. “I maintain that you make time for what you want to do,” he says. “And I really want to do this.” Wright wasn’t the only one to bring a pager to rehearsals. A group of

Illustration by Mark Steele JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Scanning the Social Sciences

Letters have gone out inviting senior faculty members from Facilitating boundary across the University, nominated by the deans of their respec- crossing is a high priority tive schools, to participate in planning for a broad review of the for President Drew Faust. way Harvard handles the social sciences. The list of participants In a letter to the Harvard is not yet final, but a recent conversation with University community at the start of provost Steven E. Hyman offers a preview of the committee’s the academic year, she purpose and the work that lies ahead. wrote of her wish for The review will proceed along lines similar to those followed Harvard to become “a in the natural sciences, where a review that began in 2006 is university known more now moving from goal-setting to implementation (see “For Sci- for bridges and less for Steven E. Hyman ence and Engineering, New Life,” March-April 2007, page 65). walls.” In this vein, the But Hyman, a neurobiologist, warns that this isn’t as easy as provost’s office has be- JUSTIN IDE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE mapping the previous process onto the social sciences. come the nerve center “Frankly,” he says, “the natural sciences are simpler. It’s really for University-wide initia- four schools—arts and sciences, engineering, medicine, and tives in the natural sci- public health. The social sciences are far more complex. Every ences, the arts, and now, school at Harvard, arguably, is engaged in the social sciences.” the social sciences. In the natural sciences, Hyman adds, independent developments As a model of successful such as the biotech boom and stem-cell research have driven col- coordination, Hyman cites laboration across disciplines. The social sciences, absent such the interfaculty initiative forces, have not gone so far down that path. It also hasn’t helped, in health policy. That initia- he says, that social-science methodologies “differ enormously tive encompasses a Ph.D. from the qualitative and ethnographic to highly quantitative.” program within FAS, with But crossing these boundaries is both inevitable and neces- joint programs through sary, says Eckstein professor of applied economics David M. HMS and Harvard Law Cutler, dean for the social sciences in the Faculty of Arts and School (HLS); a secondary Sciences (FAS), who has already signed on to the nascent work- concentration for under- ing group. For most social scientists, says Cutler, a deep undergraduates; a postdoctoral standing of a single field no longer suffices. In his own case, he program; and a program David M. Cutler

has had to learn about aspects of medicine and public policy in that aims to use Harvard ROSE LINCOLN/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE order to study the economics of healthcare. In his course on scholars’ knowledge to improve the quality of healthcare in health policy, he uses readings from the New England Journal of eastern Massachusetts. The initiative gets funding from six Medicine or, he says,“from whatever discipline happens to have faculties; its director, Joseph P. Newhouse, holds appoint- someone who wrote a nice paper.” ments at HMS, HKS, and HSPH. Yet Cutler suspects that if he showed his research to econo- And as an example of what should not happen under the new mists trained 40 years ago,“they would look at it and say,‘I have approach, Hyman points to the field of human rights, where no idea what this person is doing.’” The configuration of acade- HSPH has the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and mic departments—in some cases, set up more than 100 years Human Rights; HKS has the Carr Center for Human Rights Pol- ago—does not reflect the new reality, he explains.The depart- icy; and HLS has its own Human Rights Program. As executive ments are still important, but a structure for coordinating be- director of the University Committee on Human Rights Stud- tween them is also necessary. ies—“an awkward overlying planning committee,” in Hyman’s Harvard’s historic decentralization can hold back interdisci- words—Jacqueline Bhabha “has done a brilliant job,” he says, plinary connection, says Cutler. For instance, it would make “but it’s exhausting.” sense for him to teach at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and With a University capital campaign on the horizon, creating a for HMS health-policy scholars to teach or co-teach courses wish list for fundraising will be a primary goal for the review. offered through FAS, the Harvard School of Public Health But the eventual recommendations may not all require money. (HSPH), or the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). But because Cutler, for one, believes Harvard already possesses many of the each professor’s paycheck comes from his or her specific fac- resources needed to increase effectiveness in the social sci- ulty, he says,“we’re not very well set up to deal with that at the ences. “If you’ve got butter and sugar and flour and eggs,” he moment.” says, “I think you ought to bake a cake.”

66 May - June 2008 The Longwood Symphony Orchestra performs at Jordan Hall.

Dimes, St. Jude Chil- MetLife Award for Excel- dren’s Research Hos- lence in Community En- HM pital, and the Boston gagement. Visit harvard- Health Care for the This summer, about a mag.com/extras Homeless Program. third of the group’s 125 to listen to In 2004 McPhee members will tour in Eng- the Longwood Symphony agreed to become the land, and Wong dreams of Orchestra CD, LSO’s conductor (in someday taking the or- “The Sounds of addition to his Boston chestra to a developing Healing.” Ballet job). “When I country where the doctors and therapists took the group on,” could practice both their hobby and their music lovers at the Longwood Medical he says, “it was really because I believe in professions. Area (ranging from students to doctors to the good work they do in the community “Sometimes you’re in a scurry over at chaplains) founded the group in 1982, and and I felt I could help them continue to the hospital, trying to get to rehearsal, about 85 percent of the orchestra’s mem- build their model.” The American Sym- and you wonder if it’s worth it,” says bers still work in healthcare. That doesn’t phony Orchestra League recently took Wright. “But then you get there for five surprise its president, Lisa Wong ’79, who note, too, and gave the LSO the 2007 minutes, and yup, it was.” used to play her violin in both the Har- vard-Radcliffe and Bach Society Orches- tras. “The kind of dedication and precise will it mean for the way people live, for in- training you need to get as a musician,” Connecting stance, as 97 new airports open by 2020? she says, “translates well into the dedica- with China During a recent visit, some of these is- tion and precise thinking you do as a sues were tackled by alumni and fellows medical professional.” China disorients the visitor. The scale who have spent time in Massachusetts, by Wong joined the group shortly after its and bustle of its cities—propelled by the Harvard faculty members and their acade- inception, but by 1991 she and a number greatest economic growth and urban mi- mic partners in China, and by panelists at of other members felt that simply show- gration in history—overwhelm. The cur- the Harvard Alumni Association’s (HAA) ing up once a week to play music “didn’t rency features Mao’s likeness, but new conference in Shanghai (March 28-30). seem to be enough.” The LSO therefore luxury apartment towers have displaced They also looked deep into China’s history, decided to organize a symposium with commoner housing all around the site of analyzed its present challenges, and tried the Boston-based Albert Schweitzer Fel- this summer’s Olympics in his capital city. to support its pursuit of a more fulﬁlling lowship, which was launching a program The ubiquitous advertisements for West- future for its 1.3 billion people. to send medical students to underserved ern consumer goods in Shanghai symbol- areas of the United States. The two-day ize openness to the world, but during the The statistics in o∞cial accounts of event included panel discussions on March protests in Tibet, China Daily duly every aspect of China’s transformation ob- HIV/AIDS and domestic violence, and reported overseas Chinese students’ out- scure as much as they explain. The pace culminated in a concert featuring the LSO rage at purported distortions by “the and scope of change demand the telling of and cellist Yo-Yo Ma ’76, D.Mus. ’91. For Western Goebbels’ Nazi media.” Along a individuals’ stories, of neighborhoods en- further guidance the group turned to Shanghai thoroughfare near the “Cowboy during the whirlwind—the tools of social Jonathan McPhee, a sometime guest con- Boot Bar,” laundry dries on bamboo poles anthropology. But that discipline has ductor who was then music director for extended from balconies to the passing scarcely existed in the Chinese academy, the Boston Ballet. “When I first came into telephone wires; at street level, a retailer’s apart from ethnographies of minority contact with them, they were just a lingerie display would make Victoria’s Se- groups within the People’s Republic. bunch of doctors playing together for cret close the curtains. Now, Pan Tianshu, fun,” he remembers. “But whenever you’ve Perhaps it should not surprise that such got that many Type-A people in a room, contrasts, arising within a generation of you’re going to have growth.” the Cultural Revoluton, can disorient the The orchestra now partners with non- Chinese, too. Under the twin pressures of profit medical organizations for each of its the one-child policy and the migration of four yearly concerts. (The nonprofit 150 million rural workers to urban jobs groups buy discounted tickets and then (with a quarter-billion more expected to sell them to earn the difference; concert- follow within 20 years), traditional, ex- goers also can, and do, make larger dona- tended families have shrunk. Frantic tions.) To date, the LSO has raised hun- growth and projects like the Olym- dreds of thousands of dollars for more than pics have uprooted whole commu- 25 organizations, including the March of nities and created new ones; what

Tom Kates Photography JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Ph.D. ’02, one of perhaps a dozen western- istic research into uct of being only children.” trained social anthropologists in the coun- China’s more techno- Across the society, Pan said, try, is pioneering the field. Trained by fac- cratic, quantitative citizens refer to the “four-two- ulty members including Rabb professor of academic mainstream. one” family (grandparents, par- anthropology Arthur Kleinman (who has (The importance of do- ents, child), an abrupt shift worked in China since 1978 and in Taiwan ing so throughout Chi- from the past resulting from the the prior decade), Pan described how he na’s higher education strict family-planning policy. inserted himself into one of Shanghai’s system was a principal Its consequences range from “lower quarter” neighborhoods. His dis- theme of the HAA key- altered family sertation details the e≠ects of the “unem- note address by Gei- experiences to ployment scheme” that stripped state-en- singer professor of his- China’s looming terprise jobs from “work-unit persons” tory William C. Kirby, rush toward the during China’s economic reforms. In re- director of the Fairbank uncertain demo- sponse, they began besieging the o∞cial Center for East Asian Research. He graphics of hun- neighborhood organizations, once organs observed that for centuries, imper- dreds of millions of of social control, for job aid and welfare. ial China’s examination system elderly citizens— These same marginal city dwellers— brought the most accomplished living longer, but once Mao’s vanguard class—saw their humanists into high state service bereft of traditional neighborhoods targeted for clearance and precisely because they were domestic supports redevelopment. Pan said that their initial broadly learned, not because they and as yet unprovided embrace of the promise of better housing were experienced administrators for in other ways. was followed by mourning for the loss of or—as are most current senior leaders— Amid so much rapid community, and ultimately anger at inad- engineers.) dislocation, Chinese experts report more equate compensation. More generally, he Pan teaches four courses per term and mental-health problems: depression, per- said, the residents have su≠ered from a edits authorized translations of exem- vasive anxiety, drug abuse, eating disor- “change of time-space,” a “compression” plary American works. Among them are ders, even Internet addiction. There is also of their lives and the city’s meaning for books by mentors Theodore Bestor, pro- greater willingness, at least in urban cen- them. fessor of anthropology; senior lecturer ters, to recognize and address such chal- Now an assistant professor at Fudan Rubie Watson; and Kleinman, whose What lenges—best symbolized by the new University’s School of Social Develop- Really Matters contains a shattering por- Shanghai Mental Health Center (SMHC), ment and Public Policy—itself created trait of a doctor whose life was all but de- a treatment and teaching complex consid- only in 2004—the energetic Pan is in a stroyed during the Cultural Revolution ered the standard-setter for China. The hurry to bring such qualitative, human- and by repeated personal betrayals. Thus 900-bed facility, and a larger unit where Pan introduces a new perspective into geriatric, rehabilitation, and combined Above: Translations of works by Harvard scholars Arthur Kleinman (top) and Rubie China’s contemporary discourse on itself. mental-infectious-disease cases are cared Watson, edited by their former student for, now handle more than 4,000 hospital- Pan Tianshu. Below, Peking University Pan’s academic work touches on other izations and a third of a million outpatient students Zhou Jia and Liu Jiang, and Professor Deng Xiaonan, are part of an broad changes in Chinese life. Not only visits annually, according to Xu Yifeng, international consortium transforming work and neighborhood but family have professor of psychiatry and incoming chair the study of Chinese history. been redefined. During President Drew of the Chinese Psychiatrist Association. Faust’s visit to Shanghai In China, proposed national legislation No. 3 Girls High School on mental illness has been through 10 (where a student greet- drafts since 1985 but remains unadopted, ed her, “Good afternoon, and medical training is less specialized respectable president”), than in the United States, so fellowships she listened as a student for one or two professionals annually to explained the appeal of study at Harvard have played a significant extracurricular groups: role in educating SMHC’s sta≠ members, “We are the only child in and in advancing care. (Xu was one of the the family, so we seldom first such fellows, in the late 1990s.) In a have the chance to orga- group meeting with several former fel- nize such big programs.” lows, center president Xiao Zeping em- Faust said that Chinese phasized, “All the candidates come back students at Harvard had as a master of the hospital,” prepared to told her “how much they lead a unit or department. felt they were the prod- She said of her colleagues that the Free-

Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard News O∞ce Green Goals of Science and Technology—opening in A new task force, appointed by President Saudi Arabia in 2009—to help it recruit Drew Faust on February 27, will examine faculty members and collaborate on re- Harvard’s greenhouse-gas emissions Brevia search; one attraction is the new institu- and recommend University goals for re- tion’s $10-billion endowment, which ducing them; it is to report by the end promises ample research funds. In the of the academic year. United States, the Howard Brooks professor of in- Hughes Medical Institute ternational science pub- pledged $300 million to lic policy and human de- underwrite the early re- velopment William C. search of 70 promising Clark is chair; Thomas young biomedical faculty Vautin, associate vice members nationwide. president for facilities and environmental ser- Nota Bene vices, is vice chair. De- Price check. Harvard Col- tails about the task force lege tuition, room, board, mission and its member- and fees for 2008-2009 will ship are available at rise to $47,215, an increase www.news.harvard.edu/- of 3.5 percent (compared to gazette/2008/02.28/99- last year’s 4.5 percent in- sustainability.html. crease). Need-based schol- THREATENED TREASURES. Many rare arship aid will grow substantially—by Endowments Profiled drawings, posters, and archived documents 21.4 percent—to $125 million. Princeton Harvard reports that just 17 percent of its from the Harvard Theatre Collection as raised its term bill 3.9 percent, while Yale well as Houghton Library holdings were $34.9-billion endowment is truly unre- damaged when a large drainpipe ruptured committed to an increase of 2.2 percent (in stricted by donors. For Stanford and in Pusey Library during heavy rain on the line with core consumer price inflation). Princeton (which posted their reports on night of March 8, sending more than 500 gallons of water into the stacks. Thomas Renovations recommended. line; Harvard did not), the comparable Horrocks, associate librarian for collections The Faculty proportions are nearly 25 percent and at Houghton, surveyed preservation efforts of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has begun “approximately 30 percent.” Those were (above); the destruction would have been planning a major renovation of the 12 un- among the interesting tidbits revealed in worse had the Harvard College Library not dergraduate residential houses, a process arranged for security staff to conduct February, when more than 100 universi- extra checks of the stacks following week- that may take as long as 15 years. The con- ties and colleges responded to queries end flood-watch warnings from the dition of four Houses—Dunster, Leverett, from U.S. Senate Finance Committee National Weather Service. Lowell, and Mather—has been assessed; members Max Baucus and Charles the remaining eight will be evaluated Grassley concerning the size, growth, of grants for biomedical research. On during the next several months. FAS dean management, and use of their endow- March 11, President Drew Faust, the Michael D. Smith is appointing a House ments. The senators have been exploring Johns Hopkins medical-school dean, and Program Planning Committee of faculty whether the institutions’ spending poli- an Ohio State biologist, testified about and sta≠ members and students “to ex- cies and financial aid are, in their view, the problem before the Senate Commit- amine the mission and purpose of House consistent with recent strong endow- tee on Health, Education, Labor, and life and to develop an architectural space ment growth and tax-exempt status— Pensions. Young researchers, Faust said, plan for the House system.” perhaps with an eye to legislating “see a future defined by new limits—not mandatory annual payouts of 5 percent in ideas, energy, intelligence, or enthusi- Tuition trimming. Complementing its or so. asm—but in opportunity.” If not cor- loan-forgiveness program, Harvard Law rected, “[O]ur position as the primary School next fall will begin waiving third- Life-Sciences Shortfall destination for the best and brightest re- year tuition ($41,500) for students who Harvard and six other research institu- searchers from around the world may be commit to five years of work in govern- tions have published “A Broken Pipe- challenged.” One example of that chal- ment or nonprofit jobs after graduation. line?” (www.brokenpipeline.org), a re- lenge emerged a week earlier as Berkeley, At Harvard Medical School, starting port on the consequences for science of Stanford, and the University of Texas next year, students whose families earn five years of flat funding for the National each signed multimillion-dollar agree- less than $120,000 a year will no longer Institutes of Health, the principal source ments with King Abdullah University have to make a parental tuition contribu-

Photograph by Rose Lincoln/Harvard News O∞ce Harvard Magazine 69 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

tion, saving them an average of $12,500 Excellent engineers. Advancing film. The Faculty of Arts and annually in their four years of study. The Radcli≠e Institute in- Sciences has approved a new doctoral-de- policy will a≠ect just over one-third of terim dean Barbara J. gree program in film and visual studies current medical students. Grosz, Higgins professor (www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/gradprogram. of natural sciences, who html), the natural outgrowth of expanded Name game. The Kennedy School of Gov- investigates natural-lan- faculty, facilities, courses, and student in- ROSE LINCOLN/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE ernment has rebranded itself the Harvard guage communication be- Barbara J. terest in visual images (see “Cinema Veri- Kennedy School. tween humans and com- Grosz tas,” November-December 2005, page 34). puters, has been elected Historians honored. His- to the National Academy Poetic pique. Poking fun at the Faculty of torian of science and of Engineering. Also Arts and Sciences for canceling two of its Graduate School of Arts elected were Frans A. scheduled meetings and grappling with and Sciences dean Allan Spaepen, Franklin profes- unpredictable attendance (which has has won the sor of applied physics, for prompted an exploration of decreasing M. Brandt STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE

2008 Bancroft Prize, the Allan M. work on amorphous met- COURTESY OF FRANS A. SPAEPEN the required quorum), the Crimson editori- top professional honor for Brandt als and semiconductors, Frans A. alized on March 10 in villanelle form, be- Spaepen books in American history, for The Cigarette and Zhigang Suo, Puck- ginning: “The Faculty Council mused Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of ett professor of mechan- about its forum,/Attendance at monthly the Product That Deﬁned America. Peter Silver ics and materials, for meetings dwindled low./‘We think the ’92, assistant professor of history at Prince- work on electronic mate- problem must be with the quorum!’/‘We ton, also won, for Our Savage Neighbors: How rial systems and compos- must not stoop to pressure or implore Indian War Transformed Early America. ites. All four are School ’em,/Who cares if professors never go?’” of Engineering and Ap- (For the complete verse, see www.the- DISEASE DIGITIZED. Understanding of

disease evolved dramatically with the advent COURTESY OF ZHIGANG SUO plied Sciences faculty crimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522404.) of modern germ theory in the final third of Zhigang Suo members. the nineteenth century. Before then, Miscellany. Faculty of individual susceptibilities—not disease-caus- Athletics and administration. Faculty of Arts and Sciences associ- ing agents—were thought to drive many illnesses. A new University Library Open Arts and Sciences executive dean Nancy ate dean for academic Collections offering, “Contagion: Historical Maull, FAS’s chief administrative and a≠airs Brian W. Casey, Views of Diseases and Epidemics,” now ﬁnancial o∞cer for 15 years, stepped down Ph.D. ’00—a senior ﬁgure examines in rich detail (500,000 pages of

books, serials, manuscripts, and images) at the end of February. On an interim STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE in recruiting new profes- medicinal beliefs about miasmas, malign bad basis, Nichols Family director of athletics Brian W. sors—has been appoint- Casey smells, and other issues (sin, for instance), Robert L. Scalise assumed those responsi- ed president of DePauw while exploring cholera, smallpox, influenza, bilities; he formerly served in a similar ca- University, in Greencastle, Indiana, e≠ec- yellow fever, and more. Shown here: Fighting Harvard Extension School pneumonic plague in Manchuria. Access the pacity at Harvard Business School. tive July 1.… at- collection at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ tracted 350 students worldwide for “Posi- contagion. Other on-line archives cover Educating women entrepreneurs. Har- tive Psychology,” its largest distance- working women and immigration to the is among 16 institu- learning enrollment to date; the course United States; a collection of materials on vard Business School Islam will appear in late 2008. tions working with Goldman Sachs & was a smash in real life, too (see “The Sci- Company on the lat- ence of Happiness,” January-February ter’s $100-million, ﬁve- 2007, page 26).…James M. Poterba ’80, year philanthropic ef- chair of MIT’s economics department, has fort to provide 10,000 succeeded Baker professor of economics women in developing Martin S. Feldstein as president of the countries with busi- National Bureau of Economic Research.… ness and management The on-line social-networking site Face- skills. HBS will focus book has hired Sheryl Sandberg ’91, on training business M.B.A. ’95, who spent six years at Google, school deans and senior as chief operating o∞cer. She reports to faculty members in company founder Mark Zuckerberg ’06, India to provide case- who dropped out to work on the enter- method training. See prise.…The Malkin Athletic Center has www.10000women.org installed that must-have amenity for mod- for details. ern ﬁtness bu≠s: satellite video service.

70 May - June 2008 Image courtesy of Imaging Services, Harvard College Library man Foundation Fellowships, coordinated Students at Shanghai through Kleinman in his Harvard Medical No. 3 Girls High School performed traditional School (HMS) capacity—he is professor of music for President Faust. psychiatry and professor of medical anthropology—and Fogarty Fellowships unfor the development of derwritten by the National Institutes of science. Health, “change their mentality and their knowledge.” The returning fellows, she Many similar profes- added, “have a large influence on students, sional and academic policy, and the culture”; several play signif- ties, some directed at icant roles in advising on China’s mental- pressing new priorities, health policies and care system. were evident throughout a week’s travel. health data, and projections of economic Chen Jue, a 2004-2005 Fogarty Fellow, On a weekday afternoon, a presentation impacts from various uses of green-tax conducted research on eating disorders. on the nation’s truly alarming air pollution revenues—points the Harvard speakers After observing group therapy at Harvard began at Tsinghua University, in north- embraced as they seek to further refine hospitals, she introduced group-therapy western Beijing. Seated at tables supplied their projections and demonstrate reme- techniques in her eating-disorders clinic at with bananas and bottled water, with tea dies for troubling pollution and global- SMHC, and reports “much better success.” nearby, Chris Nielsen, Wang Yuxuan, and warming trends. Cheng Wenhong, a vice professor, used Mun Ho outlined the findings from Clear- Interviewed separately, Deborah Selig- part of her fellowship year, in 2003-2004, to ing the Air, the latest product of a multiyear, sohn ’84 underscored the sense that Chi- observe at Children’s Hospital, before she interdisciplinary collaboration between nese policymakers are addressing energy, established a clinic for adolescents. Harvard and Tsinghua’s department of en- environmental, and global-warming prob- Predating even the earliest exchanges vironmental science and engineering. lems, to a degree not widely acknowl- for mental health were joint e≠orts to The trio—Nielsen, executive director of edged in the United States. Seligsohn, strengthen the foundations of modern the China Project at the School of Engi- who recently left the Foreign Service after public health in China. At Fudan Univer- neering and Applied Sciences; Wang, who 21 years so she could remain in Beijing and sity’s School of Public Health, near will join the Tsinghua faculty after receiv- focus on the environment, now directs the SMHC, Professor Chen Jie recalled studying her Harvard doctorate this June; and World Resources Institute’s China pro- ing at the Harvard School of Public Health Ho, an economist who is a fellow at Har- gram. The nation, she said, “is at this (HSPH) in 1985-1986. Her focus then was vard’s Institute for Quantitative Social major overall inflection [point].…There is a on hospital management and health Science—were presenting novel research. new idea of what development means”— economics; today, she teaches graduate Theirs is the first detailed model of Chi- not just raw gains in output, but all the as- courses in hospital management and in nese air pollutants by source (electrical pects of “creating what looks like an a±u- the assessment of new healthcare tech- power, mostly from coal; cement; steel; ent society” in terms of citizens’ health, nologies and practices. Her Ministry of chemicals; and China’s burgeoning vehicle education, the physical environment, and Health-a∞liated laboratory evaluates the fleet), the health impact of each, and the income equality. e∞cacy of drugs, devices, and procedures e≠ectiveness and costs of economic means “That’s what they want,” she said of the proposed for use throughout China’s med- (“green taxes”) to mitigate the problem. leadership, whose ranks have recently ical system (and advises on such topics Their audience was novel, too: not envi- broadened to include new disciplines and throughout Asia). ronmental scientists, but faculty and stu- greater administrative experience; they Chen has chaired the Harvard a∞lates dents from Tsinghua’s School of Econom- have carefully embraced new goals as well of the Shanghai Overseas Returned Schol- ics and Management—people who will (including such terms as “harmonious soci- ars Association, a role now passing to help shape China’s energy, environmental, ety” and the “scientific concept of develop- Qian Xu, the school’s vice dean. Qian and global-warming policies. In the ensu- ment”). “What’s needed,” she studied maternal and child health at ing discussion, none of the said, “is more serious interna- HSPH and Tufts in 1992-1993. Both speak audience members tional action to help China suc- passionately about their continuing con- undercut the re- ceed” in attaining its energy and tacts with colleagues in Boston and their searchers’ basic as- environmental goals, beginning strong desire to keep in touch more sumptions or mar- with American commitments closely and regularly. Underscoring the ket-based approach to develop and deploy new point, SMHC’s Xiao said the center main- to pollution control. technologies. tains relationships with dozens of acade- Rather, they ques- There are tangible signs of mic institutions worldwide, but Har- tioned details of the the kinds of changes Selig- vard’s training role is the most extensive scientists’ model, their sohn identified. Tsinghua’s and important—of particular value be- The HAA event attracted School of Public Policy and cause “the U.S. is the engine of the world” more than 600 people. Management, established

Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard News O∞ce Harvard Magazine 71 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL in 2000, is busily educating administrators citizens. She began drafting the amended Ultimately, the paths China pursues will using a curriculum and case-teaching law in 2005, and said it now incorporates reflect its own history and interests. In a method developed in cooperation with strong language prohibiting discrimina- young country like the United States, it Daewoo professor of international affairs tion and outlining government responsi- can be easy to forget the weight of a civi- Anthony Saich and Harvard Kennedy bilities toward disabled people. Alford has lization that has persisted for millennia. School (HKS) colleagues. (Saich, who also been a regular conduit of information to In a traditionally styled building on the directs the University Asia Center, runs HLS and international experts, she said, northern edge of Peking University’s cam- executive-education programs in the particularly because “We did not know pus, professor of history Deng Xiaonan United States and China for public o∞- about the implementation or the cost to and her graduate students are part of an cials at all levels of the Chinese govern- enforce the disabled people’s rights.” international consortium that will make ment.) During a recent morning class in While taking care to suggest that any China’s past accessible to radically fresh the school’s new master in international policies must be China’s own, Alford has research and exploration. The China Bio- development program, associate professor been encouraged by the momentum graphical Database (CBDB), including the Cheng Wenhao—a 2003 HKS fellow—led building for reform of the disability law— university, the Harvard-Yenching Insti- students from China, Ethiopia, Korea, and its wider implications. He has spoken tute, and the Academia Sinica (in Taiwan), South Africa, Taiwan, and Zambia through about the CDPF as one form of represen- is meticulously recording names, homes, exercises in performance management for tation for a citizenry who need many more writings, o∞cial positions, histories, fam- a police department and other agencies. such avenues to express their views and ily relationships, and other information on Elsewhere, his colleagues were using secure their rights. the tens of thousands of known Song dy- sharply drawn case studies on such hard Another of Alford’s Chinese associates, nasty figures (960-1279). Ultimately, it issues as public opposition to relocating Lu Zhian, associate professor at Fudan aims to extend forward and back in time the Beijing zoo, farmers’ demands for price University Law School, has in fact added to capture the records of hundreds of supports, and compensation for people the study of disability to his expertise in thousands of other documented scholar- displaced by redevelopment. international and human rights law. Al- o∞cials. A few minutes away by taxi, at Renmin though his students principally go into in- Carswell professor of East Asian lan- University of China School of Law, the ternational business law, Lu said he had guages and civilizations Peter K. Bol, who country’s largest, Wang Liming was ad- engaged them in rights questions, particu- leads CBDB’s Harvard contingent, said vancing a two-front humanitarian agenda. larly as he coaches contestants in interna- that the historical record in total exceeds As dean, he has established China’s first tional moot court competitions, where that available from any other civiliza- legal center and clinic devoted to disabled rights issues frequently arise. He has tion—and that when the records are com- persons. As a member of the National Peo- drawn on wide public interest in recent, puterized and opened to scholars world- ple’s Congress, he is helping to develop a horrific legal cases, such as the forced ster- wide, they will enable unprecedented comprehensive revision of the 1990 law on ilization of two institutionalized, men- inquiries into China’s leadership and po- “protection of disabled persons”—a land- tally disabled girls when they began hav- litical and economic development over mark, but too generally worded to pro- ing painful menstrual periods. As time. (This technological infrastructure mote e≠ective action. Fudan-HLS student and faculty ex- will also fit neatly with the historical geo- In describing his work, Wang—a Har- changes proceed, Lu said, he sees rising in- graphic information systems Bol has built vard Law School (HLS) fellow in 1998- terest in the field. separately with Fudan colleagues; see 1999—cited Stimson professor of law A China Daily re- “Hello, Geotech,” November-December William Alford, who directs the graduate port that Presi- 2006, page 44.) Liu Jiang and Zhou Jia, legal program and international and East dent Hu Jintao led students who are doing some of the Asian legal studies at HLS. Alford has a March 28 Polit- data entry, said they had already been involved with the Special Olympics buro meeting on identified new research questions for 30 years, and has extensive contacts in the need “to provide about the relationships among fami- disability issues. better welfare for the lies, social groups, and members of When Renmin convened a conference country’s 83 million the administrative elite. Professor in early 2007 to seek diverse “suggestions handicapped people” Deng, herself a Song spe- about how to amend our law,” Wang said, as a “major barometer cialist, said she imagined Alford helped invite experts from around of the progress of soci- that “the method of his- the world. The conference proceedings ety and civilization” tory studies might be have been published, in Chinese, by the suggested that final greatly changed” by the school. Among the key participants was legislation might indeed CBDB technology. Ma Yu’e, deputy director-general and be near. The stakes are not chief legal o∞cer of the Chinese Disabled Conference proceedings and merely academic. Bol mod- Persons’ Federation (CDPF)—the inter- papers on disability law, published erated perhaps the most mediary between the state and disabled by Renmin University animated of six panel dis-

72 May - June 2008 cussions at the HAA “global series” confer- March 26, President Faust spoke of ence at a modern hotel in the Pudong sec- the sixfold increase in China’s tion of Shanghai. “Does Chinese Culture higher-education enrollment during Have a Future?” engaged professor of East the past decade, and of the recogni- Asian languages and literatures Tian Xiao- tion that “knowledge and learning fei, historian Zhu Xueqin of Shanghai Uni- are as essential to human beings as versity, and philosophy professor Xu Youyu food,” particularly as “we struggle to of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences understand what it means to be in a vigorous, bilingual critique of the gov- human amid such disorienting shifts ernment-sanctioned vogue for “national in our societies and our lives.” She learning”—an attempt, most thought, to spoke of education in the Chinese justify a particular Chinese path that context as “illuminating one’s bright would support an increasingly market-dri- virtue.” President Xu Zhihong of Peking University ven economy without the trappings of lib- Whatever the di≠erences in culture confers an honorary degree on the visiting President Faust in Beijing on March 26. eral democracy. In historical perspective, and circumstances, Harvard has been able this reflects a huge reversal from Mao’s to play a role in that illumination for a ferent.” Faced with the challenge to “stim- original proposition that China was caught growing number of Chinese professionals ulate your thinking,” she said, at first she in a cultural backwater, and had to be and academicians—and increasingly the found “my brain was very quiet.” But soon yanked into line with the universalist prin- tra∞c is flowing in the other direction. she discovered herself exchanging views ciples of modern Marxist-Leninist commu- He Yanling—a Freeman Fellow at HMS with colleagues in elevators, reveling in the nism. Such debates echoed sharply across in 1998-1999, now at Shanghai Mental library collections, and learning how to China from the dying days of the imperial Health Center as a clinician, psychiatry collaborate in designing research projects. government in the late 1800s throughout professor, and researcher investigating the The whole experience “opened my mind, the twentieth century; in di≠erent forms, need for mental-health care—compared opened my eyes. That was the most excit- they still do today. her Chinese education to “feeding the Bei- ing thing to me.” Brief though her fellow- In her remarks at Peking University, jing duck”: force-feeding of knowledge and ship was, He said, “It changed my view of where she received an honorary degree on facts. Harvard, she found, was “totally dif- medicine.” john s. rosenberg

THE UNDERGRADUATE I had no intention of seeking out more terrifying counsel, but, Bill, it turned out, found me anyway. After exhausting the subjects of the size of the wedding party, Getting My Feet Wet the quality of the food, and the humidity of the day, Bill turned to my precarious liz goodwin ’08 future in Massachusetts. by “I only have one thing to tell you, kid.” I waited in suspense, hoping to hear noth- remember many things from my classmates and was unprepared for the ing more of enormous insects. “Never— cousin’s wedding—my poofy brides- conditions that awaited me. and I mean never—get your feet wet.” maid’s dress, the humidity, how The night before the wedding, many of I looked at him expectantly, but Bill pretty the small church looked dur- us were sprawled about on deck chairs seemed finished talking. Iing the ceremony—but most of all, I re- next to the hotel’s pool. A distant cousin “Don’t get my feet wet? Like when I go member the guests’ advice, bestowed with approached me and sat down. swimming?” I asked. drawled urgency, about how to survive in “Have you heard about the bugs?” I “Don’t get your feet wet, period! You New England. It was the summer before replied that I had not. “They have enor- know what I used to do? I used to put my freshman year of college, and my rela- mous bugs up there—big as softballs! They both of my feet in Ziploc bags, then put tives (from my mother’s 100-percent-Texas fly into your clothes and bite you. Don’t my socks on, then put my shoes on,” he side of the family) were anxious to help me ever leave the house without some strong said. “That’s the only way to guarantee avoid the pitfalls of living in an arctic, Yan- bug spray on.” After this advice was dis- your feet will remain dry. Do what you kee-filled part of the country, referred to pensed, my cousin leaned back into the have to do. Just don’t get them wet.” simply as “up there.” Many of them were deck chair and took a sip of his beer. “You The rest of the weekend passed in a blur impressed that I was going away to Har- should talk to Bill, though,” he added, of photographs, dancing, and feasting. But vard, but that was not the point. The point mentioning a distant relative by marriage a vague sense of foreboding accompanied was that I was venturing o≠ to a far-away to whom I had hardly ever spoken. “He me as I drove home with my parents that land, where I knew none of my future lived up there for a couple of years.” Sunday. My anxiety at the prospect of

Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard News O∞ce Harvard Magazine 73 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL leaving my hometown and family seized ize what I saw as my apartness from the “these people” for a few years: adapt to, on my relatives’ dramatic warnings, even smoother, more sophisticated people who yet not take on, their bizarre customs. though they would have made me laugh in surrounded me. By the end of my freshman year, how- other circumstances. Neither of my par- For most of my first year, I defined my- ever, my plan of autonomous survival had ents detected my unease, which quickly self against Harvard and the people I cat- become more complicated. I had learned dissipated in the excitement of planning egorized as a part of Harvard; it was a re- to use stories from my hometown to my departure. In a few weeks’ time I was assuring way of remembering who I was amuse my peers, and to define a more packed up and ready to go, the memory of and reminding myself that I belonged comfortable spot for myself among them. I told my classmates about the high- school parties we had in empty pastures, or about friends my age who had married or had children, or about an acquain- tance’s antiquated (and in Cambridge, even foreign-seeming) prejudices or beliefs. It did not exactly feel treacherous, since I often laughed at those things myself when I lived at home. But in laughing at the very background that I wanted so desperately to define myself by, I also gained distance from it. I noticed that my slight drawl had disap- peared, leaving only the word “y’all” and nothing else. I no longer viewed people who ridiculed less sophisticated and less urban swaths of America as irreconcilably di≠erent from me. The “Texas Girl” identity I had chosen no longer fit as snugly, much like the roomy winter coat I bought in a rushed trip to the mall in October. I suppose that, despite being warned, I had gotten my feet wet, and there was no going back.

