FALL 2014 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE COLLABORATIONS 45 STARTUPS. 1 GARAGE. C1_FrontCover_v1.indd C1 10/1/14 4:41 PM ChangeCHANGETHEWORLD lives, On October 29, join Columbians around the globe for 24 hours of giving back, connecting, and chances to win matching funds for your favorite school or program. Changing Lives That Change The World givingday.columbia.edu #ColumbiaGivingDay C2_GivingDay.indd C2 9/30/14 5:45 PM CONTENTS Fall 2014 12 44 26 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 3 Letters 12 Start Me Up By Rebecca Shapiro 6 Primary Sources The new Columbia Startup Lab in SoHo is open Darwin in plain English . Gail Sheehy’s New York for business. We visit some young entrepreneurs to memories . Eric Holder goes to Ferguson see what clicks. 8 College Walk 22 Streams and Echoes Grab your coat and get your stethoscope . By Tim Page Decanterbury tales . Kenneth Waltz: The composer Chou Wen-chung, featured this fall as one A remembrance of the Miller Theatre’s “Composer Portraits,” has been connecting East and West for more than sixty years. 48 News Amale Andraos named dean of GSAPP . 26 The Professor’s Last Stand Columbia gives seed grants to overseas research By David J. Craig projects . Brown Institute for Media Innovation US historian Eric Foner is trying something new before opens its doors . Columbia Secondary School he retires: he’s fi lming a massive open online course, graduates its fi rst class . David Goldstein or MOOC. Call it a Lincoln login. recruited to head new genomics institute . Bollinger’s term extended 34 Rewired By Paul Hond 53 Newsmakers Law professor Tim Wu, the coiner of “net neutrality,” entered New York’s lieutenant-governor race to change 55 Explorations politics. Will politics change him? 56 Reviews 44 Heavy Heart, Empty Heart By James McGirk 63 Classifi eds John Berryman drank too much, and poured his life into his poetry. Now, in his centennial year, his work 64 Finals is being reissued and celebrated anew. Cover photograph by Jörg Meyer 1 ToC.indd 1 10/1/14 4:00 PM IN THIS ISSUE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Interim Executive Vice President, University Development & Alumni Relations Amelia Alverson Nona Farahnik ’12LAW lives in Los Angeles. In the summer Publisher of 2014, she took a leave of absence from her job as an Tim McGowan associate at Latham & Watkins to serve as Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu’s campaign manager in his race for Chief Editorial Adviser Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS lieutenant governor of New York. >> Page 34 Managing Editor Rebecca Shapiro Senior Editor David J. Craig Emily Kate is a Columbia College senior who has worked Associate Editor in wineries in the United States and Australia. She earned Paul Hond her certifi cations with honors from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, through the International Wine Center in Copy Chief Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN New York, and is the proprietor of thewinehistorian.com. >> Page 10 Art Director Eson Chan Assistant to the Editor Lauren Savage Editorial Assistants Tim Page ’79CC is a professor of journalism and music at Juwon Kim, Dan Wallace the University of Southern California. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1997 for his writing about music for Mailing Address Columbia Magazine the Washington Post, and he is the author or editor of more Columbia Alumni Center than twenty books. >> Page 22 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 Tel. 212-851-4155 Fax 212-851-1950 [email protected] www.magazine.columbia.edu Address and Archive Assistance James Shapiro ’77CC is the Larry Miller Professor of [email protected] English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. He is a 212-851-4155 governor of the Folger Shakespeare Library and serves on the To update your address online, visit board of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2011, he was alumni.columbia.edu/directory, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). >> Page 60 Advertising: 212-851-4155 [email protected] To download our advertising brochure or submit a classifi ed advertisement online, David Sulzer is a professor of psychiatry, neurology, visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise. and pharmacology at Columbia University Medical Center. Columbia Magazine is published for He studies memory, learning, and behavior, with special alumni and friends of Columbia by the attention to the brain mechanisms that underlie Parkinson’s Offi ce of Alumni and Development. disease, schizophrenia, autism, and drug addiction. © 2014 by the Trustees of Columbia University >> Page 55 in the City of New York RUTH FREMSON / NYT REDUX RUTH 2 Columbia Fall 2014 2 Contributors.indd 2 10/1/14 2:52 PM letters IT TAKES A VILLAGE Stacey Kors’s cover article “The Road to fl icts and all-too-fresh internecine bloodlet- As a board member of the Fistula Founda- Kigutu,” about Deogratias Niyizonkiza’s ting. Where words fail, or are constrained by tion, I was already planning to travel to the Village Health Works clinic in Burundi, cultural inhibitions, working side by side can Great Lakes region of Africa to visit proj- is inspirational in so many ways. I was be a literal road to resolution. ects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, particularly moved by the story of Cécille, Nicholas Cunningham Burundi, and Rwanda when I read the Sum- a local woman who got villagers together Professor Emeritus mer 2014 Columbia Magazine cover story to build a mountainside road to the clinic, College of Physicians and Surgeons about Deogratias Niyizonkiza and the Vil- a project that reunited Tutsis and Hutus, Springfi eld Center, NY lage Health Works clinic that he founded. who had been locked in post-genocidal Since I would be in the neighborhood antipathy and shame. What a story — “The Road to Kigutu” of his village of Kigutu, only some three The Tutsi–Hutu ethnic rivalry in Rwanda shows exactly what one committed per- hours away by car, I wrote to Deo and was and Burundi is profound, being both his- son can do in this world. As a parent of generously invited to visit, enjoy a dinner torical and biological. This came home a Columbia grad, I read the magazine of beans and rice, and spend a night there. to me forty years ago on a site visit to too, and this issue is especially interesting. I was met at the Bujumbura International Burundi. Walking into a bar in the capi- Come on, people, we can raise the money Airport by Dr. Romeo Niyomukiza and tal, Bujumbura, I was surprised to fi nd for Deo’s next project! Columbia people driven with a full military honor guard men quaffi ng not beer but milk from large may be a small segment of society, but I (two soldiers with AK-47s in the back of beakers. I fi nally realized that they were believe they are a mighty one that can rec- our pickup truck) to Kigutu. demonstrating their Tutsi (ruling) heri- ognize a hero to get behind. Let’s do it! Village Health Works is a grand project tage: the taller Tutsis have lived alongside Elaine Fleck that fully lives up to its billing. I would like the shorter Hutus for so long that size no Sedona, AZ the Columbia community to know that the longer differentiates them, but the Tut- medical care is top-notch, the site gorgeous, sis’ history as herders (and therefore milk Thank you for publishing the article the programs in agronomy, music, dance, drinkers) provides them with a tolerance about the heartwarming work Deogratias and community health all well done and very for milk that Hutus (historically farmers) Niyizonkiza is pursuing in the wake of the popular with the local community. Deo’s generally lack. So what I was witnessing horrible Burundian genocide. Hopefully, project has gone from dream to reality in an was a particularly intolerant form of con- the publicity will attract needed funds and astonishingly short time. It was an honor to spicuous consumption! serve as a reminder of how quickly ethnic be able to see what he has accomplished. Building a road for the benefi t of all moun- hatred and violence can erupt. Lawrence A. William ’62CC, ’66PS tain patients of whatever heritage was a Cassandra B. O’Neal ’92CC Los Altos Hills, CA superb way of resolving ages-old ethnic con- Seattle, WA Fall 2014 Columbia 3 3-5 Letters3.indd 3 9/29/14 2:47 PM LETTERS INSTITUTIONAL ROOTS rable guest I have ever had at the restaurant. worrying about corruption is a luxury that In the article “Fickle Fortunes” (Summer He called me over and told me he wanted many people can’t afford.” The poor as well 2014), Douglas Quenqua describes a survey to show me something. Now, when most as the privileged are angered and oppressed on poverty put out by the Columbia School bar guests do this, it’s because they want to by offi cial corruption and harassment. Don’t of Social Work and the Robin Hood Foun- show me something they just got published, Cole and Savage remember that the Arab dation. As a social worker and community their latest Instagram post, or ten photos of Spring was set off by the suicide of a poor organizer in New York City for more than their dog — but he very quietly showed me Tunisian street vendor who couldn’t take his twenty-nine years, I support a process that the picture of him hugging his daughter that mistreatment by offi cials anymore? tries to understand the roots of poverty appears in the magazine. He told me all about Carol Crystle ’64GSAS, ’71TC and that recognizes how people can cycle how excited he was to surprise his daughter, Chicago, IL in and out of it.