Having integrated much of my experience in “Yankee-country,” it became di∞cult to cross over between home and school. Instead of a welcome respite, being back in Texas felt like a strange species of limbo. A party at a friend’s house during Christmas break only underscored my in- between state. Because almost everyone my relatives’ warnings long faded. Yet into somewhere. In spite of my previous long- there attended a major state college or a small inside pocket of my biggest suit- ing to go far away for college, and the fact was still living in our hometown, the case, I slipped a precautionary container that I never quite felt like I completely ﬁt guests were all intimately involved in of bug spray. in with my hometown, I began to cling to each other’s lives, as if high school had the identity of the girl from Texas. never ended. At this party, relationships Instead of scary insects or frostbite, I latched onto this chosen identity be- strengthened or weakened, subtle hierar- intimidating peers confronted me at Har- cause I felt legitimately threatened by peo- chies formed and reformed, and a few peo- vard. At the ﬁrst party I ever went to as a ple who seemed to share a common lan- ple’s semester-long romantic hopes were freshman, an older, immaculately dressed guage learned in high schools where going realized or dashed. Everyone else seemed student asked me where I was from. to the Ivy League was the norm, instead of so inextricably connected to each other in When I answered, “Texas,” he said, “Oh, the exception. I sensed that if I, too, tried webs of familial, romantic, or social in- what a coincidence. My family owns a to use this language it would sound false, volvement, yet I felt completely apart— ranch in Montana.” I didn’t see the coinci- so I rejected it and cultivated my own. I like an out-of-towner who has wandered dence, and this comment came to symbol- told myself that I had to get along with into a party by mistake. A few friends

74 May - June 2008 Illustration by David M. Brinley asked me how Harvard was going and thesis proposal, classes, duties at the adapted to two very di≠erent environ- then stood silently in front of me, out of Crimson—in Cambridge. ments. things to say. My best friend was with me, Some of the same people who had at- As people were heading to their cars to which made the experience less isolating, tended my cousin’s wedding three years drive over to the reception, a squat lady but I could not shake the feeling that my earlier were at the funeral, which was a dressed all in black, with long, gray hair, past, instead of waiting patiently for my big event despite my grandfather’s desire approached me. return, had swept on ahead of me, heed- for a small graveside service. His female “Are you the granddaughter that goes to lessly, and that I would never catch up. cousins cooked pounds and pounds of Harvard?” she asked. “I hear you are writ- This sense of in-between-ness, of not peach cobbler, and a group of Co- ing a book about Paul. That’s just great. quite fitting in anywhere, is, of course, the manches, whom my grandfather be- Someone should really write about his life stu≠ of growing up, canonized in coming- friended decades ago, chanted and beat and how wonderful a person he was. I’m of-age literature and discussed by young drums by his grave. A military honor so happy you’re writing that book.” people everywhere. Yet my own experience guard laid a flag over his casket for his I was startled by her words, and shocked felt immensely personal and uniquely trou- service in the Second World War. As the that this rumor was making its way bling, as most of my close friends, both in former editor of the local newspaper, he through the crowd. Yet as she went on to Texas and at Harvard, did not feel the same had known a wide variety of people, as describe how she met my grandfather disconnect between their hometown lives was evident in the diversity of the crowd. (when he wrote an article about her getting and their lives at college. I had achieved an While I remembered him as quiet and snowed in with her 13 collies), I found my- uneasy truce between two worlds, but I shy, preferring to be out with his cows self taking mental notes, wondering to my- longed for something more definite and rather than participating in rowdy family self at the world’s strangeness, at the sheer more comfortable. I wanted a home. discussions, many of the people at the fu- vastness of experience that one human life neral remembered him as an inspiring is granted in 80 years. During his life, my When my mom called last October to boss with a sly sense of humor, or as the grandfather had been many di≠erent people tell me my grandfather had died, I was “midnight cowboy” because of the odd to those who knew him, yet they loved him printing out my Portuguese paper in La- hours he spent in his pastures. more—not less—for his versatility. It really mont Library. I sat down in the stairwell, I could not help but absorb the scene would make a good book, I thought. She clutching my cell phone, and listened to hungrily, appreciating its strangeness and left, and I stood there alone for a little while her news. He had been very sick for sev- narrative value as I never would have before walking quickly to catch up to my eral months, and I had thought I was pre- done had I not gone away and adapted to family, and to drive home. pared for his death, but sadness washed a di≠erent world. Although deeply moved over me anyway, submerging my desire to by the service, a part of me was observing Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow go to class or turn in my paper. I bought a instead of participating, caught up by the Liz Goodwin ’08 is not exactly writing her grand- plane ticket to the funeral a few hours same watchful feeling that accompanies father’s biography, but is, at least, finished with later, and left my Harvard worries—my me everywhere as a partial outsider, half- her senior thesis.

Yale. Christensen has always jumped bet- SPORTS ter outdoors, so her performance thus far bodes well for the upcoming season and her ultimate goal: a trip to the Olympic trials, which she could clinch with a jump Leap, Arch, and Tuck of 1.85 meters. Christensen says she first tried the high jump in elementary school, during a Raising the bar “track and field day when you could pick any event.” She discovered that she was itius, Altius, Fortius—that’s the her finish in the top eight nationally, she “pretty okay at it.” (When asked, she ac- Olympic motto: faster, higher, was named an all-American indoors, one knowledges that she won, yes, “but there stronger. Altius is Becky Chris- of only three Crimson women high were only seven people in the class.”) tensen’s specialty. The junior jumpers ever to earn that honor. At the In high school she got serious about her highC jumper, who hails from the small meet, Christensen missed twice at 1.80 interest. In the Texas state championships, town of Celina, Texas, north of Dallas, meters before clearing the bar on her she placed third as a freshman in her divi- won the Heptagonal Championships, third and final try. When the bar was sion, then second as a sophomore, and took second at the ECACs, and finished raised to 1.83 meters, or six feet, she finally won first in her junior and senior fourth at the 2008 NCAA indoor track cleared it on her first jump, tying her per- years. “I’m not sure how Harvard found and field championships this spring. For sonal best, set outdoors last year against me,” she says, but former field-events

www.gocrimson.com JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

explains. Her initial ap- plays the flute, piccolo, and tenor saxo- proach is not so much a run phone, clearly has in abundance. “When as a series of measured you are over the bar you want to be on your bounds, a deliberate gather- back in an arched position, with your head ing of speed down the upside down looking at whatever is behind straightway. As she enters the mat” she explains (see page 57). “Begin- the curved part of the J, her ners sit over the bar, instead of letting steps become quicker and themselves lie backwards.” shorter until she pops sud- Christensen spent her high-school denly o≠ her outside foot, years perfecting the arch. At Harvard, she driving up with the opposite worked on leaning away from the bar, and knee and throwing her inside that gained her three inches. Now she arm up in the air to guide her works on little things: from run up, to body over the bar. “You have keeping her shoulders open as she falls to- got to put all your energy ward the mat, to tucking her chin down into that last step,” she says. to her chest, which, in the jump’s final The goal is to have every stage, provides a fleeting counterbalance part of the body—arms, when she flips her feet over the bar. Becky Christensen head, shoulders, hips, calves, She is focused now on the Olympic tri- feet—pass through a curve als. “I don’t have any dreams of advancing coach Paul Turner persuaded her to visit that reaches its apex just above the bar. from there,” she says, “because there are a Cambridge. “When it is cold in the winter, Achieving that requires a good measure of lot of really good jumpers. I just want to I wonder why I came all the way up north,” flexibility and (since the body is simultane- go and compete.” For Becky Christensen, she confesses, but when she came to visit, ously rotating) an impeccable sense of tim- the pursuit of excellence is all about the it was snowing. “I hadn’t seen that in a ing—something Christensen, who also altitude. jonathan shaw long time,” she says, not since she lived outside Chicago when she was eight. “It seemed a really beautiful place to be.” ranking University sources say separately At Harvard during competition season, Questions about that Harvard is investigating (under the Christensen is focused: strength work on Recruiting auspices of the Ivy League) the possibility Mondays and Wednesdays (Fridays, prior that NCAA recruiting rules were vio- to meets, are easy days); jumping on Tues- An article alleging that Harvard had lated, with a focus on the actions of assis- days and Thursdays. High jumpers today lowered academic standards for recruits to tant coach Kenneth L. Blakeney in the use a technique called the Fosbury flop to its men’s basketball program, and might weeks before the team hired him last July. clear the bar, though Christensen’s father, also have skirted or violated National Col- Last June, Blakeney reportedly played who is six foot four, cleared six feet in mid- legiate Athletic Associations (NCAA) pick-up basketball on separate occasions dle school using an old-fashioned tech- rules governing recruiting, appeared with two recruits later admitted to Har- nique called the Western rollover. Chris- March 2 on the front page of the New York vard, during a period when contact with tensen herself hasn’t tried the “Western Times Sunday sports section. “Harvard has potential players is not allowed. Even roll—nobody does that anymore,” she says never won an Ivy League title in men’s bas- though Blakeney was not a Harvard em- with a laugh—but she is thrilled to have ketball and has not reached the NCAA ployee at the time, if such contact leads to cleared the same height as her father. tournament since 1946,” the article began, “a significant competitive or recruiting asserting that, in an attempt to improve advantage,” according to wording on the The high jump appears simple enough: the program, the College had adopted a NCAA website, it could be considered a run toward a bar suspended between two “new approach” that could “tarnish the major infraction of its rules. A reviewer standards, throw yourself in the air, and University’s sterling reputation.” chosen from outside the Harvard athletics land on a big, soft mat. But clearing a bar University o∞cials vigorously disputed department will submit findings to the higher than you are (Christensen is 5 feet, the allegation that Harvard had lowered Ivy League O∞ce and a committee made 11 inches) is no mean feat. The physics of its academic standards in any way even up of representatives from each of the the event are perplexing, to say the least. before the article appeared. In a written other Ivy schools, who will take the case High jumpers run a J-shaped path toward statement quoted in the Times, Harvard from there, and to the NCAA if necessary. the bar. “You have to run a straight line to- vice president for government, commu- The Times article based its separate as- ward the mat until you get pretty close nity, and public a≠airs Alan J. Stone char- sertions that Harvard had lowered its and then turn fairly tightly and lean away acterized “any suggestion that our stan- standards for men’s basketball on the ad- from the bar,” in order to compensate for dards have been lowered for basketball” missions status—then unknown—of one your momentum toward it, Christensen as “absolutely inaccurate.” But two high- or more of the athletes whom Harvard

76 May - June 2008 Photograph by Jim Harrison head coach H. Tommy The Times article was Scalise in an interview. “Sometimes you go Amaker had been recruit- widely reported in the for a couple more [recruits] so that you can ing for the incoming fresh- media. Several commenta- get your kids and your culture into the man class. The reporter tors suggested that recruits program.” In other words, a thriving sport sought comment on Har- Harvard had planned to might get fewer recruits one year, so that vard’s list of prospects admit now would not be more recruits can be directed to a program from several sources. The admitted, whether or not that needs them. “That is what we have Yale men’s basketball they had received “likely done [for basketball],” says Scalise. “We coach, James Jones, was H. Tommy letters” (notfications to ap- have not given them a lower AI target than quoted as saying, “We Amaker plicants, primarily athletes, we have given them in the past.” Instead, don’t know how all this is STU ROSNER issued before the o∞cial the basketball program received a larger going to come out, but we could not get reply date, that they can expect to be ad- number of the total pool of recruited first- involved with many of the kids that they mitted). But that is unlikely: the Ivy year athletes. That has apparently had are bringing in.” Two former Harvard as- League has specific rules about the acad- minimal impact on the team’s AI. “It ap- sistant coaches whose contracts were not emic performance of recruited athletes, pears that the basketball athletes we’ve re- renewed under Amaker, now in his first and all seven schools share information cruited for next year’s class will have one year on the job, commented that acade- about their recruits and teams on an an- of the highest AIs of any school in the mic standards for the recruits appeared nual basis. The league’s standards are League over the past several years,” Scalise lower than they remembered. Amaker did predefined and enforceable. In an inter- wrote separately to alumni athletes. not respond to requests for an interview. view, dean of admissions William R. Harvard Crimson editorials questioned But “coaches do not make admissions Fitzsimmons confirmed that no likely the practice of recruiting athletes at all. decisions” in the Ivy League, athletic di- letters sent to men’s basketball recruits One declared that Harvard should be pur- rector Robert L. Scalise, who hired had been rescinded. suing “world-changing talent instead.” In Amaker, pointed out in an interview. The The Ivy League uses a measure called an interview, FAS dean Michael D. Smith, admissions process is separate and, typi- the “academic index” (AI) to monitor himself a varsity swimmer at Princeton cally, only about half the recruits on a compliance. Based on standardized test and now a member of the FAS standing coach’s wish list are admitted. In a letter scores and secondary-school class rank committee on athletics, pointed out that sent to alumni athletes in March, Scalise (or grade point average in the absence of the two are not mutually exclusive. “Har- (who became interim executive dean of class rank), the minimum AI allowed for vard admits students with broad ranges the Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS] any individual Ivy athlete is 171. (Appli- of backgrounds: it is not just athletics, that month) noted that “all of the stu- cants with lower AIs may be admitted, but musical ability that students bring, dent-athletes who we’ve been recruiting but not on the basis of athletic ability.) drama, [a desire to] write for the Crimson. have had significant contact” with the But the mean AI for any incoming class of All those di≠erent aspects [of student other coaches mentioned in the article. recruited athletes across all sports (except life] are ways that we look at extending football, which uses a di≠erent system) the learning environment outside the has to be within one standard deviation of classroom.” Smith is concerned that there Hockey Wrap-Up the mean AI of all students—athletes and is an implication, in some of the articles non-athletes—at a particular institution, being written, that some students on Women’s Hockey as calculated when they entered as fresh- campus don’t belong here. “The admis- The top-ranked icewomen (32-2, 22-0 men. That means Harvard recruits must sions process has not been lowered in any Ivy) dominated the East all season but meet a standard higher than that at other manner for students we are bringing in fell to fourth ranked Wisconsin in the Ivy colleges, to the extent that the mean now, or students we are bringing in in the NCAA semifinals March 20. Junior for- AI of the Harvard student body is higher. future,” he says. “I’d hate to have our stu- ward Sarah Vaillancourt, who had 26 The system is designed to ensure that dents feeling that maybe they don’t be- goals and 36 assists on the season, won “student-athletes be ‘representative’ of long here. All of our students absolutely the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, the undergraduate student belong here.” given to the top women’s college bodies to which they are The executive director of hockey player. admitted,” according to an the Ivy League, Je≠ Orleans, Ivy League fact sheet. said in an interview that the Men’s Hockey There is some wiggle Times allegations relating to After a slow start, the stickmen (17-13- room within this frame- basketball admissions will 4, 12-7-3 ECAC) finished their season work. “When a new coach be reviewed in the regular by winning 6 of 7 games, earning them comes on board, we realize Ivy League athletic admis- a trip to the conference championship, that it usually leads to a sions meeting in May, and where they lost to Princeton, 4-1. kind of culture change that a statement would be

within the team,” said KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE made at that time. Robert Scalise

Harvard Magazine 77 the bones of a strange flat-headed, fish- ALUMNI cum-crocodile-like creature-with-a-neck that he and colleagues had found the year before while scraping away at ancient rocks in the Canadian Arctic. Fishing for Answers Roughly 375 million years old, from the Late Devonian period, the fossilized creature was a genus of the extinct sarcop- A paleontologist looks at the origins of the human body. terygian (lobe-finned) fish that shares several key features with tetrapods (early n 2005, parents and school o∞cials parents’ favor, deciding that the require- four-legged animals). In addition to the in Dover, Pennsylvania, were locked ment was unconstitutional. Throughout neck and non-conical head, Tiktaalik roseae, in a courtroom debate over a school- the trial, paleontologist Neil Shubin, as it was named, boasted expanded ribs board mandate that intelligent de- Ph.D. ’87, Bensley professor in the depart- and parts of a shoulder, along with Isign be presented as an alternative to evo- ment of organismal biology and anatomy webbed fins—inside which were also lution in ninth-grade science classes. The at the University of Chicago, struggled to primitive bones corresponding to an upper judge in the case ultimately ruled in the remain quiet in his o∞ce: on his desk lay arm, forearm, and pieces of a wrist. All are explicitly non-fish features. Shubin and Neil Shubin other scientists say Tiktaalik helps bridge the gap in our understanding of what changes occurred as sea animals crept ashore, and plays a critical role in understanding—and proving—human origins. “During the Dover trial, I couldn’t tell anyone apart from colleagues about our find,” Shubin says now, with a smile: the news was an exclusive, scheduled to be announced in Nature’s April 2006 cover story. Most of the nation’s news media, major publications, and science magazines followed up with articles about Tiktaalik (the word means “large, freshwater fish” in the Inuktitut dialect of Inuit). Hailed as “the fish that crawled out of the water” and “the missing link,” Tiktaalik is by far the most important discovery of Shubin’s career, which has centered on the evolution of limbed beings. “I’ve devoted my life to this evolutionary biology stu≠—I love it,” he exclaims. “I enjoy going to work because it’s fun working with worms, fish, and salamanders. I think it’s beautiful that remedies for the problems we su≠er from will be found by seeing pieces of us nestled in the most primitive and humble creatures that live on the earth.” His new book, Your Inner Fish, is an infectious exploration of the 3.5-billion-year history of the human body. It traces our organs back to fossils and prehistoric DNA—how our arm and hand bones came from fins; how our teeth first formed as spiky structures in the mouths of tiny, ancient, jawless lamprey-like fish known as conodonts; and how major aspects of our genome are similar to those of worms. Our

Photograph by Ralf-Finn Hestoft ability to talk, for example, depends on on an urban archaeo- the larynx, which is composed primarily logical site and “loved of cartilage akin to the gill bars in a fish or ancient Egypt and Tu- shark. Even hiccups—a nerve spasm and tankhamen and see- inhalation, followed almost immediately ing the past inside (35 milliseconds, Shubin writes) by the the dirt,” he explains. “hic” sound—are the product of our “Paleontology pulled shared history with fish and tadpoles, reme into the immedi- spectively. And the process through which acy of discoveries. If teeth first formed in fish—at base, from you know where to the interaction between two layers of tis- look, and crack in- sue—is the same process involved in the side the rocks, and subsequent development of scales, hairs, find a physical piece feathers, and sweat glands. of evidence that can Shubin says he wrote the book to exchange the way we Remains, and a reconstruction of what researchers believe Tiktaalik roseae plain his work to his father, Seymour Shu- look at our past— looked like as it roamed its corner of the bin, who still writes crime novels and this struck me as earth millions of years ago thrillers for a living at 87. “I gave him the very powerful.” At first draft and he said, ‘I don’t understand Columbia, he majored in biology and an- a few teeth best seen under a microscope. it,’” Shubin said at a winter reading at Har- thropology, which led to paleontology and The remains of this tritheledont, previ- vard Book Store in Cambridge. “He told then doctoral work at Harvard. ously linked only to South Africa, me, ‘Neil, nobody ever lost money writing In the 1980s, academic research in showed it had a human way of chewing a page turner.’ I said, ‘Dad, I’m a scientist. anatomy and development focused on the food. “I had an idea for field research and COURTESY OF NEIL SHUBIN We don’t write page turners.’ But I wrote relationships between living creatures Harvard had the resources to support it over again. And this time he liked it.” and fossils on the cellular level, using em- this independent research,” he says. “If Your Inner Fish, in fact, is something of an bryos. “Only a handful of people were that hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t be here adventure tale. It pulls in the reader even doing it, and few as well as those at Har- talking about all of this today.” though the Tiktaalik discovery took six vard,” Shubin points out. (This was be- By now, his main academic interest was years and four often frustrating, error- fore new technological tools enabled sci- the morphology of the tetrapod limb. filled trips into deep wilderness to com- entists to work on the molecular level.) Working with the embryos of salaman- plete. “For starters, there were polar His first Harvard-a∞liated expedition ders, frogs, and fish, Shubin wrote his dis- bears,” says Shubin, a city boy from came in 1983, on the field team of profes- sertation on developmental biology and Philadelphia. “And polar bears eat peo- sor of biology and curator of vertebrate the similarities between fins and limbs. He ple.” On the group’s first expedition to paleontology Farish A. Jenkins Jr., who spent the next two years doing postdoc- the Canadian Arctic, in 1999—which was working in the American West, toral work at the University of California, Shubin calls a “colossal bad choice” all looking for new sites and early mammals Berkeley, where he also met and married around—they took rifles and motion de- that could help explain how humans de- geologist Michele Seidl ’85 (now director tectors, which they set up in their tents veloped the ability to chew. Shubin of planning for biological sciences at the before going to sleep. Not long after, the writes that the mammalian method for University of Chicago). An 11-year stint at detectors went o≠ and everyone jumped chewing first emerged in fossil records the University of Pennsylvania followed. up, cocked their guns, and raced outside. dating from 225 million to 195 million Nothing was there. This scenario played years ago, in big-headed reptiles that At penn, and still searching for the ori- out at least four times before someone re- walked on all fours and had bony jaws gins of limbed creatures, Shubin focused alized that it was not lurking man-eaters with teeth that fell out and re-grew his sights on the already well-studied setting the detectors o≠, but ferocious throughout their lives. Catskill Formation of Pennsylvania. In the winds. “These detectors were made for Having finally learned how to spot Late Devonian age, when Shubin and oth- suburban New Jersey, not the Arctic,” bones in the dust, mud, and dirt, Shubin ers say some animals were making the Shubin jokes. “You’ve just got to learn in grew eager to lead his own trip. He ex- switch from sea to land, this region was fieldwork that you never get it just right.” plored 200-million-year-old Connecticut akin to today’s Amazon River delta, he rocks a half-day’s trip away from Cam- notes, with many streams draining into a That wasn’t the first field trip to leave a bridge before expanding to Nova Scotia; large sea where Pittsburgh now stands. In strong impression on him. As a child, he ultimately, he found enough bones to fill 1993, he and one of his graduate students, loved going to museums, especially the a few shoeboxes among the sandstone Ted Daeschler, began visiting rock zones Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadel- cli≠s in the Bay of Fundy. Among them recently blasted out by the state trans- phia and the Natural History Museum in was a significant find: a piece of an early portation department to prepare for more New York City. In high school, he worked mouse-like mammal with a tiny jaw and roadways. To their surprise, Shubin relates

www.haa.harvard.edu Harvard Magazine 79 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL in Your Inner Fish, Daeschler one day found and was experienced enough to help camp on time. “We were very worried, “a marvelous shoulder bone” that they them: Farish Jenkins. (Later that day, but then he came limping into the cook named Hynerpeton, Greek for “little creep- Shubin adds, he and Daeschler went to a tent with a wild-eyed stare, like he’d been ing animal from Hyner,” Pennsylvania. Chinese restaurant where Shubin’s for- chased by polar bears,” Shubin recalls. The two men formed a dynamic part- tune cookie held this gem: “Soon you “But we knew he hadn’t been, because his nership—Shubin always pushing on to will be at the top of the world.” This slip pockets were full of bones.” That same the next target; Daeschler patiently of paper was taped to his o∞ce door for night, the team spent hours (in the Arctic working to examine a given spot thor- years.) summer, the sun never sets) documenting oughly. In 1998 they were in Shubin’s That first outing, in 1999—the time of the site and gathering fragments. o∞ce, having an academic argument the motion-detector debacle, when terri- Fast-forward to July 2004. With grant about the next most plausible search ble weather kept the researchers inside money running out, and the prognosis sites, when one of them pulled out a ge- tents for three weeks rereading every looking poor, Shubin and Daeschler ology textbook to prove a point and book they’d brought—was on Melville Is- opted for a fourth and final trip (their found a diagram that stopped them land in the western part of the Canadian third to Ellesmere). Shubin describes short. It showed three places on earth Arctic. They found plenty of fish fossils, cracking ice and rock in the bottom of a with known Late Devonian freshwater but all appeared to be deep-water quarry one day when he saw a patch of rocks: eastern North America—home of dwellers, not the shallows skimmers that fossilized scales and a jaw-like “blob” in Hynerpeton; the east coast of Greenland ultimately crept on shore. ice unlike any fish mouth he’d ever seen. (where the earliest known tetrapods The following year, better prepared for The next day, while foraging at the top of had already been found); and well-ex- five weeks in the wild, Shubin, Daeschler, the same quarry, Shubin’s colleague and posed rocks in the Canadian Arctic that, and their team set up camp on Ellesmere former fellow graduate student Stephen the duo realized, were unexplored. No Island, with permission from the Inuit Gatesy, Ph.D. ’89 (now a biology profes- paleontological field guides existed for people of the Nunavut Territory. One sor at Brown), dug out a piece of rock that area, but Shubin knew one man evening, an undergraduate in the party, and “we realized we saw a flat-headed who had led previous trips to Greenland Jason Downs, failed to return to the base something, something unknown,” Shu-

mer interns at nonprofit agencies in Greater Boston, and this year plans to launch and fund a Harvard Club of Boston commu- Centennial Salute nity-service fellowship under the auspices of the Phillips Brooks House Association, says Philip C. Haughey ’57, president of the One hundred years ago, Henry Lee Higginson, class of 1855, club’s board of governors (and a member of this magazine’s founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and donor of Sol- Board of Incorporators). diers Field and other gifts to Harvard, became the first president The club works actively to retain its 5,272 members and recruit of the Harvard Club of Boston. He and other early club leaders more, especially younger ones. “It is not an easy time for clubs in set the tone of solid relations with the University, philanthropic- general, because people have moved to the ’burbs, families are minded ventures, and the promotion of “social intercourse” buried in regulated activities with their kids, and it’s a challenge to among Harvard men and, in time, women (at first admitted only know how best to appeal to young members and their families,” to an “annex,” in 1940) that remain hallmarks of the club today. Haughey says. The main club on Commonwealth Avenue (built in About 400 alumni and guests gathered on March 12 to cele- 1913) offers fitness centers, squash courts, dining, and something to brate the club’s centennial with a lavish dinner and listen to re- see or do almost every night of the week: from concerts, films, and marks by President Drew Faust.When the club founders agreed lectures to sports-oriented events, holiday dinners, and the annual to “‘disseminate the standards of education and right living of children’s Christmas party and father-daughter tea dance. The Harvard University,’” she told the crowd, they did so at a time downtown affiliate on Federal Street also offers dining and events. when their annual expenses were just over $1,700—“which A mix of members came to celebrate the centennial. Friends would not even pay for our parking bills tonight.” But in essence, Bruno Marino, Ph.D. ’91, and Lewis Lutin, A.L.M. ’88, were chatting they “were part of a world of aspirations and initiatives really no in the oak-paneled bar.“This place is my home away from home,” different from our own.” Among the early recipients of a Har- reported Marino, a scientific entrepreneur who lives in Maine and vard Club scholarship for Boston boys, she noted, was James B. spends at least one night a week at the club for business reasons. Conant,“the Harvard president perhaps best known for opening “It’s a great place to meet all kinds of people for all kinds of rea- the University to what he called ‘gifted youth of limited means.’” sons.” Lutin, of Falmouth, Massachusetts, added,“I’ve been coming Continuing in that tradition, the club last spring awarded 36 here every week for 20 years. This place is about friendship.” scholarships worth $4,500 each to incoming freshmen of the Boston attorney Maura Pelham ’00 said she found the majestic class of 2011. The club also recognizes nearly 300 high-school rooms, glittering chandeliers, and Old World ambience so beauti- students each year for academic excellence, sponsors 13 sum- ful, she joined the club last year mostly so she and her fiancé could

80 May - June 2008 bin reports. “It was a snout sticking July, in hopes of finding more bones,” that kind of understanding is possible straight out from the rock.” Shubin says. “You never know what’s within our lifetimes, that the basic tool The team spent the rest of the summer going to happen when you get there, be- kit and developmental processes are very painstakingly chipping away at the rock cause of the weather, but the goal is to go ancient—that a version of same tool kit around the creature so they could wrap up to the original site and work on new that builds a worm builds a human. It’s the boulder-cum-fossil and transport it areas around it” to find slightly younger been a remarkable time for paleontology, thousands of miles to the lab where, for or slightly older rocks and see if any a very powerful revolution on a lot of sci- two months, preparers used dental tools to bones they contain shed light on further entific fronts.” pick apart the specimen. What was re- developmental changes. The group has After his talk at Harvard Book Store, vealed was a creature with eyes on top of found other water-based creatures— the audience asked Shubin questions its flat head, a neck, upper arm bones, a some “really bizarre-looking” armored that ranged from specifics about Tiktaa- wrist, parts of a palm, and “an elbow joint fish, some eight- or nine-foot-long lik’s anatomy to his arctic experiences that Tiktaalik would’ve used to push itself predatory fish, and some fish as tiny as a and plans for the future, to his views on up o≠ the substrate, as if it were doing fingernail. intelligent design and creationism. Did push-ups,” Shubin explains. “And it had Shubin is excited that the Tiktaalik find he think his discovery would sway reli- ribs—larger and more expandable ribs has also inspired other scientists, who are gious beliefs? What should teachers say than you’d ever see on a fish.” In short, “Tik- looking at new, undisclosed geological lo- about Tiktaalik—how is it a scientific taalik is not a random find,” he says. “It is a cations for more Late Devonian speci- tool for students? “No degree of evidence piece of the human story.” mens. “We are beginning to unlock the will shift the views of a creationist, ” To date, the core research team has mechanisms that underlie evolutionary Shubin responded, then added with a found about 20 individuals—based on change, so we can ask what is the genetic laugh, “but if, next to my Tiktaalik, I’d isolated fins, jaws, and other pieces—but and developmental recipe that built the only about four really good specimens. human, and how is it di≠erent from fish?” “We’re the only people working up there he says. “We’re at a moment in scientific and we’re going back this summer, in discovery where we can begin to see that

President Drew Faust addressing a sold- out crowd at the Harvard Club of Boston’s centennial celebration; the club rolls out the crimson carpet; a delectable Veritas dessert hold their wedding reception there. “None of my friends are members,” she noted,“but I am going to make an effort to get them here.” Norton Reamer, M.B.A. ’60, a former Radcliffe College trustee who finds the downtown club more convenient for lunch and business meetings, had come to the main clubhouse primarily to hear Faust in her new role. The president spoke of making Harvard more affordable, of addressing changes in undergraduate teaching and advising, and of developing the new Allston campus. She discussed the new task force she has charged with defining the role of the arts at a research university and in a liberal-arts education, and laid out the increasingly international nature of of continuous growth and continuous the University on the eve of departing for the Harvard Alumni improvement,’” Faust quoted from his speech.“I hope we have ac- Association’s global series event in China (see page 67). cepted his challenge,” she declared.“I hope we continue to carry In closing, she talked about Harvard president Charles William it forward. And I acknowledge the partnership with the Harvard Eliot, the guest speaker at the first annual Harvard Club of Boston Club of Boston that has made possible the advancement of the dinner,in 1909, not long before he stepped down after 40 years in University and the continuing of the University.…I will look for- office.“‘The University has before it an opportunity to make sure ward to spending more birthdays with you.”

Photographs by Dom Miguel Photography Harvard Magazine 81 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

found a human skull, then that would be it’s not science,” Shubin explained. “I scientist because I like looking at crea- truly devastating” to evolutionists. have a job to do and that’s making hy- tures and discovering new things that What about intelligent design? “I don’t potheses and going out in the ﬁeld and tell us about the history of life.” have time for it because it’s not testable, ﬁnding out if they are true. I became a nell porter brown

mencement day. All Harvard degree Alejandro Santo Domingo ’99, New For Overseer holders, except Corporation members York City. Managing director, Quadrant and officers of instruction and gover- Capital Advisors Inc. nance, are entitled to vote for Overseer Carolyn Hughes ’54, Oceanside, New candidates. The election for HAA direc- York. Retired; former project manager, tors is open to all alumni. Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. Elizabeth Reilly ’91, Boston. Attorney, For Overseer (six-year term, five to be WilmerHale. elected): Joseph Bae ’94, Hong Kong. Member Lynn Chang ’75, Newton, Massa- and managing partner, KKR Asia. chusetts. Concert violinist; violin Rosa Wu ’03, San Francisco. Associate professor. product manager, Google. Lynn Chang Anne Fadiman Paul Finnegan Paul Finnegan ’75, M.B.A. ’82, Rodney Hardy ’60, Minneapolis. Vice Chicago. Co-CEO, Madison Dearborn president/owner, Sienna Corporation. Partners, Inc. Andrea Zopp ’78, J.D. ’81, Chicago. Se- Michael Holland ’66, New York nior vice president and chief human re- City. Chairman, Holland and Com- sources officer, Exelon Corporation. pany LLC. Anne Fadiman ’74, Whately, Massachusetts. Author; Fran- For Director cis writer-in-residence, Yale. Eve Higginbotham, M.D. ’79, Atlanta. Dean and senior Robert Freedman Eve Higginbotham Michael Holland vice president for academic affairs, Morehouse School of Medicine; surgery professor. Regina Montoya, J.D. ’79, Dallas. CEO, New America Al- liance. David Oxtoby ’72, Clare- Joseph Bae Rodney Hardy Carolyn Hughes mont, California. President and professor of chemistry, Pomona College. Anand Mahindra ’77, Anand Mahindra Regina Montoya David Oxtoby M.B.A. ’81. Mumbai, India. Vice chairman and managing director, Mahindra and Mahindra Vote Now Limited. Robert Freedman ’62, Philadel- This spring, alumni will choose five new phia. Partner, Dechert LLP. (Nomi- Harvard Overseers and six new elected di- nated by petition.) Kevin Jennings Robert Kraft Elizabeth Reilly rectors for the Harvard Alumni Associa- tion (HAA) board. The candidates’ names For Elected Director (three-year appear in ballot order below, as deter- term, six to be elected): mined by lot. Robert Kraft ’76, Los Angeles. Ballots, mailed to reach alumni by April President, Fox Music. 15, must be received back in Cambridge by Kevin Jennings ’85, New York noon on May 30 to be counted. The results City. Founder and executive direc- will be announced at the HAA’s annual tor, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Edu- meeting on June 5, on the afternoon of Com- cation Network (GLSEN).

Alejandro Santo 82 May - June 2008 Rosa Wu Andrea Zopp Domingo Comings and Goings tana (Billings) offers “Alexander the Great: A Man for All Seasons” by Loeb A New Radcliffe Room University clubs offer a variety of so- professor of classical art and archaeology The College Club of Boston, 117 years cial and intellectual events, including David Mitten. Mitten also speaks to mem- old, calls itself the oldest such women’s Harvard-affiliated speakers (please see bers of the Harvard Club of Montana club in America. Radcliffe was repre- the partial list below). For further infor- (Missoula) on May 9. Also on May 9, the sented among the 19 pioneers who mation, contact the club directly, call the Harvard Club of Western North Carolina gathered in 1890 to form a club where HAA at 617-495-3070, or visit www.haa.- hosts Plummer professor of Christian college-educated women could “‘enjoy harvard.edu. morals and Pusey minister of Memorial sociability and companionship’ while On May 2, executive dean of the Rad- Church Peter Gomes, who dicsusses advancing their knowledge of litera- cliffe Institute for Advanced Study and “Nearly 40 Years On: A View from The ture, public affairs, history and the arts” law lecturer Louise Richardson talks at Memorial Church.” On May 15, the Har- (see www.thecollegeclubofboston.- the Harvard Club of the West Coast of vard Club of Cincinnati hosts a dinner to com). In restoring its Victorian town- Florida about “What Terrorists Want: celebrate the 2007 Ivy League Champi- house at 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Understanding the Enemy, Containing the onship Harvard football team with guest the club’s board members dedicated Threat.” On May 6, the Harvard Club of Tim Murphy, Stephenson family head the 11 guest rooms to its founders’ Santa Barbara gathers to learn about “Pe- football coach, who talks about “Harvard schools; among them is the Radcliffe troleum, Putin, Power, and the Rise of the Athletics Today.” Also on May 15, the Har- Room, designed by John Montgomery New Russia” from Marshall Goldman, vard Alumni Club of Oregon and South- and Susan Able, RS ’97. Davis professor of Soviet economics emeri- west Washington offers a lecture on “The tus at Wellesley College and former asso- Imagined Earth: Reflections on the ciate director of the Davis Center for Russ- Human Place in Nature” by the Kennedy guages and literatures Maria Tatar, who ian Studies at Harvard. (He speaks to the School’s Pforzheimer professor of science explores “Touching Magic: The Power of Harvard Club of Northeast Ohio on May and technology studies Sheila Jasanoff. Stories in Childhood” (members only). 28, and to the Harvard-Radcli≠e Club of Xenia Dormandy, director of the Project On June 18, the Harvard Club in Con- Rhode Island on June 11, where he will lec- on India and the Subcontinent at the cord (Massachusetts) learns about “The ture on “Vast Changes in Russia—What It Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Sci- Aging Mind” from Douglas H. Powell, clin- Means for the U.S. and the World.”) The ence and International Affairs, talks about ical instructor in psychology at the Med- Triad Harvard-Radcliffe Club hosts the “Understanding India and Pakistan: Har- ical School. On June 19, Berkman visiting Kennedy School’s Shattuck professor of vard Kennedy School’s Role in the Policy professor of entrepreneurial legal studies government Paul Peterson for a discussion Process” for the Rocky Mountain Har- Jonathan Zittrain, of the Law School, ex- of “What Can Be Done about the Current vard University Club on May 18. On May amines “The Future of the Internet—And Crisis in American Education?” on May 8. 21, the Harvard Club of New York City How to Stop It” at the Harvard Club of That same day, the Harvard Club of Mon- hosts Loeb professor of Germanic lan- Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh).

Beyondorders. posts on its website the recipients’ accounts, and often their org helps U.S. photographs, of how the donations have been used in Iraq. Above and Beyond service members “Small things can have a big impact,” says cofounder Matthew “rise above the Scherrer, M.B.A. ’07, who spent four years in the army in Afghanis- call of duty” to tan and Iraq before attending the Business School. He and Ho, who aid Iraqi civilians.Tin-Yun Ho ’07 (’08) thought up and helped create was busy trying to put his idea into practice, were introduced by a the website last year, after reading about a civil-affairs officer who House tutor and began organizing a network of fellow students, in- had organized a school-supplies drive for Iraqi children among her cluding Buzicky, who helped with such legal details as incorpora- friends and family back home. “She was able to channel so much tion. (“Beyond Orders is a great model for how [Harvard] schools good will into an Iraqi neighborhood,” he says. “I wanted a way to that tend to be fairly segregated can work together,” says Scherrer.) link more soldiers in Iraq with Americans who want to help.” They approached alumni, and Scherrer contacted and rallied mili- The project is a kind of “Craigslist for soldiers and marines in tary units behind the exchange program: to date, Beyondorders has Iraq,” explains cofounder Katharine Buzicky, J.D. ’07, now a mili- registered more than 30 service members and completed more tary lawyer. The group aims to make it “easy, secure, and efficient” than 100 donations—one with 750 packages of school supplies. for military personnel to request items needed by ordinary Board members Buzicky, Ho, Scherrer, and West Pointer Rajiv Iraqis—eyeglasses, shoes, bandages, soccer balls, mechanics’ cover- Srinivasan continue working to get more military and civilian vol- alls, sewing machines—from anyone in America “willing and able unteers involved. When Ho, who took a semester off to set up the to assist,” and for donors to offer supplies that may be useful. site (tutoring to raise money to keep it going), was interviewed by a Beyondorders facilitates matches, provides donors with APO ad- local TV station, he told viewers,“I need you to get on the site, reg- dresses for the military recipients, keeps tabs on shipments, and ister, and tell the troops in Iraq what you can do.” That’s still true.

Harvard Magazine 83 THE COLLEGE PUMP

A Peal before Leaving

Church, to study the cultural significance gay marriage and whose church does not of these bells, to learn how best to ring ordain women? And who would have them, and, said Rapoport, to become part imagined that the same patriarch would of a renaissance of ringing in Russia. share public stages…before massive televi- The Danilov Monastery is the once and sion audiences with Diana Eck? Further- future home of the Lowell bells. Stalin more, who would have imagined that “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched wanted to melt them down. Industrialist when the patriarch called publicly for a to shake with passers-by.” Charles R. Crane, LL.D. ’22, bought them philanthropist to finance the repatriation and gave them to Harvard in 1930. They of the bells, his call would be answered by uestion: “What was I, a go home this summer (see “Bell Swap,” Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian Jew, whose young American student of November-December 2006, page 88). foundation is run by a Russian Muslim?” medicine and electrical engi- “The more deeply I have become in- In Russian ringing traditions, bells neering—and an observant volved in the repatriation project,” said sound rhythmic patterns, not melodies. Q Jew—doing in the frozen bell Rapoport, “the stranger and more mirac- (Although Lowell’s bells can’t ring a chro- tower of a Russian Orthodox monastery ulous it seems to me.…In the 20 years matic scale, Rapoport has discovered over in Moscow on the eve of the New Year?” since communism began to loosen its the years that tunes can be played with Benjamin Isaac Rapoport posed that grip, the Russian Orthodox Church has them, including “Hatikvah,” the Israeli question in a February talk at morning sent a stream of requests asking Harvard national anthem.) Readers may hear them prayers in Memorial Church. to return the bells….Until 2002, all such ring traditionally during a bell festival Answer: Rapoport, A.B.-A.M. ’03, who requests fell on deaf ears. Who would and symposium on June 1 and 2 (see is in his fourth year of the M.D.-Ph.D. pro- have imagined that Diana Eck, a preemi- www.lowell.harvard.edu/Bells/ for de- gram at the Medical School and does re- nent American scholar of religion and tails) hosted by Eck, the master of Lowell, search on the design of brain-implantable also an outspoken supporter of gay and participated in by monks, foundry- electronic devices, is also head ringer of rights—and herself married to a female men, the Yale Russian Chorus, members the Russian bells at Lowell House. During minister in this church—who would have of the Crane family, Vekselberg, and pro- the winter recess, he and three under- imagined that such a figure would mas- ject manager Peter Riley, who will ex- graduate Lowell Klappermeisters went to termind the return of these bells to the plain how, in July, workers will remove a the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, seat of great monastery of the Russian Orthodox bit of the bell tower, take out the old the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox patriarch, who has publicly denounced bells, and hoist in 27 tons of new ones. Valery Anisimov, director of the Vera “Our Russian teachers and col- Foundry in Voronezh, Russia, came leagues know that their traditions to Lowell House in February 2007 will live” with us, said Rapoport. with a team of artisans to make “On returning from Russia, I sent molds (right) of the surface decora- tions and inscriptions on the venera- a recording of our first Lowell ble bells. Back at the foundry, work- House ringings back to Moscow. I ers modeled the new bells in wax, received the following response created clay molds, and poured the bronze. Harvard chose this foundry from the monastery: ‘It is very joy- because it was the only one able to ful news for me the Lowellians make a bell as big as the Bell of like your new (and at the same Mother Earth, the largest of Lowell’s time very old) style. Ben, I also set of 17. On March 30, 2007, the superior of the Danilov Monastery was happy to receive and listen to prayed and the foundry cast the 14- your audio files. My soul sang ton replacement Mother Earth. with the bells!’” primus v

84 May - June 2008 Photograph by Diana Eck ...... LETTERS (continued from page 10) is a practical goal. That would be to pur- false. Perhaps her source of information is sue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- Deirdre Imus, whose public forum is Islam—Nye is accepting unquestioningly ness for all peoples of the Middle East. granted to her by her entertainer-hus- the corrupted vocabulary whereby the The lavish aid we give Israel should be band, but that doesn’t justify either United States is engaged in a phony “war” spent only to promote peace and prosper- O’Brien’s tone or her message. I trust that on terror that the sitting president has ity evenhandedly in the Middle East. An thoughtful Harvard scientists can help used to ram through his anti-civil liber- economic union is a feasible mechanism. O’Brien understand how uninformed her tarian agenda. Borders have long been established by the published letter turned out to be. [Life exists beyond the narrow United Nations. Joseph R. Barrie, M. D., ’60 confines of “soft” and “hard” modalities in Beginning in the Middle East, this model Harvard, Mass. the exercise of American hegemony.] One could serve well for global application. need only introduce a different question: Francis Sullivan ’46 MILITARY JURIST “Why?” Why assume that the United Greer, S.C. It is indeed refreshing to read an ac- States has an obligation to shoulder a count of an alumnus—an exceptional twenty-first-century version of the MEDICAL ERRORS man by any standard—who is doing work “white man’s burden”? Why not assume My wife and I have been in medicine of the very highest importance for the na- that countries other than the U.S.A. right- for more than 60 years each. We have tion (“Wartime Legalities,” by Willy fully have national interests which their never been told to hide the facts regard- Stern, March-April, page 72). Colonel governments are pursuing in a rational ing a medical error. “The Talking Cure” Martins is emblematic of the hundreds of manner and that those governments, (March-April, page 60) would leave your judge advocates of all the armed forces whether democratically elected or not, readers believing this was a universal and serving in the theater, who every day for- are as politically mature as our own? common practice. In none of the eight ward the rule of law among the Iraqi pop- Our “mission” should be to create the major medical institutions here or in ulation, ensure that combat operations institutional basis for consensual, multi- Scotland where we have practiced were are conducted according to international polar security arrangements. This means we ever instructed not to inform a patient standards, advise commanders on a host replacing the confrontational policies of or his/her insurance company that an of issues, and assist in maintaining good military and economic containment di- error was made. order and discipline among our own per- rected against China and Russia, whose In truth, we were told very little about sonnel, all at great personal risk and continuation Nye advocates, and jettison- the matter for the first 45 to 50 years of under conditions of substantial hardship. ing the false issues of “values gaps” and practice, certainly not at Harvard Med- I have been fortunate enough to work in spreading democracy by force. Instead we ical School. I can recall only one instance and around the Judge Advocate General’s should be accommodating graciously and of the subject coming up during my years Corps of the respective armed forces for proactively worldwide economic and de- there. We medical students in the 1940s most of my career. These uniformed mographic change, bringing the BRIC passed on among us the tale about the lawyers represent some of the best in the countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China] to great Brigham [Hospital] surgeon, John American legal profession. In an era in their rightful positions of influence in the Homans: to the effect that he had apolo- which the bottom line seems to be the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank. gized to a patient for some minor lapse in only criterion for success, they have cho- This also entails dismantling NATO, now judgment or technique. The story was sen the path of duty and sacrifice. Given that it demeans its member countries by told not so much because it was an ob- the load of educational debt that the aver- serving merely as a “tool kit” for an Amer- ject lesson but because it reflected the age law graduate emerges with, many of ican bully, prevents the emergence of a well-known honesty and humanity of the them have in a real sense mortgaged their much-needed EU defense agency, and is man. In more recent years, the advice my futures to serve the nation. I salute them, ultimately counterproductive to U.S. aims. wife and I have always heard in various and hope that that nation continues to be In many ways the situation before us relevant meetings has been to report er- worthy of their sacrifice. parallels the run-up to World War I, and rors immediately to the patient and to Scott W. Stuck, J.D. ’73 it is an open question whether we will do hospital administration. Perhaps our ex- Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces better than the U.K. did then as we step perience is unique, but I doubt it. Washington, D.C. up to the mark. Giulio J. D’Angio, M.D.’45 Gilbert Doctorow ’67 Philadelphia I read with great pride the account Brussels of Colonel Mark Martins and his service AUTISM REMEDIES to our country in Iraq, and am particu- No mention is made of Israel as a fac- As a physician and the grandfather of larly impressed at the positive, strategic tor in our nation’s past, present, or future an autistic 10-year-old, I am dismayed impact this one Harvard-trained lawyer foreign policy. Our present “only for Is- both by the letter of Theresa V. (Makin) has had. It’s ironic that Harvard’s influ- rael” foreign policy has caused us to make O’Brien ’00 (March-April, page 5, concern- ence in our armed forces is greatly dimin- enemies, brought us to 9/11, and is a likely ing “A Spectrum of Disorders,” January- ished by a continuing ban on ROTC train- reason for the current Iraq war, with its February, page 27) and your decision to ing on campus. tragic loss and cost. publish it. I believe that the entire letter is Ralph Erickson, M.P.H. ’89 Working toward a better foreign policy not only undocumented, but viciously Columbia, Md.

Harvard Magazine 93 MAKING CREDIT SAFER financial products, review new products ments on the outstanding loan balance. (continued from page 37) for safety, and require modification of With every agency, the fear of capture dangerous products before they can be by those it regulates is ever-present. But charter that would permit them di≠erent marketed to the public? The agency in a world in which there is little coher- options in developing and marketing could review mortgages, credit cards, car ent, consumer-oriented regulation of financial products. If the regulated can loans, and so on. It could also exercise ju- any kind, an FPSC with power to act is choose the regulators they want, it should risdiction over life insurance and annuity far better than the available alternatives. be no surprise when they game the rules contracts. In e≠ect, the FPSC would eval- Whether it is housed in a current in their own favor. uate these products to eliminate the hid- agency such as the CPSC or stands Unfortunately, in a world in which the den tricks that make some of them far alone, the point is to concentrate the re- financial-services industry is routinely one of the top three contributors to na- The point is to concentrate the review of tional political campaigns, the likelihood of quick action to respond to specific financial products with a focus on the problems and to engage in meaningful oversight is vanishingly slim. This leaves safety of the products as consumers use them. consumers e≠ectively unprotected in a world in which a number of merchants of more dangerous than others, and ensure view of financial products in a single lo- financial products have shown them- that none pose unacceptable risks to con- cation, with a focus on the safety of the selves very willing to take as much as sumers. products as consumers use them. Companies they can by any means they can. An FPSC would promote the benefits of that o≠er good products would have lit- free markets by assuring that consumers tle to fear. Indeed, if they could conduct A FINANCIAL PRODUCTS can enter credit markets confident that business without competing with com- SAFETY COMMISSION the products they purchase meet mini- panies whose business model is to mis- It is time for a new model of financial mum safety standards. A commission lead the customer, then the vendors regulation, one focused primarily on con- could collect data about which financial o≠ering safer products would be more sumer safety rather than corporate profitability. products are least understood, what likely to flourish. Moreover, with an The model for such regulation is the U.S. kinds of disclosures are most e≠ective, FPSC, consumer-credit suppliers would Consumer Product Safety Commission and which products are most likely to re- be free to innovate on a level playing (CPSC), an independent agency founded sult in consumer default. It could develop field within the boundaries of clearly in 1972 during the Nixon administration. nuanced regulatory responses; some disclosed terms and open competi- The CPSC’s mission is to protect the pub- credit terms might be banned altogether, tion—not hidden terms designed to lic from risks of injury and death from while others might be permitted only mislead consumers. products used in the home, school, and with clearer disclosure. A commission The consumer financial services indus- recreation. It has the authority to develop could promote uniform disclosures that try has grown to more than $3 trillion in uniform safety standards, order the recall make it easier to compare products, and annual business. Lenders employ thou- of unsafe products, and ban products that to discern conflicts of interest on the sands of lawyers, marketing agencies, pose unreasonable risks. In establishing part of a mortgage broker or seller of statisticians, and business strategists to the commission, Congress recognized that what are now loosely regulated products. help them increase profits. In a rapidly “the complexities of consumer products For example, an FPSC might review the changing market, customers need some- and the diverse nature and abilities of con- following terms that appear in some— one on their side to help make certain sumers using them frequently result in an but not all—credit-card agreements: uni- that the products they buy meet mini- inability of users to anticipate risks and to versal default clauses; unlimited and un- mum safety standards. Personal responsi- safeguard themselves adequately.” explained fees; interest-rate increases bility will always play a critical role in The evidence clearly shows that the that exceed 10 percentage points; and an dealing with credit cards or other loans, CPSC is cost-e≠ective. Since it was estab- issuer’s claim that it can change the just as personal responsibility remains a lished, product-related death and injury terms after money has been borrowed. It central feature in the safe use of any other rates in the United States have decreased would also promote such market-en- product, but a Financial Product Safety substantially. The CPSC estimates that hancing practices as a simple, easy-to- Commission would be the consumers’ standards for three products alone—ciga- read paragraph that explains all interest ally. And for every family that avoids a rette lighters, cribs, and baby walkers— charges; clear explanations of when fees trap or doesn’t get caught by a trick— save more than $2 billion annually (more will be imposed; a requirement that the that’s regulation that works. than the agency’s total cumulative budget terms of a credit card remain the same since its inception). until the card expires; no marketing tar- Elizabeth Warren, RF ’02, is Gottlieb professor of So why not create a Financial Product geted at college students or minors; and a law and faculty director of the Program of Judicial Safety Commission (FPSC), charged statement showing how long it will take Education at Harvard Law School. An earlier ver- with responsibility to establish guide- to pay o≠ the balance, as well as how sion of this article appeared in Democracy: A lines for consumer disclosure, collect and much interest will be paid if the cus- Journal of Ideas (democracyjournal.org/- report data about the uses of di≠erent tomer makes the minimum monthly pay- article.php?ID=6528).

94 May - June 2008 HOME OF THE HUMANITIES multicolored, ornate (continued from page 56) ornamental ceiling as well, copied from a from the classic Veracruz culture, on the chateau in the Loire east coast of modern Mexico—informs Valley. A monthly, viewers about the culture’s widespread public concert series ball games, believed to have served both fulfills their wish to ritualistic and recreational functions; the have the room used athletic equipment on display includes for chamber-music stone elbow and knee protectors. In an- performances. other gallery, visitors learn about Maya re- On one December ligion by viewing a bust of the maize god evening, the concert is and a bowl with a carved image of the by the vocal ensemble chocolate god. Pomerium. (Fittingly, The Blisses snubbed the sensibilities of its medieval Latin their time in favor of collecting pieces name translates as that brought them pleasure. Just as they garden or orchard.) In were early Byzantine enthusiasts, Robert the minutes before Bliss “was ahead of his time” in collecting the concert begins, pre-Columbian artifacts, says Bühl: his people crane their collection, first displayed at the National necks unabashedly to Gallery, was one of the earliest to recog- stare at the ceiling, re- nize the objects’ artistic value, as well as cently restored to its their status as historical artifacts. A spe- original state after cial exhibit for the grand reopening fea- years of bad restora- tures his first acquisition, a nine-inch-tall tions that had, sta≠ jade Olmec statuette he found at an an- members ruefully re- tique shop in Paris in 1912. Here, the call, left cherubs look- figure assumes a double meaning, coming like Casper the menting on both Olmec culture and the Friendly Ghost. Along Blisses’ life history. the sides of the room The main house, which dates to 1801, is are a work by El Greco; a museum in itself, exquisitely decorated an early Renaissance Curator and with floors of exotic Hawaiian wood and painting depicting the museum director furniture collected during the Blisses’ martyrdom of Saint Gudrun Bühl travels around the world. After buying Peter, painted in the the property, they added a greenhouse, a fifteenth century by Jacobello del Fiore; and the massive silvered-brass light stable (which by the time they completed and a wooden sculpture of the Virgin fixtures, said to be from the cathedral of it was a garage instead), an orchid house holding the Christ Child, carved as a Segovia in Spain. (today a periodical room attached to the model for a life-size version by the The program is songs of Christmas, but new library), servants’ quarters, the mu- fifteenth-century German sculptor not those that would be familiar to mod- seum wings, and, of course, the gardens. Tilman Riemenschneider. ern ears. The ensemble sings in Latin, But their main structural addition was The ensemble sings in front of a Palla- starting with a monophonic Gregorian the music room. dian arch; tapestries from the fifteenth chant version of each song—haunting in In decorating this room, they spared century hang above the singers’ heads. its sparsity—followed by its layered and no expense. The appointments include The scene is framed by the floor of red textured polyphonic elaboration, like a a fireplace with a hulking sixteenth- Verona marble, the Italianate columns, stove with all its burners going at once, century limestone mantelpiece that the gilded bronze wall sconces—de- di≠erent dishes bubbling and boiling. stretches to the 15-foot ceiling. Its previ- signed for candles but now electrified— Some listeners are undoubtedly consider- ous home was the Château de Théobon, ing this a commentary on stylistic change in the Dordogne. A pendant representing between the Middle Ages and the Re- (The Blisses had the crocodile god, one of naissance; others, just as certainly, are the most widespread to have the foun- deities among the pre- simply appreciating the lush sounds. The dations of the Columbian peoples of Blisses’ names may be unfamiliar to many house reinforced what are now Costa Rica listeners, but this scene fulfills their beneath the spot and Panama. Made of a wishes just the same. gold and copper alloy, where it would the pendant is believed sit.) They also to be between 500 and Elizabeth Gudrais ’01 is associate editor of this commissioned a 1,300 years old. magazine.

Harvard Magazine 95 TREASURE Glass Jelly Move over, Glass Flowers.

he blue beauty at left is Por- pita mediterranea rendered in glass, reproduced here at about twice life size. These jellies, Tmoved by wind and wave across the surface of the open sea, are composed of colonies of specialized organisms. They trap and subdue their prey with tentacles bearing stinging cells that eject barbed threads with a paralyzing toxin, according to Janis Sacco, director of exhibitions at the Harvard Museum of Natural His- tory. They don’t sting humans. The University’s greatest indoor tourist attraction are the more than 4,000 aston- ishing “glass flowers” made especially for Harvard from 1887 through 1936 by artisans Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, father and son, at their studio near Dres- den. The plants now share the spotlight with sea slugs, squid, jellyfish, and other soft ones of the ocean, also rendered in glass and wire by the Blaschkas. The new exhibition Sea Creatures in Glass will continue through January 4, 2009. Alongside the 58 models are specimens in bottles, a video, and a recreation of the Blaschka studio. Before they turned exclusively to plants, the Blaschkas mass-produced models of more than 700 marine invertebrate species. Harvard acquired its 420 models around 1878 to use for teaching. With the advent of underwater photography, the collection began to su≠er from benign neglect (“The Glass Animals,” July-August 1997, page 92). “Most of the models still need to be cleaned and restored,” says James Hanken, Agassiz professor of zoology—a process to be completed, he judges, about $250,000 from now. A few of the first batch to be rescued were shown last year in Minnesota at Underwater Adven- tures Aquarium, whose CEO, Todd Peter- son ’84, M.B.A. ’87, spurred Harvard’s e≠orts. The crystal creatures flew West in

their own ﬁrst-class seat on the plane. HARVARD UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY the saddle ring

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